We are joined by Aviva Chomsky, whose new book, “Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal” details how systemic prejudice against Mexicans and many other migrant workers has been woven into U.S. immigration policies that deny them the same path to citizenship that have long been granted to European immigrants. She also draws parallels between the immigration laws now in place that criminalize migrants, and the caste system that has oppressed African Americans, as described by Prof. Michelle Alexander in her book, “The New Jim Crow.” Chomsky’s previous book on this topic is “They Take Our Jobs! and 20 Other Myths about Immigration.” She is a professor of history and coordinator of Latin American studies at Salem State University in Massachusetts.
Aviva Chomsky is a prolific American historian, author, and activist, and has been active in Latin American solidarity and immigrants’ rights issues since the 1980s. She currently teaches at Salem State University in Massachusetts, where she is also the coordinator of the Latin American studies program. She previously was a research associate at Harvard University, where she specialized in Caribbean and Latin American history. Her book West Indian Workers and the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica 1870–1940 was awarded the 1997 Best Book Prize by the New England Council of Latin American Studies. She is also the author of many other books like Linked Labor Histories: New England, Colombia, and the Making of a Global Working Class. Her articles on immigration rights have appeared in The Nation, HuffPost and and TomDispatch.
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2 Comments
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I hope the author takes another look at her work in 10 years when the oil starts to run out. She’ll laugh her frozen, starving ass off.
FREE AMERICA
DIRECT DEMOCRACY
Aviva Chomsky has made a very compelling argument about how discriminatory policies, including the denial of the same path to citizenship that is given to ethnic European Caucasians, of the US government against Asians, particularly Mexicans, other non-white Latin Americans, Africans, and non-whites has reinforced the racial caste social system in America. It is tragically a revival of a new form of the Jim Crow system of racially oppressive and discriminatory laws that were used against Afro-Americans. It represents a very grave threat to the progress that we have made in the civil rights and human rights movements. This frightening destructive trend is insidious , and we must do every thing to reverse it. Thus, if this is allowed to continue, it will seriously undermine American democracy that is supposed to be based on justice, equality, human rights, and equal opportunity.