Let’s be clear. An attack on DACAmented youth is a cruel attack on all immigrant families. Having arrived in the US as a child, even with the privilege of “having papers,” I know that being a young immigrant often means being your family’s interpreter, their lifeline to mainstream society, the person who has to negotiate everything from basic cable to basic human rights.
Last Tuesday, when the Trump administration announced the end of DACA (Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals), a program that protected 800,000 immigrant youth from deportation and allowed them to work in the US, the administration also challenged Congress “to address immigration reform in a way that puts hardworking citizens of our country first.” The truth, however, is that the US immigration system is racist and has always put (white and wealthy) citizens first. From the first immigration law passed by Congress (the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882) to today’s Dream Act (which has not been passed yet), the overwhelmingly white political and economic elite have attempted to draw divide-and-conquer lines to maintain a racialized class hierarchy.
As an organization that seeks to build new culture and a new economy by supporting young people to develop food co-ops, we stand strong for immigrant justice. We reject the racialized divide-and-conquer narratives that pit citizens against immigrants, “legal” immigrants against “illegal” immigrants, and childhood arrivals “who committed no crime” against their parents who made “poor choices”. Now more than ever, we must cooperate for our collective liberation.
In a capitalist system that seeks to reduce immigrant families to paper — the ones we own and the ones we make — co-ops are surprisingly one of the few ways that undocumented immigrants can earn a dignified living. Yet, our racist immigration system forces DACAmented students seeking to learn about food co-ops to choose between risking their safety to travel and attend CoFED‘s Summer Co-op Academy and staying home. With DACA protections phasing out and immigration reform unlikely to deliver justice for all 11 million undocumented immigrants under this current administration, the co-op movement — our best chance at self-determination and economic democracy — is set up to fail. Immigrants, many undocumented, literally build and feed America. We simply cannot build a new economy when the people who built and continue to build this country — immigrants, Black folx, indigenous peoples, people of color, and poor people — are living under a police state that criminalizes us for daring to be a part of US society and contributing to our country’s successes.
So when immigrants are under attack, what do we do?
Stand up! Fight back! Call Congress to pass permanent protection for all immigrants.
