Restrictions, red tape face new immigrants

The great civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. This adage appears to have proved itself to be painfully real in the Shenandoah killing of Luis Ramirez.

As a Schuylkill County native and a recent law school graduate, I read the news from the region with great interest, especially how the coal region is handling immigration issues.

Although Mr. Ramirez’s death is still under investigation, there may be a racial and anti-immigrant motivation to his killing. Regardless of whether this is the case, I have grown concerned about the apparent bigotry toward Latinos in general and, as a person who has studied the law, the incorrect legal interpretations many people use to justify their hate of illegal immigrants.

Many residents of Shenandoah, similar to my own family, are descendents of Lithuanians and other eastern European countries. When our ancestors came to the coal region, they were met with prejudice. Many new immigrants were treated poorly and were discriminated against. The Lattimer Massacre, which occurred in nearby Hazleton, is an example.

The hostility some of the descendants of our ancestors have directed toward new immigrants are manifested through legal misconceptions. Shenandoah Borough Council, in following the lead of Hazleton City Council, has considered passing an ordinance that would discriminate against Latino residents. As Judge Munley, the federal judge who threw out the Hazleton statute, correctly stated, such an ordinance is unconstitutional.

Illegal immigrants, contrary to popular belief, are not criminals and do have rights under the U.S. Constitution. These local ordinances violate the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The ordinances also violate preemption, the legal doctrine which reserves immigration matters to the U.S. Congress and the federal government.

Another misconception is that our ancestors followed the same immigration laws, so new immigrants today should as well. This is historically and legally inaccurate. The restrictions and red tape that a new immigrant today must go through to become a U.S. citizen largely did not exist until the 1920s.

Legislative history and newspaper records show it was hostility and prejudice at the time toward recent arrivals from Eastern Europe and other places that caused political pressure to create new laws. The prejudice then was toward many of the ancestors of Shenandoah’s current residents. The U.S. Congress developed tighter restrictions, which made it difficult to become a U.S. citizen.

These laws punished the immigrant, but largely have left employers untouched from strenuous regulation. The irony is but for the illogical hatred of many of Shenandoah’s ethnic minorities in the 1920s — groups that include my own family — these current restrictions would not exist.

It is true that our current immigration system is troubled, but it is unfair to blame new immigrants. These immigrants are recruited by employers to work here. Like our ancestors, immigrants are often just trying to provide for their families, and are escaping crippling economic hardship in their native lands.

It is hypocritical to blame new immigrants. Instead, we should be examining the inequitable legal structure that allows employers to cause illegal immigration and benefit economically from it without much penalty.

Only by addressing our own ignorance of our ancestors’ past and the legal inequities that causes so much prejudice today, can we truly live up to Dr. King’s words and aspirations.

Only then will the root of the senseless injustice that appears to surround Mr. Ramirez’s death truly be addressed.

Joseph Radzievich

Jacksonville Beach, Fla.