The Mercury News - Preserve Family Reunification for Immigrants of Color, Too

Op-Ed

By Ro Khanna and Keith Ellison

The chilling pictures of kids being separated from their parents stirred the conscience of our nation. But House Speaker Paul Ryan is still forging ahead with legislation this week to restrict family-based immigration.

Historical context exposes the hypocrisy of this proposal. During the 1965 immigration debate, many who wanted to preserve America's European makeup explicitly argued for the virtues of family reunification policies. If family was an important consideration back then for European immigrants, is it not equally important today for African-Americans, Asian-Americans and Latino-Americans?

The importance of family to an immigrant's success is evident throughout America's history. Consider Jerry Yang, who was born in Taiwan and was 2 years old when his father died. At age 10 in 1978, he moved with his mother and brother to San Jose.

Jerry's grandmother and extended family cared for him while his mother worked. Yang would go on to co-found Yahoo and become the company's CEO.

Family reunification helps immigrants integrate into society, facilitating access to jobs and credit. The policy has worked. Immigrants today are more than twice as likely to start a new business. Forty-three percent of companies in the 2017 Fortune 500, including several technology firms in Silicon Valley, were launched by foreign-born entrepreneurs, many arriving on family visas.

Family and skills-based visas complement each other: America would become less attractive to those who come on skills-based visas without the chance for their families to join them.

The president recently disparaged family reunification -- or "chain migration," the pejorative term he prefers -- from Asian, Latino and African countries. Instead, he called for more immigrants from places like Norway. Such inflammatory comments and policy choices remind us of a distant time in history.

A century ago, Congress enacted the Immigration Act of 1917, inspired by advocates of eugenics who sought to expressly preserve "American homogeneity" and Northern European character. The Immigration Act of 1924, which included both the Asian Exclusion Act and the National Origin Act, went further by creating a quota system restricting immigration from these "inferior" regions.

Discriminatory immigration policies lasted until the civil rights movement in the 1960s. While many tout the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and The Voting Rights Act of 1965, the movement also paved the way for an end to an openly racist immigration system.

In a nod to the civil rights movement, President Lyndon Johnson in his 1964 State of the Union address to Congress directed his administration to "lift by legislation the bars of discrimination against those who seek entry into our country."

During this period, nativist politicians such as Congressman Michael Feighan, D-Ohio, chairman of the House Immigration Subcommittee, concocted a new pretext to maintain America's European character -- family reunification. On the House floor, Feighan argued that America should give preference to the family members of Europeans who were already living here over foreigners from other continents. Feighan succeeded in having the 1965 Immigration Act prioritize family reunification.

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So why the change of heart today? Why are we abandoning our belief in family values and the importance of family reunification? Could it be related to a shift in the national origin of today's immigrants?

In 1960, Europeans were 7 of 8 immigrants in the U.S. By 2010, 9 out of 10 were from outside Europe. In 1965, 84 percent of the country was non-Hispanic white, compared with 62 percent today.

The simple truth is that policymakers' willingness to celebrate family reunification has changed as the nationality of immigrants has changed.

Today, those marching in the street to keep family reunification draw their inspiration from the civil rights movement. They are marching for the principle that immigrants from China, India or Mexico are as committed to family values as those from Britain, Germany or Norway.

They are marching for the principle that we are a creedal nation that celebrates the contributions of immigrants regardless of their blood or religion. They know that an America that stands up for all our families will be a more innovative and stronger America in the 21st century.

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