Excerpts from my award-winning article on "The Impact of Neo-Immigration on African-Americans." To read the entire 4000-word article visit my website, (uraihfields.freehomepage.com), at the bottom of this page. Then click on "Custom3 Page."

What is the position of African-Americans on immigration and what role should they play in the immigration debate?

A major factor that nobody is willing to talk about during the current debacle-prone debate on immigration within and outside of the legislative chambers is the impact, beginning with the presidency of Ronald Reagan, of immigration on African-Americans. The immigrants referred to here are those from Mexico and South America, a large percentage of whom illegally entered the United States. They compose seventy percent of all the immigrants who came to the United States during the last twenty-five years.
There is much rehetoric about the need for these immigrants "to do work that Americans want do." Those who say that should cease spouting out this unmitigated lie. Think for a moment about the people who did that work prior to 1980, including the period of slavery. We are told that Hispanics, the name used in America for Mexicans and other Spanish speaking people south of the United States, are doing 24 percent of the work in agriculture, 17 percent in the cleaning sector, and 9 percent of the construction jobs. Many others are employed in service jobs such as restaurants and hotels. And their work is by no means restrictred to these categories. At least 7,000.000 of these illegal immigarants are Mexicans. They make up 5 percent of the American work force.
According to the U.S. Census, in 1980 there were 14,808,873 Hispanics and 28,495.025 African-Americans in the United States. In 1990 the number of Hispanics increased to 22,354.059 and the number of African-Americans to 29,988.080. In 2006 the African-American population is 35,000.000 and the Hispanic population is 40,000.000. with an additional 10,000.000 undocumented Hispanics their numbers are estimated to be 50,000.000 and that number is increasing by 2,000 a day. From 1980, when the Hispanic population was 14,808,873 and the African-Ameican population was 28,495.025 to the present, African-Americans have increased by 6,000.000 while during that same period the Hispanic population has increased by 35,000.000. Should this trend continue by 2030 there will be more than 70,000.000 Hispanics in the United States. At present there are 300.000.000 people in the United States and 7,000,000.000 people on Planet Earth.
With these facts and figures in mind there are a few observations that need to be made in order to put the matter of this discussion in historical perspective. With the state of Texas being in limbo because Mexico never fully recognized Texas independene at the time that the United States wanted to make Texas a state, in 1845, President James Polk, the 11th president of the United States, sent a diplomat to Mexico with an eminent-domain-like offer to purchase New Mexico and California from the Mexican government. He also wanted Mexico to agree to establish the Rio Grande river as the border between the two countries, which would make Texas part of the United States. President Polk sent military forces to the Rio Grande area where they won battles. By mid-1846 there was fighting in California and Los Angeles came under the control of the U.S. military forces. Subsequently, the U.S. Army seized Mexico City. Shortly after the New Year of 1848, the peace Tready of Guadalupe-Hidalgo was completed and the war ended. ... In the late nineteen sixties, about the time African-Americans gained their civil rights, after more than a decade of intense civil rights struggle that began in the mid-fifties under the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the deaths of some freedom fighters that included the assassination of King, white Americans, especially white leaders, recognized that by law they had to cease practicing racial discrimination in the workplace, treat African-Americans with dignity and give them pay equal to that received by whtie workers doing similar work. Particularly in these two areas white controllers devised ways to get around the law by (1) establishing private schools to circumvent having to send their children to schools attended by black children and (2) employing immigrants to do menial and common labor. To accomplish the latter they employed non-American Mexican laborers to take jobs, many of them that would have been availabe for black workers who these employers did not want to employ. They recognized that they could pay illegal immigrant workers less than they would be required to pay black workers and not have to be concerned about violating the law because these workers were not U.S. citizens, and besides they had the support of federal, state and local governments in excecuting this racist scheme. ...
When illegal immigrants were just adversely impacting black Americans it did not concern the politicians and was not considered by most Americans to be a problem. As a matter of record, it was hailed as being good for America. But since their presence in America is threatening white Americans it seems to matter a lot. And this national security rhetoric attached to any discussion on immigration is nothing more than a smoke stream. Earlier it was mentioned that many of the costruction jobs are held by Mexicans. Prior to Mexicans holding these jobs many of them were held by white men who received union or descent wages. Coupled with this is the horrendous, but what thirty years ago would have been considered an unimaginable, leap Mexicans have made during the last twenty years in politics. Today, the Hispanic list of elected politicians include two U.S. Senators, a Governor, a Lt. Governor, the Mayor of America's second largest city and there are many others. So, with this flexing of Mexican power immigrants have become a problem for white Americans, at least that is the perception.
Bringing and allowing Mexicans and other Hispanics to come to America to become America's new Negroes started as s simple means of securing non-American laborers as and alternative to employing black American, who following their gains in civil rights had for the first time since being in America, considered themselves to be full U.S. citizens entitled to the same rights, including wages, enjoyed by white American citizens. Today, this once managable and profitable exodus of Mexicans from a land of poverty to America has become a Frankenstein that is neither solvable or managable, at least not by handling it in the traditional way that America's controllers have responded when confronted by those considered to be underclass or less than "red-blooded" Americans. The magnitude of the immigrant issue and the new awareness of immigrants demand a different methodolgy than the American government has ever used in achieving a peaceful resolve. To reiterate, the influx of the undprecedented waves of immigrants coming to America have not only adversely affected African-Americans but also white Americans.
It is worth noting that many of the rights Mexicans did not enjoy when they were called "wetbacks," but now enjoy, were made possible by the civil rights struggle forged by black Americans. These include the right to vote, access to nondiscriminatory education, health care and welfare benefits; rights that the parents and foreparents of African-Americans were denied. When I was a boy growing up in Alabama I had to walk to school, six miles one way, because the school bus that passed me was for only white students. ...
The impact of neo-immigration is much greater on black Americans than on white Americans. Elucidation on the five headings listed below will show the magnitude of the impact of immigration on African-Americans. (Note I will list the areas here. In order to read the full context read this article on my website. This is a "must read" section.). They are:
1. Black employment, (2) Housing, (3) Prisons and Jails, (4) Black Community and Black Frustration, and (5) Black Political Power. ...
What should be the response of black people to immigration? First, it seems that blacks should insist that the language presently being used, i.e., "illegal immigrants" and "undocumented immigrants" be deemed antiquated and inappropriate. It is even questionable as to whether these people should be called immigrants. Nobody refers to President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney as immigrants; nobody, perhaps, with the exception of Native Americans. Even during slavery when an African-American was considered as stated in the United States Constitution to be three-fifth of a person he was considered to be a citizen, at least for tax purpose. Of course, he did not enjoy three-fifth of his citizenship rights. It just maybe that if we begin calling so-called illegal immigrants citizens that this alone will be fifty percent of the solution or a manageable approach to this hot-button issue. ...
African-Americans' awareness that they were denied their citizenship rights before neo-immigration became a problem and that these immigrants, no less than slaves of former times, were brought, allowed and encouraged to come to America, in part, to replace them in the labor market and hasten the day when they would become dispensable as laborers does not make it easy for them to take a self-interest position in this matter.
The facts are in. Blacks have been hit hard, brutually wounded, families destroyed, increased underemployment and unemployment, skyrocketed incarceration of black males, maleducation and an increase in school drop-outs. These are the things that come to mind when blacks think about immigration. There is evidene that black Americans may become effete, if not extinct, and the question is being raised: "'What role is immigration playing in the worsening condition of black people?" While all black disfunctionalsm cannot be attibuted to immigration it is obvious that it is a contributing factor to black destuctiveness. Considering the history of black people in America and their commitment to justice and equality the black response has to be, indeed, it must be, that regardless to how people got to America, whether they came on a slave ship, waded through the waters of the Rio Grande or treaded across the desert, came on the Mayflower, a cruise ship, or by jet airplane, be treated equally and with respect, with no speical denials or privileges for anyone that are not granted to everyone. "E pluribus unum!" Are not we all the grandchildren of Gandpa Adam and Gandma Eve?
Beyond these things, may African-Americans who have struggled and waited patiently for justice for themselves to become a reality, at this junction in history, pause and be observers rather than participants in the present immigration battle that is being fought by Hispanics and white Americans. In the meantime, African- Americans must be unwavering in their demand for what is rightly due themselves and never forget that "This is their America too!" It just maybe that illegal immigrants viz. Mexicans returning to the land once inhabited by their foreparents and African-Americans' demand for reparations as compensation for 244 years of requieted slave labor rendered by their foreparents are both just endeavors that are worthy of being pursued vigorously and vigilantly.
Engraved on the
Statue of Liberty, given to the United States by France, are the words of Emma Lazarus' poem "The New Colossus:"
Give me your tied, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

Copyright 206 by Uriah J. Fields

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