Teaching the Immigration Debate in Freshman Composition Teaching the Immigration Debate in Freshman Composition Michael Hale Radical Teacher, Number 84, Spring 2009, pp. 18-30 (Article) Published by University of Illinois Press DOI: For additional information about this article [ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ] https://doi.org/10.1353/rdt.0.0028 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/262639 https://doi.org/10.1353/rdt.0.0028 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/262639 RADICAL TEACHER • NUMBER 8418 Teaching the Immigration Debate in Freshman Composition By Michael Hale After the largest immigration raid in U.S. history to date, the New York Times ran an editorial entitled “The Great Immigration Panic” condemning the anti- immigrant hysteria sweeping our country. It suggests that a time will come “once the enforcement fever breaks, when we look at what has been done and no longer recognize the country that did it . . . . A nation of immigrants is holding another nation of immigrants in bondage, exploit- ing its labor while ignoring its suffering . . . .” While the language is clear and mov- ing, the tone is one of defeat because it concedes, “There are few national figures [read politicians] standing firm against restrictionism.” The editorial concludes, “Children someday will study the Great Immigration Panic of the early 2000s, which harmed countless lives, wasted bil- lions of dollars and mocked the nation’s most deeply held values.” Sadly, much of the immigrant rights movement has taken a similar poignant yet defeated tone since 2006. Looking at the current crisis in the immigrant rights movement from the perspective of a progressive teacher, I had to ask myself what I am doing to engage my students—not “someday”—but right now in this national debate. Not only do students need the critical tools to look beyond the vast amounts of disinforma- tion and propaganda in order to construct more informed, reasoned opinions (a point the editorial agreed with), but they also need to develop a sense of agency that enables them to participate actively in the struggles against anti-immigrant hyste- ria (a point that liberal publications will rarely concede). Only intelligent decisions arrived at through reflection and research fused with an understanding that change only happens with the active participa- tion of masses of people, peppered with a healthy sense of outrage, will begin to overcome one of the most dangerous and recurrent tendencies in American society. I have been involved in immigrant rights movements since my childhood in Los B E T W E E n H A L F -M iL L iO n A n D A M iL L iO n P r O T E S T E r S M A r C H A G A in S T i M M iG r A n T L A W i n L O S A n G E L E S . P H O T O B Y M A r C u S rt 84 text.indd 18 3/25/09 12:06:22 pM NUMBER 84 • RADICAL TEACHER 19 Angeles, from the Sanctuary Movement for Central American refugees in the 1980s to the fights against Proposition 187 in the 1990s to the struggles against anti- Arab hostility after 2001 to the massive immigrant rights marches in 2006. Most recently, I moved to Toledo, Ohio, and worked for the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (AFL-CIO) helping to orga- nize migrant farmworkers, mostly of Mexican and indigenous descent, in the Midwest and South. In my experience, the most successful immigrant rights move- ments do not wait on politicians to solve problems, but rather empower immigrants to speak for themselves and educate fellow immigrants and allies about the root causes of immigration. At the same time, successful movements create more allies and empower them to go into their com- munities and defuse the scapegoating and disinformation that consumes too many U.S. citizens. This article will discuss how I developed a freshmen composition class that tries to transfer the lessons I learned as an immigrant rights organizer into the freshmen composition classroom. The debate over undocumented immi- gration lends itself well to a research- focused composition class. With my syl- labus structured around purpose-driven writing situations, I try to break the larger debate down into a series of problems that students must confront in order to under- stand the issues, obtain reliable informa- tion, and form well-reasoned opinions. Each problem, and the strategies I teach in order to overcome the problem, match- es with an objective of the composition course. Thus, all students learn about and engage in the issue while developing the writing skills needed to succeed in the course and in their future classes. At the same time, the class helped a small percentage of students develop an activist consciousness that motivated them to par- ticipate in the immigrant rights marches, a union conference, and a campus-wide panel discussion on The North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Crisis in the Immigrant Rights Movement The immigrant rights movement in the United States has been on the defensive ever since the breath-taking marches in 2006. Millions of people marched against the repressive Sensenbrenner Act (HR 4437)—a bill that aimed to increase the criminalization of undocumented immi- grants to unprecedented levels and also to criminalize anyone who aided undoc- umented immigrants such as teachers, nurses, social workers, or clergy. The marches were the largest series of demon- strations in the last 20 years and arguably the largest demonstrations ever in U.S. history. After that inspiring show of force, the last two years have been among the most difficult for immigrants and their allies due to a number of factors. Immigrant com- munities have lived in greater fear than at anytime in recent history with hundreds of workplace and home raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), count- less families separated by detention and deportation, horrendous deaths occurring in ICE detention facilities, and a rising number of hate crimes.1 The movement underestimated the extreme methods the Bush administration would use to create a sense of crisis and fear. The immigrant rights movement also underestimated the anger that was mobi- lized by organized anti-immigrant forces. Anti-immigrant forces are nowhere near rt 84 text.indd 19 3/25/09 12:06:23 pM RADICAL TEACHER • NUMBER 8420 the size of the immigrant rights move- ment, yet those small groups of mostly white middle-class people are given far more respectability by the media and politicians. More importantly, they are given disproportionate access to broadcast countless lies about immigrants meant to whip up fear and hatred. Scapegoating immigrants and people of color in order to confuse economically struggling voters during times of war and crisis, thereby distracting them from the real source of their suffering, has a long and ugly history in the United States (Higham). Most importantly, too much hope was pinned to the Democratic Party and Washington-based national immigrant rights organizations that quickly moved to compromise with the Bush Administration on guest worker proposals without imme- diate legalization (Bacon, “Time to Build a Stronger, More Radical Movement”). More immigrants have died in ICE deten- tion facilities in the last five years than prisoners in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib (Ruiz). Yet while many Democrats speak about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo as a national shame, no leading Democrat, including Obama, mentions a word about the horrors of ICE detention or the suf- fering of the undocumented even when one of the largest immigration raids hap- pen in Laurel, Mississippi, the same week as their convention. With the defeat of all federal immigration reform legisla- tion, the immigrant rights movement has been unable to re-organize itself with the same sense of determination it had in 2000, placing it in a defensive posture. Using the disorganization of the immi- grant rights movement to their advan- tage, the anti-immigrant movement is channeling their efforts into hundreds of bills proposed at the state and local level.2 Like the Jim Crow laws, black codes, restrictive covenants, and sundown laws local and state governments used to repress African Americans migrating from the South to the North and West during the last century, these new bills aim to make life extremely difficult for immigrant communities. Because many of these bills focus on the large and grow- ing Latino population, some immigrant rights activists and scholars have begun to use the term “Juan Crow” to describe the systematic use of the laws to prevent the undocumented and those perceived to be undocumented from gaining full equality (Lovato). The bills essentially try to make every aspect of life from finding a place to live to finding a job to obtaining medical ser- vices to accessing higher education subject to verification of one’s status. Many bills also focus on making English the offi- cial language and deputizing local law enforcement to act as ICE agents. Several states are debating whether to ask state employees to act as ICE agents as well. As a result of Proposition 200, teachers in Arizona are asked to turn over names of students whom they suspect of being undocumented. The North Carolina leg- islature recently passed a law prohibiting undocumented students from attending any public college or university, and states that offer in-state tuition to undocu- mented students who graduated from high school such as California are under increased pressure to reverse their policy. Socially Conscious, Purpose-Driven Writing My experience teaching a composition class focused on the immigration debate ranges from positions I have held as rt 84 text.indd 20 3/25/09 12:06:23 pM NUMBER 84 • RADICAL TEACHER 21 an adjunct at several transfer-oriented community colleges in Los Angeles, California, to a trade-oriented commu- nity college in Toledo, Ohio, where I currently teach. While between 40-70% of my students in Los Angeles were work- ing-class Chicano/as and Latino/as some- where between first and third generation, the majority in Toledo are working-class white and African American students somewhere between third and sixth gen- eration. The grandparents of most of my African American students migrated from the South during the Great Migration to the North. While practically every Chicano/a and Latino/a student is made to feel their immigrant heritage, most of my Toledo students (despite Toledo’s Polish, Irish, German, Hungarian, and Southern cultural background) have no sense of their immigrant/migrant heri- tage. Teaching the immigration debate gave my students the opportunity to devel- op their writing skills by confronting a demanding issue that was being dis- cussed in their homes, in their places of worship, in their local and national newspapers, and in the streets of their community. The urgency and ubiquity of the issue gave many (but certainly not all) the excitement and motivation necessary to put in the hard work it takes to write college-level essays. At the same time, the new focus allowed me to break away from the standardized composition syl- labus while still fulfilling all the required course objectives. It also engaged my interest more than assignments created by administrators and solved many of the problems that plague freshmen composi- tion students who are asked to write a research paper, too often for the first time in their life. Breaking Away from the Standardized Syllabus The desire to teach a syllabus of chal- lenging reading, rigorous writing, and critical thinking often conflicts with the subtle and not-so-subtle push to teach an unchallenging standardized composition syllabus. If I take the standardized route, I feel guilty my students are just passing through, not learning what they need to survive; if I take the challenging route, I live in constant anxiety that I will lose my job and have to write my parents for a loan, again. Too often, adjuncts give in to the need for security and simply long for creating a challenging syllabus. If faculty question any administrator on the simplified assignments in most standardized composition syllabi, they will be told how freshmen need the sim- plest assignments possible in order to master complicated rhetorical modes like compare and contrast and cause and effect.3 Examples of assignments given by administrators are “Compare your favor- ite flavor of ice cream to your least favorite flavor of ice cream” or “Write a letter to Santa Claus describing in precise detail the gift you would most like to receive this Christmas.” As much as I would like Santa Claus to fulfill my wish of grading all my papers for the year, I find it hard to see how this helps students learn how to prepare for the difficult assignments they will confront in their upper division courses, nor do I see how these assign- ments overcome the “who cares” factor in order for students (and instructors for that matter) to gain the motivation to do the hard work involved in college-level writing (and grading). Slowly I began to move away from the standardized compo- sition syllabus and instead worked to place rt 84 text.indd 21 3/25/09 12:06:24 pM RADICAL TEACHER • NUMBER 8422 the students’ needs above my feelings of insecurity. Assignments Before I give any writing assignments, I find it important to set the tone for the semester and engage students right away with the urgency and complexity of the issue that they will spend the semester researching from various angles. I have tried a number of strategies to accomplish this, but the most effective has been a video documentary that presents the vari- ous sides of the issue but centers on the humanitarian aspects of immigration.4 Video seems to capture students’ attention better and drive home the magnitude of the issue. The first time I taught a composition class focused on the immigration debate, I ended the class with a video. A white male student, in his final reflection essay, explained why it would be better to start the class with a video. He wrote: When reading about immigration, it is very difficult to see the real people in the story. The film brought real people to life and showed the losses that they had achieved . . . . [The documentary] really helped me take into perspective that no matter what anyone says, immi- grants are human beings, and we are all the same. Many Americans today feel superior to the rest of the world, and this creates the biggest problem of all. As a human being, I believe that everyone is equal, and the documentary created a way to reiterate that belief of equality. Other students wrote about how the documentaries helped them realize that they had many false ideas about immi- grants. A female African American stu- dent wrote, “After watching the movie, I saw that many of my ideas and opinions about immigration, the struggle immi- grants go through to get here and how they are treated, was very naïve.” From this realization, she was also able to con- nect the racism experienced by undocu- mented immigrants to the racism faced by African Americans. “Like black people, immigrants a lot of times are treated like they should not even be alive. They are taken advantage of . . . because people think less of them.” Assignment 1 Summary: Which Side Are You On? Immigration is a controversial issue that cannot be easily divided into left, liberal, and conservative categories. Because it places the students on unfamiliar ground that does not conform to traditional par- tisan American politics, the immigration debate provokes more critical thinking than a discussion of welfare or affirmative action, where the lines are drawn along more familiar boundaries. For example, conservative students who support the Bush administration do not know how to process his administration’s vocal support of “immigration reform” with their standard AM-radio, anti- immigrant rhetoric. Interestingly, there is considerable division in the Republican Party over immigration reform. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal editorializes, “No issue more deeply divides American con- servatives today than immigration. It’s the subject on which we get the most criti- cal mail by far . . .” (“Conservatives and Immigration”). A vocal minority of the Republican Party, represented by people like Representative Tom Tancredo and Pat Buchanan, wants strict enforcement rt 84 text.indd 22 3/25/09 12:06:24 pM NUMBER 84 • RADICAL TEACHER 23 and immigration restriction. A whole host of cultural nationalist, xenophobic, and racist hate groups orbit around this section of the Republican Party (Barry, “The Politics and Ideologies of the Anti- Immigrant Forces”). They have a popu- list message that speaks to disaffected working-class and middle-class voters. In contrast, a large percentage of the neo- conservative section of the Republican Party, represented by figures such as Bush and McCain, are more subservient to the growing demands from U.S. corporations for a large exploitable work force. They promote enforcement combined with a guest worker program and a long, com- plicated, and expensive path to legaliza- tion that keeps new immigrants in a state of constant fear of deportation and, therefore, more exploitable (Bacon, “How U.S. Corporations Won the Debate Over Immigration”). On the other side, liberal or left stu- dents must not only contemplate the divisions within the Republican Party but also divisions within the Democratic Party—particularly the newly elect- ed more conservative Democrats often referred to as the Blue Dog Coalition (Anderson). In addition, there are strong divisions between Washington-based immigrant lobbying groups and orga- nizations created by and predominantly composed of immigrants that work at the grassroots level for unconditional legal- ization and family reunification (Bacon, “Time to Build a Stronger, More Radical Movement”). For example, in a controver- sial editorial “Change of Heart on Guest Workers,” the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) withdrew its support for unconditional legalization for the undoc- umented and instead crossed over to the neocon/neoliberal camp by supporting a guest worker program advocated by the McCain-Kennedy coalition.5 There are also debates between leftist and liberals over open borders versus regulated bor- ders (La Botz). Additionally, nonpolitical religious students are being challenged by their spiritual leaders to adopt more pro-immigrant positions.6 Lastly, envi- ronmental groups have been split between Malthusians who advocate sharp reduc- tions in population and social justice envi- ronmentalists who research deeper root causes of environmental devastation than simply over-population. The Sierra Club has witnessed terrible fighting between these factions (“Hostile Takeover”). The first assignment asks students to summarize the positions of the vari- ous organizational forces involved in the immigration debate. It allows students to develop knowledge of the broader scope of the issue while sharpening their criti- cal thinking and writing skills. Instead of starting with the rhetorical mode, I start with the writing situation (how do you sort out the various factions in this debate?), and then have the students discuss which rhetorical mode would best fit the par- ticular demands of the writing situation. Sorting out these different factions lends itself well to a classification and division assignment. Students can choose to clas- sify and divide one side of the debate or both sides in a compare and contrast for- mat organized around a category such as “economic arguments.” For example, Tom Barry, a prominent investigative journal- ist on immigration issues, insists, “Anti- immigration forces include partisans of the two main political parties as well as adherents of parties and movements on the political left and right that fall outside mainstream political thinking” (“Politics and Ideologies of the Anti-Immigrant rt 84 text.indd 23 3/25/09 12:06:25 pM RADICAL TEACHER • NUMBER 8424 Forces”). In fact, Barry subdivides the restrictionist side of the immigration debate into six categories: Restrictionist Policy Institutes, White Supremacist, Malthusian Environmentalist, Paleo- Cons, Neo-Cons, and Border Vigilantes. Barry’s point underscores the uncommon nature of the immigrant rights debate, and how it requires deeper thinking than many other issues in order to form an opinion. Using Tom Barry’s article as a model, the first assignment asks students to write a 4-page essay in which they subdivide the pro-immigrant forces into categories they create. They select two articles from an online reader I prepared with links to articles from Barry, Bacon, La Botz, The Interfaith Worker Justice Center, and Guskin and Wilson in order to conduct research on the pro-immigrant forces. This assignment makes students reach beyond the simplistic pro/con, two-sided structure by which most controversial issues get framed in current U.S. poli- tics; each side is examined carefully to reveal many more factions than originally thought. Assignment 2 Investigation: Where Does that Information Come From? It is hard to find a topic that has pro- duced more news reports, studies, and dinner-table discussion than undocu- mented immigrants. The ability to cut away the unneeded or unreliable infor- mation using tools that are more objec- tive than subjective allows students to see the clarifying power reading and research can provide. While there has been an explosion of information cover- ing immigration, it ranges from rigorous scholarly inquiry to deliberatively mis- leading fear-mongering. With an unprec- edented number of interlocking lobbying groups, think tanks, pundits, and politi- cians, anti-immigrant groups are able to greatly influence the national discussion.7 Disinformation abounds!8 It has never been more important to teach meticulous investigation and evaluation of sources. I teach seven overlapping techniques of information evaluation (relevance, evi- dence, authorship, publisher, bias, timeli- ness, and comprehensiveness) advocated by most reference librarians and many research handbooks, but I also teach stu- dents that they should follow the money and study the leadership. Perhaps because it feels like a covert, defiant activity, my students really enjoy this. This is generally one of the most popular assignments. I use two large partisan organizations as investigative targets. These two organiza- tions produce a considerable amount of the information discussed in the main- stream media. The first is a corporate lobbying group named the Essential Worker Immigrant Coalition (EWIC); the second is an anti-immigrant think tank, the Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR). On the surface, both are well-funded Washington-based organiza- tions that produce professional studies, Congressional testimony, interviews, and opinion/editorials for newspapers, radio, and television. However, EWIC is a lobbying coalition of large corporations like Wal-Mart and employer associations like the National Builders Association in alliance with certain national DC-based immigrant rights organizations like the National Council of La Raza, unions like SEIU, and religious institutions like the Council of Catholic Bishops. It is headed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and rt 84 text.indd 24 3/25/09 12:06:25 pM NUMBER 84 • RADICAL TEACHER 25 fervently advocates for a guest worker pro- gram that would reproduce the indentured servitude programs of the past like the infamous Bracero Program (“Close to Slaver y”). Likewise, FAIR is not a disinterested research institute. It was founded and is still run by some of the most active elements of the a n t i-i m m i g r a n t movement.9 The second assignment asks students first to conduct a full-text Lexis Nexis database search to assess how often both organizations have been quoted in the daily papers within the last year and then write a reflection journal entry. Next, I send students to both websites (www. ewic.org and www.fairus.org) and ask them to evaluate the information pro- vided based upon the merits of its schol- arship and threats to its validity using criteria mentioned above. This assignment allows my students to understand that even information that appears authorita- tive requires rigorous scrutiny. To see the ways information is manipu- lated is not shocking for most of my immi- grant students. They often come from countries where corruption and propa- ganda is assumed to underlie most “news” reports. A Mexican student once told me that the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) (a center-right political party that ruled Mexico for over 60 years) runs sto- ries that “only children can believe.” This can lead to a paralyzing sense of hope- lessness. On the other hand, for many of my middle-class suburban students, the realization that they are being lied to can be very jarring. They take the discovery almost personally. Many move from com- plete trust to complete distrust. While I encourage students to have a suspi- cious attitude toward informa- tion in a conten- tious debate, a cynical or hopeless attitude only rein- forces and some- times even justifies the apathy already present in many young people. What is missing, I tell my students, is agency on the part of the student. Between accepting everything others tell you or rejecting everything and withdrawing, there is the middle ground of critically evaluating information and constructing your own opinion. This is an important revelation for many students. In a final journal entry, a Mexican woman spoke about an overwhelming feeling that things just happened to her and her family. She compared that feeling before to a new feeling she had: This class didn’t show me anything I didn’t already know in terms of the problem. I have already witnessed first hand what happens when a Mexican tries to cross the border . . . . You take your life into your hands for the promise of something beautiful . . . . I was mad before . . . often confused. . . . I knew the reality even before, but to see it from a distance through watching a documen- tary and reading articles made me think more clearly . . . . The class gave me facts and information to fight back against haters who often lie to make their case. The feeling of being able to research thoroughly, think clearly, and defend her- betWeen accepting everything others tell you or rejecting everything and WithdraWing, there is the middle ground of critically evaluating information and constructing your oWn opinion. rt 84 text.indd 25 3/25/09 12:06:26 pM RADICAL TEACHER • NUMBER 8426 self effectively gave her a sense of agency. Other students said that they felt as if they could participate in political discussions/ debates with their family members and friends for the first time in their lives. Additional Assignments Essays 3 and 4 focus students on critiqu- ing an argument of their own choosing within the immigration debate. I often ask them to find a direct quote claiming some- thing significant about immigrants from a pro- or anti-immigrant position. Their task is to assess the validity of the claim using scholarly sources—for example “all immi- grants are criminals,” “immigrants do not pay taxes,” or “immigrants pay billions into social security.”10 These assignments force them to search beyond the talking heads and dig for substantial informa- tion from peer reviewed sources such as academic journals, government publica- tions from the Census Bureau or Bureau of Labor Statistics, and nonpartisan think tanks such as the Pew Hispanic Center. They learn to interrogate the sources and the information they find with probing questions: After considering the totality of information gathered on a given claim, are there patterns in the information? Discrepancies? Agreements? What is the significance of the data? To where are their conclusions trying to lead? After completing essays 1-4, my students have outlined the complicated factions within the debate, amassed a sizable portfolio of research, and hopefully formed a position within the debate. In their final assignment, students write a 10-page research paper and argue for a solution to a specific issue within the debate using the research they have gath- ered throughout the semester. Of the three basic positions a student generally takes (open borders with unconditional legal- ization, regulated borders with some form of legalization, and enforcement only), no student has moved from one to another extreme. Each semester I have taught the immigrant debate, a few students choose open borders (particularly immigrant stu- dents and religious students), a few stu- dents remain locked within their enforce- ment-only position (but at least with a much more informed outlook), while most students move from an enforcement-only to supporting regulation of some form. Of the students who choose the regulation position, many were very interested in a visa program modeled after the European Union that would allow people from the Western Hemisphere to travel and work freely across borders.11 Some students saw this as pragmatic, some saw it as repara- tions for U.S. military interventions, and some saw it as a way to help the struggling U.S. economy without reproducing the harshest aspects of the Bracero Program. Results While focusing my students on the immigration debate allowed me to move away from the standardized syllabus and make challenging assignments that focused on critical thinking and argumen- tation, I found that it also solved many other problems that plague freshman composition students and composition instructors. By focusing the entire class on one debatable issue, the students had an opportunity to develop a broad knowledge of that issue; this helped to prepare the students to write their research paper. In my experience, many students who strug- gle through the first several assignments panic when they have to write a 10-page rt 84 text.indd 26 3/25/09 12:06:26 pM NUMBER 84 • RADICAL TEACHER 27 research paper. After reading numerous articles throughout the semester, they not only developed their opinions but also a good databank of sources to back them up. Their writing had a clear purpose, and because everyone was working on the same issue, they could find their position within a group of similar and opposing positions and collaborate in like-minded groups much more easily. My new focus also solved several prob- lems that plague me as an instructor. Immigration was an issue that chose me more than I chose it, mostly because I could no longer ignore it. I was tired of placing such a huge firewall between my classroom and my outside activism. The immigration debate engaged my interest as a teacher in a way that standardized assignments did not. I had surprising suc- cess in getting a small number of students to engage with the issue outside of the classroom. Several students became so interested in the issue that they partici- pated in immigrant rights marches. They did so because they were tired of seeing the abuses immigrants face. The main reason my immigrant students said they participated was to help their families live without fear of deportation. I also invited three students to give their papers on corporate-sponsored guest worker proposals at a union-sponsored forum on immigrant rights in Los Angeles. Writing on a social justice issue helped build a strong activist consciousness tem- pered by serious academic research. At the forum, a student opened her talk with an analysis informed by her study of the Bracero Program: “Ever heard the phrase ‘We learn history to help us prevent from making the same mistakes’? Well, it seems as though we have not learned from our past mistakes. The guest-worker program proposed by President Bush is a bad rep- etition of history.” During the 2008 Democratic primaries, both Obama and Clinton swept through Ohio speaking critically about NAFTA. In general, Ohio Democrats have a deep hatred of NAFTA. A New York Times editorial on 24 February 2008 argued, “Criticisms of trade agreements in Ohio are as predictable as praise for ethanol in Iowa.” Ohio voters see it as the principle reason manufacturing jobs have left the state. However, the vast majority never consider the effect NAFTA has had in Mexico or Canada. After listening in class to a Oaxacan guest speaker tell his family’s story of losing their corn farm after NAFTA passed, several students remarked that his story was conspicuously absent in the current discussion occurring in Ohio. Those students and I attended a campus-wide discussion on NAFTA and the election held by the political sci- ence department. During the question and answer session, I raised the issue of NAFTA’s effect on Mexican peasants and how it has forced millions of people across the border; I was quickly told that my question was outside of the range of the discussion. One of my students immediately jumped up, stood in line, and asked a similar question. He said to the moderator, “I used to be like you. I never thought about how NAFTA affected any- one besides my father who lost his job as a parts supplier.” He then related the story of the Oaxacan man and talked about how he believed the unemployed from Mexico and Ohio had much in common. It was one of the most rewarding experiences I have ever had as a teacher. It is this sense of agency that I really want my students to develop. rt 84 text.indd 27 3/25/09 12:06:27 pM RADICAL TEACHER • NUMBER 8428 Notes 1 For a look at increased detention see Detention Watch Network http://www. detentionwatchnetwork.org/. For deaths occurring in ICE detention see the Washing- ton Post’s investigative series Careless Deten- tion http://w w w.washingtonpost.com/ w p-sr v/nat ion /specia ls/imm ig rat ion / index.html and the New York Times special series “Immigration Detention: In-Custody Deaths.” For hate crimes see The Year in Hate by SPLC http://www.splcenter.org/ intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=886. 2 See National Immigration Law Center’s Local Law Enforcement Page for an overview http://w w w.nilc.org/ i m m l a w p o l i c y/ L o c a l L a w/ i n d e x . htm. For an overview of the types of anti- immigrant ordinances see http://w w w. immig ra ntsol ida r it y.org/ Documents/ Nov06OverviewLocalOrdinances/FIR- MOverviewofOrdinanceTypes.pdf. 3 While I believe these discussions are happening in every level of higher educa- tion, it is pushed harder and less hidden at the community college level. 4 There are many recently released documentaries focusing on immigrant communities in the United States. Here is a short list of recommendations: Wetback: the Undocumented Documentary follows two Nicaraguan men as they travel across Central American, Mexico, and the U.S. border. Casey Peek and Jose Palafox’s New World Border analyzes free trade policies and abuses happening on the U.S./Mexico border—particularly focusing on Clinton’s Operation Gatekeeper. National Net- work for Immigrant and Refugee Rights’ UPROOTED: Refugees of the Global Econ- omy follows migrants from Bolivia, Haiti, and the Philippines after policies from the World Trade Organization (WTO) and The International Monetary Fund (IMF) devastated their countries. El Immigrante by John Sheedy, David Eckenrode, and John Eckenrode examines the Mexican and American border crisis by telling the story of Eusebio de Haro, a young Mexican migrant, who was shot and killed during one of his journeys north. Point of Attack directed by Kathleen Foster follows the attacks against Arab immigrants after 9-11. These are all short documentaries that can be shown in one class meeting. 5 Janet Murgia, president of NCLR, wrote an editorial in the Washington Post announcing their reversal. This set off a wave a criticism. Nativo Lopez’s “NCLR’s Embrace of Bracero-type Program a Tro- jan Horse” is one of the strongest. 6 For example Cardinal Mahony in Los Angeles promised that he would instruct his bishops to disobey the law if HR 4437 passes. For an overview of religious posi- tions on immigration, read the Interfaith Worker Justice’s “For You Were Once a Stranger: Immigration in the U.S. Through the Lens of Faith.” 7 There are numerous studies that uncover the interconnectedness of the anti-immigrant movement in terms of its funding sources and ideologies including ties to the eugenics movement and White Power movement. Here are a few titles: “The Puppeteer” and “The Teflon Nativ- ists” by the Southern Poverty Law Center; Tom Barry’s “Whose Side Are You On” and “What’s FAIR Got to Do with It” 8 There are many reports that discuss this issue. Here are a few titles: Fair- ness and Accuracy in Reporting’s “CNN’s Immigration Problem Is Dobbs the exception—or the rule?”; Amy Goodman’s “The Dubious Mr. Dobbs.” Media Mat- ters has an ongoing archive of articles on this subject at http://mediamatters.org/ issues_topics/immigration. rt 84 text.indd 28 3/25/09 12:06:27 pM NUMBER 84 • RADICAL TEACHER 29 9 See note 4. 10 Several excellent articles and books have been recently published debunk- ing the common myths about immigra- tion. Guskin and Wilson’s The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers; Aviva Chomsky’s “They Take Our Jobs!”: and 20 Other Myths about Immigration; for a short- er article, see “Top 5 Immigration Myths the Campaign Season” by the American Immigration Lawyers Association. 11 This is a position advocated by Bal- demar Velásquez, founder and president of the Farm Labor Organizing Commit- tee-AFL-CIO, called the Freedom Visa (www.floc.com). Works Cited Andersen, Ericka. “Hybrid Politics: Blue America Goes Red.” Human Events. http://w w w.humanevents.com /ar ticle. hp?id=21169&key words=ariz&g t, 18 June 2007. Bacon, David. “How U.S. Corporations Won the Debate Over Immigration.” Multi- national Monitor. Winter 2005. http://dba- con.igc.org/ Img ra nts/2 0 0 4 cor pswon. html, 4 June 2008. ---. “Time To Build a Stronger, More Radical Movement.” American Prospect. 24 July 2007. http://www.prospect.org/cs/ articles?article=time_for_a_more_radi- cal_immigrantrights_movement. 4 June 2008. Barry, Tom. “The Politics and Ideologies of the Anti-Immigration Forces.” Coun- ter Punch. 25 June 2005. http://w w w. counterpunch.org/barry06252005.html, 4 June 2008. ---. “What’s FAIR got to do with it?” 19 Jan. 2006. http://rightweb.irc-online. org/rw/3053.html, 4 June 2008. ---. “Whose Side Are You On.” NACLA (2005). http://w w w.nacla.org/art_dis- play.php?art=2555. Chomsky, Aviva. “They Take Our Jobs!” and 20 Other Myths about Immigration. New York: Beacon Press, 2007. “Close to Slavery Guest Worker Programs in the United States.” Southern Poverty Law Center 2007. http://www.splcenter. org/legal/guestreport/index.jsp. “CNN’s Immigration Problem.” Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. 24 Apr. 2006. http:// www.fair.org/index.php?page=2867. “Conservatives and Immigration.” Edi- torial. Wall Street Journal [Washington DC]. 10 July 2006. http://w w w.opin- i o n j o u r n a l . c o m /e d i t o r i a l / f e a t u r e . html?id=110008632, 4 June 2008. “For You Were Once a Stranger: Immi- gration in the U.S. Through the Lens of Faith.” Interfaith Worker Justice (2006). h t t p : // w w w . i w j . o r g /a c t n o w / i m m / IWJhndbk_4May07LORES.pdf. Goodman, Amy. “The Dubious Mr. Dobbs.” Democracy Now. 5 Dec. 2007. http://www. d e m o c r a c y n ow. o r g / blo g / 2 0 0 7/1 2 /5/ the_dubious_mr_dobbs. “The Great Immigration Panic.” New York Times (03 June 2008): 22. Guskin, Jane and David Wilson. The Poli- tics of Immigration: Questions and Answers. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2007. Higham, John. Strangers in the Land: Pat- terns of American Nativism, 1860-1925. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press; 2nd edition, 1988. “Hostile Takeover.” Editorial. Intelli- gence Report. Spring 2004. http://www. rt 84 text.indd 29 3/25/09 12:06:28 pM RADICAL TEACHER • NUMBER 8430 splcenter.org/intel /intelrepor t /ar ticle. jsp?aid=379, 4 June 2008. “Immigration Detention: In-Custody Deaths.” New York Times. Times Topic. ht t p: //topics.ny t i mes.com /top/refer- ence/t imestopics/subjects/i /immig ra- t ion _ detent ion _us/incustody_ deat hs/ index.html. La Botz, Dan and Ana Avendaño. “Open Border Debate.” New Labor Forum (2008). Lopez, Nativo. “NCLR’s Embrace of Bra- cero-type Program a Trojan Horse.” Border Voz. 26 Feb. 2007. http://www.bordervoz. org/guestworker.html#anchor_15. Lovato, Roberto. “Juan Crow in Geor- gia.” The Nation. 8 May 2008. http://www. thenation.com/doc/20080526/lovato. Murguia, Janet. “A Change of Heart on Guest Workers.” Washington Post 11 Feb. 2007. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ w p -d y n /content /a r t ic le /2 0 0 7/0 2 /0 9/ AR 2007020901947.html. “The Puppeteer.” Intelligence Report. Sum- mer 2005. http://w w w.splcenter.org/ intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=180, 4 June 2008 Ruiz, Albor. “Immigration’s human rights shame is now a moral crisis.” Daily News. 18 May 2008. “The Teflon Nativists FAIR Marked by Ties to White Supremacy.” Intelli- gence Report. Winter 2007. http://www. splcenter.org/intel /intelrepor t /ar ticle. jsp?aid=846. “Top 5 Immigration Myths this Campaign Season.” 2007. American Immigration Lawyers Association. http://w w w.aila. net/content/default.aspx?docid=24201. rt 84 text.indd 30 3/25/09 12:06:28 pM