Beacon Broadside

Immigration Mythology: The Rules Apply to Everyone

The following is an excerpt from "They Take Our Jobs!" and 20 Other Myths About Immigration by Aviva Chomsky. The book was called "An indispensible guide to the current debate on immigration" by the late Howard Zinn. Read more about Beacon's immigration titles at "Beyond SB1070" on Beacon.org

Myth 7: THE RULES APPLY TO EVERYONE, SO NEW IMMIGRANTS NEED TO FOLLOW THEM JUST AS IMMIGRANTS IN THE PAST DID

One of the most oft-repeated—and most puzzling—comments regarding the debate on immigration goes something like this: "I'm not against immigration, but I'm against illegal immigration. New immigrants should play by the rules, like our parents and forebears did."

The sentiment reveals a lot about how we've been taught to think about U.S. history: we've been taught to think of this as a country of white, voluntary immigrants. The history of people who don't fall into that category is incidental, rather than central, to the story we learn in school. "The rules," though, were different for Europeans than for Africans, Asians, and Native Americans. For the latter, "the rules" meant enslavement, exclusion, and conquest.

What the people (generally of European origin) who point to "the rules" ignore, moreover, is that when their parents and grandparents came to the United States, they in fact did exactly what so-called "illegal" immigrants are doing today. They decided to make the journey, and they made it. All they had to do was get together the boat fare. The rules were different then. U.S. law explicitly limited citizenship and naturalization to white people. Nonwhites, however, were denied both entry and citizenship. Through a complex process of omission and commission, the law dictated open immigration for white people and restricted immigration for people of color. Immigration and naturalization law created, in the words of Aristide Zolberg, "a nation by design."

Americans by Choice

Danielle Ofri is a writer and practicing internist at New York City’s Bellevue Hospital. She is the editor-in-chief of the Bellevue Literary Review. Her newest book is Medicine in Translation: Journeys with my Patients. You can follow Danielle on Twitter and Facebook, or visit her homepage.

Read more about Beacon’s immigration titles at “Beyond SB1070” on Beacon.org

The first thing I always do on July 4th is unfold my New York Times to where the Declaration of Independence is printed on the back page, as it is every year. I’m a fairly jaded New Yorker, but seeing the original writing every year always makes my heart skip a beat. And now that I have three young children, I’m even more thrilled to show off this documentary evidence of what it means to be American. Plus, I get to impress them with how I still remember the first paragraph by heart from my junior high school days.

This year, when I flipped through the newspaper, something else caught my eye. A full-page ad from the Carnegie Corporation declared, “Immigrants, the Pride of America.” Centered among 46 photos of immigrants with impressive resumes was a picture of the venerable American capitalist with the following text below:

“Andrew Carnegie, who founded Carnegie Corporation of New York in 1911, was an immigrant from Scotland. We at Carnegie Corporation salute his legacy, along with the contributions of the millions of other immigrants who have made, and continue to make, our nation strong and vibrant. We are committed to helping immigrants become integrated into the civic fabric of our nation because enlightened citizenship is the everlasting strength of our democracy. Our national motto, E pluribus unum— “out of many, one” — continues to be an ideal we can all aspire to and a true guiding light for our nation.”

I’m not normally swayed by such unabashed patriotism, but after the steady stream of vitriol in the immigration debate, this was a welcome relief.

How to Fill the College Education Gap

Steve Wilson is the author of The Boys From Little Mexico: A Season Chasing the American Dream. Read more about Beacon’s immigration titles at “Beyond SB1070” on Beacon.org

As our representatives once again consider how to legislate immigration reform, one of their first priorities should be to reconsider one languishing immigration program--The DREAM Act.

The Development, Relief and Education of Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, first introduced by Senator Orrin Hatch (R) in 2001, aims to create educational equality. The legislation, currently on everybody's backburner, would allow certain undocumented immigrants to receive conditional residency if they either attend a university or join the U.S. military. To qualify, immigrants would have to enter the U.S. at age 15 or younger, graduate from an American high school, and have good moral character.

In the past, the bill has been promoted as a palatable form of immigration reform. It only affects people who entered the country as minors, presumably brought into the U.S. by their parents. These kids form a rapidly growing group today; about 2.4 million undocumented people aged 24 and under live in the U.S. right now.

But promoting the DREAM Act as legislation that should be passed, as a means of addressing some unfairness that exists because the alien minor didn't choose to enter the country, is wrongheaded. Not only is this sales pitch politically ineffective to most conservative politicians--after all the DREAM Act has been around, going nowhere, for a decade--but it misses a more dire predicament the U.S. faces today: we're running out of college graduates. The DREAM Act is a simple way to get more.

Link Roundup: Abortion Access, Porn, Mikvehs and Molasses

Here are some of this week's top Beacon author sightings:

Carole Joffe, author of Dispatches from the Abortion Wars, documents America post-Roe v. Wade and how abortion is still inaccessible by many standards. In a recent article from the New York Times Magazine, Joffe is quoted for her opinions on antiabortion extremists and the “tenuous relationship between medicine and abortion.”

In a special “We Read It” blog on Newsweek.com, Gail Dines’ book Pornland received a great review calling it “an important book.” According to Dines, the adult film industry isn’t portraying love but rather promoting violence and hate. The blog also links to an earlier Newsweek article written on The Porning of America by Kevin Scott and Carmine Sarracino.

Hollowing out the Middle by Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas was recently mentioned in a Huffington Post article on the rural Midwest’s enlightened youth and their migration out of small towns and into the hustle and bustle of urban environments.

The House of Secrets by Varda Polak-Sahm documents the sacred purifying Jewish ritual known as mikveh. A recent review in the Christian Century praised the book, saying: 

“Polak-Sahm mesmerizes the reader with her encounters at the mikveh...brilliantly illuminates these tensions and their religious and cultural meanings, not just intellectually but, like all good anthropologists, in a way that produces a rich understanding of people’s lives.”

Finally, we are happy to announce that Boston’s One City, One Book winner, Dark Tide, the book documenting Boston's historical Molasses Flood, will culminate its celebration on September 20th with an online discussion with the author, Steven Puleo, followed by an author event at the BPL (central branch).

Forget the Beer Summit. Shirley Sherrod’s Story Begins Our Conversation on Race

Sherrilyn Ifill is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, and is nationally recognized as an advocate in the areas of civil rights, voting rights, judicial diversity and judicial decision-making. Ifill is the author of On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st Century.

If you've watched the full video of the speech given by former USDA Georgia Director of Rural Development Shirley Sherrod at the NAACP Freedom Fund breakfast, then you know that a hideous injustice has been perpetrated against a thoughtful, smart, sensitive, reflective, principled African American woman. She movingly described her journey as a child who had to work in the fields in the deep South to becoming a representative of the USDA. The result of this journey was her recognition that "it's not about black or white, it's about the poor." As Sherrod told her audience, "we have to work together." It's the ultimate irony that she lamented at the end of her speech that "it's a shame that we don't have white people and black people in this audience."

In fact, Sherrod's speech should be required listening for those who want to understand the arc of race and racism in America and the possibilities for redemption in this country. The world into which Mrs. Sherrod was born is one that can poison you or strengthen you. Mrs. Sherrod chose the latter path. According to Mrs. Sherrod, her father was murdered by white men who were acquitted, despite the presence of eyewitnesses at the crime scene. Her family home was threatened by violent whites. Her mother protected the family home with a gun and with courage. Sherrod decided early-on to devote her life to helping the less fortunate. She learned that the less fortunate are black and white. And she learned and encouraged her listeners to hold themselves accountable and look beyond "black and white." Sherrod's story and her compelling telling of it at the NAACP breakfast should be regarded as the opening statement in the "conversation on race" that keeps getting hijacked in this country.

Howard Bryant on the Red Sox and their African-American fans and players

Tonight at 6pm, Howard Bryant will speak at the Boston Public Library. From the BPL website: 

Howard Bryant delivers a definitive biography of Baseball Hall-of-Famer Henry Aaron. Bryant's research here is exhaustive, but it only serves to add texture and context to Aaron's compelling story, which starts with an impoverished but proud Mobile, Alabama boyhood, then follows Aaron's long and steady trajectory as the greatest home-run hitter (if not player) of his generation, ending with Aaron's public and private responses to the breaking of his home-run record by Bonds in 2007.

Howard Bryant is the author of Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston, which was a finalist for the Society of American Baseball Research's 2003 Seymour Medal, and Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power, and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball. He is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN the Magazine; appears regularly on ESPN's The Sports Reporters, ESPN First Take, and Outside the Lines; and serves as sports correspondent for NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday.

Link Roundup: United We Read

This week's notable praise begins right here in the streets of Boston. As the Hub of the Universe sits down to read together (unified for the first time), here are just a few items we would like to celebrate:

In an online poll, Boston Globe readers chose Stephen Puleo's Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 as Boston's first ever "One Book, One City" selection. Coming in a close second place was Michael Patrick McDonald's memoir All Souls: A Family Story from Southie. It was exciting watching the two Beacon books neck and neck in the polling all week, and we are proud that both have had such a lasting impact on readers and our city.

The Sunday edition of the New York Post featured an opinion piece by Gail Dines, author of Pornland, about how an entire generation of men has been jaded by the overabundance of hardcore pornography at their disposal. The Washington Post's Express Night Out featured an interview with Dines about her personal experience writing this book.

Jeremy Adam Smith, author of The Daddy Shift, editor of Are We Born Racist? and the newly awarded 2010-11 Knight Fellow at Stanford University, recently appeared in the July issue of Parents magazine with his take on the reality of being a new dad as well as the expectations and responsibilities of staying home. You can also watch him on the Today Show in a segment on stay-at-home dads.

Steve Wilson's book, The Boys from Little Mexico, paints a portrait of an all-Hispanic boys' soccer team in Oregon en route to the state championship. In a special soccer book post commemorating the World Cup on Nancy Pearl's Book Lust blog, Wilson's book received notable mention as a must-read. The House of Soccer blog also gave it a great review, which makes us want to shout, "Gooooooaaaaaallll!"

The Daddy Shift: Random Memories of the Today Show

Jeremy Adam Smith is the author of The Daddy Shift: How Stay-at-Home Dads, Breadwinning Moms, and Shared Parenting Are Transforming the American Family and the co-editor of Are We Born Racist?: New Insights from Neuroscience and Positive Psychology. This post originally appeared on his blog, Daddy Dialectic.

So, apparently, on Tuesday I was a guest on The Today Show:

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1. When I walked up to the studio, the guest entrance was besieged by awe-struck teenage girls. Were they waiting for me? Er, no, they were there for a supernaturally handsome dude I later learned was Peter Facinelli, one of the stars of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse:

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Peter and I were ushered into the studio together; he gave me the once-over to make sure I wasn't somebody famous, and then ignored me. That's OK, because I didn't recognize him either, and I would rather gouge out my own eyes than watch The Twilight Saga.

What Married Same-Sex Couples Owe to Hippie Communes

Today's post is from Nancy D. Polikoff, author of Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families under the Law. Polikoff is a Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law, where she teaches Sexuality and the Law and has taught Family Law for more than 20 years. This post originally appeared on her Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage blog.

I'm guessing most married same-sex couples think they have little in common with the hippie communes of the 1960's and 70's. Free-loving hippies challenged the fabric of American society, including the nuclear family, while most married same-sex couples, or at least the organizations that speak for them, are busy presenting gay marriage as anything but a threat to heterosexual family life.

Well, think again. Last week's ruling in Gill v. OPM demonstrates just how much debt all gay rights advocacy owes those hippies.

After rejecting every asserted justification for excluding Massachusetts married couples from the legal consequences of being married under federal law, US District Court Judge Joseph Tauro said this:

What remains, therefore, is the possibility that Congress sought to deny recognition to same-sex marriages in order to make heterosexual marriage appear more valuable or desirable. But to the extent that this was the goal, Congress has achieved it "only by punishing same-sex couples who exercise their rights under state law." And this the Constitution does not permit. "For if the constitutional conception of 'equal protection of the laws' means anything, it must at the very least mean" that the Constitution will not abide such "a bare congressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group."

The citation for the last sentence in that paragraph is a case called USDA v. Moreno, decided in 1973. It's the case that formed the primary precedent for the Court's landmark gay rights ruling in 1996, Romer v. Evans.

Moreno was a challenge to an amendment to the statute governing the federal food stamp program. When enacted in 1964, eligibility for food stamps was determined on the basis of household size and income. A "household" included any group of related or unrelated individuals who basically shopped for food and cooked in common. In 1971, Congress amended the law to exclude households whose members were not all related.

The Boston Globe's Citywide Read: Vote Now!

Two Beacon Press books, All Souls: A Family Story from Southie by Michael Patrick MacDonald, and Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 by Stephen Puleo, are leading the voting for the Boston Globe's first citywide read program. From the Globe: 

After lamenting the absence of a One Book, One City program in Boston, the Globe decided to launch an experiment: a citywide reading program of its own. The comments that followed the story after it ran in the Books section and on Boston.com confirmed what we suspected — local citizens are certainly among the country's most opinionated readers. What better place to host a reading program than Boston? Here's how the Globe online book club will work: What follows is a list of 10 books, many of which were culled from readers' suggestions. The list — we hope — has something for everyone; each book certainly has plenty of meat for discussion. The only theme: All the books have local interest. Readers will have one week to vote for their pick (voting closes July 13). Once the winner is announced participants will then have a month to read the book. At the end of the month Boston.com will host a discussion with an expert moderator.

Go to the Globe website and vote now for the title you'd like to read. The poll closes tomorrow, so cast your vote now!