Top-down Comprehensive Immigration
Reform Proposals and Compromises Lack Intelligence, Justice, and Democracy (April 16 2013)
Manuel Barajas The Gang of 8 in the Senate proposed a comprehensive immigration
reform (CIR) that emphasized border security, guest worker program aligned with
US economic interests, and an earned and restricted legalization path (Janurary
28, 2013). Soon after, President Obama in his State of the Union articulated a
similar position, and asked congress to compromise on something he could sign
(February 13, 2013). An illusion of hope was projected to the 11 million living
in the shadows and their relatives/friends also living in fear of being
separated from loved ones. Also exciting the public (March 29, 2013), the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO/other conformists compromised on a lobbying
platform that advances both of their interests. Their compromise also
prioritized border security (e.g., e-verify) and permited another form of
guestworkers—i.e., W visas—satisfying corporate interests and promising
prevailing wages for labor. Past programs have made similar formal promises but
failed in enforcing them. The Gang of 8, after listening to their powerful
constituencies, now present a largely unchanged but more punitive CIR proposal
that secures the border above all, permits guest workers, and lastly restricts
and complicates legalization, where a great a majority will be disenfranchised
and without guarantee to legalize even after 10 years of waiting.
1) They
lack intelligence. The politics of enforcement-only is disconnected from
solid research. Specifically, the enforcement-only policy neglect the factors
that create migration and therefore its solutions are wasteful of resources and
damaging to the financial stability of the nation.
2) They
violate justice. CIR discussions exclude the voices of those most
impacted communities, and/or simply appropriate their voices to
justify a reform that maintains many of their communities in a subservient and
exploitable status in society. For example, dreamers in the military or
college have their voices show cased, but their sisters and brothers and many
others with dreams of a better future are silenced.
3) They
are void of courage to challenge the politics of intolerance and bias
that devalue and exploit people on the basis of race-ethnicity,
gender/sexuality, and class. For example, deportations are at historical
records, and about 98% are Latin@.
4) They
hurt the health of families/communities prioritizing policies that tear
them apart, deny health care/public services, and pit them against each other
(migrant vs. non-migrants, ethnicities racialized as immigrant vs. native,
etc.).
5) They block
societal harmony when public resources are invested in projects (border
enforcement, secure communities, detention centers) that create a culture of
borders that split society with notions of ‘I belong here more than you’ and ‘I
have more rights to exist.’
These top-down CIR compromises suppress
justice, democracy, and a future that works for everyone and not just a few
powerful corporate and nativist interest groups. The problem is not with
compromising but rather with compromises detached of historical, scientific,
and ethical insights.
1
Over the past thirty years as U.S.
political-economic involvement in Mexico, Central American and Asia grew, and
correspondingly migration from those nations increased to this country (Fernández-Kelly
1983; Sassen 1988, 1996; Gonzalez and Fernandez 2003). In the 1990 census for
the first time in US history, Latino and Asian immigrants outnumbered
foreign-born Europeans coming to the United States. Migration from Mexico
climbed steeper after NAFTA in 1994 and even after 9/11 and the billions of
dollars directed to homeland security. The combination of border enforcement
and Great Recession, however, paused migration from south of the border. In the
past 5 years, the United States deported historical records of immigrants
approximating 400,000 a year, totaling 1.5 million. Since NAFTA, more people
have been deported than all deportations combined since the early in 19th century (Golash Boza 2012).
Ninety-eight percent of them were from Latin America. About 70 percent of the
total were from Mexico though they only made up about 30 percent of the
immigrants (documented and undocumented). Honduras had the highest proportion
of deportees per their numbers, followed by Mexico and then Guatemala. What we see
is the deportation of people from nations that have been historically
integrated into the U.S. economy, and whose economies have been reduced to
export production for foreign investors. In Mexico, 80–90 percent of its
exports are directed to the U.S., and during the
U.S. Great Recession it’s poverty jumped 2 percent points
with about half of the population impoverished, violence increased claiming
over 60,000 lives, and remittances declined yet remained the number one
economic resource.
CIR must consider the United State’s role in dislocating
people from their homeland via its political-economic policies like
NAFTA/CAFTA, and/or military interventions like in Vietnam in the sixties,
Central America in the eighties, and the Middle East now. To reduce migration,
U.S. policy must prioritize labor, civil, and human rights across borders.
Insensitive to the global realities that cause immigration and to the
historical biases denying people of color full membership to nation,
restrictive and burdensome CIR acts effectively violate human rights and keep a
large number of immigrants and relatives in a marginalized status for
generations. Equity, justice, and democratic principles must be core values in
all national and multi-national acts.
En solidaridad
con CIR that uplifts human dignity and justice!
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