In November 1994, Californians passed Proposition 187, which would have cut off a number of health and social services, including access to public education, to undocumented immigrants and their children. Proposition 187 was conceived by a group of extreme right-wing groups and elected officials as part of an effort to target immigrants in California. As the initiative's authors worked to generate support, then-Governor Pete Wilson (R) was running for re-election against then-State Treasurer Kathleen Brown (D), who was leading by double digits in the polls. Needing a wedge issue to drum up his base and increase his chances for re-election, Governor Wilson made Proposition 187 and scapegoating immigrants for the state’s economic downturn the hallmark of his campaign. Proposition 187 created a spark in the immigrant rights movement.
During the two weeks in mid-October leading up to the elections, immigrant rights groups, student groups, community groups, and unions came together to mobilize 150,000 people in a massive march from Boyle Heights in East L.A. all the way to City Hall. This historic event was one of the largest immigrant rights marches during that time. This strong grassroots campaign forged a new generation of young immigrant activists to mobilize and commit their lives to the struggle for immigrant rights. Middle and high school students soon followed suit. A few days before Election Day, 10,000 students from over 30 L.A. schools left their classrooms and took to the streets. Although Proposition 187 passed on Election Day, it was successfully struck down in federal court three days later. The campaign to defeat this initiative propelled today’s immigrant rights movement.
The current immigration debate, often volatile and certainly emotional, raises questions about not only the reform of immigration policy, but also the meaning of “American citizenship” and the future of the nation. The Trump administration used the categorization of deporting “criminals” to deport hard-working immigrant families who are not hardcore criminals, but whose labor is used and defined as “criminal” simply because they are undocumented. This includes Central American families, who because of violence and exploitation in their countries by multinational corporations have found themselves in the U. S. renewing their right to stay every year. This includes Mexican families who have overstayed their visas or who have been deported and, although contributing billions to the economy, are now categorized as felons. It includes Black undocumented immigrants who are 11% of all immigrants in the immigration system and who make up 20% of immigrants facing deportation on criminal charges.
In this light, immigrant communities are targeted by federal policies and laws that push them into one of three vague categories: “illegal,” “criminal,” and “the other.” Being in one of these categories has led to immediate apprehension, detention and deportation that leads to banishment in other countries, a punishment that ranks right below the death penalty in most societies. Immigrants have few protections afforded to them and lack most due process rights once in immigration proceedings. On top of legal threats, American media continues to feed fear to the public and have played a major role in building support for discriminatory measures against immigrant communities. For example, a 2020 report by the USC Annenberg School's Norman Lear Center found that one in five immigrant characters on television were associated with crime in some way even though according to government data, immigrants commit less crime than native-born Americans. In addition, this report found that 11% of immigrant characters were associated with incarceration on television, while less than 1% of immigrants are actually incarcerated. Since 1990, the United States government has deported between 4 and 5 million people, the vast majority after 9/11.
Mirroring these harsh security and enforcement policies are the political and social contradictions of a globalized consumer-based economy that has come to depend upon exploitable low-wage labor in the manufacturing and service industries to maintain an unbalanced standard of living for a privileged minority. For example, the United States has about 4% of the world’s population yet consumes 25% of the world’s resources. It is no coincidence that during the past 30 years of the expansion of global economics, 25% of the bottom of the U.S. economy is low-wage work in industries where immigrant workers comprise the majority of the workforce.
While these attacks are creating fear and uncertainty in our communities on the one hand, they have also led to the advancement of an immigrant rights movement that has become more multi-racial, multi-sectional, and intersectional. It is these broad-based coalitions that have pushed varied political representatives to take positions of “no ban and no wall,” to support sanctuary measures stopping police from cooperating with immigration officials, and to protect the rights of our immigrant and communities of color in opposing the oppressive policies that the federal government has been forcing on states and cities throughout the country.
Our book Organizing Lessons: Immigrant Attacks and Resistance! includes selected readings from a community of immigrant rights activists, labor activists, and activist scholars working in the organized resistance movements for immigrant and workers’ rights. This book focuses on these contemporary immigration themes through a close examination of their historical roots, how government policies target immigrants as part of a deeply embedded system of structural racism, and the cross-racial movements that have emerged to challenge the scapegoating divisive policies of the federal government and corporate elites. The readings articulate how immigration policy is related to larger questions of nation building, racialization, political participation, and social and economic inequality. Finally, the readings discuss the vibrant, and increasingly intersectional, organized resistance against these repressive policies within the immigrant rights and labor movements.
One of the stories of these enforcement policies, and the organized resistance in the aftermath, is told in the article by Jose Calderon. In this piece, Calderon discusses immigration raids and the community’s responses as part of a historical pattern by the U. S. government to scapegoat, attack, and deport immigrants when the country is experiencing an economic downturn. Another example of organized resistance to unjust immigration policy was during the mega-marches of 2006. For a three-month period from March to May, a series of massive and peaceful pro-immigrant marches took place across the country to demand a humane legalization program and denounce the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Control Act of 2005 (HR 4437), more commonly referred to as the “Sensenbrenner Bill.” In The 2006 Immigrant Uprising: Origins and Future, Kent Wong, Victor Narro, and Janna-Shadduck Hernandez of the UCLA Labor Center discuss these mega-marches and the opportunity for the labor movement to support and become a major ally of the post 9/11 immigrant rights movement.
Beginning in the 1980’s, deregulation in many industries combined with the deindustrialization caused by an increasingly global economy led to the deunionization of major industries in which the workforce changed as an influx of mostly Latino immigrants took the new low-wage positions left vacant by mostly U.S. native-born workers. The article Organizing Immigrant Workers: Action and Research Strategies in the Pomona Day Labor Center presents examples of the economic restructuring, which has resulted in a growth of the low-wage immigrant workforce, particularly in the service sector and the informal economy, and conflicting strategies and prospects in organizing.
The Same Struggle: Immigrant Rights and Educational Justice describes the emergence of community-based leadership that crosses borders in building intersectional multi-racial coalitions. These coalitions are collectively carrying out naturalization and voter turnout efforts to advance the election of political representatives who will defend the rights of all immigrants and refugees. It is no accident that labor has changed its position on the necessity of organizing immigrant workers, as Kent Wong advocates in his article The Future of Work: Organize the Immigrant Workers.
The questions that come to the forefront from these readings are: What has been the role of corporations and local and national governments in creating particular immigrant flows, from and to certain places? In particular, how has this country’s foreign policies, based on structural racism, led to economic inequalities between the U. S. and other immigrant sending countries? To what extent do anxieties about immigration reflect concerns with race, class, and culture? What has been the organized resistance in the fight back against repressive policies targeting immigrant communities?
It is our hope that the selected readings and articles in this volume will address these overarching questions and provide a blueprint for moving forward with the vibrant, and increasingly intersectional, organized resistance against these repressive policies within the immigrant rights and labor movements.
Organizing Lessons: Immigrant Attacks and Resistance! is available in digital format for free. To support classroom, workshop, and organizing discussions, a set of guiding questions accompanies each chapter.
Photo Credit: Seattle City Council | CC BY 2.0 DEED
