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The great irony in the gargantuan march
of tens of thousands in Los Angeles and other cities for immigrant
rights is that the old civil rights groups have been virtually
mute on immigration and the marches. There are no position papers,
statements, or press releases on the websites of the NAACP, Urban
League, SCLC on immigration reform, and nothing on the marches.
The Congressional Black Caucus hasn't done much better. It has
issued mostly perfunctory, tepid and cautious statements opposing
the draconian provisions of the House bill that passed last December.
The bill calls for a wall on the Southern border, a massive beef
up in border security, and tough sanctions on employers that
hire illegal aliens. The Senate Judiciary Committee will wrestle
with the bill this week.
Only nine CBC members initially
backed the relatively liberal immigration reform bill introduced
by CBC member Sheila Lee Jackson in 2004. The lone exception
to the old guard's mute response was their lambaste of Mexican
President Vicente Fox last May for his quip that Mexicans will
work jobs that even blacks won't.
The silence from mainstream
civil rights groups and the CBC's modest support for immigrant
rights is a radical departure from the past. During the 1980s
when immigration was not the hot button issue it is today, the
Caucus in 1985 staunchly opposed tougher immigration proposals,
voted against employer sanctions for hiring illegal immigrants,
and an English language requirement to attain legalization. That
was an easy call then. Those were the Reagan years, and Reagan
and conservative Republicans, then as now, pushed the bill. Civil
rights leaders and black Democrats waged low yield war against
Reagan policies.
The NAACP made a slight nod
to the immigration fight when it invited Hector Flores, president
of League of United Latin American Citizens, to address its 2002
convention. The NAACP billed the invitation as a "historic
first." But it was careful to note that immigration was
one of a list of policy initiatives the two groups would work
together on. That list included support for affirmative action,
expanded hate crimes legislation, voting rights protections,
and increased health and education funding. There is no indication
that the two groups have done much together since the convention
to tackle these crisis problems, and that includes immigration
reform.
The CBC and civil rights leaders
tread lightly on the immigrant rights battle for two reasons.
They are loath to equate the immigrant rights movement with the
civil rights battles of the 1960s. They see immigrant rights
as a reactive, narrow, single-issue movement whose leaders have
not actively reached out to black leaders and groups. Spanish
language newspapers, and radio stations, for instance, drove
the mammoth march and rally in Los Angeles. Their fiery appeals
to take action were in Spanish, and many of the marchers waved
Mexican and El Salvadorian flags.
Black leaders also cast a nervous
glance over their shoulder at the shrill chorus of anger rising
from many African-Americans, especially the black poor, of whom
a significant number flatly oppose illegal immigrant rights.
But illegal immigration is not the prime reason so many poor
young blacks are on the streets, and why some turn to gangs,
guns and drug dealing to get ahead.
A shrinking economy, sharp
state and federal government cuts in and the elimination of job
and skills training programs, failing public schools, a soaring
black prison population, and employment discrimination are the
prime causes of the poverty crisis in many inner city black neighborhoods.
The recent studies by Princeton, Columbia and Harvard researchers
on the dreary plight of young black males reconfirmed that chronic
unemployment has turned thousands of young black males into America's
job untouchables.
Yet, many blacks soft target
illegal immigrants for the crisis and loudly claim that they
take jobs from unskilled and marginally skilled blacks. Black
fury over immigration has cemented an odd alliance between black
anti-immigrant activists and GOP conservatives, fringe anti-illegal
immigration groups, and thinly disguised racially tinged America
first groups.
Historians, politicians, and
civil rights activists hail the March on Washington in August
1963 as the watershed event in the civil rights movement. It
defined an era of protest, sounded the death knell for the near
century of legal segregation, and challenged Americans to make
racial justice a reality for blacks. But the estimated million
that marched and held rallies for immigrant rights in Los Angeles
and other cities dwarfed the numbers at the March on Washington.
If the numbers and passion immigration reform stirs mean anything,
the judgment of history will be that it also defined an era,
sounded the death knell for discrimination against immigrants,
and challenged Americans to make justice and equality a reality
for immigrants, both legal and illegal. The battle over immigrant
rights will be fought as fiercely and doggedly as the civil rights
battle of the 1960s. That battle forever altered the way Americans
look at race. The immigrant's rights battle will profoundly alter
the way Americans look at immigrants. The silence of civil rights
leaders won't change that.
CounterPunch
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