Executive Director, Hilary Stern, was selected by CDS International to participate in a professional exchange program between Belgian Immigrant Integration Experts and US Immigrant Integration Experts. Hilary represented Seattle along with Daniel Perez, from Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and Alaric Bien, ED of Chinese Information and Referral Services. From March 9-15, they spent visiting their Belgian colleagues. The following is Hilary's report.
Imagine a country that is only a fraction of the size of Washington State with almost twice as many people. Now imagine that this country has two parallel governments with different social policies, one for the French speaking population and one for the Flemish (Dutch) speaking population. Both of these governments are squeezed into a small area, even existing side by side in the same city – Brussels—and within Brussels, sometimes existing in the same buildings. This is Belgium in 2008.
As part of a delegation of twelve Americans working on immigration integration in four cities in the United States, Executive Director, Hilary Stern, struggled to sort out the differences between Flemish policy and Wallonian (French-speaking) policy on immigrant integration. But after a one-week visit with 23 different Belgium organizations, she came away with a few general conclusions. Uniformly, Belgium is willing to invest considerable resources into helping new immigrants become Belgium. There are government-funded programs that teach new immigrants language, vocational skills and cultural training so that they can get a job. These programs expect that it will take immigrants at least a year to learn enough to get a job and provide immigrants with a living allowance and support to get housing, medical care, and other basic needs while they integrate. After two years a new immigrant can receive Belgium citizenship through an easy application process. Belgium seems to be doing everything right here.
But yet, there is a general feeling in the country that immigrants and the children of immigrants are not welcomed. In fact, the unemployment rate for non-European (dark skinned) citizens is a shocking 33%, almost five times as great as the unemployment rate in Belgium. This is partly explained by the fact that children of immigrants are far less likely to finish high school and go to college. But highly educated African immigrants also report difficulties finding work.
Our mission was to find out what went wrong, and how we can learn from the Belgian experience. The following is a report on what Stern learned.
Frustration of the Children of Guest Workers.
While Belgium has wonderful integration programs today, they were started too late to help the large numbers of Moroccan and Turkish immigrants who were recruited to work in the Belgian coalmines in the 1960’s. These immigrants were invited to come as guest workers and expected to return home after the coal mining and steel industries dried up. But they didn’t. They brought their families and settled in Belgium and stayed after their temporary work permits ran out. Their children and grandchildren grew up marginalized and undocumented in a society that had welcomed their grandparents as long as they were needed as workers.
When Stern asked the Charge D’Affairs of the American Embassy in Belgium, Wayne Bush, what lesson this can teach us in the US as we debate an immigration reform that includes a guest worker policy, he said, “If you are to have immigrants in your country, you need to consider them part of your future.” Indeed, many immigrants who come to the United States today with the idea of working for a few years and then going back to their countries end up building a life here. It is important that the US give opportunities to these immigrants so that we don’t create an underclass with a lack of opportunity, breeding resentment and despair in the children of immigrants born in this country.
Delegation of Americans visiting Belgium for the Belgium-
US Cultural Crossing March 9-15, 2008. Top row, left to right:
Hassan Jaber,Susan Colussy, Glory Kilanko, Lisa Davey, Leslie
Irwin, Irina Nikishin, Alaric Bien, Paul Stein. Bottom row, left
to right: Jose Blanco, Hilary Stern, Daniel Perez, Mary Burt.
Social Exclusion of the Undocumented.
While Belgium ended up legalizing most of the guest worker population in 1975, (Belgium also had another general legalization program in 2000, where it is estimated that about a third of the undocumented population was legalized.) it also restricted pathways for legal immigration so the numbers of undocumented immigrants continued to grow. Today, about 2% of the population of Belgium is undocumented and has no access to the generous public support that is given to legal immigrants (There are two exceptions to this: undocumented immigrants do have access to the government-sponsored health insurance and to public school education until the age of 18.). That means that all of these great classes in French, Flemish, and Belgium culture are closed to the undocumented. It also means that the undocumented need to eke out a living in the unregulated underground economy working in construction, agriculture, cleaning and restaurant work. This sounded all too familiar. In Washington State, 4% of the population is undocumented and they concentrate in construction, agriculture, janitorial, housekeeping, and restaurant work. Washington State undocumented workers are subject to wage theft and other exploitation on the job, just as their Belgian counterparts.
One difference that Stern saw in Belgium was that many of the undocumented were highly educated Africans from Central Africa. The American delegation had the privilege of meeting Omar Anza, a leader of UDEP, the Union for the Defense of Undocumented Migrants. He had a Masters degree in both business and accounting and struggled for years to support his wife and children as an undocumented farm laborer. Another difference: in Belgium there are no immigration agents and the local police are charged with finding and detaining undocumented immigrants. Dark-skinned undocumented immigrants (and most are dark-skinned, since most other Europeans can work and live legally anywhere in Europe) live in constant fear that they will be asked for their documents on the street. They can’t refuse to answer, since every Belgium is required to carry a national identification card with them. Those without the national identification card are easily recognized as undocumented or “sin papiers.”
A Strong Civil Society.
But despite their fear, the undocumented immigrants in Belgium have organized themselves into a rapidly growing civic association and are conducting a campaign of peaceful protest to bring attention to their plight. In 2006, one hundred sixty two undocumented immigrants occupied a church and went on a hunger strike for 52 days, until the government agreed to allow all of the protesters to apply for legalization. Since then, undocumented immigrants have peacefully occupied 42 churches. While Stern was there, she visited a church where 250 undocumented immigrant men were holding a sit in. It was the second day of their occupation and they were preparing to deliver a letter to the Prime Minister asking for their papers. Each man she spoke to told her the same story. He was there because he wanted to be part of Belgium society. He wanted to be able to work and pay taxes and integrate into the society. He was tired of living and working in the underground economy. Stern was impressed by hope, energy and solidarity that she felt in that room filled with immigrant men from countries all over the world – India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Morocco, Nigeria, Congo, Cameroon, Turkey. Any country would be enriched by their faith in social mobility and their willingness to work hard for a better life for their families.
Undocumented immigrants occupying Eglise Notre Dame
Immaculee, Brussels, Belgium. March 13, 2008
Social Mobility and Social Cohesion.
Throughout our history, the United States has been able to integrate wave after wave of new immigrants and has been enriched by their contributions. New immigrants arrive in our country full of hope for a better life for their families. As President John F. Kennedy said, “Such confidence, when widely shared, sets the national tone. The opportunities that America offered made the dream real, at least for a good many; but the dream itself was in large part the product of millions of plain people beginning a new life in the conviction that life could indeed be better, and each new wave of immigration rekindled the dream.” (Kennedy, John F. (1964, 2008) A Nation of Immigrants, New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers) But when those dreams are frustrated, when upward mobility is impossible because of systematic social exclusion, the children of immigrants lose hope and social cohesion falls apart. In our own history, systematic oppression based on race frustrated the hopes of generations of African Americans. In Belgium history, social exclusion of Moroccan and Turkish immigrant children has created an underclass. In both cases, once the dream of social mobility has been destroyed, it is very difficult to resurrect it and will take more than just equal opportunity under the law to bring social equality.
In our current times, both the United States and Belgium are in the midst of creating another social underclass: the children of undocumented immigrants. While their parents came to our countries full of hope for a better life, these children find that their hopes are frustrated when they are unable to go to college. Without a college education, even the brightest are relegated to a second-class existence in our knowledge-based economy.
Both the United States and Belgium need to struggle with a new global reality that attracts workers from other parts of the world to our countries. Restrictive immigration laws are no match for the determination of the human spirit. The United States can learn from the humanity of Belgium, which has provided a path to legalization when faced with the pathos of the undocumented immigrants’ determination to make that dream of upward mobility a reality.
Statistical Comparison of Belgium, Washington State, and the United States
Area in sq kmBelgium: 30,528
Washington State: 184,673
United States: 9,826,630
Population
Belgium: 10,392,226
Washington State: 6,395,798
United States: 281,421,906
Number Immigrant/Foreign Born
Belgium: 897,110
Washington State:793,789
United States: 37,547,789
Percent Immigrant/Foreign Born
Belgium: 9%
Washington State: 12%
United States: 12.50%
Number of Undocumented
Belgium: 250,000
Washington State: 250,000
United States: 12,000,000
% of Pop. That is Undocumented
Belgium: 2.41%
Washington State: 3.91%
United States: 4.26%
GDP per Capita
Belgium: $36,500
Washington State: $39,616
United States: $37,714
Unemployment
Belgium: 7.60%
Washington State: 4.50%
United States: 4.90%
Unemployment of children of immigrants
Belgium: 32.90%
United States: 6.20%
Unemployment of foreign-born immigrants
United States: 3.90%
~Hilary Stern
Posts
