23 June 2007NB: A shorter version of this essay appeared in the Indypendent Reader, a quarterly newspaper that is a joint project of the Baltimore Independent Media Center and Research Associates, Baltimore.IMMIGRATION AND "FAMILY VALUES"Michael Lane"Latinos have come to the US to seek the same dreams that inspired others: they want a better life for their children. Family values do not stop at the Rio Grande River. Latinos enrich our country with faith in God, a strong ethic of work and community responsibility." -- George W. Bush, 9 February 2000, quoted in "Renewing America's purpose," a presidential campaign document (2000) Whatever other motives lie beneath now President Bush's pronouncement, there can be little serious doubt that it was, at least, but one movement in a carefully crafted White House political strategy. The Republican presidential campaign cabal, led by the baby-faced éminence grise Karl Rove, has made it clear time and again that it will be satisfied with nothing less than total domination of national politics. One way it hopes to achieve this is through courting the rapidly growing Hispanic electorate, appearing to sympathize with those Latinos trying to immigrate to the US. President Ronald Reagan is said to have quipped, "Latinos are Republicans. They just don't know it yet." The White House leadership thereby hopes to cancel out the effect of the tradition of voting for Democrats widely followed among African Americans. Much is packed into the quotation above, including religious ecumenicism, which Bush deploys tactically from time to time, albeit with patronizing bestowal of the "Protestant" values of redemption and contentment with one's faithful enclave in world of predestined ends. Were matters so easy for Republicans. As anyone who has been following the news has heard, Bush and Co. have encountered considerable opposition within their own party to their proposals for "immigration reform," which would include legislation on "guest worker" programs, "amnesty" for illegal immigration (in a certain time frame and with monetary fines), and an increase in issuance of visas to certain categories of professionals. Reasons for opposing the immigration bills lately introduced, most of which the White House broadly supports, are as many and varied as their provisions, and they include technical, financial, and expressly ideological objections. The administration has had to treat the issues delicately, in order to keep certain Republican politicians and reactionary constituencies together as a functioning political entity. A recent widely reported example of such maneuvering is George Bush's celebrity appearance at a fundraising gala for Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, despite Sessions's vociferous campaigning against reforms to immigration law the White House favors. "Gangs, Drug Dealers, and Terrorists"Some gaps in Republican strategy on immigration reform are harder to bridge than others, because there are several more or less internally coherent ways to interpret the samenesses and differences that define "nation" and "community" in political discourse on rights and duties. Former Congressman Newt Gingrich of the conservative American Enterprise Institute-infamous as the adulterous advocate for "family values" who left his wife while she lay dying of cancer-has lately been railing in public about the threat that immigration, especially from Latin America, poses to "our" way of life. He has described illegal immigrants broadly as comprising "gangs, drug dealers, and terrorists" (The National Review, 4/26/06), and he opposes state-sponsored bilingualism, despite English being only the de facto official language of the US, because Spanish is "the language of living in the ghetto" (Fox News Sunday, 4/2/07). Gingrich has declared that immigrants must come to an "understanding of the Founding Fathers and the core values of American civilization" (press release, 12/1/06, www.newt.org). Thus not only does he exhibit Anglocentrism, but he also touts Protestant virtues (admittedly controversial as such) against supposed Catholic sloth and decadence. He is usually careful not to say this in so many words, but he comes close in major public addresses. Gingrich gave the commencement speech at Liberty University this year, shortly after the death of its founder, Southern Baptist preacher Jerry Fallwell. Fallwell had once declared that America's straying from his very narrowly defined godly ways had brought the 9/11 attacks upon it. When Gingrich spoke, he referred approvingly before a sympathetic audience of the "true religion" of the Founding Fathers (5/19/07, www.newt.org), by which he clearly did not mean Roman Catholicism, the predominant religion among Latinos. Such statements put Gingrich in good company with such other religiously tending immigrant bashers as Congressman and presidential candidate Tom Tancredo (R-CO), who warns that the US is "in mortal danger"-in fact, the title of his recent book-of losing "civic virtue" and dedication to "family" and "community," as well as becoming "lazy" in economic productivity and protection of "borders, language, and culture." There are also those like CNN's Lou Dobbs who has claimed that over 7,000 immigrants infected with leprosy are blemishing the complexion of "middle class" American every year. The Southern Poverty Law Center, among other civil rights organizations, has roundly criticized him for this insistent wild overstatement, as has been reported in The Nation (6/6/07), New York Times (5/30/07), and USA Today (5/15/07). Tancredo and Dobbs are repeating variations on themes heard before in political struggles over immigration in the US. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, demagogic warnings about the "Yellow Peril" and "Hindoo Tide" together with the "Typhoid Mary" stereotype alternated or ran in tandem with official discourse on how "useful" different categories of immigrant might be to "us" (see "Chronology" below). Nevertheless, debate over Latino "family values" has provoked some genuine worry on the Christian Right in particular, since they exalt these ideals as the very crux of "American civilization." On the one hand, Tom Tancredo has no qualms about inveighing against "left-leaning religious activists," which to his mind include members of all major denominations (except perhaps traditional Baptists) that are older than the US itself: Catholic, Episcopalian (Anglican), Lutheran, United Methodist, and Presbyterian. The leaderships of these churches have declared that currently debated legislation on immigration does not reflect "Gospel attitudes." "The faith community must step forward and tell left-leaning activists that undermining border security is not a religious imperative," says Tancredo, himself a conservative "Evangelical Presbyterian" (press release, 2/21/2006). On the other hand, David Brody, commentator for the Southern Baptist-based Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), wonders whether the Christian Right can rise to the challenge Hillary Clinton issued when she decried the lack of "family values" in proposed immigration legislation that would not take into account kinship between prospective immigrants and legal residents (5/25/07). He is afraid that the Democrats have hijacked the rhetoric of conservative Christians, while many Republicans, including to some extent the President, and some Democrats support legislation that would diminish the importance of familial relationship as a criterion for immigration and instead extend "guest worker" programs in agriculture, services, and industrial "training," as well as H-1B visas to "specialty occupations." Republicans, Democrats, and the Impact of International Trade AgreementsIf Democratic politicians are trying to take the proverbial "moral high ground" in the eyes of conservative Christian voters or at least seem conservative insofar as they support the immigration priorities that were instituted in the 1960s (see again "Chronology"), it is significant that they have done at least as much as Republicans to contribute to the conditions underlying the political controversy over immigration. To call their behavior ironic would be generous; they have proved more hypocritical than Republicans in some instances. The great majority of people who immigrate to the United States do so in search of work that will pay them enough so that they and their dependants can survive, if nothing more. The Democrats promoted and supported multilateral international trade treaties in the 1990s: the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), and World Trade Organization (WTO), among others. These coupled with forced opening of markets to foreign investors, using the bait of the World Bank and the switch of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), have the effect of permitting liquid and material capital to travel wherever its possessors desire, while simultaneously restricting the right and ability of human workers to cross national borders. Even in the Democratic presidential candidates' debate before the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees union (AFSCME) on June 17 of this year, Clinton equivocated about the impact of NAFTA on workers. She said, "Like anything, NAFTA had some positives, but unfortunately had a lot of downsides." The moderator, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, replied "So we'll leave that as a non-answer." That much was triteness of the "at least the Nazis made Volkswagens too" variety. To be fair, she also alluded to the loss of manufacturing jobs to places south of the US border. However, she also asserted that jobs have been lost to Canada as well, as if the figures were equivalent. Then she used her assertion as a launch pad for talking about her health care proposals, from the point of view of bosses (cost-effectiveness), probably needless to say, but not necessarily in terms of workers' rights. In fact, NAFTA and similar treaties have a detrimental effect on American workers as well as on workers from south of the border, many of the latter immigrating to the US in search of work. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the net loss of jobs from the US between 1993 and 2006 was nearly one million ("Economic snapshots," 10/4/06, www.epinet.org). Furthermore, immigrants desperate enough for employment to travel to the US, often under the most brutal conditions, bring the average wages down in jobs that they are capable of performing. They provide employers with a workforce that accepts low pay and no benefits and has few legal rights. This situation is ripe for the politics of divisiveness, as illustrated above. At the same time that wage laborers of one nation can be pitted against those of another, the extension of H-1B and related visas to certain "highly qualified" persons widens the divide between those who are "needed to run the global economy" (contributing to the "multicultural" fantasy of the managing class) and those deemed only "temporarily" or "occasionally" useful (the kind of precarious existence that well and steadily paid pundits like The New York Times' Thomas Friedman think we should revel in). Such efforts as are made to justify this distinction are often framed in terms of "cultural" disposition-for example, Latinos being "willing to do those jobs that Americans refuse"-or an almost natural order-for example, the counter-claim that some Americans are willing to do those (dirty) jobs too, because they recognize that sacrificing themselves will allow others of "us" to succeed. It is historically noteworthy that the recent trend toward structuring immigration legislation principally according to the purpose one can serve in the official economy is reminiscent of the trend in the late nineteenth century (see "Chronology"), just as the recent onslaught against workers' rights and the widening gulf between rich and poor are. What Kind of "Global Village" is this?Still, Hillary Clinton thinks she can persuade us, for her own political ends, that she can square circles-for instance, by reinserting "family values" into discussion of immigration. Ten years ago she published a book called It Takes a Village, appropriating for its title an "African proverb" (generic to that vast continent we are to believe). She espouses in it an idealistic communalism, global in scale-"a brave new world," in her words, in which familial relations are extended to every part of a putative social whole, not only for rearing of its children but also for its reproduction more broadly. Would her world today be the cliché "one big happy family"? The question deserves careful thought. Economic relations already resemble a paternalistic family of global scale-one in which daughters and sons accept their lot for fear of retribution or abandonment, "the help" is expected to show gratitude for crumbs, and neighboring elders arrange marriages of convenience, when they are not goading their dependants to kill one another.
Michael LaneProbably the most public discussion of work in the United States right now takes place in the context of debate over legal and illegal immigration. Congress is currently considering "comprehensive immigration reform" legislation, instigated in large part by President Bush. The various bills being debated and revised include provisions for conditional legal amnesty, fines, and deportation for illegal immigration, as well as "guest worker" programs, quotas on certain kinds of "highly skilled" workers, and new and tougher means of law enforcement. It is interesting to see how many of the same rationales for excluding prospective legal and illegal immigrants heard in the news today have been employed at different times past, depending on political and economic circumstances: racism dressed up as threats to "our culture" or "way of life," risk of contagious disease, danger presented by terrorism or hostile ideologies, and threats to "American" jobs. Many of the same issues have also arisen: vigilantism, economic exceptions, design of guest worker programs, determination of quotas, and the status of English as an "official language." It is important to note that a current trend in legislation turns away from the legal principle of determining eligibility for legal immigration according to one's kinship with a person already legally residing in the US, a principle that was established in the 1960s, toward a "contractual" principle reminiscent of laws of the late 19th century, whereby preferential treatment was based on the type of skill one could sell. This political trend is like many in the US and around the world in the last couple of decades that explicitly favor capital and management over people simply seeking rewarding and dignified work (see "Immigration and 'family values'" above). The Timeline1790 Naturalization Act (revised in 1795) specifies that "any alien, being a free white person, may be admitted to become a citizen of the United States." The act of 1795 increases the residency requirement from 2 to 5 years in the US, and from 1 year to 2 years in the state of residence, and it establishes the oath of allegiance that is still required. 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts permit the President to deport any foreigner deemed to be dangerous. 1808 The importation of slaves into the United States is prohibited. 1831 Pennsylvania permits bilingual instruction in English and German in its public schools. 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, concluding the Mexican War, extends citizenship to approximately 80,000 Mexican residents of the US Southwest. 1865 The 14th Amendment to US Constitution grants former slaves citizenship and therefore, in theory, guarantees their children citizenship by naturalization. 1870 Naturalization Act of 1870 limits American citizenship to "white persons and persons of African descent," excluding Asians from eligibility for US citizenship. 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act is passed preventing persons of Chinese origin from immigrating to the US for a period of 10 years. It is promoted by politicians and demagogues causing alarm about the cultural and demographic "Yellow Peril" to the settled white population. Tens of thousand of Chinese have come to the US to work in the preceding three decades, starting with the California Gold Rush of 1849 and continuing with the building of the Transcontinental Railroad. The act is renewed in 1892 for another ten years and again in 1902 for an indefinite period. The Magnuson Act of 1943 repeals it. 1882 Immigration Act levies a tax of 50 cents on each immigrant and creates several categories of immigrants ineligible for entry into the US, including "lunatics" and people "likely to become public charges." 1885-87 Alien Contract Labor Laws prohibit any company or person from bringing foreigners under contract to work into the US. The only exceptions are those who are brought to do domestic work and "skilled workers" who can establish some new trade or industry. 1901 Following President McKinley's assassination by Leon Czolgosz, a second-generation Polish American, the Anarchist Exclusion Act is passed, which allows immigrants to be excluded on the basis of their political opinions. 1907 Immigration Act of 1907 reorganizes the states bordering Mexico (Arizona, New Mexico, and a large part of Texas) into the Mexican Border District with a Border Patrol, in order to stem the flow of immigrants into the US.
1913 Alien Land Law in California prohibits South and East Asians from holding titles to property in that state. 1917 Immigration Act of 1917 requires proof of literacy. Strict passport requirements are introduced too. 1921 Emergency Quota Act (Johnson Quota Act) limits annual immigration from Europe to 3% of the population of a "nationality" represented in the US Census of 1910. This effectively discriminates against Eastern and Southern Europeans. 1922 Cable Act partially rescinds the Expatriation Act, but declares that an American woman who marries an Asian still loses her citizenship. 1923 The United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind classifies "Indians" (South Asians) as "non-White" according to "common [read 'white'] understanding." The ruling helps the cause of politicians and demagogues who warn of the "Turban Tide" or "Hindoo Invasion," cast in terms similar to the "Yellow Peril" of the 1880s (see above). Bhagat Singh Thind fought for the US in World War I, and he later became a professor of philosophy. 1924 Johnson-Reed Act introduces a more complex system of "national" quotas. It limits annual European immigration to 2% of population of a group given in the US Census of 1890 (20 years earlier than the standard for Emergency Quota Act; see above). The Johnson-Reed Act comprises the Asian Exclusion Act and National Origins Act. The former prohibits most immigration from Asia, including foreign-born wives and children of US citizens of Chinese descent. 1934 Tydings-McDuffie Act, which declares the "independence" of the Philippines on July 4, 1946, also strips Filipinos of their status as US nationals and severely restricts Filipino immigration by establishing an annual quota of 50 persons. 1940 Alien Registration Act required all aliens (non-US citizens) within the United States to register with the government and receive an Alien Registration Receipt Card (the predecessor to the famous "green card"). It requires the registration and fingerprinting of all aliens in the US over the age of 14. The act classifies Korean immigrants as subjects of the Japanese Empire. 1942 Filipinos are reclassified as US citizens, allowing them to be enlisted in the armed forces. Executive Order 9066 authorizes the military to evacuate 112,000 Japanese Americans from the Pacific coast and place them in 10 concentration camps throughout the US. 1943 "Guest Worker" / Bracero Program established after negotiations between the US and Mexican governments. The Bracero Program, as such, ends in 1964. 1944 The Supreme Court upholds as constitutional the internment of Japanese Americans in The United States v. Korematsu. 1945 War Brides Act allows foreign-born wives of US citizens who had served in the US armed forces during World War II to enter the United States. The following year, this privilege is extended to fiancées. 1946 Luce-Celler Act ends discrimination against South Asians in particular, but it allows only small numbers of them into the country each year. 1948 Displaced Persons Act permits Europeans displaced by WW II to enter the US irrespective of immigration quotas. 1950 Internal Security Act renders the Alien Registration Receipt Card even more valuable. Immigrants with legal residency have their cards replaced with what has generally become known as the "green card" (Form I-151). The act excludes "communists" or persons who might engage in activities "which would be prejudicial to the public interest, or would endanger the welfare or safety of the United States." 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act (McCarran-Walter Act) revises the "national" quota system again. It limits total annual immigration to 1/6 of 1% of the population of the continental United States in 1920. The act exempts from quotas spouses and children of US citizens and people born in the Western Hemisphere. 1954 "Operation Wetback" organizes the US Border Patrol and local police forces, which are assisted by unofficial vigilante groups, for deporting Latin American immigrants or intimidating them into leaving. Some 80,000 are deported, and over 500,000 leave under duress. Some are deported simply for "looking Mexican," and this number includes Latino and Native American citizens. One of the ships used to deport those rounded up to places far from US borders bears the name Emancipation. 1965 Nationality Act Amendments (Hart-Celler Act) abolishes system of quotas on national origin. However, it puts caps on Western Hemispheric v. Eastern Hemispheric immigration (120,000 v. 170,000). It introduces the current "family preference" standard into US immigration law 1968 Immigration Act of 1968 brings immigration law into line with lately passed US civil rights laws. It abolishes discrimination based on race, gender, and place of birth or residence. It also finally eliminates the remaining laws discriminating against East Asians 1976 Immigration Act of 1976 eliminates special treatment for residents of the Western Hemisphere 1980 Immigration Act of 1980 includes the Refugee Act, which redefines "refugee" in terms of United Nations standards. The annual refugee "target" is set at 50,000, while the upper limit for immigrants from around the world is reduced to 270,000 per year. 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) introduces penalties for employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. "Amnesty" is also granted for about 3,000,000 illegal immigrants. A "guest worker" program is expanded to include both agricultural and non-agricultural workers 1988 Redress Act provides $20,000 compensation to each survivor of the WW II internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans. 1990 Immigration Act of 1990 modifies and expands the act of 1965. It raises the annual limit to 700,000 persons and increases the issue of visas by 40%. It also establishes an annual limit for certain categories of immigrants. It is aimed at helping US businesses attract "skilled foreign workers" who can make "educational, professional, or financial contributions" to the US economy. It creates the Immigrant Investor Program. 1990 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and Illegal Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act are followed by increase in both incarceration (including on death row) and deportation of illegal immigrants. 1994 California voters enact Proposition 187, later thrown out as unconstitutional by the courts, which prohibits the provision of public education and welfare services to undocumented aliens. 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act strengthens border enforcement and makes it more difficult for foreigners to gain asylum. The law establishes income requirements for sponsors of legal immigrants.
1997 Congress restores health and welfare benefits to some elderly and indigent immigrants who had previously legally received them. 1998 Agricultural Research, Extension, and Education Reform Act and the Non-citizen Benefit Clarification and Other Technical Amendments Act restore additional public benefits to some immigrants.
2001 USA Patriot Act, among other measures, reorganizes US immigration enforcement, replacing the Immigration and Naturalization Service under the US Department of Justice with the Citizenship and Immigration Services under the newly founded Department of Homeland Security. It also requires passports to be machine-readable. 2007 Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (S. 1438), sponsored by Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and endorsed by Republican President Bush, is fiercely debated in Congress, both within and between political parties. (All information here is found in public records. See, for example, http://thomas.loc.gov on the Web.) Feedback should be sent to me, Michael Lane, at mflane@acephale.org Finally, here is a link to a draft of a recent academic article of mine:"Linear B wo-wo / wo-wi-ja" (for Minos 39-40 [2007]). | ARCHIVESJune 2007March 2006November 2005July 2005May 2005February 2005October 2004September 2004August 2004July 2004June 2004May 2004 |