Immigrant Rights: A Puerto Rican Issue?
Jordan, Howard
It was a sweltering hot summer day, and I hadn't seen Palmira Rios for what seemed like ages. During our student days at Yale University in the late 1970s, this remarkable black Puerto Rican...
...By contrast, Dominicans, the largest immigrant community in New York, had voter turn-out rates of 51% in 1992 and 52% in 1993...
...Many other Puerto Rican elected officials, while not engaging directly in anti-immigrant practices, do, however, remain oblivious to the implications of immigraVOL XXIX, No 3 Nov/DEc 1995 37 VOL XXIX, No 3 Nov/DEC 1995 37REPORT ON IMMIGRATION tion for the Puerto Rican community...
...They ask why, given the escalating rate of poverty among Puerto Ricans (the poorest community of color in the nation), they should champion the rights of new arrivals...
...First of all, the growing anti-immigrant hysteria promotes a cli- York City Board of Educatino mate of discrimination which directly affects Puerto Ricans, who are viewed by many as "foreigners...
...English Only laws, while directly targeting immigrants who do not speak English, would have a harmful effect on all linguistic minorities, including Puerto Ricans...
...citizens, overuse entitlement programs, and drive down wages...
...In 1987, the LCRJ led a march of over 3,000 in Brooklyn to protest the death of Dominican immigrant Juan Rodriguez at the hands of four New York City police officers...
...In their eyes, I was two things they couldn't swallow: I appeared to be a Dominican immigrant and I was black...
...colony, most divid' migration occurred in the late 1950s...
...policy was unfair to the region...
...by 1990, Puerto Ricans constituted only one-half of all the city's Latinos...
...gth...
...We Puerto Ricans are no strangers to the immigrant experience...
...On March 2, 1917, under the impending threat of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Jones Act making Puerto Ricans U.S...
...Clearly, the full electoral power of Latinos will only be felt if Latinos of all nationalities-citizens and immigrant non-citizens alike-participate in the political process...
...In 1993, the Task Force on New Americans drafted a bill to allow permanent residents to vote in local elections...
...North Americans have been taught for too long that any gains by immigrants are at the expense of "real" Americans...
...In a July WBAI public-radio program entitled "Talkback," when City Council member Israel Ruiz, who represents the Northwest Bronx, was asked by a listener about the importance of immigration for Latino political empowerment, he remarked: "That is a federal issue...
...Three years later, at the behest of Puerto Rican activists and elected officials, the New York State Assembly established a Task Force on New Americans (TFNA), chaired by two Puerto Ricans (this author and then Assemblyman Jos6 Rivera...
...Puerto Rico was invaded and colonized by the United States in 1898 after being ceded as booty in the Spanish American War...
...Labor Department, migration created a special task force-the s the Apparel/Restaurant Guidance and Enforcement Team (TARGET)-to nmunity, protect immigrant workers against unfair labor practices in factories and tenuous restaurants...
...We in the City Council have nothing to do with that...
...citizens at birth, they rep- strer resent 70% of the city's registered Latino voters...
...Puerto Ricans have served as directors, chairs and general counsels of some of the city's major immigration-advocacy groups...
...That I was a U.S...
...In the face of this renewed specter of U.S...
...Like many North Americans, they believe that immigrants take jobs away from U.S...
...conquest, Puerto Ricans do not fit the typical mold of the U.S...
...citizens alike...
...citizenship, he threatened to deport her back to the Dominican Republic...
...Upon arrival, however, we were often relegated to sweatshop jobs and substandard housing...
...Howard, these INS agents treated me like a criminal," she said, as tears welled up in her eyes...
...Puerto Ricans are the oldest and sapping i largest Latino community in New York poll City, numbering around 900,000...
...If this country controlled immigration, our people could find meaningful work...
...It is part and parcel of the nativist, xenophobic political climate that has ensnared this once-thriving nation of immigrants...
...Our people have paid their dues by fighting in every American war since 1917," one irate Puerto Rican recently complained to me...
...lexicon called the struggle for social justice...
...citizens by law...
...Like the waves of immigrants before us, Puerto Ricans came to the United States to find work...
...This dramatic incident, experienced by one of the Puerto Rican community's "best and brightest," is not unique or isolated...
...On the international front, Puerto Ricans in New York City have demonstrated solidarity with Latin America when they felt that U.S...
...In the 1992 presidential elections, turn-out in presentation on the New Puerto Rican election districts n in 1987...
...Other Latino groups have grown substantially over the past 15 years...
...It's a special concern to Puerto Ricans because many of our problems stem from being the subject of discrimination in a society which displays a certain disposition to treat people who look or sound foreign as less than equal...
...The anti-immigrant backlash is, at its core, fueled by a search for scapegoats in the face of employment shortages, economic displacement, and diminishing returns to the white middle class...
...The immigration debate that is raging throughout the United States and in our barrios holds profound implications for organizers and activists in the Puerto Rican community...
...Public policy targeted at illegal immigrants also often ends up harming Puerto Ricans...
...The community was, for instance, involved in the effort to pressure Congress to grant temporary protective status for Salvadoran immigrants who were fleeing a U.S...
...in 1993, it dropped to only 37...
...Latinos whose accent and/or skin color are for many people grounds enough to presume illegality...
...uerto Rican views on immigration are, in part, a product of the historical experience of Puerto Ricans in the United States...
...Colombians, mostly located in Queens, are the next largest Latino subgroup with 84,454, followed by Ecuadorians with 78,444...
...Even more troubling was the report's finding that after IRCA became law, about 83,000 employers re on began to refuse employment to people who presented Puerto Rican birth certificates as proof of citizenship...
...Immigration affects all minority groups," explains Midgalia Rivera, a Puerto Rican activist from the Latino Institute in Chicago...
...The case of Professor Rios illustrates that the immigration backlash is being felt not only by so-called "illegals" but also by Puerto Ricans and other U.S...
...a n e ts t n( More recently, Puerto Rican Rican Congresswoman Nydia VelAzquez and Maria Echaveste, a Mexican-American silence woman who heads the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S...
...Constitution...
...But now we were in a different place at a different time...
...Immigrant rights and Latino empowerment are cousins in the U.S...
...Puerto Ricans who favor increased conVOL XXIX, No 3 Nov/DEC 1995 35REPORT ON IMMIGRATION trols on immigration argue that immigration harms their long-term interests...
...According to a recent study by the Hispanic Research Center of Fordham University in collaboration with the Institute for Puerto Rican Policy, Latino electoral clout in New York is attenuated by low voting rates among Puerto Ricans and low eligibility rates among other Latino immigrant subgroups...
...In private, many Puerto Ricans also express resentment that newer arrivals fail to appreciate the pioneering role of their community in establishing social-service programs that help immigrants...
...When, as the task force's executive director, I asked several Puerto Rican elected officials to sponsor the bill, they replied: "That's a Dominican bill...
...Write your congressman...
...Sociologist Clara Rodrfguez once characterized Puerto Ricans as "colonial immigrants," a term that seeks to capture the unique citizenship Puerto status of Puerto Ricans coupled with the cultural-newcomer experience...
...He is also former executive director of the New York State Assembly Task Force on Immigration, and a board member of the Center for Immigrant Rights...
...While Senators Gonzalez and M6ndez have since opposed the four antiimmigrant bills sponsored by Padavan, they have never publicly disavowed the report...
...These Puerto Ricans view immigrant-bashing as part of a scapegoating process that starts with stripping undocumented immigrants of their constitutional rights, and ends by attacking the rights of legal permanent residents and U.S...
...Immigration should, moreover, be seen as a politicalempowerment issue for Puerto Ricans...
...Today, over one-third of the 6.3 million Latino co Puerto Ricans live on the mainland...
...Being U.S...
...According to the 1990 Latino National Political Survey, 74% of Puerto Ricans say that too many immigrants are already coming to the United States...
...As products of U.S...
...immigrant...
...In 1970, two-thirds of all Latinos in New York City were Puerto Rican...
...These immigrants come here to take our jobs or get on welfare...
...Generations of Puerto Rican activists have fought to improve our community's lot...
...It also held the state's first public hearings on immigration and issued a major report on the defects of the employer-sanctions provision of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA...
...I sat in silence as the New School for Social Research professor told me of the indignity of being stopped at LaGuardia airport by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) upon her return from the Dominican Republic where she was doing research for a Fulbright fellowship...
...here are a number of important reasons why Puerto Ricans should defend immigrant rights...
...In another vivid example of anti-immigrant sentiment among some of the Puerto Rican leadership, New York State Senators Efrain Gonzalez and Olga M6ndez endorsed an anti-immigrant legislative report issued last year by State Senator Frank Padavan's Committee on Cities...
...was 45...
...ambiv Although Puerto Ricans have been moving to the United States since the about im island became a U.S...
...A Puerto Rican Day parade in New York City nothing to them...
...ical Puerto Ricans have also been prominent defenders of Latino civil rights...
...intolerance, immigrant rights and Puerto Rican rights are inextricably intertwined...
...The task force introduced the first comprehensive immigration omnibus act in New York State history...
...According to a U.S...
...General Accounting Office (GAO) 1990 study, after the passage of IRCA, an estimated 227,000 employers began not hiring people because of their "foreign" appearance or accents-a practice that undoubtedly hurts Puerto Ricans...
...government-supported military dictatorship...
...Not all of the leadership, however, has come out in defense of immigrant rights...
...Yet, in this city where Latino once meant Puerto Rican, a process of demographic redefinition is underway...
...In 1984, for instance, a Puerto RicanDominican group, Latinos United for Political Action (LUPA), spearheaded the effort to persuade New York City Mayor Ed Koch to adopt an executive order prohibiting city agencies from giving information on the immigration status of residents using city services...
...During our student days at Yale University in the late 1970s, this remarkable black Puerto Rican woman had championed the rights of Latinos and all students of color as a member of Despierta Boricua, our Puerto Rican student organization...
...Eventually the bill was introduced by Senator David Paterson, an African-American legislator...
...The majority of Puerto Ricans, however, have gnawing questions about immigration...
...As the story of Professor Palmira Rios reflects, the rampant anti-immigrant sentiments sweeping the nation forbode a new wave of racism, discrimination, and hurdles to the political empowerment of Puerto Ricans...
...A case in point are English Only laws-an integral part of the Republican Party's Contract with America-which seek to establish English as the official language of the United States...
...The Dominican population increased 165% between 1980 and 1990, numbering 332,713 according to the 1990 Census...
...citizen and a university professor meant Howard Jordan is a journalist, attorney and managing editor of Critica: A Journal of Puerto Rican Politics and Policy...
...Puerto Ricans, U.S.-born Latinos and all progressive people of conscience need to recognize that the attack on the rights of immigrants is a fundamental attack on civil rights guaranteed by the U.S...
...Yet another example of how anti-immigrant public policy affects Puerto Ricans is the employer-sanction provisions of IRCA...
...Examples of Puerto Rican support for immigrant rights abound...
...As Juan Cartagena, a Puerto Rican activist lawyer, points out: "The debate today centers not on language but on the persons who speak these 'foreign' tongues: Latinos and Asians...
...The so-called Padavan Report called for several pernicious anti-immigrant measures and counted Puerto Ricans as "foreign born...
...we're Puerto Rican...
...For some Puerto Ricans, the defense of immigrant rights is an integral part of the broader struggle for social justice and Latino empowerment in this country...
...To the extent that you cannot register your child in school because he or she is suspected of being illegal, or that you may not get a job because you look or sound foreign, we Puerto Ricans have a vested interest in addressing this issue...
...Puerto Ricans and Dominicans have joined forces in such organizations as the Latino Coalition for Racial Justice (LCRJ) and the Latino Rights Project to condemn police brutality against Latinos...
...They consider Dominicans, Colombians, and other Latino immigrants to be brothers and sisters in this struggle...
...In 1988, then Assemblyman Jos6 Serrano had New York State declared a "sanctuary" for Salvadoran refugees...
...They have also consistently gone to bat for immigrants with the city's political establishment...
...Even after she provided documentation of U.S...
...Rio relayed how the white INS customs agent had demanded proof that she was Puerto Rican and not an "illegal alien...
...After hours of harassment, exhaustive interrogations, and verbal abuse, Rios was finally permitted to return to her home in New York City...
...The strategy to increase Latino political representation must be twofold: encouraging more Puerto Ricans to vote, and enfranchising new Latino arrivals...
...The task force was largely responsible as well for New York State becoming the only state in the union to designate $2 million to facilitate an "amnesty" process for undocumented residents...
...The Mexican community in the city, next with 61,722, is the fastest-growing group...
...These demographic shifts are bound to have significant implications for Latino politics in the city...
...The lack of consensus on the immigration issue also makes it difficult to forge wider progressive alliances among Puerto Ricans, immigration advocates, people of color, and progressive people of conscience [see "African-American Doubts about Immigration," below...
...Puerto Rican ambivalence about immigration may drive a divisive wedge into the Latino community, effectively sapping what little political strength Latinos have been able to muster...
Vol. 29 • November 1995 • No. 3
