Immigration

The Real Housewife of Ciudad Juárez

/ Andrea Kao / Leave a comment

Border security is a big issue in past and current Immigration Policy debates. Policies in border security include measures that not only increase Border Patrol personnel at the Mexican-American borders, but also call for the erection of physical barriers between the two countries. This is true in “Operation Gatekeeper” in San Diego, California, “Operation Safeguard” in Tuscon, Arizona, and “Operation Hold the Line” in El Paso, Texas.

How does this affect the lives of families that straddle that border?

One woman, Emily Bonderer Cruz, writes all about this exact topic in her blog: The Real Housewife of Ciudad Juárez. She writes about crossing the border, about friends and family and work across the border, and she writes about her husband who is trapped behind that border.

Emily Bonderer Cruz is an American citizen who fell in love with an undocumented immigrant man from Mexico. While love (often) does not care about immigration status, Ray “Gordo” Mundo’s immigration status severely complicated their relationship. Ray Mundo, had been deported back to Mexico before he met Emily. Then he came back into the United States, again without immigration status. Then, he met Emily.  The previous order of removal meant that even if Ray and Emily were to be married, he’d have to live outside of the United States for ten years before being able to re-enter and adjust to Legal Permanent Resident status.

So, Emily moved. She moved with Ray. She moved with Ray to a border town in Mexico. And she commutes passed those giant walls, into El Paso, Texas, every morning.

In July, 2013, NPR’s This American Life featured Emily’s story. Listen to it. Read her blog. It’s fascinating.

Let’s Talk About Immigration

/ Danielle Kloster / Leave a comment

It’s environmental and energy policy day, but today we’re going to think a little broader about the impact of non-environmental policies on the environment. I’m participating in a seminar this semester on human population growth and consumption and we spent this week discussing the implications of immigration on population growth and rising consumption. Few people, including environmentalists, think about the implications of immigration on the environment and on energy usage.
First, it is important to draw the distinction between immigrants and immigration. I, and other environmental writers on this topic, do not want to point a finger at individual immigrants and blame them for rising consumption and environmental damage due to population growth in the US. We are speaking instead about the general trend of increasing immigration rates. The US population continues to increase, despite reproduction being at a replacement rate, due to high levels of immigration (around 1 million people annually). Although there are moral arguments to allow people from less fortunate, developing countries the chance at a “better” life in the US, we must consider the moral implications of such opportunities. Is it moral to allow over-consumption of resources? Or increased energy demand, leading to increased emissions of harmful gases and dependency on foreign sources of fuel?
The “better” life promised by migration to America is highly dependent on consumption. Although it is not true for all immigrants, many move to the US with the goal of getting a better job. A better job means more disposable income to be spent on consumption, unless the money is sent back to their home country. The American way of life involves significantly greater energy use than other countries of the world. Per capita, the US used 312 million BTUs (British thermal units) in 2010, compared to the world average of 74 million BTU the same year (1). The same is true for many other resources, including freshwater and meat consumption. The UN reports that Americans use 215 cubic meters (7593 cubic feet) per capita per year, compared to 4 cubic meters (141 cubic feet) per capita per year in Mali (2). In 2002, Americans consumed an average of 124.8 kilograms (275.1 pounds) of meat per capita, compared to 79.6 kilograms (125.5 pounds) in the United Kingdom and 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds) in Bhutan (3). It is likely that new immigrants take some time to assimilate into this culture of high consumption and have lower consumption levels than Americans born and raised in this culture. However, as they live here longer and raise the next generation, they and their children are likely to have comparable rates of energy and resource consumption.
Additionally, higher population levels create environmental degradation. More people need more homes, leading to urbanization, urban sprawl, sub-urbanization, and subdivision of rural properties. More people and more consumption lead to higher levels of waste, requiring larger landfills and greater waste-water treatment capacity. More people means more food production leading to greater soil erosion, as well as higher levels of fertilizer leaching and pesticide spread. Tom Horton, a blogger in the ecologically fragile Chesapeake Bay area, argues that while granting amnesty to immigrants currently living in the US is laudable, the current immigration bill will end up encouraging greater immigration into the US, ultimately increasing the US population by 40% by 2050 (4). He makes the important point that concentrating our efforts on decreasing per capita consumption will not make a difference if the number of people is continually increasing. And, my favorite point he makes, “we’ve also learned that like the essential plant nutrients such as nitrogen which are degrading the Bay, too much of a good thing – including humans with aspirations for a better life – can overwhelm the rest of nature.”
It’s difficult for me to take a stand against immigration, as I strongly believe that immigrants contribute greatly to the cultural melting pot of this country. In a nation of immigrants, it is difficult to draw the line and prevent others from coming here and benefiting as we have. I don’t think Americans have a greater right to consume than non-Americans or immigrants. It is extremely important, for both environmental and moral reasons, to decrease American per capita consumption. However, I do think it is important in debating immigration policy to at least consider the environmental implications of allowing more people to come to the US and live like Americans when the world can barely sustain Americans living like Americans.
(1) http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=85&t=1
(2) http://www.unwater.org/downloads/Water_facts_and_trends.pdf
(3) http://www.theguardian.com/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02/meat-consumption-per-capita-climate-change
(4)http://www.bayjournal.com/article/immigration_reform_needs_to_be_handled_very_carefully

Immutability and LGBT Asylum

/ Eric van der Vort / Leave a comment

There are long-standing debates about the causes of homosexuality, if indeed any exist.  Though the most current research of which this author is aware suggests that, rather than being the result of any one factor (e.g. a single genetic cause), it may be a confluence of factors, the more important and, in my view, the more interesting fact is that the biological, sociological and psychological underpinnings of sexual orientation and gender identity have important ramifications for legal and policy debates about how governments should deal with sexuality.

As the Western world has embraced the rights of gender and sexual minorities with surprising alacrity, one issue that has confronted several governments has been immigration of members of these identity communities.  Particularly as domestic rights have expanded in some countries while others have remained discriminatory or hostile toward LGBT individuals within their borders, questions of immigration and asylum have sometimes become quite prominent.  While many Western states have (relatively) clear standards for those seeking asylum on the basis of discrimination or persecution in their home countries, these standards often require that individuals be members of particular ethnic, racial or religious groups that are easily idenified, quantified and understood.  The pursuit of asylum status on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity can be more complex because of the standards in law about what precisely counts as an identity.

A related example is somewhat instructive: in American equal protection jurisprudence, the most stringent standards for equal protection adhere to classifications making use of groups that fall under a suspect classification.  Some of the criteria that serve to qualify a group for this ‘suspect classification’ status include (1) a history of discrimination, (2) an immutable or highly visible characteristic, (3) political powerlessness and (4) no relation between the classification in question and the ability to contribute to political, economic and social life.  When a group is considered a suspect class, any legal classification using that category of persons is subject to strict scrutiny.  Legal classifications in the U.S. that currently meet this standard include any making use of race, national origin, alienage and (by some interpretations) religion.  Each of these four classifications shares some level of the above criteria, but one above all others stands out as uniting them: the immutability of the classification.  Immutability in American law is an essentially biological characteristic: individuals have no control over the circumstances of their birth and, thus, legal classifications that rely on such groupings are invalid.

In light of this immutability doctrine, one can begin to tease out the logical difficulty of treating sexuality as a suspect classification.  Assuming an acceptance of this particular scheme (developed by the Supreme Court over several decades), sexual orientation and gender identity do not seem to match the requirements.  While other characteristics may be subject to debate (histories of discrimination, political powerlessness and so on), there is something about sexuality which remains harder to pin down and quantify in easy terms.  Even birth gender, which stands as a quasi-suspect classification, is a matter of biology, at least in law.  The fluidity of sexuality and gender identity lead some observers to conclude that they cannot serve as the basis of any kind of suspect classification, thus requiring either a separate legal standard or no legal protections at all, at least any more than is afforded to any other group.

This brief foray into constitutional law is instructive to the matter of LGBT asylum seekers and refugees.  While the United States and other Western countries have accepted claims for asylum on the basis of discrimination and persecution because of sexual orientation and gender identity, this remains one of the areas where bureaucracies continue to have some difficulty.  Petitions have been denied in the United States and United Kingdom in recent years, and the issue has risen again as groups have pressured governments in the West to open doors to Russian asylum seekers.  This has challenged bureaucrats, who are tasked with distinguishing between individuals genuinely seeking asylum and those who are simply seeking entry to a particular country with “false” claims.

A recent report by the Home Affairs Committee in the United Kingdom has shed light on the situation facing LGBT asylum-seekers not only in the U.K. but elsewhere.  The BBC reports that some asylum-seekers in the U.K. have, because of seemingly skeptical officials, resorted to submitting evidence of same-sex sexual behavior to ‘prove’ their sexual orientation or gender identity as evidence for their asylum petitions:

The report said: “The battleground is now firmly centered in ‘proving’ that they are gay. In turn, this has led to claimants going to extreme lengths to try and meet the new demands of credibility assessment in this area, including the submission of photographic and video evidence of highly personal sexual activity to caseworkers, presenting officers and the judiciary.”

The committee said: “We were concerned to hear that the decision making process for LGBTI applicants relies so heavily on anecdotal evidence and ‘proving that they are gay’.”

It added that “it is not appropriate to force people to prove their sexuality if there is a perception that they are gay. The assessment of credibility is an area of weakness within the British asylum system.

Such reports, if accurate, are highly troubling for those of us concerned with the rights of gender and sexual minorities.  They reflect a return to a way of thinking that places weight not on an individual’s identity but on an individual’s actions, the propensity toward (and actualization of) same-sex sexual desires or “genuine” evidence of gender non-conforming behavior and identity.  As sexual orientation is not, like the immutable characteristics comprehended by the U.S. Supreme Court, a highly visible characteristic and may in fact be fluid, the weight of an asylum seeker’s identity may be placed on actual conduct.  Much of the work by the LGBT community and its allies has been to reject this older, arguably outmoded view of sexuality.  Yet it seems that some asylum-seekers are doubly burdened, having to prove discrimination or persecution and having to prove that the basis of that discrimination is in fact real.

Less Than “Do Nothing” Congress?

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

Less Than “Do Nothing” Congress?

Recently Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross interviewed New York Times congressional correspondent Jonathan Weisman about Congress’ coming summer recess and its inaction in the last term.  

Here is a description of the interview: 

Friday is the last day before the 113th Congress scatters for their summer recess. And what has it accomplished so far? Almost nothing, says New York Times congressional correspondent Jonathan Weisman. As he points out in a recent article:

“None of Congress’s 12 annual spending bills have reached Mr. Obama’s desk, and with the House and the Senate far apart on total spending levels, a government shutdown is possible on Oct. 1, when the current spending law expires.

“Once Congress returns on Sept. 9, lawmakers will have just nine legislative days until the current fiscal year ends and large swaths of the government would be forced to close.”

Weisman joins Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross to discuss why this Congress has passed so few laws, and explain some of the conflicts between Republican lawmakers and President Obama.

Undocumented Immigrants Intentionally Arrested in Protest

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

Undocumented Immigrants Intentionally Arrested in Protest

As the debate about immigration reform continues to simmer, This American Life ran a story recently about a group of activists 

 from the National Immigrant Youth Alliance who intentionally got arrested for being undocumented. They believed if they could get inside the Broward Transitional Center in Florida, they could prevent lots of the immigrants there from being deported. Obama Administration policy, laid out in a series of documents called the Morton memos, states that non-violent immigrants who are not criminals are low priority for detention. Michael May also wrote a print version of this story, for The American Prospect. (27 minutes)