Immigration has a powerful place in America’s origin story. Kim Grainger, J.D. wants to share it.
During her upcoming “Immigration Policy and Social Justice” seminar this week, New College’s assistant vice president for academic administration will help demystify United States immigration law and delve into its history. New College faculty, staff and students are invited to join the free event, hosted by the Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence (OOIE), from noon to 1:15 p.m. Wed. March 3.
“We’ll look at historical immigration policies towards Western and Eastern immigrants,” Grainger said. “After that, we’ll compare those policies to more recent patterns and practices.”
Grainger’s talk is part of New College’s “Context for Discourse (C4D)” series—a program designed to create a conversation about issues affecting the campus community and the world.
Over the course of the year, the series will investigate belief systems, identities, perceptions and concerns impacting the way people engage with each other (both consciously and subconsciously). Participants will learn about how systems can either sustain or reverse long-standing inequities, as well as how individuals can serve as antiracists, equal rights advocates, feminists and champions for neurodiverse and differently-abled community members.
Grainger—a scientist, lawyer and longtime higher education leader—is an ideal C4D speaker. As an attorney, she has conducted pro bono legal consultations related to immigration, health insurance and basic estate planning. She serves as board treasurer for the nonprofit organization Immersion for Spanish Language Acquisition (ISLA).
Helping people understand the evolution of U.S. immigration law is the C4D seminar’s main goal, but participants will also be exposed to a more nuanced view of contemporary Latin American immigration.
“They’ll come away with a basic understanding of immigration issues,” Grainger said. “That includes asylum, temporary protected status and the current process of becoming a lawful permanent resident.”
Attendees will also be invited to consider how stereotypes and biases inform perceptions about certain communities, and how this may influence the national discourse as well as the New College campus climate.
It’s a subject that is close to Grainger’s heart—and life.
“Minorities are often compartmentalized. Even so, diverse racial and ethnic groups have many similar experiences,” Grainger said. “As an African-American woman who speaks Spanish and is married to an immigrant, I’ve had firsthand experience with this deep connection in both my personal life and my interactions with clients and students. My goal is to be a connector and a bridge builder between various communities, and to highlight how similar we all are.”
According to Grainger, the American immigrant experience has changed greatly in the past 100 years.
“At various times throughout its history, the United States has been more open to receiving immigrants,” she said. “Today, families go to Ellis Island to see the names of their ancestors and draw connections to both their American and European lineage. By building a family-based immigration system that privileges descendants from countries and regions where immigration was open and encouraged in the past, would-be immigrants from countries that don’t fit into that category have a much more difficult time immigrating legally today. Immigrants of color have a more difficult route to legal status under current U.S. immigration laws.”
Grainger said that current U.S. citizens often ask why some undocumented immigrants don’t do it the “right way” or follow the law. According to her, these current citizens are ignoring the fact that many immigrants don’t have a family member who can sponsor them.
“All too often, there is no path for individuals in certain situations from some countries to come to the U.S. the ‘right way,’” Grainger said. “Yet the circumstances in their home country make the wrong way a better option than remaining. In her poem, Home, Somali-British poet Warsan Shire wrote, ‘No one puts their children in a boat, unless the water is safer than the land.’”
So why do some Americans feel there are “good” and “bad” immigrants?
“Colonialism, racism and xenophobia account for many of these stereotypes,” Grainger said. “I challenge us all to examine the boxes we create for immigrants and who fits into each of them. Unconscious bias often creeps into categorizing people as ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ If you’ve never met or known a person who doesn’t look like you, you are less likely to relate to their experiences and recognize their humanity.”
Families from Irish, Jewish and Italian backgrounds often have endearing stories about their predecessors who came here from the “old country” with nothing, worked hard and achieved the American dream. How do these stories compare with the reality of the immigrant experience? And what stories are we leaving out? Grainger is happy to put it all in perspective.
“According to the Library of Congress, more than 4 million Italians came to the United States from the 1880s to 1920,” Grainger said. “Let’s think about what else was happening during this time, including the end of legal American slavery and the rise of Jim Crow laws. How many African ‘immigrants’ came to the U.S. during that same time? Those stories are not so endearing.”
Grainger adds that she is “by no means a historian, but historical context is essential to understanding what has shaped the melting pot that is America. The hard work/bootstrap stories must also acknowledge that some people working hard had no legal rights to the products of their labor and could therefore not create the generational wealth you see in some communities.”
Two resources Grainger recommends:
The Library of Congress: loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration.
The American Immigration Lawyers Association: aila.org.
To attend the C4D event with Grainger, register here.
Su Byron is the communications specialist for the New College Foundation.