Feminists Should Support Immigration Reform

36 thoughts on Feminists Should Support Immigration Reform

1. In before the avalanche of trolls to tell you that this was a thoughtful and persuasive and awesome article. Thanks for sharing!

2. Is it trolling to point out that the article stretches things a bit? For example:

   Undocumented immigrants… live in a world where they have little to no access to resources to report injustices and crimes committed against them without fear of arrest or deportation.

   This isn’t really true in many places.

   Not only do I routinely represent illegal immigrants in our civil courts (usually in wage and harassment claims), but they have routine access to the courts in many other areas. They get the help of the police; they get restraining orders; they get all sorts of things. There are very few judges who will give a hoot about immigration status and many of the state enforcement agencies (wage and hour as a specific example) will specifically look the other way because they would rather bust the employer.

   Now, if you have a deportation order out against you that’s a different story-but the # of people with active deportation orders is very, very, small (and includes a lot of people that feminists might not want to get too strongly behind, such as abusers and violent criminals.)

   Additionally, a slew of laws passed in some states during 2009 and 2010 now allow law enforcement to question individuals about their immigration status,

   This is not as common as you imply. I mean, sure: there’s Arizona and Texas. But then there’s the rest of the country, like, say, California, a/k/a the state where you will be able to go to the RMV as an illegal immigrant and get a drivers license without anyone giving a shit. Or, say, Baltimore, which has specifically established itself as a “sanctuary city” for illegal immigrants Or, say, my own city’s “translator day” in the courts, where a significant percentage of non-English speaking illegal immigrants (I’ve personally known it to be as high as 20% on some days) does their stuff as plaintiff and defendant in front of a judge and the public and a bunch of cops without anyone batting an eye.

   Not to mention that the federal government (who is a pretty big dog in the fight, ya?) is generally against state enforcement.

   Much of what feminists have fought to attain for women over the years is completely devalued when it comes to undocumented women.

   Without the ability to access legal protection…

   This is simply not true, as a legal matter. Having personally seen women obtain restraining orders (which can result in deportation orders, FWIW) against their abusers without suffering INS reports, I can attest to that.

   It is functionally true in some instances, largely as a class/race/language matter, though it’s by no means limited to illegal immigrants.

   Police always respond preferentially to the privileged class; this is an issue which deserves considerable attention but it’s not necessarily related to illegal immigration.

   undocumented women are frequently victims of physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

   I haven’t seen the statistics. How much worse is it than for legal aliens or citizens, if you control for things like race, class, education, etc?

   I agree with one thing: illegal immigrant women who are in a partnership with a US citizen male seem to be at more risk. That particular power imbalance seems to have much more frequency of abuse. Of course, that is also a situation which some people tend to deliberately seek out, especially in the “get married to get a green card” way. that is still pretty common in a lot of places.

   They are confined to violent relationships without the resources or support necessary to help them get out.

   Well, of the many private support places I know of, not one would deny victim assistance based on immigration status. I’m sure it happens, and I don’t think my experience is universal, but I doubt it’s all that common: people who are politically motivated to help victims don’t generally turn them away due to citizenship issues.

   Government entitlement programs (food stamps, etc.) are limited. But I don’t see any way around the reality that you don’t get “citizen benefits” if you aren’t a citizen.

   They are underpaid for their labor, forced to work in unsafe work environments and subjected to sexual harassment from employers.

   Yes. Of course, so are a lot of people, citizens and legal aliens and illegal immigrants alike–enough that there are whole groups of lawyers (hi, nice to meet ya!) who work to sue those employers.

   This is mostly an issue for minimum wage and OSHA, which the feds enforce strictly w/o much concern for legality of the employees. Harassment is always very difficult to prove–it’s hard to prove there as well. But immigration status isn’t the killer in a harassment case; generally speaking, the evidence is the problem.

   The United States needs a more comprehensive plan that provides access to public education

   We already provide a public education to the children irrespective of immigration status.
   We don’t provide a free public education to adult citizens.
   We don’t have any incentive to provide any education to an adult who is at risk of deportation.
   given the relatively small amount of free education that’s out there for citizens, if we WERE going to significantly raise educational opportunities, it would be odd if we did so for non-citizens. It’s not as if there’s plenty to go around.

   supports the unification of families,

   I’m sorry, but that is just crying for a bit of snark: There are two ways to re-unify a cross border family. Deportation is one of them. Admission to the US is the other. As a practical matter “unification” as a goal is neither pro or anti-immigration.

   provides realistic pathways to legal citizenship

   What, precisely, should that be? Who gets it?

   We have a gazibijillion people who want to come to the US. We cannot allow in everyone who wants to get admission.

   How do you propose we select the ones we want?

   -The ones whose admission will benefit current US citizens?
   -the ones who have followed the laws (should we give priority to people who immigrated illegally, or priority to those who did not?)
   -The ones who are local? (do Mexicans get priority over Sudanese?)
   -The ones who are most in need? (see, again, Mexicans / Sudanese)
   -The ones who have the greatest ease of assimilation?

   Right now, what you are referring to as “immigration reform” is a one-show cinema. You focus solely on the needs of one particular group (current illegal immigrants in the US) without practically paying attention to the “negative costs” of your proposals.

   …and gives undocumented immigrants immunity from deportation when they report abuses at work or in other areas of their lives.

   How do you suggest that this would work?

   I ask because this is one of those “good in theory, very very difficult in practice” things. We’re already trying to implement it informally and do a reasonable job.

   But all of the illegal immigrants I’ve worked with are people who will, just like everyone else, do what it takes to get ahead. If you have a rule “report abuse and you get immunity from deportation” then everyone will just start reporting abuse. You need a much more complicated rule. And of course, there’s already a partial rule in place (http://www.law.siu.edu/selfhelp/info/new/domestic%20violence%20and%20immigration%20_2_.pdf)

   1. Undocumented immigrants… live in a world where they have little to no access to resources to report injustices and crimes committed against them without fear of arrest or deportation.

      This isn’t really true in many places.

      I think your added emphasis is misplaced.

      “without fear of arrest or deportation”

      Not everyone is a lawyer, and sees and understands the hidden benevolence of the legal system as you do.

      Try to imagine that people who aren’t lawyers have different perspectives on all the benevolence you’ve pointed out.

3. I am a feminist and an immigration lawyer, and as much as they are two issues that I care about very passionately and am very involved in, I don’t really see immigrant rights as a feminist issue. I don’t think we have to make feminism an umbrella for every injustice that exists. There are important feminist issues within immigration, such as the fact that current (and past, and probably future) immigration reform proposals favor male-dominated employment programs and ignore the child and elder care industries that depend on thousands or millions of immigrant women.
   It’s always worth providing a feminist perspective to an issue or set of issues, but that doesn’t make the whole topic a feminist question, in my mind. The gulag that is our immigration detention system mostly imprisons men, and that has plenty of implications for women too, but only as much as all incarceration is a feminist issue because it . At that point, it seems to broad a definition to have much purpose.
   To me, a feminist issue is one that governs the autonomy and equality of women. Otherwise, it’s an issue to which I bring a feminist perspective.

   1. There are important feminist issues within immigration, such as the fact that current (and past, and probably future) immigration reform proposals favor male-dominated employment programs and ignore the child and elder care industries that depend on thousands or millions of immigrant women.

      Could you say more about this?

   2. Immigration is a feminist issue because so many undocumented women work in hazardous occupations.
      Item: a Knoxville TV station reported on the extremely high rate of birth defects in children of immigrant mothers who worked in East Tennessee’s tomato fields, and who were exposed to pesticides and herbicides while pregnant.
      Item: Studies indicate that the children of carpet industry workers, undocumented or otherwise, have a leukemia rate ten times that of the general population. Dalton, GA was, for many years, a preferred destination of immigrants seeking industrial work; that city is about 1/3 Hispanic.
      These are two examples from “my territory”. American industries are poisoning women and children, and America should be repairing the damage and instituting procedures to prevent recurrences. If y’all haven’t picked spiny okra or itchy beans on a 100 degree day with 90% humidity, you have no idea how heroic an effort must be made to get up and do this every day without giving up, especially with the pitiful wages and appalling working conditions.

4. I think this made a compelling case for why I, as a human being, should care about immigration reform, but not why I, as a feminist, should care about immigration reform. The argument seems to be “because the current system hurts people, and some of those people are women”, which I think then makes everything a feminist issue, and “feminist issue” loses all meaning.

   1. This!

      It’s a good essay, but even from the opening paragraph its sounds more like “If you care about feminism, here are reasons you might care about immigration (in America) too”.
      That might have been a better way to frame it?

   2. Access to reproductive health care isn’t a feminist issue? Mothers loosing custody of their children because of ethnicity, nationality or language isn’t a feminist issue? Incarcerating women for years without a trial isn’t a feminist issue? Low wages and terrible working conditions for marginalized women in caretaking rolls isn’t a feminist issue? Access to education for women isn’t a feminist issue? Power dynamics that allow employers to get away with rape and sexual harrasment aren’t feminist issues? Demonizing maginalized women (mostly POC or indigenous women) for having children isn’t a feminist issue? Not recognizing violence against women as a reason people are refugees isn’t a feminist issue? The disperportionately higher rates of female illiteracy in some communities here and abroad isn’t a feminist issue? Female malnutrition and low birth weight babies among women doing hard manual labor in the USA isn’t a feminist issue? Deporting women to cities where more women and/or childred Cuidad Juarez alone at night isn’t a feminist issue? What am I missing?

      1. Also where do you live that everything on this list isn’t a local issue happening to people within 15 miles of you? I

5. Are these commentators kidding? At this point in feminist history, considering the repeated emphasis in the blogosphere on intersectionality, it should be self-evident that issues which disproportionately affect women are feminist issues — look at how the extremist half of Congress obstructed VAWA for almost 2 years because they claimed it protected undocumented women too much. So yes, most feminists I work with would support immigration reform for this very reason.

   1. I agree. I am afraid that from an intersectional feminist perspective, Feministe is fast becoming a “don’t read the comments” site.

      I also work in immigration law and just off the top of my head here are three cases I’ve dealt with recently that show why immigration is a feminist issue:

      * A woman whose status derived from her husband’s, and who is facing deportation because of his abuse and abandonment of her, which immigration officials have deemed a “personal matter” and not their concern

      * A very young woman whose asylum application, after being gang raped in her home village, was rejected (gender is still not fully accepted as a “particular social group” entitling refugee status to those who are targeted for persecution because of it) and has not been allowed to remain under humanitarian grounds

      * An uneducated woman from a poor country whose only option for economic migration was to turn to a trafficker. Guess what happened to her.

      Granted I am not working in the US system, but similar issues arise there too. The enforcement of border controls affects migrant women’s lives in real and significant gender-specific ways. To deny that it is a feminist issue is to deny that migrant women matter to feminism.

6. Immigration reform will lead to much higher unemployment.

7. Immigration reform only benefits the big business.

8. Pingback: Feminists Should Support Immigration Reform - F...

9. Anecdotes make bad policy.

   On an individual level, you see someone and you want to help them. But when you make rules, you affect everyone, not just your person of the moment.

   * A woman whose status derived from her husband’s, and who is facing deportation because of his abuse and abandonment of her, which immigration officials have deemed a “personal matter” and not their concern

   In the US we have a specific immigration provision to deal with that. It exists specifically to help people (almost always women) who obtain their status through legal residents would otherwise fear that reporting abuse would lose them their immigration status. I linked to it above.

   Does it mean that everyone who claims it will get it? No (nor should it, since it requires some sort of qualification.) It may be that we need to improve accuracy in the system. But a single example of a woman who didn’t meet the criteria is not really meaningful.

   What policy change would you suggest?

   * A very young woman whose asylum application, after being gang raped in her home village, was rejected (gender is still not fully accepted as a “particular social group” entitling refugee status to those who are targeted for persecution because of it) and has not been allowed to remain under humanitarian grounds

   Gender isn’t a refugee qualifier because that would, pretty obviously, put about 50% of every patriarchal women-targeting country in refugee status. Refugees are granted special protections and are given special status w/r/t immigration. You can’t treat half a population as worthy of special protections or you have sort of removed the “special treatment” concept.

   Rape isn’t an automatic qualifier either because–like every other crime–the fact that someone has been horribly victimized doesn’t automatically make them a refugee. If someone tries to murder you and you survive, for example, you’re not a refugee on that basis alone. That analysis is more detailed.

   What would you suggest? After all this is a policy thread, not a “damn the policy, help this particular woman” thread. What policy provision do you think we should apply which is fair, just, or some combination, and which would have helped this person?

   * An uneducated woman from a poor country whose only option for economic migration was to turn to a trafficker. Guess what happened to her.

   What would happen to her under immigration reform? Because–again–there is a tendency to “help the person we happen to be thinking about” even if the results aren’t especially good overall.

   There are many, many, women (and men) who want to make more money and who want to come into the U.S. Would this woman have gotten in ahead of everyone else? On what basis? Why?

   1. Gender isn’t a refugee qualifier because that would, pretty obviously, put about 50% of every patriarchal women-targeting country in refugee status.

      No, it wouldn’t – any more than the race, religion and nationality categories qualify every member of those groups for refugee status if they come from a particular country. They still have to show that they are personally at risk of persecution; it’s only in relatively rare and extreme circumstances that simply falling into a certain category would be qualification enough. Anyway, as the UNHCR guidelines point out, the size of a group is not relevant to whether it qualifies as a particular social group for Convention purposes.

      If someone tries to murder you and you survive, for example, you’re not a refugee on that basis alone.

      If someone tries to murder you because of your membership of a Convention category, that may well be deemed to constitute persecution depending on the broader context in which it occurs. There is absolutely no logical reason that sexual violence against women couldn’t be subject to the same sort of analysis that we give to violence targeted against other categories of people. None whatsoever.

      To be honest, this is the same conversation I have with border defenders in every country – “Well it’s too bad about that woman’s situation, but sure if we let her in we’d have to let in everyone in similar circumstances and we just can’t be letting that happen.” Even to some feminists, protecting state borders is more important than protecting women’s bodies. To me, that says it all about why immigration is a feminist issue.

      1. Wendy Lyon June 25, 2013 at 9:51 am | Permalink | Reply

         Gender isn’t a refugee qualifier because that would, pretty obviously, put about 50% of every patriarchal women-targeting country in refugee status.

         No, it wouldn’t – any more than the race, religion and nationality categories qualify every member of those groups for refugee status if they come from a particular country. They still have to show that they are personally at risk of persecution; it’s only in relatively rare and extreme circumstances that simply falling into a certain category would be qualification enough.

         We are not disagreeing.

         Anyway, as the UNHCR guidelines point out, the size of a group is not relevant to whether it qualifies as a particular social group for Convention purposes.

         Eh. Are we speaking technically or practically here?

         If someone tries to murder you because of your membership of a Convention category, that may well be deemed to constitute persecution depending on the broader context in which it occurs.

         Sure, of course it can. You didn’t mention anything of the kind in your post.

         There is absolutely no logical reason that sexual violence against women couldn’t be subject to the same sort of analysis that we give to violence targeted against other categories of people. None whatsoever.

         It’s a trickier context. Certainly it is merely another form of victimization if you’re doing another analysis: “I suffered ___ because of my political views” is a valid refugee issue whether ___ is “beating” or “killing” or “rape.”

         We certainly consider FGM as basis for protected status, for example–there’s no reason to refuse to do so for rape. But rape is unfortunately so common that it is often NOT linked to specific persecution.

         To be honest, this is the same conversation I have with border defenders in every country – “Well it’s too bad about that woman’s situation, but sure if we let her in we’d have to let in everyone in similar circumstances and we just can’t be letting that happen.”

         Yes. When you are dealing with a country of 300 million people then you have to have a set of rules, you can’t function on a per-person basis.

         If you want to argue that a particular person should get in, you should be prepared to address the policy. Otherwise it’s meaningless in the broader sphere. That’s why I keep asking you what your policy suggestions are (none of which you have answered.) “admit everyone who was raped?” “Admit all women?” “Admit everyone who claims they are a refugee, without further inquiry?” Something else?

         Forming policy through anecdotes is a really bad way to make policy. You can certainly make an argument for a policy change. But if you’re entirely opposed to the “we need rules” argument then I don’t understand why you’d comment in a policy thread.

         Even to some feminists, protecting state borders is more important than protecting women’s bodies. To me, that says it all about why immigration is a feminist issue.

         Well, some folks seems to think that feminism is inherently antithetical to the concept of national identity and border control, i.e. the concept that countries should be able to decide who they do or do not want to let in. A subset also believes that a government’s role should be to generally improve the world, irrespective of effects on its citizens.

         Other people think that most governments are inherently charged with benefiting their citizens, and that countries are entitled to control their borders. That is, to put it mildly, a controversial issue.

         Women’s bodies are important. The question isn’t whether we should consider women’s bodies (of course we should.) The question is really “where does that particular issue fall on the larger rankings of things we should consider?” If by a “feminist” you mean “we should consider women’s interests as one of the factors” along with everything from “men’s interests” to “economic concerns” to “broad international issues” then immigration should be (and is!) a feminist issue.

         If by “feminist” you mean that we should prioritize women’s interests over those other interests, then you have a lot of explaining left to do. Because you don’t just need to show that women have important interests; you need to show that they’re more important than the other things.

         As much as folks like to try and duck anything that they call “oppression olympics,” sometimes it is sort of unavoidable. Like here.

         If we devote a significantly larger %age of our immigration resources to helping one group, then we will almost certainly end up devoting fewer resources to helping another group. Do you want to give amnesty to all of the local central and south american illegal immigrants? Well, then, either you have to manage to obtain a sea change and admit everyone, against a pretty strong majority (good luck with that…) or you have to recognize that we’ll end up admitting fewer people from other countries.

         This isn’t usually discussed, because it’s a lot easier to get sympathy for someone (“let Sympathetic Sally in to the USA!”) than it is to answer the trickier question “if we’re admitting less than 100% of applicants, and we have to make an admit/deny decision for everyone, then why should Sympathetic Sally be in the “admit” group instead of these other folks?”

         1. rape is unfortunately so common that it is often NOT linked to specific persecution.

            My point is that often rape is the specific persecution, in the same way that FGM is. It is often specifically used by men as a means of persecuting women. Sometimes this is linked to another Convention ground, sometimes it is pure misogyny – and when it is the latter, and when it is committed either by the State or with the collusion or acquiescence of the State, it ought to be treated in the same way as we treat violence against people committed on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation etc. There really is no good legal argument for not doing so – all the arguments either come down to a floodgates fear (which is unwarranted for reasons I’ve already stated), or to the ingrained idea that men’s sexual violence against women is somehow “different”.

            I’m sorry that I missed where in the OP it said “this thread is only for offering or commenting on specific policies, not for discussing why immigration law is a feminist issue”. I note that you haven’t questioned the contributions of the commenters who didn’t discuss policy while saying they don’t think it’s a feminist issue. Wonder why that is.

            Since my policy stance matters so much to you, though, I would fall into the “border controls are antithetical to feminism (and to human rights generally)” category. So I have no sympathy for your argument that we shouldn’t let in some women because then we might have to keep out some equally deserving men. But my point in all this is that as long as border controls continue to exist, the way that they are enforced has gender-specific implications for women in a lot of different ways (which my anecdotes were intended to illustrate) – and that is why immigration law is a feminist issue. I really don’t see how this is a difficult concept.

         2. Thank you for your posts, Wendy.

10. I guess the question I have after seeing this comment thread is: how do the people here define “feminist issue”? My personal definition from stuff I’ve seen around the blogosphere would be “an issue that would benefit from a feminist analysis/praxis, or requires a feminist lens in order to be (better?) understood”, but it sounds like others here define it as “issues integral to the practice of (what I understand to be mainstream) feminism”. Which…cool, I guess; I’m not exactly terribly attached to my definition, since it’s one I cobbled together on my lonesome and all, but it sounds like defining the common understanding of the term more clearly would stop a lot of the disagreements I see.

    1. Immigration reform is disastrous for low income workers.Studies have consistently showed that immigration reduces wages for home grown population.

       1. Bla. Bla bla blu. Abloo abloo abloo. Wooooooooo.

          Woof.

          1. Bla. Bla bla blu. Abloo abloo abloo. Wooooooooo.

             Woof.

             I like the way you phrased that.

          2. I like the way you phrased that.

             😉 Thanks.

             Really, I don’t know what else to say to foxy at this point. I figure if I make aggressive non-sense at them they’ll go the fuck away eventually.

       2. And the traditional remedy for this has been organizing the newly immigrated workers. It’s a lot better than racist bullshit.

    2. My personal definition from stuff I’ve seen around the blogosphere would be “an issue that would benefit from a feminist analysis/praxis, or requires a feminist lens in order to be (better?) understood”

       I love this, mac. Thanks for saying it so well.

       1. Aww, thanks ^__^

11. I miss bfp.

    1. Me too

       1. Me three.

12. I’m confused. Why would I tuck away my feminism for any issue dealing with people? If it’s about people then it’s a feminist issue for me. Gender plays a HUGE ROLE in interpersonal interactions and there are no better or more accurate frameworks for me to understand the way gender plays a role in social issues than the ones offered under the name of feminism.

13. There’s a lot of headdesk worthy stuff in the comments section, and I don’t have a lot of energy to argue back, but I will say that I hope many of you will watch Frontline/Univision’s documentary Rape in the Fields. It takes on one issue that for many women is frequently made worse and more complicated because they are undocumented.

    And contrary to what A Lawyer, says, many communities that have lots of members who are undocumented have mistrust of law enforcement and/or simple unwillingness to engage with police. I have grown up in such a community and sadly many people have the mantra “I don’t want to get involved,” and this can mean that people try to settle things among themselves or that they won’t report violent crime. I survived a public sexual assault with bystander effect in place and no one calling the police even though I was clearly not consenting to what was happening. I attribute a lot of that to the unwillingness to “get involved.” People (documented immigrants, undocumented immigrants, and citizens) not having to fear calling attention to themselves would help a lot when it comes to reporting violent crime.

    I know I’m mostly talking about sexual assault here, but there are a wide variety of reasons here that immigration reform is so important…

    1. Yeah, the comments here are puzzling. I haven’t commented on Feministe lately since domestic violence work has swamped my life, but some of these comments are ignorant enough that I had to drop in to point out intersectionality is, y’know, an accepted facet of modern feminism?

14. Here’s the link to the Frontline program:
    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/rape-in-the-fields/

15. Immigration Reform(whatever that solution is), LGBT Rights, Racial Equality etc. are all feminist issues because they affect women negatively to a much higher degree than their male counterparts.

    Actively separating them and saying those aspects are not important especially aspects that are unchangeable like one’s race, sexual orientation and so fort are cause for concern. Any woman especially a white women who tries to tell me, a black woman that my race has nothing to do with the conversation on gender equality is not a person i deem intelligent. In fact, it points out to me that she is only fighting for gender equality only for a certain group of women and not all women as one would think.

    Dismissing it with straw man arguments and the other such fallacies does not change that fact. Some group of women are privileged over other groups of women in each of those identities whether it be white women over women of colour in all aspects of life , heterosexual women over homosexual, bisexual transgender and queer women in all aspect of life. And many of those identities are not exclusive. You get the point and i’m not even bringing in the male privilege into it yet. That very imbalance should make it obvious that all those identities and causes intersect and are crucial to fighting equality for all women.

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