Executive Director, David Inoue’s Statement for Welcome with Dignity
July 21, 2021
Good morning, my name is David Inoue and I am the executive director for the Japanese American Citizens League. I am also a member of Tsuru for Solidarity, a grassroots movement of Japanese Americans of conscience. Although my background is in public health and health administration, I am here today to speak more to the history of policies such as today’s ongoing Title 42 expulsions because the JACL believes we need to understand our history so we do not repeat our mistakes.
Asian Americans have long been targeted for immigration and other forms of discrimination under the false pretense of national security necessity. The earliest Chinese immigrants were branded as being dirty, and at one point, all of San Francisco Chinatown was quarantined to supposedly protect the public from the plague. Policies such as the Chinese Exclusion Act became commonplace to limit the growth of Asian immigrant populations and preventing them from purchasing property. Chinatowns and Japantowns became the norm, particularly on the West coast.
At the beginning of World War II, it wasn’t public health, but the government’s false claims of a national security threat that led to the mass incarceration of nearly 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry. The government knew there was no security threat, but gave in to the racism and xenophobia that had been building for years. Nearly 40 years after the end of the war, declassified government documents revealed the truth, that there was no military threat from Japanese Americans at all to justify the wholesale deprivation of civil and human rights during the war. The investigating commission concluded the cause of incarceration was not security, but due racial prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership. It also concluded that there was a lack of evidence.
Under the previous administration, similar false pretenses were used as the basis to exclude and expel immigrants to our country. One of their first acts was to implement a Muslim ban, again under the false claim of national security. The Supreme Court affirmed this false rationale while at the same time condemning the Japanese American incarceration. Emboldened by the court’s indifference to the government’s capacity to lie about what constitutes a national security threat, the Administration saw another opportunity when COVID-19 engulfed our country as part of a worldwide pandemic.
With the border to Mexico already closed, Title 42 was invoked to return anyone coming to the country who might pose a public health threat. Again, the threat of our public’s health, in the name of national security and safety, was being used as a weapon to prevent entry and expel those already here. In a cruel twist of irony, focus was placed on expulsion of those who had been in mass detention facilities because of the increased risk of COVID transmission in such places. Places the government had placed these people. The administration created conditions for expulsion and forced the people into those conditions.
We do not deny that COVID-19 remains a significant, and deadly, threat to us. But there are things we can do that will actually prevent the spread. Get vaccinated. We may need to return to mask wearing. But, we need to do things that will actually prevent the spread of the disease, not act out of racism and claim a false public health necessity.
We applaud that one of President Biden’s first actions as president was the repeal of the executive order behind the Muslim Ban. In signing that repeal, President Biden noted the false security threat that had been created to justify the ban. It is time to recognize the false public health threat being used to justify Title 42 expulsions and end this policy just as the Muslim ban was ended.
For the Fourth of July weekend, my family and I were in New York City and had the opportunity to visit the Statue of Liberty and the Ellis Island Museum. As I looked upon the statue, I could not help but feel a sense of beauty, and what the statue symbolizes for so many immigrants when they come to this country, people like my own Chinese grandparents and my Japanese father. But then at Ellis Island, we are also shown the ugly parts of our history, the xenophobia, the racism. We must decide which story of immigration we want to choose, the bright shiny ideal of Lady Liberty’s torch, or do we continue to repeat history, to hide behind false national security and safety threats to discriminate. I say it is time we stop repeating history and bring an end to Title 42 expulsions.
The cruelty of the continued title 42 based expulsions must end. Eighty years ago, it was wrong to use a false security threat to incarcerate 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry and it is wrong today to use a false public health threat to expel people seeking safety and asylum in our country. We can choose now to give into racism and xenophobia that supports these harmful policies, or we can show in our actions and policy that we do believe in the ideal of the shining torch of the Statue of Liberty, that we welcome those who yearn to be free.
