[img]139|left|Jessica Gadsden||no_popup[/img]If you really want to annoy me, then all you have to do is spout the cliché, “We’re a country of immigrants.”
That one always gets me going.
What I hear is not the drumbeat of patriotism overlaid with the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” or “America the Beautiful,” backed by a pretty montage of Ellis Island and the American flag fading into the Statute of Liberty. Instead I hear, “This is a country of immigrants, Europeans mostly. We’ll just erase those natives who we didn’t quite kill with the smallpox—but, hey, they’ve got casinos — and forget those descendents of slaves brought here in chains, who like their forbearers are still in bondage — most of them living in ghettos, and millions incarcerated for non-violent “offenses. Hey, they’ve got half a President so it must all be okay.”
My ancestors definitely were not immigrants. The intolerant phrase is one of many that ignores how different my family’s journey to America was from your average European (or Asian, or African) immigrant. Nothing about being chained together in the cargo section of the boat with humans packed like sardines will ever be the marketing lead for the “land of opportunity.”
I Haven’t Thought About It
Because my family’s journey differs from that of a majority of Americans, I have always been quite ambivalent about immigration, illegal or otherwise. I remember someone asking me if I was going to donate to the restoration of Ellis Island (it was a hot NYC charity for a minute about fifteen years ago). I think it took one good stare and they backed down. More recently, as Congress “debated” the Dream Act, and as Arizona codified intolerance (again), assumptions about my feelings concerning immigration peppered the conversation of people around me. Nothing about my family’s experiences with various immigrant groups over the years (mostly in New York City) has put a rosy glow on the American immigrant mythos.
Now that immigration is among the current topics in the American political zeitgeist, I can honestly say, immigration — the illegal kind, that is — is one hot-button issue that I’ve never given much, if any, thought. If anything, I’ve just marveled at the fact that so many have been so eager to come here despite the fact that my ancestors (and millions like them) were brought here to be enslaved and oppressed. But rather than revulsion at this history, many who immigrate to America have come to oppress blacks with just as much ease as the Founders. (All due respect to Michele Bachmann. She’s got her history wrong.) My grandmothers and great aunts remember changes in the last names of their domestic employers, but not in their oppressive behavior. On the whole, immigration of any type hasn’t benefitted us to any great degree.
And if you listen to so-called liberal radio, it has only harmed us. I remember two different talk radio hosts remarking (one just last week) that illegal immigration, especially here in California, has harmed us black folks because the newest immigrants have taken the low skilled, low wage jobs normally “reserved” for us, because the immigrants are willing to do them more cheaply.
Immigration simply has never been the average black person’s issue. Instead, the thoughts and opinions folks like I have about this vast country are usually focused on how it has treated and continues to treat us. We are the heirs of those stolen, bartered, beaten, raped and sold like chattel into the most shameful institution in this country’s history. We continue to be exploited, segregated, incarcerated and vilified. My thoughts focus on making sure conversations about the state of African Americans — about our disproportionately high unemployment, poverty, imprisonment, and our ghettos and lack of educational opportunity — relate back to slavery, its vestiges, and how in our so-called post-racial society, we aren’t “winning the future,” no matter who says we can.
The great Appeaser-in-Chief should focus on the fact that during his term in office — as opposed to some date uncertain far away — we surely aren’t winning the present. That’s because we started out here, in this “country of immigrants,” hobbled by the irons and chains that bound us while white men and women were free.
So when my dear husband asked me, out of the blue, what I thought about illegal immigration, and more specifically, our country’s latest policy of indefinite incarceration, I gave him my knee jerk speech: Immigrants, the illegal ones (and yes, I know it’s politically incorrect to use that phrase), excuse me, those undocumented people, are breaking the law –— and what happens to them . . . happens.
I’ve always thought that immigration was tilted heavily toward those that look like the leaders of this country. No one seems to balk at the sheer numbers of Irish or other European immigrants who cross our shores. Chinese were okay when the country needed cheap labor in its sugar cane fields or on its railroads, and then not so much. The Japanese were okay, until they weren’t. And the brown and black immigrants scrambling to get in from one despotic regime or another seem subject to strict quotas and endless hurdles. That aside, at the end of the day, though, I haven’t thought much more about it.
Capitalists Want to Control Workers
In my eyes, immigration, illegal or otherwise, like slavery, has always been a labor issue. Some corporation wants cheap labor, and immigrants are the best way to achieve it. Whether it’s paying someone to work in the back of your local restaurant or mowing your lawn or caring for your children for less than minimum wage, or the abuse of the H1-B Visa program — the bottom line is the same. Capitalists wants labor they can control — and our country lets it happen, to the detriment of both the exploited undocumented worker and the under- or unemployed American citizen trying to make ends meet.
And as usual, we’re left fighting amongst ourselves. Sure, even I’ve been annoyed when I’ve been desperately seeking employment, only to watch classmates of mine, here on student visas, get hired for entry level jobs on H1-B visas. I’m supposed to believe that working as an entry level editor is a “specialty” occupation for which no American could be found? Or law firms doing the same? I know for sure there are plenty of unemployed American lawyers, such that reaching out to “outsiders” can’t be justified.
I try to be sympathetic when I hear that employers, who know their immigration status is tied to their jobs, abuse these workers. But I get even more annoyed when, say, farmers suggest that no American will pick grapes or cotton or spinach. What they leave out is that Americans are smart enough not to want to sign up for backbreaking work and live ten to a trailer, packed like sardines for something less than a living wage. If restaurant work or domestic labor paid as much or as well as a “real” job, with reasonable hours and benefits, Americans would be lining up to take them.
Instead, we’re caught up in our own xenophobia, worried about the country turning more brown, more Hispanic or less English speaking (or all three). Do we have an immigration problem? I think so. We already have too many people and too few jobs and resources. More people, skilled or unskilled, can only drive down wages. But in a country that values profit over people, I don’t expect a solution anytime soon, my ambivalence notwithstanding.
Jessica Gadsden has been controversial since the day she discovered her inner soapbox. She excoriated the cheerleaders on the editorial page of her high school paper, transferred from a co-educational university to a women's college to protest the gender-biased curfew policy, published a newspaper in law school that raked the dean over the coals with (among other things) the headline, “Law School Supports Drug Use”—and that was before she got serious about speaking out. Progressive doesn't begin to define her political views. A reformed lawyer, she is a fulltime novelist who writes under a pseudonym, of course. A Brooklyn native, she divided her college years between Hampton University and Smith.
Ms. Gadsden’s essays appear every other Tuesday. She may be contacted at www.pennermag.com
