Dr. Claud Anderson: Immigration Harms Native Black Americans

By Dr. Claud Anderson
President, The Harvest Institute
The Harvest Institute

Dr. Claud Anderson: How Immigration Harms Native Blacks. DACA, Affirmative Action, Immigration, Illegal Immigration, Employment and more.

Executing immigration policies without mitigating the negative impact that those policies might have on Native Black Americans is illegal, unconstitutional and immoral. The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, enacted at the end of the 1860s Civil War, mandated that Black people be treated in all manners similar to Whites. Since then, six succeeding generations of immigrants have been fast-tracked into full American Dream membership and have received socioeconomic benefits over Black Americans, the nation’s official underclass and the most vulnerable citizens in the nation.

Black Americans remain an obsolete and abandoned labor class because the original mandates of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution have been ignored, violated and corrupted. The 14th Amendment stipulated and mandated that all levels of government exercise all necessary means to lift the legacies and burdens off of the shoulders of Black Americans. These constitutional amendments were the collective base for the 1866 Civil Rights Laws designed to correct the 1857 Dred Scott decision that held a Black man had no rights a white man was bound to respect. These laws were intended, not for all people, but to specifically correct the systemic injustice imposed upon Black people.

Throughout this nation’s history, there have been successive waves of immigrants that blocked the access of Native Blacks to or pushed them off of the upward mobility ladder of success. After slavery over 100 million Europeans, immigrants displaced Blacks in every labor and professional occupation. Since slavery, Black displacement continues unabated in areas such as:

SPACE:

Although immigrants today move into rural communities and suburbs, most tend to migrate into and gentrify majority urban Black communities in which they compete with Native Blacks. Once they establish a footprint, they mark and close their living space by using their language, culture, and enclaves as an empowerment enabler. The poverty that immigrants bring to America is the result of policies from their countries of origin, not America. The direct private and governmental assistance they receive when they arrive in America, however, aids them to push Blacks out and gentrify old Black neighborhoods turning them into China Towns, Mexican Towns, or Arab towns.

ECONOMICS:

Black Americans are not economically progressing. In comparative and proportional terms, they remain where they were following the Civil War, fixed at the bottom with the least wealth and income. The economic restraining impact that immigration has on Black Americans are quantifiable. For every 10 percent increase in the number of immigrants entering this nation, the annual income of Black Americans is reduced by three-tenths of one percent. As an example, in the 1950s, Blacks had an earnings ratio of 56 cents to every $1 earned by Whites. As a result of the 1960 Black civil rights movement, Black earnings ratio went up to 66 cents compared to the White dollar. However, between 1970 and 1990, there was a 300 percent increase in the number of Hispanic, Asian, and Arab immigrants. The ratio of Black earnings to Whites dropped from 66 cents back to 57 cents. The nine-point economic gains of the Black civil rights movement was wiped out by a 300 percent increase of immigrant that occurred between 1970 and 1990.

EMPLOYMENT:

Whether the jobs categories are unskilled or require a high skill-set, this nation has a long history of using immigrants to displace Black labor in the workplace. As examples: the U.S. Depart. Of Commerce reported that when the Civil War ended, of the 120,000 skilled craftsmen and artisans, over 100,000 of them were Black Americans. By the mid-1890s, new immigration policies bought in 26 million immigrants who blocked Black opportunities and totally displaced them in skilled crafts, farming, and businesses. The effects of never corrected economic exclusion are cumulative and passed down generation to generation. Today, nearly 50 percent of the workers who fill highly technical jobs are immigrants recruited and hired under the H-1B visa program for both government and private corporations. Since 2007, when Blacks had a national structural unemployment rate of 35 percent, and Hispanic unemployment was 4.5 percent, yet approximately 48 percent of all new hires were Hispanics immigrants. Government and private businesses have yet to target Blacks for employment opportunities as they do for immigrants.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AND PUBLIC POLICIES:

Affirmative action programs were, or originally intended, to be corrective actions for handicapping conditions and injustices imposed on 22 generations of Black Americans. Public policies that ignore the exceptional history of Native Black Americans, and equate them to newly arriving immigrants’ compounds historical racial injustices and are illegal. There is no mandate to benefit immigrants over Native Blacks. To date, the nation has not complied with either the 13th or 14th Amendments to the Constitution or the 1866 civil rights laws. To develop immigration policies that will follow the Constitution regarding Blacks and build a stronger America, immigration policies should be based on the following understandings:

• Newton’s 3rd law of motion says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Opportunities provided to immigrants are opportunities denied to Native Blacks. That disparity must be the central focus of our nation’s immigration policies.
• Legal and illegal immigrants have made Blacks a permanent minority-loser in a majority wins society.
• Original intent of 13th, 14th Amendments and the 1866 civil rights laws was to protect Black Americans.
• Historically, Black leaders recognized the harm to their people and opposed open-door immigration policies until the 1960s civil rights movement, which after a few years lost its focus on Blacks.
• Immigration policies should establish a Protected Class status for Blacks similar to that of American Indians.
• The immigration policies of the Dream Act for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) has already had a negative impact on Black Americans and will continue to elevate immigrants over Blacks. DACA harms Native Blacks, is unconstitutional and should be opposed by Blacks.
• Reform existing immigration laws to treat Haitian refugees equal to Cuban and other migrating people.
• Disallow immigrant status to be an eligibility criterion for Affirmative Action programs.
• Government policies should increase the quota of immigrants of Black African descent.
• Include in all education and citizenship training programs, courses about Black history so that incoming immigrants gain knowledge of the contributions Native Blacks have made to this nation.

URBAN OPPORTUNITY ACT: A WORD OF CAUTION

The Urban Opportunity Act can be a death blow for Native Black America unless it is implemented in accordance with constitutional protections and places Blacks into a Protective Class.

Historically, immigration law and policies ranked immigrants above Blacks, labeled immigrants minorities and awarded them advantages and benefits withheld from Blacks. Consequently, to avoid gentrifying majority urban Black communities to benefit immigrants and fabricated minorities, the Urban Opportunities Act must specifically target economic resources and opportunities to the indigenous under-served Black population.

Dr. Anderson’s books Provide a full analysis of how immigration harms Blacks

Black Labor, White Wealth : The Search for Power and Economic Justice

PowerNomics : The National Plan to Empower Black America

Black History Reader: 101 Questions You Never Thought to Ask

Dirty Little Secrets About Black History : Its Heroes & Other Troublemakers

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