March 23
GUEST: Dr. Sarah Rogerson,
Director of the Justice Center at Albany Law School, as well
as its Immigration Law Clinic, talks about law and policy
regarding victims of child abuse and neglect,
persecution, domestic violence and sexual assault.
Undocumented
doesn't mean illegal
Sarah Rogerson offers Activist Radio listeners a lot of history. We do learn the traditional stories, from elementary school on. Ellis Island and America, offering hope to those oppressed in their own countries. It is a stars and stripes account, one that omits so very much.
But lets face it, the hidden history of our country is much more interesting than the textbooks make out. I have tutored junior high students, so I know how stultifying the approved version really is. There are no bumps, no scrapes, and no hidden secrets that make any real account of our history so much more entertaining.
The history of immigration is all the more whitewashed. We are a nation of immigrants, and yet know little or nothing of the systems and laws that have shaped our ethnicities and racial compositions. A look at the history of immigration helps us understand the highly charged discrimination that still plagues our society.
Yet coming to terms with the racism that has guided our immigration policies for the last two centuries can also be liberating. Can one understand Trump without considering how he manipulates immigration for political gains? He, like most effective demagogues of the past, has a gift for stirring racial and ethnic fears. The US border is the perfect symbol of the US under attack. And attacked by immigrants, the very people who now make up 98% of our population.
Isn't it time we learned the real story of immigration? Without it we are vulnerable to the worst type of racist provocateurs.
