African Americans and Immigration

Rachel Swarns’ story in today’s NYTimes on African Americans and the immigrants’ rights movement provided a textured look at the mixed feelings with which some civil rights activists view the immigrants’ rights marches and activism of the past months.  But  the debate highlighted in the article (and the article itself) obscures the existance of Black immigrants.

The quote from Brendon L. Laster highlights the point.  Mr. Laster is quoted as saying:

“I think what they were able to do, the level of organization they were able to pull off, that was phenomenal,” said Mr. Laster, who is also a part-time sociology professor at a community college in Baltimore. “But I do think their struggle is, in fundamental ways, very different from ours. We didn’t chose to come here; we came here as slaves. And we were denied, even though we were legal citizens, our basic rights.”

But not all Blacks in the U.S. came here as slaves — some are immigrants.  Some of these immigrants are here legally, others are not.  Many of these immigrants — authorized and unauthorized — face discrimination similar to that experienced by the decendants of slaves.  Furthermore, they face the problems of immigrants.  Black noncitizens, like other noncitizens, face removal under increasingly harsh immigration laws.  Haitian migrants have faced systematic and virulent discrimination under U.S. immigration law.  In an interdependent world, these issues have to be a part of the broader civil rights struggle.

To succeed, today’s movement must harken back to a time when those engaged in the struggle were deeply concerned not just about what happened within the U.S. borders, but also with oppression in colonial states on a global scale.  In the modern world, with its multinational corporations and global markets for goods and services, the new civil rights movement must be a global human rights movement if it hopes to advance the goals of all of those who have been left out of the dream.  And those who march for immigration reform here must also think globally — about the plight of citizens who have, for too long, been denied justice.

-jmc