"Illegal Limbo": Childhood and Immigration Status

Interesting short piece on the ASA (American Sociological Association) blog "Contexts" about the life-course of the children of non-status ("illegal") immigrants in the US.

In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled that children of undocumented immigrants have the right to a free public school education alongside native-born children. But when these undocumented kids leave high school, they transition from protected child to illegal immigrant. That is, the laws support the undocumented child, but not the undocumented adult they’ll eventually become. Roberto G. Gonzales (American Sociological Review, August 2011) explores how these youth experience their status transformation through interviews with 150 “1.5-generation” Latinos in California.

 A man and his son wave the flag of El Salvador at an immigration rally in New York City.

Adolescents, Gonzales writes, first recognize their illegal status in their late teens, when their lack of a Social Security number prohibits such rites of passage as getting a part-time job or a driver’s license. Assimilation alongside their native-born peers led these kids to believe they would have more opportunities than their parents, but undocumented youth get a harsh reality check at graduation: no papers means no future. The young adults must “learn to be illegal,” which includes re-evaluating their future goals. And parents—who often believed that their children would have citizenship by the time they reached adulthood—don’t prepare them for this transition.

Despite speaking fluent English and earning high school (and sometimes college) degrees, undocumented young adults end up no better off in the labor market than their uneducated parents. Gonzales argues that the system has created a “new disenfranchised underclass”—2.1 million young adults who are stuck in what might be called “illegal limbo.”  Link

It's an interesting and little-discussed side of the "illegal immigration" debate in the US.  It also highlights  the arbitrariness of much of the discourse about "saving the children", and of children's right to fair treatment and equal opportunity, a set of entitlements that have a clear and definite expiry date (your 18th birthday). You see this false distinction again when it comes to popular discussions of children and gangs, imprisonment, poverty, etc.  After that point, the discourse shifts from "victim" to "perpetrator", from "innocent" to "guilty" as arbitrarily and suddenly as we go from child to adult. Am I right?

All this has interesting (and expansive) cultural roots in the West - dating back as far as I know, to the Victorian Era, before which childhood was not necessarily associated with innocence.  Okay, this is from Wikipedia, I know, but it's kindof "common knowledge" among sociologists, so trust me ;)

The man usually credited with - or accused of - creating the modern notion of childhood is Jean Jacques Rousseau. Building on the ideas of John Lockeand other 17th-century liberal thinkers, Rousseau formulated childhood as a brief period of sanctuary before people encounter the perils and hardships of adulthood. "Why rob these innocents of the joys which pass so quickly," Rousseau pleaded. "Why fill with bitterness the fleeting early days of childhood, days which will no more return for them than for you?"

The Victorian Era has been described as a source of the modern institution of childhood. Ironically, the Industrial Revolution during this era led to an increase in child labour, but due to the campaigning of the Evangelicals, and efforts of author Charles Dickens and others, child labour was gradually reduced and halted in England via the Factory Acts of 1802-1878. The Victorians concomitantly emphasized the role of the family and the sanctity of the child, and broadly speaking, this attitude has remained dominant in Western societies since then. Link

It's all very ironic, of course, given how prevalent and brutal child labour practices were, but also highlights the bourgeois origins of the discourse.

But why 18, you may wonder? Why is that most often the magic number? I just downloaded a bunch of papers, mostly from legal history journals, which I am too tired to read tonight. But I'm making a mental note for a future post entitled perhaps "Why 18?" or, alternatively, "Boy you 18 now, you grown,  and you need to get yo'self a J. O. B.".  Probably the former, though. 

Meth (cont'd)

The (fantastic) PBS documentary series Frontline did a show on meth a few of years ago, and it's definitely worth watching. Not only because of the almost unbelievable destructiveness and pervasiveness of the drug in some parts of the States, but also because the creators take a legal and structural approach to understanding the spread of meth, as well as the barriers to combatting it.

So they consider how, for example, laws restricting the importation of certain component chemicals that are only manufactured in India had measurable effects on addiction rates nationwide (less of the chemical imported meant less potent/addictive meth in the supply, and lower addition rates). In one of the more disturbing explorations, you also see how lobbyists from the pharma industry strove to block the passage of laws that would further restrict the dissemination of one of the key ingredient of meth (ephedrin or alternately, pseudoephedrine), which, importantly, are found in over-the-counter cold medicines.

"The Meth Epidemic" tells the story of two potential solutions to the crisis and examines why neither was fully tried. In the mid-80s, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration first proposed controlling the retail sale of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine in cold medicines by having customers register at the counter and limiting how much they could buy. Pharmaceutical companies, however, resisted the DEA's plan. Allan Rexinger, a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry, felt the DEA was overreacting and unfairly punishing a legitimate business: "They have a different way of thinking. DEA agents carry guns; DEA agents are killed in the jungles of South America. But when you're working in Congress, you don't need to carry a gun. We felt like we were being treated just like a Colombian drug lord." Meanwhile, Gene Haislip, a former deputy administrator at the DEA, says: "They live in the business community, where the name of the game is to make money and sell product. They're highly skilled, very well organized and very well funded, and they can be quite formidable." Faced with a choice, the White House and Congress ultimately exempted cold medication from the regulatory proposals.

Read more: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meth/etc/synopsis.html#ixzz1dtmLzgmj

Here is the full documentary.

Chris Rock on race and "progress"

Interviewer: How do you think things have changed over the last couple of decades?
CR: Umm... white people have gotten less crazy. (...) You can say there is progress and all this, but... when you say it's "progress", you're acting like what happened before wasn't crazy. You know what I mean. So, "Oh, segregatio, we've made a lot of progress and there is no more segregation"... Segregation is re-tarded!..."

The debate ends here.

Alex, Alex, Alex...You know what the problem here is?

You're just not a good young liberal white person. I love you and all, but there it is.
I can't have a dialogue with someone who works for a living, who pays these taxes I wish to disperse into the ether of human need, who has no aspirations that involve graduate school, or marrying an indie-ish chick with bangs (and perhaps an ironic tattoo). You may have gone to an Ivy League School, and wish to live by a body of water one day, but that's incidental... it's all incidental (Plus I think Wharton is like a small island of not-Ivyness in the otherwise beautiful clear Blue of the archipelago).

You don't even drink coffee, for fuck's sake.

All you need to know is that I am a sociologist -- it is inscribed in the genealogy of my very profession to know what's best for poor people (this is also, incidentally, inherent to my whiteness ...Double-Rainbow.)

I work with immigration detainees, I am sensitive to the injustice of the world, and I am all 'round a more advanced person.

So just trust me on these things, ok?

( I know baba's with me on this. Hey, bro, facebook me)

And where exactly will Bernie get this money?

Unfortunately Bernie Sanders doesn't know what he's talking about.

Gov't has no money. Gov't is broke. It has trillions in deficits (it borrowed money, then spent it, and now has no more. Worst, since the gov't has been doing this for so long, it now can't function without this borrowed money)

One of two things will happen:

1) Out-of-control government get reigned in by people who understand that now is the time to act before things get catastrophic (the tea party movement thing)
2) The government will go bankrupt

The consequences of (2) are much more serious than taking Pell Grants away from grad studends

Bernie's leftist arguments sound nice in theory but don't apply to the real world.

Here are some realists:




And if you have time for some real clear thinking

Bernie Sanders -- Bernie, Fucking, Sanders

So what is one way to go forward, other than savage cuts for programs for the most vulnerable people in this country? (...)

Why does anyone think it is moral or right to move towards deficit reduction on the backs of the weak and the vulnerable? I understand -- and I know something about politics -- I do understand that the parents of kids who are in Head Start do not make large campaign contributions, and I know that the senior citizens of thic ountry who need some help for social security do not make large campaign contributions -- I undersrtand that. I understand that college students desperately trying to go through college on a Pell Grant do not make large campaign contributions. But there is a sense of morality here that we have to deal with, and I think it makes no sense, I think it is immoral, I think it is bad economics to balance the budget on the backs of working families while we give continued tax breaks to those people who don't need it.

Caracas, Venezula: Squatters living in abandoned sky-scraper

Guy tries to rob dep; Attendant pulls out Samurai sword

Hilarity and comedic justice ensue.