Pearl River There can’t be much disagreement that the immigrant community is filled with trepidation and on full alert in anticipation of the coming Trump administration and its animus towards almost 13 million current undocumented US residents. I would say that Trump has declared them Enemy #1, but he has so many declared enemies that there’s likely a long list tied for first place.
Recently, I talked to Professor Rafael Martinez of Arizona State University about all of this on Wade’s World. For Martinez, the experience had been personal, since he had also been brought to the US illegally and lived in the shadows while in school until the immigrant youth movements he documents in his new book, Illegalized: Undocumented Youth Movements in the United States had some success. In the period after the election of President Obama in 2008, as the push to finally reform immigration laws and create a process to legalization faltered, the saving grace had been the courageous actions of young immigrants. Martinez discussed the crystallizing events for these movements in Chicago church sanctuaries and bold and risky confrontations by some in ICE offices, where they risked deportation, and were in some cases deported, in making the point and winning public support. Their actions, along with others at the time, provided traction for the Dreamers and the executive orders under DACA providing young people, brought to the US as children by their families, independent of any action on their own, to receive some relief and the ability for those, who were eligible and applied, to work and go to school legally.
The constant litigation and opposition to the Dreamers over the last number of years will likely pale compared to the incoming Trump administration assaults, but as Martinez documented, the antipathy has already had huge impacts. Of the 800,000 who qualified at the high point under the Dream program, there are only 500,000 enrolled now. Young people are afraid to apply and, in many cases, as the statistics indicate, leaving the program in order to not allow the government to deport them, if there is a major policy shift.
These are especially reasonable fears now, as the behind-the-scenes details of Trump plans begin to be fleshed out. One of his more radical proposals is to end the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship which dates back to the 14th amendment ending slavery after the Civil War. Trump’s claims that he will try to eviscerate this right via executive order on “day one” of his administration. Such action will certainly be met immediately by lawsuits, since most legal experts believe a change would require a constitutional amendment, but that won’t keep his antics from having a chilling effect. Coupled with this initiative and its PR impact, will be more stringent polices at the border and on visa applications to prevent so-called “birth tourism,” where pregnant mothers, often from Mexico and increasingly from China, come to the US to have their babies, so that they will also be US citizens.
It all sounds like a mess and for immigrants an existential threat on some many levels. The return of the old Bush policies, most widely identified with former Maricopa County Sheriff Arpaio, enabling local law enforcement officials to ask people about their immigration status on even routine traffic stops, and then turn the information over to ICE for potential detention and deportation, is also being touted as coming back strong. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals efforts to move immigration policy from the federal government to states like Texas is another threat.
Perhaps the self-interest of tech companies, the agricultural sector, and a lot of manufacturing will mitigate some of this anti-immigrant attack, but it’s going to be coming in hard and fast, and it’s just not humane or right.