Last month's failure of the federal immigration bill is already having
some disturbing side effects; the absence of fair federal legislation on
this issue is enabling a culture of local racist vigilantism that goes
unchecked.
For instance, last week Prince William County in Virginia passed a law
requiring staff members of county schools and agencies to verify the
immigration status of anyone who tries to use public services, including
libraries, medical clinics and swimming pools. If Virginia police officers
pull someone over for a minor traffic violation, they can demand to see his
identification if they suspect, for whatever reason, that he might be an
undocumented immigrant.
Virginia is not alone in passing anti-immigrant laws. As of November 1 in
Tulsa, Oklahoma, it will be a felony to "knowingly transport, move, conceal
or harbor an illegal immigrant." Other counties nationwide are working to
pass similar legislation.
If these laws sound familiar to you, it's because they are: the Virginia
law harkens back to the time before the Civil Rights Movement, when
segregation was the status quo in many parts of America. In the absence of
federal civil rights legislation, state governments were free to implement
Jim Crow laws as they saw fit, resulting in ordinances like this one from
Virginia that stated: "The conductors or managers on all railroads.are
hereby required to assign to each white or colored passenger his or her
respective car.If the passenger fails to disclose his race, the conductor
and managers.shall be the sole judges of his race."
And as for the Tulsa law, it's strongly reminiscent of the mid-1800s, when
the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 made it a crime-punishable by prison time and
a $1,000 fine-to provide food or shelter to a runaway slave.
We seem to be traveling back in time. And as was the case in our nation's
past, the failure of the federal government to take a stand is prompting
local and state governments to pass laws based on fear and prejudice.
Most prominent anti-immigrant groups deny that their sentiments are
racially intolerant, claiming that they simply want to restore law and order
and protect American resources. It's eye-opening, though, that many of these
groups are funded by and partnered with white nationalist organizations like
the Council of Conservative Citizens, which has called African-Americans "a
retrograde species of humanity," and warned that immigration is turning the
U.S. into a "slimy brown mass of glop." Organizations like these have always
sought to fan the flames of racism in America; clearly their mission has not
changed.
Nor has their tactic of divide and rule. These same groups claim that
immigration puts an economic squeeze on already hard-pressed
African-American communities. Yet, it is the 'free trade' assault brought on
by NAFTA that has shipped good American jobs abroad and depressed wages. The
same force has been driving Mexican farmers off the land, pushing them toward a risky journey north. Only corporate leaders, with ever fattening
salaries, have benefited. For African-American and Latino alike, the only numbers on the rise have been incidents of police brutality and jailings in
private, for-profit prisons and detention centers.
We are already watching history repeat itself, and it's only going to get
worse if we do nothing. The passage of fair federal immigration legislation
would go a long way towards stopping the trend of local vigilantism, but the
60s taught us that we cannot wait passively for Capitol Hill to come around.
We stand together or perish alone.