Tagged: Immigration

E-Newsletter 5.4: Race, Poverty, and Immigration – Part 2

Welcome to the latest installment of the Race Equity Project’s e-newsletter: Race, Poverty, and Immigration – Part 2. We hope you found Part 1 of our series informative.

In this e-newsletter, we present three articles.  The first provides concrete examples of racialized immigration policy at the local level in the United States.  The second provides a case study of piloting a VAWA clinic at a legal services organization.  Finally, the last article discusses the current debate over birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment.  We hope that you will find these articles provocative and inspiring.

The Intersection of Race and Class in U.S. Immigration Law and Enforcement – Dean Kevin R. Johnson, U.C. Davis School of Law

Piloting an Immigration Workshop for Survivors of Domestic Violence – Sarah R. Ropelato, Legal Services of Northern California

Race, Immigration, and Birthright Citizenship – Professor Victor M. Goode, City University School of Law

Do you have an idea for a future e-newsletter? Would you like to share the race-based work that you are doing with others interested in achieving race equity? Drop us an email. We would love to hear from you!

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The Intersection of Race and Class in U.S. Immigration Law and Enforcement

By Dean Kevin R. Johnson

Consideration of the intersection of race and class in American social life is timely in light of the 2008 Presidential election, which undeniably focused national attention on both race (with the first African American elected President) and class (with the nation reeling from the devastating impacts of the worst economic downturn in the U.S. economy since the Great Depression).   In my estimation, there is no better body of law to illustrate the close nexus between race and class than U.S. immigration law and its enforcement.  Put simply, U.S. immigration law historically has operated — and continues to operate — to prevent many poor and working noncitizens of color from migrating to, and harshly treating those living in, the United States.

As in many areas of law, matters of race and class in the U.S. immigration laws are unquestionably more complicated today than in the past.  Fortunately, express racial exclusions can no longer be found in the immigration laws.  A by-product of the civil-rights movement of the 1960s, the Immigration Act of 1965^[1] abolished the racially discriminatory national origins quotas system that had remained a bulwark of U.S. immigration law since 1924.

Although Congress eliminated the racial exclusions, provisions of the current U.S. immigration laws regulating entry into the United States, such as economic litmus tests^[2] and arbitrary annual limits on the number of immigrants per country,^[3] have racially disparate impacts.  All else being equal, people from the developing world — predominantly “people of color” as that category is popularly understood in the United States — find it much more difficult to migrate lawfully to this country than similarly situated noncitizens from the developed, and predominantly white, world.  Nonetheless, because of the consistently high demand among people in the developing world to migrate to the United States, people of color dominate the stream of immigrants to this country.

Although racial exclusions are something of the past, the express — and aggressive –exclusion of poor and working people remains a fundamental function of modern U.S. immigration law, embodied in the provisions of the omnibus Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952.  This express discrimination against poor and working immigrants by the U.S. immigration laws in operation has disparate national origin and racial impacts, especially on prospective migrants from Mexico.

This paper offers concrete recent examples of the clear intersection of race and class in immigration law and its enforcement in the United States, with a focus on state and local efforts to regulate immigration.  Previously on this website, Professor Bill Hing analyzed the racial impacts of Arizona’s efforts to regulate immigration through a controversial measure known popularly as SB 1070.  Unfortunately, Arizona is not the only state or local jurisdiction that has entered the realm of immigration regulation.

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Piloting an Immigration Workshop for Survivors of Domestic Violence

By Sarah R. Ropelato

Legal Services of Northern California has been assisting survivors of domestic violence obtain lawful immigration status under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) for a number of years.  In doing so, we have focused primarily on working with local community organizations devoted to assisting such survivors who could identify those among their clientele who potentially qualify for relief under VAWA and who, with training, could begin the legwork involved in commencing the VAWA petition process, such as gathering the necessary supporting documents.  This partnership with community organizations has been both an effective and efficient way for us to process VAWA cases without overwhelming our regular intake process, and has also built the capacity of partner organizations that provide critical services to our clients and community.  Over the last six months, we decided to expand on the work we are doing by piloting an immigration workshop for survivors of domestic violence.  This article will discuss what we did, how we did it, and what we learned in the process.

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Race, Immigration, and the Birthright Controversy

By Professor Victor M. Goode

Shortly after a federal court judge stayed some of the more controversial portions of Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law, a new line of attack on immigration policy emerged.  This new assault seeks to have the children of undocumented immigrant parents who are born in the US declared ineligible for citizenship despite the “birthright provision” of the 14^th Amendment. Some conservative members of Congress agree, claiming that the clause, which provides for automatic citizenship for those born in the United States, has been misapplied and must be corrected either by the courts or by legislation.

The language of the clause in question states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the States wherein they reside.” Despite the plain wording of this provision, its critics argue that an examination of the Congressional Record reveals that it was never intended to apply to the children of “undocumented immigrants” even if they are born in the United States.

When debating the proposed language of the amendment, its author Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan said that the provision would not grant citizenship to “persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers.” Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. 2890 (1866). Critics of our current immigration policy have focused on this statement arguing that the words “foreigners” and “aliens” is further proof that the framers of the amendment never intended it to grant automatic citizenship to the children of undocumented persons who do not have permanent resident status.

They argue that the citizenship sentence must be taken apart to discern its real meaning.  The phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof…” means that one has complied with all the conditions and requirements of U.S. law.   A person who has entered the country illegally by definition fails this requirement and their children therefore cannot qualify for the right of citizenship by birth.

The fallacies of this argument are obvious and numerous.  This line of reasoning does not clarify our understanding of the Constitution, but rather adds to the continuing assault on immigrants, this time by questioning the citizenship status of their children who are born here.  Original intent is certainly one among several theories used by courts in interpreting the Constitution.  But the critics of the birthright clause seek to resurrect an argument that has been settled for over a hundred years.  In doing so they ignore the role that race has played in influencing our country’s approach to immigration and citizenship and allow an important policy debate to occur within the shadow of racial bias.

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