May 22, 2008
The recent raid in Postville, Iowa, on this country’s largest kosher slaughterhouse, where at least 390 people were arrested on immigration charges, is troubling on many levels.
As Jews, a collective shudder runs through the community whenever a business enterprise so closely connected with the community is raided by government agents. Because of the terrifying associations of other raids against Jews by uniformed personnel in Europe and elsewhere, we must take it seriously when the unprotected among us are subjected to single-minded enforcement policies.
It is also difficult to forget our own experience in America when in 1924, the Congress passed the National Origins Quota legislation — highly restrictive immigration laws designed to bar thousands of immigrants fleeing Eastern and southern Europe. Those laws were still in place in the 1930s and ’40s, when European Jewry most needed the United States to come to its rescue.
Despite our country’s varied immigration record, Jews as a community proudly hearken to America’s founding principle of welcome. We have benefited from its ultimate generosity and want others — regardless of national identity, race, or religion — likewise to enjoy its earned privileges.
Every generation of immigrants shares the dreams of religious freedom and family unity. As Jews we are taught repeatedly throughout the Torah and the Talmud to “love the stranger” and “welcome the stranger among us.” These religious and ethical teachings are at the core of who we are as a religious community and as a nation.
Yet sovereign countries must protect their borders by passing immigration legislation, and those laws must be enforced. Historically, immigration raids periodically have been the method of enforcement, from the Palmer Raids against communists and anarchists in 1919 to raids targeting Italian immigrants throughout the 1920s. The Agriprocessors raid in Postville is, however, by the government’s own admission, the largest immigration raid in this nation’s history.
Not only the size of this raid but also the increased frequency of using raids as a means to address the estimated 12 million undocumented workers in this country is a most disturbing trend. We cannot condone the hiring of undocumented workers. But at the same time, we cannot ignore that American workers are unwilling to meet businesses’ labor needs at prevailing wages and there is no legal avenue for businesses to petition for the unskilled migrant workers they so desperately need. Congress has ignored this problem for decades through its refusal to facilitate the legal entry of unskilled workers.
Yet just as raids are no substitute for fair and humane immigration reform, Congress’ failure to enact immigration reform is no justification for immigrant workers, their families, and entire communities to have their lives subjected to such turmoil.
Postville should be a clarion call for our community and our country. As Jews, it is our obligation to advocate for fair treatment of the 390 detainees in Postville and the millions of other undocumented workers nationally, who are “strangers in a strange land.” As a nation, it is time for us to return to the core values forged by the teachings of our great religions and fundamentally reject our current illegal immigration “system.”
We must dispense with quick, harsh “fixes” — such as raids and deportation-only or forced-expulsion strategies — and return to the essential business of creating comprehensive immigration reform. Rather than divide communities and families, Congress and the administration must lead our country in this effort.
Gideon Aronoff is the president and chief executive officer of HIAS, the international migration agency of the U.S. Jewish community. This essay was distributed by JTA.
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