As immigration reform becomes imminent and the adversities of African and Caribbean immigrants escape the discourse, Black law makers from Capitol Hill and Black Christian churches are bonding to ensure that the Caribbean-African perspective is incorporated in the proposed law.
As immigration reform becomes imminent and the adversities of African and Caribbean immigrants escape the discourse, Black law makers from Capitol Hill and Black Christian churches are bonding to ensure that the Caribbean-African perspective is incorporated in the proposed law. At a 2 hour rally on Wednesday, March 20, on the foreground of the Congressional Building, the few hundred attendees who represented a cross section of black organizations, churches, the Service Employees International Union and the White House were reminded that “there is a black face to immigration too” instead of simply an Asian and Hispanic issue. According to Congressman Stephen Horsford, “there are some (law makers) who don’t want your perspective to be heard” and “there are many more who do not understand this issue”.
The attendees were reminded that America from its inception was built as a nation of immigrants but the 400 years of African involuntary immigration has been the foundation of the country. This history of America, it was suggested, makes arguing against immigration, much less dismissal of the Black’s reality an absurdity. And the fact that 1 out of 5 Black Americans has Caribbean fore-parents, while all Blacks are of African ancestry, makes the plight of contemporary African and Caribbean immigrants an inherent Black American concern.
The Service Employees International Union, in solidarity, and in the person of Jaime Contreras, Vice President, demands urgent comprehensive reform. He said 70% of the union’s 125,000 members are from 64 countries spanning every continent. But the state of immigration is affecting all members due to the large numbers who are in constant fear of themselves, families, or neighbours being arrested or deported.
It is under the Obama administration that the highest rates of deportation and the strongest border protection occur, noted Bishop Findlayter, who also recognizes the urgency for immediate reform, the halting of deportation, and need for due process.
The Caribbean-African perspective decries any immigration reform which just caters for cheap labour. It is informed by the principles of: 1. family reunification, 2. expeditious processing of citizenship for all children brought to the US, 3. redefinition of family to include extended family, 4. end to criminalization of immigrants, 5. immediate halt to deportation, 6. granting of due process to all immigrants, 7. explicit ban on all racial profiling in immigration enforcement, 8. ending of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement programme which involves local law authorities in immigration enforcement which results into cops “stopping, frisking and deporting” youths, 9. citizenship to temporary and permanent status holders, 10. a pathway to direct citizenship, 11. ending second class citizenship, 12. all recruited professionals and temporary workers must have an expedited path to citizenship, 13. economic justice; all fines and fees associated with new citizenship must not be prohibitive, and 14. investments in specific work and job training programmes for Black immigrants.
Pastor Lennox Briggo, CUSH (Churches United to Save and Heal) representative in the Washington, D.C Metropolitan Area, while introducing the purpose of the rally, noted that while 10% of all immigrants are Blacks from the Caribbean, Africa and Latin America, they also constitute the highest percentage of deportees. That must stop he said.
The approximately 15 speakers, who were allotted either 30 seconds or 3 minutes to speak, included Bishop Orlando Findlayter (CUSH’S President), Reverend Dennis Dillon, congress members Charlie Rangel, Bobby Rush, Evet Clarke, Gregory Meeks, Stephen Horsford, Hakeem Jefferies and Sheila Jackson-Lee. They agreed that the approximately 4 million Black immigrants of the 11 million estimated illegal immigrants are unduly maligned as illegal entrants into to US, tax defaulters, lazy, uneducated, numerically insignificant and dispensable. “These myths” must be debunked said congress man Gregory Meeks, who supported congress woman Clarke that African descendants who arrive in America are generally highly educated and skilled. She contended that they further educate themselves here, buy property, pay taxes, invest, die for America, and enrich America culturally, professionally, and economically. They are “all American without legalization, and now it’s time to make it right”, she said.
Congress men Rangel and Rush endorsed those views, adding that Caribbean and African immigrants are the most educated and skilled of all immigrants, have been creating jobs and supplies, serving the armed forces, State and Federal Departments, education and businesses. It was observed that almost all the Caribbean and African immigrants entered the US legally, so their issues are not border matters but those of overstay resulting from a “broken immigration system” which inconvenienced renewal of documentation.
Said Rangel, Dean of the 42 member Black Congressional Caucus, “…we are the children and grandchildren of a lot of our people in Africa, having them to rejoin this country of immigrants means that it gives us for the first time an opportunity to rejoin our culture and our history to make even a better contribution to this country.” He added, “We are all immigrants and that means that all immigrants not matter where they are from, no matter what quarters and prejudices and vices we have in the past, it is time for change, it is time for reform and it is time for justice”
Rush, a former Deputy Minister of Defense in the Black Panther Party, who fired up the attendees, lamented that “after 400 hundred years of free labour on our (African) backs … they (anti-immigrants) have the audacity, the nerve, the arrogance to say ‘when we finally get ready to pass an immigration bill we going to cut out the very same people (Blacks) who came and provided the free labour to build this country’”.
Reverend Dillion asserted that the Black community remains disrespected and underestimated because it remains hooked on “‘Black Power’ instead of ‘Green Power’ ”. He suggests that at the end of the day it is economic power which sustains any other power. So the economic consideration must be primary in understanding and treating the immigration issues. The Black community he implied must reform its expenditure and investment habits if it is to harness and expand its economic capacity.
By Lin-Jay Harry-Voglezon (American International News Correspondent)
