Resolving to Fight in the Face of Immigration Reform Setback

Shelley Lee and Gina Perez, Oberlin College

(originally published November 12, 2016)

As educators in Ohio who teach and write about immigration in the United States, we are acutely aware of the hardships and obstacles that come with being undocumented. Those in Ohio face particular challenges, as a recent report from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research found that the state ranks last in policies that support the health and well-being of undocumented immigrants and their families. Ohio has some of the most restrictive policies in public health and welfare benefits, higher education, labor and employment practices, driver licensing and identification, and federal immigration enforcement practices. As if things could not get grimmer, on election day 52 percent of Ohio voters selected a presidential candidate whose immigration plan includes a highly punitive policy toward the undocumented population. Donald Trump has vowed to immediately suspend President Obama’s executive orders deferring removal for certain undocumented immigrants; deport all “criminal aliens”; end sanctuary cities; expand Immigration and Customs Enforcement; and build a wall across the U.S.-Mexico border. While our state is far from alone in taking such draconian approaches, the old saying, “As Ohio goes, so goes the nation,” combined with the recent election results, prompts apprehension, indeed alarm, about what may come as a new Trump administration pursues an agenda rooted in fear, devoid of realistic understanding of our immigration problems, and bent on punishment and enforcement to “put America first.”

As some of us struggle to understand why and how a candidate whose campaign was fueled by inflammatory and bigoted rhetoric was able to win the presidency, historical antecedents remind us of the ways we might be on familiar ground. Indeed, the vilification of undocumented people as a centerpiece of the Trump campaign extended a long tradition in American politics of scapegoating the most vulnerable segments in society as a panacea for other problems. During the nineteenth century, many working class Irish immigrants, anxious about their increasingly limited possibilities for moving out of wage work amidst rapid industrialization and eager to escape their own baggage as nativist targets, aligned themselves with a politics of white supremacy that included being pro-slavery and anti-Chinese immigration. More recently, voters in California, in the midst of a deep recession, passed the notorious anti-immigrant Proposition 187 of 1994. Our present hysteria against undocumented people has ranged from a number of state-led initiatives from Arizona to Alabama that have included the “show us your papers” laws, swift detention of suspected undocumented immigrants, and the criminalization of those who aid them, including school teachers, clergy and social service providers.

As immigration politics and the immigration system have become increasingly oriented around the problem of “illegals,” conversations about it focus almost exclusively on the immigrants themselves: their criminality and moral failings, or their innocence and virtue. During the primaries, the entire Republican field encouraged voters to regard them as second class humans undeserving of dignity or understanding. Obscured are the problems in the immigration system itself, which have given rise to the growing undocumented population. While there have been some modifications, our current system relies on an over fifty-old framework created by the Hart-Celler Act of 1965, in which immigrant visas are allocated equally across nations, with family and employment based preference categories determining how they are doled out. The ceiling on annual per country visas — in FY2016 it was 25,644 — has meant that certain countries became “oversubscribed,” resulting in excruciatingly long wait times for would-be emigrants. For example, for an adult married person from Mexico or the Philippines seeking to immigrate through sponsorship by a U.S. citizen parent, the time between the initial filing of a visa petition and eligibility to adjust status to legal permanent resident (i.e., the wait time) is currently 21 years. The idea that undocumented immigrants should just “get in line” and enter through legal channels reflects a limited understanding of the system or lack of compassion toward people seeking to make better lives against a bureaucracy unprecedented in its inefficiency.

If history and very recent events are a guide, punitive immigration policies do not work. They do not curb undocumented immigration, improve the economy, or make us safer. They have stirred up international ill-will, messaged to the world that the United States is a xenophobic nation, and sown internal fear and distrust that pits immigrants against others. Here in Ohio, in the face of the challenges traced above, local communities have engaged in efforts that defy a punitive approach to immigration enforcement. Through initiatives like sanctuary cities, activists and community leaders have worked to build trust between local law enforcement and undocumented immigrants. Such efforts embrace all immigrants as fellow citizens and reject the notion that immigration policies must only be exclusionary or consumed with gatekeeping. They can instead foster integration, dispel negative myths and stereotypes, and support the health and well-being of immigrant families, and by extension the broader communities in which they live.

Our immigration system is broken. In the absence of comprehensive immigration reform at the federal level, cities and states have responded by developing their own policies, some exclusionary and others inclusive. Now that we have a president-elect whose stated goals on immigration center on exclusion, punishment, and deportation, we must work together and harder than ever and mobilize to defend existing measures like DACA, while creatively pursuing policies at all levels that defend immigrants and their families. If we truly want to “make America great again,” we can only do so by rejecting the politics of blame and punishment and fighting for a society that is humane, fair, and protects the most vulnerable among us.


Shelley S. Lee is Associate Professor of Comparative American Studies and History at Oberlin College.

Gina M. Pérez is Professor of Comparative American Studies at Oberlin College.

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Comparative American Studies at Oberlin

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