posted on: Tuesday, April 06, 2010

By Christine Reeves

Can you remember your biggest worry at age 14?

Now, try imagining that you’re 14 again. Only this time, you don’t speak English. You also don’t know anyone around you, and you don’t look like many of them either. Yesterday, you left your country, home town and parents. Today, you arrived in America—this enormous, daunting beacon of legendary opportunity, about which you heard so much, but know so little… what’s your biggest worry, now?

Motivated youth come here from around the world, live with relatives and learn in American schools. Then, their work ethic bolsters and broadens the American economy, because they pursue both the American dream and the transcontinental dream of sending money back to their families, who couldn’t journey with them. This dual dream is a heavy burden to shoulder—especially for the 14-year-olds, who harbor too many worries.

Here is where Asian American LEAD and the venture philanthropists supporting it step into play. Last week, I attended AALEAD’s 11th Annual Dinner and Award Ceremony that honored remarkable immigrant students and Mario Morino, the chairman of Venture Philanthropy Partners. Morino and AALEAD operate under the arithmetic proof that:

Low-Income, Asian American Children + Education & Opportunity
=
Successful, Self-Sufficient Asian American Adults

Recognizing that education and opportunity must persist inside and outside the classroom, AALEAD offers five forms of youth development: (1) after-school child intervention, (2) safe space, (3) mentoring, (4) family support and (5) advocacy. Although all the aforementioned ingredients catalyze success and self-sufficiency, I believe the fifth—advocacy—is most critical. Advocacy doesn’t just support needs of current AALEAD children and their families; it also engages and empowers communities around a common goal, demands the attention and accountability of policymakers, achieves staggering returns-on-investments, and benefits countless future generations of low-income, immigrant children. In sum, advocacy is the silver bullet for long-term systemic change that shatters almost any glass ceiling. Yes, advocacy poses challenges. Yet, how many more challenges would new Americans face if advocates hadn’t organized against historical immigrant discrimination. Where you would be without those advocates of the past?

In its short history, America has witnessed four waves of immigration. Each wave brought advocates, who improved our country by railing against discrimination that spanned from heinous and unconscionable slavery, to abusive indentured servitude, to disguised racial quotas.

From 1700 to the outbreak of Revolutionary War, the first major wave included over 450,000 willing immigrants, who made high-risk, high-reward ventures to the American colonies. Then, in 1807, abolitionist advocates (including members of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade) slowed immigration even more, by supporting legislation that outlawed importation of slaves, a trade that had forced approximately 375,000 Africans onto American soil.

From the 1820s until the Long Depression of 1873, the second wave brought 7.5 million willing immigrants. As a direct result of the Irish Potato Famine, approximately one-third of those immigrants were Irish. Upon arriving in America, the Irish—just as the Italians, Jews, Asians, and countless other groups—faced intense discrimination. However, Irish advocates (such as Boston Mayor James Michael Curley and New York Governor and Presidential candidate Al Smith) soon elevated their people’s lot by collectively advocating for their unalienable rights and campaigning for political office.

The third wave, from the 1880s until the Great Depression of 1929, brought another 23.5 million willing immigrants. These newcomers endured some of the most egregious discrimination policies. Basically, by 1882, Congress added a few clauses to Lady Liberty’s welcome; America would accept “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” so long as they weren’t beggars, contract laborers, mentally disabled, illiterate, unaccompanied minors, or people who hailed from the “Asiatic Barred Zone.” In 1921, Congress ensured a white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant majority, regardless of how much the U.S. population grew. Congress accomplished this by passing legislation that required the percentage of immigrants from each country match the percentage of Americans claiming ancestral origin to that country in the 1910 census.

The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act amended the racist quotas system and thus triggered the fourth wave of immigration. It took over a generation of advocates to help overturn the 1921 law. Yet, today, discrimination still permeates the U.S. immigration system. Instead of country of origin, laws favor highly educated, skilled workers. This makes sense, but we must evaluate treatment of uneducated, unskilled workers, who also help our society. Foreign migrant farm workers, for instance, “take the jobs Americans don’t want,” because many U.S. farmers know that when they lower wages enough, no American will want the jobs. Then, historically, the government comes to the rescue by granting temporary work visas for foreign migrant farm workers, who harvest Americans’ produce at almost any wage, working condition, or health risk. At the end of the picking season, these foreign migrant farm workers are forced home. It’s twenty-first century indentured servitude, minus any hope of a legal path to citizenship. A myriad of nonprofits (including Center for Community Change), foundation affinity groups (including Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy and Hispanics in Philanthropy), and individuals (including class action attorneys Edward Tuddenham and Sarah Cleveland) champion this cause, but justice requires more champions.

I am not insinuating a solution to America’s complicated and contested immigration problems, and I certainly don’t support policies for granting every interested immigrant American citizenship. I only offer two suggestions. First, advocates for any side of this multidimensional debate should obtain a holistic and compassionate understanding of history; because short-sighted leaders are dangers, especially when their arguments exhibit more volume than credibility. Second, I hope all policymakers choose humility over hypocrisy, by seeing themselves in the immigrants whose futures they control.

Ultimately, unless your ancestors trekked the Bering Land Bridge following the last Ice Age, none of us is more American than anyone else. Whether our families came by Mayflower in 1620, or by airplane yesterday—and regardless of our legal status—we all should be entitled to basic human and civil rights. So, as we consider immigration policy or nonprofits that advocate for immigrants, let us remember that America is the home of the brave immigrant.

Photo Credit:

http://www.mansfieldct.org/Schools/MMS/staff/stratton/TL20Website/Immigration_files/image002.jpg

Christine Reeves is field assistant at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP).