Operation Walls and Mirrors

Joseph Nevins, a professor of Geography at Vassar College. As a scholar, he has focused on territorial boundaries as well as the social constructs that follow with a focus on the boundary of Mexico and the United States. His book, Operation Gatekeeper and Beyond: The War on “Illegals” and the Remaking of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary clearly outlines the complex social structure surrounding the border and how that social structure is affected by a number of other variables such as politics, economics, and crime to name a few. He offers a unique view point on a matter typically reserved for political scientists or historians, and this allows for his argument to be refreshing and insightful.
David Gutierrez is a Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. At UCSD, Professor Gutierrez specializes in Chicano history and immigration history as well as politics in the United States over the course of the 20th century. His book, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity are similar to book in that it is certainly refreshing, but it is written from the viewpoint of a historian, so it offers a more historical background of the border with less of a focus on the social constructs and more of a focus on the history of border changes that occurred over time through the lens of social and political events.
Each novel covers virtually the same topic but with differing viewpoints in the same way that two people can witness a car crash from different vantage points but ultimately end up with the same breakdown of events leading up to the crash. The comparison of the two books can offer a deeper understanding of the border as a whole and certainly a better rounded view...

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...cially. (Nevins 202) He states earlier that the buildup of the boundary and immigration are simply trends that occur from the local level to the state and national level and the “illegalization” of the immigration process is simply a means by which the United States government can portray the people who have good intentions as outlaws.(Nevins 193) Thus bringing back an important concept from The Third Boarder: The negative images of the US and Mexico border carries over from the first, to the second, to the third border. Nevins then argues that the reason why the tactic works is that American society has a history of, “race based anti-immigrant sentiment.”(Nevins 194) It is not hard to conclude that his stance on the term illegal alien would be remarkably similar to that of Gutierrez, even though they are witnessing this event from two different vantage points.