A great article by Fred Tsao in Chicago Sun Times, who is the immigration and citizenship director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights!
Though I doubt his arguments will make a difference, as Americans are still living in fear. Maybe 10 years down the road people will start thinking differently.
From Chicago Sun Times
It has been a difficult year for America. The 9/11 tragedies jarred Americans out of the safety we have enjoyed and launched our country into a new era of fear and heightened security. While our government needed to guard against further attacks, we need to look back at what impact these actions have had, and whether we really are any safer.
Since 9/11, the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights has documented no fewer than 24 government actions that have affected, and in many cases targeted, immigrants and refugees. These mean-spirited, heavy-handed and ultimately un-American actions have scapegoated America’s immigrant and refugee communities.
Post-9/11 federal policies have criminalized hardworking immigrants who make enormous contributions to America. For instance, the Aviation Security Act, by now requiring that all airport baggage screeners must be U.S. citizens, resulted in thousands of immigrant workers losing their jobs and sent a message that immigrants were too risky to handle their duties, even though noncitizens can serve in the U.S. military. Many thousands of other workers were fired because of closer scrutiny of Social Security numbers. More recently, the Justice Department renewed enforcement of decades-old laws requiring noncitizens to report address changes, causing many immigrants to panic that the INS will deport them.
Refugees are languishing in camps all over the world as the United States shuts its doors to those fleeing persecution. Refugee admissions ceased altogether in the first two months after 9/11. Since resettlement resumed, additional security precautions and diversion of resettlement staff have resulted in only 20,000 refugees gaining admission, out of an authorized ceiling of 70,000.
*Arabs and Muslims have been singled out as a group for measures that violate their rights but fail to improve national security. No fewer than 1,200 Muslims and Arabs have been secretly detained based on suspicion that they were involved in or had knowledge of terrorist activity. Hundreds of these detainees were tried in secret proceedings without the opportunity to know the charges against them. Arabs and Muslims were also subjected to ‘‘voluntary’’ Justice Department interview initiatives and strict scrutiny of visa applications–measures that cast suspicion on all members of their communities. *
Finally, the government’s response to 9/11 has stalled hopes for rational immigration reform, including a new legalization program. Before 9/11, the hopes for legalization ran high. There was broad support for legalization including the AFL-CIO, U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops, and several businesses and trade associations. The Chicago City Council endorsed a nationwide legalization a few days after a community demonstration of 10,000 people in downtown Chicago. In light of the broad U.S. support for legalization, President Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox opened historic discussions in the summer of 2001 to address how to deal with the millions of undocumented Mexican workers already living in and contributing to the United States.
And then America was attacked, and any progress on immigration reform, including the growing movement for legalization, came to a screeching halt. Hope gave way to fear: fear of the knock on the door from law enforcement officers, fear of losing one’s job, fear of being detained and even deported.
In times of economic or political stress, the United States has historically scapegoated immigrants for the woes of the nation:
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In 1919, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, who claimed a communist takeover was imminent, ordered the roundup of more than 10,000 suspected communists and anarchists, mostly Eastern European Jews. No evidence of a possible takeover was ever found.
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During World War II, more than 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were forced to live in internment camps even though more than two-thirds of the detainees were U.S. citizens and none was ever charged with any acts hostile to the United States.
*Today, we look back on those incidents with shame and disbelief. And yet this past year our government’s actions have continued on this familiar path. Immigrants have demonstrated their patriotism by applying for citizenship and enlisting in the U.S. military in increasing numbers. It’s time to respect our new Americans, rather than eye them with suspicion.
The right way to make America safer is through good intelligence work, which requires that federal agencies share information to identify and screen out those few individuals who would harm us. Immigrant communities can be of great assistance to these efforts, but only if they are viewed as partners rather than suspects. And we would all be safer if we brought hard-working undocumented immigrants out of the shadows by legalizing their status.*
**Let’s not look back on this time with shame. Instead, let’s live up to America’s legacy as a nation of immigrants, a legacy that has made us the greatest country in the world. **
