Political Representation and Economic Rights in the Shadows of Citizenship

In recent years, the remarkable movement for the political rights of undocumented youth—the so- called “DREAMers”—has catalyzed a critical conversation about the economic rights of all noncitizens. A growing number of states have amended their laws in response to advocacy by and for this particular group of noncitizens. This Essay situates this modern legal development in a broader conceptual and historical frame. It reflects on the relationship between economic rights and political aspirations in this movement, as well as in two other key legal developments in immigration history: the passage of anti-Asian alien land laws in the 1910s and 1920s, and the equal protection revolution in noncitizen rights in the 1970s.

These three examples demonstrate the interplay between economic rights and political aspirations or dispossessions in the history of immigration and citizenship. While our conversations about immigrant rights are often siloed into specific areas—the economy, education, politics, and so on—we see that these areas are not so separate but instead can be interconnected and intimately related.