Why So Few Blacks Join Immigration Rallies (African immigrants don’t see the plight of Latinos)

African immigrants don’t see the plight of Latinos and others as their struggle.

At last week's immigration march on Washington, tens of thousands of immigrants and activists rallied around the Capitol Building, calling for legislation that would afford legal status to the millions of illegal immigrants living and working within the United States. While official crowd estimates for such events are notoriously unreliable, the New York Times noted that "the demonstrators filled five lengthy blocks of the Washington Mall."

Angela Kelley, vice president for immigration policy and advocacy at the Center for American Progress, agrees with Orjih. Though she notes that the fewest immigrants to America come from Africa, she says the ones who do tend to be "more wealthy, more educated perhaps" than Latino immigrants. She also says that African immigrants frequently arrive bearing student or H-1B visas, those given to highly skilled workers in specialized occupations like law, medicine and mathematics.

Because they stand to gain a lot less from reform, mobilizing black immigrant communities for events like last Sunday's rally can be a daunting task. Gustavo Torres is the executive director of Casa de Maryland, an organization that helps immigrants in the D.C. metropolitan area attain health, legal and financial assistance. Torres says that, though he and his group reached out to black immigrants to participate in the march on Washington, their efforts had little impact. "Immigrants from other parts of the world repeatedly tell us that they perceive the immigrant rights movement as a Latino phenomenon," he says, "and that creates a barrier for their involvement. African and Caribbean leaders are not engaged in the build-up in a way that will bring people out."

Torres says Casa invited the African Immigrant and Refugee Foundation to the march, and they ended up participating. But he adds that black immigrant media outlets are largely uninterested in reform events, making it nearly impossible to reach individuals in the community. "The Spanish-speaking populace can effectively utilize their media outlets for outreach, but that is significantly more difficult with African and Caribbean press," he says. "Two years ago, we hosted a press conference targeting the African and Muslim press that took an enormous amount of effort and resulted in two coverages--both by Latino outlets that wanted to tell the story of other immigrant communities getting involved."

Ironically, it seems as if most immigration reform proponents are focusing their outreach efforts not on foreign-born blacks, but African Americans, who increasingly are questioning the impact illegal immigration has on their community. Leading up to the march, National Urban League President Marc Morial, who spoke at the rally, told the Washington Post, "It is very important that the nation's communities of color do not simply see themselves as groups competing for crumbs."

As it turns out, the nation's black immigrants don't seem to see themselves in a competition at all. Many, if not most, of the rally attendees wielded protest signs--both homemade and professionally manufactured--or wore T-shirts emblazoned with slogans like "Change takes courage" and "Illegals are humans." Still others carried flags--American, Mexican, Brazilian, French, and almost everything in between. And while it seemed as if practically everyone had a unique way of showing their support for reform, they also had one very notable similarity: The crowd was overwhelmingly Latino, with chants of "Libertad ahora!" filling the air as frequently as "Freedom now!"

To be sure, knowing the statistics--76 percent of America's illegal immigrants are Hispanic, according to the Pew Hispanic Center--a majority Latino presence was to be expected. And according to the Population Reference Bureau, in 2005, there were only 2,815,000 foreign-born blacks in America (compared to nearly 18 million foreign-born Hispanics). But in Washington, D.C., estimated to be the home of more than 150,000 Ethiopian immigrants and their descendants, the lack of black protesters was downright odd. Ultimately, it raised an important question to consider in the days leading up to the Obama administration's grapple with America's immigration problems: Why don't black immigrants have an affinity for the reform movement?

One thing we do know is that, despite their relatively small presence, black immigrants are often the most upwardly mobile ethnic group functioning in the United States today, even more than foreign-born white Americans. For instance, as journalist Clarence Page noted in 2007's "Black immigrants: an invisible model minority," in 2000 "43.8 percent of African immigrants had achieved a college degree, compared to 42.5 of Asian Americans, 28.9 percent for immigrants from Europe, Russia and Canada, and 23.1 percent of the U.S. population as a whole." In 2005, a fifth of Caribbean or Latin American-born blacks in America had degrees. And according to a 2006 study by sociologists at Princeton and University of Pennsylvania, of the black students attending Ivy League colleges, 41 percent were either immigrants themselves or children of immigrants.

If the statistics are to be believed, then it would seem that there's some truth to the quip that a Jamaican immigrant offered while Page was researching his article: "I'm too busy working two jobs to worry about the white man's racism."

“Why don’t black immigrants have an affinity for the reform movement?”

Black Americans and their communities have suffered the most from this invasion. Some streets in Los Angeles will get you shot by a ‘latino’ just for being Black. But like McCain voters, most black voters don’t know that Obama wants to give them all amnesty.

Ask Jamiel Shaw’s family, or Terry Anderson or Jesse Lee Peterson or Ted Hayes and thousands more like them. The author of this article could find the truth if she wanted it.

African-Americans drowning in wave of illegal immigration
By TERRY ANDERSON

Published Jan. 31, 2003, in the Houston Chronicle

THE black community has made great strides in the last few decades. Racism has certainly not been eradicated, but it is no longer accepted with a wink and a nod as it once was. We are proud to see Secretary of State Colin Powell, even when we do not agree with everything he does. The same with Condoleezza Rice, the president’s national security adviser, and many others.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that in some regions we black folks are so overwhelmed by the huge numbers of immigrants that we are being displaced in our schools, jobs and neighborhoods.

That may seem a harsh thing for a black person to say against brown people, but I don’t see it that way. I am an American, proud of both my nation and my race. What I see in my community of South Central Los Angeles — where I have lived nearly all my life — is thousands of Mexicans who care nothing about our traditions and culture, and only want to impose their way on us. That’s not immigration, that is invasion.

It is sad what has happened in my neighborhood. This was a respectable, blue-collar area of hard-working black folks living in their bungalows and going to their jobs. In just a couple decades it has become almost entirely Mexican. They live several families to a three-bedroom house and keep chickens in the yard, but the city doesn’t care about the zoning violations or the noise of having so many crowded into a small space.

According to the Census Bureau, nearby Watts is now 60 percent Hispanic, and it was previously the black community on the West Coast. No longer.

The immigration situation is really hard on our young people. A 17-year-old kid on my street couldn’t get a job at McDonald’s because he didn’t speak Spanish. Another young neighbor boy was thrown into a bilingual classroom at age 8 and was forced to listen to Spanish all day long. His six-hour school day was turned into three hours. When his mother asked for an English-only class, she was told “there are none.”

Would you believe that I, a black man, have been called a racist many times for speaking up against this invasion? I have a radio program on the subject and therefore hear from a lot of people, even some in Mexico.

When they call me a racist, I put this question to them: What if a hundred thousand Vietnamese were suddenly dropped into Guadalajara? And what if those newcomers didn’t speak Spanish, and further insisted that their children be taught in Vietnamese? What would you think if they were happy to work for half the normal wages for any job they could get, thereby putting thousands of your local Guadalajarans out of work? Would it be racist to say there was a problem?

When people of good will and good sense hear the situation put that way, nearly all understand and respect my viewpoint.

Now if only they would listen in Washington. America’s political leaders are the problem. They have been selling out this great nation for real and imaginary political benefits while ignoring the dangers. Even after Sept. 11, nothing has been done to plug up our borders. Another terrorist attack could be 10 times worse, and it would likely happen because Congress and the president learned nothing about the need to keep the nation’s borders secure.

If I sound angry, you hear right. Like other Americans, I want immigration to be legal, controlled and reduced. But as a black American, I see that the burden my people must carry is heavier than for many others. I am sure that if Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., were alive, he would understand the fundamental unfairness to the black community of allowing more immigration than the nation can handle.

http://www.immigrationshumancost.org/text/drowning.html

“Terry likewise supported Jamiel’s Law — a “radical” proposal to deny “sanctuary city” protection for gang members. That anyone could oppose such a common-sense, modest, narrow proposal is still stupefying to me. But oppose it they did, and Terry was right there, fighting the massive disinformation campaign waged by people who took the side of gangs rather than the side of gangs’ victims. He didn’t just talk about Jamiel’s Law on the radio; he actually came to the rallies and the protests. That he took his time to attend meant a great deal to me and to the Shaw Family, too.”[snip]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2549144/posts?q=1&;page=51

Another GOOD one.

MUST SEE THIS!!! The best, well explained reason to support Arizona and say NO to amnesty!
By ZO, who is hip, and brilliant! “PC stands for Political Crap!”
Zo On Illegal Immigration
machosauceproduction
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s98DX_1JPYI

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