Patricia Kullberg hosts this MLK Day episode of the Old Mole, which takes up the history and politics of immigration.
The Reverend Martin Luther King once said: "We may have all come on different ships, but now we're in the same boat." Were he alive, MLK would have been the first to condemn the state terror campaign currently inflicted on our immigrant communities. Surely he would have recognized it as the same terror long inflicted on the Black community. He would have known that terror campaigns are mounted to keep ordinary citizens divided and fearful of each other. He would have understood the connections to racial capitalism and our imperialist past and present.
“Day Without an Immigrant” is a campaign organized in Oregon by Piñeros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN). Once a month immigrants are urged not to shop, go to school or work, to demonstrate the social and economic contributions of the immigrant community. Today is the second of those days.
In honor of both MLK and PCUN’s campaign, we devote our show today to a wide-ranging discussion about immigration in the United States. Luisa Martinez speaks with immigration lawyer and activist Daniel Kanstroom about the political economy of labor migration, the historical antecedents of current US immigration policy, the racialization of immigration enforcement, and immigration policy through the lenses of gender, poverty and ideology. Daniel Kanstroom is professor of law at Boston University and has decades of experience with immigration law. He is the author of Deportation Nation: Outsiders in American History and Aftermath: Deportation Law and the New American Diaspora. Luisa Martinez is a member of Portland DSA and the National Political Committee of DSA. This interview originally aired in two parts on April 21 and 28.