Georgetown Law & UBN Life on Hold

PART I: A SNAPSHOT OF THE BLACK IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCE

Black immigrants in the United States experience unique harms while navigating the inherent cruelty of the U.S. immigration system. The complex and often overlooked history of Black people’s presence in the United States, along with systemic, anti-Black racism, are factors that impact the Black immigrant experience in the United States. Anti-Blackness sits at the core of all systems of criminal and civil law enforcement in the United States. Slave patrols made up of vigilante white men, deputized to hunt enslaved Black people escaping the horrors of chattel slavery, are the inception of what is known as American policing. The slave patrols’ white supremacist agenda still exists within modern frameworks of policing and immigration enforcement. As such, Black people of all immigration statuses in the United States are disproportionately criminalized and penalized by criminal and civil law enforcement. The targeting of Black immigrants by various law enforcement bodies results in inequitable deportation rates based on criminal charges. Black immigrants face anti-Black racism simultaneously with anti-immigrant policies and sentiments. At the intersection of Blackness and immigrant status, Black immigrants are fighting for just and transformative immigration policies. While the experience of every Black immigrant is unique, this report seeks to highlight some of the systemic trends, challenges, and victories that mark the collective experience of Black immigrants in the United States. Brief Introduction to the Black Immigrant Experience Modern Black migration to the United States has seen rapid growth in the last twenty years. 2 The Black immigrant population today is more than five times larger than it was in 1980, and since 2000 there has been a 71% increase in the number of Black immigrants living in the United States. 3 While a large portion of the growth in the last twenty years has been from African migration (Africans are 39% of the foreign- born Black population), almost half of all foreign-born Black people in the United States are from the Caribbean, with Haiti and Jamaica being the top two countries of origin. As of 2020, immigrants are 10% of the Black population living in the United States. 4 Notably, the 1965 Immigration & Nationality Act (INA) paved the way for the creation of American immigration laws not based not on race or ethnicity; previously, U.S. immigration laws explicitly sought to keep immigration as white as possible. 5 After the 1965 law, which coincided with major civil rights legislation and the broader Civil Rights Movement of the1960s and 1970s, the United States saw a major uptick in immigration from more diverse countries across the world, including majority-Black countries. 6 2 Monica Anderson & Gustavo Lopez, Key facts about black immigrants in the U.S. , Pew Research Ctr., (Jan. 24, 2018), http://pewrsr.ch/2E2rH4N. 3 Id. 4 What Does it Mean to Be a Black Immigrant in the United States? , The Immi gration Learning Ctr. (June 19, 2020), https:// www.ilctr.org/what-does-it-mean-to-be-black-immigrant-united-states/. 5 Muzaffar Chishti, et. al., Fifty Years On, the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act Continues to Reshape the United States , Migration Pol ’y Inst. (Oct. 15, 2015), https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/fifty-years-1965-immigration-and-nationality-act- continues-reshape-united-states. 6 Id.

Life On Hold: Black Immigrants & the Promise of Liberian Refugee Immigration Fairness

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