In November 2018, a panel of speakers came together at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to discuss immigration. Here’s what they said:
Rachel Ida Buff, Dept. of History & Cultures and Communities Program
Rachel was asked to confine her remarks to the past though she has a lot to say about the present. Act 1: Birthright Citizenship. African Americans agitated for freedom before, during, and after slavery, before and after the Civil War. They were aware after the war that emancipation would not be enough. The 14th amendment passed 10 years after the emancipation because it was controversial.
This is tested in 1898 when a Chinese American man, Wong Kim Ark, was born in California but educated in China decided to come back to the U.S. He is told he could not enter because he is Chinese, and he says no I am American. This case goes to the Supreme Court and Ark won his case.
Act 2: Learning from the Banana. Around the time Ark was suing for his citizenship, the U.S began to expand its territories abroad. We occupied territories through economic practices. The greatest examples to me is United Fruit which began to have plantations in Central America and the Caribbean. It is important to say that the occupants of the newly acquired territories of the U.S did not have full citizenship rights. It was possible for Americans to eat bananas from all over the world, to view the tropical places where bananas where grown, but it was not possible for people from those tropical plantations to flee to better their lives; they weren’t allowed by law.
Act 3: Refugees. People move; it’s an act of migrant refusal. The Haitians began leaving Haiti in 1963 and pushing to be seen as refugees in this county. The advent of mass detention began. It is still open today as a way to detain people who are petitioning for their rights as refugees to claim asylum.
In the 1980s, a notion of sanctuary starts in the churches. The idea that churches should use their space to offer sanctuary to those fleeing repression, danger, and death in Central America who are continually not acknowledged by the regime here of people who are deserving of refuge and shelter. In the 1990s, politicians started to demonize sanctuary as a place of crime, danger, and linked immigration with crime and danger.
Our campuses are public spaces where we come together on evenings like this to share ideas, to welcome one another regardless of race, ethnicity, or nationality. It is very clear in the current regime that these spaces are going to become more and more dangerous for foreign born students, transgender people, people of color, etc. We need to find ways to take care of and shelter one another.
Mary Flynn, Program Manager of Refugee Resettlement, LSS of WI & Upper MI
Overview of Refugee Resettlement: this is our mission statement- act compassionately, serve humbly, and lead courageously. We do this every single day in our office because refugees come to is having to flee their homes for various reasons but all including persecution, torture, violence, threats. They did not necessarily choose to come to the U.S but one of the things I see every day is America in people’s’ eyes. They had such great hopes and dreams for the U.S.
On January 27, 2017 at 4:30 in the afternoon that all changed with the first executive order which affected the admission of refugees into the United States. I now see something quite different. I see people who are fearful, people who need reassurance that they have permanent legal status that they arrived with, and they need reassurance that what they see on TV isn’t facts that they have to pay attention to.
We work with refugees and asylees. Refugee resettlement is our democratic expression. Refugees are not immigrants but these days they are often included in that discussion. People flee their country, present themselves to the United Nations office, go through rigorous interviews, and if they are lucky they get refugee status. If they are very lucky they might have someone who is already here that they know.
In 2016, 85,000 refugees were allowed in the U.S. in 2017, Obama’s administration had 85,000 plus another 25,000 for Syrians. This year it is 30,000. “We can do better and we have capacity to do better.”
Janan Najeeb, President, Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition
When I heard the title of Immigration in the city in the Trump Era, what I immediately thought was what it probably should have been is America’s History of Exclusionary Immigration Policies instead. Immigration policies in the Trump era is the next step towards our long standing history of discriminatory immigration policies in the U.S that have targeted specific groups for exclusion. The most serious concern affecting immigrant communities is that we don’t know our history and we think our democracy can take care of itself.
If these last two years have taught us anything, it’s how fragile our democracy actually is if we leave it to others to take care of. Also how easily our fellow citizens are swayed if someone else defines us because then we are no longer immigrants, we are illegal immigrants or illegal aliens. We are no longer Muslims, we are terrorists.
In 1916 congress began imposing a literacy test on immigrants which led to the passing of the immigration act.
As we hear the new rhetoric: Muslims are terrorists, Mexicans are criminals and rapists and Africans came from a-hole countries. While the majority of terrorists and acts of mass shootings in this country are committed by white men. Why are we surprised? Hate crimes jumped 17% last year. The Muslim community here has been directly affected by the travel ban and family separation. My husband’s family is dispersed around the world after leaving the Syrian War. The efforts to end birthright citizenship needs to be called what it is: a policy to prevent more black and brown people from entering this country. As minorities we spend all of this energy defending ourselves rather than taking action and becoming empowered.
I believe this changed this past election. In many places in America, people rejected candidates that promoted hate. We need to make that in all places. People who have been in this country for decades and have never voted, voted for the very first time. My experience based on what I do every day is that the vast majority of people are good, decent people that are incredibly uninformed. We need a war of education. We need to mobilize religious leaders. We need to uplift the positive values of diversity and unity’ highlight the immense contributions of immigrants.
Jasmine Gonzalez, Communication Coordinator for Voces De La Frontera
Voces is a pro immigrant pro low income worker grassroots organization. Christine Nuemann-Ortiz started this organization as a center where immigrants can come and learn their rights, take English classes, take citizenship classes and work towards self-sufficiency.
2006 is when it came this huge mobilizing force. In 2006, Jim Sensenbrenner introduced Hr4437 which would have made it a felony to be undocumented and would have criminalized anyone who did not report an undocumented individual. That would have criminalized so many people are doing nothing but exist in this state. When that was introduced, Voces knew they had to do something. It was such an insane law. Voces began to bring in all of these workers, immigrants and allies and began to put pressure on legislatures. They pushed back against this horrible law.
At the federal level, congress was creating a Real Id Legislation which pressures states to ask for documentation when giving driver’s license. You have to provide proof to show you are here legally. Once this law was passed, all of the undocumented immigrants who were once legally able to drive no longer were able to. That is the bases of a lot of what we’re working on now. It has instilled fear into many of these communities because they are terrified to drive and they cannot contribute to their community. If you are caught driving without a license that can lead to families being separated or parents being deported.
The way things have changed now that Trump is president is that all of this anti-immigrant sentiment is now clear. He has defaced and dehumanized all of these good and working people. The only real change is that there is now additional fear and hatred we have to deal with.
This past year we created a program where we took all of our allies and we mobilized as many Latinx voters in the state to step up and vote for people who can fight against this horrible legislation. We had records turnout throughout the state because people were calling anyone and everyone they knew to register to vote.
“At the end of the day all these people want to do is reach that American Dream and we are going to be there for them no matter who is in office.”
Karyn Rotker, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU of WI
In 1848, the original Wisconsin Constitution, allowed immigrants to vote before they became citizens if they were white. That lasted until 1908, around the time where lots of Polish people, Jews, Italians, and Greeks, who were at the time not considered to be white, started coming into this state and suddenly the Constitution was changed because we did not want those people voting.
The ACLU shows the breath of the attack on immigrant communities today. There are cases before the supreme court right now on the right to bail on immigration detention. You have a mass lock up of immigrants who are being deprived of bail. The litigation over family separation and detention tearing children from away from their parents. They did not even keep track, in many cases, of which child belonged to which parent. They are still months later not able to reunite all of these parents.
There is litigation over the census citizenship question. The U.S gov. decided whether they are U.S citizens. The goal is to strike people because they are not going to answer these questions truthfully. If they do not answer these questions, they don’t show up in the Cap so they get fewer representatives in congress, there is less money for those communities because a lot of the funds you get from the gov. is based on population. If people “don’t exist” you don’t have to give them money.
Advocacy and efforts locally: get local law enforcement not be part of Trumps deportation force. There is a special program called 278g where local sheriffs get trained to be immigration agents. Because of advocacy, Milwaukee County applied to be part of it. It was the only community that was turned down because there was so much opposition in the community. Waukesha County did get 287g status. We did open records requests around the state and some sheriffs are cooperating with ICE and some are not so we are going to continue advocating for that.
Being undocumented is not a crime. The mere factor for unlawful presence is not a criminal violation. Just being here and being undocumented is a civil violation.
We are continuing to do open records to try to figure out where the communities that most of these folks are coming from are so we can target some of our education and advocacy efforts.