Although, as you all know by now, I'm no fan of the New York Times, I was pleasantly surprised by this editorial on American immigration policy published today. I was especially pleased by the following few lines:
Unbothered by the sight of blameless children in prison scrubs, the government plans to build up to three new family detention centers.
As an educator who learned how to teach on the border of Mexico, I can assure you that there's no way to overstate the disruptive effect that immigration laws exert on undocumented children's education. I understand (but disagree) with arguments about undocumented workers taking away American jobs and "mooching" off of the government. However, it's cruel to hold children and teens responsible for their parents' actions: many of the teenage students I knew who faced deportation lived in the US because their parents brought them over illegally when they were two or three years old. Is it really fair to emotionally and economically punish these kids for choices they didn't make? The worst were the kids who got into college out of state and then realized that they were ineligible for financial aid, and so decided to join the army. Apparently you're only allowed to pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you were born in the fifty states.
For more on how immigration raids impact children and families, check out this excellent report. For more on the Dream Act, a bill that makes it easier for undocumented students to attend college and then apply for citizenship, check here and here. Check out SAALT's take on how immigration reform impacts the South Asian community here.
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I wish this post went further, much like the DREAM Act (which should be passed and is a good thing). You write:
We need to get out of the realm of punishment and "fairness" in a narrow sense into the realm of historical, poltiical, and social analysis, what we have seen and what we want. The U.S. has used its immigration policies to censor its society (see: Palmer Raids, deportation of Marcus Garvey, post 9-11 policies etc.), maintain a pool of surplus labor to hold down wages and simultaneously exploit people (see: agricultural workers; Operation Wetback; post-9-11 policies, etc.); and most recently to boost the prison-industrial project through criminalization.
All this amounts to the developmment now of what a friend of mine calls "Immigrant Apartheid." which is apt. No one should be deported for criminal, political, or other reasons, and the U.S. should take steps to further open its borderes, given the context of colonialism and poverty.
Given that that's not going to happen, what do we do?
Thanks for this post and the suggested links. As a parallel reading, do try Nandita Sharma's essay "Anti-Trafficking Rhetoric and the Making of the Global Apartheid," NWSA Journal; Fall 2005; 17, 3 -- about the collusion of anti-trafficking campaigns and anti-immigrant politics. Interesting analysis.