Aviva Chomsky > Quotes

“Like other discriminatory legislation in our country's history, immigration laws define and differentiate legal status on the basis of arbitrary attributes. Immigration laws create unequal rights. People who break immigration laws don't cause harm or even potential harm (unlike, for example, drunk driving, which creates the potential for harm even if no accident occurs). Rather, people who break immigration laws do things that are perfectly legal for others, but denied to them--like crossing a border or, even more commonly, simply exist.”
― Aviva Chomsky, "They Take Our Jobs!": And 20 Other Myths about Immigration

“Countries, sovereignty, citizenship, and laws are all social constructions: abstractions invented by humans.”
― Aviva Chomsky, Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal

“If our goal is to slow migration, then the best way to do so is to work for a more equitable global system. But slowing migration is an odd goal, if the real problem is global inequality.”
― Aviva Chomsky, "They Take Our Jobs!": And 20 Other Myths about Immigration

“What’s your status now?” the legislator asked them. “I’m undocumented,” one Brazilian student answered, bewildered. “Why don’t you start the process to become a citizen?” he continued. “I can’t,” she explained. “Why not?” he asked, revealing his profound ignorance of immigration law. Just as the law forbids most residents of the Third World to travel here—by requiring visas, but refusing to grant them—it also forbids virtually all people who are undocumented to regularize their status.”
― Aviva Chomsky, Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal

“The English-speaking world developed a historical narrative known as the “Black Legend,” which portrayed the Spanish as cruel and backward conquistadores who murdered and plundered their way through the Caribbean and Latin America. The British, in contrast (according to their own account), were hard-working, forward-looking colonists (rather than colonizers) who industriously set up self-sufficient farming villages on empty lands.”
― Aviva Chomsky, Central America's Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration

“One of the conceits of forgetting in the United States is the idea that colonialism ended in 1776 when the new country declared independence. Central American countries, too, celebrate their independence heroes and wars as historical milestones. But in both regions, the colonial roots ran deep and profoundly shaped the new countries. In the United States, independence meant a surge of settler colonial expansion that incorporated Central America into its sights. In Central America, colonial racial hierarchies shaped the new nations even as the United States imposed new forms of neocolonial rule.”
― Aviva Chomsky, Central America's Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration

“For intellectuals and elites, invisibilizing and forgetting are a way of creating blissful ignorance that allows them to enjoy their privilege without acknowledging its basis in exploitation. Forgetting allows them to avoid the shame that would come from seeing.”
― Aviva Chomsky, Central America's Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration

“Although China was not a colony, with the Treaty of Wanghia in 1844, the United States insisted on American access to Chinese ports and, moreover, that US citizens in China would be subject to US rather than Chinese law.”
― Aviva Chomsky, Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal

“and social services, and most were released within weeks to family members in the United States (many of them undocumented themselves). Facilities must provide “classroom education, health care, socializing/recreation activities, vocational training, mental health services, case management, and, when possible, assist with family reunion.”9 According to the New York Times, “It is not unusual for youths to recall the detention shelters . . . as some of the best times in their battered lives.”10”
― Aviva Chomsky, Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal

“subject to special taxes and forced labor. Purity of blood could also be purchased.”
― Aviva Chomsky, Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal

“The church wanted souls; the government wanted subjects and taxes; the conquistadors wanted gold. In each case, they needed people, and they needed people identified as Indian. But they each sought to remake Indigenous peoples to fit their own desires. The church claimed rights to evangelize Indigenous peoples, the Crown to tax them, and the conquistadors to enslave them. As they jostled for control, they subjected Indigenous forms of religion, governance, and labor to their sometimes-competing objectives.”
― Aviva Chomsky, Central America's Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration

“Even if they converted to Christianity, they would continue to bear the stain of their non-Christian ancestry. So-called New Christians were viewed with suspicion and periodically repressed or expelled.”
― Aviva Chomsky, Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal

“Both in Cuba and in the United states, the word 'freedom' comes up frequently in describing Cuba's history and current realities. It's a word that incorporates many different meanings. US policy makers tend to use it to refer to freedom for private enterprise, while for Cuban policy makers it generally means freedom from U.S interference.”
― Aviva Chomsky, Identity and Struggle at the Margins of the Nation-State: The Laboring Peoples of Central America and the Hispanic Caribbean

“As I began to give interviews and talks about my book “They Take Our Jobs!” And 20 Other Myths about Immigration, published in 2007, I became more and more convinced that a key, central issue that’s hampering those of us who support immigrant rights is the absence of a basic, fundamental ability to say “immigrant rights are human rights.” Immigration simply should not be illegal. No politician or talk-show commentator is going to risk saying this, but we have to.”
― Aviva Chomsky, Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal

“Large-scale Central American migration to the United States dates to the civil wars of the 1980s and came primarily from El Salvador and Guatemala. Most came fleeing political violence, and their presence became politically very inconvenient for the Reagan administration, which was seeking to justify its support for these countries’ governments. Others were economic refugees. Either way, the refugees gave the lie to Reagan’s claims of the governments’ legitimacy and right to US support.”
― Aviva Chomsky, Central America's Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration

“Children were held for up to two weeks in CBP short-term hold facilities. These facilities are not designed for long-term detention or to hold children. The lights stay on 24 hours a day, and there are no showers or recreation spaces. During the influx, they were sometimes so overcrowded that children had to take turns just to lie down on the concrete floor.” The ORR began to open”
― Aviva Chomsky, Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal

“The treatment of children in detention improved with the involvement of the social service agencies. Rather than being housed indefinitely with adult criminals, children were sent to special facilities where they had access to educational”
― Aviva Chomsky, Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal

“Paradoxically, they needed Indians to be Indians at the same time they needed to define all that was Indian as inferior and in need of Spanish domination.”
― Aviva Chomsky, Central America's Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration

“Very few US Americans can name a single political leader in Central America. We have the privilege of “forgetting” about these countries.
Yet US political leaders, parties, and policies are the stuff of everyday conversation in Central America. People there don’t have the luxury of ignoring or forgetting what is going on in the United States, because they know that US presidential elections, policy decisions, and economic developments are likely to deeply affect them.”
― Aviva Chomsky, Central America's Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration

“It’s important, though, to keep sight of the larger goals as well and not adopt short-term campaigns that work at cross-purposes to what we really believe and seek to change.”
― Aviva Chomsky, Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal

“They debated the humanity of the native peoples of the Americas, in the end deciding that they were, in theory, capable of being converted to Christianity and, therefore, not to be enslaved.”
― Aviva Chomsky, Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal

“Uprising by oppressed people, like slave and peasant rebellions have existed as long as civilisation has existed. But revolutions are more than just uprisings , they are concerted attempts to reorganise society.”
― Aviva Chomsky, A History of the Cuban Revolution

“But it works better in this supposedly postracial age, because it never uses race directly to discriminate. Instead, it criminalizes people of color and then discriminates on the basis of their criminal status.”
― Aviva Chomsky, Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal