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Racism,
Immigrants, and Their Discontents |
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Immigration
and race are joined, almost inseparably, from the colorline to the
borderline. The majority of immigrants are considered "people of color,"
coming from Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, Africa, and other parts of
the world. And while they may "pass" as people of color, they do
not "pass" as citizens. Immigration policy has
fueled new forms of racism that affects all communities. Take employer
sanctions, the cornerstone of the 1986 immigration law, requiring employers
to check the documents of all new hires. A Congressional study by the U.S.
General Accounting Office found that employer sanctions created new forms of
racial discrimination against Latino and Asian legal residents and citizens –
those who "look or sound" foreign. Or Proposition 187-style laws
and the welfare reform policies of the last five years that deny or restrict
social, health, and educational services to immigrants. Even though the
living and work conditions and the erosion of rights facing immigrants and
people of color are almost identical, immigrants are increasingly blamed for
widening racial inequalities. The Demographic Revolution The U.S. Census projects
that by the year 2025 Latinos, African Americans, Asians, Pacific Islanders,
and Indigenous peoples will make up 50% of the U.S. population in the South, Southwest,
and West. California reached that demographic pinnacle during 1996-1998; whites
are now some 40% of the state's population. By 2050 the U.S. will be over 50%
people of color. This demographic revolution calls for re-thinking and
linking the racial justice and immigrant rights agenda in new ways. Third World, or South,
countries are also undergoing a demographic shift. The UN projects that by
2050 the peoples of Asia and Africa will constitute 78.5% of the world's
population. Why are so many people migrating? Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate for
economics, explains that "...increased migratory pressure over the
decades owes more to the dynamism of international capitalism than just the
growing size of the population of third world countries." U.S.-led
global economic restructuring undermines the stability of communities, drains
resources, and forces people to move in search of work and survival. Although
there are today an estimated 150 million people in migration, they are a
small percent of the world's population. And less than 2% of the world's
migrants and refugees come to the U.S. Immigrant Rights in the Fight against Racism Does immigration, or
rather immigrants, cause or deepen racial inequality? Claiming this denies
the legacy of structural racism present since the U.S. was founded, which
began with the dispossession and enslavement of Indigenous peoples and their
descendants. This was accompanied by the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, whetting
an appetite for labor by forcibly displacing peoples from their lands and
indenturing workers. These patterns continue today. Immigrant and
non-immigrant communities of color share the same conditions: undercounted,
underpaid, constantly belittled by institutionalized racism, massively incarcerated,
suffering astronomically high push-out rates in all levels of education,
denied equal access to services – and sharing similar poverty rates with its
attendant inequities in income, wealth, and health. Yet the immigrant's role
in the recently booming economy is minimized or altogether denied. Except
when it comes to scapegoating immigrants for the conditions of other
impoverished communities of color. Immigrants are then endowed with supernatural
powers to steal the often low-paid and unstable jobs of African Americans or other
low income and working class people of color and whites. Conventional wisdom would
want us to believe that immigration's impact on communities of color makes
the rights of immigrants, especially immigrants of color, secondary to the rights
of low income and working class whites, African Americans, and other people
of color. However, the complexity of immigrants' nationality, ethnicity,
cultural, language, and community diversity and histories should enhance –
not diminish – the demand for racial justice, civil rights, and equality.
This can be achieved through a new relationship between racial justice and
immigrant rights, which means ultimately creating new alliances between our
diverse communities that also struggle for a new international relationship
between the U.S. and immigrants' countries, a relationship that would not
force peoples to leave their homelands. The challenge is to recognize that immigrant rights include racial justice and vice-versa. Otherwise we narrow the cause of racial justice by relinquishing arenas of human, social, cultural, economic, and political rights that also derive from the struggles of immigrant communities. Equally, if we ignore the racial justice dimension of immigrant rights, we underestimate the tenacity of racism and risk losing strategic allies to those who scapegoat immigrants at the expense of the rights of people of color. Finally, the demands of our communities will be short-lived if they are gained at the expense of any other community – citizen or non-citizen. Arnoldo
García is the World Conference Project Director at the National Network for
Immigrant and Refugee Rights . |
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