by Marisa S. Cianciarulo

As we celebrate Black History Month, the 2025 theme of which is African Americans and Labor, it’s an important time to reflect on the United States as a country built and defined by hard work, to remember and honor the enslaved and exploited laborers of the past, and to acknowledge and thank the millions of people, most of whom are people of color, who have come to this country to work in essential industries for which there are insufficient U.S. workers. To that end, I will take this opportunity to highlight the important work of Western State’s Immigration and Deportation Defense Clinic.

As lawyers, we often speak of work/life balance. It eludes us, I believe, because it’s a false dichotomy. Work is an essential part of everyday life. Work, whether it’s in a professional career, as a stay-at-home parent, or in a factory, service industry, or one of the other hundreds of categories of employment, defines every one of us. Whatever and however we contribute to our communities, no matter how unassuming or uncelebrated, it brings us some amount of pride, purpose, and gratification.

That is no less true for the immigrant workers who have no path toward legalization. The Western State Immigration and Deportation Defense Clinic represents people from around the world for whom work and life are inseparable. Many of their clients work two and three jobs for one reason: to give their families a better life. As immigration laws have become stricter and the borders more militarized, many clients have gone for years without seeing their children, sending money back home so that their children can attend school and have basic amenities that their parents grew up without. Many others find themselves in removal proceedings after living their lives here from infancy to adulthood and now have U.S.-born children and spouses to support.

My own family’s immigration experience illustrates the stark contrast between the United States’ immigration policies, past and present. My white European great-grandparents arrived in the United States from Italy over one hundred years ago. They were not fleeing poverty or oppression like most of our clinic’s clients; they were seeking opportunity and the chance for a better life. (My college-educated Tuscan great-grandmother had married a Sicilian soldier whose mother was illiterate; I suspect being able to start over in a country that didn’t recognize or pay heed to those significant cultural and class differences was also a strong motivating factor.) When they arrived, they were welcomed with open arms compared to immigrants of color, particularly Asian immigrants subject to specific exclusions. While European immigrants faced discrimination and xenophobia at that time, the laws treated them favorably: my great-grandparents received immediate lawful presence and employment eligibility with the right to apply for naturalization in five years. They worked, they raised a family, and generations of their descendants benefitted from that experience.

Today, immigration laws are not racially discriminatory on their face. They do, however, have a disproportionate impact on people of color. For example, U.S. immigration laws passed in the 1990s penalize people who have accumulated more than one year of unlawful presence by subjecting them to a ten-year bar on reentering the country should they ever leave. People who entered on and subsequently overstayed a visa, who then become eligible for lawful permanent residency through marriage to a U.S. citizen, can apply for lawful permanent residency without ever leaving the country and triggering the ten-year bar. But people who entered without inspection—a distinction held almost exclusively by the millions of people who have entered through the southern border from Mexico, Central America, and South America—are not eligible to apply for lawful permanent residency within the United States. They must apply from outside the country, which means they must leave the country and thereby trigger the ten-year bar. Only an approved waiver by their U.S. citizen spouse will enable them to return to their families in the United States. The ten-year bar applies irrespective of age or intent at the time of entry, so even people who entered with their families as babies and who have spent their entire lives in the United States are subject to it.

Another stark difference between my ancestors’ immigration story and today’s reality is how much rhetoric has changed regarding causes and effects of immigration. Immigration is an extraordinary economic phenomenon that, for the most part, follows the laws of supply and demand, but also plays a significant role in increasing resources and building a country’s capacity for growth and economic expansion. One person’s job gain does not equal another’s job loss. Consequently, when my great-grandparents arrived, immigration regulation was housed in the Department of Commerce and Labor. Then, as today, immigration was about work—about filling labor shortages and growing the economy. By 1940, however, immigration regulation had moved to the Department of Justice. Immigration was now a law enforcement matter—a change that occurred as the United States was experiencing an influx of European immigrants fleeing Nazi persecution, while at the same time beginning to recruit workers from Mexico to fill job shortages caused by the United States’ entry into World War II. Immigration functions would remain within the Justice Department for the next sixty-three years, until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the establishment of three new immigration agencies within that department. Immigration was now a national security matter, casting it as more threatening than useful, and treated as presumptively dangerous.

If my great-grandparents were to emigrate from Italy today, they would find most avenues to the United States closed to them. Perhaps my great-grandmother, with her university degree in fine arts, would be able to secure a temporary employment or cultural exchange visa. As white Europeans, few would question their right to be here, even if they overstayed that temporary visa and decided to make a life here without long-term legal immigration status. Like they did a hundred years ago, they would work and raise their family. They would maintain old traditions and adopt new ones. They would be a bilingual household and observe their children navigate two languages and cultures. But today they would be undocumented. Today, they would be perceived as a threat. Their pride in their work and their family would be tempered by fear and uncertainty. Their U.S.-born children would wonder whether a radical misinterpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment or a new constitutional amendment might strip them of their citizenship. But they would keep working and hoping for a better future.

This month, my colleagues and I at Western State honor African American labor and the profound impact it has had on this country, and our Immigration and Deportation Defense Clinic continues the important work of representing immigrant workers. Just as work is life, and life is work, “they” are “we” in ways more numerous and meaningful than the differences that separate us. “They,” our nation’s undocumented immigrants, are parents who crossed deserts and rivers of mud to feed their children. “They” are the teachers in our children’s schools, the nurses caring for our loved ones, the agricultural workers putting affordable food on our tables, and even the lawyers serving our communities and strengthening our profession. As “they” seek a path to legalization through the assistance of our clinic, let’s hope that this month of reflection and gratitude brings us closer to “we.”

Marisa S. Cianciarulo is the Dean of Western State College of Law at Westcliff University. She practiced immigration law from 1998 to 2012, first as a private attorney and then as a clinical professor of law. She can be reached at mcianciarulo@wsulaw.edu.