Migrating to Prison - César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández
“Despite the common refrain that immigration law is ‘broken’, immigration imprisonment is a sign that the United States immigration policy is working exactly as designed. The system hasn’t malfunctioned. It was intended to punish, stigmatize, and marginalize - all for political and financial gain.”
Over the years I have come to learn that most Americans do not and never will (completely) understand the ins and outs of their own immigration system. One could ask “but why would they need to?”, but in a country where immigration is a polarized topic, often either viewed in white or black, a topic that politicians use to win elections, it IS important that the citizens in this country really understand what their policies are. Migrating to Prison is in my opinion a must read for everyone in order to understand how we got to where we are.
César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández provides us with an examination of immigrant detention history in the US and how it has evolved into a multi-billion dollar prison industry, evolving along the same parallels as mass incarceration has in this country. In addition to the evolution of migration detention, and immigration policies, the author provides us with ways to effectively fight the policies that incarcerate immigrants for no other reason than they are immigrants, by cutting them off from the root. There are some very helpful points for those of us fighting for the abolition of prisons in general.
“The immigration prison is a reminder that human bondage based on racial and economic markers of undesirability can’t be relegated to some distant past. If we’re willing to lock up people, we will find a reason. Most of the time the targets will be people of color. We can call this a coincidence, but we would be lying to ourselves.”
I personally found the chapter entitled “The Good Immigrant vs. The Bad Immigrant” particularly important - politicians’ rhetoric tends to balance the “good ones” against “all the others”, a rhetoric that has become truth for most people discussing immigration in the US. The thing is, as I mentioned above, most people don’t understand how the immigration process actually works in the US, and that, coupled with the fact that no human being is perfect, creates this ridiculous perception that an immigrant must be a perfect human being in order to be allowed to reside on US soil. I have lost count of the times that someone has said “oh but you are one of the good ones!” to me - like it’s a compliment. No, I’m not “good”, I just have certain privileges to thank for the fact that I avoided deportation. (And my immigration story has been fraught with fear and lasted years and years before I was granted any kind of safe status). And I am human and have made enough mistakes that could easily have changed my story. So I’m glad the author brought this up, because this rhetoric is extremely harmful, and has been used by politicians on all sides on a regular basis, even if some presidents were less vulgar in their wording than others.
All in all this is a very important book to read and I recommend it to everyone. Thank you César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández for the very important work that you have done for us all.
(Side note: I am constantly in awe of the great work published by The New Press - if you haven’t heard of them I highly suggest checking out their publications).