Immigration’s Thorny Struggles

[Start by playing the song – Goodnight, New York by Priscilla Herdman from the album, The Road Home]

Welcome everyone. I’m so excited that you are here and that so many are interested in this important topic. I hope my presentation will be of some value to you as we all try to figure out the best ways to move forward on the incredibly complex and thorny issue of immigration.

I guess part of the reason I like to start off with the song I played for you is because I grew up in New Jersey across from the NYC harbor and as a little girl I often looked out at the Statue of Liberty in awe. Somehow that beautiful, strong, and inspiring woman with her torch lighting the way for frightened travelers lodged herself in my consciousness even as a child and fostered within me a lifelong quest to do whatever I could to protect and light the way for those struggling for security and opportunity in this nation of ours.

Like most people I mostly focused on and memorized the words on the base of the Statue of Liberty known to most of us –

     “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the

      wretched refuse of your teeming shores. Send these, the homeless, tempest-

      tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

But other lines from this Emma Lazarus poem have also come, recently, to touch me as deeply –

“Here at our sun-washed, sunset gates shall stand a mighty woman with a torch,

whose flame is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles”

Wow, is about all I can say in reading these words.

Another reason I often start my presentations on immigration with the song, Goodnight, New York is because the song first touches on this idea of the US as a nation dedicated to welcoming those seeking better lives, but its last verse evokes the contradiction between the promise written on the Statue of Liberty and the reality of US immigration policy throughout history. The last verse says:

     My mother came to America

     Sailed through the harbor of hopes and of dreams

     Here in the new world

   I hope I’ve not failed her

     But nothing’s the way that it seems

     All of my yearning, all of my hunger

     Maybe I’m learning, sometimes I wonder

     Goodnight New York

Here the words of the song begin to open the door to the ways in which those hoping for a new life encounter obstacles and more loss. None of us can forget, for example, how in 1939 the US turned away the M.S. St. Louis carrying over 900 Jewish immigrants fleeing Nazi Germany. Eventually the ship had to return to Germany and nearly ⅓ of the passengers died in subsequent years during the Nazi extermination of the Jews.

In fact, in a recent article I read I found the disturbing fact that “Over the past century, the US has deported more immigrants than it has allowed in.” While I am not an expert on immigration policy much of what I have read is quite disturbing. During much of our history, maintaining the “racial purity” of the nation was the explicit underlying principle. One of the first efforts to maintain what was seen as crucial to the success of the American experiment – namely white, homogeneity – was the Chinese Exclusion Act passed in 1882. This Act banned all immigrants from China and made it clear that none presently in the country could ever become naturalized citizens. Amazingly, this ban on citizenship for any Chinese immigrant remained in effect until 1943 and immigration from other Asian Pacific countries was banned in 1917. Restrictions of immigration became especially intense during the 1920s with the rise of the Eugenics Movement and the waves of immigrants who arrived from parts of Europe that were not seen as traditionally white. Immigrants from Italy, Ireland, and Eastern European countries were seen as suspect – potentially criminal and likely to dilute the “white gene pool” of the original groups who colonized America. An elaborate set of quotas was devised based on an immigrant’s country of origin and allowing each country to send immigrants only in proportion to the percent of the people from that country present in the 1890 US census. The fear that immigrants might also become a burden on governmental programs – the concept of “becoming a public charge” – was also codified in this period and we saw this fear raised once again during the last administration. So, immigration policy is not only thorny now but indeed has been for at least a century and in its early iterations was explicitly based on highly racialized notions of who is worthy of citizenship and who is not and to some extent fear of those who are not white continues to be a powerful subtext of immigration policy. And, as I said before, that while I am not an expert, by any means, on the history of US immigration policy, I have tried to learn as much as I could about it and I found the book One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle over American Immigration, 1924-1965 by Jia Lynn Yang to be a valuable, comprehensive, and readable source.

One element of immigration policy that is fascinating and was previously unknown to me, but which becomes important as we look at immigration dilemmas today is that immigrants from Mexico, Central America and South America, unlike the groups described above, were exempt from most restrictions and immigration quotas until 1965.

Of course, it goes without saying that entirely excluded from considerations of citizenship were Native Americans who were already here when colonizers from Northern Europe arrived on these shores and enslaved Africans forcibly brought to the US, who really cannot be described as immigrants. Only in the aftermath of the Civil War was citizenship granted to formerly enslaved people by the 14th Constitutional Amendment while Native Americans were not granted the right to citizenship until 1924. Of course we know that laws granting citizenship to formerly enslaved people and Native Americans did not translate into voting rights or other benefits of citizenship for decades and those rights still remain elusive and incomplete even now. But those struggles are topics for another time.

But before going forward with this presentation, I want to acknowledge Priscilla Herdman and her album The Road Home and explain why I have quoted so extensively from her work. Not only do I love the lyrics from her songs, but I have a special place in my heart for Priscilla Herdman because she sang several powerful songs at a retreat I attended several years ago called The Resilience of the Human Spirit: An International Gathering of Poets. During this weekend conference I met and heard the stories and poetry of individuals whose lives had been impacted by extraordinary horror from an adult child of the Holocaust to a poet who saw his wife assassinated before his eyes in Iran, to those fleeing the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, among others. Herdman’s heartfelt singing punctuated some of the most painful moments of this retreat and helped foster, along with the poems themselves, a profound sense of solidarity among all in attendance. It was an unforgettable experience. And I think it was my participation in this transformative weekend that reaffirmed my desire to learn more about immigration in its various forms.

As mentioned above, you can hear the songs of Priscilla Herdman, focused on the experiences of migrants, if you Google her name and album, The Road Home.

But moving on – let’s try to define and perhaps deconstruct the meanings of some important terms that come up as we try to understand immigration issues. Probably many of you already know the meanings of most of these terms but sometimes a review is helpful.

The first term to look at is the word – immigrant. Who is an immigrant? Well, anyone who leaves their country of origin and moves to a new country – a country that is a foreign country for them is an immigrant. It is a very broad and generic term.

But things become complex when we look at the fact that some immigrants are here legally or with the appropriate documents and many are not.

There are many avenues that allow a person to become a documented immigrant, like family reunification policies, sponsorship by an employer for highly skilled professional and technical workers, showing extraordinary talent or qualifying as a genius. There are any number of visas which allow a person to enter the US legally and some of them can move a person toward permanent residence and eventually citizenship but many other types of visas do not. It is a very complicated matter as we will see.

Undocumented immigrants are those who have entered the country illegally or who have overstayed a legal visa they previously obtained. It is generally this category of immigrants that worries many and which results in detention and deportation even when a person has resided in the US peacefully and productively for years. One recent study I read said that if you discount those being deported within days of entering the country at the Southern border, most people who are deported have lived in this country for over a decade. The impact on families, many which include American born children, often results in serious psychological trauma and significant economic hardship.

Refugees are individuals who are forced to flee their home countries due to war or other forms of upheaval and cross a national border in the process. Most reside in refugee camps for long periods of time but are protected by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the agency that works to resettle these individuals to other safer countries. Individuals who are refugees in the US have been vetted and cleared to settle here. They are documented immigrants.

Asylum Seekers are also individuals fleeing violence, persecution, war, and other atrocities and they also cross an international border. They enter a country they consider to be safe and ask to present their case for protection to the government of that country. It is not illegal to seek asylum but until that person’s case is heard in court and their claims of violence are accepted as valid, the individual does not have documented status. Sadly, according to a recent study, nearly 72% of appeals for asylum are denied by the US government. To make matters worse, during the previous administration asylum seekers were blocked from entering the US to register their appeal, in violation of international law. Those hoping to enter the US via our Southern border were returned to Mexico and required to remain there until a date was set for them to present their case for asylum to a court. This policy is called the Migrant Protection Protocols or the Remain in Mexico policy. This policy made it nearly impossible for migrants to obtain a US lawyer, made it very difficult to know when to appear for their asylum hearing, and placed migrants in grave danger in many cases. This policy contributed to another serious issue we are now facing, namely families sending their children into the US alone as Unaccompanied Minors because the Biden administration, while not canceling the Remain in Mexico Policy has said it will not turn away children crossing the border alone.

DACA Recipient – DACA stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. This status applies to individuals, sometimes called Dreamers, who were brought to the US as children but not through legal processes. They are, therefore, undocumented immigrants. However, if they meet a number of fairly stringent requirements, including no criminal history, they may apply for DACA status if they can afford the application fee. This status allows Dreamers to avoid deportation, to continue their education and to obtain valid work permits for two years. After two years the individual may reapply and pay the $495 fee again.

TPS – this term, Temporary Protected Status, refers to individuals who were admitted to the US legally but who do not have the option of applying for permanent residency. This status was formulated in 1990 to provide only temporary protection for individuals unable to return to their homelands due to armed conflict or natural disaster. However, many who hold TPS have been living in the US for decades and it has become difficult to terminate this program and to deport the recipients of TPS.

Some other abbreviations you are likely to see when reading about immigration issues are: ICE which stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, CBP which stands for Customs and Border Patrol, and DHS which stands for Department of Homeland Security. All three of these agencies are involved in policing and enforcing immigration policies.

One question that typically arises when issues of unauthorized immigration come up is: Why don’t these people just come to the US legally? My ancestors did and I know people who are legal immigrants; so just get in line and migrate correctly.

While this is a valid question, the answer, like so many other matters associated with immigration at this moment in time, is really complicated. For one thing, immigration policy changes constantly and recent immigration policy, under the prior administration, drastically reduced the number of people who can be admitted to the US legally. The number of refugees, for example, who can be admitted to our country for resettlement was the lowest it has been in decades under the prior administration, capped at only 15,000 people annually. This serious reduction was particularly problematic because it came at a time when there were as many people seeking refuge from global conflict as there were after the devastation of World War II. Biden has changed the cap on the number of refugees who can be admitted, but the resettlement infrastructure – agencies dedicated to helping newcomers find housing, jobs, access to English language learning and other necessary services – was seriously downsized during the last administration and building these organizations back up will take time. I volunteer at Ascentria Care Alliance in Worcester, previously named Lutheran Social Services, in their English Language Learning program and watched first hand as layoffs and the elimination of crucial services for migrants took place.

The cap on the number of people eligible for authorized immigration through family reunification or through obtaining specialized employment in high tech or professional fields was also significantly lowered during the prior administration. But even if a person qualifies for a visa which permits authorized immigration, the time frame to achieve permanent residence and later citizenship through the naturalization process is very long.

The article “What Part of Legal Immigration Don’t You Understand?” also included as a resource on the Grassroots Central Mass website, presents a visual representation of just how difficult obtaining authorized admission into the US is and how long it usually takes. Most people fleeing economic hardship, starvation, extreme violence or other extraordinary factors usually are not eligible for authorized immigration unless deemed official refugees by the UN or approved as asylum recipients by the US government, so for most migrants, there really is no line to get into.

Perhaps the stories of recent immigrants can more effectively illustrate just how long obtaining legal entry into the US is. Several years ago the Worcester Women’s Oral History Project presented a powerful evening of stories of immigrants and their journey to the US. Most of us in the room were both saddened and overwhelmed by the obstacles faced by many of these newcomers but also inspired by their incredible resilience. You can read some of their stories by following the link to the Worcester Women’s Oral History Project.

In conjunction with this event, I had the honor of interviewing two refugees resettled to the US from Burma, now called Myanmar. The stories of each woman touched my heart. Paw Wah, who told me her name means “bloom like the white flower” and that the white flower symbolizes hope, explained why she had to flee her home country. She said:

      “every time, every day, we have, we suffering the fear when the war will be close

      to our village … the Burmese soldier they torture people … and then we have to

      hide in hole.”

She went on to explain that her younger brother who had a disability and could not follow the commands of the Burmese soldiers was kicked and brutalized by the soldiers and later died of his injuries. She told me:

     “They beating him … then they kicked him to the river … my mother give some

      leaf and root … but he coughing too much, coughing and fever. … then one

      month later he die on my hand… and after my brother died, two months later my

      mother die … and after my mother eight months, my father.”

After this Paw Wah ran from her home and spent seven years in a refugee camp in Thailand where she married and had three children. She also cared for many others during her years there and became a health care aide administering vaccinations, helping to re-feed malnourished children, and caring for pregnant mothers. After those seven years she and her family finally reached the top of the list to be vetted by the UNHCR for resettlement and two years after that they arrived in the US – Worcester, Mass to be precise. In describing her arrival in the US she laughed and said “It was like a caveman came to America.” Finally seven years after her arrival she became a US citizen and a proud voter.

Paw Wah chronicles in her oral history the many ordeals she faced as a newcomer but her love of this country is hard to capture in words. She expresses enormous gratitude for the gifts the US has provided to her and her family, glows when describing the success of her children in school, calls the caseworker she had when she arrived an angel, and was named as a Hometown Hero by the City of Worcester due to her willingness to serve as a foster parent for unaccompanied minors arriving as refugees and for cooking massive meals for volunteers and people made homeless in Springfield, Mass after the tornado in 2011.

Paw Wah’s conclusion is that “this America and Massachusetts, America, Worcester, Worcester, Massachusetts, America, the best in the world!!!

So even as an authorized immigrant to the US her journey from armed conflict, torture, and the deaths of her family members in Burma to US citizenship took 16 years which is also in accord with the usual timeline for refugees.

Paw Wah’s story is one of an authorized immigrant, but it is clear to see that many migrants cannot wait this long, do not have access even to refugee camps overseen by the UN, and leave home, as one of the poems I find powerful tells us, because “home is the mouth of a shark.” The first line of this haunting poem titled Home and written by Warsan Shire states:

No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark

And it is unauthorized entry into our country or the quest for asylum, which is an authorized but often unsuccessful process, that are at the heart of our nation’s current struggles with figuring out what to do with migrants coming to us in need of protection. It is certainly an extreme understatement to say that the situation is enormously complex. While on the one hand the humanitarian impulse is to allow all seeking a safer home entry into the US, other factors, such as a concern for how to adequately care for and integrate large numbers of newcomers, push us in the opposite direction. The need for laborers, especially in agriculture and other unskilled areas, has always been a factor which brought immigrants to the US and their labor benefits not only the businesses that lure them here but also all of us and yet the unwillingness to accept such essential workers as permanent residents creates many of the dilemmas we are dealing with now. As mentioned earlier, until 1965 migrant farm workers could come to the US to work, return home at the end of the harvest, and then return for the next season with no trouble. When immigration policy restricted border crossing for these workers, many stayed as undocumented immigrants for fear that if they went home they would not be able to return.

US trade and foreign policy have also been powerful forces affecting the movement of people across our southern border. Certainly NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) and its current iteration called USMCA (the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement) allowed many crops produced in the US to be sold cheaply in Mexico. This drove many Mexican farmers out of business and prompted their unauthorized movement into the US to find work. In addition US foreign policy, especially in Central America, dating back to at least the 1970s, frequently undermined democratically elected leaders and challenged stability and the efforts to move toward greater economic equality in these countries. And finally the chaos caused by drug cartels, which often threaten people who then flee, can in large part be laid at our doorstep since the vast majority of those consuming illicit drugs and fueling drug trafficking are Americans.

So now, my head is swimming as I imagine yours might be as well. As an ordinary citizen, the ways to solve the extraordinary problems that foster unauthorized immigration and designing effective responses to those in need who come to our borders, is beyond me. Recently, as you know, Biden placed the problems of immigration in the hands of Kamala Harris but I have to say at this moment at least, that I’m glad I’m not her. What an extraordinary challenge she is now facing.

What I can do though is to use my voice to try to change the narrative about newcomers arriving here and I can support organizations and legislation seeking to create greater security for them. I feel there is so much that can be done on a state level while we wait for change on the national level.

I’ll include here some organizations and initiatives that appreciate the often devastating situations that prompt unauthorized immigration or keep undocumented immigrants in the shadows. I have only listed ones that I am familiar with or that I have supported financially. MIRA – the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition – is an amazing organization that worked hard to improve the roll out of Covid vaccines to people who do not speak English or have no access to the internet. It also raises funds to help DACA eligible young people afford the application fees and helps them apply, while also providing advocacy for immigrant-friendly legislation. One legislative initiative that is critical and which has finally become law after a yes vote on Ballot Question 4 in November of 2022 is what we call The Driver’s Licenses for All bill. Driving without a license is a serious crime and often results in the deportation of individuals without any other offenses on their record. In fact driving without a valid license is one of the main ways undocumented immigrants come into contact with law enforcement. Beginning in the summer of 2023 Massachusetts will join sixteen other states and the District of Columbia, and will allow those without documents to seek a valid driver’s license. This new policy will make Massachusetts roads safer for everyone while removing the terrible dilemma undocumented immigrants in Massachusetts previously faced of driving without a valid driver’s license.

Another fear undocumented residents in Massachusetts face is the possibility of being reported to federal law enforcement, such as ICE, for minor traffic violations or other non-violent offenses or even if they are the victims of crime themselves. For this reason MIRA and many other groups support the Safe Communities Act which would mean that local and state law enforcement would not coordinate with federal law enforcement except in cases where an undocumented individual was involved in violent crime. Currently many undocumented immigrants are afraid to go to the police to report any crimes such as drug trafficking or domestic violence for fear that they themselves will be deported if minor infractions in their own records, like parking violations, were discovered when they asked for police intervention in a more serious situation. This makes everyone less safe when a large number of people fear the police. So far immigration advocates have not been able to successfully move the Safe Communities Act through the legislature but efforts continue and a new Safe Communities bill has been introduced to the present Massachusetts legislature.

You can also get involved with or contribute financially to organizations which advocate for the rights of immigrants. One organization I love is Abuelas Responden/Grannies Respond. Maybe this one jumps out at me as I am a granny myself. In 2018 this group of older women organized a nationwide tour starting in New York City and traveling across the country to McAllen, Texas to witness the impact of the Family Separation Policy on those seeking asylum on our Southern border and to observe the conditions in which families were kept in the detention center there. Thirty grannies began the trip in two vans and one camper and by the time they arrived in McAllen their numbers had swollen greatly. Along the way they gave talks in multiple cities helping people to learn about the Family Separation Policy and ways to help families in extraordinary need at the border. Since their trip the Grannies have created numerous local chapters, raised funds for school supplies, food, and clothing, and continue to operate what they call an “Overground Railroad” where volunteers meet immigrants who have been released from detention and bring them to bus stations, often providing maps, provisions, and some cash so the person can travel to family or sponsors while waiting for their next asylum hearing. Sometimes volunteers drive the individual to another city to meet another driver who then takes them to another destination in their journey to a final location.

I think I love the Grannies so much because their mission – “to provide and elicit compassionate and respectful support for asylum seekers and immigrants who are seeking safety and security in the United States” – resonates with my own advocacy goals. As a psychologist with a special interest in emotional trauma it has been impossible for me to look away from the enormous challenges faced by those seeking protection and freedom from extraordinary violence. I see recent immigrants as people who embody the same dreams as my own family of immigrants and maybe your family too, who “sailed through the harbor of hopes and of dreams” and brought with them their unbridled optimism, energy, and talent. And I see it as my responsibility to assist in any way I can.

In a recent talk I was introduced to the idea of “dangerous seeing” and I might add “dangerous speaking” to this equation and I took this concept as a mandate for action. For me this mandate requires me to work hard to change the destructive narratives too often applied to immigrants, to deconstruct myths such as ones that claim immigrants take more from our nation than they give – something that is profoundly untrue – to name and stand against the forms of oppression and violence perpetrated against them not by individuals but also by government institutions, and to highlight the amazing resilience and generosity seen in many immigrants. I see this presentation too as a way for me to fulfill my responsibility to use my voice to speak for the voiceless. And I hope, if I have been successful in presenting these ideas, that you will also desire to do the same.

Using art, music, poetry, dance, and cuisine, are also ways to connect us to the beauty immigrants bring to our nation and to help us develop the empathy we need to see within the diversity of experience, the universals of love, family, suffering, and joy. And in the spirit of art as a vehicle for change, I will end with excerpts from the poem Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye. You can read along with me if you want.

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is

You must lose things,

Feel the future dissolve in a moment

Like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

What you counted and carefully saved,

All this must go so you know

How desolate the landscape can be

Between the regions of kindness …

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness

You must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

Lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

How he too was someone

Who journeyed through the night with plans

And the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

You must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow,

You must speak to it till your voice

Catches the thread of all sorrows

And you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

Only kindness that ties your shoes

And sends you out into the day …

Only kindness that raises its head

From the crowd to say

It is I you have been looking for

And then goes with you everywhere,

Like a shadow or a friend.

Thank you for listening and if you have questions or comments I would be happy to speak to them.

Presented by Regina Edmonds, Professor Emerita, Assumption University.