10

Lady Liberty

Words between strangers can be telling. On a recent flight, the person sitting next to me started up a conversation, wondering where I was flying to and from that day. After a few minutes, he started confiding in me. As he talked, I felt my blood pressure rise. I blinked and steeled myself for what I knew would be a difficult conversation.

Random confessional encounters of racist, sexist, Islamophobic, or xenophobic beliefs are a relatively new thing in my life despite the fact that I have lived and worked with people from a variety of locations and political backgrounds for many years. But some people have started to assume that because I am a white woman on a business trip and they are also white people on a business trip, I’ll share their views.

I don’t.

The conversations often start the same. They lean in close, but not too close—just close enough so other people can’t hear—and say things like what the man on the airplane said to me that day: “Illegals are killing our nation.” I took two or three quiet deep breaths, and imperfectly dove in. “Really?… You or a close family member must have been personally deeply hurt at some point. What happened?”

“Well, nothing” is the only answer I’ve invariably heard back so far. But I keep the conversation going: “Have you lost your job or has your local economy been hurt by immigrants?”

“No” is the only answer I’ve gotten so far.

Then, still in a conversational tone, I usually share: “Did you know that immigrants or the children of immigrants started 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies in our country and that immigrants are a critically important part of all aspects of our labor force, of businesses of every size, and of our communities? The diversity of our nation is exactly what has made us strong, innovative, and prosperous.”

To be clear, I don’t believe immigrants are only as important as their labor and contributions to our GDP; however, when I’ve been in a position where other white people are openly admitting their biases, I know I’m up against a mammoth myth about immigrants draining our economy, so a strategic economic argument is often the first line of defense to open their eyes and minds.

The conversation continues. The next thing out of my mouth is usually the thing my heart wanted to start with in the first place. “One important thing: A human being can’t be illegal. When you get pulled over for a speeding ticket you aren’t ‘illegal.’ Your action of speeding was illegal, but not you as a person. A desperate border crossing doesn’t make a person illegal, either.”¹

Talking past the point of disagreement, past our filtered bubbles of news sources and social media groups, past the pull to conform with a group we belong to, can be terrifying, triggering deeply negative emotions, but it is absolutely necessary to move our nation forward. Of course, some of the conversations get weird, uncomfortable, and, honestly, a bit threatening. Even as terrifying as it can be, it’s important that we all engage past our comfort zones and not just ignore those who express views that we find offensive. This is critical because the rhetoric that’s being used to dehumanize immigrants in America and the world is truly frightening in its cause and in its effects both now and into the future.

Our Freedoms Are Intertwined

Standing up to xenophobia, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, as well as racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic beliefs are a part of supporting equal rights for all people in America. The majority of people—roughly two-thirds—directly harmed by the rising tide of hate and the anti-immigrant sentiment, and anti-Muslim policies that often accompany it, are women and their children. Our friends, family, neighbors, teammates, and colleagues—as well as members of our communities—are experiencing hate every day.

Silence is not an option. Our freedoms and our communities are intertwined.

We’ve all heard the old saying “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Well, that saying isn’t true. Words really do matter. National data shows that following the 2016 increase in hate rhetoric, there was at least a 6 percent increase in hate crimes, most of which were crimes against people.² And in the past year, approximately eight thousand hate crimes were committed with firearms.³

This hate isn’t just impacting adults. Young students are experiencing more direct bullying in schools, too. The Southern Poverty Law Center conducted a survey of teachers that revealed heartbreaking statistics. Since the 2016 election, 80 percent of teachers shared that they were seeing increased anxiety from marginalized students, including immigrants, Muslims, African Americans, and LGBTQ+ students, and 40 percent heard bullying directed at students of color, Muslims, immigrants, and people based on gender or sexual orientation, including disturbing incidents involving images like swastikas, Nazi salutes, and Confederate flags.⁴

Those hateful words and images are causing real harm.

Hate Hurts and Harms

One in five Muslim women say they have enough stress and anxiety due to our political climate to believe they need the help of a mental health professional.⁵ That signifies just how much bullying, discrimination, and stress Muslim women face in our nation.⁶

Children, particularly girls who are dealing with the dual challenges of Islamophobia and sexism, are negatively impacted, too. Bullying of Muslim students in schools is up significantly: 42 percent of Muslims with children in grades K–12 reported bullying of their children because of their faith. This isn’t just children bullying children. Studies show that adults are involved in about a quarter of the bullying incidents. Given this information, it’s not surprising that polls show personal safety is a major concern for a high numbers of people of the Muslim and Jewish faiths. This fear turns out to be based in reality. Religious-based discrimination is at unacceptably high levels, with Muslims reporting the highest levels (60 percent) and people of the Jewish faith (38 percent) reporting the next highest.

Too often Muslims have inaccurately been framed as foreigners, but in truth Muslims have been an integral part of our nation for hundreds of years. The American Muslim population is incredibly diverse, with the vast majority being U.S. citizens.⁷ In fact, Muslims are the only faith community surveyed with no majority race. American Muslims are 25 percent Black, 24 percent white, 18 percent Asian, 18 percent Arab, 7 percent mixed race, and 5 percent Hispanic.⁸ Muslims are our friends and our neighbors. Muslims are the people we volunteer and play on sports teams with, our colleagues, and part of who makes our nation work. Despite this, some conservative national opinion leaders have fanned the flames of Islamophobia, making Muslims and those perceived as Muslim very unsafe. This acutely impacts Muslim women who are dealing with xenophobia, racism, and sexism at the same time each and every day.

More than 60 percent of people in our nation have said they’ve never had a conversation with a person who they know is Muslim. The result of this is that the majority of people in our country know little to nothing about the religion,⁹ but many get swept up in the negative misinformation pushed out by hardline conservative leaders.

This is putting many people in the Muslim community in direct danger. In the last year, according to the FBI, anti-Muslim hate crimes have risen 67 percent. This high statistic is more than likely quite low because Muslim leaders report that hate crimes are often not pursued, tracked, or reported to the extent that they are happening.¹⁰ One thing is clear: Anti-Muslim hostility is based upon and inextricable from xenophobia, and we must fight back against both together.

The Rising Yet Unwelcome Tide

Both anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment are rising at the same time—and that’s not a coincidence. Wendy Cervantes, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy, told me, “Xenophobia and Islamophobia are rooted in the same type of fear. In fact, Islamophobia is a form of xenophobia. It’s all rooted in the fear of the ‘other.’ And until we can realize that there really is no ‘other,’ this vicious cycle is going to continue.” Make no mistake, this cycle is vicious in the literal sense.

Wendy visited a classroom in North Carolina where a nine-year-old boy told her that he’s trying to perfect making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in case his mom and dad get deported. He told her that he’s worried about his three-year-old sister because she doesn’t like jelly.

And this boy is not alone. Five million children, most of whom are under the age of ten, live with the constant fear of being separated from their parents.¹¹ Already thousands of children have been separated from their parents as a result of recent immigration enforcement activities.

More than 5 million children are experiencing the toxic stress of constant fear and worry of separation, and the women who are moms in this situation are experiencing this toxic stress, too. This situation speaks to the unintended consequences of an unfair national immigration policy on our communities. Five million children are roughly as many people as live in the city of Boston. Imagine a whole city of only children and no parents. It’s a nearly unfathomable number. Yet 5 million children and their moms wake up every day not knowing whether they or their families will be safe.

One mother in Arizona knows this scenario all too well. Her two tiny children were left alone in a car after she was taken away by deputies after a traffic violation. The local Arizona NBC station news report described the incident through the eyes of a witness. “The deputies were wearing ski masks and detained the children’s mother for about an hour while her children watched, crying.”¹² How could this even be legal and okay with the supervisor of the deputies?

It turns out that the person in charge knew exactly what was going on. Sheriff Joe Arpaio was the person in charge of those deputies at the time. Arpaio has been cited repeatedly for gross civil rights violations and racial profiling of both citizens and noncitizens in the name of immigration enforcement. When questioned about his tactics, Arpaio said that under his jurisdiction, “it was not unusual for law enforcement officers to wear ski masks while on duty.”¹³

Regardless of where any of us stand on immigration policy, no one should be treated that way. Arpaio is an extreme example, but he’s not the only one. Human rights abuses in the name of immigration enforcement are un-American and are still happening all too often.

There was a win for justice in Arpaio’s case. With over 2,700 lawsuits against Arpaio and forty thousand felony warrants outstanding in his jurisdiction at one point, Arpaio had fostered a climate of hate and fear using virulently anti-Latino and anti-immigrant tactics. He and his deputies regularly crossed the line by using tactics that violate civil rights in the name of immigration enforcement.¹⁴ This is not okay. MomsRising members joined with other organizations like the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and called on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Arpaio for his out-of-control inhuman behavior and human rights abuses.

And they did.

The U.S. Department of Justice got involved, investigated, and Arpaio’s ability to go unchecked was checked. Then we—all of us who believe in Lady Liberty—won another battle: After twenty-four years in office as the most widely recognized anti-immigrant law official in the country, and despite raising $12 million from donors for his reelection bid, Arpaio lost his most recent reelection.¹⁵ Even though President Trump later pardoned Arpaio, the fact that he is no longer a sheriff with the force of law at his disposal is a major victory for people who spoke up, who voted, and who took action.

The evidence is clear. Our voices matter.

The Stereotypes Are Wrong

Stereotyping of people is both harmful and dangerous, and stereotypes are wrong. For instance, immigrants pay substantial taxes and contribute to our communities, not the opposite. In fact, undocumented immigrants paid $11.8 billion in state and local taxes in 2012 alone.¹⁶ And while many undocumented immigrants pay taxes through sales taxes, payroll taxes, and more, many do not (and cannot) take funds out. Money CNN reports: “The truth is that undocumented immigrants contribute more in payroll taxes than they will ever consume in public benefits.”¹⁷ Contrary to a ridiculous and harmful narrative pushed forward by many hardline conservatives over many years, immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than those who are native born.¹⁸ According to FBI statistics, when you look at the total number of crimes, white people actually commit the highest total number of crimes in our nation.¹⁹

There are two key wrong ideas about immigration on our southern border that must be addressed and set right. First, despite what many hardline conservatives have been inferring, the net migration at our southern border with Mexico is negative, and it has been so since the Great Recession. From 2009 to 2014, more people left the United States to return to Mexico than came here.²⁰ That’s right. The “wall” that President Trump repeatedly said he wanted to build is even more ridiculous and delusional than most people thought at the time. (Asians make up the largest share of recent immigrants, despite what has been insinuated to the public.²¹)

Second, many of the mothers and children who are seeking safety at our southern border are fleeing what has become known as the Northern Triangle of Central America: parts of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. This region has among the highest rates of homicide in the world and is considered the most violent region in the Western hemisphere.²² U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the Department of Homeland Security, found that 88 percent of the mothers and children entering at our southern border had credible fear, including escaping extreme sexual and gender-based violence,²³ that meets the threshold for qualifying for asylum, which is an international human right.²⁴ Yet, almost none of these mothers and children have received adequate legal representation. Shockingly, 80 percent of all asylum-seeking children fleeing violence from Central America continue to face their hearings alone.²⁵

Throw out the stereotypes. This is the real situation. It’s heartbreaking. It’s time to remember the promise of America that is written on the base of our Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” These words have in many ways defined our country. Bringing people together, caring for one another, and reaching out in times of war, famine, and natural disasters are part of our national heritage. Closing the door on others closes doors for our country and for ourselves. We can never forget: It’s our diversity that brings innovative ideas, solutions, and prosperity. We are truly stronger together.

It also bears repeating that immigrant women, children, and families are vital and important parts of our communities, workplaces, society, economy, friendships, and country. We must march to stop human rights abuses from happening in the name of immigration enforcement. Our nation needs federal comprehensive and fair immigration reform so there’s a line to stand in for legal status and citizenship for our friends, family, and neighbors who are currently undocumented—and we need it yesterday. We don’t have a comprehensive national immigration policy, an application process, or even a road map to citizenship for the undocumented people who live in our communities. Quite simply, there is no line to stand in. We need to fix this.

Right now, too many women and families are in limbo, working hard, fueling our economy, and paying taxes but vulnerable to losing a friend or family member who has been part of our community for years and years without notice. In fact, millions of women live with this fear each and every day:²⁶ These women have children like Gabi, who is seven years old and shares: “I always cry when my mom is late for pickup. She might not pick me up one day.”²⁷

All Hands on Deck

Our nation is prosperous and innovative because of our diversity, not in spite of it. It’s time to stand up for our neighbors, not stand silently by as they and we are torn down. The fact that we have stood for each other in that past is what truly makes America great.

If you see something, do something. Say something, persist. Start conversations and keep talking when it gets uncomfortable as long as you are safe. Take action in a way that works best for you. But just be sure to do something. It’s time to stand united for liberty and justice for every woman in America.

Never forget that together, we are a powerful force—and one conversation, one bullhorn, one letter to Congress at a time, everything we do adds up. We’ve come a long way as a nation together, and we cannot and will not turn our backs on the American Dream or on each other now.