#imigration

(cartoon Clay Bennett)

ICE always melts

God’s Word on Immigration

[M]aking the world better for everyone makes it better for immigrants. I think if we do the work to expand workers’ rights, expand social safety nets, health care, education—all of that makes things better for immigrants. And when conditions are better for everyone, it makes it easier for us to fight for immigrants and make sure they’re not excluded from those public benefits. So we have to understand that it’s not just some separate issue. It’s a part of the fabric of doing social justice work in the US and anywhere, really. But the bigger point I’m trying to make is that immigrants have become an easy scapegoat because people are struggling from a sense of scarcity and economic insecurity. So many of the resources we have go to the prison-industrial complex, immigration enforcement, and US militarism. How do we make sure we’re bringing people in and doing that political education and keeping them in this work? In the next four years, though our ability to shift things will be mostly at the state and local level, that work is going to be so critical to getting those longer-term wins. From my perspective it is the big lesson for how we approach this new administration.