The authors examine U.S. efforts to prevent illegal immigration to the United States. Although the United States has witnessed a sharp drop in illegal border crossings in the past decade alongside an enormous increase in government activities to prevent illegal immigration, there remains little understanding of the role enforcement has played. Better data and analyses to assist lawmakers in crafting more successful policies and to support administration officials in implementing these policies are long overdue.

This is a major revision and update of Nevins’ earlier classic and is an ideal text for use with undergraduate students in a wide variety of courses on immigration, transnational issues, and the politics of race, inclusion and exclusion. Not only has the author brought his subject completely up to date, but as a "case" of increasing economic integration and liberalization along with growing immigration control, the US / Mexico Border and its history is put in a wider global context of similar development s elsewhere. A companion website is available at www.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415996945. The Companion Website contains key U.S. government documents related to the boundary and immigration enforcement strategy; reports from non-partisan research entities and non-governmental organizations that evaluate enforcement from a civil and human rights perspective; and studies that investigate migrant deaths in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. There are also photo essays, including one related to deportations and another to California’s Border Field State Park, for which the site also includes historic photos and other resources. Finally, the site has links to websites—from U.S. government agencies involved in boundary and immigrant policing, to humanitarian and border, migrant, and human rights organizations.

Provides an immensely readable account of what has become an increasingly central concern for developed nations: keeping third world immigrants out.