Question

How does ableism might influence disabled refugees/immigrants/migrants’ ability to flee their home? Consider challenges in terms of travel, of being detained at the border, arriving at Ellis Island. What are 2 examples of immigration policies (one from the US, one from abroad) preventing or making it more difficult for people with disabilities to enter.

In what ways has disability been used as a means of excluding or preventing immigrants, refugees, economic migrants from seeking refuge, citizenship, or a means to a better life?

Answer 1

ABLEISM:

Namely, discourses and structures that have created a process and system by which people have been banned based on real and perceived mental and physical disabilities, as well as for prevailing notions of inferiority, deviancy,threat and unproductivity.

Ableism form the foundational frame work of US immigration policies, Numerous immigration policies to this day continue to target and violate the rights of disabled persons by subjecting them to invasive mental and physical examination. Whether assessed as likely to become a public charge or threat to persons and property, disabled people who apply for immigration to the US face numerous obstacles to admission. Further more, these discrimination policies do not simply end at the border. Undocumented immigrants in the US US who are mentally disabled makeup about 15 percentage of those in immigration detention.

ELLI'S ISLAND:  Opened in 1892 as an immigration station where millions of newly arrived immigrants to the US entered the country.At the Canadian Ellis island arriving immigrants underwent stringent inspection and faced the medical gaze of immigration officials. These officials directly and indirectly held the power to admit or reject immigrants with little to no oversight.

IMMIGRATION POLICIES:

The immigration Act of 1882 prohibited entry to any lunatic, idiot or person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge.

Immigration policy in the US currently consists of Muslim banns, a DACA recission ,severe restriction on refugee resettlement , calls for extreme or enhanced vetting and ongoing threats to temporary protected statuses , the diversity visa programme and family based immigration.

DISABILITY is the crucial factor in deciding whether an immigrant would be allowed to enter the United states. The history of immigration to the US has ensured the fundamental quality of the country as a white supermacist- capitalist state protected from an influx disabled and deviant people as either threats or burden. The states economic power rests on the perpetual existence of a large labour force that can produce at low costs. This is a process that renders disabled individuals , as inherently dispersable . It is a system that justifies the banning of people deserved unable to reproduce , add value or who might threaten the economy state as a result of perceived inferiorities, deficits, and deviation.