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Latinos and Immigrants
Cristina M. Rodriguez, NYU School of Law
Harvard Latino Law Review, Vol. 11, No. 247, 2008
ABSTRACT:
In this symposium essay, I consider whether Latinos should embrace or resist the close correlation of Latino political identity with the immigration question. Do Latinos qua Latinos define themselves as perpetual outsiders and elide more important community interests when they highlight immigration as a core Latino concern, or is this focus required to secure the status of Latinos in the American political community? I conclude that the general public's tendency to draw a strong correlation between Latinos and immigrants is inescapable, whether individual Latinos prefer to divorce themselves from their immigrant ancestry, or from the immigration circumstances of Latinos with national origins distinct from their own. The immigration issue must be embraced as a Latino issue, because the interests of U.S. Latinos and Latin American immigrants are intertwined. The value of promoting Latino group solidarity and advancing new civil rights agendas also could be invoked to support Latino focus on the immigration debate. But even for those who are not exercised by such objectives, self interest requires engaging the immigration question. Accordingly, Latinos and their allies must approach immigration-related politics from a perspective that prioritizes immigrant integration and what I call the "normalization" of immigrant identity into mainstream American political identity.
SUGGESTED CITATION:
Cristina M. Rodriguez,
"Latinos and Immigrants"
(July 28, 2008).
New York University School of Law.
New York University Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers.
Paper 76.
http://lsr.nellco.org/nyu/plltwp/papers/76
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