"Immigrants rights movement affecting African Americans"

By Karen Juanita Carrillo
Amsterdam News,
6 April 2006.

The nation's growing movement for immigrant rights is making some peopletake a second look at the current work and living conditions AfricanAmericans face.

With right-wing calls for deportation of immigrants, and amidst claims that immigrants are stealing jobs from U.S. citizens - which, in many cases means working class African Americans - some portions of the U.S.-born Black community have turned their anger at immigrants.

"But African Americans should join the immigrant rights movement. We're already part of it; we're intricately connected to it," claimed Councilman Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn). "We need to get our focus straight: Your enemyis not immigrants. Your enemy is white male domination, the white male power structure. What is stopping us from getting jobs is not immigrants. We should not settle for that divide-and-conquer tactic," added Baron, who is currently sponsoring the Voting Rights Restoration Act in New York City Council.

The Voting Rights Restoration Act would re-establish local voting rights for[legal] non-citizen immigrant residents who have lived in New York City formore than six months.

Barron points out that many of today's immigrants are from Africa and theWest Indies and that the current wave of immigrant fear could stem from the fact that so many immigrants are people of color.

"The problem is that the white power structure has more jobs than it shouldhave, and they have to be forced to open up opportunities for everyone," the councilman continued. "This was happening before immigrants came - beforethe Mexicans were here, we didn't have jobs, so don't fall for that storythat we were all happily employed before."

With a national budget of $2.7 trillion, a New York State budget of $112 billion and a New York City budget of $55.5 billion, Barron claims there's no reason for a lack of employment opportunities in this country.

"There are 2.3 million Black people in New York City and we're worried about some Mexicans?" he scoffed. "We'd better be worried about the Bloombergs and the Spitzers out there; those are the ones really affecting our lives!"

"I really believe that this whole issue brings up a larger question. It really reminds me of why we started the Black Radical Congress (BRC) in the first place. This is exactly the issue that emerged for us during the emergence of the move toward globalization. You have something like NAFTA[North American Free Trade Agreement], which disassembles the nature of workin a place like Mexico so that people have to find a way to feed themselvesand work and pay for their families," said Humberto Brown, a member of theBlack Radical Congress. "That leads them to come here, so now you have a situation where African Americans who have historically and today continue to be the most disadvantaged group in this 'wonderful' U.S. democracy, now they're faced with the question of whose rights should be fought for. Do labor rights, immigrant rights and the right to work supersede the rights of Black Americans? It's putting two oppressed groups, who are both victims of capitalism and globalization, against each other."

The immigrant rights movement is pressuring civil rights advocates to redefine what it means to be a citizen of any country, Brown added.

"Citizenship should not be defined by nation states anymore. Citizenship should be an element of your human rights - you're right to work, your rightto health care, and your right to stability and to a pension wherever you are living in the world. Since globalization has cheapened labor, it's corrupted the safety nets that so many countries used to offer. I think African Americans should join the immigrant rights marches to demand jobs for themselves, jobs for everybody. We should make sure that this economy works for everybody. It's a challenging issue, because we have to force global capitalism to provide equity for the people who produce its wealth. And that may be something it is unable to do," he said.

Included by permission of Amsterdam News. Voices C 2006, IPA, all rightsreserved.