Is
Illegal Immigration the Greatest Threat to Blacks Since Slavery?
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson,
BlackNews.com Columnist
Flamboyant
arch black anti-immigration foe Ted Hayes has repeatedly called
illegal immigration the greatest threat to black America since
slavery? This eye-catching, over-the-top, outrageous bit of
hyperbole has set more tongues wagging than celebrity sex
gossip. It will probably do more than that on June 23. It
could start a riot. That’s the day that Hayes and a
handful of other black immigration opponents will march through
a black neighborhood in Los Angeles trying to rally blacks
to their anti-immigration banner. Immigration reform proponents
have plastered the area with leaflets blasting the march and
vow to confront the anti-immigration marchers.
Though
the march is unique, blacks have been loudly protesting illegal
immigration since it became a stormy national issue and ripped
apart Congress last year. In May 2006, an odd assemblage of
writers, preachers, a homeless rights advocate, professional
anti-immigration advocates, and a few local black community
residents from the Washington, D.C. area, grabbed some momentary
camera time with a press conference in Washington, D.C. They
called themselves Choose Black America and claimed that the
overwhelming majority of black Americans agreed with them
that illegal immigration was the prime threat to blacks.
This
was hardly a spontaneous gathering of public-spirited
blacks outraged over the impact of illegal immigration,
and neither was their red-hot rhetoric against the bill.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform paid
for the airfare, hotel accommodations, and expenses
for most of the participants as well as the rental fee
for the press conference. The organization has long
demanded the toughest possible immigration laws and
the tightest possible border control enforcement. But
the participants had made their point, and it was that
there a few noted blacks that are willing to put their
bodies and faces in front of a camera, and oppose immigration
reform, and weren’t scared at being branded bigots
in the process.
Their
Washington, D.C. flutter was the high water mark for
the black immigration foes. With the death of the immigration
reform bill in Congress, the group quickly vanished
from the public’s radarscope. However, when the
Senate briefly resuscitated the bill in April, black
immigration opponents got a new lease on life. The Los
Angeles march gives them another chance to tap into
the ambivalence, frustration, unease, and even anger
among many blacks over illegal immigration.
The
signs that illegal immigration touched a sore nerve
in many blacks were there all along. The first big warning
sign of black frustration with illegal immigration came
during the battle over Proposition 187 in California
in 1994. White voters voted by big margins for the proposition
that denied public services to undocumented immigrants.
But nearly fifty percent of blacks also backed the measure.
Republican governor Pete Wilson shamelessly pandered
to anti-immigrant hysteria and rode it to a reelection
victory. Wilson also got nearly 20 percent of the black
vote in the 1994 election. It was double what Republicans
in California typically get from blacks. Wilson almost
certainly bumped up his black vote total with his freewheeling
assault on illegal immigration. Blacks have also given
substantial support to anti-bilingual ballot measures
in California. More than a decade later black attitudes
toward illegal immigrants, which almost always is seen
as Latino illegal immigrants, was put to the electoral
test in Arizona with another ballot initiative. Proposition
200 mandated tough sanctions on employers for hiring
illegal immigrants, and tighter border enforcement.
Exit polls showed that more than 65 percent of blacks
backed the measure. As with Proposition 187 in California
a decade before, it passed by a landslide.
The
vote by blacks on the anti-illegal immigration ballot
measures and their antipathy to illegal immigration
as measured by the polls flies in the fact of the staunch
support that mainstream civil rights organizations and
most of the Congressional Black Caucus have given to
the passage of a comprehensive, liberal immigration
reform law. It even contradicts the polls that showed
during the great immigration debate last year that blacks
by big margins backed liberal immigration reform.
Yet
there was a kicker in those polls and that was the issue
of jobs. Blacks expressed deep worry that they were
slipping further behind in the battle for more jobs.
And that’s a legitimate fear. Blacks suffer the
highest rates of unemployment of any group in America.
The job crisis has had an especially devastating impact
on young, marginal-skilled and educated black males.
In the eternal hunt for scapegoats to dump blame for
the job crisis on, illegal immigration is the softest
of soft targets.
But
that’s wrong-headed, misguided, and fraught with
peril. The prime cause of chronic black unemployment
is corporate downsizing, and outsourcing, the massive
cuts in federal and state job and skills training funds
and programs, the reluctance and flat-out refusal of
many employers to hire those with criminal records,
and the sneaky and open racial discrimination by private
employers.
None of that matters to the rabid black immigration
reform foes, and for now they’re banking that
the horror some blacks have over illegal immigration
will propel a few souls into the streets in Los Angeles
on June 23. They hope that they’ll be cheered
on by many more who won’t march. No matter what
happens, though, they’ve done a great job in further
polarizing blacks and Latinos. That’s the greatest
threat of all.
Earl
Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst.
His new book "The Latino Challenge to Black America:
Towards a Conversation between African-Americans and
Hispanics" (Middle Passage Press and Hispanic Economics
New York) in English and Spanish will be out in October.
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