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An editorial perspective from the Harvest Institute--submitted to EU by LaSandra Stratton

IMMIGRATION HARMS BLACK AMERICA

"Immigration's impact on native Blacks and their communities is disproportionate, direct and devastating," said. Dr. Claud Anderson, president
of The Harvest Institute, a Black-focused research, policy and education organization. Anderson said that the hidden national employment rate of Blacks
is 35%. In cities like Baltimore, Detroit and Pittsburgh, Black unemployment is well over 45%. In New York, unemployment for Black men tops 51% and the national youth unemployment figure is nearly 80%. 

 

In the 1930s, government declared a national emergency when total unemployment reached 25%. Native Blacks are a labor class that the government and private industry are allowing to become obsolete while they reach out to foreign born immigrants to fill shrinking employment opportunities. The Harvest Institute opposes amnesty for illegal immigrant aliens, guest worker programs, and supports increased restrictions on
illegal and legal immigration until the nation first lifts the legacies!  of slavery and Jim Crow on native Black American. Dr. Anderson said, "Most civil rights groups and elected officials turn a blind eye to the fact that current immigration laws and public policies advantage new immigrants above Blacks and bestow benefits and rights to foreign born that native Blacks still strive to acquire but have never enjoyed."
    

Research from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) indicates that immigrants drive down the wage scale and displace  native Black Americans in skilled and unskilled jobs. Businesses often claim that immigrants perform jobs that Americans will not. Low wage  immigrants relieve businesses of the need to pay living wages. Jobs in America pay immigrants wages 10 to 20 times what they
would earn in their homelands. Minimum wage is not a liveable wage for most Americans. At the same time, there are many categories of jobs that  native Blacks would like to perform, but immigrants are often preferred.

 

Both governments and the private sector ignore native Blacks as a source of labor for jobs  the economy needs. Dr. Anderson, author of best-selling books that include, PowerNomics: The National Plan to Empower Black America, once a high ranking member of the Democratic party said, "Both political parties ignore and patronize native Blacks who, across the economic strata, increasi!
ngly resent the preferential treatment bestowed upon immigrants."
 

According to Anderson, "The Harvest Institute's mission is to correct some of the historical legacies of exclusion by  helping Black America to become more self-sufficient and competitive as a group.

The Harvest Institute bases its opposition to increased immigration on the Constitution which mandated the United States government to correct the effects of slavery on Blacks. Laws created slavery and enslaved Blacks as a group.
Therefore, to emancipate slaves and to change government policies that were legal under slavery but illegal after emancipation, Congress passed corrective laws and Constitutional Amendments. Congress mandated Due Process and Equal
Protection for Blacks in the 13th and 14th Constitutional Amendments, and in the
1866 Civil Rights Law mandated that "...all levels of government [to] use all necessary means to lift all the badges and incidents of slavery off the
shoulders of black people."

 

None of the mandated corrective actions have ever occurred. Nor did the civil rights laws and social integration of the 1960s lift the "badges and incidences of slavery" from native Black Americans. Instead of implementing the required corrective measures, the federal government enacted policies which advantaged immigrants over native Black
Americans.
 

The immigration policies of the United States have made native Black Americans this nation's only planned, permanent, involuntary minority-loser.
Immigration hurts Blacks more than any other population group in America in the following ways:

*   The legacies of the slavery and Jim Crow legal regimes continue to affect native Blacks. Of all the nation's population groups -Whites, Asians, Blacks and Native Americans- native Blacks have the highest unemployment, lowest median household income and the lowest number of businesses. Immigrants compete with native Black Americans and displace them economically, from housing, their neighborhoods, businesses, education, employment, affirmative action programs
and in the nation's conscience.
 

*   Any amnesty policy that accepts the 11-20 million illegal aliens would extend immigration rights to additional family members. If each illegal
immigrant brought even two people, the resultant 40 million would completely decimate and even nullify the voting strength of 36 million native Black
Americans;
 

*       According to CIS, immigrant headed households consume more in public services than they pay in taxes. The fiscal burden ranges from $11 billion to $20 billion above the net gain from having immigrants in the work force. The
corporate elite benefit most from increased immigration. Native Black taxes are used to help lift immigrants and provide services to them such as health care and educational opportunities, that are not available to native Blacks.
 

*   Affirmative action programs, originally intended as corrective action for Blacks, have been converted into preference programs for immigrants. However,
ninety percent of immigrants are classified as White and Whites are excluded from affirmative action programs, why then are uninjured immigrants included in these programs?
 

    Immigration has erased the 10% income gains that native Blacks made between 1956 and 1966, the years of the civil rights movement.

    Responsibility to enhance the lives of native born Americans should be a higher priority of the United States government than creating opportunities for
foreign born. The Harvest Institute recommends that Congress and the Administration work to eliminate the disparities between immigrants, legal and illegal, and native Blacks in America and adopt the following policies:

  1)    Restrict immigration and train native populations, especially unemployed and unskilled Blacks, as a new labor pool;
 

  2)    Immigration reform should include resources to establish economic development programs such as community banks to specifically alleviate the
direct negative impact on native Black communities;
 

  3)     Require all immigrants that seek American citizenship to demonstrate knowledge of Black history and the contributions native Blacks have made to the development of this nation;
 

  4)   Reform existing immigration law to treat Haitian refugees equal to Cuban refugees;         increase the number of immigrants of African descent until their numbers match the percentage of Asians, Arabs, and Hispanics who have migrated to the United States, legally and illegally over the last 40 years;
 

   5)   Remove  immigrants from affirmative action programs which were initially intended to address the native Black racial problem.

(For more detailed information see the Information Alert posted at www.harvestinstitute.org)
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Another Perspective

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African-Americans have a stake in supporting immigrant rights

By Alan Jenkins

April 12, 2006

Black Americans should stand together with undocumented immigrants.

Watching the landmark demonstrations by immigrants and their supporters, few could miss the parallels with the historic protests of the 1960s that helped power civil rights laws and moved our country closer to equal opportunity.

Now, in African-American communities, newspapers and chat rooms around the country, those parallels are part of a pointed debate: Would giving undocumented immigrants lawful pathways to employment and citizenship be good or bad for black Americans?

While immigrant labor could reduce the salaries and competitiveness of low-wage black workers, immigrants are also consumers whose demand for goods and services can create new jobs and rejuvenate neighborhoods where black people work and live.

But a narrow focus on employment figures misses the point.

The stake African-Americans have in the immigration debate is not just a matter of economic quid pro quo, but of national values, shared destiny and the kind of country we want to be.

Demanding respect for the dignity, equality and human rights of all people is central to African-Americans' history and consciousness, as well as to our own advancement.

Black abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth spoke out for the rights of women of all races, as well as for African-Americans.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached the ideal of mutuality, that "whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly," and that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Progressive African-American leaders in today's debate are increasingly advancing the same inclusive vision.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., argues that, at the same time that we attend to border security, "we must allow undocumented immigrants to come out of the shadows and step on a path toward full participation in our society."

NAACP President Bruce Gordon is calling for immigration policies "consistent with humanitarian values and with the need to treat all individuals with respect and dignity."

And Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has said, "We do not need to adopt policies of jailing, deporting and criminalizing immigrants to protect ourselves from the real threats of terrorism."

The real threats to African-American opportunity derive not from the United States becoming a nation of immigrants -- which, in fact, we have always been -- but from our becoming a nation of Wal-Marts, a nation of prisons and a nation in which a disaster like Hurricane Katrina can happen to our nation's most vulnerable members.

Large employers like Wal-Mart increasingly abandon health coverage, pensions and living wages for their workers. They also thwart unionization, which has historically lifted the status of African-Americans, along with millions of other Americans.

Rigid sentencing schemes and unwise law enforcement practices have led to huge and disproportionate increases in the imprisonment of blacks and Latinos for nonviolent and drug offenses.

And we'll never forget those graphic images from the Gulf Coast of desperately poor people abandoned by our government -- or the knowledge that we've not adequately helped those people get back on their feet.

In each case, African-Americans and immigrants find themselves in a common, disadvantaged position.

Immigrants had nothing to do with causing those problems. But they are increasingly part of the solution.

The coalition supporting earned legalization for immigrants -- such as business owners seeking low-cost labor and politicians seeking Latino votes -- do not tend to support other policies necessary to expand opportunity for all, like living wage laws, civil rights and fair labor enforcement or universal health care.

But immigrants, especially those who do the hardest, lowest paying work, understand the importance of those protections. So do African-Americans.

As a matter of conscience and a matter of progress, supporting the inclusion of undocumented immigrants as part of a broader agenda for opportunity makes sense for African-Americans -- and for America.

Alan Jenkins is executive director of The Opportunity Agenda, a communications, research and advocacy organization with the mission of building the national will to expand opportunity in America. His past positions include director of Human Rights at the Ford Foundation, assistant to the Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice and associate counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. He can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org.

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