Week 7: Kyrene Giezl Gutierrez - A01

Week 7’s readings really hit home for me, specifically the journal, “The criminalization of immigration and the privatization of the immigration detention: implications for justice.” Being an immigrant and having some family and friends who are undocumented, it was a hard read. As I was reading some of the state laws explained in the journal, I couldn’t help but feel so angry and reflect on what I’ve learned in college when it comes to the relationship of immigrants and the U.S. Some of the laws Alissa R. Ackerman and Rich Furman (2013) discussed in the journal were Alabama’s HB56, the Hammon-Beason Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act, and Arizona’s SB 1070, the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act. Ackerman and Furman (2013) explain how these laws criminalize key aspects of undocumented immigrants’ lives, thus making it very difficult to live in the state.

From the journal, Alabama’s HB56, the Hammon-Beason Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act, did the following:

• “[The law] compels schools to check the immigration status of students and report these data to the state” (Ackerman & Furman, 2013).
• “The law compels police to check the immigration status of anyone whom they suspect may not be in the country legally, thereby implicating the criminal justice system in immigration enforcement” (Ackerman & Furman, 2013).
• “The law also makes it a felony for undocumented persons to seek a driver’s or business license” (Ackerman & Furman, 2013).

One of the thoughts running through my mind when I read this section was how unfair it was for undocumented children and children of undocumented parents to be denied the basic right to an education due to the fear that they or their family will potentially be deported or locked up. I also thought the law gives WAY TOO MUCH power to the police by giving them the authority to check the immigration status of anyone they suspect may be undocumented. My issue with this is that police will never stop a white male and ask for identification and documented, but they will always stop a colored person. Yet what’s so crazy to me is that ANYONE can be undocumented, white, colored, it doesn’t matter.

Arizona’s SB 1070, the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, did the following:

• “Officers can detain a person who cannot produce valid documents of immigration status” (Ackerman & Furman, 2013).
• “The law mandates law enforcement officers to keep individuals in custody until their immigration status is verified” (Ackerman & Furman, 2013).
• “SB 1070 permits private citizens to sue state law enforcement if the private citizens believe local law enforcement is failing to enforce federal immigration law” (Ackerman & Furman, 2013).

This law and everything it allows officers to do made me realize why there’s such a big culture of hiding within the Filipino culture. Within the Filipino culture, undocumented individuals are called TNT (Tago ng Tago), which translates to hiding and hiding. This fear of being separated from your family and going back home to a country you are no longer familiar with is what causes undocumented Filipinos to always stay in the shadows. They are not allowed to speak about it, so they bottle everything up, causing an internal issue on top of already being undocumented and the struggles along with it.

Throughout U.S. history, immigrants are often used as scapegoats to everything that’s going wrong with the nation. There’s a lot of violence happening, blame it on the undocumented folks. There are not enough jobs for Americans, blame it on the immigrants. Instead of actually looking in the mirror and fixing the cracks within the country, America is so self-righteous and will always blame it on the folks they don’t consider “American.” With the privatization of detention centers, there’s more of a need to criminalize undocumented immigrants. One of the many ways they criminalize immigrants is through the laws mentioned above, which limit their living conditions, forcing some to commit a felony just for the sake of survival. Since detention centers are becoming more privatized, it needs funds to run. The more people there are in the detention centers, the more funding the center receives. It’s simple.

Question: Why does the U.S. make it so difficult for undocumented individuals to have a path for citizenship rather than detention centers or prisons? How can we attempt to make changes to the current path?

Resources:

Alissa R. Ackerman & Rich Furman (2013) The criminalization of immigration and the privatization of the immigration detention: implications for justice, Contemporary Justice Review, 16:2, 251-263, DOI: 10.1080/10282580.2013.798506

Englehart, B. (2013, July 12). Senate Immigration Bill. [Cartoon] Cagle Cartoons. Retrieved from http://caglecartoons.com/viewimage.asp?ID={B565E23D-22FA-4BBB-8328-40B4A9530EA3}