The high cost of xenophobia

By Max J. Castro                                                                      Read Spanish Version
majcastro@gmail.com

Persecuting
immigrants doesn’t come free. Nor can it be pursued with impunity.
These are realities that are becoming increasingly clear to public
officials at every level of government from the Department of
Homeland Security to county boards who once may have thought that
bashing a vulnerable population for political gain would be a
cakewalk.

The
economic cost of policies based on xenophobia includes not only the
financial burden of enforcement, detention, and litigation but also
major losses in the form of foregone production, profits, wages, and
taxes. Then there is the huge social and human cost of ethnic
polarization and community strife.

None
of this has stopped state and local governments from approving a
plethora of anti-immigrant legislation. Many politicians across the
country continue to act as if they believe the electoral benefits of
espousing nativist demagoguery outweigh the costs. But now the
reaction of the immigrant community and its friends is beginning to
be felt, and the anti-immigration crusade has begun to experience a
series of serious setbacks.

A
prime example of the latter is an October 10 ruling by a federal
judge in California that halted the federal government’s crackdown
against workers with unverified social security numbers and their
employers. The suit was filed by an unusual coalition that includes
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO, and the American Civil
Liberties Union.

Judge
Charles B. Breyer of the Northern District of California, who ordered
the government to delay indefinitely its plan to send “no match”
letters that could have triggered the firing of more than 8 million
workers whose social security numbers do not match those on record,
criticized the government for attempting to impose a rule that could
have “massive ramifications” for employers without conducting a
required survey of the costs and impacts to small businesses.

Given
that that the Social Security database is known to contain many
errors, Judge Breyer wrote that the implementation of the new rule
would cause “irreparable harm to innocent workers and employers.”
As a result, the judge issued a temporary injunction prohibiting the
government from sending out the “no match” letters for an
indefinite period of time.

The
immigration crackdown is meeting with legal challenges at the local
level as well. On the same day that Breyer’s ruling was announced,
civil rights groups filed suit against Prince William County,
Virginia, for its proposed immigration crackdown, which would require
police to check the immigration status of persons they stop for
traffic and other infractions.

Prince
William County supervisors had already postponed implementation of
the new policy after the police department estimated the cost of
enforcing the measure at $14 million a year. Defending against the
lawsuit will add to the cost to taxpayers. And, Prince William County
is likely to discover that the expense of defending its
anti-immigrant policies is not worth it. Earlier this year, a federal
judge struck down anti-immigrant legislation enacted by the town of
Hazelton, Pennsylvania, ruling that immigration is a federal matter.
The same legal reasoning would apply to Prince William County’s
attempt to legislate immigration.

Anti-immigrant
proposals are also meeting with resistance in the political arena,
and not just in big cities or liberal bastions like New York City,
San Francisco, and Washington, DC. Recently, elected officials in
Arlington, Virginia, criticized Prince William County for its
anti-immigrant stance. Last week, commissioners in Frederick County,
Maryland, debated proposed anti-immigrant measures that included
banning the children of undocumented immigrants from attending public
schools, a practice the U.S. Supreme Court struck down as
unconstitutional in 1982. That anti-immigrant proposal was defeated
by a 3-2 vote.

The
anti-immigrant campaign also is having the unintended consequence of
politicizing, mobilizing, and uniting Latinos. For instance, Laura
Valle, co-founder and executive director of La Voz de Loudoun
(Virginia), a Latino non-profit social service organization, recently
resigned after five years in order to join the political fray. “I
feel drawn to political action on issues related to immigration,”
Valle told the Washington
Post.

In
a separate article the Post
reported that Latino entrepreneurs in the Washington,DC, suburbs who
have never worked with working class immigrants on a political cause
have joined the movement to oppose the wave of xenophobia. In many
cases, this happened after their business declined drastically
because scared immigrants are staying away from Latino-identified
shops, restaurants, and other establishments for fear they may be
targeted by federal immigration authorities or local police
cooperating with them.

Xenophobia
does not come free. Recent battles over immigration in courtrooms,
town halls, and state legislatures are proving costly and divisive.
Stepped-up immigration raids are devastating families, hurting
companies, and hampering agriculture. The anti-immigrant offensive in
the United States is inflicting damage on the image of the United
States, especially in Latin America, at a time when international
goodwill toward this country is at an all-time low.

But
these injuries are only a presage of what might happen if virulent
anti-immigrant advocates get their wish that the U.S. government
adopt a policy of driving out all unauthorized immigrants.

That
is unlikely to happen. Anti-immigrant forces will score more
victories, cause more pain, and succeed in stirring up more anger and
division. But ultimately they will not prevail. The main check
against the triumph of nativism is the Latino community, and the
Latino community is becoming a formidable force in American politics.

Latinos
don’t yet have the power to drive immigration policy, but already
they have enough numbers and influence to blunt the very worst
threats emanating from the anti-immigrant camp, such as last year’s
attempt to criminalize the undocumented population. And Latino power
is growing fast. Indeed, there is a kind of race under way between
growing Latino empowerment and the increasing political mobilization
of virulent anti-immigrant sentiments. It is a race the xenophobes
will lose but not before inflicting many casualties.

In
order to minimize the damage in the short run, the anti-immigrant
wave must be confronted at every turn by a united Latino community
and its allies. The strategy should be to maximize the cost of
anti-immigrant policies not only in sheer economic and political
terms but in every way possible, especially public image. Every town
and city considering anti-immigrant legislation should know that if
it succumbs to the xenophobic temptation it will be exposed far and
wide as a bastion of intolerance, and that it will face litigation,
economic boycotts, and public protests. 

In
the longer term, a broad coalition of Latinos, progressives, and
people of good will of all races and political affiliations should be
assembled to transform U.S. immigration policy from one focused on
persecution and punishment to one based on integration and inclusion.
The many cities and towns across the country already doing this,
eschewing the hostile policies adopted by the Hazeltons and Prince
William Counties and instead welcoming immigrants, are showing the
way.