Mark Karlin interviewed Aviva Chomsky,
a professor and coordinator of Latin American studies at Salem State University
in Massachusetts, about the issues raised in her book, Undocumented:
How Immigration Became Illegal.
Mark Karlin: You write that a key
factor in immigration becoming illegal (for many persons of color, particularly
from Mexico and Latin America) is the development of a two-track parallel
system of labor in the United States? Can you briefly explain?
Aviva Chomsky: As I argue in
the book, illegality is one way that is currently used to keep a significant
portion of the country's population in second-class status. Different methods
have been used over time, but if you look at any moment in US history, there
has been some legal method of disenfranchising part of the
population, and maintaining them as a cheap labor force. Past systems include
slavery and racial discrimination.
It's very convenient for employers to have
access to disenfranchised workers, and it's also convenient in some ways for
citizens in general - it helps citizens have access to cheap food, cheap goods,
cheap services, all produced by people who don't enjoy the same rights that
citizens do. (Of course there are downsides for citizens too - but we need to
be clear that the problem is the system that exploits people,
and not blame the people who are being exploited.)
Illegality as a system of
enforcing this unequal labor market really rose to the fore after 1965 and
especially after 1986, with two immigration "reforms" that made
Mexican workers "illegal" (1965) and then made it specifically
illegal for them to work (1986), thus increasing their vulnerability in the
labor market.
Your book details the historical
development of immigration law, with a benchmark year being 1965. Why was that
year a threshold that "progressively restricted the rights of
noncitizens"? Why was that year so important as a dividing point?
[The year] 1965 was when the Immigration
and Nationality Act (INA) was passed. The 1965 law dismantled the system of
national origins quotas that had been implemented in 1921. The 1921 law
explicitly sought to maintain what Congress felt was the appropriate racial and
national balance of the US population by restricting the large immigration from
southern and eastern Europe that had occurred in the previous decades.
It
looked back in time to a period when the US supposedly had the
"correct" racial-ethnic composition, and set quotas for the different
European countries based on their proportion in the population. Non-Europeans
basically didn't get quotas at all. "Asians" were already excluded
because they were considered to be "racially ineligible to
citizenship." The law was based on and strengthened the assumption that
the United States was meant to be a white country - but it went further than
that to rank Europeans into more and less desirable citizens.
The 1965 Act responded to the
post-World War II climate of rejection of overt racial discrimination. It set
up a uniform quota system, giving every "country" in the world a
quota of about 20,000 immigrant visas per year. I put "country" in
quotes because we need to think about what this means, in 1965. Most of Africa
was colonized, so did not get any quotas. Europe happens to be made up of many
tiny countries. So despite looking non-discriminatory on paper, the system of
20,000 per country actually was a way of continuing to privilege European
immigration.
The INA drastically changed the way
Mexicans were treated under US immigration law. Prior to 1965, there were no
restrictions on immigration from the Western Hemisphere. Every restrictive
immigration law that was passed made an exception for Mexicans - because
employers needed their labor. Now, in the name of treating all countries
equally, the 20,000 per year quota was also imposed on Western Hemisphere
countries - which basically meant Mexico, the only Western Hemisphere country
that was sending large numbers of migrants to the US.
At the same time, other
laws including civil rights legislation and the abolition of the Bracero
Program also made it harder to discriminate against workers on the basis of
race in the post-war period. So now, suddenly, with the abolition of the
Bracero Program and the imposition of the quota, those Mexicans who had been
crossing the border to work, and being recruited and welcomed into the country,
were suddenly turned into "illegal" people. So there was a new legal
justification for discrimination and exploitation, one more suitable for the
times.
The United States was founded by white
immigrants to North America who displaced Native Americans, and was a nation
pretty much wide open to white immigration from Europe during its
post-independence and industrial expansion eras. From the perspective of many
white US citizens, how much does racial and ethnic prejudice against people of
color from Mexico and Central America play a role in the hyper-state of fear
and resentment against them coming to the United States?
I think anti-immigrant racism has
become a politically acceptable substitute for racism that is overtly based on
skin color. Most white Americans today would hotly deny being
"racist" - they would say that "skin color doesn't matter."
But they have no trouble being "anti-immigrant" - because, they say,
"immigrants broke the law!" It's a new rationale for legal
discrimination against people of color.
However, the US business community,
under both Bush and Obama, has been pushing for a guest worker program in order
to ensure a steady supply of inexpensive labor. They have been frustrated by
the end of the Bracero Program a few decades ago and feel the current H-2 visa
quota does not provide a sufficient low wage labor force. An August 29 Wall Street Journal article reports,
"Mr. Obama is also considering changes requested by business groups to
make more visas available for legal immigration, people familiar with White
House deliberations have said." Even Bush was backing immigration
"reform" that would supply a cheap labor force to business. Despite
the populist right-wing political appeal to anti-immigration sentiment, many in
the business wing of both parties wants more visas for Mexicans and Latin
Americans because they will, of necessity, generally work for less and demand
fewer benefits and work for longer hours. Of course, visas without citizenship
provides work without the guarantee of human rights or protections. Is that
correct?
Yes, I think any kind of guest-worker
program that allows people to come to the country to work but deprives them of
full civil, legal and human rights, is a recipe for inequality and discrimination.
If we want to claim to treat people equally, then we can't create legal
exceptions to allow some people to be more equal than others.
Can you briefly explain, as you did
in a recent commentary on TomDisptach.com, how a
sensationalist outburst in the media and politically about the alleged crisis
of a massive invasion of children immigrants across the Mexico border
symbolizes a national xenophobic hysteria?
Central American youth have been
crossing the border in increasing numbers for the past several years. But the
story that appeared in the news was placed and promoted by the anti-Obama,
anti-immigrant right wing, with the spin that it was Obama's supposedly lenient
policies towards immigrant youth that had caused what was frequently called a
"surge." Unfortunately instead of looking at the roots of the
problem, the Democrats turned it into a humanitarian sound bite: "poor
children!"
You also write in your TomDisptach.com
commentary, "In other words, the policies that led to the present 'crisis'
were promoted over the decades with similar degrees of enthusiasm by
Republicans and Democrats." In addition, you emphasize that both parties
are to blame for perpetuating narratives that avoid the reality of immigration
issues regarding our southern neighbors. What is your response to Democrats
that it is the Republicans who are keeping the "problem" from being
resolved?
The Democrats are correct that the
Republicans are blocking a "comprehensive immigration reform" in
Congress. They are incorrect in implying that what they are calling a
comprehensive immigration reform will solve the problem. The model that the
Democrats are pushing is very similar to the reform that Reagan signed in 1986:
create a path to legalization for some undocumented people, and increase
criminalization for others, while further militarizing the border. It did not
solve the "problem" in 1986 and it will not solve the problem now.
In Chapter 6, you talk about some of
the contradictions in US policy toward undocumented children. Can you expand on
that?
Some laws, and some federal and state
agencies, protect the rights of children. Other laws criminalize and penalize
the undocumented. Since many children are undocumented, or have parents who are
undocumented, these laws end up contradicting each other. It's important to
remember that undocumentedness is a status created by our
laws. Our laws place people in that status. For adults, it's justified by the
rhetoric of criminalization. For children, it's harder to rely on that rhetoric
to justify discrimination and persecution.
On page 101, you cite that the
immigration enforcement and detention system cost a staggering $74 billion in
2011 and employs 800,000 people. Obviously, this creates an economic
constituency, including the prison system, to keep current policies in force,
doesn't it?
Yes, it absolutely does. And the
private prison system - which has increasingly come to house immigrant
detainees - has fought hard to keep the criminalization in place. But
struggling localities and local officials have also lobbied for detention
centers. It's a growth industry, and it provides jobs. Immigrant detainees are
considered to be desirable detainees (for people who are invested in the prison
industry) because they tend to be young and in good health, and not violent -
they're cheaper to care for than the general prison population. That's why the
private prison companies make such a profit off of them.
I was touched by your poignant
reference to the Woody Guthrie song that lamented the plight of
"deportees" who had worked in the Bracero Program and died in a plane
crash in California (at the time it was written): "Is this the best way we
can grow our big orchards? / Is this the best way we can grow our good
fruit?" Why has the agricultural sector in the United States long been an
exploiter of the Bracero Program, undocumented and H-2 workers?
The agricultural sector has been an
exploiter because our agricultural system has developed in a completely
unsustainable way, over several centuries. It's been based on huge federal
subsidies, huge fossil fuel inputs, depleting aquifers, and exploiting cheap
migrant labor - in order to make a profit, and to provide cheap food that
historically allowed other industries to pay low wages, and allows us to be one
of the most obese countries on the planet. It's based on producing as much as
possible at the lowest cost possible, and demanding and receiving federal
support in the form of subsidies and legal protections to do so.
Your last chapter offers a large number
of solutions to the travesty of US immigration policy toward Mexico and Central
America. Do you think that any of them can make it through the sensationalism
and racial bias that currently exists in the United States?
No. I think that we can work for some
tweaking of the system - like the "Morton Memos" that instructed ICE
[Immigration and Customs Enforcement] to exercise "prosecutorial discretion"
and stop deporting people who are not violent criminals or a threat to national
security, or Obama's signature Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program
that gives temporary relief from deportation to some undocumented youth. If the
Morton Memos were to actually be enforced I think it would create a
dramatically improved climate for human rights and equality for undocumented
people. Unfortunately they have not been enforced and deportation continues to
be the Obama administration's default mode of operation.
I think that citizens and policy makers
need to face up to how our history, our economy, our laws and our social
structures created undocumentedness as a way of legitimating inequality. We
need to decide once and for all that we do not want to sustain a society based
on differences in status - that all people should be treated equally. Then we
can have a real immigration reform.
Copyright, Truthout.
No comments:
Post a Comment