This Documentary Would Go Well With…
By Sexual Correspondent Andrea (AJ) Plaid
Here’s a summary of my thoughts on im/migration so far:
- Short of 1st Nations people, everyone living in the US emigrated—whether by choice or force, whether the im/migrant is themselves and/or their ancestors or current family members—from somewhere else. And we’re squatting on 1st Nation lands.
- For those who want to argue that the Black people who came to the US cannot be immigrants in that Ellis Island/American Odyssey Mythology sense because that group were forced by white slave traders and slaveowners to be on these shores: no, we—and I say “we” because I’m the great-granddaughter of an enslaved Africans and African Americans, so I’m of that group–didn’t see Ellis Island. That does not negate that we moved or “migrated,” albeit involuntarily, from one part of the world to another—which is the definition of an “immigrant.” Or that we don’t have our own American Odyssey. That’s also another post for another day.
- The US government needs to give undocumented people amnesty and broader roads to citizenship, if that’s what they seek, instead of assigning inherent criminality to them based on some racialized rhetoric. They don’t have papers, usually because the system is so labyrinthine and expensive that it’s discouraging. Or they’re trying to get residency and/or citizenship and are stuck in the process. And the reality that’s clouded by the vitriol is, among other things, that undocumented immigrants not only contribute to this economy—sometimes endangering their health in the process–they also contribute to the economies of the places from which they moved.
- Thanks to the nasty racialized rhetoric, people who have US residency, of not citizenship, are getting caught in the dragnet to catch “those people” who, according to the heuristics, allegedly look nothing like the people spouting the rhetoric. (And, to the clear, the folks spouting the rhetoric aren’t always white, either—my mom and uncle will hiss about the “Mexicans” taking “our” jobs and trying to have children in the US so the parents can stay in the country and “take advantage” of “our” public services. Like I said, allegedly.)
My pro-immigration stance isn’t radical or revolutionary; honestly, I think it’s quite middle-of-the-road, compared to writers and other creatives who have extensively and award-winningly written on the topic and advocates who tirelessly work on this issue. (Usually, these groups overlap.)
But my middle-of-the-road thoughts don’t stop me from wondering if an advocate seems to be doing a bait-and-switch for the cause.
Case in point: Restore Fairness, a campaign spearheaded by Breakthrough, a human-rights organization which is, according to its website:
….using the power of popular culture, media, leadership development and community education to transform public attitudes and advance equality, justice, and dignity. Through initiatives in India and the United States, Breakthrough addresses critical global issues including violence against women, sexuality and HIV/AIDS, racial justice, and immigrant rights.
We use creative tools to build a culture of human rights. These rights make up the daily fabric of our lives, of how we tend to live individually and as a community. The rights to life, food, shelter, freedom of expression, freedom from violence, religious freedom – these are all human rights to which we are all entitled. The United Nations has codified many human rights in documents called conventions and treaties, which are ratified by member countries that promise to adhere by their rules. They are described in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Guaranteeing these rights for us and for others is what building a human rights culture is all about.
And I’m so down with their principles because they’re commonsensical to me. Breakthrough also allies with major pro-immigration organizations, such as American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Amnesty International, American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA, National Council of La Raza, Asian American Justice Center, Women’s Refugee Commission, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, and South Asian Americans Leading Together.
But then why is their “Restore Fairness” campaign website comes of like a subtle campaign for their own documentary?
Here’s the documentary. Judge for yourself:
Restore Fairness: bring back due process to the immigration system from Breakthrough on Vimeo.
As a documentary maven, this doc is a beautifully produced film which distills the message of the need for immigration reform well. After watching I feel informed and agreeing, but not moved from my already-held position. Is it “powerful,” as the press release claims? For me, the message would be powerful if coupled with a documentary like Arturo Perez Torres’ Wetback: The Undocumented Documentary, which chronicles the journey of two Nicaraguan men trying to cross through the US to Canada without documentation. In this turned-to-eleven hatred-of-the-“illegals” climate, people need to see as well as hear from undocumented people as well as those who are residents, citizens, and asylum seekers as to why the immigration system need to be fixed. That, to me, would be fair and, yes, powerful.
Like I said, Breakthrough’s movie is a necessary one for those who want to start understanding the debate about reforming the immigration system—goodness knows the damn thing needs to be overhauled, and we need more information and less venom. However, instead of just touting its own cinematic effort, a good idea may be for the organization to offer pop-culture resources, like a blogroll of other pro-immigration sites and a filmography of other films dealing with the same issue.
In other words, form a pop-culture coalition. In the spirit of left-leaning coalition-building, especially online, that would be innovative.
Photo Credit: B-listed
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
atlasien wrote:
One approach I try to use in arguing for a pro-immigrant perspective is to say that
- money legally flows across borders with almost no restrictions, but people can’t.
- who is more to blame for your economic problems… the individual immigrant, who pays a heavy price (sometimes their very life) to cross the border… or the company that moves their money offshore, or moves their factory to a cheap country where people can’t demand higher wages… or the governments that encourage this shopping for cheap labor with tax incentives?
- any restriction against peoplecrossing the border should be accompanied with balanced restrictions against capital crossing the border. Otherwise, the border restriction only benefits the elites of society.
- if you want to stop cheap labor from other countries reducing the price of your own labor, then support international workers’ rights and transnational unions! That’s the only way, in this globalized world, that things are going to improve.
I don’t know which is better sometimes: the logical approach or the emotional approach. I think it depends on the situation. And some people will never want to listen, unfortunately, because they’re too wrapped up in hate.
Posted 28 Sep 2009 at 8:53 am ¶
Jess wrote:
right on altasien.
Y’know, it’s useful to remember the push factors as well as the pull factors that make people want to come to the US. There’s a reason we don’t get a ton of immigrant from say, Ireland anymore, or France, or Germany.
Max Weber has a really interesting treatment of this when he talks about why Protestants, essentially, are better at capitalism (and why, in a similar vein, the Japanese were better at it than other Asian nations). His cultural critique would be a bit dated now, but the important part of his analysis is that he talks about how industrialization is part of what moves people.
That is, you could draw a line (he says) marking which countries were industrializing and that is where the workers come from. At that time it was Eastern and Southern Europe. But the prediction he made seems to hold very true now, even within countries. In Mexico, for instance, the rural folks that are from the agricultural regions (nowadays primarily the southern end of the country) go to Mexico City or Acapulco or Cancun to work as they get displaced, but also because those jobs pay better than being a farmer. (These people aren’t fools, after all, and a steady food supply is a steady food supply).
Sound familiar? It should. The US went through exactly the same thing less than 100 years ago. (We forget that the tipping point in the US to becoming a majority of city dwellers did not happen until the 1920 census).
In that sense, any sensible discussion of immigration has to include that kind of stuff. At a minimum, it has to recognize that if you make it tougher for people to follow the rules, they won’t do it and they will overstay visas and the like. (To give an idea, it basically costs $900 to fie your paperwork to do stuff legally — that’s just the filing fee).
Also, if we had, in the US, NQA policy on protecting workers, with real penalties for employers who violate standards, that would go a long way towards addressing the issues of labor demand. If every worker is protected there is no reason to hire people who are not (since you remove them from the market, essentially, by offering them the same protections). Most other countries do a much better job of this.
Posted 28 Sep 2009 at 3:52 pm ¶
Titanis walleri wrote:
“Short of 1st Nations people, everyone living in the US emigrated—whether by choice or force, whether the im/migrant is themselves and/or their ancestors or current family members—from somewhere else.”
Actually, *everyone* in the Americas is either an immigrant or the descendant thereof, iirc.
Posted 28 Sep 2009 at 5:10 pm ¶
Fiqah wrote:
Great (companion?) piece, AJ. Too exhausted for further commentary…but well-said, and well done.
Posted 29 Sep 2009 at 2:58 am ¶
Slush wrote:
Sadly, the immigration debate is less about policy or human rights than about America’s identity as a white nation. (Except, I imagine, in the case of POC who are anti-immigrant. I just haven’t encountered many of those.)
I do think there’s a possible model in the gay rights movement here – that part of the growing tolerance of homosexuality has been encouraging coming out so that every American realizes that some of the people they know and love are part of that demonized group.
But check out the trailer of this film, 9500-liberty, to realize that plenty of anti-immigrant folks are fully prepared to spit in your face no matter how sympathetic your story.
http://ndn.org/blog/2009/08/9500-liberty-remarkable-film-about-immigration-reform
Posted 29 Sep 2009 at 11:31 am ¶
Olivia wrote:
Restore Fairness… Is it just me is is that sounding a little dodgy? Double entendre or what
Posted 29 Sep 2009 at 11:46 am ¶
Jess wrote:
I’d cosign with altasien on that, and also note that a lot of migration is driven by industrialization, both within and between countries.
That’s why a big chunk of the immigration to the US from Mexico has started to be people from the southern part of the country, while those from Mexico City stay home.
(The same was true within the US, BTW, as people from the countryside moved into cities).
That means that if you are going to industrialize — by no means a bad thing — then you have to do it in a way that increases skills rather than decreasing them. For example, the kind of automation they do in German factories (where the apprenticeship system is strong) is different from what they do in US factories. It’s a matter of building up a skilled worker base rather than becoming the cheap labor market for richer nations. Call centers aren’t going to do that.
To that end, an international workers’ movement is essential. And it’s also essential for the labor movement here to demand no questions asked on protecting workers’ rights — jut protect them and worry about the status of the workers later.
Also: “Illegal Immigrants” are violating civil law. That means it’s a parking ticket, basically. It is not a criminal act to overstay your visa.
I’d add that if you want to stop people from overstaying visas and getting exploited, then the simplest thing to do is cut the frigging costs. It should not cost $900 to file the paperwork with USCIS. The line should not go all the way around the block at the center in Newark, on a Saturday, at 8am. Having more than three people processing this stuff (really! That is all they have!) for 30,000 applications is simply absurd. I once did the calculation: if they never, ever slept and spent 10 minutes with each applicant it would still take a year to get through the backlog. So, ironically, I am going to suggest that the USCIS get more money to hire more people.
If visas were, say, $30, and you could one-stop shop them and get them processed in a week, then the coyotes would be out of business in a hurry. On top of that, workers wouldn’t need to take exploitative jobs — you could afford to wait for something better, especially if you know you are protected by local laws.
Posted 29 Sep 2009 at 3:50 pm ¶
Crissy Spivey wrote:
Hi,
Thank you so much for posting. Racialicious has always been very positive and receptive to posting Breakthrough’s work/posts. And we love your blog in that it is extremely thoughtful, insightful and smart. In regards to our “Restore Fairness” video, the video is only one component of an entire campaign with many take actions on our website at http://www.restorefairness.org to call on the government to restore due process and fairness to the immigration system.
The video has been produced with 26 other orgs (human rights, immigrant rights, advocacy and community grps) to get the video into the hands of Members of Congress as well as use it as a community mobilization and education tool. We worked very closely with our partner groups to both inform the video campaign as well as distribute the video. We also have key take actions on our site like writing to Congress, emailing local newspapers, becoming an ally of the campaign and the issue, resources for information, and a blog roll for people to see others that have taken a similar stance on the issue. For those that watch the video, we hope they see the urgent need for reform, share with others and in turn visit the website to take action as listed above. We have also produced a screening guide to accompany the video as a tool for individuals to screen the film for their communities using talking points, an overview of the issue and questions to generate discussion that will in turn mobilize others to take action on our site.
We want the government to:
Restore the ability of judges to consider individual circumstances, so everyone receives a fair day in court
Create legally enforceable detention standards and implement cost affective alternatives to detention
Stop indiscriminate raids and the continued use of local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration law
These are our goals, and the video and campaign site are working towards that same goal. Again, thank you for your comment on the video, and like you we also believe in mobilizing collective efforts to create change. Please share the video with others at http://www.restorefairness.com, as we really believe that when we deny due process and some people, all of our freedoms are at risk.
Thanks again,
-Crissy Spivey
Breakthrough
Posted 29 Sep 2009 at 3:59 pm ¶
Jess wrote:
sorry for the double post. I thought it didnt go through the first time.
Posted 30 Sep 2009 at 7:42 am ¶
PatrickInBeijing wrote:
Great post! For various reasons (okay, I’m not sure), I couldn’t see the documentary. But I think the comments are good. This is a topic dear to my heart.
Back in the ’90’s, I spent a fair amount of time researching and debating the anti-immigration movement. EVERYONE associated with it was racist, to varying degrees. I still see many of the same names.
The essential nature of the American anti-immigration movement is the fear that some white people have of people who are different (and especially people who speak a different language). In the United States, this is mostly a fear of people who’s primary language is either Spanish or one of the indigenous languages of the Americas.
As the number of immigrants increased, the anti-immigrant movement increased in strength. In the long run, it is doomed as the American demographics change, but in the short run, it can make the lives of a hell of a lot of people miserable.
The SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center) does a good job of connecting the racist dots, and is a good source to quote.
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?sid=175
Without our “undocumented workers”, Americans would have nothing to eat. People who hate immigration should begin by either heading for the fields, or stop eating (eating encourages immigration).
It is also important to note that one of the aims of the anti-immigration movement is not to stop immigration (which is like trying to stop the tide, feel free). It is to ensure the status of undocumented workers as a people who can be safely exploited, abused and cheated. We need to clearly call people on this.
The opposition to documented immigration is largely aimed at Asians of every kind. The fact that without such immigration, our high-tech society would not be, is just lost to some people.
I always tell people that what will really turn the United States into a developing country is stopping talented highly educated immigrants from coming.
One of the things I learned in “debates” is that the anti-immigrant forces have no interest in truth. Even when clearly shown that their “facts” are wrong, they continue to repeat them. Never think that they are interested in “fairness”, no matter what they call themselves.
A useful tactic is to point out that groups that are anti-immigrant are dooming themselves to extinction. (think Republicans). Not only is a fairly good percentage of the US composed of immigrants, but they have friends and family which multiply their numbers and potential influence.
I am refusing to vote in the VA governor’s election because both of the candidates are anti-immigrant, and endorsed English as a official language. Pah! A pox on both their houses.
It is certainly heartening to see all of the folks speaking on this issue, there needs to be more (including my voice, weak, but needing to be reactivated). This kind of article and the comments helps rejuvenate me, so a special thanks. (I have lost some heart around this issue lately).
Posted 02 Oct 2009 at 4:34 am ¶