THE BEST MEASURE of the declining state of immigrant rights in the post–September 11 world came last fall at a congressional hearing on, of all things, airport security. The question at hand concerned how to avoid a repeat of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, DC, to which congressmen tossed out such ideas as arming pilots, deploying sky marshals in airplanes, and handing over airport security to the federal government. But then, another suggestion surfaced: require every baggage screener at every airport to be an American citizen.

The proposal, which Congress has since enacted into law, struck immigrants and their allies as extraordinary. Forget that thousands of people who enjoy legal status and but have yet to become naturalized citizens are now losing their jobs operating baggage-screening equipment at airports nationwide, including in Boston. Consider, instead, the basic fact that all it takes for an immigrant to enlist in the US military or the National Guard is a "green card," or permanent residency. Congress, in other words, believes that what’s good enough for the armed forces isn’t necessarily good for the airlines. Explains Angela Kelley, the deputy director of the National Immigration Forum, in Washington, DC, "Now legal immigrants who are non-citizens in the National Guard can patrol airports and be put in charge of watching over citizen baggage screeners. It’s just bizarre."

Indeed. Yet the legislation passed in the wake of September 11 illustrates the sudden and stark shift in Washington’s attitude toward immigrants. Up until then, momentum had stood firmly behind immigrants’ rights. More and more politicians were voting to extend benefits to overlooked immigrant populations. More and more were exploring how to fix the notoriously high backlog of amnesty cases. Broad-based agreement among Democrats, Republicans, and business and labor groups had emerged to develop a grand plan allowing undocumented immigrants to work legally in the United States and "guest workers" to migrate freely across borders. The atmosphere was the friendliest toward immigrants in decades. "Before September 11," says Elizabeth Matos, the immigrant-rights coordinator at the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy coalition (MIRA), "the climate was the most favorable in a long time."

But all that crumbled along with the World Trade Center and the E-ring of the Pentagon. The terrorist attacks forced Congress and the Bush administration to enhance national security, of course. In the process, however, many politicians came to view immigration in terms of one concern — stopping potential terrorists from slipping into the country. In the year since September 11, the Bush administration, in particular, has adopted a dizzying array of heavy-handed measures aimed at immigrants. It has launched new initiatives imposing jail time if immigrants do not file a change-of-address form within 10 days of moving; requiring employers to review employees’ social-security numbers; and calling on local and state police to act as immigration agents. "Taken together," says Judy Golub, the senior advocacy director at the Washington, DC–based American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), "the administration’s policies create a troubling picture in which immigrants in this country feel besieged." Which, naturally, raises the question: can the immigration-reform movement ever really recover from such serious setbacks?

THE YEAR 2001, pre–September 11, was shaping up to be a watershed year for immigrant-rights issues on Capitol Hill. There were, for example, numerous efforts aimed at undoing the damage caused to legal immigrants across the nation by the draconian 1996 immigration law, which overhauled immigration procedures and sped up the deportation of millions of people. They’re still around, of course, but they’ve been defanged.

One such effort involves what US Congressman Barney Frank (D-Newton), an outspoken advocate for immigrant rights, describes as the "retroactive automatic-deportation provision." Under the 1996 law, legal immigrants who’ve been convicted of felony crimes, such as drug offenses or aggravated assaults, can face instant deportation — even if they’ve served jail time. Back in 2000, Frank sponsored legislation that would have effectively overturned the law’s harsh language. He pushed his bill through the House of Representatives, where it passed unanimously. In June 2001, just three months before the September 11 terrorist attacks, the US Supreme Court bolstered the cause by ruling the automatic-deportation provision unconstitutional — partly because it shipped away lawful permanent residents without a hearing and partly because it was applied retroactively. The court’s decision, according to Helena Marques of the New Bedford–based Immigrants Assistance Center, which has organized 120 Portuguese and Cape Verdean families whose loved ones got deported under the law, "gave immigrants hope. Before 9/11, we felt we had taken a huge step forward."

Likewise, the effort to give relief to hundreds of thousands of Colombians living illegally in this country had made strides. By summer 2001, immigrant groups from Boston to Los Angeles to Miami had convinced a growing number of politicians that undocumented Colombians deserve what’s known as temporary protected status (TPS), an immigration status bestowed on refugees from war-torn countries. Massachusetts senator Edward Kennedy spearheaded the effort in August 2001, when he circulated a "Dear Colleague" letter among his fellow senators. The letter, addressed to President Bush, who has the power to grant TPS status to immigrants, implored him and his administration to protect Colombians seeking refuge here from deportation. "It was a big deal," explains Raquel Matthews, a Colombian organizer with Voices in Action, an immigrant-advocacy group in Malden. "We thought, ‘What luck.’"

Perhaps the biggest success story prior to 9/11 occurred in the most unlikely area: amnesty for undocumented aliens. This political taboo was broken by Bush himself, who’s proven to be more enlightened on immigration than most of his Republican colleagues. In February 2001, Bush and Mexican president Vicente Fox launched groundbreaking negotiations on immigration. By July 2001, Bush’s top advisers had endorsed a plan to allow the estimated three million Mexicans living illegally in the US to apply for permanent residency — thus paving the way for one of the largest attempts to legalize the status of illegal immigrants in American history.

The Bushies’ move to embrace Mexicans unleashed the floodgates. The Democratic Party, long the champion of immigrants’ rights, upped the ante almost immediately by vowing to extend amnesty to millions of other illegal immigrants, such as Colombians, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Hondurans. Politicians of all stripes uttered the words "legalization" and "immigrants" in the same breath. Optimism heightened. Momentum surged. On September 6, just one week before the terrorist attacks, Bush and Fox held a high-profile summit at the White House. When Bush stood beside his Mexican counterpart on the South Lawn and called for "a direct and honest assessment of reality" regarding undocumented Mexicans, reform seemed inevitable. "All of a sudden," recalls Elena Letonia, who heads the Cambridge-based Centro Presente, "it was a major shift in the political climate. I didn’t think it would happen in my lifetime."

But the rosy landscape on the Hill vanished almost as soon as 19 foreign hijackers plowed commercial jets into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field last year — sending more than 3000 people to their deaths. The catastrophe, as we know, brought with it a vicious backlash against immigrants. Since September 11, more and more immigrants who work hard and pay taxes — many of whom have legal papers and work permits — have become victims of violent crimes, mass firings, and police dragnets. Republicans in Congress seized the anti-immigrant hysteria and proposed restrictions to fortify borders, track foreign students, and even put a six-month moratorium on immigration. Ultimately, the backlash manifested itself in subtle yet insidious policy changes. Says Letonia, "It’s like a generalized fear or suspicion of immigrants." Politicians, she adds, "have said, ‘Look at these foreign terrorists’ and have invented rules and regulations" that make life hard for all immigrants.

Take, for instance, the recent attempt by the Social Security Administration (SSA) to match its database to the records of American employers. Throughout 2002, the agency has sent out as many as 750,000 "no-match" letters to companies, notifying them that an employee’s name and Social Security number do not match information in SSA files. The letters say nothing about an employee’s legal immigration status. Such no-matches can result if an employer, say, misspells an employee’s name on tax forms. Even so, the SSA action has prompted some employers to terminate immigrant workers on the spot, which, of course, only generates panic and fear.

Consider, too, that more states have made it difficult for immigrants to obtain even basic documentation in the post-9/11 world. In Massachusetts, the state Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV) now requires immigrants to show a Social Security card to get a driver’s license. Though the requirement dates back to the 1996 law, the RMV rarely enforced it before September 11, advocates claim. But the agency has since toughened up, leaving hundreds of thousands of immigrants who have temporary status or who live here illegally unable to renew licenses. Those who need one for their jobs have resorted to the black market, where prices can run up to $3000. In effect, Massachusetts and other states have altered the purpose of the state-issued ID from a document verifying that a person knows the rules of the road to a kind of internal US passport.

Policy changes like these have made immigration reform, for all intents and purposes, a pipe dream. Off the table is legislation to end automatic deportation, to grant temporary protection to Colombians, to legalize undocumented aliens. "I’m afraid that nothing good [on immigration] can happen right now," says Congressman Frank. "There is this general climate in which politicians do not want to be seen as generous to immigrants or soft on terrorism, even though the two things are wholly unrelated."