May 1, 2008 6:51 PM
The Immigration 101 series tracks my immigration law course at Hofstra University School of Law.
I remember a village had a meeting about their "immigrant problem" some years ago. An official from the old INS was on hand to hear what folks had to say. They told them the INS officer that they expected a roundup of "illegals" to begin immediately. He responded that they had told him where the Latinos were, but not the undocumented aliens.
A lot of immigrant-haters want race to be a stand-in for immigration legal status. Brown=Illegal in their calculus. But the courts have held the opposite to be true. Most Latinos in the U.S. are U.S. Citizens or Lawful Permanent Residents. This means that when the police encounters a person who is Latino, that person is much more likely to be here legally than to be here illegally. So, brown skin is actually a marker of lawful presence, not, as the bigots would have it, of illegality.
This is why ICE can't just roll through Hempstead and stop and question all the Latinos about their legal status.
Now a lot of the unbiased Hispanophobes tell me that "Legal" Latinos should have no objection to being singled out by ICE because of the color of their skin, being questioned about their very right to live here because of their accent, and having to produce evidence of legal status, even if they were born here. Of course, these are often the same folks who complain about having to have their shoes inspected before boarding a plane!
Read other parts of this series:
Immigration 101 is a comprehensive series on American immigration law for the layperson. This series tracks my course on immigration law at Hofstra Law School and answers many of your questions about immigration policy.
Here is the current list of articles in this series.
Immigration 101 Overview of the Immigration System
Immigration 101 Employment Based
Immigration 101 Family Based Immigration
Immigration 101 So what makes up a family
Immigration 101 History We need a new Ellis Island
Immigration 101 Coming to the U.S.
Immigration 101 Stopping 'em at the border
Immigration 101 Don't Give Me Your Poor
Immigration 101 Free Speech Part 1
Immigration 101 Free Speech Part 2
Immigration 101 Keeping the Chinese Out Part 1
Immigration 101 The Chinese Exclusion Act Cases Part 2
Immigration 101 Employer Sanctions Part 1 Introduction
Immigration 101 Employer Sanctions Part 2 How employers evade the law
Immigration 101 Employer Sanctions Part 3 The impact of sanctions on immigrants
Immigration 101 ICE Storm-An on the ground look at raids
Immigration 101 Sept. 11 and immigration
Immigration 101 How the Sept. 11 Hijackers got into the United States
Immigration 101 Becoming a Citizen Pat 1
Immigration 101 Becoming a Citizen Part 2 Good Moral Character
Immigration 101 Becoming a Citizen Part 3 English
Immigration 101 Becoming a Citizen-Part 4 What is an American?
Immigration 101 Becoming a Citizen-Part 5 What does an American believe?
Immigration 101 Becoming A Citizen Part 6 A confident view of who we are
What do you think it will take for the mainstream to actually see these tactics as racist?
By Charlene Obernauer May 17, 2008 12:20 AM