Who Does America Want?
Who does America want? Not the immigrant, not the poor, not the Brown, and certainly not the Black person. When America cannot kill Black and Brown people with its knees, it suffocates them with fines and fees. Black, Brown, and poor people are deliberately excluded from society through fines and fees for traffic offenses. If America treats its own citizens with such contempt, why should immigrants expect better treatment?
This paper juxtaposes immigration-related fees with the fines and fees for traffic violations to help the reader understand that America’s racism and classism exist both at and within its borders. Most of the people in county jails for unpaid traffic tickets are Black and Brown. The fees for the H-1B visa (commonly referred to as the work visa) and naturalization through marriage, two of the main pathways to citizenship, are so excessive that the only message received by immigrants is: “Stay out.”
These fees originate from different areas of the law but still communicate the same idea: immigrants, poor, Black, and Brown people are unwanted in America. If unpaid, these fees combined prevent immigrants, poor, Black, and Brown people from driving to work, maintaining medical appointments, taking their children to school, walking the streets, marrying the love of their lives, and working to provide for their basic needs. The American system uses every opportunity to create unnecessary barriers for their progress and oppresses them enough to make them regret their birth or coming to America. This paper examines how the use of fines and fees in the United States reinforces those barriers and communicates that people of color and immigrants are unwanted in America. This paper specifically discusses the impact of fines and fees for traffic violations on Black Americans as well as the use of excessive fines and fees in immigration and naturalization—ultimately arguing that both systems result in the intentional exclusion of Black Americans and immigrants in the United States.
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