Next Steps for Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal

The final meeting of the group reading Undocumented, by Aviva Chomsky, met on Thursday, July 27.

Next Steps for Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal

At the last meeting for the book Undocumented, we looked at and discussed a series of political cartoons and read Sarah Stillman's piece, The Mothers Being Deported by Trump. Here are our next steps:

What will we do as a result of reading this book and participating in the book group?

• Have conversations with our colleagues about issues related to immigration
• Include more content about immigration in our teaching and give students space to talk about how immigration has affected them
• Look for places in our teaching where we can reframe the narrative around immigration
• Look for more research to counter racist assumptions around immigration
• Follow how rhetoric is used to cast immigration and sanctuary in a negative light and counter this negativity
• Getting to know our colleagues to see if they are involved outside of school and if not, make suggestions about how they can get involved
• Have conversations with people to help push their thinking
• Get more involved with the Caucus of Working Educator’s Immigrant Justice Committee
• Take notes from the book for myself and then use them in conversations to counter stereotypes or fallacies
• Get more involved in my daughter’s school
• Work within my political organization – DSA – to push for Medicare for All that includes undocumented immigrants
• Have more one-on-one conversations in school to make sure everyone has had the chance to be trained since the professional development session around immigration and immigrants will not reach all school personnel and will miss many (security, police, lunch aids, administrative support, cafeteria, cleaning staff, substitutes, bus folks) who interact in multiple ways with students
• Continue to work with New Sanctuary Movement (NSM) and the Pennsylvania Immigrant and Citizenship Coalition (PICC)
• After the professional development session check in with building representatives to make sure all staff have the opportunity to learn the material and offer to teach people like the secretary
• Eventually remind the SRC that all staff are important to schools and to the education of children and so all staff need to learn and be involved in professional development
• Have a more intentionally open mind to listen more to immigrant families about what would be useful to them in the schools
• Continue to teach about immigration and immigrants and to challenge students to challenge the sound bites
• Look for more ways to support at-risk immigrants
• Continue to share information

Undocumented: How Immigration became Illegal, Meeting 2

The book group reading Undocumented: How Immigration became Illegal has been identifying themes found in the book and unpacking those themes and applying them to present day.  

Some things we have discussed include:

• The use of the law by those in power to develop, maintain, and enforce unjust social and economic structures
• The inherent contradictions in the immigration issue in the US: 
• On the one hand the economy relies on very low wage workers like immigrants, but on the other these workers are criminalized because of how they arrived
• The US claims to be a nation of immigrants but has demonstrated hyper-xenophobia over the last 150 years 
• For people from the US and Europe, freedom to travel is considered a birth right but freedom to travel does not apply to others
• The United States government demanded that US citizens in China be subject to US law, instead of local law
• Migration to the US has not really changed.  What has changed are the laws;
• “Illegality is a way to enforce a dual labor market and keep some labor cheap, in a supposedly postracial era. Illegality uses lack of citizenship – that is, being born in the wrong place – to make workers more exploitable” (P. 39)
• The cruelty of US policy across centuries: the treatment of Chinese and Filipino immigrants who built the railroads that produced incredible wealth for this country but who were then tossed aside; the use and abuse of Mexican migrants who engaged in circular migration to come to work in agriculture and who were lynched by the Texas Rangers (after whom we have named a baseball team); and the current policy of the Border Patrol to not search for migrants at the border but to wait until they are dehydrated and starving in the desert so that it will be easier to deport them are just some examples;
• The role of hegemony in getting people to buy into the myth that immigrants are causing problems and that “our” ancestors immigrated “legally” when so-called illegal immigration did not exist until 1965.  Chomsky notes that Europeans ‘have used religion, race, and nationality – that is, countries and citizenship – as organizing principles to divide people into categories and castes. Each has been used hierarchically to justify social inequalities and differential legal treatment of different groups. Once status is inscribed in the law, this becomes an automatic justification for inequality: “It’s the law!”’ (p. 24).
• The use of laws to justify covert racism. As with Blacks, criminalization could no longer happen because of race so immigrants of color were criminalized for their status (p. 15) and special laws were developed for them, not unlike the Rockefeller laws
• The use of law, and the internalization of believing that law is good, makes the process of dehumanization easier
• Immigration is the flipside of inequality

The third meeting will be on Thursday, July 13 from 3:30-5:00 in Center City. Location TBD

Undocumented, Meeting 1

List of themes from the first meeting for Undocumented:

• Abuse
• Contradictions
• Kindness
• Racism
• Money
• 14th Amendment 
• Visibility/Invisibility
• History
• Unification of identity groups
• Education

The third meeting will be on Thursday, July 13 from 3:30-5:00 in Center City. Location TBD

 

Join the Caucus and TAG for the 4th Annual Summer Reading Series!

Since 2014, educators, students, parents, community members, and organizers have come together over the summer to participate in a summer reading series focused on racial and social justice themes.  More than 400 people have participated in more than 35 reading groups that have taken place across Philadelphia.  Our reading series builds our membership; develops our leadership ability; and fuels our organizing to build our power as a union, our work as teachers, and our relationships with each other.  

This year, based on survey results, WE and TAG are excited to announce 15 book groups.  You can join groups organized by the Philadelphia Black History Collaborative; educators focused on ending white supremacy; members of the immigration justice ItAG and committee; and leaders in the Restorative Practices Project.  Other groups will focus on building organizing skills; reading empowering works of fiction; growing our historical and current understanding of systems and structures that form our education system.  For the first time, we have a reading group meeting in the Northeast, and groups reading books paired together around a common theme.

This summer, we continue the tradition of bringing together people from all walks of life and all parts of the city -- parents, teachers, nurses, counselors, activists, community members, students, andanyone else!  All are welcome!  Please sign up here!

And come to the Summer Kick-Off Happy Hour on June 9, from 4:00-7:30PM at Maximum Level Lounge (5118 Sansom Street) to find out more about the reading groups, celebrate the end of the year, enter a raffle to win a copy of one of our books, and join the movement for racial, social, and education justice in Philadelphia.                    

Want to learn more about past book clubs?Read this article on the Summer Reading Series in Perspectives on Urban Educationby WE supporting member Kathleen Riley.