Why Immigration Reform Is a Women's Issue
Is multiculturalism just male supremacy in colorful ethnic attire?
Americans are vaguely aware that mass immigration will bring demographic changes of a monumental nature, transforming America from a mainly European-descended country to a multicultural human landscape. And like many gradual changes, the danger of this transformation may not be apparent until it is too late. What has been largely ignored is what such profound demographic changes may mean for women and women's rights.
Median census projections put the U.S. at 400 million by 2050, although the high prediction is an unimaginable half billion high-consumption Americans in a mere 50 years. The huge shift in demographics increases the proportion of Hispanics, while black and white Americans will decrease in percentages because these two groups reached steady-state population growth — the most desirable condition environmentally. More than 75 percent of the overall population growth is the result of immigrants and their descendants.
The majority of current and likely future immigrants come from countries where the rights of women are few or nonexistent, where females are men's disposable property. American women should question how safe their recently won political and reproductive rights will be with millions more conservative Catholics and Moslems as voters. (There are currently 6-8 million followers of Islam in the U.S.) While politically incorrect to mention such things, many non-Western cultures still regard women as lesser beings, yet we are urged to embrace this anti-woman ideology — multiculturalism— as better than our imperfect modern society. Exactly where are these marvelous egalitarian societies that we should emulate?
MULTICULTURAL MYTHS; WOMEN'S REALITY
The proponents of multiculturalism present a picture from classic Disney, of rainbow-hued ethnic peoples joining hands around a cheerful planet. But this confabulation is at odds with the reality of women's lives in most of the Third World. It certainly does not approximate women's experience in Afghanistan and other fundamentalist Islamic states. In those places, women's prescribed clothing is less like a colorful traditional costume, more like a piggy-back prison, to prevent males thinking lustful thoughts after seeing an elbow or earlobe. The overall effect of multiculturalism is that it is often male supremacy in a PC package.
American women should be very suspicious when someone tries to guilt trip them on the evil nature of the United States. Though it's far from perfect, the modern U.S. still offers enormously more freedom for women than these traditional cultures we are pressured to welcome. If in doubt, how about a pleasant solo vacation to Egypt? Iran? Mexico, perhaps? Or, closer to home, how comfortable is a stroll near the local day-labor hang-out?
Certainly women's rights are being addressed worldwide as never before, but the ball and chain of millenia of male privilege will not be changed by a few United Nations resolutions. So-called “honor killings” persist in Jordan (and throughout the Middle East) despite a government campaign against the practice. These murders are instances where the slightest suggestion of sexual misbehavior results in the death of the accused woman or girl by the hand of a male family member. India is “short” 22 million women and girls, due to sex-selection abortion, infanticide and bride murder (according to Sixty Minutes.)
Why then would American women choose to import cultures with such misogynist practices in the name of “diversity?” Like male Americans, they were not asked. The Immigration Act of 1965 was supposedly designed to remove obnoxious racial restrictions from earlier legislation. In fact, it exceeded that mandate and instead created a wholesale imbalance toward immigration by cultures that support practices like polygamy. Immigrants are welcomed from countries like Sudan (home to slavery, genital mutilation), Laos (where arranged marriage for girls as young as 12 is normal) and Saudi Arabia (in which women may neither drive nor vote).
Yet diversity proponents present all cultures as equally worthy. Perhaps for men.
MULTICULTURALISM'S LEGAL STRATEGY
Multiculturalists favor the “group rights” framing of law which put women's rights at severe disadvantage. The groups in question are the ethnic immigrant enclaves which increasingly insist upon the virtual autonomy of their cultures. This demand extends to the point of denying that U.S. law applies to them, particularly when it encroaches upon perceived male prerogatives of violence against women. Murdering one's wife is a cultural right, according to this view.
Sexism is alive and well in most of these vaunted cultures which are represented as superior. Indeed, male supremacy is often a core principle in traditional societies. It is generally agreed that one of the biggest strains on new immigrant families is the freedom available for women and girls. One reads about male-on-female violence among immigrants in the press, usually called “family tragedies” — a description that disguises more than it reveals. Many of these episodes follow the same pattern: Family from a traditional culture immigrates to America. Wife (or daughter) begins living a more liberated life. Threatened male injures or murders the offending female. And the man may get off with minimal punishment by using cultural rights as a legal defense.
In an all-too-familiar story, the Los Angeles Times (12/10/98) described how an Iranian immigrant shot his wife in the head for leaving the house against his wishes. He was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon rather than attempted murder after a defense that focused on how wives in Iran are expected to be obedient.
So-called “immigrants' rights” groups aim to create a body of legal precedent distinct from American jurisprudence. Separate and unequal, such a legal philosphy would continue male privilege as a cultural right at the cost of women's equality. Each use of the “culture defense” in a case of violence against women is a blow against women's rights and safety.
Consider Mormonism in Utah as an example of the intractability of some cultural practices. Polygamy was supposedly ended as a prerequisite for statehood, but news stories demonstrate the continued existence of the custom and how it creates conditions of violence and servitude for women. Cultural practices survive in spite of laws if the community is large and distinct enough.
THE VATICAN'S OVERPOPULATION POLICY
The most serious threat to women's rights as a whole is the Vatican. (And it is that political institution being criticized here, not individual American Catholics.) Many centuries of being the government of western Europe have left the Papacy with little regard for the sovereignty of mere nations. It wields influence over even non-Catholics through a combination of putative spiritual authority and hardball power politics. It particularly harms the lives of women worldwide by continually blocking voluntary family planning programs for overpopulated Third World countries where the grinding poverty would be alleviated by stabilized population growth. At the same time, it calls for open borders everywhere (except Vatican City), saying that the rights of the poor to immigrate supercede national sovereignty and law.
The Vatican has arrived at its planetary population coercion by way of enforcing its doctrine of papal infallibility. Far from being a long-held belief, papal infallibility dates from only 1870, when it was designed as a basis for strengthening Vatican power. But in doing so, the Catholic hierarchy painted itself into a rigid theological corner where it remains today. A Church encyclical of 1968 stated that birth control would be forever prohibited by the Vatican. Therefore any change in its birth control position would violate infallibility and would look bad.
The work of Dr. Stephen Mumford shines a needed light on how the Vatican has subverted the policies of the U.S. government. His book “The Life and Death of NSSM 200” details how a comprehensive and progressive U.S. population policy created under President Richard Nixon was derailed by political machinations of the Catholic hierarchy. It is important reading that will disabuse anyone who thinks of the Vatican as ruling from moral authority.
The Catholic hierarchy already has flexed its political muscle on the healthcare front, as reported in Immaculate Contraception (The Nation) (1/25/99). The Church prohibits measures such as pregnancy-prevention drugs for rape victims. When hospital mergers occur, often the Catholic practices prevail, meaning that all reproductive health care gets axed even though these hospitals are subsidized by the tax money of all citizens.
A STRUGGLE JUST TO MAINTAIN CURRENT RIGHTS?
Women should be wary of alliances between patriarchal religious groups — fundamentalist Christians and Moslems — who wish to subvert women's rights. The urge to keep women subservient is a major agenda item for many fundamentalists, from Iranian clerics to southern Baptists (remember the “submission” flap a while back). Women's liberation has hardly begun in most places and is certainly not set in stone in our own society, where male backlash continues, ranging from violence and harassment down to small insults. What happens when male supremacist cultural groups form political coalitions to return women to second class status — what rights will be safe?
If multiculturalism simply urged a more open-minded examination of human society, that would be beneficial. Indeed, it might make some Americans see our own mixed history in a new and more balanced light. The human spectacle has not shown much cause for optimism in the long run. But multiculturalism offers nothing for women even as its advocates assert moral superiority compared to our imperfect culture.
As feminist writer Katha Pollitt has remarked, “In its demand for equality for women, feminism sets itself in opposition to virtually every culture on earth. You could say that multiculturalism demands respect for all cultural traditions, while feminism respects only traditions that indeed deserve respect.”
The question must be asked: Why import this problem through policies of mass immigration? Isn't homegrown sexism bad enough? American women who care about hard-won freedoms should consider the future under our present course.
— by Brenda Walker
