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We often hear these days that the immigration system is broken.
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I want to make the case today that our immigration conversation is broken
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and to suggest some ways that, together, we might build a better one.
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In order to do that, I'm going to propose some new questions
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about immigration,
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the United States
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and the world,
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questions that might move the borders of the immigration debate.
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I'm not going to begin with the feverish argument that we're currently having,
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even as the lives and well-being of immigrants are being put at risk
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at the US border and far beyond it.
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Instead, I'm going to begin with me in graduate school
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in New Jersey in the mid-1990s, earnestly studying US history,
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which is what I currently teach as a professor at Vanderbilt University
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in Nashville, Tennessee.
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And when I wasn't studying,
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sometimes to avoid writing my dissertation,
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my friends and I would go into town
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to hand out neon-colored flyers, protesting legislation
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that was threatening to take away immigrants' rights.
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Our flyers were sincere, they were well-meaning,
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they were factually accurate ...
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But I realize now, they were also kind of a problem.
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Here's what they said:
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"Don't take away immigrant rights to public education,
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to medical services, to the social safety net.
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They work hard.
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They pay taxes.
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They're law-abiding.
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They use social services less than Americans do.
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They're eager to learn English,
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and their children serve in the US military all over the world."
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Now, these are, of course, arguments that we hear every day.
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Immigrants and their advocates use them
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as they confront those who would deny immigrants their rights
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or even exclude them from society.
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And up to a certain point, it makes perfect sense
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that these would be the kinds of claims that immigrants' defenders would turn to.
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But in the long term, and maybe even in the short term,
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I think these arguments can be counterproductive.
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Why?
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Because it's always an uphill battle
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to defend yourself on your opponent's terrain.
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And, unwittingly, the handouts my friends and I were handing out
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and the versions of these arguments that we hear today
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were actually playing the anti-immigrants game.
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We were playing that game in part by envisioning
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that immigrants were outsiders,
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rather than, as I'm hoping to suggest in a few minutes,
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people that are already, in important ways, on the inside.
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It's those who are hostile to immigrants, the nativists,
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who have succeeded in framing the immigration debate
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around three main questions.
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First, there's the question of whether immigrants can be useful tools.
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How can we use immigrants?
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Will they make us richer and stronger?
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The nativist answer to this question is no,
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immigrants have little or nothing to offer.
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The second question is whether immigrants are others.
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Can immigrants become more like us?
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Are they capable of becoming more like us?
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Are they capable of assimilating?
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Are they willing to assimilate?
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Here, again, the nativist answer is no,
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immigrants are permanently different from us and inferior to us.
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And the third question is whether immigrants are parasites.
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Are they dangerous to us? And will they drain our resources?
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Here, the nativist answer is yes and yes,
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immigrants pose a threat and they sap our wealth.
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I would suggest that these three questions and the nativist animus behind them
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have succeeded in framing the larger contours of the immigration debate.
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These questions are anti-immigrant and nativist at their core,
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built around a kind of hierarchical division of insiders and outsiders,
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us and them,
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in which only we matter,
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and they don't.
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And what gives these questions traction and power
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beyond the circle of committed nativists
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is the way they tap into an everyday, seemingly harmless sense
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of national belonging
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and activate it, heighten it
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and inflame it.
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Nativists commit themselves to making stark distinctions
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between insiders and outsiders.
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But the distinction itself is at the heart of the way nations define themselves.
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The fissures between inside and outside,
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which often run deepest along lines of race and religion,
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are always there to be deepened and exploited.
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And that potentially gives nativist approaches resonance
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far beyond those who consider themselves anti-immigrant,
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and remarkably, even among some who consider themselves pro-immigrant.
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So, for example, when Immigrants Act allies
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answer these questions the nativists are posing,
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they take them seriously.
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They legitimate those questions and, to some extent,
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the anti-immigrant assumptions that are behind them.
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When we take these questions seriously without even knowing it,
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we're reinforcing the closed, exclusionary borders
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of the immigration conversation.
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So how did we get here?
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How did these become the leading ways that we talk about immigration?
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Here, we need some backstory,
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which is where my history training comes in.
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During the first century of the US's status as an independent nation,
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it did very little to restrict immigration at the national level.
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In fact, many policymakers and employers worked hard
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to recruit immigrants
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to build up industry
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and to serve as settlers, to seize the continent.
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But after the Civil War,
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nativist voices rose in volume and in power.
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The Asian, Latin American, Caribbean and European immigrants
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who dug Americans' canals,
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cooked their dinners,
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fought their wars
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and put their children to bed at night
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were met with a new and intense xenophobia,
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which cast immigrants as permanent outsiders
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who should never be allowed to become insiders.
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By the mid-1920s, the nativists had won,
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erecting racist laws
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that closed out untold numbers of vulnerable immigrants and refugees.
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Immigrants and their allies did their best to fight back,
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but they found themselves on the defensive,
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caught in some ways in the nativists' frames.
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When nativists said that immigrants weren't useful,
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their allies said yes, they are.
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When nativists accused immigrants of being others,
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their allies promised that they would assimilate.
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When nativists charged that immigrants were dangerous parasites,
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their allies emphasized their loyalty, their obedience,
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their hard work and their thrift.
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Even as advocates welcomed immigrants,
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many still regarded immigrants as outsiders to be pitied, to be rescued,
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to be uplifted
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and to be tolerated,
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but never fully brought inside as equals in rights and respect.
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After World War II, and especially from the mid-1960s until really recently,
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immigrants and their allies turned the tide,
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overthrowing mid-20th century restriction
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and winning instead a new system that prioritized family reunification,
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the admission of refugees
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and the admission of those with special skills.
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But even then,
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they didn't succeed in fundamentally changing the terms of the debate,
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and so that framework endured,
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ready to be taken up again in our own convulsive moment.
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That conversation is broken.
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The old questions are harmful and divisive.
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So how do we get from that conversation
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to one that's more likely to get us closer to a world that is fairer,
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that is more just,
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that's more secure?
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I want to suggest that what we have to do
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is one of the hardest things that any society can do:
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to redraw the boundaries of who counts,
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of whose life, whose rights
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and whose thriving matters.
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We need to redraw the boundaries.
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We need to redraw the borders of us.
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In order to do that, we need to first take on a worldview that's widely held
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but also seriously flawed.
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According to that worldview,
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there's the inside of the national boundaries, inside the nation,
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which is where we live, work and mind our own business.
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And then there's the outside; there's everywhere else.
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According to this worldview, when immigrants cross into the nation,
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they're moving from the outside to the inside,
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but they remain outsiders.
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Any power or resources they receive
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are gifts from us rather than rights.
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Now, it's not hard to see why this is such a commonly held worldview.
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It's reinforced in everyday ways that we talk and act and behave,
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down to the bordered maps that we hang up in our schoolrooms.
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The problem with this worldview is that it just doesn't correspond
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to the way the world actually works,
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and the way it has worked in the past.
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Of course, American workers have built up wealth in society.
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But so have immigrants,
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particularly in parts of the American economy that are indispensable
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and where few Americans work, like agriculture.
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Since the nation's founding,
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Americans have been inside the American workforce.
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Of course, Americans have built up institutions in society
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that guarantee rights.
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But so have immigrants.
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They've been there during every major social movement,
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like civil rights and organized labor,
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that have fought to expand rights in society for everyone.
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So immigrants are already inside the struggle
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for rights, democracy and freedom.
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And finally, Americans and other citizens of the Global North
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haven't minded their own business,
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and they haven't stayed within their own borders.
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They haven't respected other nations' borders.
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They've gone out into the world with their armies,
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they've taken over territories and resources,
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and they've extracted enormous profits from many of the countries
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that immigrants are from.
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In this sense, many immigrants are actually already inside American power.
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With this different map of inside and outside in mind,
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the question isn't whether receiving countries
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are going to let immigrants in.
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They're already in.
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The question is whether the United States and other countries
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are going to give immigrants access to the rights and resources
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that their work, their activism and their home countries
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have already played a fundamental role in creating.
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With this new map in mind,
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we can turn to a set of tough, new, urgently needed questions,
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radically different from the ones we've asked before --
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questions that might change the borders of the immigration debate.
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Our three questions are about workers' rights,
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about responsibility
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and about equality.
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First, we need to be asking about workers' rights.
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How do existing policies make it harder for immigrants to defend themselves
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and easier for them to be exploited,
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driving down wages, rights and protections for everyone?
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When immigrants are threatened with roundups, detention and deportations,
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their employers know that they can be abused,
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that they can be told that if they fight back,
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they'll be turned over to ICE.
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When employers know
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that they can terrorize an immigrant with his lack of papers,
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it makes that worker hyper-exploitable,
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and that has impacts not only for immigrant workers
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but for all workers.
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Second, we need to ask questions about responsibility.
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What role have rich, powerful countries like the United States
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played in making it hard or impossible
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for immigrants to stay in their home countries?
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Picking up and moving from your country is difficult and dangerous,
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but many immigrants simply do not have the option of staying home
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if they want to survive.
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Wars, trade agreements
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and consumer habits rooted in the Global North
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play a major and devastating role here.
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What responsibilities do the United States,
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the European Union and China --
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the world's leading carbon emitters --
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have to the millions of people already uprooted by global warming?
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And third, we need to ask questions about equality.
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Global inequality is a wrenching, intensifying problem.
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Income and wealth gaps are widening around the world.
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Increasingly, what determines whether you're rich or poor,
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more than anything else,
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is what country you're born in,