Zero-Sum Gains: African Americans and Illegal Immigration
By Faye M. Anderson
Volume 18, Number 1 (Fall 2007)
Issue theme: "The future of an unsustainable planet"

To make sense about the national interest in immigration, it is necessary to make distinctions between those who obey the law, and those who violate it. Therefore, we disagree, also, with those who label our efforts to control illegal immigration as somehow inherently anti-immigrant. Unlawful immigration is unacceptable.
—Barbara Jordan1 (Feb. 24, 1995)
The response to New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer’s proposal to give driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants drove home the fact: there is no racial gap in Americans’ attitudes toward unlawful immigration. Like white Americans, African Americans overwhelmingly opposed Spitzer’s reckless plan2 that would have rewarded lawbreakers and undermined national security.

Of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States, 56 percent came from Mexico and another 22 percent from the rest of Latin America, according to a report3 by the Pew Hispanic Center. The myth that African Americans and Latinos are “naturalâ€