September 10, 2017

Word: Trump may be uniting undocumented and citizen latinos

Angelo Falcon, National Institute for Latino Policy - What struck me was the language [Dreamers] used to express their reaction to the ending of DACA. The style of the protests and the expressions they used reminded me of the civil rights movement. This included the making of demands and defiantly pointing out that they weren't going anywhere and calling for inclusion. This was not the language and style of underground undocumented, but of full-fledged Americans expressing their cultural citizenship and understanding, they were the "other" in Trump's world. 

On the other hand, the concern is voiced by anti-immigrant conservatives and the Right that Latinos and other immigrants of color are not assimilating fast enough into American society. The Dreamers, interesting enough, do not fit this profile. If anything they are models of assimilation, if not complete acculturation. This is the problem that Republicans are facing now with many opposing the ending of DACA.These Dreamers represent a form of assimilation within the context of a multicultural society, something the Right has trouble accepting.

Nonetheless, the Dreamers movement has presented itself as American as apple pie. Despite their legal status, they have done everything that has been asked of them to fit in. They are in many ways the Model Minority subset among the Latino undocumented, as the seemingly endless number of Dreamer valedictorians seems to show.

This assimilation strategy of the immigration rights movement is, under Trump's immigration terrorism, being reconsidered by many in the movement now. Trying to fit into an individualistic-based model of assimilation, along with the lines of the European immigrant of the past, doesn't appear to be working. What is occurring instead is their racialization...

The nature of this current immigration movement is in sharp contrast to earlier empowerment movements by Chicanos and Puerto Ricans of the 1960s and '70s, which were and are based on the assertion of racial-ethnic identifies opposed to white privilege and racial discrimination. Instead of trying to fit in, these movements sought to exert their rights as American citizens and challenge notions of the melting pot, instead promoting a cultural pluralism. They also had strong radical influences that challenged the worse capitalist practices.

It was perhaps in 2006, with the mass immigrant protests across the country, that the Latino movement was fundamentally transformed. Chicano and Mexican-Americans, by far the largest segment of the country's Latino population, initially had difficulty connecting with this largely foreign-born Mexican movement for immigrant rights. But they and even Puerto Ricans, who are American citizens by birth, eventually adopted this new movement. Today, one recurrent complaint by Mexican-Americans, Chicanos and Puerto Ricans is that the immigration issue has come to largely overshadow a broader Latino agenda.

Trump's anti-immigrant policies, propagated on the notion that part of their goal is to assimilate Latinos are actually having the opposite effect. It is now more clearly defining the Dreamers and other Latino immigrants racially, with all that implies. He may also be, in the process, uniting undocumented and citizen Latinos in new and deeper ways, hopefully promoting broader and more oppositional Latino policy and political agendas and movements. In this sense, the Trump effect may not be all bad. 

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