Why Should We?
African Americans should not be brow-beaten into joining the anti-ICE protests.
The recent immigration riots, which began in Los Angeles but now seem to be spreading to cities across the country, have caused many Hispanics to take to platforms like TikTok to ask, “Where are you, our Black brothers and sisters? Why aren't you here rioting with us?”
In response, many African Americans have taken to the same platforms to say, “This is not our problem,” “This is your fault for voting for Trump,” “We don’t like each other,’ and “Why should we?”
It is that last response that most closely matches my view on why I hope not to see African Americans join the “professional anarchists” protesting in favor of open borders. I say, “Why should we?”
One of the issues AACONS has spoken about most often since our inception has been the negative impact of illegal immigration on the Black community. One way we have been doing so is by quoting the work of Harvard economist George Borjas, who has been the leading voice in explaining the detrimental effect immigration has on the African American community.
In his 2009 paper IMMIGRATION AND THE ECONOMIC STATUS OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN MEN, for example, Borjas, along with his co-authors, Professors Jeffrey Grogger and Gordon H. Hanson, argued that “a 10-percent immigrant-induced increase in the supply of a particular skill group reduced the black wage by 2.5 percent, lowered the employment rate of black men by 5.9 percentage points, and increased the incarceration rate of blacks by 1.3 percentage points.”
Many others have said similar things. In her 2007 book, Debating Immigration, Dr. Carol Swain, a favorite AACONS guest, wrote at length about African Americans disproportionately losing jobs to illegals. Also, in 2016, Peter Kirsanow of the United States Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) testified to the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration, “Illegal immigration has a disparate impact on African-American men because these men are disproportionately represented in the low-skilled labor force.”
Black anxiety about the detrimental impact on their community from immigration has a long history.
The Reverend Ralph Abernathy, for example, a close associate of Dr. Martin Luther’s, joined Walter Mondale and Cesar Chavez to protest illegal immigration:
And, as Steven Malanga of the Manhattan Institute writes:
“In fact, black unease about immigration goes back to the 19th century, when former slave Frederick Douglass warned that immigrants were displacing free blacks in the labor market. Many blacks supported the 1892 federal law that restricted Chinese immigration and later urged restrictions on Mexican workers. "If the million Mexicans who have entered the country have not displaced Negro workers, whom have they displaced?" asked black journalist George Schuyler in 1928.”
Many Blacks fully realize the harm open borders have inflicted upon them, even without reading the work of Borjas, Swain, Schuyler, and others. This is a major reason President Trump saw an eight-point increase in Black support between 2020 and 2024.
“They coming for our jobs” may be a South Park joke, but in the Black community, it’s a statement of fact. A great example of this occurred in 2007 when a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid emptied the Cripher poultry plant of many of its illegal immigrant employees. This resulted in a huge increase in the number of Black employees and wages at the plant.
And, we have seen more than a few viral videos, such as the one below, of Black citizens confronting their sanctuary city mayors over having to suffer tax hikes and cuts in services despite these mayors dedicating an obscene amount of money to illegals:
The smartest, most succinct statement on immigration came from one of this nation’s most significant African American politicians, Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, who in 1995 famously said, “Credibility in immigration policy can be summed up in one sentence: those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave.” She added, “The top priorities for detention and removal, of course, are criminal aliens. But for the system to be credible, people actually have to be deported at the end of the process.”
So again, whenever I see someone attempt to browbeat African Americans into essentially protesting for open borders, I ask, “Why should we?” Immigration, especially the sort of limitless illegal immigration we saw under Biden, is not now, nor has it ever been to our benefit.
—DK