I recently spoke at an immigration forum at Cornell, and took that as an opportunity to prepare a discussion paper on using the term "immigrant rights" in the campaigns for immigration policy reform. While the paper has a bunch of reference at the end, there are few direct citations in the paper. Rather it's more conceptual -- and highly critical. I will soon have a report on the history of immigrant rights organizing that critically examines the campaigns, coalitions, and funding networks.
I first started working on immigration issues and with immigrants in the late 1970s. To a certain degree, the discussion paper is a self-critique of my own failure to think strategically about immigration issues. Instead, like many others, I became involved in this issue not because of any real interest in immigration policy but rather out of feelings of solidarity, anti-imperialism (especially re: Central America), and internationalist principles. And like many others I know -- and many of the leaders, activists, and supporters of the immigrant rights organizations - I was drawn emotionally to the plight of immigrants and also established strong connections with immigrants and their home communities, mostly in Mexico but also in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador. My first involvement was with an immigrant labor organizing project called the Maricopa County Organizing Project (MCOP) and later the Arizona Farm Workers, which grew out of MCOP.
Together with the other key figures in a small nonprofit organization (that later evolved into the Interhemispheric Education Center and then the International Relations Center), we produced a Spanish-language pocket guide for immigrants called El Otro Lado. John Nichols, author of Milagro Beanfield War, did a great series of classic sketches/cartoons for the booklet, and we sold (at 50 cents each) many tens of thousands of the booklet -- bought by organizations that distributed them to illegal border crossers. Basically, it was, as an article in the San Diego Union Tribune, noted, a guide for immigrants on how they could work and live in the United States without getting caught by "La Migra" (change traditional styles of dress, for example) while also giving immigrants a list of organizations that could provide sustenance and legal aid. Also, El Otro Lado in a series of anecdotal sketches (intended mainly for Mexican campesinos) explained the legal rights immigrants had in the United States. But the politics of the booklet clearly went beyond constitutional, legal, or internationally defined human rights -- to communicate a sense that immigrants had a right to work in the United States, to provide for their families, and to cross back and forth across the border since they picked the food Americans ate and did our dirty work.
Well, to get to the point, the thrust of the discussion paper Immigrant Rights: Scope, Limits, and Implications is that it has been a strategic and tactical mistake to link the campaign for comprehensive immigration reform so closely with the term "immigrant rights." See what you think, and let me know.
Tom
Immigrant Rights -- Scope, Limits, and Implications
March 30, 2012 | Report
By Tom Barry
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“Immigrant-rights” is a term commonly used by immigrant advocates – including service providers, community organizers, leftists, lawyers, foundation program officers, labor organizers, and policy reformers.
But the term immigrant-rights is seldom defined by those who refer to the rights of immigrants when campaigning for immigration reform. This is especially true for immigrant-rights advocates and organizations that aren’t directly involved in the defense of the legal rights of immigrants.
Over the past few decades, most of the organizations and coalitions involved in grassroots efforts and policy advocacy for liberal immigration reform have identified themselves as “immigrant-rights” groups. At the same time, since the early 1980s many organizations and campaigns have emerged to serve immigrant communities and to fight discrimination against immigrants.
In the aftermath of the defeat of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) campaign over the past decade– routinely described as an “immigrant-rights” struggle and movement – the value of the term as a framework for reform efforts and as a messaging tool needs review.
Immigrant-rights is a term that is still widely used by groups and activists who call for an immigration reform that would legalize the status of unauthorized immigrants. But there are indications that at least some sectors of the pro-immigrant movement have become more circumspect about what they contend are immigrant rights.
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