Sole Survivor: The Natasha Aeriel Story

The Elephant In The Room: How Immigration Sabotaged Black Americans

The mainstream media goes out of it's way to avoid the topic of the role that exploding levels of immigration - legal and illegal -  plays in the deplorable social and economic conditions of Native Black Americans who populate the nations urban centers.

The Elephant In The Room: How Immigration Sabotaged Black Americans 

 

 

While these migrants provide a level of cheap labor that benefits business owners who employ them, immigration negatively impacts the working class and Black Americans in particular.

50 plus years of unfettered immigration has had a devastating impact on Black urban communities; helping to widen an already almost irreversible chasm between wealth and poverty.

American policy has historically allowed the massive influx of low-skilled foreign labor to displace Native Blacks in the work force. Also, most current Black leaders have no desire or are afraid to call this reality into question.

However, recent events at the border make this issue hard to ignore and we must address it as often as possible to re-frame the narrative to one that reflects the dire nature of the situation on the ground.

As early as 1895 Booker T. Washington recognized the negative impact of immigration on Native Black workers and addressed it in his famous Atlanta Exposition Address. He pushed his audience of powerful White industrialists to halt the importation of millions of workers from Europe to fill factory jobs created by the Industrial Revolution. Washington implored them to "put down your bucket where you are", and to cast their lot with underemployed freed slaves and their descendants.

They did not heed his request and immigration continued to flourish. It wasn't until the 1920's, spurred by economic concerns and ethnic prejudice that America's "open door" policies were tightened. The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 was enacted and put in place the first instance of numerical limits on the number of immigrants who could enter the United States.

The Immigration Act of 1924, made these quotas stricter and permanent and also introduced the visa system we still use today.

On the heels of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, considered to be a major advancement for American Blacks, The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act did away with long-standing national origin quotas that favored European immigrants and replaced it with one that emphasized family reunification and skilled immigrants.

This policy all but made the 1964 Civil Right Act a moot policy as it relates to Black Americans.

The explosion of immigrants and their descendants fueled by the Immigration Act of 1965 was unforeseen by most (although I have my suspicions on it being a calculated move to offset Black progress).

Between 1965 and 2015, in absolute numbers, there have been roughly 59 million immigrants to arrive in the United States; flooding unskilled labor markets causing low income workers wages to decline even further.

An often ignored dynamic created by unfettered immigration, one that adds insult to an already injurious condition, where we had to contend with regular, run of the mill White Racism but also with discrimination via a phenomenon described by Philip Martin of the University of California at Davis as "ethnic networking". Ethnic networks or immigrant networks, though illegal under the auspices of the 1965 Immigration Act, are created when immigrants achieve either numbers or power within an enterprise (There is power in numbers). Once a level of influence is achieved these workers will begin to recruit friends and relatives to fill vacancies that arise. This type of infiltration causes a depression in wages and eventually leads to changes in workplace culture, language, etc., which may cause native workers to feel out of place and many are ultimately displaced altogether. So not only are Black Americans forced into competition with immigrant workers they then turn around and pay higher prices for goods produced by the same immigrant labor.

In addition to this vicious cycle eating away at Black economic progress, systems put in place to rectify centuries of chattel slavery and exploitation against Native Blacks, namely Affirmative Action, had to be shared with newly arrived bodies with numbers that eclipse their own.

The fact of the matter is there has been an over proliferation of unfettered immigration, many times under the guise of "diversity and inclusion" and it has occurred at too rapid a pace to be properly managed and it's effects accurately gauged.

I am advocating for a moratorium on the importation of foreign workers as a way to begin improving economic conditions of Blacks who populate the inner cities. This type of policy would also benefit recent immigrants whose labor realities are also challenged by additional immigration.

The current administration has set us on a crash course for economic disaster and has spawned a border crisis of historical proportions via Executive Actions and policy changes with the intention of dismantling immigration enforcement and controls on one hand and subsidizing massive amnesty proposals on the other.

Americans must demand that our political leaders make every effort to protect American workers' interests here at home and this means protecting our borders against illegal immigration as well as managing legal immigration in a way that ensures the prospects and stability of the native workforce.

Putting a halt to immigration for a time would be a cost efficient and simple fix to many issues caused by unfettered immigration and we already have systems in place to help us toward that end.

Here are 5 ways we can shore up American borders and protect American workers:

1. Fully Reinstate Title 42 which allows the denial of entry of migrants who pose a health risk regardless of age.  Issued by the CDC Title 42 allows CBP to quickly expel people caught entering the U.S. illegally due to the Pandemic. The Biden Administration has exempted unaccompanied alien minors creating an incentive for families to send their children to the border.
2. Require those seeking asylum to make a claim in the first safe nation and require asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their claim is heard. No more "catch and release".
3. Reinstate agreements with all Northern Triangle nations, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, to accept and protect asylum seekers closer to their home countries.
4. Make every effort to ensure all families and unaccompanied minors who come here illegally are reunited safely - at Home.
5. Allow ICE to do it's job by removing arbitrary limitations on who may be arrested or removed as well as abolish all sanctuary cities.

Lowering immigration numbers would just be a start in solving the myriad and tortuous  problems of Black Americans, much more needs to be done, but we must force the conversation.