[LWVNM Action] Fwd: [immigration] History of Immigration

Sat Sep 17 14:14:18 MDT 2022

Gracias,  I have a journalist friend from Mexico that has been in the asylum system for 13(!!) years and still waiting for a decision.  
Elisa Sánchez
"He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust."
Thomas Aquinas  (1225-1274) 

    On Saturday, September 17, 2022 at 09:08:44 AM MDT, Meredith Machen via Action <action at mailman.swcp.com> wrote:  

 Please read the post below and the updated asylum explainer article  by Rescue.org linkedin the References list at the end of Heather Cox  Richardson’s current issue of Letters from an American. Immigration reform is on the ballot.
Thanks, Meredith Machen, LWVNM Immigration Chair and LWVUS Immigration Discussion Group co- moderator
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Beryl Flom <berylflom at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Sep 17, 2022 at 7:28 AM
Subject: [immigration] History of Immigration
To: LWVUS Immigration Discussion Group <lwvus-immigration-discussion-group at googlegroups.com>

This summary came from Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American:
Mexican immigration is nothing new; our western agribusinesses were built on migrant labor of Mexicans, Japanese, and poor whites, among others, in the late 19th century. From the time the current border was set in 1848 until the 1930s, people moved back and forth across it without restrictions. But in 1965, Congress passed the Hart-Celler Act, putting a cap on Latin American immigration for the first time. The cap was low: just 20,000, although 50,000 workers were coming annually.

After 1965, workers continued to come as they always had, and to be employed, as always. But now their presence was illegal. In 1986, Congress tried to fix the problem by offering amnesty to 2.3 million Mexicans who were living in the U.S. and by cracking down on employers who hired undocumented workers. But rather than ending the problem of undocumented workers, the new law exacerbated it by beginning the process of militarizing the border. Until then, migrants into the United States had been offset by an equal number leaving at the end of the season. Once the border became heavily guarded, Mexican migrants refused to take the chance of leaving.

Then, in the 1990s, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) flooded Mexico with U.S. corn and drove Mexican farmers to find work in the American Southeast. This immigration boom had passed by 2007, when the number of undocumented Mexicans living in the United States began to decline as more Mexicans left the U.S. than came. 

In 2013 a large majority of Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, backed a bill to fix the disconnect caused by the 1965 law. In 2013, with a bipartisan vote of 68–32, the Senate passed a bill giving a 13-year pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants, who would have to meet security requirements. It required employers to verify that they were hiring legal workers. It created a visa system for unskilled workers, and it got rid of preference for family migration in favor of skill-based migration. And it strengthened border security. It would have passed the House, but House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) refused to bring it up for a vote, aware that the issue of immigration would rally Republican voters. 

But most of the immigrants coming over the southern border now are not Mexican migrants.

Beginning around 2014, people began to flee “warlike levels of violence” in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, coming to the U.S. for asylum. This is legal, although most come illegally, taking their chances with smugglers who collect fees to protect migrants on the Mexican side of the border and to get them into the U.S.

The Obama administration tried to deter migrants by expanding the detention of families, and it made significant investments in Central America in an attempt to stabilize the region by expanding economic development and promoting security. The Trump administration emphasized deterrence. It cut off support to Central American countries, worked with authoritarians to try to stop regional gangs, drastically limited the number of refugees the U.S. would admit, and—infamously—deliberately separated children from their parents to deter would-be asylum seekers.

The number of migrants to the U.S. dropped throughout Trump’s years in office. The Trump administration gutted immigration staff and facilities and then cut off immigration during the pandemic under Title 42, a public health order. 

The Biden administration coincided with the easing of the pandemic and catastrophic storms in Central America, leading migration to jump, but the administration continued to turn migrants back under Title 42 and resumed working with Central American countries to stem the violence that is sparking people to flee. (In nine months, the Trump administration expelled more than 400,000 people under Title 42; in Biden’s first 18 months, his administration expelled 1.7 million people.) 

The Biden administration sought to end Title 42 last May, but a lawsuit by Republican states led a federal judge in Louisiana to keep the policy in place. People arriving at the U.S. border have the right to apply for asylum even under Title 42.

There are a lot of moving pieces in the immigration debate: migrants need safety, the U.S. needs workers, our immigrant-processing systems are understaffed, and our laws are outdated. They need real solutions, not political stunts.

—

Notes:

https://www.texastribune.org/2022/02/01/texas-national-guard-border-operation-lone-star-abbott/

https://www.boston.gov/departments/immigrant-advancement/immigrant-demographics#:~:text=Boston%20is%20a%20welcoming%20City,has%20more%20than%20690%2C000%20residents.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-09-15/marthas-vineyard-migrants-ron-desantis

https://www.urban.org/stateofdcimmigrants

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/16/desantis-geographic-conflict-2024-election/

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/TX/POP010210

https://www.politifact.com/article/2022/sep/06/surprising-number-americans-believe-these-false-cl/

https://www.axios.com/2022/09/15/desantis-marthas-vineyard-migrants-biden

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/18/immigration-border-republicans/

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/12/us-unauthorized-immigrant-population-2017/

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/doesnt-add-up/sharetoken/lkQnyIQXsVFR

https://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/immigration-bill-2013-senate-passes-093530

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2014/08/04/the-real-reason-why-the-house-wont-pass-comprehensive-immigration-reform/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/title-42-immigration-border-biden-covid-19-cdc/

https://www.rescue.org/article/it-legal-cross-us-border-seek-asylum

https://www.wcvb.com/article/venezuelan-migrants-flown-to-marthas-vineyard-being-offered-shelter-support-on-cape-cod/41244254#

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Meredith Ross Machen
505-577-6337
Vote as if your life depended on it!
Meredith.machen at gmail.com

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