Public Employee Press
Viewpoint
SANCTUARY AS A CIVIL RIGHT
Those who attack immigrants and Muslims also attack civil rights and workers’ rights.
By NEAL FRUMKIN
As we enter the era of the Trump presidency, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim actions and rhetoric are on the rise.
So too are efforts to defend those affected by such actions and sentiments. The sanctuary movement – an answer to Trump’s deportation policy – is an encouraging development.
Members of DC 37 should be part of this resistance and other efforts to protect immigrants. Why?
Those who attack immigrants and Muslims also attack the civil rights and workers’ rights movements.
As noted abolitionist leader, Frederick Douglas wrote in 1866, “They divided both to conquer each,” referring to African Americans and whites. As members of the labor movement, we should understand that in our unity we have strength.
I find the Trump policy on immigration and Muslims to be divisive and reprehensible. The ban on Muslims includes refugees from the civil war in Syria.
For me, the policy brings to mind an ugly chapter in our history that deeply disturbed the family of Trump’s son-in-law.
In 1982, Rae Kushner, grandmother of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared, was interviewed for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. She described the difficulties Jewish refugees had getting to the U.S. (and many other countries) as they fled the Nazis.
She lamented President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s refusal to allow the St. Louis, a refugee ship, to discharge its passengers in this country.
Many of those refused entry were later murdered by the Nazis. Kushner’s grandmother proudly said she taught her children and grandchildren to embrace refugee rights. Perhaps Jared has forgotten the lesson. We shouldn’t.
A personal experience years ago reinforced my sympathy for immigrants, who so often are fleeing war, persecution and economic hardship.
After I retired in 2002, my wife and I vacationed in southwest Arizona.
We were hiking the remote mountainous region near the Mexican border looking for some rare birds in their spring northward migration.
The group we were with came upon some discarded clothes and empty water jugs. Someone in the group made an anti-immigrant statement. I answered by asking why we were happy to see birds that flew north to find food, nesting areas and a place to raise their young while we were angry at human beings doing the same thing.
Today, millions of people are forced to leave their place of birth due to war, religious and political persecution, economic necessity and ecological disaster.
New York City, we are told, is a sanctuary city. What does that mean? When I think of sanctuary, I can’t get the image of the Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame seeking the protection of the church out of my mind.
But that absolute protection is not what the city’s sanctuary policy is about.
The principle underlying the city’s decision not to serve as the extra arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, is important.
By being willing to hand over people based on a court order, the city falls short of living up to that principle. Instead, we should follow the lead of the abolitionist movement to build the equivalent of the Underground Railroad to protect immigrants without legal status.
Resisting anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim propagandists and politicians has common ground with the fight for union rights, health care, low-cost housing, decent education and Social Security.
Each of these fights exists in every country around the world. That is why I proudly wear a button that reads “Workers struggles have no borders.”
Neal Frumkin is the associate vice president for inter-union relations of the DC 37 Retirees Association.
