Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Reply to Open Letter of 1/15/2014: Our Families Can’t Wait At http://theadac.org/contact/



 Engraved on the Statue of Liberty:
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. “
– Emma Lazarus, American poet, 1883

Dear Friends,

I’m writing as an ally deeply concerned about the situation of immigrant families, and about the direction the immigrant rights movement has taken since the Senate passed its “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” Bill S.744.

The status quo for immigrant communities remains unbearable. You ask, “How many more will it take before we stop this? How many more families will be torn apart? How many more children traumatized?” You demand a reassessment of the goals and measures of the immigrant rights movement.

Nothing is more important. Can we take one more step back and look at what immigrant communities and their friends really need, and how to get there? I believe the Senate Bill S. 744 is a hurtful and dangerous piece of legislation, and its passage would harm immigrant families in profound ways that would take decades to reverse.

My sense is that what people need is

1.     a stop to deportations. An immediate deportation moratorium.
2.     a stop to “immigration detention” – no prison for people not accused or convicted of a violent crime. Closing of “detention centers” and their elimination from the federal budget.
3.     the ability to work and to travel – “blue cards” with a right to work for any employer, and to freely leave and return to the United States, along the lines of the agricultural workers’ legalization proposal, but as indefinite immigration status and without penalties for unemployment or for prior immigration violations.
4.     the right to stay at home - policy reorientations so that livelihoods and personal safety in immigrants’ places of origin are no longer devastated by policies of the U.S. government.

To get there is obviously a hard road with many steps, and the steps proposed by NDLON at http://goo.gl/DZjaeN are a perfect start. Just how hard that road is, can be gauged by the similar road for black people in this country, discussed for example here https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=500680846686544&id=168304409924191. To achieve these steps will take a reevaluation of our arguments. A focus on the right to stay at home will be necessary: a spotlight must be maintained on the reasons why so many people, including unaccompanied children are coming/fleeing to this country undocumented every day. If this fundamental issue is not addressed, discussions of “border security” or of a “cutoff date” for applying for legalized status, are pointless.

Some thoughts about people’s need for a right to stay at home:

- “Free trade” agreements have destroyed the livelihoods of tens of millions of people and made lives impossible for poor families in member countries. In rural Guatemala, 80% of children are chronically malnourished. This means 80% of children there have been starved to the point where their brain development can never catch up to normal. (see for example http://abcnews.go.com/Health/slideshow/guatemala-devastating-effects-malnutrition-12387162).
Do not expand the “free trade” regime to Asian countries through TPP (see http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/opinion/obamas-covert-trade-deal.html?_r=0; http://www.citizen.org/tpp). Renegotiate NAFTA and CAFTA-DR to protect small farmers, workers, and the health of the environment in all member countries including the United States.

-  Violence supported by the United States government over decades, has made life too dangerous in many countries from which undocumented people come. Military expenditures in most countries receiving U.S. military aid were and are used against poor people inside these countries, not to defend against outside attackers. See for example http://www.soaw.org/about-the-soawhinsec/soa-labor-a-globalization. In addition, guns flow from official use to criminal ex- or current soldiers and police and from them to simple criminals. Whoever cannot afford private guards and razor-wire topped walls lives in permanent fear for their life.
As a start, provide people who feel threatened in countries where military and police officials were trained in the “School of the Americas” with asylum in the United States, so that average people can protect themselves.

- The violent drug trade, which makes life impossible in many countries of origin of undocumented people, is driven by the money made at every level. This drug trade is indirectly supported by the Department of Justice’s decision not to prosecute the largest money launderers, which are banks on Wall Street and in London, for example HSBC bank. (See http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/media/hsbc-exposed-us-finacial-system-to-money-laundering-drug-terrorist-financing-risks;  http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-20121213. ) The billions of dollars of drug profits flowing to these banks are guaranteed by the “War on Drugs.”
Declare an end to the “War on Drugs” and prosecute the largest as well as the smallest money launderers.

Until we are all free, we are none of us free. – Emma Lazarus, American poet

S.744 or similar legislation would not free immigrant families from the pervasive fear of being torn apart. S.744 was always intended to leave out millions of undocumented people and persecute them yet more harshly. As Arturo Carmona, Executive Director of presente.org, said, “even the Congressional Budget Office have reported that it is quite probable that less than half of the estimated 11 million undocumented would qualify for the RPI permit, which doesn’t even constitute legalization or a path to citizenship, and the remainder would be deported according to S.744,” http://presente.org/press/releases/2013/7/26/more-30-latino-organizations-call-to-reject-S744

S.744 would divide immigrant communities deeply, between those with “RPI” (“Registered Provisional Immigrant”) status (but in constant danger of losing it) and those without it – because they were unemployed for more than 60 days, because they returned after being deported, because they earn less than 125% of the poverty line, because they have any kind of conviction, or simply because they do not have the money to apply.

This is not Republicans versus Democrats. At the federal level it is Democrats who are driving the violence against immigrant families. It is President Obama who requested in his budget proposal for this year, that 30,000 immigrant prison “beds” must be kept filled by ICE. Representatives Foster and Deutch wrote a letter to the President, signed by 63 more congressmen and –women, asking him to remove this budget item. The President did not remove it. A mandate to fill immigrant prisons every night with 34,000 people is now again part of the federal budget.

With over 400 people dying at the border last year, and S.744 providing a ten-fold scale-up of border militarization, how can immigrant advocates support S.744?

As long as immigrant advocates focus on party politics and not on basic human rights and needs of immigrant families, enormous energies will be not only wasted, but applied to promote deeply harmful goals. For example, Fast4Families was a strong action whose fundamentally flawed demand was that the House take up S.744. This was an action where amazing, sincere and deeply committed people became political props for Democrats including President Obama.

If the House fulfills the demand of Fast4Families and passes S.744 in some form, deaths on the border will skyrocket, prisons for immigrants in which people are raped and driven to mental breakdown will be enshrined as “reform,” and deportations of 5 million people will have the stamp of approval of immigrant advocates. Fear in immigrant communities will metastasize.

Law professor Elizabeth Keyes writes: “Reform that excludes millions creates significant new problems for those left out, the ‘super undocumented,’ whose vulnerability to discrimination and exploitation will far exceed the already tremendous vulnerability of today’s undocumented population because they will be seen as even more culpable for their own lack of status. I fear that being undocumented the day after immigration reform will make being undocumented today look good by comparison.” (2014,  Race and Immigration Reform, Then and Now. At http://ssrn.com/abstract=2375804). Citizenship is not the issue. Turning millions of our friends and family members into the “super undocumented” is.

Let’s let go of “Comprehensive Immigration Reform.” In its “best” form, S. 744, it  would bring uncertain and unstable benefits to some, and enshrine still worse persecution for all others.

Let’s focus on specifics as NDLON recommends, and discuss what measures immigrant families truly require now to flourish. Demands for reform have to start with the basic needs of immigrant families, and with the simple human needs of people throughout our hemispheres.

Sincerely,
Julia