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| Pro-immigrant banner at Mets game. Photo: Rise and Resist |
The evening of September 7 protesters
from
Rise and Resist
dropped a banner at a Mets game reading: “Immigrants Make Baseball Great.” When
they tweeted out a
video of
the action, the usual suspects responded with tweets about “legal
immigrants.”
This is a standard response from
the right wing. The irony is that for the past two and a half years the Trump
administration’s focus has been on cutting legal immigration. The travel
ban was about excluding legal immigrants who were Muslim. The measures against
asylum seekers target people exercising their legal right to apply for asylum
(which they have even if they “entered without inspection”). The “sh--hole
countries” remark was about legal immigrants from African countries. So it’s
blatantly dishonest for the right to bring up legality when the goal is really
just to exclude certain people.
We need to keep exposing this
hypocrisy every time we
encounter
it.
But is this really
worth the effort? Many people simply use the term “illegal” as a code word to
disguise their racism; they give themselves away when they say someone “
looks
illegal.” But some are actually confused and think they are upholding
an idea of the United States as a “nation of laws,” and it’s important to keep
the issue clear: the right wing’s agenda is limiting
all
immigration—legal or otherwise—by poor people of color.
Note: John Oliver has provided an
informative guide
to the Byzantine process for getting legal immigration status.
Join authors Jane Guskin & David L. Wilson for a
participatory discussion of themes from their book, The Politics of
Immigration.
