As described in my book, Immigration Reform: The Corpse That Will Not Die, pro-immigrant reformers in the 1980s weren’t just so-called “policy wonks” focused on shaping legislation. They were also deeply concerned with “implementation”—the art and science of turning abstract policy into real improvements in people’s lives. In that era, advocates wanted to protect as many undocumented people from deportations as they could. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Through enactment and implementation of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), they helped more than three million undocumented people gain permanent resident (green card) status. A follow-on bill, the Immigration Act of 1990, protected another two million or so from deportation through temporary programs, such as Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
These results came not simply from the legislation itself, but also from concentrating on implementation. Immediately after legislation passed, the advocates shaped and monitored agency regulations. They designed program manuals and followed up with trainings to support community groups who were assisting the undocumented to apply for legalization. But ultimately, it was church and civic organizations on the ground in communities across the country that made the difference. Chronically understaffed, often relying heavily on volunteers, these groups rose to the challenge. They conducted outreach efforts, informing their communities about the opportunity to legalize. They stood up programs that helped people collect the documentation and fill out the forms the government required. Millions were protected from deportation as a result.
Four decades later, the task facing pro-immigrant advocates is to protect subsequent generations of undocumented residents, who contribute mightily to our society and economy, from indiscriminate mass deportations. Many perform essential work planting and picking crops we rely on for food, performing manual labor at construction sites, caring for our elderly and infirm, bussing tables and washing dishes at restaurants, and cleaning our hotel rooms and offices. Many have longstanding ties to the community, including US citizen children. And it’s not just undocumented families at risk. The Trump administration is systematically revoking the status of huge swaths of those here lawfully. Affected people include hundreds of thousands of Afghans, Cubans, Nicaraguans, Haitians, and Venezuelans paroled into the country, millions with Temporary Protected Status, and many student visa holders, that are now at risk of deportation. Policy advocates and litigators are fighting to protect these communities in Congress and the courts. But they can’t win this battle alone. Luckily, they don’t have to.
In effect, pro-immigrant advocates today face the opposite challenge of our forebears: instead of helping people legalize, we must now confront the policy of mass deportations and figure out how to make it fail. And instead of standing up a program, we need to “reverse engineer” the deportation machine: break it down into its component parts and add barriers at every step. There’s a common through-line that links today’s strategies to those from a generation ago. Our predecessors relied heavily on “people power”—volunteers, often from the community—to make legalization work. We can do the same today to lawfully impede mass deportations. For example, ordinary people can take effective steps to chip away at the infrastructure supporting the current mass deportation regime:
- Volunteering time to first responders and legal services organizations, many of whom need of people who are fluent in multiple languages. This work can range from answering phones or collecting and analyzing data to accompanying people to their immigration hearings.
- Documenting (with cameras or phones) enforcement activities, and if abuses are discovered, disseminating them to advocates, legal service organizations and policymakers directly, or via social media and the press.
- Supporting those apprehended/detained and others at risk by lifting up their cases to lawmakers, other public officials and media. Human interest stories should be emphasized (over data & statistics). The reason: even people who don’t like immigration often are sympathetic to immigrants they know. Our job is to steer the discourse away from an abstract battle over immigration policy into a question of how our society should treat fellow human beings.
- Writing letters and making phone calls to Members of Congress & Senators. This kind of “old school” pressure is far more effective than many believe.
There is no national clearinghouse for you to sign up. The groups and coalitions doing this work are trying to stand up an infrastructure in real time and tend to be, as we say in the trade, “hyper local.” To find ways to help, we must educate ourselves:
- Review Know Your Rights materials that local groups are using to educate the undocumented population.
- Look to see which organizations are quoted in local stories about how people have been released from detention; contact them and see if they accept volunteers.
- Go to a demonstration or rally where organizations often have tables or exhibits or disseminate flyers about how to help.
- And if you can’t find a local group or coalition to latch onto, start one. Many of the most successful advocacy activities have been started by regular people seeing injustice and doing something about it.
Then, decide what you can do and do it! Most Americans can’t do everything outlined above, but all of us
can do something.
Immigration Reform: The Corpse that Will Not Die 