Entire CUNY Law Faculty Weighs in on Immigration Reform, Social Justice, and Civil Rights

From the entire CUNY law faculty:

A CALL: CIVIL RIGHTS, WOMEN’S RIGHTS, LGBT RIGHTS, SOCIAL JUSTICE and IMMIGRANTS We are law professors, and activists who have spent our lives working with various civil rights and social justice movements. We have worked on behalf of people of color, women of all colors, the LGBT community and immigrants. We teach that law is a force for achieving justice. Amongst us are children of immigrants, and poor and working class people, many of whom have labored in factories and low-paying, dead-end jobs, bilingual speakers, and linguistic and sexual minorities. We write this letter to join with members of the civil rights, women’s rights, LGBT rights, and social justice movements who support the current struggle for social justice and equality that has evolved as a response to immigration proposals that would criminalize recent immigrants, undermine immigrant families, and ensure an oppressed and underpaid labor force. We oppose the recent mob calls for mass deportation, plans for the militarization of the U.S. border, a guest worker program that will perpetuate a vulnerable underclass and punishing citizens and immigrants who are not proficient in English We demand that our civil rights, employment, labor, and safe workplace laws be enforced broadly and comprehensively, to encompass all people. We call for a program providing a pathway to permanent residency and citizenship that promotes family unification legalizes young people who pursue education and recognizes the contributions of immigrants. We must provide a living wage and safe work environment to all workers and a safe and free civil society for all communities. We join those who publicly and vocally make these demands. There is economic, moral, and political wisdom in supporting the current struggle for immigrants’ rights because it is a struggle for workers’ rights, family, and justice. The focus should not be on how to ensure that this country maintains its cheap labor force, regardless of the toll on individual workers, and poor and working class communities. Rather, we should overhaul an economic system that currently exploits workers. Core values of social justice movements merge at the bottom of the economic pyramid. Further, we must not allow the hijacking of rhetoric about family values by those who do not value all families. Our political and economic resources would be better spent on our decrepit public education and health systems, which fail to provide even minimal services, as illustrated by working class and poor communities’ low high school graduation rates, high infant mortality rates, and poor health indicators. We join civil rights groups that have not been deterred from speaking out based on fear-mongering that immigrants will take jobs from poor people of color. Communities of color have never benefited by targeting each other. The real obstacle to job acquisition and job security is a local and global economy that is founded on labor exploitation and racism. We cannot tolerate the persistent discrimination against African Americans who have led many of the struggles for equality. Our organizations must continue in their proud tradition of working towards the fulfillment of our democratic principles and ideals. We must demand the expansion of fair labor and anti-discrimination laws to benefit all workers. These laws have been under assault for over a decade. Our labor, employment discrimination, and safe workplace laws and the agencies that oversee their enforcement now have limited effect. We fear that the current dilution of these laws will continue unchallenged, until we find that they do not apply to anyone and do not provide relief to any person. The environmental and labor movements must see their work as fully in line with the needs and demands of immigrants and poor workers for a safe and non-toxic workplace. Current proposals undermine civil rights. Enforcement of immigration-related laws by local police will expand the authority and discretion of police, a long-standing area of concern of civil rights groups. Such expansion of police power would exacerbate the difficult relationship of police and communities of color, as well as hamper the reporting and investigation of real crimes. Casting immigrants as criminals has led to vigilante-type behavior against Asians, Caribbeans, Latinos, and Muslims, regardless of their citizenship, and is reminiscent of U.S. history when African Americans were attacked and murdered for invoking civil rights. The “terrorist” word has been overused to justify proposals to provide massive amounts of money to “secure” our borders with a boondoggle fence and an alarming militarization of our southern border. Current increased border enforcement has done nothing to stop economic migration across the border, which has been fueled by a NAFTA agreement that has played havoc with the lives of farmers in Mexico and workers in the U.S. Punishing people because they are not proficient in English does not help them learn English. Instead resources need to be provided for English language education programs. We join women’s rights groups that denounce the sex and gender discrimination in current and proposed immigration legislation. Proposals for “earned” authorization perpetuate gender stereotypes by valuing continuous and extensive participation in the paid labor market, giving no credit to time spent on home-based child and family care, provided predominantly by women. Yet, the unrecognized work of many undocumented women as caretakers has allowed U.S. citizen women to substantially improve their own access to employment and careers. Weak enforcement of labor and anti-discrimination laws particularly hurt women who still earn less than similarly situated men, are targets of sexual harassment, and comprise substantial numbers of the lowest paid workers. Long-proposed asylum regulations that would recognize gender-based persecutions continue to languish. Women who are the spouses and children of citizens and legal permanent residents are denied residency because of technical visa infractions, ensuring the separation of these families. Hostility to minority immigrant mothers based in a concern about the changing “complexion” of the United States fuels proposals to deny citizenship to children born in the United States, contravening longstanding constitutional doctrine. We can only join hands with the majority of the women of the world who are struggling for equality, safety, dignity, and the well-being of their families, if we begin the struggle at home and see immigrant women as partners. We also support those who advocate that children who have long lived in the United States should be able to earn a legalized status through education. We join those in the LGBT rights movement who act in solidarity with advocates for the rights of immigrants and poor people, with the full knowledge that they are members of shared communities and populations. Many LGBT people are people of color, poor people, and immigrants; many immigrants, people of color, and poor people are LGBT. This simple fact bears repeating because it is so often forgotten. It must also be remembered that “homosexuals” were recently excluded as undesirable immigrants and that citizenship qualifications imposed moral tests. Asylum for LGBT people from other nations occurs in a worldwide climate of homophobia, in which acceptance in this nation might well be withheld. Further, spousal immigration preferences exclude the “permanent partners” of LGBT citizens and permanent residents, imposing a particular and limited version of the acceptable “American” family. Our agenda cannot move forward without recognizing that the struggle is not about “illegal immigrants” but about justice for all, regardless of race, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, or class. We can all agree that paying someone substandard wages, or no wages, is not the economic system that furthers the agenda of a democratic society. As history has demonstrated, denying civil, social, and economic rights to a scapegoated population only opens the path to denial of rights to us all. We support those of you who have taken strong stands on these issues and urge others to do so. Please feel free to distribute this letter if you wish.

Jenny Rivera, Ruthann Robson and Janet Calvo for Faculty of the City University School of Law

KJ