On US Immigration and the Deservingness Challenge

In this essay, I suggest how to overcome the lack of obligation of the United States to abide by UDHR Article 14. Right to Asylum in other Countries from Persecution, as it pertains to undocumented refugees within its borders.

International human rights norms are the obligations of governments to act or refrain from acting in order to protect the human rights of everyone within their borders. The 30 Articles of the UDHR are enshrined under two covenants: the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR); and the International Covenant for Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICERCR). The United States only ratified the former and, therefore, is obligated to abide by the international human rights norms of the ICCPR under which UDHR Article 14 is enshrined.

The challenge, therefore, of applying international human rights norms in campaigns to represent unauthorized migrants in American policy discussions or advocacy campaigns rests in the United States’ failure to ratify the International Covenant for Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICERCR), and the lack of awareness among the American people that refugees are their allies in strengthening the American economy. The ICESCR includes, but is not limited to, articles 13 (Right to Move in and out of the Country), 14 (Right to Asylum in other Countries from Persecution), 25 (Right to Adequate Living Standard) and 26 (Right to Education), which are among the second generation of rights of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR); the United States is not obligated to abide by it. If the United States had ratified the ICERCR, the right to leave one’s own (or any other) country does not mean one has the right to enter another. Even if the United States had ratified the ICERCR, some international human right norms are not necessarily consistent with the American idea of citizenship.

The media portrays the dire of American citizenship as one who has acculturated himself or herself to the ideals of American society such as civic engagement and deservingness of citizenship because they have met this standard in the face of adversity. Acculturation to American values includes being among the best and the brightest, and most successful in one’s endeavors; this standard of exceptionalism is one that the average native born American fails to meet. Civic engagement or “good citizenry” involves working hard and enriching the nation, as well as volunteering in one’s community. It is after one meets the aforementioned elements that one is considered worthy of remaining in the United States, provided that one did not arrive on one’s own volition, but rather, as an innocent victim fleeing persecution, or say, a child or an infant. Even the Supreme Court recognized that "undocumented children, citing their young age and lack of power in decisions to migrate as key to their innocence.” (Patler et al., 2015, 1457). Only after proving victimhood or innocence has one met the threshold for deservingness of citizenship. Although the United States iOS not obligated to abide by the international human rights norms of the ICECRC, the media has the power to shape and frame the perception of refugees.

To best meet the challenge of using international human rights norms as a constitutive element of campaigns to represent unauthorized migrants in American policy discussions or advocacy campaigns, it is necessary to meet Americans where they are. “Opinion polls routinely find that the majority of Americans favor a combination of tough enforcement and ‘earned legalization’ [when] addressing the unauthorized immigrant population.” (Rosenbaum, 2011, 1). An advocacy campaign framing unauthorized immigrants as relatable in the context of the American threshold for citizenship would be an effective approach. People are inclined to assist students in their academic and career endeavors, as they have prepared themselves for becoming contributing adults. Repeatedly portraying them in media campaigns called, let’s say, “We Are Your Allies” with patriotic music playing in the background featuring outstanding students who are team players and serve their communities as volunteers could resonate with the American public. So as not to encourage immigration of students at the expense of the larger population of unauthorized immigrants, “We Are Your Allies” could use the same background music to feature small business owners and laborers as taxpayers and the good parents who, through no fault of their own, had to flee conflict and are responsible for the success and acculturation of stellar students.

With power brokers in entertainment, business and academia as allies, and by framing immigrants to the American public in a tone and context by which they can relate could inspire them to support a media campaign as discussed. With a call to action for viewers to conveniently reach out to their politicians and urge them to continue realizing the return on the investment that this country has made in unauthorized immigrants by rewarding them with citizenship.

__________

SOURCES:

1. Bauböck, Rainer “Migration and Citizenship: Normative Debates,” The Oxford Handbook of the Politics of International Migration, Oxford University Press, 2012.

2. Patler, Caitlin, et al.,s (2015) Framing Citizenship: Media Coverage of Anti-deportation Cases Led by Undocumented Immigrant Youth Organisations, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 41:9, 1453-1474, https://bit.ly/2M6C7qp. Accessed 20 January 2020.

3. Rosenblum, M.R., US immigration policy since 9/11: Understanding the stalemate over comprehensive immigration reform, Migration Policy Institute, 2011. https://bit.ly/2SrMdTy. Accessed 20 January 2020.

4. “Refugee Resettlement in the United States.” U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of State, 13 Jan. 2016, 2009-2017https://2009-2017.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2016/01/251176.htm. Accessed 20 January 2020.

Through the Eyes of a Child

In March 2006, I gave the following speech at the New York County Lawyers Association at a program to commemorate the life of Mrs. Coretta Scott King. In it, I share how witnessing the violence perpetrated by the United States government and domestic terrorists during the Civil Rights Movement impacted me as a child.

As soon as I agreed to speak about the Civil Rights Movement through the eyes of a child, I began to feel a sense of foreboding. During my preparation I started to understand why: I did not have the words to articulate what I was feelings during that time and I began crying tears that I had been too paralyzed with fear and shock to shed during those formative years of my life. Looking back, however, gave me the opportunity to put some perspective on the past, and appreciate why a widely circulated photograph of Coretta Scott King at her husband’s funeral where she is embracing her youngest daughter, Bernice, who was leaning onto her lap resonated with me.

I was born at the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement in the year of Emmitt Till’s death and three weeks after Rosa Parks’ arrest. By the time Martin Luther King, Jr. rose to prominence, my parents had established themselves in El Barrio where my earliest memories began. In those days, El Barrio was much more diverse than I believe it is today. My mother, who was a housewife, would help me conduct experiments with my little chemistry set, taught me botany using kidney beans to illustrate the growth process of plants, how to sew - to keep me out of her way while she was sewing, took my on trips to the local library, and to the Museum of the City of New York where I was always fascinated with the giant dollhouse display. You could say that I was living a carefree life.

Then one day, my father decided it was time to introduce me to race distinctions. Although African Americans were referred to as Negros and colored back then, he referred to us as black. Since I was too young to think abstractly, what he succeeded at doing was to cause confusion. I remember standing by our front door when my father approached me from down the hall and out of the blue he informed me that I was black. A mental recall of the contents in my crayon box confirmed otherwise: the blue sky matched the blue crayon; the green grass matched the green crayon; but my brown skin did not match the black crayon.

“Daddy, my skin is brown.”

“You’re black!”

I’ll always remember how my father’s body trembled with emotion when he said those words. The emphasis the he placed on “black”. communicated two things: 1. something was amiss; 2. I had better adapt, but to what I had no clue. All I knew was there was a concept of categorizing people by color which lead me to a new dilemma: If I’m black and Andy is white, what does that make Judy? Even though it is always there, nothing raises people’s consciousness of their connectedness to one another than disaster and tragedy, recent examples: Katrina, Tsunami and 9.11. I believe that children, because of their inability to articulate like adults, have a heightened sense of connectedness and with my ability to reason in only concrete terms, I sought an appropriate color designation for Judy. So at five years old, I concluded, based on my father’s logic, that Puerto Ricans were the grey people.

This discourse occurred during the time of the Sit-Ins and just before the Freedom Rides got underway. Unbeknownst to me at the time, my father, who held an MBA in finance, could not get a job on Wall Street. When he showed up for interviews, security showed him the service entrance. When he landed a job at a major department store, he endured the humiliation of people coning to see the black man - if he was even referred to as such - who had an MBA and worked as a clerk. He left that job, worked n government, and eventually used his degree by serving the El Barrio community as a civic leader.

As I became more cognizant of my surroundings, the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum, violence seemed more and more prevalent and I felt bombarded with the news of it. There were regular broadcasts of the hostility to southern whites. When the evening news featured Bull Connor and his K9 gang, I learned to subcategorize whites: good white people; bad white people; bad like the one who assassinated Medgar Evers, and Goodwin, Cheney and Schwerner, and used tear gas, whips and clubs against the Selma to Montgomery marchers.

I could barely finish an emotional sigh of relief and savor a sense of hope from the success of the March on Washington, I when less than two weeks later, four little girls: Denise McNair; Cynthia Wesley; Carole Robertson; Adie Mae Collins were assassinated on a Sunday morning when a bomb exploded at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Those four little girls were my contemporaries. Those four little girls were killed while engaging in the very activity that I engaged in on Sunday mornings. Those four little girls represented me.

I was too engrossed with my own feelings to think about what Coretta might have been feeling for her own girls.

A couple of months later, just as my class had settled in from recess our principal announced over the public address system that president Kennedy had been assassinated. The streets were devoid of after school activity as I walked home from early dismissal. I remember a little girl of about five years old walking up to me with a worried look ion her small face and asked, “Did you hear about the President?” I nodded yes. “It’s a shame, isn’t it?” Again, I nodded yes. I was too shocked to speak.

I was too consumed with fear to wonder how Coretta might comfort her children.

One Sunday, I overheard my parents in their bedroom arguing about whether my father ought to take my sister and me to hear Malcolm X speak. I recall sitting in the living room feeling apprehensive. Going to see Malcolm X represented part of the gradual, yet significant, transition from the cocoon of childhood and into the incomprehensible world of adults. The issue became moot when my grandfather called from the Audubon to say that Malcolm was gone.

I was too preoccupied with my own sense of dread to wonder what Coretta might have been feeling.

Then one Thursday evening, a television station interrupted my favorite program to bring the special report that Martin Luther kIng had been assassinated.

I was too shocked to wonder whether Coretta had seen the writing on the wall.

Violence was a constant intrusion on daily living and it was not limited to the Civil Rights Movement. The United States was murdering people of color in Vietnam and broadcasting the killings on the nightly news. I recall the discussions at home when the New York City Police Department shot and killed a ten year old black boy under the guise of mistaking him for an adult. and a white man’s attempt at washing the black off of a young adolescent boy. I cannot find the words to impress upon you how frightening and how stressful that was for a child.

Yet in the midst of all this turbulence and confusion, I continued to enjoy childhood activities like the Girl Scouts, piano lesson and slept away camp, but civic unrest filled the airwaves with popular songs that reflected the social climate, and were evident at theBroadway plays we attend which allowed me to examine the social climate in a non-threatening manner.

I was too busy enjoying myself to wonder if Coretta, whose children were living at the heart of the unrest, could give her children that kind of reprieve.

A few years ago, an old family friend who had worked with my father gave me his papers and shared a story of having witnessed a man drawing a gun on my father at a meeting. It was not until I heard that story and read mu father’s papers that I came to appreciate the amount of stress he had been under and the risks he had been taking trying to stabilize the community, all the while protecting my sisters and me form the perils he faced.

With the Civil Rights Movement as backdrop, my father protected us from the indignities that black Americans suffered by maintaining:

• the strength to refrain from making disparaging remarks about people of other races;

• the expectation that we excel in school and by providing positive black role models to show us the possibilities for our futures in the form of our music teacher, our pediatrician and family physicians, and by chairing strategy meetings in our home with other community leaders;

• by providing a stable home life that gave me a sense of security in the knowledge that my mother, who hosted those strategy meetings and assisted my father with speech writing, was home while I was at school and when I returned.

In the thick of the Civil Rights Movement, Mrs. King had the courage and the strength to march with her husband and be a mother to her children, while maintaining an elegant public image; no small feat. Even as a child, the photograph of her that I described represented the source of strength and symbol of protection that parents are for their children, especially in the face of adversity.

Thank you for your time.

اسمي جنيس

On Child Marriage in the United States of America

October 11th is the International Day of the Girl Child. In the United States when one hears of child marriages, one thinks of a poor young uneducated girl living in a developing countries living in abject poverty. Her uneducated parents consent for her to marry a man older enough to be her father or grandfather. This essay pulls a curtain back on one of the wealthiest and most powerful countries in the world.

Child marriage is a global, largely a rural phenomenon grounded in poverty. Under those circumstances, it is not unusual for underaged children, particularly girls, to marry. In the United States, parents may give consent for their minor children to be married; the exceptions are the states of Delaware and New Jersey. In Massachusetts, it is possible for children to marry at any age, leaving them vulnerable and trapped in situations that are not in their best interests. In certain states, these children cannot divorce, or otherwise leave their marriages, or flee to a shelters to escape spousal abuse. In the majority of these cases, girls are married to adults. Children who otherwise would be protected by statutory rape laws, are emancipated because marriage serves as a rite of passage into adulthood, but there is a catch. UDHR Article 16 recognizes the individual right to choose whom to marry. The implication here is that these individuals are adults who enjoy the freedom to divorce, enter into contracts, obtain restraining orders, and make other independent decisions. Therein lies the catch: married children do not enjoy these liberties.

The best interests of the child is expressed in human rights covenants and conventions that recognize the family as society’s most fundamental group. It is here where the health and well-being of children are paramount; the nucleus in which children are protected and guided to become fully developed and contributing adults. The Convention on the Rights of the Child identifies individuals under the age of 18 as children, and was drafted to meet their special needs. Article 3 thereof articulates the need for all governments, and private and other institutions to consider as paramount the best interest of children. One might argue that different cultures have various ways of interpreting what this means. The stages in which children develop, however, are universal. Minor children, regardless of country of origin, lack the physical, mental and emotional maturity to take on the responsibilities of adulthood. Yet parents throughout the United States consent to their children entering marriages prematurely; maybe to sexual predators. Why does the United States, and country that helped to draft and has signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child, only considers their best interest in family court?

The Articles of the UDHR fall under one of two broad covenants. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) covers such rights as freedom from torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, fair trial rights, freedom of thought, religion and expression, privacy, home and family life, equality and non-discrimination. International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) addresses issues such as the care and protection of dependent children, education, desirable work, adequate living standard, participation in cultural life, and participation in trade unions. The United States ratified the former. Issues concerning the welfare of children fall under the latter.

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When Your Rights as a Citizen are Threatened

Pursuant to the UDHR, the issue of citizen rights is universal. With the Honorable Maurice Kamto's story as backdrop, gain insight as to how those rights can be undermined and what elected officials in United States capital are doing about it.

Imagine that you are a member of a community that discriminates against a minority of its citizens. Like everyone privileged to live on this planet, you must decide whether to play the cards you were dealt to the best of their ability; you decide to make the most of your situation. As a result, your list of accomplish include becoming a respected professor of international law, a former dean of the faculty at University, and former chairman and special rapporteur of the U.N. International Law Commission. Your role in the latter led to successful negotiations that resolved a dispute with a border country.

The trajectory of your life leads to a prominent political appointment back home. Seeing an opportunity to help your marginalized community, you withdraw from government to form a movement that opposes policies of the current administration. Several years later, you run for president. You challenge the results, declare yourself the winner, and engage in peaceful protests. In retaliation, the government burns villages, closes schools, apprehends protesters, tortures and kills some, and you are on trial facing the death penalty. Such is the story of Cameroonian Maurice Kamto.

Cameroon is a country divided by two legal systems: the majority French civil law; the minority British common law. This division occurred when Germany lost its African colonies after World War II. The majority of Cameroon went to France; the Southern remainder to the United Kingdom. In 2017, the Cameroon Civil War, known as the Anglophone Crisis, broke out in Anglophone Cameroon. The following year, Mr. Kamto ran for president. Earlier this year, he was arrested.

Although Mr. Kamto, a Francophone Cameroonian, exercised UDHR 29 to better the lives of fellow citizens, his government violated UDHR 30 by interfering with the rights of its citizens. While Mr. Kamots’s and his fellow Anglophone civilian supporters and protests organizers of lawyers, teachers, and students exercising UDHR Articles 19, 20 and 21 to form opinions, peacefully assemble and to participate in government, their government violently repressed them by violating UDHR Articles 3, 5, 9 and 26 by interfering with their rights to life, liberty and personal security, and by committing torture, murder, imprisonment, and closing schools.

Although the Anglophone Crisis is not widely reported in the media, the United States House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee and the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee have introduced H.Res.358 and S.Res.292, respectively, calling for the Cameroonian government to respect the human rights of all its citizens. Why should you care? Quoting Martin Niemöller, “First they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist…Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.” UDHR 29 requires the same of us: to speak out. Maurice Kamto did. He set an example for the rest of us.

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The Day I Witnessed a Human Rights Violation

I first wrote this reflection for a human rights class. Although the events took place many years ago, I remember them as though it were yesterday.

Robert was a thin, cockeyed, odd-looking boy who never smiled. One weekend, I learned that we had mutual friends. The following Monday, I approached him about it and that’s how we became acquainted. I learned how personable and friendly he was. We always greeted one another with smiles, chatted in the cafeteria or when our departures from school coincided.

Springtime brought with it boys from nearby high schools who sought a view of students at dismissal from our practically all-girls art school. They were harmless and we ignored them. One afternoon, Robert had left the building ahead of me; we did not get a chance to speak. He was walking alone several yards ahead. Suddenly and seemingly out of no where, a group of boys charged at Robert and proceeded to attack him. The slaps after slaps after slaps to his head were loud enough to cause everyone within earshot to stop and gasp. Meanwhile, Robert was bent over near the ground trying to protect his head. This was my most vivid memory of witnessing someone’s human rights being violated. I was shaken, I felt helpless and sick to my stomach.

Although UDHR Article 18 articulated an individual’s right to freedom of conscience and, therefore, to behave accordingly, Article 29 gave that individual a responsibility to respect the rights of others. In the instant case, a moral person would have likely believed that treating others as one would have wanted to be treated as a prudent rule of thumb when considering whether to engage the behavior supra. Since these were teenagers, however, they most likely allowed any subjective values they had or may have had about what was right and good, to become outweighed by peer pressure and a desire to fit in.

In the meantime, Robert’s human rights pursuant to, inter alia, UDHR Articles 1-7, had been violated. Consistent with UDHR Article 30, the purpose of the rule of law in American society is primarily to protect the health, safety, welfare and rights of citizens. Ethical considerations are in keeping with this purpose. Robert had the legal right to take himself to the nearest police station, file a police report, press charges against his assailants, and have his day in court. The problem here was this: the incident had taken place nearly three years after Stonewall. Legal remedies notwithstanding, the NYPD, and by extension the state, lacked the ethical and political will to protect him

In her book, Evidence of Hope, Kathryn Sikkink reminded us that advancement of human rights takes time, persistence and occurs in unexpected ways; Stonewall was the tip of a socially significant iceberg. The persistence of the LGBTQXYZ Community has resulted in openly “other” politicians, judges, lawyers, actors, educators, etc. Citing Theodore Parker, Martin Luther King Jr., reminded us that, “ the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” While there is more work to be done, the fight for justice has finally produced a generation people with the moral fortitude speak out, support and protect the rights of members of the Queer Community.

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