Home > Author > Aviva Chomsky
1 " Like other discriminatory legislation in our country's history, immigration laws define and differentiate legal status on the basis of arbitrary attributes. Immigration laws create unequal rights. People who break immigration laws don't cause harm or even potential harm (unlike, for example, drunk driving, which creates the potential for harm even if no accident occurs). Rather, people who break immigration laws do things that are perfectly legal for others, but denied to them--like crossing a border or, even more commonly, simply exist. "
― Aviva Chomsky , They Take Our Jobs!: And 20 Other Myths about Immigration
2 " If our goal is to slow migration, then the best way to do so is to work for a more equitable global system. But slowing migration is an odd goal, if the real problem is global inequality. "
3 " Both in Cuba and in the United states, the word 'freedom' comes up frequently in describing Cuba's history and current realities. It's a word that incorporates many different meanings. US policy makers tend to use it to refer to freedom for private enterprise, while for Cuban policy makers it generally means freedom from U.S interference. "
― Aviva Chomsky , Identity and Struggle at the Margins of the Nation-State: The Laboring Peoples of Central America and the Hispanic Caribbean
4 " Countries, sovereignty, citizenship, and laws are all social constructions: abstractions invented by humans. "
― Aviva Chomsky , Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal
5 " What’s your status now?” the legislator asked them. “I’m undocumented,” one Brazilian student answered, bewildered. “Why don’t you start the process to become a citizen?” he continued. “I can’t,” she explained. “Why not?” he asked, revealing his profound ignorance of immigration law. Just as the law forbids most residents of the Third World to travel here—by requiring visas, but refusing to grant them—it also forbids virtually all people who are undocumented to regularize their status. "
6 " Uprising by oppressed people, like slave and peasant rebellions have existed as long as civilisation has existed. But revolutions are more than just uprisings , they are concerted attempts to reorganise society. "
― Aviva Chomsky , A History of the Cuban Revolution
7 " The English-speaking world developed a historical narrative known as the “Black Legend,” which portrayed the Spanish as cruel and backward conquistadores who murdered and plundered their way through the Caribbean and Latin America. The British, in contrast (according to their own account), were hard-working, forward-looking colonists (rather than colonizers) who industriously set up self-sufficient farming villages on empty lands. "
― Aviva Chomsky , Central America's Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration
