Race in the Immigration Debate
Last night I attended a discussion of the ethics of immigration put on by the DC Duke alumni club. Parts of it were thought-provoking, especially the comments of the only academic at the table, Noah Pickus of Duke's Kenan Institute of Ethics. Broadly, the discussion centered around notions of membership, asking the open-ended (and quite unanswerable) question of what the U.S. immigration and naturalization policies says about those of us who are already members.
Economics/jobs was advanced as the major axis along which these decisions are being made, and religion came up as well. However, I was disappointed (though not surprised) as the issue of race--which to my eyes was clearly just beneath the surface of 90% of the topics being discussed--was ignored again and again. During the question and answer period, I raised this concern. Though my comments weren't eloquent, I thought I had pretty effectively pointed out the elephant in the room. However, the various commentators didn't seem to think so. One of them, a gentleman from the Heritage Foundation, explained that a lot of immigrants are Asian and Hispanic, so clearly race is not an issue. Professor Pickus was a little more subtle, but still did not address head-on the racism underlying the current debate (though I should note that his book does take up the issue of race).
Just to be perfectly clear, the problem as I see it is that race, though no longer an explicit consideration in immigration policy, is quite active today, and drives immigration policy through the subconscious attitudes of those engaged in the debate. Last night's panelists appeared to subscribe to the notion that because we are not explicitly burdening latino/as via facially discriminatory laws, our immigration system is not discriminatory. However, I beg to differ with this interpretation.
1. assimilation / language: The specter of semi-permanent Spanish-speaking "enclaves" was raised a number of times by several speakers. The fact is, patterns of assimilation of today's Latin Americans are not so different than of the Germans, Italians and Irish in their respective immigration heydays. Now, as then, the voiced concern is one of harmonizing the old and the new cultures, and bringing the new immigrants into the American fold. But that will happen, so long as the immigrants are given the opportunity to come out of the shadows and work legally alongside their native compatriots.
2. ghettoization of the workplace: It is true that there are jobs Americans don't want and won't fill. However, this state of affairs didn't "just happen." The most convincing explanation is that undocumented migrants started taking these jobs, and employers were very happy to have them. Their undocumented status and relative inability to change jobs, exacerbated by older legal regimes that tied them to one employer, made them reliant on that employer. Without the ability to unionize, or much if any opportunity to complain to the Department of Labor or its state counterparts, these workers were extremely vulnerable to exploitation, including physical abuse, no enforcement of wage or hours laws. These jobs, which had included opportunities for advancement when they'd previously been filled by natives, evolved into the dead-end, low-pay, Latino-only jobs of today.
I could go on. The effect of the above phenomena, and many, many others, including the almost single-minded focus on the southern border to the exclusion of the northern border and the some forty percent of undocumented migrants who are here after overstaying a business or tourist visa, is to create a system where Mexicans and other Latin Americans make up a permanent underclass. This problem requires a much more systemic solution than reform of immigration law can provide, but it seems like a good starting point.
Unfortunately, I don't have any immediate solutions, other than to suggest that we be much more aware of the role of race in the immigration debate. Immigration reform is about thirty-seven separate issues, each more contentious than the last, all rolled into one. I suggest that we at least add racism, in both its overt and more subtle forms, to the list.
Economics/jobs was advanced as the major axis along which these decisions are being made, and religion came up as well. However, I was disappointed (though not surprised) as the issue of race--which to my eyes was clearly just beneath the surface of 90% of the topics being discussed--was ignored again and again. During the question and answer period, I raised this concern. Though my comments weren't eloquent, I thought I had pretty effectively pointed out the elephant in the room. However, the various commentators didn't seem to think so. One of them, a gentleman from the Heritage Foundation, explained that a lot of immigrants are Asian and Hispanic, so clearly race is not an issue. Professor Pickus was a little more subtle, but still did not address head-on the racism underlying the current debate (though I should note that his book does take up the issue of race).
Just to be perfectly clear, the problem as I see it is that race, though no longer an explicit consideration in immigration policy, is quite active today, and drives immigration policy through the subconscious attitudes of those engaged in the debate. Last night's panelists appeared to subscribe to the notion that because we are not explicitly burdening latino/as via facially discriminatory laws, our immigration system is not discriminatory. However, I beg to differ with this interpretation.
1. assimilation / language: The specter of semi-permanent Spanish-speaking "enclaves" was raised a number of times by several speakers. The fact is, patterns of assimilation of today's Latin Americans are not so different than of the Germans, Italians and Irish in their respective immigration heydays. Now, as then, the voiced concern is one of harmonizing the old and the new cultures, and bringing the new immigrants into the American fold. But that will happen, so long as the immigrants are given the opportunity to come out of the shadows and work legally alongside their native compatriots.
2. ghettoization of the workplace: It is true that there are jobs Americans don't want and won't fill. However, this state of affairs didn't "just happen." The most convincing explanation is that undocumented migrants started taking these jobs, and employers were very happy to have them. Their undocumented status and relative inability to change jobs, exacerbated by older legal regimes that tied them to one employer, made them reliant on that employer. Without the ability to unionize, or much if any opportunity to complain to the Department of Labor or its state counterparts, these workers were extremely vulnerable to exploitation, including physical abuse, no enforcement of wage or hours laws. These jobs, which had included opportunities for advancement when they'd previously been filled by natives, evolved into the dead-end, low-pay, Latino-only jobs of today.
I could go on. The effect of the above phenomena, and many, many others, including the almost single-minded focus on the southern border to the exclusion of the northern border and the some forty percent of undocumented migrants who are here after overstaying a business or tourist visa, is to create a system where Mexicans and other Latin Americans make up a permanent underclass. This problem requires a much more systemic solution than reform of immigration law can provide, but it seems like a good starting point.
Unfortunately, I don't have any immediate solutions, other than to suggest that we be much more aware of the role of race in the immigration debate. Immigration reform is about thirty-seven separate issues, each more contentious than the last, all rolled into one. I suggest that we at least add racism, in both its overt and more subtle forms, to the list.
posted by swanno at 11:40 PM
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