We asked Q—, a national immigrant rights advocate, to describe the current environment in her field.* Here’s her surprising answer …
“The immigrant rights movement is going through an overwhelming, tense, and confused time, which is hopefully setting the stage for changes that have been needed for a long time.
“The down side:
“A lot of people didn’t like the immigration reform legislation in the Senate this year. But now the only thing that might have been a solution is gone, and both political parties are saying they won’t pursue anything comprehensive and humane for at least the next several years. And that means the lives of immigrants are likely to get a lot worse before they start to get better.
“We’re facing the entrenchment and elaboration of a separate and unequal legal system for immigrants that doesn’t provide checks and balances necessary for ensuring that the government follows the law.
“We’re facing a lack of hope among Americans—including immigration activists—that the federal government can fix anything, let alone anything as complicated as immigration policy.
“We’re facing an overwhelming number of anti-immigrant measures introduced in cities and states. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures,
As of July 2, 2007, no fewer than 1404 pieces of legislation related to immigrants and immigration had been introduced among the 50 state legislatures. From January to July 2nd 2007, 170 bills became law in 41 states ... State legislators have introduced roughly two-and-a-half times more bills in 2007, than in 2006. The number of enactments from 2006 (84) has more than doubled to 170 in 2007 ... In the continued absence of a comprehensive federal reform of the United States’ challenged immigration system, states have displayed an unprecedented level of activity.
“We’re facing racial profiling, as people are being asked for their documentation on traffic stops if they look ‘foreign.’
“We’re facing attacks in Congress that keep chipping away at the rights of immigrants to argue their cases in court, the power of judges to make decisions about individual cases, and assurances that detention facilities keep people safe.
“We’re facing the enforcement of ‘material support’ laws that define immigrants and others as terrorists if they have ever provided any help to a rebel group, even if that rebel group fought alongside American troops, and even if the choice was to carry water for an army or be shot in the head.
“We’re facing a seemingly endless trail of death at the US-Mexico border.
“We’re facing the tangled interests and assumptions of African Americans, Latinos, labor, agribusiness, churches, and practically every other politically powerful interest group.
“Many immigrant rights activists are feeling overwhelmed and scared. A lot of people are angry, and some are more reflective than they had been.
“The upside:
“On the upside, this is a time when a long-needed reinvention of the immigrant rights movement is possible.
“Without the pressure to take a reactive stance towards a cumbersome piece of legislation, and with the mood of critical self-examination, we have the potential to find new ways to encourage people to be vocal about the principles that even ‘illegal immigrants’ are human beings with certain inalienable rights, and that systems need to be kept in place to ensure that the government is accountable for its actions.
“Like many other progressives, a lot of immigrant rights activists have become too used to communicating with people who already agree with them, and they need to refocus on systematically building their base of active support. Polls continue to show that the majority of Americans favor many reforms supported by activists, but in the past year they have not favored them strongly enough to take action by calling Congress or attending a city council meeting.
“It is easier to get people excited about opposing something (like ‘amnesty’) than about supporting something that only takes steps towards solving a problem (like this year’s Senate bill). But, honestly, vocal immigrant rights activists have been—to put it mildly— drastically less effective at making their voices heard than their opponents have been.
“Too much money and time have been dedicated to in-group meetings, as well as investing in communications and organizing campaigns that either taste like Kool-Aid or alienate potential champions.
“Too little has been invested in taking the concerns of potential allies seriously, which involves grappling with deeply troubling issues that lurk in the background (whether we like it or not) and give our opponents ammunition: issues like the relationship between terrorism and immigration, the fear that American culture and skin color are changing too quickly, and the reality that vulnerable immigrants often take jobs that employers would otherwise need to provide better conditions and pay for.
“By too often sidestepping minefields like these, immigrant rights advocates have demonstrated their fear of them, let faulty assumptions and misinformation go uncorrected, and implicitly lent credence to their critics. Increasingly, activists need to engage in the messy work of clearing the field of mines rather than awkwardly dancing around them.
“Immigrant rights activists need to dedicate themselves to a deceptively simple task: Helping specific groups of people see that the lives and contributions of immigrants are worth making a phone call for.
“The immigrant rights movement has hit what I think will soon be seen as ‘rock bottom,’ which is a good place for starting off on a new path.”
_____
* My informant prefers to remain anonymous.
Image sources: Going Postal T-Shirts, Our Daily Bleed
Great stuff, Q, thanks.
...grappling with deeply troubling issues that lurk in the background (whether we like it or not)...
...By too often sidestepping minefields like these, immigrant rights advocates have demonstrated their fear of them,...
And lurking in the background of the deeply troubling issues are root causes that don't exist.
Doh.
Posted by: bUM fREE | August 15, 2007 at 03:02 PM
I am one simple mofo but it sure seems like all this could be perpetuated by promoting individuation, having the effect of reducing one's collective actions to the pursuit of self-interest en masse.
Anti-communism evolved to anti-communionism?
Double-doh.
Posted by: bUM fREE | August 15, 2007 at 03:03 PM
Thanks for your comments, BF. I'll alert Q so she can respond to you directly (she's not quite used to this blogging thing, so I don't think she's checking comments).
I resonate with what you say. The self-interestedness can get pretty granular -- to use a term currently in vogue. I certainly see it in myself: a disinclination to have my world-view shaken by another moral being who reaches conclusions substantially different from my own.
Posted by: Albert | August 15, 2007 at 10:19 PM
Thanks for your comments, bUM fREE.
I agree that we're all too used to acting in what we think is our own self-interest without considering other people.
On the other hand, acting for the good of the group can be even more dangerous, depending on how we define the group we belong to - the "us" that is essentially defined in opposition to a "them." Fanatics tend to care more about the collective than the individual, and mobs are horrible and scary.
I'm not sure how group vs. individual identification plays into the immigration debate.
But fortunately we don't need an answer to that in order to make progress for immigrant rights. Workable and humane immigration reform makes sense for individuals and for communities, although we're not very good at making that case yet.
Q
Posted by: Q | August 16, 2007 at 06:35 PM
Q
I think that in your position I would feel like a volunteer fireman constantly putting out fires set by arsonists with carte blanche.
Demoralizing, at least. Enraging, at least. Debilitating, at last -- if the arsonists aren't stripped of their credentials and squashed.
Musn't we begin by insisting that fire chiefs call arson, arson, instead of a lightning strike?
As a citizen, I have given up volunteering to jump out of bed to join the bucket brigade. Not out of cynicism, but out of self-respect, out of refusing to be duped indefinitely.
An influential "architect" just "retired" to spend more time with his family and write books. The architect is a known, credentialed arson whose specialty is to convert his competitor's greatest strength into a liability.
In the world of political in-fighting, ok, fine, whatever. But he and his kind don't limit themselves to that. They are rewriting the codes. They are taking the finest qualities of the American people and converting them into manageable liabilities.
They are burning down the house. And we are sleeping.
Pleasant dreams.
Posted by: bUM fREE | August 17, 2007 at 09:44 AM
Maybe i have a good question to ask the blog:
If you are in a dirty fight (ie, you are being fought dirty upon) how dirty are you willing to fight in return?
Have you been tempted, have you yielded to tempation and acted, have your ethics not allowed you to yield, or is the question just hopelessly naive to a professional fighting big fights in the real world?
If you have not yielded (or if you have) and you are willing to hit rock bottom (the place of reinvention) can you do that as a group without a spiritual communion with your fellow warriors?
The communion of failure? Or each individual bearing the full weight of the group failure upon his/her shoulders individually?
How prepared are we for the latter?
And who would not avoid it?
Posted by: bUM fREE | August 18, 2007 at 01:48 PM
Just ran into this over at Tom's place:
9/11/07 General Strike
Posted by: bUM fREE | August 18, 2007 at 11:38 PM
"What is at the root of our crisis of confidence? What drains us of our conviction at crucial moments when we are tested? At the root, I think it’s the notion that we have accepted, which is that our ideas have already been tried and found wanting. Part of what keeps us from building the alternatives that we deserve and long for and that the world needs so desperately, like a healthcare system that doesn't sicken us when we see it portrayed on film, like the ability to rebuild New Orleans without treating a massive human tragedy like an opportunity for rapid profit-making for politically connected contractors, the right to have bridges that don't collapse and subways that don't flood when it rains. I think that what lies at the root of that lack of confidence is that we’re told over and over again that progressive ideas have already been tried and failed. We hear it so much that we accepted it. So our alternatives are posed tentatively, almost apologetically. 'Is another world possible?' we ask."
Posted by: bUM fREE | August 19, 2007 at 06:56 PM
It's like those art critics in the 50s who declared "the death of painting." Of course, new generations of painters continue to surprise us with their work.
Posted by: Albert Ruesga | August 21, 2007 at 09:42 AM
Thanks for all of these interesting thoughts and questions, bUM fREE. You've touched on a lot of subjects and I'm sure I can't address them all here.
It's hard for me to write about all of this without feeling preachy and starry-eyed, but here it goes.
My own personal feeling is that if we want to create positive change in the world we need to cultivate it through love, humility, discipline, and critical thinking, and that if we act like our adversaries we join their ranks. If we really believe we are right in any kind of broad sense, shouldn't we be trying to get our adversaries to act like us rather than the other way around? And wouldn't that require that we behave in ways that we would like our adversaries to follow?
Thinking about all of the reasons that progressives have been on the defensive for the past many years makes my head spin. But I think one of them is that we have become too self-indulgent of our anger. We've needed a new Martin Luther King for a long time now. Our anger - however justified it might be - leads us to feel overly self-righteous, to feel bonded in an unhealthy way with people who we share our anger with, and to be blind to our own misperceptions and ignorance. Our anger prevents us from seeing things clearly or from being critical of ourselves and of how our groups operate in dysfunctional ways that keep us stuck. It also alienates people who aren't part of "us" - who do not share our often-peculiar constellation of misperceptions, ignorance, lingo, and even hairstyles and ways of dressing. At least I have come to recognize this dynamic in my own life.
I think we need to look at how we - progressives - unintentionally perpetuate the evil we see in the world, either by letting our anger and pride get away from us, or by allowing our personal and group dysfunctions to blossom, or by thinking we somehow get permission to act amorally when our adversaries have supposedly taken the first punch. Or simply by taking the easiest or most popular path most of the time.
Posted by: Q | August 21, 2007 at 10:07 AM
Interesting, Q, ANGER is a core thing with me. Someone suggested to me many years ago that anger is a two-sided coin with fear on the flip side. Is fear always the source of anger? I don't know -- it seems as though I have flashed directly to furious out of some deep indignation at something. It has served me well at times but it's very very tricky.
An interesting thing is how quick the flip from fear to anger is. This makes it easy to honestly deny fear in a quick self-assessment. Subtly, though, on deeper reflection, the flip is often there.
My sense is that anger born of fear isn't gonna work too well rhetorically. Is there another, "clearer" anger, that enhances a debate?
I wonder.
Posted by: bUM fREE | August 22, 2007 at 07:32 PM
Albert, how has the new generation of painters surprised you?
Posted by: bUM fREE | August 22, 2007 at 07:35 PM
Re: Painters: I'm a big fan of outsider art. I'm constantly surprised by how these artists approach themes, how they confound our expectations of the space depicted in a frame, etc. Because new canvasses continue to startle, I think the declaration of the death of painting was premature.
Posted by: Albert Ruesga | August 25, 2007 at 12:57 PM
Can you point me to an example or two online when you have the time?
Here's a link to two artists:
Standing side by side, they work simultaneously on a horizontal surface. Periodically they place the piece on an easel to view the progress from a fresh perspective. There is little communication until it becomes apparent that the piece is beginning to develop a direction. At that time they may finally discuss it in a very general fashion. The artists allow each painting to more or less reveal itself.
I know one of the guys pretty well. (I no pimp-um ... just present-um.)
Posted by: bUM fREE | August 25, 2007 at 02:32 PM
MLK was an amalgam of love, humility, discipline, critical thinking -- and probably anger.
A well-integrated, whole man.
Does that seem true?
Posted by: bUM fREE | August 25, 2007 at 06:31 PM
MLK was an amalgam of love, humility, discipline, critical thinking -- and probably anger.
A well-integrated, whole man.
Does that seem true?
yes .. whole, even given his reported peccadilloes. Actually, I think they made him even more interesting, but of course provided both the gummint and people who probably should not have been opponents the means with which to harass and denigrate him.
Posted by: Un Autre Singe | August 26, 2007 at 12:41 PM
BF: Thanks for the links. When my beatnik buddies come to town, we do a road trip to this museum. This is what it's all about.
Re: MLK: Can one man's infidelity affect the truth of the proposition that all men are created equal? And how do we assess a life? When somebody asks us, "What do you make of the life and work of M. L. King?" are we required to answer in sound bites, with some kind of pat judgment? I'd resist this, especially in those domains where we can bid our interlocutors to take off their shoes and have a drink before they pop the first question. (Homer tells us the Greeks never conducted business until everybody was satisfied in food and drink.)
Posted by: Albert | August 27, 2007 at 12:07 AM
From the site:
Art is at its best when it forgets its very name. -Dubuffet
Thanks, Albert :-)
Posted by: bUM fREE | August 27, 2007 at 05:18 PM
This summer I spoke to dozens of immigrant leaders who said as much:
The movement is stuck.
The national organizations are out of touch with the field and have painted themselves into policy corners.
The myth of "if we all can agree then we can win the fight" is slowing everyone down.
Immigrant organizations continue to struggle with constituency building and leadership development.
The anti-immigrant climate and the nasty raids are affecting our mental health. Folks are really scared and depressed.
Posted by: Tidy Sum | August 28, 2007 at 01:35 PM
This summer I spoke to dozens of immigrant leaders who said as much:
The movement is stuck.
The national organizations are out of touch with the field and have painted themselves into policy corners.
The myth of "if we all can agree then we can win the fight" is slowing everyone down.
Immigrant organizations continue to struggle with constituency building and leadership development.
The anti-immigrant climate and the nasty raids are affecting our mental health. Folks are really scared and depressed.
Posted by: Tidy Sum | August 28, 2007 at 01:35 PM