Catching up on a jaywalking arrest

I recently learned of a horrific ordeal undergone by a New York resident that began with an act of... jaywalking? I'd missed this event when it happened in December 2019, and only found out about it thanks to Shakira Solis, a guest speaker at a recent event on the DACA program at Coe College. Perhaps you knew about this at the time. If you are undocumented, or love someone who is, you surely did. 

Javier Castillo Maradiaga is one of many people caught in the web of America's byzantine immigration policy. The short version of his story, from Correal and Shanahan 2021: He came to the U.S. from Honduras as an 8-year-old child in 2002, and received legal status under DACA in 2012. During the chaos of the Trump administration, his DACA authorization lapsed. Thus he was undocumented when he was arrested by New York City police. Against city policy, particularly since his offense was nonviolent, he was transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in whose custody he remained in various locations until a court ordered his release in March 2021. Last week at Coe, Solis used him as an example of how even DACA protection is far from airtight.

The story struck me, not just as another example of immigration policy gone wrong, but because he was arrested for jaywalking. I am pretty much pro-jaywalking. A Strong Towns article by Daniel Herriges (2020) cites the legal definition as crossing mid-block or against a traffic signal. I do this all the time. In an environment built for (ever-growing) motor vehicles, the main way pedestrians arrive safely at their destinations is by avoiding interactions with them. Whatever it takes to avoid interactions with cars is what you should do. The greatest danger in even semi-walkable areas is from traffic turning at intersections, so if you can cross mid-block, you should. If vehicles are stopped at a traffic light, and you have a clear shot to cross, you should do it. 

Herriges adds that jaywalking is "extremely common" on truly walkable urban streets, which also happen to be the most financially productive; commenter Thomas B. adds, "In NYC, jaywalking is practically a birthrite." Herriges's article includes links to a Streetsblog study showing vastly disproportionate jaywalking arrests of blacks and Latinos, and a video by "Adam Ruins Everything" explaining the origins of criminalized jaywalking in efforts by auto manufacturers to take over city streets from other users.

Jaywalking is often the best choice for pedestrians. Its stigma is borne out of political power shoving the less powerful out of the way, and is mostly enforced in a racist way. U.S. immigration policy is bad enough without using this against them.

SEE ALSO: "Dear America Brings Light in the Heat," 8 July 2021

Can Cedar Rapids be a "receiver city?"

What we're going to need more of
(Swiped from Optikos Design Inc. via cnu.org)

2021 U.S. Census estimates show continued slow growth for the State of Iowa. Cedar Rapids may be one of the best cities in America for millennials to get rich, but neither this designation by Money magazine nor our super-competitive housing prices have led to a stampede of Californians. In fact, the latest Census data show few stampedes anywhere away from cities, despite the potential for additional volatility during the pandemic, and despite prominent memes to the contrary (Frey 2021, Fry and Cohn 2021).

Cedar Rapids 2020 population was 137,710, up 9 percent from 2010, a touch higher than the 7.4 percent rise for the country as a whole. (2021 estimates are not available at this time.) Another 9 percent gain in the 2020s would get us to the neighborhood of 150,000, which is where a housing needs survey commissioned by the city has us; adding Marion and Hiawatha gets it over 200,000 (Maxfield Research 2020: 13). That assumes the same routine growth in the near-future as in the recent past, without any surge of in-migration (or sudden out-migration).

In the longer run, however, climate change may provide a greater impetus for people to move here than  has our low cost of living. Iowa is not a Great Lakes state, but we can almost see them from our houses, and we share enough attributes with our neighbors that this statement by the Council of the Great Lakes Region might well apply to us: The bi-national Great Lakes mega-region, claims Council CEO Mark Fisher, which surrounds the largest freshwater in the world and is home to 107 million American and Canadians as well as a significant regional economy in North America, will be the destination of choice for many around the world who are seeking refuge from a rapidly changing climate and new economic opportunities.

"Receiver cities" are those places likely to receive climate-induced migration from regions plagued by increased incidence of floods, droughts, dangerous heat, and violent competition for resources. A panel at last spring's Congress for the New Urbanism conference focused on Buffalo and Cleveland, which are post-industrial cities that have lost a lot of population in the last half-century, and thus have an ideal combination of inexpensively available space in a traditionally-developed core. (Cleveland hit its peak city population of 914,808 in 1950, when most of the city would still have been traditionally-developed. The 2020 population is 59.2 percent below that, suggesting there's plenty of room for new arrivals.) Cedar Rapids has a history different from those of Buffalo, Cleveland, Flint, and Youngstown, but the city center is still building back from the 2008 flood, not to mention the out-migration of residents and businesses in the decades before that. So why not us?

Why not us? How I answer that question can vary from day to day, but that need not detain us here. It was a rhetorical question, anyway! According to Robert Steuteville, editor of CNU's journal Public Square, there are ways cities can prepare for a potential influx of climate refugees (Steuteville 2021). Fortunately, since we can't predict whether or when or how large this influx will be, the CNU approach is designed not to develop acres and acres of empty space, but will improve service to current residents as well. It's like Strong Towns says...

Here are Steuteville's eight recommendations:

1. Build more sustainably, including enabling car-free living. Nicole Dieker (2019), who moved here from Seattle, managed car-free at least for awhile, but it was more work than most people are able to do, particularly when you can get anywhere in town by car in 15 minutes. Bike infrastructure is improving, but public transportation has circuitous routes and limited hours of operation. The Urban Transitions website argues even more greenhouse gas emissions can be averted through changes in building.
2. Focus on the "missing middle" to grow population in existing neighborhoods. The Cedar Rapids City Council just authorized accessory dwelling units by right in all areas of the city (Payne 2021). This is an important step, but most important in the center of the city, which has the greatest potential for sustainability, walkability, urban living, or whatever you care to call it. 
3. Bring downtown back, with mixed-used buildings to add residents and businesses. The new construction in the "Banjo Block" on 4th Avenue SE, which will add 224 new apartments on a former brownfield area (Green 2020), is a huge addition. So are the 110 units planned for New Bo Lofts south of Geonetric. We need to figure out a way to liberate valuable land that's not being used, such as in the 1200 block of 2nd Avenue SE, and the 1000 block of 3rd Street SE. I would look strongly at a land value tax. I'd also like to talk the MedQuarter out of the vast wasteland they're creating between downtown and Wellington Heights.
4. Convert single-use commercial corridors to mixed use. Are we talking about Collins Road? Or Wiley Boulevard? I don't think so... they're too far gone to do cost-efficient sprawl repair, and too far away from the center to be much help. There are some interesting developments on the west side, on 1st Avenue and Ellis Boulevard, for example. I'd like to see more of this on 6th Street West, 1st Avenue East, and maybe other strips close to the core.
5. Be competitive rather than waiting for the seekers of cheap dry land to find you. A month ago I wrote the calls for change by mayoral candidates Amara Andrews and eventual winner Tiffany O'Donnell were "refreshing in a town where the political culture can be maddeningly complacent." Changes should consider future residents, who will be different from current residents, and why they should move here and not Duluth.
6. Tear down unnecessary freeways as Rochester NY and Milwaukee already have done. Shall we talk about this? The Gazette had a brilliant long article Sunday on the destruction of the Little Mexico neighborhood in the 1960s to make room for I-380 (Jordan 2021a), and in the 1990s my student Darcie Carsner did an honors thesis on how the route was plowed through the western end of Czech Village (Carsner 1996). There were neighborhoods then... they could be neighborhoods again! Counterpoint: Iowa Department of Transportation planner Cathy Cutler justified widening  the highway on the grounds that "People are uncomfortable on 380 at four lanes. That's why we're expanding to six lanes" (Jordan 2021b). So we're going to be limited by what makes drivers "uncomfortable?!"
7. Reform zoning to allow #1-6. Cedar Rapids has taken some important first steps; besides allowing accessory dwelling units, we have adopted a form-based code and revised or eliminated parking minima.
8. Implement a walkability plan, correcting decades of auto-centric engineering. Cedar Rapids adopted a pedestrian master plan in December 2019, which you can find here. It contains 18 policy strategies aimed at developing [1] "a connected pedestrian network that links popular destinations year-round" and [2] "a culture of walking." There are some interesting proposals for more sidewalks and better promotion of the benefits of walking, but in terms of what Steuteville identifies as needing undoing--"one-way streets, excessively wide lanes, turn lanes, too little pedestrian space, and other design factors"--we've made a good start. The vast majority of our one-way pairs have been restored to two-way traffic.

Before (Google Maps screenshot from 2008)

After (2021): How my neighbors feel about this change
says a lot about how they feel about anyone walking

To hear some tell it, the city could accommodate growth to 200,000, and the metro to 250,000 or 300,000, simply by sprawling ever outward, and widening I-380 to six or maybe eight lanes. This strategy is ultimately self-defeating from both financial and environmental perspectives. (See Davis 2021.) To accommodate future growth, we should do what we should be doing anyway (and some of which we are already doing): urbanism.

SEE ALSO

Lavea Brachman and Eli Byerly-Duke, "Legacy Cities Can Think Big for Transformative Impact with ARP Funds," The Avenue (Brookings), 12 October 2021

Darcie Carsner, Ethnicity in American Political Participation: The Case of the Czech Village (Coe College, 1996)

Maxfield Research and Consulting, "Comprehensive Housing Needs Update: City of Cedar Rapids, Iowa," February 2020

Robert Steuteville, "Eight Ways for 'Receiver Cities' to Prepare," Public Square: A CNU Journal, 9 December 2021

Dear America brings light in the heat

 

Dear America cover

Jose Antonio Vargas, Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen. New York: Dey St, 2018.

The U.S.-Mexico border right now is a mess, which is not new. America has for decades winked at the movement of undocumented workers, families, and asylum seekers, while demonizing it and making it more dangerous.  Border crossings slowed during and after the 2008 recession, but ongoing anti-immigrant politics fueled a policy of gratuitous cruelty during the Trump Administration. 

President Biden has brought refreshing change in many respects, but the problems at the border persist. (For a critique of Biden administration policy, see Chacon 2021.) May 2021 saw the most Border Patrol encounters in over 20 years, while conditions at detention facilities remain bad. Republicans see immigration from Mexico as a potential political goldmine: border governors Greg Abbott (R-TX) and Doug Ducey (R-AZ) have called for states to send National Guard troops, with eager responses from Kim Reynolds (R-IA) and Ron DeSantis (R-FL). South Dakota governor Kristi Noem is sending that state's Guard, too, funded by a grant from Willis and Reba Johnson's Foundation. Meanwhile, Democrats are split on policy and hence over the administration's response. "The [Biden] administration is making Democrats look weak," said Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), while Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) wants increasing immigration from the South and terms the administration's ambivalence "disappointing" (Jaffe 2021).

A Quinnipiac Poll taken shortly after Biden's inauguration found only 20 percent of respondents preferring that undocumented people in the United States be required to leave, even lower than the 25 percent four years earlier. More than half of respondents to a 2019 Gallup Poll said Central American refugees should be allowed to stay in the U.S. (Polling Report data on immigration opinion are here.) Such data suggest there's room for maneuvering on policy, but the politics on the ground definitely lean to the restrictive.

Amidst the speeches and deployments, it is easy to forget that undocumented residents and asylum seekers are actual human beings. One man who's made it his mission to keep this in front of people's awareness is Jose Antonio Vargas, an independent journalist who is himself undocumented, albeit from the Philippines not Mexico. Vargas uses his personal story to describe the complexity of the larger situation, not aggressively but in a three-dimensional way that often goes beyond our country’s two-dimensional political talk. Dear America is a model of presenting a very personal topic with more light than heat.

Along the way, he raises many other issues worth discussing in themselves: in Part I ("Lying") he talks about  family (ch 2), being the new and different kid in school (ch 3), having responsibility at a young age (ch 7), and life choices (coming out, in ch 8). In Part II ("Passing") he talks about curiosity (ch 1), writing (ch 2), seeking and accepting help (chs 2-3 & 9), moral dilemmas (chs 4 & 6), identity (chs 5 & 10), and resourcefulness (chs 7 & 10). The themes of Part III ("Hiding") include home, belonging, and the privileges that come with fame. His snappy style makes for easy reading, but the issues he raises are not easy.

Two of the book’s themes in particular touch on our common life: the meaning of citizenship, and the struggles created for individuals by complicated legal frameworks.

Vargas discusses "citizen" as a role you practice, not as a status you possess.

If I was not considered an American because I didn't have the right papers, then practicing journalism--writing in English, interviewing Americans, making sense of the people and places around me--was my way of writing myself into America. (58)

He describes a "citizenship of participation:" Citizenship is showing up. Citizenship is using your voice while making sure you hear other people around you. Citizenship is how you live your life. Citizenship is resilience (199-200). That sounds a lot like a common life. And when FOX News provocateur Bill O'Reilly asserts to Vargas "You and the other people here illegally don't deserve to be here," Vargas asks himself, "What has O'Reilly done to 'deserve' to be here?" (151-152). O'Reilly was born in the United States, and thus by constitutional right is a citizen, but how does what he does contribute to our common life?

City planners, developers, and business owners contribute greatly to our common life, against strong headwinds of regulations. When it comes to dealing with absurd legal complexities, though, no group has anything on immigrants. As Vargas's profile rose in the 2010s, his undocumented status began to be seen as willfulness by those with whom he sparred. "It's something I want to fix," he explains to one man who confronts him on a plane, "and there's no way to fix it." The man is incredulous: "You want to get legal?" "Of course," Vargas responds. "Why would I want to be like this?" (160) After another encounter on FOX News, "I wanted to keep repeating: there is no line [in which to wait for legal citizenship]. I wanted to scream, over and over again: THERE IS NO LINE! THERE IS NO LINE! THERE IS NO LINE!" (154)

[I]n April 2017, [Bill] Maher told me he was confused. "I just don't understand," he said, "why you just can't fix this thing," as if "this thing" is a chipped tooth or a dent in a Tesla. If Maher, of all people, doesn't understand how even someone high profile like me can't just "fix this thing," then it shouldn't be a surprise that most people, regardless of political affiliation, have no idea how the immigration system works. (131)

The legal process he needs literally does not exist, unless he returned to his birth country for ten years (82). (Even legal avenues were closed off by the Trump administration; see Rampell 2020.) Other technicalities frustrate him. When he finds out he could have been adopted by his (documented) grandparents, he has passed the maximum age of 16 (65). When President Obama announces Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in 2012, Vargas is four months too old to be eligible. Even for those of the right age, "DACA is temporary and not everybody qualifies," and filing costs nearly $500 (146). Meanwhile, the tax laws certainly are flexible enough that undocumented workers pay substantial amounts in payroll and income taxes (124-126).

A common life involves laws, and boundaries, but it also requires seeing each other's humanity, and a set of laws that ordinary people can understand and follow. Vargas's snappy prose helps point the way.

SEE ALSO: "Eventually, We're Going to Have to Figure Out Immigration," 10 January 2019

Priests, prophets and the 4th of July

Swiped from Agence France Presse via washingtonpost.com

I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.

Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon.

Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps.

But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

--AMOS 5:21-24

We will be having one of the biggest gatherings in the history of Washington, D.C., on July 4th. Major fireworks display, entertainment and an address by your favorite President, me!

--DONALD TRUMP

Independence Day is Thursday, marking the 243rd anniversary of American independence from Great Britain, and our country's annual mid-summer holiday. I'm afraid I'm not feeling it this year. I'm often not feeling it on the Fourth of July, being ambivalent about crowds, loud sharp noises, and (often) excessive heat. This year, though, I'm really not feeling it.

America has a lot to celebrate, of course: our heritage of individual freedom, all the natural beauty preserved in our national parks and wilderness areas, all the people from the military to first responders to teachers to social activists to planners to writers and artists who have dedicated their lives to their communities and country. At our best we have been an example and inspiration to the rest of the world, the "city on a hill" to which the early settler John Winthrop aspired--and probably a better version than Winthrop and his Puritans might have produced on their own. The Founders of our country were flawed individuals--by our standards they were racist, sexist and elitist--but they created a framework that could be expanded and adapted. 

The prophet Amos (Wikimedia commons)

The Fourth of July is a holiday tailored to "priestly" celebration of America. I use the term "priestly" in the sense Martin E. Marty did when he visited Coe College nearly 30 years ago and did an impromptu lecture on civil religion in my class. Marty had just published Religion & Republic: The American Circumstance (Beacon, 1987) which included a chapter reflecting on "two kinds of two kinds" of American civil religion. The priestly-prophetic dimension particularly made an impression on me. Here's his explanation:

The priestly will normally be celebrative, affirmative, culture-building. The prophetic will tend... toward the judgmental. The two are translations of Joseph Pulitzer's definition of the compleat journalist or, in my application, of the fulfilled religionist: one comforts the afflicted, the other afflicts the comfortable. Needless to say, no adherent need always express only one side or kind... Thus a priest may judge and a prophet may and often does integrate people into a system of meaning and belonging. But the priest is always alert to the occasions when such integration can occur and the prophet is always sensitive to the fact that he may have to be critical of existing modes of such integration. (pp. 82-83, emphases mine)

For a priestly example, think of almost any American president, but maybe Ronald Reagan more than most, with his celebration of the mythos of small-town America. Or George W. Bush at a naturalization ceremony in 2008: Throughout our history, the words of the declaration have inspired immigrants from around the world to sail to our shores. These immigrants have helped transform 13 small colonies into a great and glowing nation (Tumulty 2019). For a prophetic example, think of Martin Luther King's speech to the March on Washington in 1963, noting despite the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence... America has given the Negro people a bad check; a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

Americans should take pride in our heritage and what we have today. And yet the danger of being too self-congratulatory, too self-satisfied looms especially large this year. We need to set aside the self-praise of our priestly class for a spell, and give the fireworks a rest, and think about what we're doing.

Pictures of crowded detention camps from the Inspector General's report in the New York Times

The situation at the U.S.-Mexico border is so awful it defies description. Moreover, it's evil--evil because a problem we didn't ask for has been inflated many times by prejudice and fear. I've criticized the toxic politics of President Donald Trump, and as President he bears a lot of responsibility for these atrocities. But he can't make things happen on his own; there's been way too much cooperation, and way too little outrage, for anyone to claim that what's going on at the border is not itself a manifestation of America. Faced with an influx of refugees, the United States has responded by ignoring their claims, imprisoning them, threatening Mexico, and unbelievably, kidnapping their children, drugging them, and farming them out to commercial operators who are neglecting and abusing them. The New York Times reports:

A chaotic scene of sickness and filth is unfolding in an overcrowded border station in Clint, Tex., where hundreds of young people who have recently crossed the border are being held, according to lawyers who visited the facility this week. Some of the children have been there for nearly a month.

Children as young as 7 and 8, many of them wearing clothes caked with snot and tears, are caring for infants they’ve just met, the lawyers said. Toddlers without diapers are relieving themselves in their pants. Teenage mothers are wearing clothes stained with breast milk.

Most of the young detainees have not been able to shower or wash their clothes since they arrived at the facility, those who visited said. They have no access to toothbrushes, toothpaste or soap.... The border station in Clint is only one of those with problems. (Dickerson 2019)

If anyone doubts that these abuses are serious, the Brookings Institution offers a summary of research on the long-term impacts of bad hygiene, sleep patterns disturbed by lights on all night, minimal food and no exercise. Small children, forcibly separated from their parents for long periods of time, have in some cases been lost by either government or private operators. The Brookings writers wonder:

How can government lawyers argue that no soap, lights on all night, and minimal food are safe and sanitary conditions for children? Who have we become as a nation? (Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff, and Rauh 2019)

The situation has been worsening for at least a year ("Zero Tolerance" 2018, Miller 2018, Dickerson 2018, Chen and Ramirez 2018), and has been documented as well as the chaos and governmental evasions and cover-ups will allow. It has gotten renewed attention after the release of a report by the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General, after several members of Congress visited facilities in Clint and El Paso, Texas this week (Mettler, De Bonis and Thebault 2019), after investigative reporting by Pro Publica, the Associated Press, and several legal aid groups. President Trump and Vice President Pence leapt into action when the conditions came to light, only to blame the mess on congressional Democrats for not appropriating money. "We're doing a fantastic job under the circumstances," said Trump. What about leadership? "The President and I are going to stand strong, call on Congress to do their job," said Pence (Flynn 2019). The administration is all about ginning up fake crises, but when it comes to actual ones, they're helpless?

The mess at the border would be extremely difficult even if the administration hadn't inflamed the situation while evading their own responsibility. The proper solution is easier said than done: for the immediate term, treat the influx of refugees as the humanitarian crisis it is, as though it were a hurricane or a flood--get whatever resources are necessary to the scene, and treat people with compassion instead of contempt. For the long run, the U.S. needs to address situations in the countries of origin, particularly El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras (see Medicins Sans Frontieres 2017, Kristof 2019). It does no good to be offended at the refugees, and apparently little good even flagrantly to mistreat them, if the situations they're fleeing are worse. Help them improve.

Sherman Tank (Wikimedia commons)

Not included in our military parade because they're no longer made

Instead, we get rationalization and evasion of responsibility, while the priestly side of Independence Day is carried to a ridiculous extreme by a military pageant in Washington, D.C., complete with tanks and fighting vehicles. What would Amos, or Jeremiah, or Martin Luther King, say about that? Or about the Border Patrol Facebook site where they joke about migrant deaths and post obscene depictions of Latina lawmakers? Or people who are totally fine with all this, and contributed a record $105 million in the last three months to Trump's reelection effort?

The most destructive American public policy in my lifetime was the Vietnam War. Second, arguably, was the second Iraq war. The refugee mess on the Mexican border doesn't compare with those for magnitude. But those wars, however they're viewed in hindsight, at least had some plausible justification. The utter gratuitousness at the border, and the malice that informs it, make it more purely evil.

On this Fourth of July, America needs a prophetic call back to itself. And priestly celebration of its accomplishments. But mostly prophecy.

SEE ALSO:
Eugene Kiely, Robert Farley, and Lori Robertson, "Confusion at the Border," Factcheck.org, 3 July 2019
Jeremy Raff, "What a Pediatrician Saw Inside a Border Patrol Warehouse," Atlantic, 3 July 2019
"Eventually, We're Going to Have to Figure Out Immigration," 10 January 2019
"Fourth of July in Cedar Rapids," 5 July 2013 [I was in a more priestly mood that year]

There are a number of organizations actively mitigating the situation at the border. I have been contributing to RAICES, which has a 30-plus-year presence in the region providing legal services to immigrants.

Eventually, we're going to have to figure out immigration

Swiped from wbur.org

President Trump made his first-ever speech to the nation from the Oval Office last night, trying to justify why the need for a 1000-foot-long wall across our border with Mexico is so excruciating that it is worth a government shutdown to force Congress to accede. With a robotic delivery and flagrantly misleading "information," he probably didn't convince anyone, but he might have managed to reassure the true believers he's still with them. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer were barely more energized as they tried to convey their party's stance as rooted in common sense and fairness, albeit with very little in the way of detail.

I was missing a lively, young, technically-literate Democrat who could, with a few props, explain how electronic surveillance worked better to solve all of the problems attendant to illegal immigration. That would have provided a contrast to our President in so many ways. But, alas, that didn't happen in this universe. And where is the vision? Where is the equivalent of Martin Luther King's 1963 dream of interracial community?

President Trump's immigration policy is so awful almost any alternative would be better, rather like every direction is south when you're at the North Pole. (The same could be said for his environmental policy.) Listening to wall advocates, you immediately wonder if they understand how the 21st century actually works, or if this is all about symbolic expression of--what? Hatred of Mexicans? Leaving one's mark in a sort-of permanent way? Add in the gratuitously cruel handling of refugees, including what amounted to kidnapping their children, and the utter unpreparedness of ICE and the Department of Homeland Security for implementing any of these policies, and you're left with the conclusion that the entire policy is fueled by malice. Ignorance, malice, and lack of resources--no wonder Pelosi and Schumer felt confident in asserting they could do it better.

Eventually, though, we're going to have to get specific. We're actually at a rather quiet phase of the immigration cycle, or would be were it not for President Trump's knack for creating chaos out of order. Overall immigration levels have recovered from the financial crisis era, but remain below long-term averages. The best estimates of undocumented persons as well as undocumented workers in the United States have them at their lowest levels in over a decade. Moreover, a sizable proportion of both groups have been in the U.S. more than 10 years; fewer are newly-arrived (Krogstad, Passel and Cohn 2018; for data on Mexican border apprehensions, see Ramon 2018). It's surely possible to imagine both economic and political pressures getting more intense. Nicholas Kristof calls 2018 "the best year in human history" because of worldwide progress against poverty, lack of access to education and premature death. May that progress continue! but if there are reversals that will increase the number of people in developing nations willing to take the risks involved in getting to America. And what of refugees, who the President has denigrated and horribly mistreated? As climate change accelerates, and basic resources become scarce in more places, the resulting instability and violence will produce refugee flows that will make those of the last few years seem like a Sunday in the park. Are we ready for that?

Immigration is one way to counteract a declinig birth rate. Or not
(Source: Frey 2018. Used without permission)

I don't think we are ready at all, other than majorities of Americans disapprove of Trump's approach. We need a coherent, predictable immigration policy that takes account of all legitimate interests in the policy debate. That means admitting all those needed for labor supply, as well as providing an avenue for refugees with a well-founded fear of persecution. It should provide security against dangerous people, drugs &c. but also to regulate the entry of immigrants--and not just those entering across one particular physical border--to some nationally-agreed upon level. It should provide clear, manageable paths to permanent and temporary residence. It should take account of those who have been in the country so long they have become part of the national fabric, such that chasing them out would do more harm than good. The resources necessary for enforcement, naturalization and managing the flow of temporary workers should not be difficult to get. Whatever the associations with the name, Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) is a much better name for this operation than the too-narrowly-focused Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

It goes without saying that this policy should be thoroughly debated in Congress, for however long it takes, as was the case with the landmark Immigration Acts of 1965 and 1986. It should not result from the President holding the government hostage until he gets what he thinks he wants.

It also goes without saying that opposition to immigration that is racially-based--viz. the President's frequent characterizations of Mexicans and "shithole countries"--should be recognized and called out for the racism it is.

The alternative to immigration laws that relate closely to the realities on the ground is, I suppose, the default option of continuing to muddle through as we have for decades. This policy has evolved in a way that's clearly adaptive to various realities, which means it's working after a fashion, despite its incoherence.  Current policy also distributes its costs unfairly to Border Patrol officers, who put their lives on the line for laws the country isn't committed to, and to undocumented laborers, who are too vulnerable to resist economic exploitation. It also creates space for unscrupulous politicians to exploit racial fears and resentments.

A country that celebrates community in all its diversity needs to have a frank conversation about immigration. For the forseeable future, it's up to Democrats to take the lead on that.

Transcripts of the President's speech and the Democrats' response are here.

The public library as base for belonging

Sophia Rodriguez at the Center for Urban Research and Learning

Until schools reinvent themselves, which I don't see happening anytime soon, after-school programs are going to be the micro-spaces where students gain a sense of positive identity.--SOPHIA RODRIGUEZ

After a lull after the 2008 recession, immigration to America is at historically high levels--maybe not as much in percentage terms as in the 1850s or 1880s, but about 1.5 million newcomers arrived in 2016, which is a lot. Their impacts are felt strongly in some places, less so in others, as these newcomers are not randomly distributed.

One such place is Hartford, Connecticut, where 130 students from Puerto Rico moved into the school district following Hurricane Sandy, adding to an influx of immigrants from a variety of Latin American and African countries, as well as Myanmar (Burma). With 20,000 students in the public school system, this would have been a major event, even without the challenges of language, academic background, and housing uncertainty.

Dr. Sophia Rodriguez, assistant professor of Educational Foundations at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, spoke at Loyola University's Center for Urban Research and Learning about an unusual pilot program based at the Hartford Public Library. Library and school district officials saw an opportunity because many immigrant students lack permanent homes and so hang out at the library. Dr. Rodriguez's report on the first year of the program was cautiously positive: Students reported greater feelings, not only of belonging, but also civic competence.

Newcomers refers to people who have been in the United States less than 30 months. Some are seeking refugee status, some are going through naturalization, and some are undocumented. Some are fleeing violence, some seek economic opportunity, some have lost everything they had in a hurricane or other natural disaster. Rodriguez, who has worked in a variety of school systems throughout the country including Chicago's, notes that even in culturally diverse urban areas, school-aged newcomers face hostility, lack of staff awareness, lack of support staff for languages other than Spanish, and a powerful norm for conducting classes in English, all in schools that are often under-resourced.

The Hartford program sought effective integration of newcomer youth into the community. Dr. Rodriguez used the word belonging, and I gather the program does, too, but as she pointed out that traditionally refers to improving the individual's comfort level with his or her surroundings. Hartford worked up a "civically-minded social justice curriculum... including policy awareness, accessing resources, and how to engage in activism." She describes three levels of belonging: (1) personal-individual day-to-day feelings; (2) relational i.e. networks of peers; (3) civic awareness i.e. feelings of belonging to the city.

The good news is, observation and surveys from 2017-18 showed improvements on all three dimensions, and responses from participants and staff were broadly positive. The program's small size (never more than 35 participants) and national-linguistic diversity improved students' levels of belonging by creating an instant peer network. Using the public library as a base showed that institution's potential in any city to be a "springboard to other resources and opportunities." All this was achieved despite numerous "logistical, methodological and staffing challenges."

Side note: As someone occasionally involved in after-school activities, the apparent willingness of students simply to hold still after a long school day seems miraculous.

With such a small sample--only 22 students participated in the surveys--inferences are made cautiously. Indeed, only on the second dimension  of belonging ("relational") were improvements statistically significant. Participants in the second year of the program are all Spanish-speaking, which presents a different dynamic from the diverse first-year group.

If someone, say library director Bridget Quinn-Carey, were to talk about this program at 1 Million Cups, very soon someone would ask if the program could be scaled up. Aye, there's the rub. One of the favorable circumstances of the program is the relatively small size, smaller than the typical class at Hartford or Bulkley High Schools. Effective integration of newcomers takes investment in staff and other resources, at a time when schools are hardly flush. This program was funded in part by the U.S. Institute for Museum and Library Services, but they're not going to be good for more than piloting and research.

In the richest society in the history of Earth, resources for those investments are here, just historically hard to tap. It might be worth it. Diversity can be a source of strength for this uncertain century--no ecologist in the world speaks favorably of monocultures--but only if newcomers are effectively integrated. Large-scale immigration is a fact, and we can choose how to respond. We can follow the example of our President, and respond with bigotry, political opportunism, and what amounts to a government kidnapping ring. Or we can rise to the challenge of inclusion, and support the work necessary to make it happen.

Speakers raise tough issues at Coe MLK celebration

Issues of diversity and inclusion were front and center in a day-long celebration of Martin Luther King Day at Coe College. Featured speakers included Geneva Williams, a local civil rights attorney who used the 1955 murder of Emmett Till to frame contemporary race relations; and political scientist Rebecca Stonawski, who discussed civil rights aspects of immigration issues.

Geneva Williams

Williams argued today's racial issues exist in the context of (and in spite of) substantial progress since the 1950s, including the end of legal disenfranchisement and the election of a President of color. She characterized today's problems as primarily economic disenfranchisement, as well as a "culture that dehumanizes each other." It is harder for events like the several 2014 shootings of unarmed black males to touch "our collective conscience," and easier to blame victims like Eric Garner when "we no longer see ourselves in the other."

She commends voting and inter-racial dialogue as means of healing this breach. During the Q-and-A section, she quipped that it's "harder to talk about race than to have the sex talk." I think there are two huge obstacles to dialogue, and one to voting:

• In an America marked by widening economic inequality (which is principally class-based but has strong racial elements) and sprawling metropolises, it is unusual to have acquaintances that cross race and/or class lines. Acquaintance creates the opportunity for dialogue that may not occur all at once. If I greeted a black person with "So, what's it like being black in Cedar Rapids?" or "Bummer about Tamir Rice, huh?" they would justifiably dismiss me as a presumptuous lunatic. Only contact over time can create the context for productive dialogue, and American society is designed to avoid rather than facilitate that contact.
• Whites have swung in a generation or two from obliviousness if not outright offensiveness to great fear of offending. I know I have. Perhaps this is true of blacks, too? We can't manage dialogue if we're so self-censored we sound like politicians under investigation. Similarly we can't expect anyone to talk candidly to us if we seize on the slightest offense. New York police union leader Patrick Lynch's rejection of any criticism of police tactics gets points for loyalty, but has done real damage to American race relations that were not in great shape to begin with.
• Voting is an obvious solution in towns like Ferguson, where neither the City Council nor the Police Department is close to representative of the town's population. But beyond that, it's not clear to me there are readily-available policy solutions to the problems of the under-employed, much less political candidates advocating them. So what's a poor black voter to do?

Rebecca Stonawski

Stonawski commendably took on the challenge of explaining immigration policy issues and terminology, culminating in the current stand-off in Washington. She described the current administration policy as [a] providing a path to citizenship for certain illegal immigrants currently in the country, with a reprieve from deportation in the meantime; [b] strengthening enforcement both at the border and workplaces; and [c] clearing the backlog of visa applications, which according to travel.state.gov has now exceeded 20 years for Mexican applicants. The proposals face uncertain prospects in Congress, with the House last week voting to block funding to implement Obama's interim executive order and the Senate likely to follow. [Incidentally, Obama would be the third straight president to have immigration proposals blocked by Congress, suggesting the institutions are playing out learned roles. My amateur transactional analysis won't get us to a solution, though.] Stonawski urged students and others in attendance to inform themselves further and then to become actively involved on behalf of your preferred solution.

No one, as far as I know, supports the current immigration situation. People have very different goals, of course, but that doesn't need to be a barrier to a solution that advances all of their different interests. (Obama's, or George W. Bush's, proposals could serve as the basis for such a solution.) The major obstacle is that many people who are already actively involved in the debate over this policy are unwilling to acknowledge two truths which I think are unavoidably true: [1] immigrants currently in this country illegally are drawn primarily by job opportunity, and play an integral role in our economy i.e. to expel them all and prevent their entry is a fantasy; [2] no country can admit everyone who wants to live there i.e. even a liberalized policy is still going to exclude people. One of the most compelling sections of King's Washington speech was the vision he described of a future of racial harmony.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.... I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day, right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today!

Of course there were those who saw that vision as morally repugnant. But there had to be others who heard those words and thought it described a way more appealing world than the one they inhabited, and decided: "Let's do it! It's way past time for this shit to stop."

Until someone paints a similarly compelling vision that incorporates the realities of immigration, of "come heres" and "been heres" working side-by-side and treated with dignity, we are going to be stuck with the current policy stalemate, mired as it is in (depending on your perspective) idealism or rigidity. And we're going to need executive action to keep the situation on the ground from completely breaking down.

OLDER POSTS

"Strength Through Diversity (II)," 9 March 2014
"Strength Through Diversity," 1 March 2014
"The Race Card Project," 12 February 2014
"Race Matters, Damn It," 16 April 2013

ALSO A GOOD READ:
Sarah Goodyear, "White Privilege, On a Bicycle," City Lab, 18 January 2015
Allen Vandermeulen, "Sermon: Making Room," The Here and the Hereafter, 18 January 2015