Avi Chomsky refutes popular conceptions of immigration

Attention, United States officials and talk show hosts. Aviva “Avi” Chomsky has a message for you: Stop blaming the nation’s immigrants for all of society’s woes.

In her new book “They Take Our Jobs! and 20 Other Myths about Immigration,” Chomsky, — daughter of linguist Noam Chomsky, and professor of history and Latin studies at Salem State College — sets out to disprove 21 of the most common problems attributed to U.S. immigrants.

Chomsky begins a recent interview by analyzing the ways we define our country and its people. The custom of sectioning off open land into borders, she says, is a human invention that began only a couple hundred years ago.

Though borders may be convenient for establishing law and order, she believes that too often they encourage discrimination. On the first page of her book, Chomsky compares the word migration, commonly used to describe animals moving across land, to immigration, used to describe people moving across prescribed borders that are regulated by governments.

“Immigration really exists only under the modern state system,” she concludes.

 In the U.S., Chomsky believes, discrimination toward immigrants is encouraged by the nation’s legislative practices. “People have rights by virtue of being people,” she said. “Our laws are based on the fact that people should be treated differently based on immigration status.”

She points out cyclic patterns of discrimination through history based on sexual orientation, culture and gender.

“We look back later and say, ‘that was really wrong,’” she says. “We don’t realize we’re echoing a long tradition.”

How do immigration issues in Salem compare to the rest of the nation? In Salem, according to the Census 2000, 1,812 city residents reported entering the U.S. between March 1990 and March of 2000.

In 2006, 31 percent of the Salem school district was reported to the Massachusetts Department of Education as Hispanic, more than double the statewide statistic. Twenty-five percent of Salem students speak a language other than English as their first language, which is double the state percentage. What draws so many immigrants to Salem’s shores?

“(It’s) a good place to live compared to Boston or Lawrence,” Chomsky says. “There’s less crime, better priced housing. It’s a better place to raise children … There are good bilingual programs in schools.”

One issue that particularly bothers Chomsky, perhaps because of her work as a professor, is the fact that undocumented immigrants do not receive the same higher education opportunities as U.S. citizens.

“You can’t go to college because you’re not a state resident,” Chomsky says. “If you apply for college you have to pay out-of-state tuition. So after high school you end up working in subcontracted, dangerous positions like the people in the New Bedford factory [charged this month with employing hundreds of illegal immigrants], living in fear of the law. You join the ranks of the dispossessed.”

Locally, Chomsky has worked to raise awareness about the Salem Harbor Station’s use of coal garnered from a mine in northern Columbia known for its poor labor practices. In 1976 when the Cerrejon Zona Norte mine was built, 2,000 soldiers reportedly displaced 300 families living in the village of Tabaco, to make way for the open-pit coal mine which stretches across 30 miles and pollutes much of the surrounding farmland.

Chomsky is traveling to Cerrejon next month with the grassroots group Witness for Peace to meet with mine union workers in hopes of raising public awareness about poor working conditions.

Though this is no small battle — Cerrejon Zona Norte is owned by three of the world’s largest multinational companies, BHP Billiton, Anglo-American and Glencore/Xstrata — Chomsky remains optimistic.

 “The area of vulnerability for multinationals is their reputation,” she says. “An active populous can make their voice heard.”