Panelists highlight the key dangers for immigrants in Trump’s new administration, underlying causes of migration, vision and strategy for what a truly just immigration policy would look like, and practical action that can be taken to resist harm and injustice.
ZNetwork.org is honored to host Zafiro Patiño, Aviva Chomsky, and Peter Bohmer, co-sponsored by CaracolDSA.org:
Aviva Chomsky is Professor of History and coordinator of Latin American Studies at Salem State University in Massachusetts. She has published over 10 books on labor history, immigration and undocumentedness, Central America, Cuba, and Colombia. She has been active in Palestine and Latin America solidarity and immigrants’ rights movements for several decades. Her courses include Race and Racism in the Americas, Indigenous Histories of the Americas, History of Latinos in the United States, Latin American History, Central American History, and Environmental History of Latin America.
She is the author of several books including Undocumented, They Take Our Jobs! And 20 Other Myths About Immigration, and Central America’s Forgotten History.
Zafiro Patiño immigrated from her native Argentina to the US in 1983 and has resided in the Boston area, Jamaica Plain in particular. She has been actively involved in various social justice initiatives, using her skills in the field of art and culture as tools to educate, to organize, and to fight for basic human rights and against corporate greed. Most recently, the focus of her work has been the struggle for affordable housing—an crisis impacting the working class as a whole but affecting immigrant working families, undocumented or not, with particular virulence.
Peter Bohmer is an active member of Palestine Action of South Sound (PASS), Economics for Everyone and Real Utopia. He has been an activist in movements for radical social change since 1967, which have included anti-racist organising and solidarity movements with the people of Vietnam, Southern Africa, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Palestine and Central America. For his activism and teaching, he was targeted by the FBI. He was a member of the faculty at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA from 1987 to 2021 where he taught political economy. He believes alternatives to capitalism are desirable and possible. Peter is the proud parent of a daughter and three sons.
Resources:
Red Cards / Tarjetas Rojas
All people in the United States, regardless of immigration status, have certain rights and protections under the U.S. Constitution. The ILRC’s Red Cards help people assert their rights and defend themselves in many situations, such as when ICE agents go to a home.
We Have Rights
An empowerment campaign to prepare for and safely defend our rights during encounters with Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE). Accessible info videos in multiple languages.
10 Immigration myths (poster)
Adapted from work by Aviva Chomsky. SCW©2017
Books by Aviva Chomsky
MIRA (Massachusetts Immigrants and refugees Advocacy Coalition) HelpLine 617-350-5480
Mass Legal Help
Free, practical information about your legal rights in Massachusetts. By legal aid programs.
Lawyers for Civil Rights
Lawyers for Civil Rights fights discrimination and fosters equity through creative and courageous legal advocacy, education, and economic empowerment. With law firms and community allies, we provide free, life-changing legal support to individuals, families, and small businesses.
PAIR Project
PAIR provides free immigration services to indigent asylum seekers and
detained immigrants, assuring fairness and access to justice.
Immigrant Defense Hotline: 617-988-0606
Free legal advice for immigrants facing imminent threats of detention.
NNIRR has gathered a list of national, state and local Immigration Hotlines.
– report raids in your area
– seek help if being detained or at risk of being deported
– report missing migrants
KNOW your Rights in Chelsea, Mass 617-742-9296
Resources for immigrants, posters, & more
La Colaborativa – 617-889-6080
Empowering the Latinx community, enhancing social and economic health, and holding institutional decision-makers accountable.
Legislation:
Support The Safe Communities Act and the Immigrant Legal Defense Act:
Safe Communities Act
SD.1670 ( Sens. Eldridge and Miranda), HD.3816 ( Reps. Cruz and Sousa)
It is time to end the involvement of our police officials about immigration status.
Immigration Legal Defense Act:
SD.2057 (Sen. Gomez) HD.4072 (Reps. Rogers, F. Moran)
It will allow immigrants facing deportation to have access to legal representation in immigration court, especially those held in federal immigration detention.
Text of Peter Bohmer’s presentation:
I will address how to build immigrant justice, including the right to migrate and right to stay at home while challenging and changing the strong anti-immigrant sentiments of ½ the population in the United States. This anti-immigrant ideology and agenda are a central part of the right-wing agenda, not only in the U.S. but much of Europe, Australia, Canada and in many countries in the global south such as Argentina, Mexico, Colombia and South Africa. It is acquiesced to by centrist parties such as the Democrats here, Macron in France and the Christian Democrats in Germany. An example at home is the horrific Laken Riley bill that was just signed into law by Trump, with the vote of 46 Democrats in the House and 12 Democrats in the Senate. This bill supports immediate detention by the Department of Homeland Security for undocumented immigrants being charged, not even convicted, for minor property crimes such as shoplifting and burglary. It empowers State Attorney Generals to sue federal government if an unauthorized immigrant has been charged with a crime in their state. The Democratic Party controlled Senate had opposed this bill in the last session. This is part of the fear mongering about immigrant crime, although a recent National Immigration of Justice study (nij.ojp.org) of Texas found undocumented immigrants were arrested at less than ½ the rate of U.S. born citizens.
My Overall Argument: Immigrants, including undocumented ones, contribute to United States society by sharing their culture, skills, talents. We should challenge the argument that undocumented immigrants take away jobs and reduce wages of U.S. born residents and increase government deficits. And that they make the U.S. born, foreigners in their own land. Immigrant justice needs to be part of a program of overall economic and racial justice. We cannot successfully defeat the right-wing agenda unless we significantly reduce the popular anti-immigrant sentiments and their fears, hostility towards immigrants. We need to challenge the great replacement theory by replacing it with an alternative and positive narrative. Through popular education and using the alternative and social media, let us develop a popular framework to change the zero-sum ideology that if immigrants get jobs, earn income; that citizens lose and replace it with a positive sum story that all workers gain by immigrant justice.
The Economic argument:
{Ref: The Case for Open Borders by John Washington (Haymarket, 2023)}
The economy is not a zero-sum game, there is not a fixed number of jobs or fixed national income. Jobs or wages for immigrants, do not mean less jobs or wages for U.S. citizens. We need to challenge this “common sense”. Because there’s stagnation or decline in wages, in job security and benefits, for the large majority of the working class of the United States and a growth in immigration, both documented and undocumented, does not mean that immigration is the cause of this decline nor the decline of life expectancy of white men who did not go beyond high school. Correlation is not causality.
One important counter example to they are taking our jobs are the many studies on the impact of immigration by economist David Card, In one he demonstrated that migration into Miami in 1980 of over 100,000 Cubans, the Marielitos, didn’t reduce wages of other Miami residents, nor raise their unemployment. Card found there were temporary increases in unemployment rates of Black Miamians and those with a high school degree or less but only for two years and then disappeared. More generally, across most economic studies, there is no reduction in employment, wages for U.S. citizens except possibly for lower income workers, and for Black workers with a high school degree or less, and even here the data is mixed. To counter any negative effects the solution is full-employment policies, supporting unionization, and anti-discrimination policies so Black workers are not replaced. Unions have an important role to play. Also, by granting undocumented immigrants, green cards and citizenship, employers will not be able to use immigrants fear of deportation to pay them lower wages or have less safe working conditions because employers know undocumented workers may be more afraid to report safety violations.
Other evidence–Cities with high recent immigration, e.g., Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, New York, Seattle don’t have rising unemployment rates nor falling wages compared to cities with less immigration such as Cleveland, Philadelphia, Detroit. So, immigration doesn’t clearly cause a decline in incomes and employment. Unemployment in cities are caused by larger factors such as capital flight and disinvestment. Government’s macroeconomic policies also determine overall employment and influence wage, are they expansionary or contractionary?
Immigrants have often revitalized declining cities where there is ongoing capital flight, e.g., Springfield Ohio where Trump and JD Vance demonized the Haitian immigrants, who were documented, with their big lie that the Haitians were killing residents, cats and dogs.
Another argument is high government spending on immigrant families for education, social services, government programs is a burden on the taxpayer. Immigrants, documented and undocumented, pay property taxes, sales taxes, usually social security taxes and are restricted from many social welfare programs. They pay more in taxes than they receive back in government programs although that should not be a criterion. Social Security is being kept solvent, partially by immigrants paying in far more in social security taxes then they get back in benefits. In 2022, according to the Social Security Administration, unauthorized immigrants paid $26 billion into social security.
Mass deportations would reduce substantially the supply of farm and construction workers, reducing the supply of food and housing construction, and raise their prices, furthering inflation.
A weak argument to support immigration and against deportation is that immigrants, especially undocumented take jobs that “Americans” don’t want. These jobs should pay a living wage and be safer and not force workers to work at an unreasonable pace. If that occurred, there would be citizens who would take them. This argument accepts super exploitation of these workers. There are many better arguments.
While it’s important to challenge the economic argument about the costs of immigration to U.S. workers, it is insufficient. There is a fear by many people in the U.S., especially white and older people of the U.S. becoming a country where there are an increasing number of people from the Global South, Muslims, from Latin America and the Caribbean, from Africa, from Asia, etc. This is the essence of the great replacement theory, that whites are being replaced by the “other”.
The Trumps, Steven Millers, Orbans, Le Pens, Melonis, Fox News are repeating over and over that immigrants are the cause of working people’s problems. This is contributing to the growing support for deportation and closing borders and for not welcoming immigrants, even refugees. Why is this story finding a receptive audience and what do we do about it? Racism and ethnocentrism have been a consistent part of U.S. history and cannot be underestimated or downplayed.
This is interrelated with a neoliberal politics and neoliberal economic policies that for 46 years have furthered job insecurity, and caused declining social programs, and less optimism about the future. Both political parties are controlled by the 1% and the Democratic Party has been part of the problem not part of the solution. Immigrants are often seen as having unfair advantages even though this is not true.
Many people blame immigrants as the cause of their strong dissatisfaction with the status quo rather than naming global capitalism and the 1% as the cause of their alienation. Without strong and inclusive left social movements and given the elite control of the media and the repeated lies; immigrants, especially undocumented are blamed—this is like scapegoating women on welfare, houseless, trans people, DEI and Black people as the problem. This politics of resentment against those with the least power is central to Trump’s and Republican Party victory and support. Our task, not an easy one, is to build broad social movements and a popular culture and popular understanding that names those in power and global capitalism as the cause of the multiple crises people are facing.
So, what is to be done? I am trying to lay out the context. The challenge for us is what do we concretely do.
In summary:
- Popular education around immigrants and immigrant justice as positive, contributing to a more vital U.S., not a zero-sum game but can be positive sum, Immigrant justice is worker justice, and worker justice is immigrant justice. Develop more our own media such as Z network.
- Challenge at all levels, austerity policies, the ongoing cutbacks in social programs, falling wages and benefits. This furthers anti-immigrant scapegoating. Organize for full employment, living wage, the right to organize, inclusive and combative unions, safety on the job, universal and affordable and quality health care for all, for affordable housing and free tuition for all immigrants, and a path to citizenship. Organize at the local, State level and nationally. This can and should be paid for by much higher taxes on high income households, on wealth and corporations. This benefits 90% of us.
- The right to stay home (see book by David Bacon) and the right to migrate—Let us organize to end U.S. government support for neoliberalism globally, and in international financial institutions; and against U.S support for right wing governments such as Bukele in El Salvador that push people out. Also, organize for climate refugees to have the right to migrate here. Most people do not want to migrate if their needs are met in their communities and countries.
- Most difficult, we need to develop a popular story where immigrants are seen as positive, that enrich and contribute to U.S. culture and society, as human beings with needs like us, rather than as “the other”. That immigrants are not replacing U.S. culture but enriching and complementing it. Our task is to challenge all forms of racism and ethnocentrism with an inclusive politics and vision. It is not enough to argue that immigrants have lower crime rates than U.S. citizens, or that they don’t take away jobs. How to develop a politics, a “common sense” of immigrant inclusion with our friends, families, our workplaces, schools, communities, and in less welcoming communities– is a central task of today. There is no easy answer to defeat the right and the move towards fascism.
A politics that downplays immigrant justice to build the largest coalition against Trumpism is a losing strategy. This is what Kamala Harris did in 2024. Without directly challenging this anti-immigrant scapegoating politics, we will not be able to stop the vote for the right-wing. This is also evident in other countries. To win, we need to make immigrant justice an integral part of a program for economic justice, not try to avoid it or be Republicans light.
It isn’t hopeless, there was a huge and popular outcry against Trump when he separated children at the Mexican border from their families in 2018. We need to generalize these humane sentiments. Let us defend necessary immigrants against deportation and the militarization of the border and against the racist rhetoric, policies and actions while reaching out and respecting and not demonizing people who are somewhat anti-immigrant.
Physically stopping detention and deportations at schools, churches, workplaces and people’s homes and communities is one important action. There is a growing movement of immigrants and those in solidarity with them. Let us broaden and deepen this current and make immigrant justice a part of all our movements, daily activities.
In Solidarity!
Si Se Puede!
Books:
The Case for Open Borders by John Washington. (Haymarket, 2023).
They Take Our Jobs by Aviva Chomsky (Beacon, 2018).
The Right to Stay Home by David Bacon (Beacon, 2014).
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