Opinion: The contradictions of US citizenship for Brown people in El Norte

While I benefit from being a U.S.-born citizen, it’s not something that I’m proud of. In fact, as I witness Brown immigrants being dehumanized, kidnapped, caged and deported by the inhumane administration, I’m ashamed of it. I don’t say this flippantly, as I’m fully aware that millions of immigrants have abandoned (to the present) their countries of origin and risked their lives, etc., to settle here for better economic opportunities to provide for themselves and families. 

I’m also knowledgeable of the history of exclusion in this nation, where there was a period in American history when only free White people enjoyed citizenship. During this period, under the U.S. Constitution, African Americans and other racialized groups didn’t qualify for citizenship.  In an excellent TIME magazine essay (July 14, 2025) on the historical significance of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Dr. Anna O. Law of CUNY Brooklyn College posits: “The overriding goal of the framers of the birthright citizenship clause (and the Reconstruction Amendments generally) was to include African Americans who had been left out of the U.S. polity⎯to form a more perfect union…”

Brown people, especially people of Mexican origin, have also been marginalized and subjugated to the bottom of society by racial capitalism in the U.S.  With or without university degrees, we are continuously reminded by the ruling classes that we must know our place. “The first requisite of a good servant,” as Thorstein Veblen writes in his book Conspicuous Consumption (1899), “is that he should conspicuously know his place.” 

Overall, as an integral part of the “servant class,” Brown immigrants represent the hardest workers in this country. For instance, my late father, Salomón Chavez Huerta, worked as a farm worker, factory worker and day laborer for many years in this country. Meanwhile, my late mother, Carmen Mejía Huerta, toiled as a domestic worker for over four decades in this country. Despite their sacrifices in el norte, they never earned enough money to purchase a car or own a home. I guess the American Dream didn’t apply to my late immigrant parents and millions of their paisanos?

Today, instead of respecting farm workers for picking our fruits and vegetables, the inhumane administration is treating them like criminals.  Instead of admiring street vendors and their entrepreneurship for providing us with inexpensive and delicious food/fruit in public spaces, the inhumane administration is treating them like drug dealers.  Instead of honoring contract gardeners for maintaining and beautifying our front lawns, the inhumane administration is treating them like rapists.

According to the late philosopher and educator Paulo Freire in his classic book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the oppressors also pay a price when they dehumanize the oppressed: “As the oppressors dehumanize others and violate their rights, they themselves also become dehumanized...” Ironically, Freire argues that the oppressors can only be saved by the oppressed: “As the oppressed, fighting to be human, take away the oppressors’ power to dominate and suppress, they restore to the oppressors the humanity they had lost in the exercise of oppression.”  

Brilliant analysis by Freire!  

For the oppressed to free themselves, however, they must have allies.  As a U.S. citizen and tenured professor with a Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley, I always exercise my freedom of expression under the First Amendment to the Constitution in defense of vulnerable, hardworking immigrants. In doing so, I reflect on the wise words by the late Chicano historian, Dr. Juan Gómez Quiñones, in the foreword of my first book (2013): “Immigrants are not strangers; they are family.” 

Moreover, as a former Religion and Public Life Organizing Fellow at Harvard Divinity School, where I taught and mentored graduate students on the intersectionality between religion and community organizing, I have a moral responsibility to use my privileged status on behalf of los de abajo. This is imperative during these dark times not just for me but also for every citizen who believes in human rights for all. Since citizens still have some rights under the law in this country, such as freedom of assembly and due process, we must all come to the defense of Brown immigrants by engaging in “good trouble,” as taught to us and practiced by the late Hon. John Lewis. 

In short, citizens and immigrants of the world must unite for human rights for all!