Underground America

On May 1, 2006, hundreds of thousands of people -- many of them immigrants, legal and not -- boycotted work and school to protest House Resolution 4437, a bill which would bring stricter law enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border, ease deportations, and make felons out of illegal immigrants. What activists dubbed "A Day Without an Immigrant" was the boiling-over of an immigration debate that, two years later, is no closer to resolution. While HR 4437 died in the Senate, so did the more moderate Senate Bill 2611, which many protesters supported. Likewise, the DREAM Act, which would provide a path to citizenship for undocumented students, has been quashed each time it has reached the debate floor.

Meanwhile, construction of the border wall quietly continues (steamrolling past environmental and human-rights objections) as do immigration raids across the country. In fact, less than a month after A Day Without an Immigrant, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began a new initiative to detain and deport undocumented workers under the revoltingly cutesy name Operation Return to Sender. Officers arrested thousands during the resulting workplace raids, and ICE continues to round up thousands more even after announcing the end of the operation in June, 2006.

All of these things, it seems, are conspiring to kill the movement. The national attention that the Senate immigration reform bill and the DREAM Act received lulled Americans into the belief that somewhere, someone is doing something. In reality, immigration legislation has reached a standstill, and millions of students, workers, employers, and military service personnel are no closer now to a viable American existence than they were two years ago. The fearlessness that rallied thousands of undocumented workers to risk their necks on A Day Without an Immigrant has been supplanted with the fear that they will be swept up in the next immigration raid.

* * *

For the past year, Voice of Witness has been working on Underground America, a collection of oral histories of undocumented workers across the U.S. The stories included in the book are harrowing and eye-opening. There is Liso, who found herself duped with a bait-and-switch scam into coming to America where she was forced into becoming a housekeeper and nanny. "El Curita" and his brother-in-law were held captive in a Gulf Coast trailer by their employer who farmed them out as cheap labor.

Yet even more troubling than these horrifying tales are the subtle indignities suffered by the young men and women we interviewed for the book. It's heartbreaking to hear from high school students ashamed of a status over which they have no control, and deprived of the opportunities afforded to their classmates. They have no attachment to the countries from which their parents brought them as infants, yet they live under the constant, looming threat of deportation.

The labor that immigrants provide and the effect they have on the economy are tangible and vital. Yet the invisible tag of illegality precludes them from the benefit of health care, the protection of labor laws, and basic peace of mind. Their plight is real. They live in a legal gray area, with no recourse for abuses suffered at the hands of those who would take advantage of their vulnerability.

If nothing else, I hope Underground America will bring some focus back to an issue that has largely been forgotten in recent months. Traditional media coverage has failed to sustain Americans' interest in immigration law. This book fills a gap in our understanding of the issue by humanizing the people at the center of an otherwise cold debate.

Comments

[GoodbyeKitty]

Turning 'Illegals' into felons creates a bountiful source of slave labor for the ever-increasing number of private prisons popping up here in the southwest

how convenient

[clr2]

We spend BILLIONS to educate and provide health care to people who don't belong here. Were is the movie about America's poor and how they do without while we pay BILLIONS on ILLEGAL ALIENS? Legal immigration is what this nation was built on. ILLEGAL immigration will be its downfall. We need to deport all ILLEGAL ALIENS, those who hire ILLEGALS should be heavily fined, and we should return to the original intent of the 14th amendment and do away with anchor babies. There are hundreds of heart wrenching stories out there - and there are thousands of stories about the harm that ILLEGAL immigration has caused our nation. We need to do the right thing for our nation: support LEGAL immigrats and DEPORT ILLEGAL ALIENS.

[Gingerously]

a lot of different groups have immigrated to this relatively new land and claimed it as their own...just so happens that the first groups came from Asia...not that you seem to care

[clr2]

I care about what is going on NOW. We spend BILLIONS on a group of people who should be in their own countries trying to change them. We need to use those BILLIONS on our own poor. Those are the people I care about.