When former President Obama announced the normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations in July 2015, the text I received from my Mexican-born partner was: “how does it feel to be Mexican?” Within that question was a recognition of the inequality that has always been at the center of U.S. immigration policy. Cubans had, until recently, benefited from a privileged position under that policy. Now we are treated like everyone else.
That, along with President Trump’s refugee ban and deportation expansion, have moved me to think more about social constructions of legality and “worthiness” within U.S. immigration policy. My parents were lucky that they were able to claim asylum in the United States in 1961; I remain forever grateful to the United States for providing them with a home at a moment of deep trauma and uncertainty in their lives. I recently went onto the website called Entry Denied, a site that allows you to enter the year and reasons for your family member’s migration in order to see if they would be allowed in now, to learn that my parents would not have be granted asylum under our current immigration system. They would be “illegal.”
The U.S. immigration system has become consistently more restrictive since the 1986 passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), the law that gave amnesty to about three million unauthorized immigrants who had been living and working in the United States. Those restrictions have been justified as necessary to protect U.S. workers and to ensure our national security. Those restrictions also have created a jumble of immigration categories and an increased emphasis on skilled immigrants. Yet, we see in the President’s rhetoric that “immigration” writ large is framed as bad for the country and our economy, despite the recent evidence from the Wall Street Journal that 51% of the country’s billion dollar start-ups were founded by immigrants.
In his immigration rhetoric, Trump often focuses on birthplace. Anyone who is not U.S.-born is unworthy; the U.S.-born therefore are worthy by default. But his actions suggest that race is a key factor in his judgments. His white European immigrant wife Melania is clearly considered worthy, but U.S-born former President Obama might not be. Similarly, certain categories of immigrants (e.g. from Mexico, Central America, and the Middle East) are always suspect, as opposed to others from Europe and South America. Trump’s racialized view of inclusion is, however, not unique. It has run throughout U.S. history in the country’s responses to migration flows.
We clearly see these racialized constructions of worth at play in the enforcement of Trump’s immigration orders. There have been numerous reports of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers choosing to treat immigrant- and non-immigrant-visa holders, U.S. citizens, U.S. legal permanent residents, and unauthorized migrants alike with callous disregard for their basic humanity. This includes handcuffing a 5-year old U.S. citizen who was detained for four hours without a parent at Dulles airport, and forcibly removing a 26-year-old unauthorized migrant from the hospital despite her diagnosis with a brain tumor. Agents enforcing Trump’s immigration ban—which awards ample discretion to border agents—also chose to detain travelers for hours in rooms without access to bathrooms or food, including a top Holocaust scholar from France on his way to deliver a lecture at Texas A&M University, and a New York art gallery owner with permanent residency who was returned to his native Buenos Aires after being detained by CBP for fourteen hours. Agents are also extending “extreme vetting” to U.S. citizens coming from countries not listed on the ban. I doubt that President Trump or Homeland Security Secretary Kelly’s orders included instruction to treat those detained inhumanely, but they have made it possible that ordinary people engage in repressive and dehumanizing behavior toward innocent travelers. I would note that many Cubans recently attempting to enter the United States from third countries are also being denied entrance to the United States.
The Cuban refugees that for years benefited from special treatment have a moral obligation to speak up in favor of a generous immigration policy. At a time when Cuban migration too has slowed, we—the lucky ones who came in with open doors—need to remind those fellow Americans who view foreigners and immigrants with suspicion that openness and generosity in our refugee and immigrant policies can reap tremendous dividends, both morally and economically. We also need to point out the ways that today’s migration flows, like yesterday’s exile preferences, are connected to expressions of U.S. hegemony in the military, economic, and political spheres. It is not by accident that certain countries send more migrants than others. Cuban migration, for example, was a product of the unique relationship between the U.S. and Cuba during the first half of the twentieth century, and especially of Cuba’s geopolitical importance to the United States during the Cold War. Only by addressing our complicity in creating the conditions underlying many immigrants’ decisions to migrate can we begin to identify the sources of migratory flows. Only by dealing with migration multilaterally, rather than unilaterally, will we be able to arrive at workable solutions.
This is very different from the role that the most vocal Cubans are playing now. Miami-Dade County recently voted to end its de-facto sanctuary status, with all but one of the Cuban city commissioners voting with the Cuban-born mayor, Carlos Giménez, on this issue (a Miami judge recently ruled this shift illegal). Cuban American city commissioner Joe Martinez made clear the racialized frames driving his vote when he tweeted “I voted against ILLEGAL CRIMINAL immigrants and I would do so again.” The irony of his statement was clearly lost on him, when about the same time he hosted a memorial event for Cuban exiles, including those who “had died crossing the [Florida] Straits to get here, them and their family members.. . trying to get freedom” and all others who entered under the U.S. immigration policy of the past 50 years. Many of those Cubans suffered discrimination in Miami-Dade in the early 1960s, as members of the local population who were violently opposed to Cuban migration openly discriminated against Cuban refugees in employment and housing. For Cuban Americans to now be supporting a policy stemming from that same discriminatory impulse, one that slams the door shut for refugees fleeing repressive governments, flies in the face of our history.
Donald Trump’s advisors often compare him to “disruptive” presidents such as Andrew Jackson or Theodore Roosevelt. Cubans know firsthand the harm that came from Teddy Roosevelt’s strong arm “Gun Boat” foreign policy. Donald Trump is following in his footsteps, trying to imagine a U.S. role unfettered by other nations and focused only on America’s bottom line. But that world has passed, and U.S. hegemony will never be regained with isolationist and anti-immigrant politics. Unfortunately, many aspiring refugees and hard-working unauthorized immigrants will pay a very high price before the Trump Administration realizes their nostalgic vision of U.S. international power cannot be realized.
Cubans know better than most the cost of U.S. imperial power, and the vagaries and idiosyncrasies of U.S. immigration policy. It is our obligation to remember and share our story so that neither we Cuban Americans, nor our fellow citizens of all races and creeds, turn our back on this history. Only then will we be able to achieve America’s true promise.
Featured Image: The First Balseros. Original photo taken by the marines who picked them up at sea, on August 3rd, 1966. Ariana Hernandez-Reguant’s private collection All Rights Reserved.
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