The Black Alliance for Just Immigration

With all the talk of African American/Latino immigrant conflict, our readers might be interested in a relatively new grass roots group, the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, based in Berkeley, California.  According to its website, the mission of the group is to engage African Americans and other communities in a dialogue that leads to actions that challenge U.S. immigration policy and the underlying issues of race, racism and economic inequity that frame it.

The Black Alliance for Just Immigration is a group of African Americans and black immigrants who are working towards uniting communities for just and fair immigration reform in the United States.   The group’s four uniting principles are:

•  All people, regardless of immigration status, country of origin, race, color, creed, gender, sexual orientation or HIV status deserve human rights as well as social and economic justice.

•  Historically and currently, U.S. immigration policy has been infused with racism, enforcing unequal and punitive standards for immigrants of color.

•  Immigration to the United States is driven by an unjust international economic order that deprives people of the ability to earn a living and raise their families in their home countries. Through international trade, lending, aid and investment policies, the United States government and corporations are the main promoters and beneficiaries of this unjust economic order.

•  African Americans, with our history of being economically exploited, marginalized and discriminated against, have much in common with people of color who migrate to the United States, documented and undocumented.

At a conference yesterday at UC Berkeley, I saw  Gerald Lenoir, the group’s coordinator, thoughtfully discuss immigration, tensions between communities of color, and the need for multiracial coalitions.

KJ