As is the case with far too many stories coming from the Trump administration, it all started with a tweet. This time is was from Dan Scavino, Jr., the White House social media director:
ItâÂÂs time to end #ChainMigration!
Read more via @WhiteHouse⤵ï¸Âhttps://t.co/02PxKLZdXkâ Dan Scavino Jr. (@Scavino45) January 10, 2018
Here’s a brief explainer from NPR on what ‘chain migration’ is:
Well, when an immigrant comes here legally and ultimately becomes a U.S. citizen, he or she has the right to bring family members along behind, not just spouses or children, but parents, even adult siblings and their spouses. And in time, those people can, of course, then bring in their relatives, so one immigrant coming here legally can set in motion a whole migration chain. And actually, this is how about two-thirds of all legal immigrants moving to this country come in now.
At its start, chain migration was a way to favor white immigrants from European countries. With that in mind, Twitter user Jennifer Mendelsohn was able to perfectly deliver the rare genealogy burn using the Scavino family records:
So Dan. Let’s say Victor Scavino arrives from Canelli, Italy in 1904, then brother Hector in 1905, brother Gildo in 1912, sister Esther in 1913, & sister Clotilde and their father Giuseppe in 1916, and they live together in NY. Do you think that would count as chain migration? https://t.co/m25mrJHjcT
â Jennifer Mendelsohn (@CleverTitleTK) January 11, 2018
Also, here’s your great-grandfather’s Gildo’s birth certificate from 1884. Just because. pic.twitter.com/Upfgm5FxGi
â Jennifer Mendelsohn (@CleverTitleTK) January 11, 2018
After Mendelsohn dropped the genealogy receipts, she retweeted immigration lawyer and advocate Hassan Ahmad’s worthy read on the origin of chain migration and why it’s time to retire the slur.
First, the term chain migration exists nowhere in the immigration law. Not in the Immig & Nationality Act, the CFR, field manuals, memos, or FAQ’s.
The term for individuals sponsoring their family members is called (surprisingly): family-based immigration.
â Hassan Ahmad (@HMAesq) January 11, 2018
Our immigration laws only allow spouses, parents, children, and siblings to be petitioned. You must be a permanent resident or US citizen in order to do it. Sometimes the wait is 1 year or so. Other times, decades.
There’s no direct way to sponsor an uncle, grandparent, etc.
â Hassan Ahmad (@HMAesq) January 11, 2018
Chain migration didn’t always just mean a pejorative and misleading politically charged replacement of family-based immigration. It also referred to the phenomenon of immigrants from certain countries settling in the same area as others who had already moved there.
â Hassan Ahmad (@HMAesq) January 11, 2018
One of the first “modern” uses of chain migration was from Dr. Roy Beck in his 1996 book “The Case Against Immigration” when he described it as “family chain-migration wave.” (see p 54).https://t.co/45bm62xHCZ
â Hassan Ahmad (@HMAesq) January 11, 2018
Interestingly, here’s a short thread showing very similar usage of the term from a Nazi propaganda poster. The idea of chain migration is much older.https://t.co/ZoITrIgWXN
â Hassan Ahmad (@HMAesq) January 11, 2018
Here is one of the first letters from Dr. John Tanton to Roy Beck, to start the project of writing that book in 1996, which grew into Dr. Beck being the President of NumbersUSA, perhaps the largest grassroots anti-immigrant organizations in the country. pic.twitter.com/6YRp1EeDCn
â Hassan Ahmad (@HMAesq) January 11, 2018
In 2006, CIS (Center for Immigration Studies), in an article by James Edwards, Jr. (of the Hudson Institute) cited Roy Beck and began using the term “chain migration.” https://t.co/FW8lywYvg4
â Hassan Ahmad (@HMAesq) January 11, 2018
CIS, of course, is an alter ego of NumbersUSA and both are tied to FAIR and ultimately their founder, Dr. John Tanton, whose private papers I am seeking to unseal in a FOIA lawsuit I filed against the University of Michigan.https://t.co/yTQiXmJ1jR
â Hassan Ahmad (@HMAesq) January 11, 2018
CIS began to use the term in more and more papers, pushing this #CampOfTheSaints myth that immigrants were just going to take over the world. Terms like chain migration suited the concept very well.
From 2012: https://t.co/quPl79yzAB
â Hassan Ahmad (@HMAesq) January 11, 2018
And another example from 2013:https://t.co/IHQm5tzRSw
â Hassan Ahmad (@HMAesq) January 11, 2018
And more recently, from 2017:https://t.co/JLV1u34vQc
A Google Trends search on the term shows about when Trump first picked it up: pic.twitter.com/LpNPmsKj8F
â Hassan Ahmad (@HMAesq) January 11, 2018
The term chain migration belongs in the same dustbin as illegal immigrant, criminal alien, and anchor baby.
IT IS A SLUR. A dehumanizing slur. Do not accept the framing. A lot of thought went into creating this term, and it goes back a long time.
â Hassan Ahmad (@HMAesq) January 11, 2018
This is a Creative Commons article. The original version of this article appeared here.
