Tacoma SDS

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Jane Guskin, Co-author of The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers will be in Tacoma on Tuesday, April 22, 7 pm at King’s Books, 218 St. Helens Street. The new book by Jane Guskin and David L. Wilson on Monthly Review Press, lays out a practical approach to immigration, tackling common questions with hard facts and rational arguments. See the website: http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org. This event is sponsored by United for Peace of Pierce County.

The New York City-based authors have developed a dialogue model that builds on the question and answer format of the book by encouraging participants to air their questions and concerns about immigration, share their experiences and ideas and seek answers together.

Jane Guskin, co-author (with David Wilson) of
The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers
2007, Monthly Review Press

Jane Guskin is co-author with David Wilson of The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers, which came out in July 2007 on Monthly Review Press. Guskin and Wilson are also co-editors, since 1990, of Weekly News Update on the Americas, a summary of Latin American news. In addition, Guskin edits Immigration News Briefs, a weekly bulletin covering immigration-related news. Both Guskin and Wilson are based in New York City.

In 1997 Guskin and Wilson helped found the Coalition for the Human Rights of Immigrants, an all-volunteer group mobilizing against workplace raids in New York. From April 2002 to April 2004, they worked to free their colleague and friend, Farouk Abdel-Muhti, from immigration detention. Guskin is employed as program director at the A.J. Muste Memorial Institute, a foundation supporting nonviolent activism for social justice, where she has worked since 1993

Interview with Jane Guskin, co-author with David L. Wilson of The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers.

Q: How did you become so involved in and passionate about immigration issues? What's your "immigration story"?

A: My mother is an immigrant from England, and my father’s father came here from Lithuania, but my own education in immigration came after I met my husband, who is Colombian. He was undocumented when we met. We decided to get married--I was terrified at the thought that this person who I loved could be deported away from me at any moment. I also got to see close up the terrible experiences of someone who is out of status here: separation from family, inability to travel, fear of arrest, fear of looking for a new job and getting asked for documents, etc. (And that was when things were easier for undocumented people here. Now it’s much worse.)

The process to get my husband his permanent residency took about six years. We were lucky that we had great legal help from Safe Horizon in Queens, where we live, and that we applied when 245(i) still existed--the clause of immigration law that allows someone who entered the US illegally to adjust their status without leaving the country. Still, it was quite an experience. The INS lost my husband’s files twice and we had to submit them all over again. They denied his work permit without giving a reason. Years went by and they wouldn’t give us an interview. When we finally got the interview (thanks to pressure from our lawyers), the INS told us that my husband had a prior deportation case from when he first entered the US (12 years earlier) that had to be reopened and fought again. With Safe Horizon’s help, we were able to get his deportation case dismissed and he finally got his permanent residency. When he applied for citizenship three years later they gave us a hard time again, but now he is a US citizen.

While we were fighting to get his residency, I kept telling myself that as soon as this is over I want to do activism for the rights of all immigrants. What they put us through made me so angry at the system, I felt I had to do something. In the end, I couldn’t wait for our ordeal to be over--in the fall of 1997, while we were still fighting my husband’s case, I got involved in the founding of Coalition for the Human Rights of Immigrants (CHRI). Workplace raids were common at the time in the midtown Manhattan garment district, and garment workers were joining with other activists--immigrants and non-immigrants--to protest the raids and build solidarity. That’s how CHRI formed, and how I got involved in immigrant rights activism.

Q: Why did you and David Wilson decide to write "The Politics of Immigration"?

A: The idea for the book came from the publisher, Monthly Review Press. The folks at Monthly Review told us they wanted to publish a sort of question-and-answer book about immigration, and they asked David and me if we would write it. I had done lots of leaflets in the past and had been wanting to do something more comprehensive, something that would give people the information they need to respond to anti-immigrant arguments (though I had thought of doing maybe a website instead of a book), but I had never managed to make time for it. So we said yes, because we thought it was a good idea.

I thought we weren’t the best people to write it, because we aren’t famous or important and we aren’t immigrants. But they asked who else might be able to write it, and I couldn’t think of anyone. I know lots of brilliant immigrants who would be capable of doing it, but they are all very, very busy doing other important work and none of them could have taken the time to do it. David and I are accustomed to doing a lot of research and writing. And we knew that if we told them we would do it, we would have to do it. So that’s how it happened. It was a huge amount of work and took longer than it was supposed to, but we did finally get it done.

Q: What are some of the main myths and misconceptions regarding immigrants that feed anti immigrants sentiments in some American people?

A: In the dialogue sessions we have done so far, the arguments about immigrants and immigration seem to fall into a few broad categories:

Culture and assimilation: There are too many people from one region, they are too different from us, they don’t want to learn English, they can’t assimilate the way previous generations did...

In fact, new immigrants are assimilating in much the same way previous generations did. (Although as a recent New York Times magazine article pointed out, it can be hard to fully assimilate into a country that is trying to deport you.) But most of these cultural questions are just based on fear of the “other,” so maybe we can ask people exactly what they are afraid of? And doesn’t that fear create a climate that makes it harder for true integration to happen?

Economic impact: They take our jobs, they push down wages...

We don’t agree with the often-expressed claim that there is no economic impact because immigrants only take jobs “Americans won’t do.” (In fact, David and I have both at some point in our lives worked at jobs that people like us allegedly won’t do.) Instead we focus on solutions to the global root causes of migration and the problems caused by more enforcement.

Many people migrate at least in part because the economies in their countries have been hurt by trade pacts and “structural adjustment” policies pushed through by international institutions and corporations with the support of the US government. So shouldn’t we be actively supporting grassroots movements around the world that are fighting for better wages, better services, and direct people’s control of resources? (In Brazil the Landless Rural Workers Movement, MST, is a great example of how people can organize themselves to build sustainable economies and a better future for their children in their own country.)

Also, the“illegal” status of so many workers does push down wages for everyone here. So a logical solution would be to let people work here legally, so they could more easily defend their workplace rights and demand fair wages and better treatment.

Crime and illegality: Immigrants are breaking the law by being out of status, “illegal” immigrants are committing lots of crimes...

In fact, it’s not a crime to be present in the US without permission. And as someone helpfully pointed out at our first dialogue session, only actions can be illegal, not people. Why is someone who once crossed the border without permission more “illegal” than someone who once drove faster than the speed limit? As for immigrants committing crimes, virtually every study ever done on the subject has shown that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than non-immigrants. (In fact, the more assimilated into US culture each generation gets, the more likely they are to commit crimes–reminding us that assimilation is not always a positive thing.)

Q: What's your reading of the recent fiasco of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform initiative? What's next? Is there something we, the immigrants, should do?

A: Over the past 10 years, I have seen a lot of legislation come and go. In the end, hardly anything positive has come out of any of it, and the situation for immigrants has just gotten worse. Right now, the climate around immigration reform is VERY polarized. I think this is the wrong moment for legislation--anything that comes out of Congress right now would be very negative.

Immigrants proved in the spring of 2006 that they can mobilize in great numbers to demand solutions; what is missing now is a real dialogue on immigration, where we can work to convince people to support legalization, family reunification, workplace rights and other positive measures. We need to show the harm that enforcement brings, and the benefits of a true integration that welcomes immigrants and doesn’t force them to give up their culture.

Even within immigrant communities there are many people who want to slam the door on those who came after them, or who condemn others for being out of status. We need to reach into our own communities--and beyond--to create true dialogue. David and I are organizing and facilitating dialogue sessions around the book, but we can’t be everywhere, so we hope people will use the book as a tool and take the initiative to organize dialogues themselves.

Another thing people can do is post reader comments on newspaper websites. When articles run about immigration issues, the comments are usually heavily anti-immigrant. To get some different perspectives in there would be really helpful, because people expressing anti-immigrant views would start to see they are really in the minority, and those with pro-immigrant views would feel more confident to express them instead of getting discouraged or overwhelmed.

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