One Night in America by Steven W. Bender

Author:Steven W. Bender [Bender, Steven W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781317254966
Google: uhweCwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-12-03T05:05:27+00:00

The legacy of immigration reform in the 1960s, particularly the Western Hemisphere limitation that Kennedy opposed, shapes all Latino issues in today’s political arena. In this atmosphere of attack on undocumented immigrants, each Latino political issue is viewed by the public through the lens of its potential to encourage or facilitate undocumented immigration. Spanish-language recognition in the voting booth, for example, prompts concern that it aids the undocumented in their supposed efforts to hijack the voting franchise. Fear of mass undocumented voting in state elections led Arizona voters in 2004 to approve a proof of citizenship initiative as a condition to voting. Bilingual education has come under attack as a means of targeting the children of undocumented immigrants in schools. Although the Supreme Court has struck down as unconstitutional a state’s refusal to educate these children, eliminating bilingual education and tossing these children into the deep end of the assimilation pool will likely survive constitutional scrutiny and is thus seen as a legitimate way of punishing these innocent children.

In the 1960s, Latino initiatives such as establishing language rights in the voting booth and the classroom had to overcome racial prejudice against Latinos, particularly Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans. In those times of the civil rights reforms, opponents of these initiatives often were blatantly racist in articulating their opposition. Eventually, these opponents found cover for some anti-Latino initiatives in the interest of law and order. Today, the criminalization of undocumented immigration from Mexico and other Latin American countries gives license to pursue all varieties of anti-Latino policies in the name of preventing undocumented immigration. The security dimension to border patrol prompted by the September 11 attacks elevates Latino issues beyond law enforcement to the level of national security and defense.

Even farm worker reform must survive this gauntlet. In the 1960s, farm worker reform faced an uphill battle against long-standing prejudice that viewed Latino farm workers as a lesser class of people who were happy to work long hours in dangerous labor for minimal pay. Broader-minded reformists, such as Kennedy and Chávez, made progress toward constructing a more enlightened view of the Latino workforce. But today, farm worker reform is not seen as predominantly an issue of economic reform or, in the eyes of cynics, economic redistribution. Rather, the lens of undocumented immigration distorts farm worker reform. Through this lens, economic protection of farm workers, whether in the workplace or by community programs of health care and education, is seen as encouraging undocumented immigration, and even the entry of terrorists into the country, and most reform proposals are politically dead on arrival. The prospects, then, for meaningful economic reform for farm workers and other Latino laborers seem even more dim than they did in the 1960s.

Ironically, unchecked immigration in the 1960s—whether green card workers or bracero laborers brought into the country as strikebreakers, or undocumented immigrants arriving after the 1965 immigration act—hampered farm labor efforts to obtain vital economic reforms from employers. Since then, the replacement of legal bracero workers with “illegal” undocumented workers has doubly crippled the efforts of farm labor organizers.

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