Amnesty or Abolition
What? A key point I noticed while reading this article is regarding the creation of an illegal alien. After the Anti-Coolie Act in 1862, the term “illegal alien” started to gain more groud. The South knew that slavery would be ending soon and wanted to bring Chinese workers in to replace their African slaves. The Anti-Coolie Act was when “Congress banned Chinese workers and all ‘lunatics, idiots, convicts, those liable to become public charges, and those suffering from contagious diseases’” (Hernandez 57) and was therefore the first immigration law. In 1907, the ever growing list of people “unworthy” to enter the country legally including unaccompanied minors, people with tuberculosis, imbeciles, and women of immoral purposes to name a few. In 1924, almost all Asiam immigrants were denied but Western Europe immigrants were favored. Since it was so difficult to enter the US legally with all of the new laws and policies, people started migrating illegal terming the phrase “illegal immigrant”. In 1893, the Supreme Court ruled that the government could deport both legal and illegal immigrants at any time for any reason. Also, in the late 1800s they said that deportation was an “administrative process” which means that the Bill of rights are not applied because deportation is not a punishment. People the government was deporting could not get a trial by jury, say it was cruel or unusual punishment, or fight for unreasonable searches and seizures because these did not apply. Today, crimes that used to be a slap on the wrist or very minor legal infractions are now means for being deported and forcibly removed from family. Undocumented immigrants today are denied the right to vote, access to foos stamps, shelter, educational loans, and employment which are all things people need to survive. It is important to know the history and how these sign systems and ideas came to be because we are still facing these issues today.
Another key point I noticed is mass incarceration. In California, the incarceration rate increased by 500% in just 18 years between 1982 and 2000. They built 23 new prisons in these years while only 12 were built between 1952 and 1964. Mass incarceration is a zone for racial inequity. LatinX and African-Americans make up over two-thirds of the state’s inmates. “By the mid-1990s, five times as many black men in California were in prison than were enrolled in public higher education” (Hernandez 64). As we know from previous readings, African-Americans are born into the idea that they are not good enough and have a good chance of ending up either dead or in prison. This is important to know because it can help develop a critical consciousness needed to acknowledge the root problems causing these issues. Just like I mentioned in the last paragraph, “the right to vote, parental rights, and access to welfare benefits, including public housing, food stamps, and educational loans, for example, can be revoked for felony drug convictions” (Hernandez 64). When the Emancipation Proclamation set slaves free it did not change the ideals the white people had about them. Then with the fourteenth amendment, Congress protected the citizenship of former slaves but people’s mind still did not change. Another example is the “separate but equal” ideology which although was theoretically supposed to give African-Americans the same opportunities and facilities as the Whites, once again did not change many people’s minds and African-Americans still did not receive equal treatment. Today, although there are not anymore huge laws pertaining to African-Americans, we have preconceived notions about people who don’t deserve the oppression they are receiving.
So What? I worked with Canal Alliance in their adult ESL classes. Both key points above affect the students I worked with. With most of them being undocumented immigrants, the unfair ideation that was first created in the late 1800s is still afecting them today. Many people who still hold these ideas judge and question immigrants intentions and think they somehow inferior. During the first couple weeks I was at Canal Alliance, the students were briefly taught in their orientations what forms to keep on hand at all times and to be vigilant about tasks that the dominant group would never worry about. For example, if one of my students was caught driving without their license, they could be at risk for deportation. My students are also affected by mass incarceration. Because minor crimes are taken out of proportion for immigrants, they are more likely to be incarcerated. Even if an individual is legal they will probably receive a harsher punishment for a simple crime. In a perfect world, a white person who shoplifts will get the same punishment as a LatinX legal immigrant who shoplifts. But unfortunately since we do not live in a perfect world, the white person would maybe spend the night in jail while the immigrant would be convicted.
In this Marshall Project article, it discusses how basic cleaning supplies are either prohibited or unattainable in prisons. For example, hand-sanitizer is restricted because inmates can separate the alcohol from the gel. Simple things like toilet paper and soap are limited. Even water is a hit or miss in some state prisons. The CDC has been preaching about washing your hands and staying away from other people when inmates can’t do either of those things. Prisons often have sicker-than-average inmates living there and are overpopulated. Medical care in a prison is also not great and medical providers are often understaffed. Prisons before have gone into lockdown, solitary confinement, and visitation restrictions for other large outbreaks but no one has ever seen an outbreak like COVID-19 in a very long time. Recently, the idea of large scale releases has been brought up. There has not been any say yet when or if this would happen. Law enforcement has been concerned with this idea and not sure if it is best for the community as a whole. However, elderly inmates with already compromised immune systems are the fastest growing share of prisoners. When this article was written, March 6, 2020, there had been no outbreaks in a prison but the case and death number has risen day to day since then.
