Category: citizenship

JHISN Newsletter 08/01/2020

Posted on August 1, 2020 by - 2020, Black Lives Matter, CBP, Census, citizenship, Coronavirus, History, Immigration, Jackson Heights, News, Newsletter, Politics, Public Charge, Refugee Crisis, Your Rights, Your Voice

Dear friends,

“We all must find a way to have the courage to get in trouble, to make good, necessary trouble,” John Lewis said. As we mourn his death this past week, we also bind his life and spirit to current struggles for racial justice. John Lewis faced down state violence and demanded voting rights for Black Americans. Today we honor his memory by collectively facing down state violence that is, again, armed and ready to make justice bleed. JHISN hopes that you might use the newsletter to make some good trouble this summer. Wherever you might be. Wherever it might be needed. 

Newsletter highlights:

  1. Border Patrol’s Long History of Violence
  2. Who Counts? Protecting the 2020 Census
  3. Community Art-Making as Activism

1. First They Came for the Migrants…

The brutality that Customs and Border Patrol paramilitaries have unleashed on protesters in Portland is shocking, but perhaps not entirely surprising.

As I see white mothers and mayors being teargassed on the streets Portland, Ore., one word keeps bubbling up from my bleeding heart: “Welcome.” Welcome to the world of secret police and nighttime raids. The world where you can be snatched by an unidentified officer in an unmarked van. The world where you get to see an attorney, maybe, after the government is done beating you. Welcome to the world as experienced by brown people with foreign-sounding names in this country. —Elie Mystal (The Nation, July 2020)

CBP has made headlines in recent years for its openly racist brutality at the Mexican border; for casually separating children from their parents; for concentration camps where migrants are tortured in hieleras–“ice boxes”–and locked in cages filled with Covid-19. At least 111 people have died at the hands of the Border Patrol since 2010. But this is only the most recent chapter of a murderous history that goes back generations. 

Established in 1924, during an earlier period of xenophobic frenzy, CBP became part of the new, sprawling Department of Homeland Security in 2002. It is one of the largest enforcement agencies in the world, fielding some 20,000 agents, with a budget of around $5 billion. By design, CBP has a loosely-defined mandate, which allows it to be used however the federal regime wants, including as a political police force.

Since its founding in the early 20th century, the U.S. Border Patrol has operated with near-complete impunity, arguably serving as the most politicized and abusive branch of federal law enforcement — even more so than the FBI during J. Edgar Hoover’s directorship. —Greg Grandin (The Intercept, January 2019) 

The Border Patrol operates outside clear borders, geographic or legal. Judges have affirmed that it can operate within 100 miles of any US border, including the coasts–a zone which encompasses 2 out of every 3 US residents. CBP has weaponized this bizarre definition of “the border” to establish intrusive checkpoints all over the country, to deploy “roving patrols” in sanctuary cities including New York, and to board trains and buses searching for people who “look undocumented.” (Protests by activists forced Greyhound Bus to deny CBP agents unrestricted access to the company’s buses last year.)

CBP’s mandate also has an international aspect. The Border Patrol Academy has trained counterinsurgency forces from a variety of overseas dictatorships. BORTAC, the paramilitary group leading the current repression in Portland, has been deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and throughout the Americas to carry out raids and beef up border forces.

Sometimes likened to an American SS, the Border Patrol has always welcomed white nationalists into its ranks, including Klansmen and neofascists. Beatings, rape, murder, racist abuse and sadistic torture have been common throughout Border Patrol history. In 2019, ProPublica exposed a secret Facebook group that had almost 9,500 Border Patrol members, including the current chief. Featuring endless racist jokes about migrant deaths, the group also mocked Democratic congresswomen–including AOC–who were investigating CBP abuses at the Mexican border. One poster encouraged agents to “throw a burrito at these bitches.” Thousands of abuse complaints have been lodged against CBP; these are routinely stonewalled and ignored. 

WHAT CAN WE DO?

2. 2020 Census and Trump’s Attempts at Immigrant Exclusion

Last weekend marked the 15th year since four immigrant women founded Adhikaar and began serving as social justice advocates for Nepali-speaking workers in our neighborhood. The organization has grown and thrived; Adhikaar currently provides direct relief for those impacted by COVID-19, promotes health justice, pushes for worker safety, and campaigns for a Billionaires’ Tax. All while encouraging immigrants to complete the 2020 census. 

Adhikaar has taken to the streets in Queens to educate the communities they serve about Congress’s constitutional responsibility to count all the people in the country every 10 years. To be counted is to take a stand against the fear-mongering used by Trump and his liegemen to dissuade people from participating in a process that determines congressional representation and appropriate distribution of federal resources. As Adhikaar, along with other local groups in the Queens Complete Count Committee, encourage immigrants to participate, the federal government is looking at other ways to discount them:

The Census Bureau has begun to examine and report on methodologies available to “provide information permitting the President…to carry out the policy” of “the exclusion of illegal aliens from the apportionment base”. —Steven Dillingham, Director of the Census Bureau, July 29, 2020

The 14th Amendment corrected the intentional racism of the original census charge, which excluded indigenous Americans and counted only three-fifths of all persons who were “not freemen or bound to service”. Trump’s push to eliminate immigrants from the census count was a nod back to the original wording in the Constitution; designed to redefine who counts as a person. The failed attempt to add a citizenship question to the census exacerbated an existing problem: historically, our national population has been undercounted, even more so in minority communities. People who fear that responding to the census might bring ICE or Border Patrol to their door are disincentivized to participate, as are historically marginalized groups who feel they do not benefit from the representation the census promises. 

In September, the Census Bureau will send a seventh mailing, including a paper questionnaire, to people in the population tracts with the lowest response rates. There are many in Queens. Despite extending the census deadline due to the pandemic, we are not yet even close to the response rates in 2010. In 2010 the overall NYC response was 62%, a full 14 points below the national average. This year the national response rate is almost 63% while NYC is only at 54%. When we drill down into specific neighborhoods the differences are dramatic: East Elmhurst is only at 43%; in Corona, the majority of tracts are below 50% (and 10 tracts are under 40%), while in 2010 there were only 6 tracts which had responses under 50%.  Although the rectangle between Roosevelt and Northern, from 76th to 86th streets, has a 68%+ response, all other areas of Jackson Heights average below 50%.

JHISN celebrates Adhikaar’s 15th birthday and honors their social media and text-banking outreach campaigns that have so far assisted over 4,300 people to complete the 2020 census. In the face of adversity and targeted exclusions, Adhikaar shows how to stand up and be counted. 

WHAT CAN WE DO?

3. Art as Activism

Art with organizing is all about building people’s power and finding strength in our communities; and art has always existed in our communities…that’s where our power lies.”  —Mahira Raihan, Arts & Cultural Justice Organizer, DRUM

The power of art and the power of organizing are intimate allies. As hundreds of thousands of people in the US, night after night, filled neighborhood streets with cries for justice for George Floyd, new art-making also poured into our public spaces. From community murals and street art to the collective performance of thousands ‘taking a knee’ together, the mobilization of political power has been inseparable from an outpouring of creative work.

While the huge, bright yellow street paintings spelling out ‘Black Lives Matter’ in Washington DC, and in front of NYC’s Trump Tower, have received international attention, more community-driven BLM street paintings designed in lush colors by local artists have also proliferated in Jackson, MI, in Cincinnati, OH, in Charlotte, NC, and in Seattle, WA. Foley Square is the site of a gorgeous multicolored Black Lives Matter street painting collaboratively designed by multiple artists; the word ‘Black’ was designed by artist and immigrant Tijay Mohammed, using Ghanaian fabric motifs and imagery. In Harlem and Bed-Stuy, painting the street with Black Lives Matter was a community event, with hundreds of local residents participating.

Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM) here in Queens is currently running a two-month Art to Activism program, mobilizing South Asian and Indo-Caribbean working-class youth to collaborate on a community-based art project. Aimed at deepening understandings of both police brutality and anti-blackness in South Asian-American communities, the project uses art-making as a catalyst to social change. Art to Activism builds on DRUM’s earlier Moving Art—Making Art for Our Movements program which created collective art “grounded in our communities’ experiences and dreams of liberation.” Visual art, theater, ‘zine-making, and poetry are all a regular part of DRUM’s organizing and cultural work.   

WHAT CAN WE DO?

  • Support DRUM’s Building Power & Safety through Solidarity campaign.
  • Purchase a copy of DRUM’s ‘zine created collectively in the Moving Art program.
  • Visit the Black Lives Matter street art in Harlem, Bed-Stuy, and Foley Square!
  • Work and play with local artists, neighbors, kids, and friends to design street art for immigrant justice on 34th Ave Open Streets.

Gratitude for your collective care in this moment of sustained and multiplying crises. Together we will continue to take strength from our solidarities, and our histories of creative resistance.

Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network

Follow @JHSolidarity on Facebook and twitter and share this newsletter with friends, families, neighbors, networks, and colleagues so they can subscribe and receive news from JHISN. 

JHISN Newsletter 07/18/2020

Posted on July 18, 2020 by - 2020, Black Lives Matter, citizenship, Coronavirus, History, ICE, Immigration, Jackson Heights, News, Newsletter, Politics, Racism, Your Rights, Your Voice

Dear Friends,

We hope this unexpected summer-in-pandemic-times might also bring you unexpected pleasures, including a deeper sense of community and neighborhood. Normally, this time of year, JHISN would be outside tabling on 37th Avenue. This summer, the newsletter is our digital ‘table.’ We are encouraged to know how many of you are reading it, via email and social media. Please share it, please let it feed your actions and political imagination. 

Newsletter Highlights:

  1. Funds for Excluded Workers: Hunger Fast & March On Billionaires in NYC
  2. History of Dominican Community @ Jackson Heights
  3. COVID-19’s impact on Black Immigrant Domestic Workers

1. Fasting for Justice—#FundExcludedWorkers

At noon on Thursday, July 16, amidst the lush mid-summer green of Madison Square Park, over one hundred excluded workers and their allies—immigrant day laborers, domestic workers, street vendors, nail salon workers, farmworkers, religious leaders, and elected officials—began a 24-hour hunger fast. Fasting activists in the park were surrounded by live performances and a #NamingTheLost memorial altar, honoring community members who have already died from COVID-19. The public fast shined light on the brutal fact that undocumented immigrant New Yorkers, many of them also essential workers, have been starved of government financial assistance during the public health crisis.

Facing food insecurity, job loss, and the threat of homelessness, these excluded and essential workers are at the heart of the #FundExcludedWorkers campaign. The campaign—endorsed by over 90 immigrant and social justice groups including DRUM, Adhikaar, Street Vendor Project, Make the Road NY, and JHISN—calls for a billionaire wealth tax in New York State to pay for emergency survival funds for immigrant workers and households. So … just across from the park where fasting protesters spent the night, dozens of immigrant New Yorkers on Thursday also held a sidewalk ‘sleep-in’ in front of the Fifth Avenue penthouse of Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos. Bezos is one of 118 billionaires living in New York State who have together increased their value by $45 billion since the start of the pandemic, and who now hold a breathtaking total of $556 billion in ‘billionaire wealth.’

In a broader study of the economic and political power of billionaires in the U.S., the Institute for Policy Studies reports that in the past 30 years, billionaire wealth has increased by a stunning 1,130 % (in 2020 dollars). In the same 3 decades the tax obligations of U.S. billionaires, measured as a percentage of their wealth, has decreased by 79%. Recent ‘pandemic profiteering’ allows billionaire wealth to soar even as tens of millions of households struggle to pay rent, buy groceries, and survive the crisis.  

The public fast and sleep-in culminated Friday morning with activists walking in a lively March on Billionaires from Madison Square Park to Cuomo’s office. A just recovery demands that the Governor implement the billionaire tax and support over 1 million workers in NY who have been excluded so far from any emergency financial relief. 

WHAT CAN WE DO?

2. History & Politics of Dominican Immigration

Dominicans are the largest Latinx nationality in New York City, numbering over 800,000 people. “Today, the pattern of Dominican immigrants tends to be a settlement in Washington Heights/Inwood followed by a move to another borough.” Dominicans have become the second-largest immigrant group in the Jackson Heights area.

Dominican migration has been heavily impacted by US imperialism. The US military invaded and occupied the Dominican Republic from 1916 until 1924. This period cemented the economic control of US-owned banks and sugar plantations, reinforced by white supremacy. 

After the occupation, the US Marine Corps groomed Dominican National Guard General Rafael Trujillo to take over, sponsoring his military coup in 1930. Trujillo, who ruled for 31 years, “was one of the most ruthless dictators in modern Latin American history. He was notorious for his torture chambers, his massacres of protesters, and his genocide of tens of thousands of ethnic Haitians. Trujillo accumulated billions of dollars through corruption. Under his rule, the Dominican Republic became a center for terrorism against progressive movements throughout the hemisphere.

After Trujillo’s assassination in 1961, there was a period of political upheaval. Juan Bosch, a progressive, was elected in 1963. But he was soon overthrown in yet another military coup, backed by 23,000 US troops. The new dictator was Joaquín Balaguer, a brutal, racist Trujillo protege. These events prompted the first major wave of Dominican migration to the US, which included both opponents of the regime and people simply fleeing social chaos.

Migration from the Dominican Republic accelerated in the 1980s. It was fueled by a huge Latin American economic crisis, often called the “Lost Decade.” As one historian puts it, “the debt crisis of the 1980s is the most traumatic economic event in Latin America’s economic history.” Those who fled to the US included a mix of very poor people, plus professionals and other middle-class Dominicans looking for economic opportunity.

Economic opportunity isn’t always easy to come by here, though. As of 2017, the median income for full-time Dominican workers in the US is $32,000; 21-23% of the Dominican population lives in poverty. As an Afro-Latinx people, Dominicans are often confronted with white racism and discrimination; many live in fear of ICE raids.

In recent years, the main route for Dominican migration to the US has been through reunification with family members who are already here. Trump’s new “public charge” regulations may have a significant effect on the ability of working-class Dominicans to acquire green cards in the future.

Dominicans in the US actively discuss the politics of anti-Blackness, prompted partly by the Black Lives Matter movement. Dominican student Roderich Martinez gives a personal point of view:

Throughout history, Dominicans have greatly acknowledged the Europeans who took over the island, Hispaniola, while at the same time minimizing the importance of the Africans who were slaves at the same time….There are places I go in New York City where people immediately assume that I am just black. The moment they hear me talk, I get a reaction like, OH MY GOD! I thought you were one of the black people. I am not going to lie, the uneducated me of three years ago would’ve answered: “Oh no, I’m just Dominican with dark skin.” Today, I would say, “Dominicans come in all different shapes and colors and I am black.”

WHAT CAN WE DO?

  • Make a digital visit to the Museo Memorial de la Resistencia Dominicana in Santo Domingo, featuring in-depth research on the long Dominican resistance to dictatorship and imperialism.
  • Fight to overturn “public charge” rules that could prevent working-class Dominicans from getting green cards; Support Congresswoman Grace Meng’s No Public Charge Deportation Act, endorsed by over 50 immigrant rights groups.

3. How COVID-19 Impacts Black Immigrant Domestic Workers

Just 10 years ago, the New York State Legislature passed the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. Remarkably, this was the first time that any state included domestic workers in the labor laws protecting other worker categories. Two Queens-based immigrant justice groups, Adhikaar and Damayan Migrant Workers Association, were part of the coalition that rallied and organized for six years to get the NYS legislation passed. A third of all non-citizen women in the U.S. were employed in domestic work in 2010, and over 90% of those workers were women of color.

Intersectional identities such as Black, immigrant, woman, and low-wage worker make these essential workers some of the most invisible and vulnerable workers in our country. Notes From the Storm (IPS, June 2020)

Domestic work reveals contradictions at the heart of the international migration of women workers: it propels women to migrate as entrepreneurial, risk-taking, decision-makers who became primary contributors to household incomes in their home country; and, at the same time, domestic work remains economically undervalued, stereotypically characterized by servility and subservience, and excluded from most formal global labor market reports.

For U.S. white women, between the Civil War and WWI, domestic work was often a transitional role between early adulthood and marriage. Throughout much of the 20th century, for U.S. black women, domestic work was an intergenerational, full-time occupation until the Civil Rights Act of 1964—when black women’s organizing resulted in a shift of this role to Filipino and Mexican immigrants. 

During May and June of 2020, over 800 black immigrant domestic workers in the U.S. were surveyed about how COVID-19 affected their lives. Workers interviewed were in New York City, Massachusetts, and Miami-Dade, Florida. Most respondents had more than one domestic job with different employers but each region identified its own dominant ‘type’ of worker. In NYC the majority of black immigrant domestic workers are nannies, providing private child care. In Miami-Dade they are housekeepers and cleaners, while in Massachusetts they are paid caregivers in the home. 

For black immigrant domestic workers in NYC, the findings are deeply disturbing:

  • Two-thirds of respondents either lost their jobs or have fewer hours and less pay since the pandemic.
  • Over 80% of undocumented domestic workers (and almost 30% of documented) have no health insurance; the same percentages of workers indicate they will not seek government support out of fear about their immigration status.
  • Over 75% who have jobs indicated their employers do not provide Personal Protective Equipment.
  • Two-thirds of undocumented domestic workers anticipate eviction or having utilities shut off in July, August, or September.

Over the next months, as domestic workers are called upon once more to take up work that is vital but historically undervalued, we must demand federal support for black domestic workers and their prioritization in the economic recovery efforts. Individual employers must take responsibility for protecting the health of workers they employ, providing the needed PPE, and avoiding convenient gig economy apps which will not direct money to the women they employ. 

WHAT CAN WE DO?

In collective struggle and mutual care,

Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network

Follow @JHSolidarity on Facebook and twitter and share this newsletter with friends, families, neighbors, networks, and colleagues so they can subscribe and receive news from JHISN. 

JHISN Newsletter 05/16/2020

Posted on May 16, 2020 by - 2020, citizenship, Coronavirus, Immigration, Jackson Heights, News, Newsletter, Politics, Your Rights, Your Voice

Dear Friends,

Greetings to you, as we enter the third month of stay-at-home restrictions in New York City. We continue to use our e-newsletter as a collective ‘public space’ during the pandemic, sharing news with a local focus on immigrant politics and solidarity. We are grateful for your encouraging responses! Please continue to send us ideas for future newsletter items, and feedback on how to make the newsletter most useful to you at info@jhimmigrantsolidarity.org

We are also now sharing the newsletter on social media. We invite you to follow @JHSolidarity on twitter and facebook, and to circulate newsletter items to folks who might be interested.  

Newsletter highlights: 

  1. Immigrants Excluded from Rent Relief — update on #CancelRent and Legislative Proposals
  2. Activist Art Traditions Continue during a Pandemic 
  3. Immigrant Students Struggle for Educational Access 

1) Still No Rent Relief for Immigrants

Widespread inability to pay rent during the Covid-19 catastrophe continues to threaten the housing security of millions of immigrants left out of federal and state assistance programs. About 20% of tenants in the US failed to pay any part of their rent on May 1. This figure actually represents a drop from April 1. Analysts believe that increased rent payments were made possible by stimulus or unemployment money. Neither of these is available to roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants, as well as many others in their households.

#CancelRent says that there were 190,000 rent and mortgage strikes nationally. In New York, there were about 14,000 strikers, mostly in 57 large buildings. Many immigrants participated. This is probably not the massive response that organizers had hoped for, but it’s a solid beginning for a movement that seems likely to grow as the rent crisis deepens. As activists say, “We can’t pay, so we won’t pay…together.”

Proposals in the US Congress for emergency rent suspension or rental assistance, including initiatives by Ilhan Omar, Sherrod Brown, and a group of Queens Congress members, seem unlikely to go anywhere right now because of Republican opposition. At the state level, Governor Cuomo has made it clear that he does not support aid of any sort for undocumented immigrants. The current legislative effort with the best prospects may be the bill proposed by Michael Gianaris in the State Senate, calling for a 90-day suspension of rent and mortgages for anyone economically impacted by Covid-19. Notably, it has attracted support from some commercial tenants, individual homeowners, and even landlords, because it would provide for broad mortgage forgiveness as well as rent relief.

Currently, there is a NY State freeze on evictions, which has been extended through August 20. Tenant advocates expect a wave of eviction proceedings once the freeze ends, since all back rent will be due at that time. Also, a new provision added to the freeze puts the burden on tenants to prove that they can’t pay their rent specifically as a result of Covid-19. This raises the prospect of grueling eviction hearings, initiated by landlords challenging the rent freeze for individual tenants. “Landlords will bring tenants to court, who will then have to demonstrate to landlords…that they were impacted, and the court will either find [tenants] credible or not,” said Ellen Davidson, a staff attorney at Legal Aid Society. “In a city where landlords have called ICE on their tenants, people will have to choose whether or not to tell their landlords about their immigration status.”

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

2) Making Art and Public Memory in Pandemic Times

In times of uncertainty, art is more than beauty or decoration — it’s a tool. Art can heal, art can save lives, art can bring us together — even when we’re apart. Aaron Huey, “Artists Paint a Portrait of a Pandemic”  

She has purple and white wings, pink-red boxing gloves, a blue cap, a white mask. Painted on the side of an abandoned building in Denver by mural artist Austin Zucchini-Fowler, Healthcare Hero is one of countless works of public art blooming across cities and towns in response to the pandemic. In New York City, she is four stories tall, a nurse in white and blue, palms pressed together like buddha, and E-S-S-E-N-T-I-A-L spelled out in bright red letters above her head—a poster designed by the Hawaiian artist Marvin Madariaga and projected on the side of an NYC hospital.  

Public art has a long, activist history of escaping the museum and the gallery to directly engage people in our everyday lives. In the current crisis, institutions ranging from the United Nations to the social change organization Amplifier are holding international contests for artists to contribute their work in the service of popular education and collective well-being during the pandemic.  

Here in Queens, a call for “Art from the Epicenter” is circulating right now for artists in Jackson Heights and neighboring areas to donate their artwork to support local organizations, including Covid Care Neighbor Network, Make the Road NY, and Meals for Elmhurst Hospital. Artists’ donated work will be sold in an online exhibition/auction, with all monies going to local groups providing mutual aid to immigrant communities and those hit hardest by the crisis.

The Queens Public Library and Queens College have also launched the Queens Memory COVID-19 Project, a public art initiative gathering stories of how we are struggling, surviving, and coming together during the crisis. Part of the larger Queens Memory Project–a community archive narrating everyday life in “The World’s Borough”–The COVID-19 Project belongs to us. As an intimate collection of oral histories, images, and experiences, the project will become a form of public memory for a moment which, for many of us right now, is filled with silence and loss.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

3) Immigrant Students Can’t Count on Billionaires for Equal Access to Education

Before the pandemic, the Education Justice Project of Make The Road New York, an immigrant-led justice organization, worked with public school parent committees and youth leaders to end ineffective punitive policies, and challenge the management of overcrowded and underfunded neighborhood schools. With a stunning 85% of youth participating in their Student Success Centers accepted to college, MTRNY’s model was replicated across all five NYC boroughs, serving over 17,000 students in 34 schools.

After the pandemic hit and the schools closed, education for the children of immigrants has been disproportionately disrupted. The Mayor’s office gave lip service to supporting immigrant families left out of federal funding and lacking access to educational technology. It was unclear how the city’s approach would be funded, until the announcement that the Open Society Foundations, run by liberal philanthropist George Soros, earmarked $15 million to fund the Department of Education’s remote learning program. 

Educational technology is often a problem area, especially for immigrant and low-income families. 15% of US households with children lack high-speed internet at home. One in three households that make below $30,000 a year lacks any internet. When parents live apart, or are in quarantine, internet learning can easily be disrupted. In New York, the Department of Education is supplying large numbers of internet-connected tablets, but some students still fall through the gaps. In one family we know, the children are doing their homework on their parent’s mobile phone.

A JHISN newsletter reader, embracing Mutual Aid, asked us if there were organizations that were funding immigrant children who lack the devices and other technology necessary to participate in the remote learning program. They were looking to make a contribution to a local organization that specifically supports children’s edtech needs. Please let us know if you are aware of any in our neighborhood?

Governor Cuomo took the idea of billionaires funding education even further by recently inviting Bill Gates to advise a council to ‘Reimagine Education’. The council met without the input of any educators from New York City, or any grassroots experts like the New York Immigration Coalition’s Education Collaborative. As Forbes magazine reports, The Gates Foundation has been involved in several education projects that have ended badly. This includes the 2011 InBloom initiative, which Gates simply walked away from after $100 million had been wasted.

Over 150 years ago an immigrant industrialist, Peter Cooper, founded Cooper Union on the Lower East Side to provide free education to the working class, women, and people of color. He aimed to promote civic virtue and harmony. Today we have racist millionaires in the White House who are “prompting immigrant families to forgo services that they fear could land them on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s radar or jeopardize their path to citizenship.” Although right now we find ourselves a long way from civic harmony, perhaps we can at least provide all students access to the necessary resources they need to pursue the education they deserve. 

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

With gratitude for collective care and mutual aid in these staggering times, 

Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network

Follow @JHSolidarity on facebook and twitter and share this newsletter with friends, families, neighbors, networks, and colleagues so they can subscribe and receive news from JHISN.

 

 

Citizenship

Posted on December 13, 2019 by - citizenship, Immigration

If you stop and think about it, citizenship is a strange phenomenon. It’s an “official” status that gets assigned to each of us, for better or worse, based on lines on a map, and accidents of birth. It’s a way that governments separate and classify us. It can be the most ordinary, bureaucratic thing in the world—or a matter of life and death.

For most people who are born in the US, citizenship is automatic and routine. They don’t do anything to get it, and they rarely give it a thought. But for hundreds of millions of people, survival itself rides on citizenship. Citizenship can lock a person into a lifetime of hunger and fear, unable to cross borders to seek a better life. Or it can virtually guarantee the basic necessities of life, safety and opportunity.

Currently there are about 730 million people in the world living on less than $1.90 a day—what economists classify as “extreme poverty.” Virtually none of these people are US citizens. Meanwhile, 16% of Honduran citizens, 21% of Indian citizens, 22% of Laotian citizens, 23.5% of Haitian citizens, and over 77% of citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo endure such destitution. All because of where they were born.

For many migrants, gaining US citizenship is a prized accomplishment. It’s not always possible to become a citizen, as we know. When it is possible, getting it often requires a difficult struggle. We should support migrants in this effort, admiring their fortitude and the sacrifices they make while seeking a better life for themselves and their families.

But we must also recognize that US citizenship often functions as a form of privilege in the world. Statistically, US citizens have a much higher standard of living, more options, and more personal security than most of the world’s people. Looked at historically, this is mainly due to the power and wealth of US imperialism, which has used military force and economic blackmail to dominate other lands. Most of the profits of imperialism go to a tiny percentage of super-rich monopolists. But some of the advantages go to ordinary US citizens, too.

Imperial privilege, infused with racism, was integral to the origin of the US. Citizenship was for white settlers only. It was based on genocide against Native peoples, their enslavement, and theft of their lands. (Native people weren’t legally considered US citizens until 1924.)

It should go without saying that African slaves weren’t US citizens. The first slave ship arrived in Jamestown in 1619. Only in 1868, 249 years later, did African Americans gain birthright citizenship. Nevertheless, their citizenship was questioned and restricted for generations after that, with many white politicians advocating Black deportation and promoting white nationalism.

The US seized half of Mexico in 1848. The 80,000 Mexicans living in the occupied territory became US citizens overnight, whether they wanted to or not. Those new citizens were still subjected to violent white racism; many were forced off their land or illegally deported in the following years. On the other hand, Mexicans who happened to live on the south side of the newly-imposed border became “illegal aliens”in the eyes of the US—restricted from crossing into the northern half of their own nation.

Ethnic Chinese people born in the US were denied birthright citizenship until a hotly-contested Supreme Court ruling in 1898.  Even then, Chinese and other non-white immigrants were strictly prohibited from becoming naturalized citizens of the US for decades—until 1952, to be exact.

We know that citizenship doesn’t guarantee equality. Nationally, women citizens didn’t get the right to vote until 1920. In 1898, nineteen years after the US invaded and occupied Puerto Rico, people born on the island were formally declared US citizens. But Puerto Ricans still can’t vote in presidential elections, unless they leave Puerto Rico to live in one of the States. They don’t get all the same federal benefits as other citizens, either. Similar restrictions apply to the residents of the US Virgin Islands, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands.

Meanwhile, the stark distinction between citizens and non-citizens inside US borders is a persistent feature of our society. Non-citizen residents face discrimination in many walks of life, whether they are in the US legally or not. On average, non-citizens make about 20% less in wages. They are frequently turned down for jobs that are reserved for citizens. Their immigration status makes them vulnerable to exploitation and police abuse. Legal residents may be denied important government benefits, such as retirement programs, welfare, health care, public housing, and access to higher education, all depending on a patchwork of arcane state and national laws.

The current US administration has recently activated a provision of the Patriot Act that allows them to imprison non-citizens forever, without trial, if the government considers them to be a “threat,” but finds them difficult to deport for some reason. (For instance, if their country of origin refuses to accept them.) Their status is considered to be similar to the prisoners in Guantanamo. No evidence of  an actual threat needs be proven—the government claims to have complete discretion when it comes to non-citizens.

Even when migrants do manage to become US citizens, that status can be taken away. Right now the government is ramping up a program called Operation Janus, started under the Obama administration, which actively attempts to deport people who are naturalized citizens, especially Muslims and politically active people. The Department of Justice looks for technical flaws, omissions or false answers in these citizens’ naturalization paperwork, often going back decades. The DOJ is working to literally undo the citizenship of people they don’t like. Operation Janus further illustrates the politicized and racially-determined character of US citizenship.

Citizen privilege obviously isn’t the only form of privilege that affects our society. White privilege has always played a particularly central role in this country. And male privilege infuses US society, like every society in the world today. There are other kinds of privilege as well. All these forms of privilege overlap and interact with each other in a variety of ways. In fact, the history of citizenship in the US, with its intimate connections to white supremacy, is a good example of this.

Recognizing that US citizenship is a privilege doesn’t mean disregarding other forms of privilege, or minimizing the oppression of citizens of color, women citizens, or any citizens struggling for equality, justice and a decent livelihood. Rather, it means adopting a global point of view. It means seeing our society through the eyes of billions of non-US citizens around the world who are struggling for those exact same things. Many of whom are migrants being driven from their homes by US imperialism.

Understanding US citizenship as a privilege helps inform our fight for migrant rights. It puts a spotlight on the fundamental unfairness of determining peoples’ fate according to where they were born, the color of their skin, or the color of their passport. It forces us to question the logic of today’s borders. How sacred are the lines on the map that were drawn by invaders and occupiers? Why can billionaire investors live and invest any where in the world, while ordinary people are prohibited from seeking a better life in another country?

By acknowledging that citizenship privilege in the US is intertwined with colonialism, we strengthen our determination to welcome and support migrants whose lives and livelihoods overseas have been devastated by US corporations and US government policies. This acknowledgement further motivates us to help reverse and repair colonialism’s damage, so that people can choose to stay in their home countries if they wish.

Finally, an awareness of citizenship’s history and role in the world underlines the responsibility of US citizens to make use of their own privilege in the battle for migrant rights. Citizenship’s advantages bring with them an obligation: to fight alongside those who seek, demand, and battle for an equal chance in life.