WestConn and the Immigration Debate

This week's version of the Echo features a trenchant letter to the editor by Paul Streitz, the Co-Director of Connecticut Citizens for Immigration Control ("Letter from Paul Streitz," The Echo: WCSU Student Newspaper LII: 7 (14 Nov. 2006), 8). In his letter, Streitz crititizes a recent online article written by Alex Standish, an Assistant Professor of Geography at WestConn. Standish's online article, "Is there still room for the 'huddled masses'?: Mid-term Elections: A Missed Opportunity to Debate the Role of Immigration in America Today," discusses the recent controversy over the "Danbury eleven" earlier this fall. In September, workers looking for employment around Kennedy park in Danbury were approached by undercover agents of the federal Immigration and Customs enforcement agency (ICE) who were posing as employers. When the eleven workers approached the ICE's van, they were lured inside. Without being allowed contact with their families, these eleven were whisked to Hartford and then to a detention facility on Long Island.

Professor Standish's article tried to examine why these violations of civil liberties could go on just a few blocks away from Westconn with only a hint of student or faculty protest. He concludes that:

"With such a weak sense of what it means to be an American today, non-English speaking immigrants who stick together and ‘impose’ upon quaint suburban America are being seen as a threat to this way of life. Surprisingly, a number of students I teach subscribe to this conservative perspective, one that might usually be associated with older generations. Certainly, many of them are taken-in by arguments that too many immigrants will overburden the system, taking jobs and services from law-abiding Americans. Few people consider the potential of additional labour to add to the wealth of a country."

Streitz objects strenuously to this conclusion. He argues that parades in Danbury in which immigrants hold Brazilian flags show a lack of a desire of immigrants to assimilate, that illegal immigrants are stealing jobs from American citizens at the local McDonald’s, and that the “colleges graduates [sic] of New Delhi” with H-1B visas are stealing computer programming jobs from American citizens in Hartford.

These arguments are silly at best and dangerous at worst. They are silly because immigrants, undocumented or not, produce jobs rather than taking them away. Half the businesses in Danbury would go under if everyone who immigrated to this town in the last three decades just up and left. Moreover, they are silly because all undocumented immigrants pay taxes in the form of sales tax, and many if not most of them pay income taxes too (see Eduardo Porter, "Here Illegally, Working Hard and Paying Taxes," New York Times 155 (19 June 2006): A1). They are silly because having pride in one's ethnic identity is not mutually exclusive with being proud to be an American. And they are silly because H1-B visas are given out very selectively and only when the federal government makes a finding that there are not qualified Americans for the jobs being taken.

The arguments are dangerous because they justify the kind of outrageous actions seen in Danbury under Mayor Mark Boughton, such as locking up people for being in a park without proper due process. Since the Danbury eleven were given precious few rights, the same thing could happen to anyone, including Mr. Streitz. Why isn't Mr. Streitz afraid of Danbury's mayor locking him up and not letting him have due process protections? Remember, they were locked up without solid evidence to determine their immigration status, so anyone--including U.S. citizens--could be similarly treated. Anyone, that is to say, who looks Latino.

That's the real danger behind the anti-immigration position: behind it lies a closet, racist ethnonationalism, the same kind of ethnonationalism that has led to the bloodbaths in Nazi Germany, the Balkans, East Timor, Cambodia, and Sudan. Mr. Streitz worries that Professor Standish ignores his students and doesn't serve them when he calls for the fair treatment of all immigrants. The real disservice is if we ignore the needs and sensibilities of the many people in our classes who are immigrants.

The fundamental reason people immigrate to the United States illegally is because it is nearly impossible for most people from non-European countries to migrate here legally unless they have connections (for Europeans and people in select countries, it is easier; a consequence of racist immigration laws passed early in the twentieth century). Mr. Streitz forgets that if most Americans took the position he does when his family came here, he wouldn't be a United States citizen in the first place.