Читать книгу The Politics of Immigration (2nd Edition) - David Wilson - Страница 14

5. Is It Easy to Be “Illegal”?

LIVING IN THE UNITED STATES WITHOUT valid immigration status was never easy, but it has become extremely difficult over the past two decades as politicians have enacted a multitude of anti-immigrant laws at the federal, state, and local level. Fear of being apprehended and deported limits opportunities and causes stress and anxiety that can have a negative impact on the physical and mental health of undocumented immigrants and their children.¹ Such fear, which intensifies anytime raids take place, also makes undocumented immigrants more vulnerable to labor exploitation and more likely to be victims of crime, and poses serious challenges to integration. Still, out-of-status immigrants can and do push back against this climate of fear by organizing to defend their rights and demand change.

What’s it like to live here “illegally”?

Immigrants who lack documents may have trouble finding a place to live, opening a bank account, applying for jobs, registering for school, or getting medical treatment. In most states, laws block “out-of-status” immigrants from seeking driver’s licenses. People without legal status often try to avoid traveling, since buses, trains, and even private cars may be stopped by officers checking immigration documents.

Such restrictions force many out-of-status immigrants into situations that are sometimes risky (such as keeping their savings in cash, and avoiding hospitals) or illegal (driving without a license). As they become more vulnerable, out-of-status immigrants are more likely to be exploited by unscrupulous employers, landlords, immigration law “consultants,” and others who try to take advantage of them, knowing they will be hesitant to report abuses.

Even some immigrants with “permanent” legal residence are now at risk because a past arrest or conviction makes them eligible for deportation under retroactive laws passed in 1996. They too may be trapped, unable to travel, and living with the daily fear of being detained and deported.²

Undocumented immigrants are often separated from family members for years, even decades. Tightened border enforcement means they can no longer visit relatives or friends back home without risking everything they have built here—and sometimes their lives. Even those immigrants who have family members here have generally been forced to leave other loved ones behind. Many immigrants come from close extended families, making the separation especially painful.³

It’s often the love they feel for their families that leads people to migrate. “Our situation doesn’t give us the luxury to live together and live well; it can’t be done,” Mexican immigrant Ramón Castillo explained to filmmaker Heather Courtney in the 2001 documentary Los Trabajadores (The Workers). Unable to make ends meet in Mexico, Castillo left his wife and two daughters behind to find work in Austin, Texas. He sent most of the money he earned back home to pay for his daughters’ schooling, in the hopes that they could become professionals and have a better future. “You either live well, or you live together. If you live together, you don’t live well, because there isn’t enough to live on. If you live well, you need to leave your family to make good money, so they can live well.”⁴

How can you tell who’s undocumented?

The United States has no national ID card for its citizens, because so many people see national ID cards as an infringement of privacy rights and civil liberties. This means there is no easy way for the authorities, or anyone else, to figure out who’s an immigrant and who’s not.

We can’t distinguish a native-born U.S. citizen from an immigrant by their physical appearance or accent, since native-born citizens have diverse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, just as immigrants do. The “equal protection” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment makes it unconstitutional to question people just because of the way they look or talk.⁵

In reality, law enforcement officers make judgments about whether someone is an immigrant based on their own prejudices, but it can be difficult to prove that they’ve engaged in racial profiling. The Supreme Court made it still more difficult in 1996 by ruling that to challenge an arrest, you need “to show that the government declined to prosecute similarly situated suspects of other races.”⁶ Still, the profiling of immigrants has at times been challenged successfully. In July 2005, an immigration judge in Arizona halted the deportation of four high school students arrested during a school trip to Niagara Falls, ruling that Border Patrol agents had illegally singled them out for questioning on the basis of their appearance. The four students were from Mexico, but had lived in the United States since they were children.⁷ In May 2013 a federal judge found that the Sheriff’s Office in Arizona’s Maricopa County had used racial profiling in making traffic stops of Latinos. The judge ordered notoriously anti-immigrant Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his officers to undergo training to prevent further unlawful detentions, and required the county to compensate people who were detained in violation of the court order.⁸

If questioned by government officials, immigrants, even those who have become U.S. citizens, have the burden of proving they are in the United States legally. Native-born citizens, by contrast, cannot be required to show identification proving their status. It’s a federal crime to lie to an agent, but if you decline to tell agents that you were born outside the United States, then unless they have evidence, the burden of proof remains on them to demonstrate that you lack legal status.⁹ However, it can be extremely difficult to stay silent during questioning and to resist coercion; most of the time agents are experienced at getting people to admit that they are not native-born citizens. Even if you don’t reveal your place of birth, they can detain you based on suspicion for several weeks.

Do undocumented people live in fear?

Out-of-status immigrants don’t necessarily live in a state of permanent, intense fear, because it’s too stressful to live that way, but many do experience ongoing, heightened levels of anxiety. Spouses or other relatives left caring for the home may worry daily about whether family breadwinners will fail to come home that evening because they have been detained at work. Children may be anxious and unable to concentrate at school because they are afraid their parents will be arrested and deported.

When immigration raids occur, they often set off a wave of terror within the affected communities and beyond. People become afraid to venture into the streets, even to shop for food or take their children to school. The kids who do make it to class spend the day worrying about losing their parents. In April 2006 immigration agents arrested 1,200 workers across the country in a single day as part of an investigation into the pallet company IFCO Systems; at the same time there were separate raids in Florida towns for immigrants who had been ordered deported. The sweeps sparked what Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center director Cheryl Little called “the worst climate of fear … in more than two decades.”

“People are scared to even go in the streets now, fearing they are going to be picked up, questioned,” said Dennis D. Grant, the Jamaican-American senior pastor of Restoration Ministries in Margate and Miramar, Florida. “They are in a state of panic right now.”¹⁰

The same thing happened in early January 2016, when the federal government began rounding up Central American refugee women and children whose petitions for asylum had been denied. Rumors about the operation spread quickly, creating alarm even in communities where no raids had yet taken place. Nancy Hiemstra, a professor of migration studies at Stony Brook University, described how such raids set back immigrants’ efforts to integrate into society. Noting the impact on one undocumented resident, the mother of a friend of her own children, Hiemstra wrote: “All fall she had been walking to a nearby church three times a week for English lessons, and proudly testing out her new language skills on neighbors. But now, she’s too scared to continue.” The woman told Hiemstra: “My husband says I shouldn’t even go to the kids’ school, not even for the concert coming up; we can’t risk it.”¹¹

Are undocumented immigrants victims of crime?

Some people believe out-of-status immigrants are especially likely to commit crimes. That’s a myth that multiple studies have proven false.¹² In reality, undocumented immigrants are disproportionately likely to be victims.

A 2009 survey the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) carried out among 500 low-income Latinos in five areas of the South (including U.S. citizens and both documented and undocumented immigrants) found that the undocumented had “become prime targets for robbery and other crimes.” Criminals know the victims “are unlikely to go to the police,” the SPLC researchers wrote, and they know that “because most undocumented immigrants can’t open bank accounts … they are more likely than others to be carrying large sums of cash.” Muggers see immigrants as “walking ATMs,” according to an immigrant rights advocate working in New Orleans.¹³

Immigrant victims of domestic violence also have a low rate of seeking help from authorities. A survey conducted by the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit immigrant service agency Ayuda in 1993 noted that 83 percent of the battered immigrants interviewed did not contact law enforcement agencies about their abuse. One-fifth of the women surveyed reported that abusive partners had threatened them with deportation or refusal to file immigration papers.¹⁴ A 2009 study by the Family Violence Prevention Fund had similar findings. Though intimate partner violence “is not more prevalent, and, in fact, is probably less prevalent, among immigrant and refugee population groups,” the study said, factors like fear of deportation and discrimination “make it especially difficult for victims in these populations to seek or obtain help.”¹⁵

Immigrants are also targeted in hate crimes. For example, in Farmingville, Long Island (New York), in 2000 two white men carried out a premeditated racist attack against two undocumented Mexican day laborers, beating them nearly to death. Because of the violence of the assault, and the publicity that accompanied it, the attackers were sentenced to twenty-five years in prison for attempted murder. In November 2008 Ecuadorian immigrant Marcelo Lucero was stabbed to death just a few miles away in Patchogue, Long Island, during an attack by a group of seven teens who had been regularly assaulting immigrants—a practice they called “beaner hopping.” The teens received prison sentences ranging from six to twenty-five years.¹⁶

Attacks on immigrants seem to have jumped dramatically from 2004 to 2012, at a time of stepped-up anti-immigrant rhetoric from politicians and the media. The government’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) estimated that although the overall number of hate crimes remained about the same over this period, the percentage of hate crimes that were based on ethnicity, including attacks on “foreigners,” rose from 22 percent to 51 percent of the total. People living in households with an income under $25,000 were especially likely to be victims in the estimated 293,800 non-fatal hate crimes that took place in 2012, and Latinos had the highest rate of victimization in relation to their population share. Immigrants who are perceived as Muslim, Middle Eastern, or South Asian have also been targeted, especially after September 11, 2001. The BJS estimated that the percentage of hate crimes motivated by religious bias reached 28 percent in 2012, nearly three times what it was in 2004.¹⁷

Can immigrants get driver’s licenses?

One major obstacle for many undocumented immigrants is the lack of official identification. Without government-issued IDs, they are frequently barred from opening bank accounts, signing contracts and leases, reporting crimes to police, or entering public buildings. Sometimes they can’t even go to their children’s schools for parent-teacher conferences.

Most states refuse to issue driver’s licenses for people without legal status. Supporters of this policy claim that having a license allows immigrants to get benefits they aren’t entitled to—and even helps terrorists. “One of the reasons the 9/11 terrorists were so successful was because they had access to official identification,” Ira Mehlman, media director of the anti-immigration Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), said in 2014. But the September 11 attacks had nothing to do with undocumented immigrants. The hijackers all came to the United States legally, with visas, and most of them still had valid status when they carried out the attacks. Eight of them had obtained non-driver IDs from the Department of Motor Vehicles in Virginia, a state that barred out-of-status immigrants from getting driver’s licenses or non-driver IDs.¹⁸

Issuing licenses actually helps fight terrorism by getting accurate information into government databases, according to national security experts. There are also traffic safety issues: research suggests that expanding opportunities for drivers to get tested, licensed, and insured would reduce the frequency and cost of vehicle collisions.¹⁹

The situation seems to be changing. Eleven states had laws as of 2013 giving access to driver’s licenses or other identification regardless of immigration status. In 2013 alone, eight states enacted laws expanding immigrants’ access to licenses. Meanwhile, cities with large immigrant populations have begun making municipal ID cards available to all residents. New Haven, Connecticut, started the trend in 2007, and as of 2015 eleven other cities had issued their own cards, including Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. The New Haven program has “helped residents feel like New Haven is home and they’re a part of the community,” the city’s communications director, Laurence Grotheer, said in 2014. “For immigrants, it begins the process of assimilation and puts them on the road to full community participation.”²⁰

Do immigrants have the right to an education?

All immigrant children, regardless of their status, have the right to public education through the high school level. The Supreme Court upheld this principle in the June 1982 Plyler v. Doe decision, overturning a Texas state law that sought to deny school funding for undocumented students.²¹

The situation is more complicated when it comes to higher education institutions such as universities and technical schools. Though many countries consider higher education to be a universal right, the United States generally treats it as a privilege. Still, many community colleges and public universities in the United States provide accessible degree programs to city or state residents. Before 1996, it didn’t matter if those students were immigrants living here without permission from the federal government.

Section 505 of the 1996 Illegal Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) barred states from granting reduced tuition to undocumented state residents unless non-resident U.S. citizens in the same circumstances get the same privilege. As of April 2006, only about 5 to 10 percent of undocumented young people who graduated from high school went on to college, compared with about 75 percent of their classmates.²² The result was that many thousands of immigrants who came here as young children, had been educated in U.S. public schools, spoke English just like people born here, and felt as “American” as anyone else, now found themselves without a future. Denied in-state tuition, unable to qualify for financial aid under federal rules, and unable to work legally, they got stuck in low-paying jobs and shut out of more promising opportunities.

Angela Perez, a Colombian immigrant, didn’t even apply to college despite ranking fourth in her 2004 graduating class with a 3.8 grade-point average. “It feels awful,” she wrote in an essay during her sophomore year. “I feel frustrated. I try hard until I accomplish something and I do not want all my accomplishments to be a waste of time. I want them to be valuable. I want to be able to pay my parents back after all their support and the difficulties they have lived in order to bring me here.”²³

Out-of-status students who did manage to get through college were still unable to pursue a career without legal status—like Kathy, another young immigrant, who graduated from Nyack College in New York with a degree in social work, but could only get a job as a nanny. “Graduation was the most depressing day of my life,” she said.²⁴

Since 2004, undocumented youth and students have organized to win substantial changes. By June 2014, at least seventeen states, the states where the majority of the country’s undocumented immigrants live, had passed laws allowing undocumented students to qualify for in-state college tuition if they attended high school in the state for a certain number of years and graduated. (The state laws comply with the 1996 Act by allowing U.S. citizens who meet the same state high school attendance and graduation requirements to get the same tuition rate, even if they no longer live in the state.)²⁵

Sustained organizing by undocumented young people led the Obama administration to launch the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in June 2012, allowing many undocumented immigrants who came here as children to apply for two-year work permits and a temporary reprieve from deportation. By the end of fiscal year 2015, nearly 700,000 people had been granted DACA.²⁶

What’s it like to work here “illegally”?

Lack of legal status forces many undocumented workers into jobs where they earn less money and face more dangerous conditions than other workers. Not wanting to draw attention to their situation, and afraid of losing the jobs they have, undocumented workers are often reluctant to fight for better wages or working conditions. Many are scared to join unions, and until recently few unions made an effort to organize them. Those out-of-status immigrants who do try to defend their workplace rights face an uneven playing field. Employers may suddenly decide to fire workers who lack documents, or use the threat of raids and deportation to squelch organizing efforts.²⁷

Several studies show that undocumented workers get paid less on average than authorized immigrants with similar skills and experience.²⁸ A lot of undocumented immigrants are paid poorly because they have less than a high school education, but they’re still paid less than other workers without a diploma. Out-of-status men who worked off the books in Los Angeles County’s huge underground economy made an average of $16,553 a year in 2004, according to a study by the Economic Roundtable, a nonprofit research organization; out-of-status women averaged just $7,630. Although they worked in major industries like apparel and textile manufacturing, these workers were paid far below industry standards, and much less than other workers who didn’t finish high school; in 2004 the median earnings for male high-school dropouts nationally were $23,192 a year, and $17,368 for women.²⁹

A 2012 study on working conditions in Durham, North Carolina, had similar results. Researchers interviewed 339 Spanish-speaking male immigrants in 2006 and early 2007. On average, the undocumented workers made about $17,268 a year; they were likely to be working off the books, and most didn’t receive sick leave, paid overtime, or paid vacations. The survey ended just before the collapse of a housing boom. About 70 percent of the men surveyed worked in construction, so the “serious vulnerability of immigrant Hispanic men, already evident even under peak economic conditions, undoubtedly worsened further still with the [2007–2009] recession,” wrote the study’s author, University of Pennsylvania sociologist Chenoa Flippen.³⁰

A higher proportion of people of color, women, and the foreign-born are paid less than the minimum wage, compared to whites, men, and the native-born. Undocumented workers in low-paid jobs get singled out for the worst treatment of all. A survey of more than 4,000 low-wage workers in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City in the first half of 2008 found that just 5.6 percent of native-born whites reported being paid less than minimum wage; the number was 16.6 percent for Latinos (including both immigrants and people born here). Black workers, both U.S.-born and foreign-born, were even more likely to report minimum wage violations than foreign-born Latino workers. Some 25.7 percent of the authorized immigrants who were surveyed experienced minimum wage violations, compared to 36.7 percent for unauthorized workers.

The workers who suffered the most were undocumented women: 47.4 percent said they had been paid less than the minimum wage. (Undocumented women are also most likely to serve as childcare or home care workers, and these occupations were most likely to be associated with wage violations among those surveyed.)³¹

Do immigrants work more dangerous jobs?

Undocumented workers appear to have a far higher rate of fatal injuries on the job than other workers. Fatal workplace accidents jumped 72 percent for Latinos between 1992 and 2005, while the rate for other workers dropped by 16 percent; by 2005 the fatality rate for Latinos was the highest for any group of employees, at 4.9 per 100,000 workers. Although most Latinos are not immigrants, a special report in the Chicago Tribune concluded that the victims were largely undocumented immigrants.

A 2009 article in the journal Demography reached similar conclusions. Although foreign-born workers accounted for about 11 percent of workplace fatalities in 1992, they made up 18 percent by 2005, with about 960 deaths each year. The authors noted that the immigrants’ increased share in fatalities “coincide[d] with a surge of immigrant inflows, particularly of undocumented immigrants, in the wake of economic crises in Latin America.”³²

Workplace fatalities continued to decline slightly for most workers after 2005, but the rate for immigrants was still at 18 percent in 2011. The great majority of the 843 immigrant workers who died that year were Latino, and it’s likely that most were undocumented. “As recession has taken hold, employers have tightened their belt,” Migration Policy Institute director Muzaffar Chishti told WBEZ radio in Chicago. “And many of the labor standards, especially related to safety, go out the window.” Chishti noted that undocumented workers are the most vulnerable, since they are less willing to speak up for their rights.³³

An in-depth 2001 report in the Long Island daily Newsday suggested that the deaths of immigrant workers are also less likely to be investigated, especially if the workers are undocumented. The report charged that the government’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) failed to investigate 874 of the estimated 4,200 job-related deaths of immigrant workers between 1994 and 1999. A report by OSHA’s Office of the Inspector General disputed the charge but found that the agency needed to develop “a comprehensive strategy for reaching all non-English-speaking employees, including undocumented immigrants.” A 2013 study of construction workplace deaths in New York City, where 74 percent of fatal falls in construction involved “Latino and/or immigrant” workers, found that OSHA was “ineffective” and “understaffed because of inadequate funding.”³⁴

Doctors and others who work with injured migrants say non-fatal workplace accidents are underreported, since out-of-status workers are afraid of losing their jobs or being deported. Dr. Eileen Couture, head of clinical care at Oak Forest Hospital in Cook County, Illinois, told the Chicago Tribune: “You say this [accident] has to be reported and they say, ‘You don’t understand, I need my job. You don’t understand, I have to feed my family.’” ³⁵

Even when they do report an injury, out-of-status workers can’t count on getting help. Francisco Ruiz, an undocumented Mexican, was injured in 1997 in Charlotte, North Carolina, when a crane hoisting him collapsed; the injury left him partially paralyzed and unable to work. His employer’s insurance company, Companion Property & Casualty, refused to pay any compensation beyond his initial medical bills and fought him in court for nearly six years on the grounds that he was “illegal.” His case drew attention because he was one of the few undocumented workers who have managed to fight back and win; the insurance company ended up having to pay him $438,000.³⁶

Are immigrants protected by labor laws?

Under existing federal and state laws, as the courts have generally interpreted them, all workers, including immigrants, have certain rights, whether or not they have the federal government’s permission to work here. Many workers don’t know their rights, however, or are scared to exercise them because of their vulnerable immigration status. Despite these obstacles, undocumented workers have successfully defended their rights through the courts, or through grassroots public pressure campaigns, with the help of workplace justice advocates.³⁷

All workers have a right to be free from discrimination in the workplace, including discrimination on the basis of race, religion, national origin, language, or accent.³⁸ All workers have the right to join a union, or to organize themselves in defense of their common interests. Most workers have the right to be paid minimum wage for the hours they have worked, plus overtime if they work more than forty hours a week. (There are a number of exceptions to federal minimum wage and overtime rights for some types of jobs. These exceptions aren’t based on immigration status, although some of the affected labor sectors like agriculture and domestic work tend to have a high proportion of unauthorized workers.)³⁹

All workers have a right to a healthy and safe workplace. As of April 2013, twenty-eight states provided compensation to all workers injured on the job, regardless of immigration status; a few excluded the undocumented, and other states hadn’t confronted the issue. However, a 2008 survey of 1,432 workers in low-wage industries in New York City found that only 11 percent of those seriously injured on the job filed claims for the compensation to which they were entitled.⁴⁰

Federal and state courts have generally upheld workplace rights for undocumented workers. For example, the courts agree that all workers should get compensation in cases of discrimination, and that employers who have violated wage or overtime requirements must compensate workers for the unpaid wages they earned.⁴¹

A number of judges have noted that it is unfair and harmful to all workers to allow employers to exploit undocumented workers and then escape their responsibilities in court by arguing that the workers’ lack of immigration status means they have no right to compensation. In June 2002, U.S. district judge Whitman Knapp of the Southern District of New York ruled that clothing manufacturer Donna Karan International Inc. was not entitled to learn the immigration status of a group of workers who were charging the company with maintaining sweatshop conditions. Knapp said the possibility that the information would be used to intimidate plaintiffs outweighed its relevance to the case.⁴² In a September 2002 case in Illinois, Rodriguez v. The Texan, a federal judge noted: “It surely comes with ill grace for an employer to hire alien workers and then, if the employer itself proceeds to violate the Fair Labor Standards Act … for it to try to squirm out of its own liability on such grounds.”⁴³

But in a March 2002 ruling (Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v. NLRB) the Supreme Court seriously undercut one important labor right guaranteed in the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA)—the right of workers to organize.

The employer in the case illegally fired an undocumented employee named José Castro in retaliation for his efforts to organize a union. Previously the company would have been forced to reinstate Castro and pay him the wages he would have earned if he hadn’t been fired, but the Supreme Court ruled that since the worker was unauthorized, the company couldn’t reinstate him and didn’t need to pay him for the work he’d missed. “Back pay is the only out-of-pocket cost that an employer incurs by illegally firing a worker,” four labor law experts noted in April 2003. “After Hoffman, an employer who violates the [NLRA] does so without suffering any economic loss” if the workers are undocumented. This “means that one of the most effective deterrents to further violations is no longer available.”⁴⁴

Still, the Hoffman decision doesn’t affect most other labor rights. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) confirmed in June 2002 that it wouldn’t inquire into the immigration status of workers claiming discrimination, and wouldn’t consider such status when investigating cases. “Make no mistake, it is still illegal for employers to discriminate against undocumented workers,” EEOC Commissioner Leslie E. Silverman insisted in a press release.⁴⁵ The U.S. Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) confirmed in 2008 that it would enforce the minimum wage and overtime laws “without regard to whether an employee is documented or undocumented.” However, because of Hoffman, undocumented workers who file discrimination claims usually won’t be able to win reinstatement in their jobs.⁴⁶

Do immigrants have constitutional rights?

The Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the Constitution, ratified in 1791) refers to the rights of “people,” not citizens. The First Amendment specifically guarantees freedom of speech and of religion, and “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Under the Bill of Rights, freedom from “unreasonable searches and seizures,” from deprivation “of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” from “excessive bail,” “excessive fines,” and “cruel and unusual punishments” are rights guaranteed to all persons—not only to the citizens of the United States. The Sixth Amendment guarantees any defendant in a criminal case, citizen or not, the right to a speedy public trial by jury with the assistance of a lawyer. Article One, Section 9, of the U.S. Constitution indicates that anyone can use the writ of habeas corpus to go before a judge to challenge his or her imprisonment.⁴⁷

But all these and other rights were systematically and openly denied to most people of African descent from the beginning. Slavery remained legal and continued to exist for another seventy-four years after the Bill of Rights was ratified. The Supreme Court declared in the Dred Scott case of March 1857 that people of African descent, whether slave or free, did not have an inherent right to U.S. citizenship.⁴⁸ Because it defended this injustice so blatantly, the Dred Scott ruling actually fueled the movement against slavery. In December 1865, after the Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified, banning slavery, “except as a punishment for crime.” In July 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, stating:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Even here, where citizenship rights are defined, the last two clauses very clearly refer not to citizens but to “any person” and “any person within [a state’s] jurisdiction.” This language clearly extends due process rights and equal protection to immigrants, regardless of their legal status.

Do immigrants have the right to protest?

The First Amendment guarantees that everyone has the right to take part in public protests, including immigrants as well as U.S.-born citizens. Some people feel angry or resentful when they see immigrants exercising these rights, as when thousands marched and rallied across the United States between February and May of 2006 to defend immigrant rights. There seems to be an unspoken but widely held belief that out-of-status immigrants should stay “in their place” as silent cogs in the labor machine—hardworking, quiet, fearful, and out of sight.⁴⁹

During the civil rights movement of the 1960s, African Americans who rose up against segregation and oppression saw similar reactions from whites, even among those who supported their civil rights in theory, but thought they should wait patiently for them rather than march.⁵⁰

What rights don’t immigrants have?

Today, equality under the law exists on paper for African Americans and other citizens of color, although in practice they suffer from pervasive discrimination and their rights are often violated with impunity. Non-citizens do not have true equality even on paper.

The way the courts have interpreted the laws and the Constitution, immigrants don’t have the right to be here in the first place; even if you’re a legal permanent resident, your presence here is considered a privilege.⁵¹ Through this twist of logic, the government claims it can deport any non-citizen for virtually any reason, or for no reason at all, including longtime residents with green cards. So in practice, noncitizens can be denied a number of rights that should be guaranteed to “all persons,” such as free speech, freedom from unjustified imprisonment, and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment. If you are a non-citizen, you can be deported for exercising your freedom of expression, imprisoned without being charged with a crime, or exiled for life from the country you consider your home.

The Dred Scott case is a reminder that even when the Supreme Court upholds discriminatory policies as the “law of the land,” we can fight back and eventually win policy changes that reflect the values of freedom, justice, and equal rights. Court decisions don’t happen in a vacuum; when the people move, the courts eventually follow. As Riva Enteen, program director of the National Lawyers Guild’s San Francisco chapter, put it in a 2002 interview: “It takes a political movement to create a political context in which the courts respond and, frankly, do the right thing. So, if there wasn’t a civil rights movement, the Supreme Court would not have [made its 1954 ruling in the] Brown v. Board [of Education case] to integrate the schools.”⁵²

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will,” noted prominent African-American writer, orator, and anti-slavery activist Frederick Douglass in a speech in August 1857, a few months after the Dred Scott decision.⁵³