Monthly Archives: April 2013

City to Explore “Access Without Fear” Policy for Undocumented Residents

Leave a reply
Toronto will consider becoming a sanctuary city.

FEBRUARY 22, 2013 AT 9:45 AM – From the Torontoist

BY 

130221 Solidarity City 01

Members of the Solidarity City Network show support for undocumented workers at city council. Photo courtesy of Solidarity City Network.

Toronto City Council has decided, after a fraught debate yesterday, to learn how it can remove barriers undocumented workers face when trying to access municipal services, and become what’s sometimes called a “sanctuary city.”

By a vote of 37-3, they’ve asked staff to compile a set of recommendations that would “ensur[e] access to services without fear to immigrants without full status or without full status documents.” If councillors endorse that report when they get it later this year, they will be formally deciding that residents should have access to municipal services regardless of their immigration status. Council also voted to ask the federal government to create a regularization program for people without status.

In practice, most municipal programs and services already guarantee undocumented residents access without having to disclose their immigration status. You can, for instance, obtain a library card by showing proof of name and address—a utility bill counts—and access many other services without being asked for documentation. However, the City has no formal policy to protect undocumented residents, which means that right now many Torontonians without status refrain from using services available to them—food banks, police services, schools, shelters, recreation services—because they fear that when they hit those formal points of contact with the government they’ll risk detention or deportation by federal border officials.

In their background report on the issue [PDF] City staff cited research showing that undocumented residents “suffer from high levels of anxiety, depression, chronic stress, and stress related physical illnesses.” Parents fear sending their children to school, and those who need medical or public health services endanger themselves to remain underground.

Dozens of members of the Solidarity City Network, a collective of residents advocating for regularization of undocumented people, celebrated the decision inside the council chambers. “I think it’s a great show of what community organizing can do,” said Tzazna Miranda, a spokesperson from the network. “The only way we’re going to get changes is if our communities are standing strong and keep councillors to what they promised today.”

Councillor Joe Mihevc (Ward 21, St. Paul’s) called the sanctuary city decision “a historic moment.” During the debate, many councillors from across the political spectrum gave emotional speeches, citing their own families’ immigration stories and arguing that Toronto is a city shaped by the strength of its immigrant communities—and that, importantly, except for First Nations residents we all were immigrants at one point.

Mihevc suggested the vote makes protections for undocumented residents official City policy, though things aren’t quite that far along—council will still need to vote to accept the recommendations once they’ve been presented. Those recommendations will include more specific guidelines for increasing access, and a plan for training front-line City workers to ensure access policies are publicized and followed.

Poor staff training can blunt efforts to make services accessible to all residents. A 2010 study conducted by Social Planning Toronto revealed that even though provincial rules guarantee access to education regardless of status, Toronto Catholic District School Board staff regularly asked for documentation or denied admission to residents they thought were undocumented.

Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong (Ward 34, Don Valley East) is one of the most vocal opponents of the sanctuary city policy. Yesterday he condemned “illegal immigrants” for failing to maintain legal status and proposed that council assist the federal government in removing undocumented people from the city. “They should be removed, we should not encourage them, we should not help them, we should not facilitate them,” Minnan-Wong said during debate. “They are an insult to every immigrant who played by the rules to get into this country.”

Any municipal access without fear policies will still have to respect existing provincial and federal laws. For example, people without status are restricted from accessing provincial welfare and disability support programs, as well as federal employment insurance benefits (even when these are administered by the City).

undocumented worker rates

Data from Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 2012, as presented in a report by the City of Toronto.

People in Toronto usually become undocumented after entering the country legally, then staying when their temporary work permits or student visas expire. The federal government has steadily increased the nation’s supply of temporary migrants in recent years, and they now arrive to Toronto in greater numbers than permanent residents do. Other residents become undocumented by remaining in Canada after they fail to achieve refugee status. Governments cannot keep reliable statistics on individuals living without documentation: City staff say the number of undocumented Torontonians could be as low as 20,000 and as high as 500,000.

Caribbean and African Immigrants Getting Blocked In New US Immigration Reform Bill

Leave a reply

Immigration Reform Bill photo

The new immigration reform bill only betters the plight of Mexican border jumpers

AFRICANGLOBE – Black lawmakers and civil rights groups are concerned by a proposal in the Senate’s immigration reform bill that would do away with “diversity” visas that are often a pathway for African and Caribbean immigrants to enter the United States.

Advocates said they haven’t seen evidence yet that a new merit-based program is an acceptable replacement for the diversity visas, which total 55,000 each year and are granted via a lottery.

Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP Washington bureau, said he is telling lawmakers not to eliminate the diversity program when comprehensive immigration reform moves forward.

“At this point, we are urging lawmakers not to eliminate the diversity visa program,” Shelton told reporters. “This is one of the places in the bill that needs to be addressed. We will work with our friends in the Senate, and we have started working with our friends in the House as well.”

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), co-chairman of the immigration task force for the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), called the Senate bill “a significant step in the right direction” but said his caucus is worried about the plan to eliminate diversity visas.

“With respect to the abolishment of the diversity visa lottery program, the CBC is extremely concerned that it might limit the future flow of immigration for people from certain parts of the world,” Jeffries said. “That’s troublesome, and we’re evaluating the merit-based visa proposal to determine if it’s fair and balanced.”

The diversity program makes 55,000 visas available each year to countries with low immigration rates to the United States. Those awarded the visas are chosen by a lottery, with about half typically going to African immigrants.

Republican lawmakers have targeted the program in the past for elimination, arguing the program’s lottery system can lead to fraud and undermine national security.

The Senate bill proposes ending the diversity visas in 2015 and creating a new, merit-based visa program. It would make 120,000 visas available per year, rising to a maximum of 250,000, depending on the need for them and the unemployment rate. Immigrants would earn points toward visas based on their education, employment, family ties and other criteria.

“The jury is still out on whether the merit-based visas will be sufficient to address the concerns we have identified with diversity visas,” said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “We are concerned but we are still looking, and we are still making a decision.”

Some groups are furious with lawmakers for putting the diversity program on the chopping block.

“This is not a zero-sum game where we take from one to give to another. That is not how comprehensive immigration reform should work,” said Bertha Lewis, president of The Black Institute. “We are really, really angry about this diversity visa business.”

Jeffries said it was “too early to say” whether he would support the Senate bill without changes. The CBC is in talks with lawmakers negotiating a House immigration overhaul, he said.

“The situation is still very much in flux, and we won’t know until the end of the month what that bill might ultimately look like,” Jeffries said.

Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.), another co-chairman of the CBC’s immigration task force, said the group met on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the diversity visa issue.

“We continue to be concerned about the discontinuation of the diversity waiver, and the fact that … African and Caribbean immigrants who are participating in the diversity visa [program] per year could lose that pathway,” Horsford said.

Horsford said CBC leaders have been in talks with immigration reform negotiators in both the House and the Senate. He suggested the merit-based replacement program was included in the Senate bill at the urging of the CBC.

“In large part, this alternative has been proposed because of our concerns with the diversity visa [discontinuation]. Meaning, we brought this issue up when we heard that it was being talked about [being] eliminated,” Horsford said. “And we said, ‘Look, without some meaningful alternative that ensures that all communities, including Caribbean and African immigrants, are protected, then, you know, we [the CBC] would have major concern.’”

Horsford said Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), another leader of the CBC’s immigration task force, has been in talks with Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), a member of the Senate’s “Gang of Eight,” about diversity visas.

“And now that we have the language, and now that we can see the alternative specifically, we can, you know, begin to work on how it affects our communities,” Horsford said.

Horsford said he expected the House immigration reform bill would have similar language related to diversity visas and the merit-based replacement program.

Shelton of the NAACP said he was hoping for “a strengthening” of the diversity visa program in the immigration reform bill by increasing its numbers of visas and expediting their processing time.

“It has not been demonstrated yet that the merit-based visas that are being lifted up will solve the problems that diversity visas were intended to solve,” Shelton said. “There may be a need for an amendment to fix this problem in the future to help African and Caribbean immigrants.”

 

By: Kevin Bogardus and Russell Berman 

No Human Being is lIlegal: Its time to drop the ‘i-word’ More on Drop the I-Word Campaign on Al Jazeera

Leave a reply

To universally refer to people who live in the country without authorisation as “illegal immigrants” is incorrect [AP]
Language has been in the news lately.Last Tuesday, on April 2, the Associated Press announced it would no longer use “illegal immigrant” to refer to people living in a country without permission.The previous week, Alaska Republican Congressman Don Young referred workers in his father’s farm as “wetbacks“, although he subsequently apologised for the racialised slander.Why is language so important? What are people so upset about?The word “wetback” is a reference to the fact that many people who cross into the United States without authorisation must cross the Rio Grande. Mexicans and non-Mexicans use the term colloquially. The US government referred to their 1954 mass repatriation campaigns along the southern border as “Operation Wetback”.In her research with Mexican immigrants, Ruth Gomberg-Munoz found that undocumented Mexicans use the Spanish equivalent (mojados) to describe themselves, even if they had not actually gotten their backs wet in the Rio Grande. Nevertheless, Gomberg-Munoz chooses not to use the word in her own writing, because many people find the word offensive.It should not be difficult to see why wetback is offensive. It makes light of a dangerous crossing: last year, at least 477 people died attempting to cross over from Mexico to the US. Aside from that, when you call someone a name like wetback, you are making one action they committed into a permanent aspect of who they are. This critique can also be applied to the “i-word”.

Living without permission 

People who live in the US without permission from the US government are commonly referred to as illegals, illegal immigrants, illegal aliens, undocumented immigrants, or unauthorised migrants. The term you select to describe them has consequences.

The first term “illegal” is grammatically incorrect – as it uses an adjective (illegal) as a noun. A person could have entered the country illegally, but that does not mean it is appropriate to call them an “illegal”.

The US government prefers to use the terms “illegal alien” and “illegal immigrant”. However, the fact that the government had adopted a moniker does not mean that the word is accurate or unproblematic. The US government also uses terms such as “criminal alien” and “fugitive alien”, which are dehumanising and politically motivated.

To universally refer to people who live in the country without authorisation as “illegal immigrants” is incorrect. As David Leopold points out, people who are victims of human trafficking and in the US without authorisation merit protection, not prosecution.

The terms “illegal immigrant” and “illegal alien” are problematic because they focus all of our attention on one aspect of a person – the fact that they do not have permission to remain in the country. This is problematic because having crossed the border without permission does not render a person necessarily an “illegal immigrant”.

You can cross the border without permission, and later obtain legalisation and even citizenship. Just as going over the speed limit once does not make you an “illegal driver”, nor does crossing the border once make you an “illegal immigrant” or an “illegal alien”. Furthermore, as Professor Otto Santa Ana of the University of California, Los Angeles, explains, the use of the adjective illegal implies criminality, and overstaying your visa or evading immigration inspectors is a civil offence.

The term “undocumented immigrant” is imprecise, as people may live in a country without legal permission, yet have plenty of documents – including birth certificates, passports and consular cards. For this reason, organisations such as the Migration Policy Institute prefer “unauthorised migrant”. Unlike “illegal immigrant”, “unauthorised migrant” does not have a criminalising tone. If you are driving without a licence, it would make more sense to call you an “unauthorised driver” than an “illegal driver”. And, we don’t call employers who employ unauthorised immigrants “illegal employers”.

The Associated Press made the decision to refer to people as living in the country illegally instead of asillegal immigrants because it is more accurate to refer to people’s behaviour than to label them because of their behaviour. The AP draws a parallel between this discussion about immigrants and “saying someone was ‘diagnosed with schizophrenia’ instead of schizophrenic”. By focusing on people’s behaviour instead of labelling them, we can avoid using people’s behaviour to define them.

Here are the new AP guidelines:

illegal immigration: Entering or residing in a country in violation of civil or criminal law. Except in direct quotes essential to the story, use illegal only to refer to an action, not a person: illegal immigration, but not illegal immigrant. Acceptable variations include living in or entering a country illegally or without legal permission. 

Changing our language

This decision by the AP to refer to actions as “illegal” and not people is crucial because it will help us avoid dehumanising language. One action a person committed – crossing the border without permission or overstaying his/her visa – should not define him/her. In reality, it does not. People who overstay their visa may be eligible for legalisation, and eventually citizenship. And, once they obtain legalisation, they are no longer living in the country without permission. They no longer have to live with the burden of illegality.

Changing our language allows us to see how our laws render people unauthorised migrants just as much as their actions do. It permits us to shift our focus from thinking of a person as an “illegal immigrant” and remembering that we are talking about a relationship between what they did – violate the terms of their visa, and the laws that shape which actions are authorised and which are not. Most importantly, it helps us to remember that we are talking about people.

It is a big step forward for the AP, and perhaps next the New York Times and other major news outlets, to stop using the “i-word”.

No human being is illegal. The term “illegal immigrant” simultaneously dehumanises and criminalises people who are denied the opportunity to obtain authorisation from the US government to live in the country they call home.

This debate over language drives home the point that all language is politicised. If you choose to continue to call people “illegal” or “illegal immigrant”, you make your position on the immigration debate clear. You also make it difficult to have a logical conversation about the problems associated with millions of people living with illegality.

In contrast, if you choose to frame the debate around people who live in the US without access to full citizenship, and who must deal daily with the burden of illegality, it allows us to have a conversation about how to move forward and fix the problem – which lies with the burden of illegality, not with the people who came to the US in search of a better life for themselves and their families.

Tanya Golash-Boza is an associate professor of Sociology at the University of California, Merced. She is the author of Yo Soy Negro Blackness in Peru, Immigration Nation: Raids, Detentions and Deportations in Post-9/11 America and Due Process Denied: Detentions and Deportations in the United States. She blogs here. 

Follow her on Twitter: @tanyagolashboza

Academics don’t let themselves be free

Leave a reply

If academics really want freedom, they should try talking to the public more, writes scholar.

2013415101423413734_8 Dr Alice Bell is an academic and writer interested in science and technology when they become part of public policy, the media and popular culture. She is a research fellow at the University of Sussex, a co-editor for New Left Project and science blogger for the Guardian.

2013415104059626734_20

Ideas of academic freedom have a long and noble history. They are also, all too often, a load of old rubbish. The worst kind of rubbish too, because it obscures more systematic problems at play.

Academics do not let themselves be free. The fields we organise ourselves into are called “disciplines” for a reason. Like anyone else, academics live in a network of constraints and compromises. Unusually, however, academics are often self-policed. Academics routinely play to external vested interests and impose ones of their own: they are just selective about which ones they choose to get angry about. Peer review, pay walls, stakeholders, snobbishness, ethics and economics. It all constrains research – for good and bad – and it is all business as usual. Many academics could also do a lot more to liberate their knowledge from the confines of ivory towers, rather than keep it for themselves.

I do not want to trivialise the many academics who have been threatened into keeping quiet. Galileo is an overused cliché (cough) but that does not mean we should forget him, or think it is an issue that has been safely consigned to history. We need to stay cognizant to soft pressures put upon researchers to pursue particular lines of enquiry too; it is not always violent.

I also want to stress that I see a point in talking about a special flavour of freedom for academics. They do not deserve more freedom than anyone else but, like journalists, they are often at their most useful when they ask difficult questions so, like journalists, we need to find systems which productively allow them to do this (for example, the idea of tenure).

Academic research

But that does not mean academic research should – or can, or does – exist without any constraints. Ethics, limited resources, socially constructed ideas of what is “interesting”, they all help networks of peer reviewers make decisions about what research to fund and what gets published.

Peer review, if you are not familiar with it, comes in several different forms, but simply means the reviewing of projects by people from roughly the same field. It means that specialists from one silo of expertise judge other specialists from the same subject. In many ways is a good thing. I mean, would you like to try to judge the quality of high-energy physics research? (Or if you are a high-energy physicist, would you like to judge some classical history? Norse linguistics? Sociology of childhood? Polar bear genetics?)

But it can make research sometimes pathologically insular. It is all terribly self-selecting. Those who do not conform are expunged, laughed away or simply leave in frustrated boredom. As sociologist Thomas Gieryn argues in his book on the Cultural Boundaries of Science, our very idea of what is or is not science is largely a “winner’s map”, built to suit the victors.

A 2011 study on “forbidden knowledge” – areas which researchers felt were no-go subjects of enquiry – found more than a third of the academics they researched reported they or one of their colleagues had chosen not to pursue/ publish research because they knew it contravened accepted dogmas of their discipline in some way. That was normal. But if it came from outside – the media, activists or politicians – that would contravene free enquiry.

Academia is a highly hierarchical business, built around subservience to those above us. There is a great bit in Homo Academicus, Bourdieu’s study of the complex exchanges of symbolic capitals at play in universities, where he refers to the way younger scholars are all too happy to help build the social status of those above them, because they, through reflected glory, may capture some such elevated status for themselves, at least in comparison to non-scholars. The highly competitive nature of the post-doc market created by a surfeit of PhDs and dropping research budgets only exacerbates the problem, as does the prevailing view that those who leave are not up to the job (as opposed to simply finding it all a bit silly/ corrupt/ dull).

Talk to the public

The various networks of influence put upon researchers should be discussed more, if only because many academics do not realise their energies being captured, these processes are often so gradual. It is perhaps scary how easily academics’ views over what is “interesting” can be influenced. To quote Yes Minister, an old BBC sitcom on the civil service: “The surprising thing about academics is not that they have their price, but how low that price is.” This is not true of most academics, but enough to be keep an eye on.

Environmental activists are right to at least be worried about “frackademy” (research funded by the shale gas industry), even though we must also expect any such critique to be well founded. It has become routine for academics to work to whatever theme the funding calls mention. If you do not, you do not get funding, and you end up working elsewhere. Such directed calls can be a good thing, poking researchers into considering socially important issues. The question is who gets to control this poking; friends of politicians or public at large? We are also increasingly asked to work with external groups.

Again, this is often good, helping us draw in expertise from outside the academy and learn more about how best to put it to use. But there is a large question mark over which external groups get to work with publicly funded academics. When we are told it will be easier to access public funds if you can match them with private, we are in danger of only answering the research questions that the rich can pay for, and building an academy devoted simply to replicating the status quo, not challenging it.

Fellow academics, if you really want to stand up for your special forms of freedoms you need to recognise the role you already play in the systems that curtail them and reflect deeply upon which of these constraints you do and do not approve of, and why. Stand up for yourself, against your boss as well as policymakers or the media. And trying talking to the public, you might even find they are an ally in your liberation.

Dr Alice Bell is an academic and writer interested in science and technology when they become part of public policy, the media and popular culture. She is a research fellow at the University of Sussex, a co-editor for New Left Project and science blogger for the Guardian.

Follow her on Twitter: @alicebell

 

Steps to expand the visa pools are critical for the success of any comprehensive immigration reform bill.

 201341894558116734_8
Laura Enriquez is a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University California, Los Angeles, where she does research on the experiences of undocumented young adults. She is a dedicated scholar-activist in the US immigrant rights movement.

In recent months, comprehensive immigration reform has become central to the political debate. Elected officials are in the process of developing the specifics of a law which will update current immigration system and address the 11 million undocumented individuals living in the US. Polls show that nearly 60 percent of Americans support immigration reform and the creation of a pathway to citizenship. Yet, we still do not know what this new law will look like. I believe that four provisions are key to making it a success:

Help people ‘waiting in line’: Address the visa backlog and amend visa caps

At present, US immigration policies are structured to promote family reunification. However, these policies were developed not so much as a way to value and strengthen families, but as a nativist tool to increase immigration opportunities to European-origin individuals.

When comprehensive immigration laws were developed and enacted in the mid-1900s, they sought to promote immigration from Europe by prioritising family-based petitions with opened pathways for migration for family members of US citizens, most of whom, at the time, had origins and thus family members in Europe.

In addition, they restricted immigration from non-European countries by limiting the number of visas available in each country. While these visa caps have been increased in the past, they still exist to limit immigration.

While there is no limit to visas available for the spouses, minor children and parents of citizens, there are limits on the number of visas available to the married children, siblings and extended family members of citizens as all family is sponsored by legal permanent residents. These limits mean that the “lines” for visas are extraordinarily long.

As of November 2012, 4.4 million people had been petitioned for and approved for a visa but are waiting for the availability of a visa. If you are lucky enough to be in one of the higher preference categories – an unmarried child of a US citizen – the wait averages seven years. However, demand in high migration countries creates backlogs so the wait reaches 15 years if you are from the Philippines and 20 if you are from Mexico.

While these numbers are dismal, they are worse for individuals lower on the preference categories. In fact, the longest wait time surpasses almost two lifetimes – 163 years for a citizen to reunite with a sibling from Mexico.

These wait times mean that undocumented migration is one of the few options open for individuals who do not want to be separated from family members for a lifetime. Additionally, it means that undocumented immigrants, who were fortunate enough to have family members petition for their legalisation upon their arrival, are still waiting for the availability of visas.

In the past, immigration reform has included increases to the number of visas available in each country. Similar steps to expand the visa pools are critical for the success of any comprehensive immigration reform bill. Though current proposals aim to clear this backlog, there needs to be consideration of how future backlogs will be prevented. Proposals for a shift away from family reunification to skill-based assessments could potentially reproduce these family-based backlogs, or worse deny visas and permanently separate families.

201313092744761734_20

Help people who want to ‘get in line’: Eliminate the 10-year bar

While current immigration law provides pathways to legalisation for undocumented immigrants via the family reunification methods discussed above, many immigrants are dissuaded from even applying due to the complicated nature of this process.

Specifically, a 1996 immigration reform law enacted a 3- and 10-year bar process which requires individuals who entered “without inspection” (that is, without a visa) to return to their country of origin to obtain their visa. Once back, they face a 3-year bar to their return if their stay was less than one year and 10-year bar if their stay was longer.

While individuals can petition to lift this “bar” based on the undue hardship it will place on their citizen petitioners, it is a risky process with uncertain outcomes. As a result, many eligible undocumented immigrants choose not to apply for legalisation once they find out about the “bar”.

In recent months, comprehensive immigration reform has become central to the political debate. Elected officials are in the process of developing the specifics of a law which will update current immigration system and address the 11 million undocumented individuals living in the US. Polls show that nearly 60 percent of Americans support immigration reform and the creation of a pathway to citizenship. Yet, we still do not know what this new law will look like. I believe that four provisions are key to making it a success:

Help people ‘waiting in line’: Address the visa backlog and amend visa caps

At present, US immigration policies are structured to promote family reunification. However, these policies were developed not so much as a way to value and strengthen families, but as a nativist tool to increase immigration opportunities to European-origin individuals.

When comprehensive immigration laws were developed and enacted in the mid-1900s, they sought to promote immigration from Europe by prioritising family-based petitions with opened pathways for migration for family members of US citizens, most of whom, at the time, had origins and thus family members in Europe.

In addition, they restricted immigration from non-European countries by limiting the number of visas available in each country. While these visa caps have been increased in the past, they still exist to limit immigration.

While there is no limit to visas available for the spouses, minor children and parents of citizens, there are limits on the number of visas available to the married children, siblings and extended family members of citizens as all family is sponsored by legal permanent residents. These limits mean that the “lines” for visas are extraordinarily long.

As of November 2012, 4.4 million people had been petitioned for and approved for a visa but are waiting for the availability of a visa. If you are lucky enough to be in one of the higher preference categories – an unmarried child of a US citizen – the wait averages seven years. However, demand in high migration countries creates backlogs so the wait reaches 15 years if you are from the Philippines and 20 if you are from Mexico.

While these numbers are dismal, they are worse for individuals lower on the preference categories. In fact, the longest wait time surpasses almost two lifetimes – 163 years for a citizen to reunite with a sibling from Mexico.

These wait times mean that undocumented migration is one of the few options open for individuals who do not want to be separated from family members for a lifetime. Additionally, it means that undocumented immigrants, who were fortunate enough to have family members petition for their legalisation upon their arrival, are still waiting for the availability of visas.

In the past, immigration reform has included increases to the number of visas available in each country. Similar steps to expand the visa pools are critical for the success of any comprehensive immigration reform bill. Though current proposals aim to clear this backlog, there needs to be consideration of how future backlogs will be prevented. Proposals for a shift away from family reunification to skill-based assessments could potentially reproduce these family-based backlogs, or worse deny visas and permanently separate families.

Help people who want to ‘get in line’: Eliminate the 10-year bar

While current immigration law provides pathways to legalisation for undocumented immigrants via the family reunification methods discussed above, many immigrants are dissuaded from even applying due to the complicated nature of this process.

Specifically, a 1996 immigration reform law enacted a 3- and 10-year bar process which requires individuals who entered “without inspection” (that is, without a visa) to return to their country of origin to obtain their visa. Once back, they face a 3-year bar to their return if their stay was less than one year and 10-year bar if their stay was longer.

While individuals can petition to lift this “bar” based on the undue hardship it will place on their citizen petitioners, it is a risky process with uncertain outcomes. As a result, many eligible undocumented immigrants choose not to apply for legalisation once they find out about the “bar”.

Those individuals who choose to apply and risk being barred from the US have to return to their country of origin to file petitions with their consular office. In the Mexican case, this happens in Ciudad Juarez, a border city plagued by violence and death. Petitioners can wait for months to years for appointments and processing and often are separated from family members during this time.

Interviewing recently legalised young adults who had to travel to Mexico revealed that these stays often had significant emotional consequences. One man spoke about how he had to watch his son learn to talk via Skype. Another spoke of the post-traumatic stress he developed after spending a night hiding in his hotel room bathtub while there was a shoot-out outside.

On the other hand, individuals who are allowed to complete the legalisation process in the US, report fairly positive experiences with the immigration system. This suggests that the proposed immigration reform law should make provisions to eliminate this provision. Dropping the 3- and 10-year bars would allow, and in fact encourage, eligible individuals to legalise their status in a safe and streamlined manner. This would help to reduce the undocumented population by encouraging them to apply through some avenues that are already open.

Help people who want to legalise: Increase acdeptable Documents

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, or IRCA, was the most recent immigration law to create a pathway to legalisation. While it legalised approximately 1.6 million undocumented immigrants, some eligible individuals were unable to apply due to a lack of acceptable documents to prove their work status and length of time in the US.

This was a lot harder for undocumented women to do, as they tended to work in private homes as housekeepers and nannies – where their employers did not want to confirm their employment – and did not have bills or accounts in their names, because it was their husbands’ responsibility.

This historical fact suggests that finding documentation of an undocumented life is hard. Many undocumented individuals strive to leave no mark of their existence for fear of deportation. In addition, many have their accounts and/or bills set up under citizen family member or friend because having a social security number makes it easier to open these accounts.

Imagine if you spent most of your life paying in cash and had few, if any accounts, in your name. How would you prove that you have been somewhere? This is a consideration that needs to be addressed as the specifics of a legalisation pathway are developed.

A glimpse into how this can be successfully implemented can be taken from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme which provides a 2-year deferral of deportation and access to a work permit for undocumented youth who entered before the age of 16 and are under the age of 31.

To prove their length of residence in the US, these young adults have been using a variety of documents – Facebook check-ins, gym records and receipts. Immigration officials have been open to these various types of non-traditional documents which have made it easier for many eligible individuals to apply.

The successful deployment of this Deferred Action programme suggests that future programmes should replicate its process. The proposed law should include such provisions to improve the current system

Help people become full members of society: Create a shorter path to citizenship

The current proposed immigration reform bill suggests that there will be a 13-year pathway to citizenship – a 10-year provisional residency followed by a 3-year permanent residency at which point they can apply for citizenship.

However, my discussions with undocumented young adults has made it clear that years of feeling socially rejected only makes them feel like they do not belong. Many feel that it becomes increasingly unlikely that these negative feelings will go away as they wait longer to legalise their status.

Longer wait times only serve to make sure that the people we intend to admit in the future will be less likely to act like full members of a society when we finally do admit them. While legalisation will help undocumented immigrants’ transition out of what some refer to as second-class citizenship, lengthened wait times will only strengthen their feelings that they are second-class citizens who do not belong in the US. This not only hurts immigrants, but it hurts US society as a whole.

Laura Enriquez is a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University California, Los Angeles, where she does research on the experiences of undocumented young adults. She is a dedicated scholar-activist in the US immigrant rights movement and is a contributor to the Huffington Post Latino Voices DREAMers Blog Series.

One thought

Leave a reply

by Dwight Gordon

Greetings, I’m constantly hearing people rant on about immigrants here, particularly the racialized ones. Whether it is about them supposedly bringing their untidiness, their rudeness, or catering to their own kind, or making cities like Toronto more dangerous. I heard a comment about how immigrants here must assimilate. But assimilate into what ? Is that referring to the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant way of life? And if so, does that mean that the aboriginal people don’t mean much? I’m Canadian of Jamaican parentage. So many people see me as being Jamaican just because I talk about Jamaica. I once had to tell a man three times that I was born in Canada. Yet he was quick to remember issues about me that could put me in a negative light. Mere coincidence ? In the meantime, I’ve been told to go back to the country where I supposedly came from. Another person had a hard time believing I was born here because of my black complexion. I keep hearing people rant on about Jamaicans, and blacks, making regions like Toronto more dangerous. So am I supposed to believe that in every case when a person is quick to see me as being from Jamaica, it’s an honest mistake ? In the meantime, Rob Ford interestingly made a comment a long time ago, saying that the Chinese work like dogs and that they’re taking over. And a man who was a company executive who was supposed to become some kind of federal commissioner, had to change his mind when he said something around the line of Jamaicans being a threat to Toronto’s safety. Some federal cabinet ministers ranted on saying that this executive was willing to work for just $1.00. I could swear one of those ranters was the current immigration minister. Thank you

 

Dwight Gordon — I am a Canadian of Jamaican descent from Toronto, living in Scarborough particularly.  I’m very active in the black and Jamaican communities, and I also participate in causes dealing with racialized communities, poverty, health and disabilities. As I became a teenager, I got some very eye-opening lessons of the problems in society and the world we live in. And the eye-opening lessons never did stop. Me being black of Jamaican heritage definitely indirectly contributed to those lessons. Hence, my activism. Thank you