Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Why Doing Immigration the “White Way” Is Wrong

Why Doing Immigration the “White Way” Is Wrong

A close up of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement badge.

Getty Images, Tennessee Witney

The president is granting refugee status to white South Africans. Meanwhile, he is issuing travel bans, unsure about his duty to uphold due process, fighting birthright citizenship, and backing massive human rights breaches against people of color, including deporting citizens and people authorized to be here.

The administration’s escalating immigration enforcement—marked by “fast-track” deportations or disappearances without due process—signal a dangerous leveling-up of aggressive anti-immigration policies and authoritarian tactics. In the face of the immigration chaos that we are now in, we could—and should—turn our efforts toward making immigration policies less racist, more efficient, and more humane because America’s promise is built on freedom and democracy, not terror. As social scientists, we know that in America, thinking people can and should “just get documented” ignores the very real and large barriers embedded in our systems.


Immigration policies are built on colonialism and white supremacy. The hypocrisy is stark: a nation founded by colonizers who pillaged, kidnapped, and displaced indigenous populations and trafficked enslaved people is aggressively, yet selectively, anti-immigrant. Racism is embedded in U.S. foreign policy, facilitating political and economic exploitation that destabilizes lower-income nations and drives migration. Today’s enforcement practices, which punitively target people of color while facilitating white people’s entry, continue these legacies.

Country of origin has always mattered; immigrant preference categories favor highly skilled applicants, which often benefits people from wealthier and whiter countries. People born outside of North America have shorter wait times for naturalization compared to those born in Mexico. For example, even adult children of U.S. citizens from Mexico can wait 19 to 24 years for visas. Waiting decades when faced with urgent issues of day-to-day survival can be unrealistic.

In the United States, the vast majority of the undocumented population are people of color. This intersection creates a particularly hazardous status. Working without authorization is dangerous. Employers take advantage of people without papers. Access to basic needs and healthcare is tenuous. Exposure to disasters—from climate emergencies to workplace hazards—is heightened.

The structural racism of our immigration system harms undocumented persons and citizens alike. Black and brown citizens are disproportionately targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In industries where Latinx populations are overrepresented, conditions are often unsafe and inhumane. Consider the policies aimed to curtail water breaks, the dangerous working conditions of infrastructure failures, heat exposure, and lack of air-conditioned facilities, and who occupies the riskiest jobs of our concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Young citizens in mixed-legal status families face undue stress.

How can we do better? We must stop separating families, revoking visas, and deporting legal residents. We need to expand and accelerate access for all asylum seekers. We need to support local organizations that serve immigrant communities, especially those targeted by ICE. There are an estimated 11 million undocumented people in the U.S. and we need to allow them a timely pathway to citizenship.

And, we can recognize that while our systems are faulty, our language doesn’t have to be. People are not aliens. People are not illegal. These othering and dehumanizing labels enable public complacency when human rights are violated.

Finally, we need to work as a global community to address social, environmental, and political mechanisms, which push and pull international migration. A world where food, water, shelter, and political safety are universally experienced would reduce forced displacement. Migration patterns would adapt.

To be sure, policy that expedites legal immigration can seem counterintuitive for a superpower, however, America does not need an oppositional us vs. them. America’s merit rests on the values it aspires towards: liberty and justice for all. It's time we hold our leaders accountable to align their policies with these values. A nation that violates human rights, disregards due process, and favors white immigrants—and the citizens who allow these inequities—is not free; it is dangerous.

Immigration policy has always been a tool of racial and economic control. When we allow these assaults, we endorse the history and perpetuation of violence, domination, white supremacy, and the harm that an intentionally, exclusionary, and deferral-based system causes. While we debate who deserves to live where, white supremacy and fascism get a free ride.

Megan Thiele Strong is a Sociology professor at San José State University and a Public Voices Fellow at the The OpEd Project and a member of the Scholars Strategy Network.

Faustina M. DuCros is a Sociology associate professor and scholar of race, migration, and inequality at San José State University and a Public Voices Fellow at the The OpEd Project.

Susana L. Gallardo is a Chicana feminist teacher, scholar, and mom. Officially an assistant professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at San José State University.

Read More

Hands protecting a child. A child being protected.

Just three months into his second term, the Trump Administration terminated 373 grants worth about $500 million from the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs.

Getty Images, Mary Long

Youth Injustice: Trump Administration Cuts Violence Prevention Programs

This essay is part of a series by Lawyers Defending American Democracy where we demonstrate the link between the administration’s sweeping executive actions and their roots in the authoritarian blueprint, Project 2025, and show how these actions harm individuals and families throughout the country.

Just three months into his second term, the Trump Administration abruptly terminated 373 grants worth about $500 million from the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP). The grants were ended without any prior notice and affected programs across the country that provide support for the complete range of department activities, including juvenile and youth justice, violence prevention, child protection, policing and prosecution, and victims’ services.

Keep ReadingShow less
An Open Letter to the Department of Education
Committee of Seventy Engages Over 23,000 Students in Civic Education Statewide
Getty Images, Maskot

An Open Letter to the Department of Education

Children—Black, white, brown, immigrant, and native-born—crowded around plastic tables, legs dangling, swapping stories, and trading pieces of their lunches. I believe that the dream of the Department of Education was to build a country where a child's start in life doesn't determine their finish, where public education flings open the doors, not just for a few, but for all.

Our story didn't begin in isolation. The Department of Education was born in 1979, forged by decades of struggle and hope; by the echoes of Brown v. Board, the promises of the Civil Rights Act, and the relentless voices of parents and educators who refused to accept that opportunity could not be representative and equitable. The mission was bold and straightforward: make real the promise that public education is a right and a shared responsibility.

Keep ReadingShow less
Protest against gerrymandering
Demonstrators protest against gerrymandering at a rally in front of the Supreme Court while the justices debated Rucho v. Common Cause.
Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post via Getty Images

When the Map Becomes the Battlefield: Gerrymandering and the Challenge of Democratic Reform

Founded as an independent national news outlet, The Fulcrum explores and advances solutions to the challenges facing our democratic republic—by amplifying diverse, civic-minded voices. We've long championed a new political paradigm rooted in civil discourse, civic integrity, and personal accountability while warning that hyper-partisan rhetoric and entrenched party lines threaten the very foundation of reasoned governance.

But in 2025, the threat has evolved. The content arriving in our newsroom, as well as the voices from the field, reflect not just frustration with gridlock, but growing alarm over the systematic dismantling of democratic institutions. From reform leaders to civic organizations to everyday citizens, we’re hearing the same refrain: The machinery of democracy is not merely stalled, but systematically being dismantled.

Keep ReadingShow less
elementary school classroom
Urgent action is needed for our beloved public schools to renew civic life, writes Goodwin.
skynesher/Getty Images

Teach Leveraging in Middle and High School To Promote Democracy

It's all about leverage. You hear this from a lot of people. Thomas Friedman said it years ago in one of his Sunday New York Times columns on foreign policy. He was referring to international relations. In particular, he was talking about bargaining leverage, namely the kind of leverage that is needed to motivate an ally or an opponent to change their course of action, whether it concerns trade, military build-up, or political alignments.

People in business, especially sophisticated big business, talk about leverage all the time. Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad wrote a chapter in their famous book, Competing for the Future, that was all about leverage, although the concept of leverage they were talking about was resource leverage, not bargaining leverage.

Keep ReadingShow less