IMMIGRATION DEBATE: "But this is Not Honduras...."

But this is not Honduras……..

My friend Michael Livingston once told me that teaching social justice involves lying a little - if you tell the uninitiated the straight truth they’ll write you off. I have found this to be true about teaching in general, whether its trying to persuade a person on the street to oppose the war, teaching history to college students, helping 13 year-olds learn how to read, or even teaching dance to middle school girls - I need to meet my students half-way even if it means walking in the opposite direction of where I want to go with them.

Sometimes however, I wonder.

The immigration debate is heating up in Minnesota and nationwide. Last December Governor Pawlenty presented a “study” that claimed that illegal immigrants and their offspring are costing Minnesota tax payers more than they contribute.

Similar caustic rhetoric coming out of Washington, in the guise of proposed legislation illustrates that Pawlenty is not the only politician using hate- mongering as an election year, vote-getting ploy.

Meeting these politicians and their unwitting supporters half-way we point out that undocumented immigrants pay taxes and pay into social security without receiving a dime. We say that immigrants do work that other Minnesotans don’t want for wages they would not accept, providing citizens with inexpensive goods and services. We remind them that we are a nation full of immigrants. We tell them to thank an immigrant for their high quality of life.

These arguments, may help someone to reject the latest hate campaign but they do not get to the heart of the immigration issue: Our economy has been dependent on the super- exploitation of a labor underclass for centuries. Substandard immigrant wages perpetuate labor and race inequality, imperialism and war.

How does this system work?

1. PERPETUATATING RACISM Throughout U.S. history the hierarchy of labor has been justified by dehumanizing workers on the bottom of the ladder: People from Africa: “ 3/5 of a person“, women: “property of father or husband“, children: ‘half the size, half the pay,” the last off the boat: “of inferior ethnicity.” People of the global south “simple people who need less.” Prisoners: “in debt to society- not deserving.”

Today, defining immigrants as illegal and therefore undeserving is the lynch pin behind Pawlenty’s anti-immigrant campaign. Children of undocumented immigrants (regardless of their citizenship) are not deserving of an education, their parents do not deserve a decent wage and labor protections, and none in the family deserves health care.

2. VULNERABLE WORKERS
Slavery worked by keeping workers as vulnerable as possible. The middle passage -mass torture- left people physically and emotionally battered. Language barriers among slaves made it difficult to organize. Legally sanctioned corporal punishment heightened the cost of rebellion. Laws defining this sector of the population as not deserving of political representation made legal recourse impossible. Jim Crow laws legalized a race hierarchy post-slavery. Similar tactics have kept women, children and prisoners vulnerable, allowing employers to super exploit these workers. Neo-colonial policies left workers in other countries working for U.S. corporations in mono-crop economies without employment alternatives or the ability to vote out their oppressors, forcing many to seek work across borders.

New immigrants have always been in the most vulnerable worker category. Language, cultural and citizenship barriers and the desperate economic and political conditions that prompted their decision to leave home, create vulnerable conditions for immigrant workers. Illegal status, like slavery and disenfranchisement is a powerful way to intensify the vulnerability of a group of workers.

Free trade policies, illegal status and geographic proximity- which make it easy deport organizers and replace them with other desperate workers, are factors that together help to maintain the super-exploitation of working people from Mexico and Central America.

Preserving a super-exploited labor force requires military force. The Iraq war is not just about oil but oil profits. Migrant laborers from all over the world are working in Iraq today.


Well yes Anne, that’s all quite true, but what do you say to the dedicated Mpls. Public school teacher, who when faced with job of incorporating a non-English speaking student into her overcrowded classroom exclaims

“after all, this is not Honduras!

How do you meet her half way so she can hear you? Maybe this is not the time to talk about global capitalism or how immigrants shore up social security. Maybe this is the time to talk about social change, posing the question: How are we going to get the sources we need to teach our children?

We can remind her of the gains made by past labor, civil rights and peace movements. It is through organization and coalition building that we can turn bombs into books, bring teachers the resources they need to serve an increasingly diverse student body, and parents the salaries and benefits they need to provide kids with what they need to be school-ready.

Today more than ever these movements overlap. The immigrant rights movement not only brings all these issues together, but here in the Twin Cities it provides the opportunity for unprecedented coalitions of diverse ethnic communities and representatives of labor, religious and civil rights organizations.

Peace activists can help make Governor Pawlenty deeply regret he ever commissioned an immigration study. Let’s not miss this opportunity to build a coalition against racism, inequality and war that is unprecedented in this North Star state .