ICE Raids Must be Stopped

Fri12Sep2008

ICE Raids Must be Stopped

I really liked this piece about why ICE raids must be stopped because it rewrites the traditional pro-immigration rhetoric based in "we're such good people, thus we deserve to immigrate!" As Mala pointed out a while ago, that rhetoric has all sorts of problems with it.

The authors of this article talk about 'family' within the context of pro-immigration, but they move away from the we're-good-people narrative to center 'family' within the discussion of international human rights:

Family and community rights are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 16 mentions the right to found a family, and posits that the family is "the natural and fundamental group unit of society."

Article 17 puts forth the notion that everyone has the right to "participate in the cultural life of the community." Not only is the importance of these rights internationally recognized; their realization is also fundamental to creating a better society for all. In direct violation of these statutes, 1.6 million people in the United States have been separated from their spouses, parents, and children since 1996, as a result of draconian deportation laws (Human Rights Watch 2007).

In other words, family is necessary and important--but it's not a requirement that your family be a functional, wonderful, happy family in order to have the human right to exist as a family, as many pro-immigration folks might have us believe.

Not forcing an entire community into the 'good person' narrative not only allows communities with immigrants in them to recognize non-traditional families (two mamis, abuelas raising kids, etc), but also removes the shroud of invisibility on 'bad' community problems like drug addiction, sexual abuse, and gangs. We would no longer have to put on the facade that we are superhuman so that we don't disturb some narrative that might get us citizenship.

Maybe if that happened, we could go on about the business of working together to creating a real health and safety in our communities.

via/counter punch