By Nazmus S
The Suffering of Immigrants and the Role of Political Institutions and Big Tech
A democratic majority in congress has not done anything to lift the “Muslim Ban” that is still in effect because the partisan Supreme Court decided to agree with a policy tweak to include North Korea by the executive branch.
Centrist Democrats joined Republicans to fund the expansion of “detention camps” at the border and beyond. As a result, U.S. Border Patrol (CBP) can detain more asylum-seekers who are fleeing violence, poverty, and climate change. They traumatize immigrant children by separating them from families and causing death via inhumane conditions. Allies of immigrants in congress are outnumbered and ignored by political establishments.
The same congress did nothing knowing that documented immigrant families (green card holders and others) are dropping out of food, housing, and healthcare benefits in fear that further executive and judicial maneuvers in public charge will affect their chance of becoming naturalized citizens.
The current administration is terrorizing undocumented immigrants and families with publicized ICE raids in homes, schools, and workplaces. While the executive branch uses brute political force against immigrants to rally up its base for the 2020 presidential election, tech companies like Amazon, Salesforce, and Microsoft are helping ICE and CBP with cloud infrastructure and data analysis tools.
Marching and Disrupting in Solidarity with Immigrants
“When immigrant families are under attack, what do we do?
Stand up, fight back!”
On October 11th, a coalition of immigrants-rights activists marched in New York City and around the country as part of a mobilization effort to close the immigration detention camps and demand asylum for all. NYC Democratic Socialist of America (NYC-DSA), Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network, Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), Close the Camps NYC, CODE Pink, and Construction and General Building Laborers’ Local 79 participated in a solidarity action to highlight the corporate complicity and profiteering from the inhumane immigration system. Protesters marched and held up a banner in front of Salesforce tower that read “Salesforce cut your contracts with Border Patrol (CBP), #notechforICE.” Salesforce sells custom-made software directly to CBP for hiring purposes.
Human rights groups, tech workers, and immigration-justice activists are also calling to end the use of Big Data, artificial intelligence, and cloud infrastructure to surveil people. Activists traveled from New York to the Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) final summit in Toronto, disrupting a keynote speech and demanding that the tech giant cancel the contract with Palantir, a Big Data company that runs its software on Amazon’s cloud and supports ICE with software and apps to help the department conduct raids.
Later, in a press conference at the Toronto City Hall, activists argued that “Technology itself is not neutral. It can be used to reinforce power structures, curb civil liberties like freedom of expression, and damage social and political movements. Furthermore, facial recognition technology powered by artificial intelligence can be used to scan driver’s licenses that put undocumented immigrants of some states in immediate danger now they can get driver’s licenses. The use of such technology by ICE will diminish hard-fought victories for immigrant rights in the US.”
Immigration Justice
The experience of immigrants is a prime example of how some humans treat others as inferior. Anti-immigrant forces see the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness of the people of color as mattering less than their own. In addition, the capitalist social, political, and economic structure of life makes it “okay” to seek employment and make a profit from the suffering to immigrants without accountability.
Tech companies use a lack of regulations in terms of the ownership and usage of data and to ignore structural acts of violence committed by the government agencies that pay them billions for their software and services. The profit motive of capitalist business goes hand-in-hand with their indifference to the malicious use of their technology. Additionally, people (undocumented folks) who are affected by structural violence are silenced and not represented by the political establishments.
“In the face of corporate and police surveillance across borders we must build a national and global movement of solidarity to fight back capitalism and incarceration of immigrants and others for a truly just world for all.” said Luis Espinosa, member of the NYC-DSA’s Immigrant Justice Working Group.
