Top-down Comprehensive Immigration Reform Proposals and Compromises Lack Intelligence, Justice, and Democracy (work in progress, April

6 2013)
Manuel Barajas The Gang of 8 in the Senate proposed a comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) that emphasized border security, guest worker program aligned with US economic interests, and an earned and restricted legalization path (Janurary 28, 2013). Soon after, President Obama in his State of the Union articulated a similar position, and asked congress to compromise on something he could sign (February 13, 2013). An illusion of hope was projected to the 11 million living in the shadows and their relatives/friends also living in fear of being separated from loved ones. Immigration and human rights scholars have continuously noted, however, a gulf between the politics of immigration on the one hand and the solid research on the other (Massey et al. 2002; Portes & Rumbaut 2006; Sassen 1996; Calavita 1998). For instance, senate, house, and executive proposals reflect a negligent disconnect with empirical/historical facts about the roots of immigration, and an alarming connection with biases based on race, class, and genderclearly noted in the trends of who gets legalized and who gets deported. More recently (March 29, 2013), the US Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO compromised on a lobbying platform that advances both of their interests. This agreement, as framed by the media, also excited the public that CIR could be attained in the near future. Their compromise also prioritizes border security (e.g., e-verify) and permits another form of guestworkersi.e., W visassatisfying corporate interests and promising prevailing wages for labor. Past programs have made similar formal promises but failed in enforcing them. These compromises are top-down in the manner that only large businesses will benefit from them, and only few labor sectors will be protected from a historical program rooted to racist-colonial labor systems that devalues specific occupations and people (Barajas 2009; Ngai 2004; Gonzalez 2006). Disturbingly, these various CIR compromises have been widely supported by mainstream media and corporate interests as the only realistic and pragmatic approaches to CIRsomething is better than nothing and everyone wins and loses something. However, these noted CIR proposals and compromises suffer in at least five areas that should not be compromised in any final reform: 1) They lack intelligence. The politics of enforcement-only is disconnected from solid research. Specifically, the enforcement-only policy neglect the factors that create migration and therefore its solutions are wasteful of resources and damaging the financial stability of the nation. 2) They violate justice. CIR discussions exclude the voices of those most impacted communities, and/or simply appropriate their voices to justify a reform that maintains many of their communities in a subservient and exploitable status in society. For example, dreamers in the military or college have their voices show cased, but their sisters and brothers and many others with dreams of a better future are not. 3) They have no courage to challenge the politics of intolerance and bias that devalue and exploit people on the basis of race-ethnicity, gender/sexuality, and class. For example, farm workers constitute about one percent of the workforce and feed the whole nation, and yet remain the most underpaid, exploited and disenfranchised population in the country. This occupational sector, predominately Latin@ and indigenous, is denied the ability to improve their labor conditions. 4) They compromise the health of families/communities prioritizing policies that tear them apart, deny health care/public services, and pit them against each other (migrant vs. non-migrants, ethnicities racialized as immigrant vs. native, etc.). 5) They disrupt societal harmony when public resources are invested in projects (border enforcement, secure communities, detention centers) that divide and devalue large segments of the population based on aristocratic traditions like entitlement based on birth, culture, gender, among others. 1

Top-down CIR compromises simply suppress justice, democracy, and a future that works for everyone and not just a few powerful corporate and nativist interest groups. The problem is not with compromising but rather with compromises detached of historical, scientific, and ethical insights. Over the past thirty years as US investment in Mexico, Central American and Asia grew, so did migration increase from those nations to this country (Fernndez-Kelly 1983; Sassen 1988, 1996; Gonzalez and Fernandez 2003). In the 1990 census for the first time in US history, Latino and Asia immigrants outnumbered foreignborn Europeans. Migration from Mexico climbed steeper after NAFTA in 1994 and even after 9/11 and the billions of dollars directed to homeland security. The combination of border enforcement and Great Recession, however, paused migration from south of the border. In the past 5 years, the US deported historical records of immigrants approximating 400,000 a year, totaling 1.5 million. Since NAFTA, more people have been deported than all deportations combined since the early in 19th century (Golash Boza 2012). Ninety-eight percent of them were from Latin America. About 70 percent of the total were from Mexico though they only made up about 30 percent of the immigrants (documented and undocumented). Honduras had the highest proportion of deportees per their numbers, followed by Mexico and then Guatemala. What we see is the deportation of people from nations that have been historically integrated into the US economy, and whose economies have been reduced to export production for foreign investors. In Mexico, 8090 percent of its exports are directed to the U.S., and during the Great Recession its poverty jumped 2 percent points with about half of the population impoverished, violence increased claiming over 60,000 lives, and remittances declined yet remained the number one economic resource. In brief, CIR must consider the nations role in dislocating people from their homeland via its politicaleconomic policies like NAFTA/CAFTA, or military interventions like in Vietnam in the sixties, Central America in the eighties, and the Middle East now. To reduce migration, US policy must prioritize labor, civil, and human rights across borders. Insensitive to the global realities that cause immigration and to the historical biases denying people of color full membership to nation, restrictive and burdensome CIR acts effectively violate human rights and keep a large number of immigrants and relatives in a marginalized status for generations. Equity, justice, and democratic principles must be core values in all national and multi-national acts. En solidaridad con CIR that uplifts human dignity and justice! MB