Contemporary Perspectives on Immigration

By Donna R. Gabaccia, Rudolph J. Vecoli Professor of Immigration History and Director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota

Human beings continue to act like human beings--to fall in love, marry, have babies, and want to preserve family ties--even as they migrate across national boundaries. Their completely normal choices pose fundamental
challenges to common assumptions about citizenship. They complicate the already-complex politics of devising and implementing immigration policies.

This week, newspapers were full of stories about love, marriage, and childrearing among migrants. Suddenly, “mixed status families,” “birthright citizenship” and “family reunification” have all joined the already long list of problems supposedly associated with immigration.

"'Mixed status' tears apart families" USA TODAY

"Change in laws could divide families" Houston Chronicle

Politicians have been quick to propose solutions—by denying citizenship to the American-born children of “illegal” immigrants or by reducing the visas available to family members.

Unfortunately, changes in law that affect immigrants usually also affect citizens—and sometimes in surprising ways. In the nineteenth century, for example, Americans wanted “dependent” wives and children to share the
citizenship of the man who headed their families. When an immigrant man decided to become a citizen, so did his foreign-born wife (whether or not she spoke English). Worse, when an American woman married a foreigner, even in the U.S., she lost her American citizenship.

Faced with the overwhelmingly male migrations of the late nineteenth century, the U.S. also very much wanted to encourage families to stay together. Every time Congress restricted the numbers of immigrants, it also
created loopholes to encourage family reunification.

The result? Almost half of the 500,000 visas available recently to prospective immigrants are claimed by those with “family-sponsorship.” Roughly 150,000 remain for persons with desired skills and professions. Almost none of those visas are open to unskilled workers, who then enter the country “illegally”--without visas. Meanwhile, another 400,000 immigrants enter because they are exempt from visa restrictions. Is this unfair? Perhaps not. That group is made up entirely of the spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens.

Germany has no birthright citizenship and it has historically had very strict requirements for naturalization of foreigners. Is this a possible model for the U.S? Millions of German-speaking grandchildren of the “guest workers” of the 1960s have never been in the country of which they are citizens and do not even speak its language. Germans have actually eased naturalization requirement in recent years, fearing the consequences of alienation and exclusion of its sizeable “alien” population of German-born non-citizens.

When law, love, and families entangle—as they inevitably do in immigration policy—we should be skeptical of easy solutions. Whatever the proposal to fix the “problem” caused by immigrants will have consequences for citizens,
too.
_______________________________________________________________________
Contributor Contact Information:

Donna R. Gabaccia Rudolph J. Vecoli Professor of Immigration History
Research and Director Immigration History Research Center
311 Elmer L. Andersen Library
222-21st Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455
612-625-5573
612 625-4800
FAX: 612-626-0018
Email: drg@umn.edu

Posted by Immigration History Research Center at 12:40 PM | Permalink

By Erika Lee, associate professor of History and Asian American Studies at the University of Minnesota.

While U.S. senators and congressmen wrangle over negotiations on federal immigration legislation, state politicians in Georgia decided to take matters into their own hands this week.

On Monday, April, 17 Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue signed a sweeping immigration bill that may be among the toughest in the nation. The Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act requires all adults to demonstrate their legal status before seeking many state-administered benefits. It sanctions employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants and mandates that companies with state contracts check the immigration status of their employees. The law will also require police to check the immigration status of people they arrest to see if they face deportation orders. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, the law “to go into effect on July 1, 2007” is believed to be the first comprehensive immigration package to make it through a statehouse this session. (Miami Herald “Georgia Governor signs immigration
bill" by Shannon McCaffrey AP)

The Georgia act is significant on several levels. First, it makes clear that in this current immigration debate, what happens in our state governments is just as important as what happens in our national capitol. In fact, local and state governments have historically used their own legislatures to spur the federal government into action. In the nineteenth century, California attempted to ban Chinese immigrants within its borders several times before the U.S. government reminded Sacramento that immigration was a federal, not a state, issue. Since the 1980s, states have taken an increasingly active role in monitoring immigrants within their jurisdictions, often with the assistance of the federal government. A little-known provision of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act established a system to train local law enforcement and correctional agencies to enforce federal immigration law in respect to aliens changed with an aggravated felony. And states, including Minnesota, want local law enforcement officers to play even greater roles in enforcing federal immigration laws. Secondly, the fact that a state like Georgia “which has historically attracted only small numbers of immigrants“ is now at the forefront of the immigration debate demonstrates how far reaching the issue has become. Lastly, the Georgia law also reflects a growing trend in the larger debate over immigration. Politicians are increasingly careful to avoid charges that they are "anti-immigrant," a label that can be a huge liability for law-makers trying to capture more of the Hispanic vote. Instead, they insist
that they only want the laws of the nation enforced. In signing the Georgia bill on Monday, Governor Perdue, a Republican, said: "I want to make this clear we are not, Georgia's government is not, and this bill is not, anti-immigrant. We simply believe that everyone who lives in our state needs to abide by our laws." Distinguishing between "good" legal immigrants and "bad" illegal immigrants is politically effective. But in this highly charged and nativist environment, I doubt that federal law enforcement officers or Georgia state administrators will be able to distinguish the "good" from the "bad." At the same signing ceremony, State Representative Melvin Everson seemed to conflate the illegal immigration problem (denounced by him as a "cancer") with all Spanish-speaking immigrants. "The last time I checked," Mr. Everson said, "America was the land of English, not Spanish." (New York Times “Georgia Enacts a Tough Law on Immigrants” by The Associated Press April 18th 2006)

We can expect more states to pass similar laws. The Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act is a sign of times to come, especially if politicians in DC fail to pass comprehensive immigration reform. And even if they do, it is likely that laws like the Georgia one will have a more direct effect on immigrants in their everyday lives than any federal legislation.

Erika Lee is associate professor of History and Asian American Studies at the University of Minnesota.

_____________________
Erika Lee
Associate Professor
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of History
University of Minnesota
614 Social Sciences Building
267 19th Ave South
Minneapolis, MN 55455
work: 612/624-9569
fax: 612/624-7096

Posted by Immigration History Research Center at 12:34 PM | Permalink

By Donna R. Gabaccia, Rudolph J. Vecoli Professor of Immigration History and Director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota

Through an accident of professional travel, I was in France on March 28, as
a million protestors hit the streets. Young people were objecting to a law
that would allow employers to dismiss them without cause. They carried
signs that said “”No to trial employment!”

The protests were effective: this Monday the French government dropped the
proposed legislation. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4865034.stm)

Will we see equally swift and dramatic responses in Washington to the
millions demonstrating in American cities over the past 10 days?
(http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/us/11immig.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)

I have my doubts.

Street demonstrations are highly orchestrated and carefully planned events,
and they have a long history in the United States. Assessments of their
political impact have been decidedly mixed, however. Few commentators doubt
that the 1963 March on Washington (of half a million African Americans and
their supporters) contributed to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of
1965. By contrast, barrels of ink have been unable to resolve ongoing
debates about the impact on U.S. policy in Vietnam of the giant anti-war
protests of the 1960s and early 1970s. And, of course, more recently,
impressive demonstrations in the U.S. and around the world failed to
prevent the American invasion of Iraq.

This week’s large pro-immigration demonstrations began as Congress recessed
for two weeks, without having reached a compromise among many competing
proposals. Divisions within the Republican Party and sharp differences
between Republicans and Democrats in Congress resulted in the impasse.
(http://search.csmonitor.com/search_content/0410/p04s01-uspo.html )
Representatives with their eyes on the upcoming elections may not have the
incentive to compromise and reach agreement even when they return. American
politicians keep their eyes on the polls more than on the streets.

Nor can we be sure that protestors favored one legal reform or another.
Yes, Catholic prelates said they would go to jail rather than deny
assistance to the so-called “illegals,” a reference to a House bill that
had still been under debate last week. And yes, immigrant advocacy groups
pointed to the political significance of the large marches.

Still, one looked in vain for the placards demanding “amnesty,” a
“temporary worker program” or even “Green cards for all.”

The signs and flags that most demonstrators carried suggested they wanted
more than a change in immigration law. Marchers demanded dignity. They
demanded recognition for who they are. As one marcher in St. Paul said,
"We're peaceful people. We're honest people. And we're helping the economy
grow." (http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/14305785.htm)

Whatever the fall-out in Washington, demonstrators accomplished something
very significant. They pushed aside the ever-present and shadowy figure of
the threatening, criminal “illegal.” When Congress renews its debates in
two weeks, it will be harder for Americans to believe that 11 million
criminals threaten their security.

Millions of flag-waving, pro-American, hardworking, and very ordinary
people on the streets of American cities reminded the country what
“illegals” look like.

And what they look are immigrants. Mothers. Fathers. Workers. Neighbors.
Voters. Dreamers. Us.
_______________________________________________________________________
Contributor Contact Information:

Donna R. Gabaccia Rudolph J. Vecoli Professor of Immigration History
Research and Director Immigration History Research Center
311 Elmer L. Andersen Library
222-21st Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455
612-625-5573
612 625-4800
FAX: 612-626-0018
Email: drg@umn.edu

Posted by Immigration History Research Center at 12:28 PM | Permalink

By Donna R. Gabaccia, Rudolph J. Vecoli Professor of Immigration History and Director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota

In recent weeks President Bush has asked for a “temporary worker” program
that would create visas for low-skill workers. Such low-skill workers have
almost no access to visas under current immigration law. They make up the
largest group of immigrants without proper documentation, the so-called
“illegals.”

In a country, and a political party, that celebrates hard work, many
Republicans nevertheless reject Bush’s proposal.
"Senate Deal on Immigration Falters" (New York Times)
"Bush pushes to make illegals temporary workers" (Pioneer Press)

As an historian, I’m intrigued by this debate, and especially by debaters’
labels for the Bush proposal. Most critics refer to it as a “guest worker”
program. That, of course, is the name Germany gave workers (Gastarbeiter)
recruited from southern and southeastern Europe and Turkey in the 1960s and
early 1970s.

These guestworkers made Germany’s economy the strongest in Europe.

Still, when the program stopped in 1973, many Germans were shocked to
discover guest workers had become permanent residents. They lived in
families, they had children, and they wanted to stay. It’s been a source of
controversy for three decades.

But it also provided one of the strongest arguments for current European
Union policy on labor migration. These now allow for completely free
movement across national boundaries for all citizens of EU member states.
Neither supporters nor critics in the contemporary debate turn to the
American past for a name for Bush’s program. Yet the U.S. once had a large
program that actively recruited Mexican workers to come to work temporarily
in the U.S.

It was called the bracero program, and it functioned between 1942 and 1963.

It’s interesting to remember how hard the U.S. once had to work to recruit
temporary Mexican workers. Before 1965, there were no numerical limits on
Mexican immigration. Perhaps potential workers still worried about what had
happened during the Great Depression when California, for example, put
Mexican workers onto railroad cars, along with their citizen children, to
ship them back to Mexico.
See: U.S. urged to apologize for 1930s deportations (Pioneer Press)

It’s even more interesting to recall why the bracero program ended. Almost
no one liked it. Employers preferred to do the hiring themselves, and not
depend on Mexican and U.S. government to deliver their labor supply.
Workers faced deportation if they objected to contract violations. The
A.F.L.-C.I.O believed the bracero program undermined working conditions for
all workers and made unionization almost impossible.

In short, programs for temporary workers are not foreign to the U.S.—as use
of the term guest worker implies. Nor are they new.

Neither supporters nor critics of Bush’s proposal want to call it a new
“bracero program” because memory of the failures of that program are still
fresh.

Temporary worker programs are not the only way to guarantee that jobs in
the U.S. find workers willing to cross borders to take them. Ironically,
when the European Union abandoned temporary labor programs it sought to
create a freer, less regulated Euroepan-wide labor market. By contrast,
here in North America, under NAFTA, goods and capital move freely across
national boundaries; human beings do not.
_______________________________________________________________________
Contributor Contact Information:

Donna R. Gabaccia Rudolph J. Vecoli Professor of Immigration History
Research and Director Immigration History Research Center
311 Elmer L. Andersen Library
222-21st Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455
612-625-5573
612 625-4800
FAX: 612-626-0018
Email: drg@umn.edu

Posted by Immigration History Research Center at 12:24 PM | Permalink

By Katherine Fennelly, Professor of Public Affairs at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute

An amazing thing happened this week. Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets across the US, and the Senate Judiciary Committee appeared to listen. Only a few weeks earlier political pundits had predicted that moderate proposals for immigration reform were ‘dead in the water’ in the Senate, and likely to be supplanted by punitive ‘enforcement only’ bills, such as those passed by the House of Representatives in December of last year (see footnote 1).

Instead, the Catholic Church joined with unions, non-profit organizations, students and Latino organizations to mobilize protestors who were angered by proposals to make unauthorized presence in the US a felony, and to expand definitions of smuggling to include anyone who assists an undocumented individual. Police estimated that 500,000 individuals turned out in Los Angeles, and 200-300,000 in Chicago.

The day after the Los Angeles march four Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee joined Democrats in approving a bill that removed the most punitive provisions and maintained many of the components of the bipartisan McCain-Kennedy bill that had the support of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The bill would allow undocumented immigrants to apply for a six-year guest worker visa if they meet several criteria: employment, payment of a $1,000 fine and back taxes, passing a criminal background screen and demonstration of English proficiency.

Despite the euphoria of the protesters, their victory may be short-lived. The Senate is sharply divided over immigration reform, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has introduced an enforcement-only bill that should lead to contentious debate between and among Republicans and Democrats in the weeks ahead.

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1] The "Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005," sponsored by Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), would also build a high-tech fence along sections of the southern border, facilitate the enforcement of federal immigration law by local officials, and require detention of all non-Mexican unauthorized immigrants apprehended at or between official ports of entry.

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Contributer: Katherine Fennelly
E-mail: kfennelly@hhh.umn.edu

Katherine Fennelly is Professor of Public Affairs at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute, University of Minnesota. During the fall of 2003 she was the Willy Brandt Visiting Professor of International Migration and Ethnic Relations at Malmö University in Sweden. Her research, teaching and outreach interests include immigration and public policy, leadership in the public sector, the human rights of immigrants and refugees in the United States, and the preparedness of communities and public institutions to adapt to demographic changes. Recent projects and publications focus on the integration of immigrants in rural, Midwestern communities in the United States.

Posted by Immigration History Research Center at 12:20 PM | Permalink

By Joel Wurl, Head of Research Collections and Associate Director of the Immigration History Research Centerat the University of Minnesota

The recently completed World Baseball Classic may seem an unlikely starting point for commentary on migration, but as this Miami Herald article illustrates, it actually furnishes an interesting window on a host of complex, inter-related issues.

It contains evidence of both the growing prevalence of transnational migratory patterns and the resilience of the nation in today’s world, and it reminds us of the often fracturing nature, on a personal level, of the decision to exit one’s homeland.

Professional sports, perhaps more visibly than any other area, constitute an environment where international boundaries are often blurred beyond distinction. Examine the roster of any North American major league baseball team and you will find a polyglot of talent from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Korea, Japan, and Canada, along with a shrinking number of U.S.-born (including an even more dramatically shrinking contingent of African Americans, but that is another essay). In decades past, the relatively small number of such non-U.S. players would tend to become permanent American residents or citizens, but today that decision is much less the norm. And as the self-directed redistribution of players to represent native countries during the WBC showed, national attachments and the desire to bring pride to the homeland are core sentiments.

The transnational existence of professional athletes also carries implications for the international movement of money and puts the long-persistent phenomenon of immigrant remittances in a dramatic new light. With some superstars earning the equivalent of a sizable portion of their nation’s gross national product, they have the power to affect matters beyond the improvement of their own families’ living conditions. But history includes some tragic cases of these individuals and their resources falling prey to corruption and violence at home, perhaps none as sad as that of basketball star Manute Bol whose attempts to use his millions to thwart civil war in Sudan in the 1990s resulted in his imprisonment and eventual return to the U.S. as a penniless refugee (http://chud.com/forums/showthread.php?t=89941).

Of course, not all foreign born professional athletes in the U.S. live a transnational life, a point this news feature underscores with the example of Cuba’s Eddie Oroposa. His story calls attention to the often forgotten category of migrants known legally as asylees. Like refugees, people who seek asylum status are unable to live where they have been owing to a “well founded fear of persecution. The difference, however, is that refugees establish their status before resettling in the U.S. (or elsewhere); asylees do so after arriving here by whatever means and expressing their claim to asylum. (See Migration Policy Institute site for further definitions and demographics.)

In typical years, many more people are admitted to the U.S. as refugees than are granted asylum status, but the number for the latter still often reaches between 15,000-20,000. The establishment of policy on asylum seekers, like that of refugees, is a quite recent development. And similar to refugee policy, it owes its emergence and initial character to foreign policy objectives as much as, or more so than, humanitarian ideals. The decision of the U.S. government to provide legal residency – sanctuary, if you will – to those fleeing persecution was shaped substantially by Cold War wrangling with the Soviet Union and its satellite nations, including to a very significant degree Castro’s Cuba. Accepting people from these lands was tool of “warfare,” a way to embarrass the enemy in the arena of world affairs.

While refugees and asylees of the latter half of the 20th Century were predominantly from Communist-controlled regions, this is far less true since the demise of the Soviet Union. Regardless of their origins, as Oroposa’s case illustrates, the athletes, musicians, writers, academics, and many others who have come here and chose to defect have faced an excruciating time of dislocation and uncertainty regarding those they left behind. And finally, this case also reminds us that migration in its many forms, be it through frequent transcontinental relocation in the free pursuit o f one’s profession or through the severing of ties to home, is first and foremost an individual experience, always with individual consequences.

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Contributer: Joel Wurl
E-mail: wurlx001@umn.edu

Joel Wurl is the head of research collections and Associate Director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota. where he has worked since 1985. He is an advisor to public programs, exhibits, and historical preservation projects and has presented and published research on several topics related to immigration and the preservation of documentary resources. He has led seminars and workshops on both archival and immigration-related topics and has spoken to a diverse array of community audiences on the immigrant experience in America and, particularly, in the state of Minnesota. Wurl was elected in 2002 to the Society of American Archivists council and has served the Midwest Archives Conference as a council member and as editor of its journal Archival Issues. He has also served as series editor for “North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories,” an Internet-based publication effort produced by Alexander St. Press.

Posted by Immigration History Research Center at 12:11 PM | Permalink

By Donna R. Gabaccia, Rudolph J. Vecoli Professor of Immigration History and Director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota

Immigration has repeatedly reshaped American populations. Can history help us understand what is happening today in American cities as “minority becomes majority?”

A century ago, Teddy Roosevelt worried about “race suicide.” New immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were having more babies than “old stock,” white American women with the result that the newcomers—viewed as too racially different from Americans to become good citizens--would soon outnumber them.

In our own times, demographers have been reporting that “minority” would soon become “majority” as a result of immigration. In New York City, as in several west coast and southwest cities, whites have been a minority since the 1980s.

Most Americans are very well aware that immigration is re-arranging the U.S. demographically. So why was the headline “Whites to be a Minority in N.Y. Soon” newsworthy this week? (New York Times, March 7, 2006)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/07/nyregion/07census.html

The answer is that a recent Brookings Institution report focused on metropolitan regions, not just central cities. The suburbs, of New York, like many western and southwestern regions, also now attract large numbers of immigrants. If, as is often asserted, white Americans had fled to the suburbs to escape newcomers with darker skins, then their strategy is clearly not working. Minorities are following them. Like most reports on urban population dynamics, the New York Times made this a story about whites and immigrant minorities. But a careful reader would have learned a more complex story.

In recent years the black population of New York City, too, has been declining--for the first time in over a century.

It is too often forgotten that both black and white Americans claim deep roots in the U.S. and that both react to the arrival of newcomers. Over a decade ago, responding to a Times Magazine portrait of the “new face of America” (in the form of an attractive coffee-colored young woman), Toni Morrison declared that immigrants made it in America “on the backs of blacks.” (Dec. 2, 1993) http://www.time.com/time/community/morrisonessay.html

Immigrant minorities will not become majorities if they become white. But if, as Morrison suggests, becoming white means becoming “not-black,” then cities, and indeed the country, will remain as troubled by race as it was under the old majority.
___________________________________________________________________

Contributor Contact Information:

Donna R. Gabaccia Rudolph J. Vecoli Professor of Immigration History
Research and Director Immigration History Research Center
311 Elmer L. Andersen Library
222-21st Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455
612-625-5573
612 625-4800
FAX: 612-626-0018
Email: drg@umn.edu

Posted by Immigration History Research Center at 12:08 PM | Permalink

By Donna R. Gabacia, Rudolph J. Vecoli Professor of Immigration History and Director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota

Minnesotans may not realize that angry debates about immigration are not
limited to their home state—or to the present.

The Twin Cities this week continues its discussions of Governor Pawlenty’s
proposals to encourage “legal” immigration (especially of highly skilled,
educated, and entrepreneurial foreigners) while cracking down on “illegal”
immigrants, who are disproportionately poor laborers whose labor is eagerly
sought in the construction, meat packing, agriculture and the
hotel/restaurant/ and cleaning industries. Specifically, the Minnesota
legislature will soon consider whether or not local police should begin to
enforce federal immigration law (see Pioneer Press “Today at the Capitol,”
March 1, 2006).

Georgia--where estimates put the number of immigrants without proper visas
at 250,000—is taking a somewhat different approach. There, a State Senate
bill proposes to deny state benefits to undocumented adults and to use the
tax code to penalize employers who employ any workers without
documentation. (http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/13983851.htm)

Along the U.S./ Mexico border participants in “Minuteman Projects” claim
they are “Americans doing the job that Congress won’t do.”

Meanwhile, in California, where state voters in 1994 tried to prevent
immigrants without proper visas from using state welfare services, Cardinal
Roger M. Mahony, as quoted by a L.A. Times reporter, said that “he would
instruct his priests to defy legislation — if approved by Congress — that
would require churches and other social organizations to ask immigrants for
legal documentation before providing assistance.
(http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-me-mahony1mar01,1,3463213.story?co
ll=la-headlines-politics)

Whether fearful or supportive of immigrants, many American recognize that
federal immigration policy is “broken,” “not working,” or not being
enforced. But does that mean that the only solutions to this problem are to
found at the local level?

As an historian, I doubt it.

In the middle years of the nineteenth century it was the states, and not
the federal government, that determined most immigration policies. There
were few restrictions on human movement but when states imposed them it was
usually to drive off poor people or to prevent racial minorities from
moving into their areas.

Local control of immigration did mean that Americans welcomed the “legal”
immigrants from Europe as unproblematic in the 1850s. On the contrary, that
decade saw the rise of a powerful movement and a new political party,
usually called the “Know-Nothings.” These “Know-Nothings” tried to convince
voters that immigrants were too influential and their power should be
limited by denying them basic rights, like land ownership and religious
freedom.

Rather than repeat the mistakes of the Know Nothings of the 1850s,
Americans today might want to devote careful thought to the kind of federal
immigration policy they would like to have—and then demand change from the
federal government.

____________________________________________________________

Contributor Contact Information:

Donna R. Gabaccia Rudolph J. Vecoli Professor of Immigration History
Research and Director Immigration History Research Center
311 Elmer L. Andersen Library
222-21st Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455
612-625-5573
612 625-4800
FAX: 612-626-0018
Email: drg@umn.edu

Posted by Immigration History Research Center at 12:05 PM | Permalink

By Andy Urban, PhD candidate in History at the University of Minnesota and member of the IHRC Advisory Council

Not surprisingly, this week’s media coverage of immigration was dominated by the nationwide rallies organized by immigrant advocacy groups, protesting the recently passed House of Representatives’ Bill that seeks to harden the policing of the border and to increasingly criminalize undocumented immigration. The rallies reached a pinnacle on Monday, when hundreds of thousands of immigrants in cities large and small ("Hispanic residents quietly show muscle in St. James" The Star Tribune) boycotted work and school in order to demonstrate their importance to the US economy.

If as scholars such as Liz Cohen have argued in recent years, citizenship and rights in the US are increasingly articulated through individuals and groups’ roles as consumers, immigrant protesters have keenly heeded this trend. By demonstrating that their positions as workers and consumers are integral to the US’s material well-being, immigrants used their absence from economic activities to show how they are part of the nation. This article ("Rallies held nationwide to show economic clout" The Star Tribune) also illustrates how many people around the world see the US’s response to undocumented immigration as being hypocritical in light of the US’s involvement in other aspects of globalization. In short, why is Wal-Mart privileged in being allowed to cross the Mexico-US border without hindrance, while human travelers are subject to myriad barriers and stigmatized as dangerous?

Critics of this week’s rallies have seemed to focus mainly on the symbolism of the events, and not the substance of the issues themselves. What garnered the most attention from critics was the fact that some of the demonstrators sang a version of the “Star-Spangled Banner” in Spanish. Colorado Republican Tom Tancredo seemed to believe that the protests would backfire because of their sacrilegious symbolism, commenting that, “My guess is that Americans are going to say ‘What are those people doing waving all those other flags and what's this about changing the national anthem into Spanish?’” ("Republican leader predicts immigration backlash" Reuters.com) For a more humorous and ironically accurate look at the significance of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” Jacob Weisberg ("The Irrational Anthem" Slate.com) points out that barely anyone, native-born Americans included, really knows this bizarre and convoluted anthem.

On a more serious note, lest we forget what happens when patriotism, English-only politics, and public vigilance intersect, an article in the New York Times ("Mont. Governor Pardons 78 in Sedition Case" New York Times) looks at the recent posthumous pardon of German Americans in Montana who the state imprisoned during World War I because their loyalty had been called into suspicion. One can only hope that we take a more nuanced approach to what it means to be an “American” in the present day.
_____________________________________________

Andy is a PhD candidate in History at the University of Minnesota, and a member of the IHRC Advisory Council. His research focuses on Irish and Chinese domestic servants in the late-nineteenth century United States.
Contact Information: urba0090@umn.edu

Posted by Immigration History Research Center at 11:45 AM | Permalink