U.S. Immigration Policy is Race Policy

Immigration policy is race policy in the United States, as it has been since the genocide of its native people. Race policy in the U.S. cannot be separated from American racism, which is an extension of white supremacist colonialism –the kind that characterized the vast majority of the globe as little as 30 years ago.

Current immigration rates have so changed U.S. demographics because Africans, Asians and Latin Americans were barred except as slaves, indentured servants and guest workers until Congress removed immigration quotas in the 1965 Immigration Reform and Control Act. Asians were banned completely from 1885 to that date. All that banning worked to create the United States as a white country.

The ongoing immigration debate revolves around two questions with deep racial subtexts: labor and terrorism. Who will do what kinds of work in this country? And whom will the government attack to convince Americans that they are safe?

An immigrant rights strategy that can’t handle race, both historically and currently, may leave us with policy that allows immigrants only to clean toilets for 23 hours a day, leaving their families thousands of miles away, or one that provides no protection from abusive law enforcement for anyone perceived to be Muslim. The racial dynamics of immigration should concern white immigrants too. Unless we’re going to accept selective enforcement, English-only ordinances will also ban Russian translation and the end of family unification policies will affect Europeans trying to keep theirs together.

No matter what, immigration policy itself is about race and color as well as nationality and class.