‘Americans Understand That Immigration Is a Fundamental Part of Our Society’: CounterSpin interview with Insha Rahman on immigration conversation

Janine Jackson interviewed the Vera Institute of Justice’s Insha Rahman about the immigration conversation for the October 4, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

Janine Jackson: Unfortunately, we can assume listeners know the popular right-wing lines: Immigrants—that’s shorthand for Black and brown immigrants—are criminals, violent drug criminals especially, but also they’re stealing jobs, draining social services and, in election season, we hear they’re voting illegally in large numbers, because they are, in some way, props for the Democratic Party.

Anyone who wants to dispute those noxious tropes can do so with a search engine. Harder to combat is the overarching and bipartisan framing of immigration and immigrants as a “problem.” How do we replace batting away the latest slur with the reality-based humane conversation we need to move us to the 21st century immigration and asylum policies we could have?

Insha Rahman is vice president of advocacy and partnerships at the Vera Institute of Justice and the director of Vera Action. She joins us now by phone. Welcome to CounterSpin, Insha Rahman.

Insha Rahman: Thanks for having me, Janine.

Guardian (9/15/24)

JJ: Rather than ask you to engage intentionally misleading anti-immigrant talking points, I wonder if you would talk a little about the impacts. What is the fallout of myths and misinformation that might sound laughable or dismissable to many of us—what’s the fallout in the lives of the communities that you work with?

IR: First of all, the Willie Horton playbook of exploiting voters’ fears about crime, and frankly the dog whistles about race and criminality, it’s nothing new. When I say Willie Horton, everybody knows the 1988 ad that was run and allegedly sunk Michael Dukakis’ Democratic bid for president, and it’s a playbook that is old, well worn. We’ve seen it every election cycle.

And so this year, in 2024, if you feel like you’re hearing about immigration and migrants and cats and dogs nonstop, it isn’t anything new. It is really just another page of the Willie Horton playbook.

And it’s not really about immigration or immigration policies. Every poll that we have done, that we have seen, has found that Americans, by and large, understand that immigration is a fundamental part of our society, of our economy, of our communities. We are a country of immigrants. But, when it is wrapped up in a fear of crime, and playing upon racist tropes about crime and criminality, that’s where it has political impact.

And the fallout, we can see: One of the most depressing and staggering polls that I’ve seen recently is that overall support for immigration, which used to be a majority of Americans, including independents and moderate voters, supported immigration to this country. They fundamentally believed immigration is a good thing for our communities, our families, our economy. Now that support has dipped, for the first time, to below 50%. And so there’s a real fallout in terms of support for policy that’s actually smart and sensible.

Christian Science Monitor (9/19/24)

And then we see it in very real ways in places like Springfield, Ohio, where there has been a lot of legal—I should say, legal—immigration of Haitian migrants to this country, who are fleeing really devastating circumstances in Haiti. We’re watching bomb threats in local schools, immigrant residents of Springfield feeling afraid. In fact, all residents of Springfield feeling afraid, because suddenly the city, that nobody had heard of until September 10 and the presidential debate, is literally in the Klieg lights, and everyday Americans and a lot of politicians are talking about Springfield. So much so that even the Republican governor of Ohio said, “Stop the fearmongering, stop the misinformation. We are just fine. What Springfield needs is our support and help, and not fearmongering and rhetoric about us.”

JJ: I think that media give inadequate attention to the carryover or bleed-through effects. It’s not to say that people who fall for anti-immigrant misinformation, they’re not asking folks before they harass them, “To be clear, you’re Haitian, right? You’re not Dominican. I don’t want to get my hatred wrong.” It’s treated as though these are targeted attacks, and as though they end when one particular incident is resolved, or when the cameras go away. But, of course, the impact on communities goes on and on.

IR: Yeah.

JJ: Changing facts on the ground with law, with policy, with institutional culture can save and can change lives. It does also work to shift the dialogue about what’s possible, about what life looks like after you change that law, for example. What are some of the legal or policy changes that you think could be important right now, that could shift the ground on immigration and asylum?

Washington Monthly (5/21/24)

IR: One of the things that we have seen there’s widespread support for, and that can be done, is just: when there are new immigrants to our cities, to our communities, we make sure that they have the ability to work. Work, employment, is life-changing for everybody, including US citizens and other members of the community, who benefit from more labor. Right now, in many parts of this country, we have more jobs than we have people to fill them, and immigration is a necessary thing; it’s why economists across the country, across the political spectrum, say we actually need immigration. We can’t build a wall and mass-deport people and shut down the borders, because we literally will have an economic crisis in this country. So employment is a really basic thing we can do.

Another thing is, sometimes people hear, folks who are coming to our cities, especially people who are bused up from Texas and other border states, Florida—people resent housing and services and making sure basic needs are met. Well, in fact, that is cheaper than the alternative. And it is good for all of us.

And it’s not for forever: If you help somebody get on their feet with some temporary housing for three to six months, they have a work permit in hand, they have a job, they will not need to be dependent on government services and resources. It is actually better for us to set people up for a small period of time for future success.

And we’ve watched some cities do that really well. For example, Boston did not engage in the kind of fear-mongering about “all these newly arrived migrants, it’s going to be the end of the city, it’s going to destroy us,” which is what we heard from a certain elected mayor in New York City. That wasn’t the approach that Boston took. And, in fact, they’ve had a lot of newly arrived migrants as well, and they’ve managed it. And you’ll see they have really good outcomes, and there’s generally a sense of positivity towards new arrivals there in a way that there simply isn’t in New York City.

Insha Rahman: “There’s some really clear policy things we can do for folks who have just come here, like work permits, like making sure there is transitional housing and support and services.”

And so, again, there’s some really clear policy things we can do for folks who have just come here, like work permits, like making sure there is transitional housing and support and services. All of that is a better investment in our communities and our economy than the alternative.

And then we see there’s always been and always will be widespread support for a path to citizenship and legalization for folks who have been here, who are part of the fabric of our communities. And so those are some of the things we could do literally immediately, but at the local level, in terms of cities and states.

And then what we need to see Congress do—and 10 years ago there was, in fact, bipartisan support for more paths to citizenship. And we need to bring the Overton window and shift it back to there, because that’s actually good for all of us.

And one other thing I’ll just mention as a policy point is, even under the law as it is—and I would say we need to update the immigration laws so that there’s more legal paths to citizenship for folks. But even with the laws that we have, making sure people have lawyers, they have some basic due process before they’re facing deportation, means many more people access the asylum laws, other forms of relief under current immigration law, which means it keeps people and families together, it keeps people in jobs.

My organization, the Vera Institute of Justice, we run a national program where we’re helping folks who are facing deportation have access to counsel, and literally people are 10 times more likely to win their case and be able to stay in the country, stay with their families, be in their jobs and in their communities, than if they have to go through deportation proceedings without a lawyer. And there’s no right to a lawyer in those proceedings. And that’s a really big problem for keeping families and communities together.

JJ: Just finally, what would you be looking for in a healthy public conversation about the changes we need to get from where we’re at to where we could be, and maybe who would be in that conversation that isn’t being heard from so much now?

IR: Too often, the conversation about immigration is dominated by politicians who are looking to score cheap political points. And if you listen to their rhetoric, they don’t have a single solution. Mass deportation is not a solution. Building a wall is not a solution.

New York Times (9/30/24)

And you know who actually has, and maybe they’re unlikely players in this, but folks who actually have very clear solutions for how we have a real and thoughtful conversation about immigration, that’s business owners and chambers of commerce. And, again, I made the point earlier that economists are like, “If we just shut down immigration, if we deport everybody, our economy will collapse.” Nobody understands that better than businesses and business owners, and they’re actually a really important voice in this conversation that often gets overlooked.

Just to go back to Springfield, Ohio, that we talked about, you actually saw the local chamber of commerce, and a number of different business owners, go out and speak publicly on the record, on the nighttime news and the newspaper and city council hearings, to say, “We need our immigrant workers and family members and community members, because they’re a vital part of our economy.”

So I actually think that’s a missing voice in this conversation that could help to bring the poles together, because the right likes business. I think the left can live with business, if business is coming at the issues in the right way. And I think there’s an opportunity to really actually bring people together, and have a more reasoned, thoughtful conversation about what the path forward is.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Insha Rahman, vice president of advocacy and partnerships at the Vera Institute of Justice, and the director of Vera Action. Find their work online at Vera.org. Thank you so much, Insha Rahman, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

IR: Thanks for having me, Janine.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

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