By Sylvia Barnard, member of Amnesty International Group 361
One of the big problems now facing American society is its flawed immigration procedures. A great deal is written and spoken about illegal immigrants.
Because, particularly on the East Coast, family history often centres on a brave immigrant who crossed the ocean alone, often as a teen-ager, and made it successfully, people actually ask why people don’t come legally now. Beginning in the nineteen-twenties and continuing through the great depression and the floods of would-be refugees from Fascism, new regulations were put in place and quotas strictly enforced. Few Americans are aware tha the famous Trapp Family Singers entered this country on the Italian quota because of Captain Von Trapp’s Italian mother. The people admitted in this time period were normally talented individuals, musicians, scholars, or scientists.
The ancestor most Americans recall from the turn of the twentieth century was much more like the would-be Hispanic immigrants of today. He or she had little money or education but a boundless appetite for hard work and sacrifice for the next generation and, failing serious medical problems, such immigrants were fairly routinely processed through Ellis Island and other entry points. The comparable immigrants today have no such avenue available.
One aspect of their fate is the frequency of detention in a prison setting. In 2009 Amnesty International issued a report called USA: Jailed Without Justice which asserts that 30,000 immigrants are detained each day. International human rights law forbids the use of such detention for persons accused of no crime. Over 75% of the immigrants who enter the United States do so legally and are quickly absorbed into the society, but unauthorised immigrants are a vulnerable minority. “Illegal immigrant” is an inappropriate term like “illegitimate child” and the correct name for them is “unauthorised immigrant,” because, like being born, crossing a national boundary is not of itself a crime.
The top three countries from which these people come are Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala, giving rise to the stereotype that they are all Hispanic, but they come from many other places as well. A more recent Amnesty report (2012) entitled In Hostile Terrain describes human rights violations experienced while crossing from Mexico. The building of fences along the border has forced people into the desert where many die of thirst and disorientation. In the July 5th, 2013, issue of the UK Guardian Weekly (pp.20-21) there is an article about the death toll among migrants who are forced by the fences to cross via Arizona. This group experiences about one death a day. About half of these deaths occur on the Tohono O’odham Indian reservation, which does not allow water stations to be set up on its territory. Although the Indians are sometimes blamed for this, a reason is to deter drug smugglers who cross the same terrain as the would-be immigrants. In fact, the “coyotes” who guide the immigrants are often themselves drug smugglers.
Two of the bad outcomes for people who want to enter the USA without authorisation are imprisonment and death in the desert. For those who make it, there are severe restrictions on their lives, a constant fear of deportation, and workplace vulnerability. All these issues deserve the consideration of Amnesty members and supporters.