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immigrant students
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On October 19, 2007, a racist op-ed ran in UC-Berkeley's
student paper, the Daily Californian, opposing giving
financial aid for college to undocumented immigrant students.
BAMN members wrote two strong op-eds in response which
demonstrate how we answer many of the racists' contentions
about the DREAM Act and about immigration itself.
Below are the two BAMN responses, in full. The first op-ed
ran in Daily Cal on October 30. Please forward this to
friends and colleagues as they are useful for formulating our
responses to the right wing in this next period.
The original right-wing op-ed is available at:
http://www.dailycal.org/sharticle.php?id=26503
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Prejudice Against Immigrants Hurts All
BY Ronald Cruz
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
LINK: http://www.dailycal.org/sharticle.php?id=26629
In her op-ed opposing giving financial aid to undocumented
immigrant students (A Dream for Some, A Nightmare for the
Rest, Oct. 19), Yeh Ling-Ling goes on a diatribe against
immigrants that exposes the base prejudice and irrationality
motivating opposition to immigration.
The California Dream Act would allow low-income undocumented
students to receive state need-based Cal Grants. The federal
Dream Act would provide eligibility for federal loans and a
path to citizenship. All U.S. citizens would remain entitled
to these programs.
The California and federal Dream Acts represent an expansion
of educational opportunity for all students. They assert the
equality and dignity of students whose parents brought them
here, indistinguishable from citizens except for what side of
the border they were born on. It means more sorely-needed
teachers, doctors, scientists and political leaders to
strengthen the states economy and advance social progress.
More than 10 million Californians are immigrants. Of these,
nearly 3 million are undocumented. Immigrants contribute
immeasurably to the states economy with billions of dollars
in taxes, making enormous profits possible through their
labor. Immigrants have enabled Californias economy to
expand, diversify, and become the sixth largest in the world.
Ms. Yeh would sacrifice the social and economic future of
California to defend white privilege and maintain a second-
class status for immigrant, Latino, black, Asian and other
minority students. She supports legalized discrimination and
setting up a new Jim Crow in California. Her vision of the
future is both unacceptable and unviable.
For California -- a majority-minority state -- to advance,
it must provide equal educational opportunity to all its
residents. It must shift its priorities and fully fund public
education. Ignoring this obvious solution, Ms. Yeh scapegoats
students. She would deny college to thousands who could
become tomorrow's teachers and educational leaders to tackle
the states educational crisis. Her arguments are not
grounded in facts -- they simply perpetuate the age-old
tradition in American politics of appealing to xenophobia and
racism to distract from the real problems.
Ms. Yehs arguments have been made obsolete by globalization
and world economic development. U.S. companies cross borders
with impunity to exploit new markets and cheap labor. This
movement of capital undercuts and destabilizes local
economies, forcing people to relocate. As old economic
sectors shift abroad, new economic sectors arise to exploit
the search for jobs of immigrants. As corporations follow the
laws of supply and demand to raise profits, the worlds poor
must follow a more living and human law to feed themselves
and their families and better their lot.
Anti-immigrant ideologues have no answer to this reality,
except for a hypocritical double standard: for capital, Open
Borders. For poor workers from Mexico and Latin America, a
wall.
Appeals to the law ring false, in light of economic reality
and this nation's history of using the law to justify
discrimination. At previous times, slavery and segregation
were the law. Access to American citizenship was proscribed
by race. The justifications offered to deny citizenship today
are just as groundless and no less arbitrary. Unjust laws
must be changed.
Our new movement asserts a more rational definition of
citizenship. The United States has always been a land of many
nations. What has made us a single people has been our
readiness, at times in this nations history, to struggle
together in the common project of breathing life into the
nation's espoused principles of freedom and equality.
The people who live on this nations soil, who learn and work
here, who contribute their labor and talents to the nation,
deserve the full rights of citizenship. The people marching
in the great demonstrations of the new movement are taking up
the torch of every progressive struggle of the American past
against immigrant bashing, scapegoating, racism and second-
class citizenship. By striving to make America realize its
ideals, they are easily far more American than their
hypocritical opponents. They are part of the real nation.
This society must acknowledge this basic truth in its laws
and practices.
American society has only moved forward when we have stood
together as people of all races and nations, as described on
the Statue of Liberty, yearning to breathe free.
---
Ronald Cruz is a Boalt Law Student and a San Francisco Bay
Area organizer for BAMN, the Coalition to Defend Affirmative
Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for
Equality By Any Means Necessary. Send comments to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
========================================
Talya Hezi, UC-Berkeley student and BAMN member
Opinion Article
10/23/2007
The Reality of the DREAM
Rightfully so, many leaders have been pushing for the
enactment of the DREAM Act in California -- an act that
would encourage immigrant youth, through the eligibility of
state financial aid, to pursue higher education after
attending three years of high school in California.
Unfortunately, opponents of this act have been slyly
besmirching its reputation through improbable, racist, and
illogical accusations employed to stir unreasonable hatred
towards all immigrants.
The current U.S. Government has largely neglected funding for
public schools; consequently, tuition has risen for public
colleges and universities and robust educational assistance
programs have become scarce. This lack of investment, not the
children of undocumented immigrants, in educational
institutions, is what causes US students to yield lower
standardized test scores. Any argument that bases lower test
scores on the enrollment of immigrant children, or an
increase in minority students, inherently asserts that
education can only be improved if offered to a select few.
Furthermore, such a racist argument implies that immigrant
children have no skills to contribute in a classroom setting
and therefore dilute the educational experience. How can we
trust future generations with our well being if only a small
percentage of them receive a reliable education? When so much
depends on the decisions of our successors as future
government and business leaders, we cannot allow ourselves to
brand education as a privilege. We must consider it a right.
In another dirty attempt to agitate California residents into
a panic, opponents of the DREAM Act blame immigrants for
using the resources that, essentially, keep them alive. One
such article claimed, newcomers . . . exacerb[ate] our
energy and water shortages. In statistics collected by the
US Energy Information Administration, industrial and
commercial entities use 51% of U.S. energy, while residential
homes only use 21%. Furthermore, of that 21%, the middle-
class single-family homes use 80% of that energy while
multifamily complexes, the dwellings of most immigrants, only
use 15%.
On the subject of water, the EPA declared Americans waste the
most water by over watering their lawns and gardens. And
although opponents of the DREAM Act would like people to
believe otherwise, most undocumented immigrants do not have a
lawn to water and therefore most of them can be excluded from
this environmental abuse. Community and State resources is
an important factor in determining policies, but who and what
uses the most resources must be first taken into account.
Claiming that immigrants exacerbate the use of resources is a
gross and disingenuous overstatement.
Aside from the reality that the children of hard working
immigrants deserve the dream of college, the DREAM Act will
serve to benefit society as a whole in exactly those issues
that opponents complain about. For the majority of
undocumented immigrants, college is, frankly, beyond their
reach financially. Without scholarships, subsidized loans,
grants, or work study, a low-income student cannot manage a
college tuition. However, if given the opportunities that the
DREAM Act offers, many of these students will begin to enroll
in Medical school, Law school, and Engineering/Science
colleges. The work force of these graduates will help in the
development of a brighter future for alternative energy,
smarter technology, better domestic and foreign policies, and
more diverse teaching in public schools. Denying this
potential not only to these deserving students, but to our
nation will severely cripple our overall national competence
in the future.
Many of the ideologies behind refusing immigration rights to
immigrants stem from the idea that those policies will
encourage greater immigration. However, there is a
fundamental element that this ideology does not take into
account, and that is the power of the human spirit to aspire
to a better life. According to the US Government
Accountability Office (GAO), a total of 383 immigrants died
trying to cross the border in 2005 (and this can serve as a
rough average for every year since 1995). Of that number, 40%
died of exposure; however, it is unclear what caused the rest
of the deaths. Nevertheless, the dangers of illegal
immigration are apparent to any immigrant yet he risks this
cost because his home country imposes a worse fate. Given
this appalling statistic, how can we expect illegal
immigration to completely stop when some immigrants face
oppression, starvation, and persecution? Not surprisingly,
those immigrants would rather die with hope than stay in
their own countries. Whether we grant undocumented immigrants
their rights or not, they will keep crossing the border.
Therefore the decision we must make is one between accepting
the fact that tougher borders will not discourage illegal
immigrants from trying to cross, and turning our backs on
human rights and ignorantly blaming immigrants for the entire
worlds problems. In this decision we must remember that
whatever we choose will reflect our civility and commitment
to human rights as a nation. A choice to deny education to an
able and deserving generation will inevitably create a
second-class sub-citizen population. Furthermore, denying the
DREAM Act and other immigrant rights will not stop
immigration; it will only shame the benevolent reputation and
ideologies that we, as Americans, seek to present to the
world.
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Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, &
Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality
By Any Means Necessary (BAMN)
Myspace.com/nationalbamn www.bamn.com
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