The cumulative effect, Chomsky argues, is today’s inefficient immigration system, which ensnares so many victims, including thousands of young children.Īviva Chomsky is the author of Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal (Beacon Press, May 13, 2014).Īs a service to our readers, we provide transcripts with our podcasts. Since Mexicans were considered workers and not immigrants, depriving them the opportunity to become citizens was perfectly legal. New arrivals to the US who were not white were not even considered immigrants, a designation applied only to people from Europe.Ĭhomsky says that in the early to mid-20th century, people crossing the Mexican border faced no restrictions because Mexican laborers were so desperately needed in the Southwest. Indeed, the whole concept of citizenship by birth was essentially created by the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment in 1868. Afterwards, thanks to the 14th Amendment, citizenship was extended to people of African descent. She explains how the idea of an “illegal immigrant” is a fairly recent one, and that the racialization of illegal immigration is what someone once described as the new Jim Crow.Ĭhomsky tells Jeff Schechtman how laws in the United States restricted citizenship to white people until the Civil War. In this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, Chomsky, a professor at Salem State University in Massachusetts, places the current debate about immigration in America in a broader historical context.Ĭhomsky outlines the 20th century policies that changed traditional patterns of migration and labor, and replaced them with prejudicial and, she argues, often arbitrary quotas and restrictions that favored Europeans over Mexicans and Central Americans. We always hear that the US is “a nation of immigrants.” But, according to immigrant rights activist Aviva Chomsky, this hides the real truth about America’s immigration history. * Virtual programs work best with the current version of the browsers listed below:
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She has been active in Latin America solidarity and immigrants’ rights movements for several decades.Īt the conclusion of the program please feel free to take a brief online survey here: She has also co-edited several anthologies including "Organizing for Power: Building a Twenty-First Century Labor Movement in Boston" (forthcoming 2021) "The People behind Colombian Coal: Mining, Multinationals and Human Rights"/"Bajo el manto del carbón: Pueblos y multinacionales en las minas del Cerrejón, Colombia" (2007), "The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics" (2003, 2nd edition 2019) and "Identity and Struggle at the Margins of the Nation-State: The Laboring Peoples of Central America and the Hispanic Caribbean" (1998). Spanish edition 2011, Cuban edition 2013), and "West Indian Workers and the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica, 1870-1940" (1996). 2015), "Linked Labor Histories: New England, Colombia, and the Making of a Global Working Class" (2008), "They Take Our Jobs! And Twenty Other Myths about Immigration" (2007 U.S. Her books include "Central America’s Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration" (forthcoming 2021) "Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal" (Beacon Press, 2014 Mexican edition, 2014), "A History of the Cuban Revolution" (2011, 2nd ed. Presenter: Aviva Chomsky is Professor of History and Coordinator of Latin American Studies at Salem State University in Massachusetts. The result is a powerful testament of the complex, contradictory, and ever-shifting nature of status in America.
Chomsky explores what it means to be undocumented in a legal, social, economic, and historical context. Professor Chomsky will argue that the United States is a “nation of deportation” as much as it is a “nation of immigrants.” Citizenship, labor, and immigration laws have intertwined to promote the economic goal of ensuring cheap labor to employers, sustained by racial notions of white supremacy.īlending history with human drama, Pr. * Use this link to join our virtual program:
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