Douglas Turner Ward (1930-2021) wrote a searing play, Days of Absence that depicted the way life might be like in a small southern town where all of the Black folks disappeared. Predictably, white folks could not walk and chew gum, neither at one time nor at the same time. They could not boil water, feed their children, nor manage their own feeding. The fictional town just about falls apart in the absence of the Black labor backbone. The play ends when, the next day, one of the missing Black folks reappears and feigns ignorance about the disappearance.
Days of Absence won both a Drama Desk Award in 1965 and a Tony Award in 1966. It captured the notice of the Ford Foundation; they awarded Douglas Turner Ward a grant that he used to establish the Negro Ensemble Company. The sardonic play, with no definitive conclusion, is a metaphor for those who are invisible, the people who serve our food, clean our homes, run the buses and trains, and facilitate lives of people who are seemingly too important to notice them.
Where is the 21st century Doulas Turner Ward, the playwright or author who will write about the days of absence that immigrant workers might stage to underline their essential importance in our economy. In agriculture and hospitality, and in science and medicine, as well as in other fields, we will be the net losers if the 47th President’s diabolical scheme to deport 3000 people a day is successful. If ICE gets to its quota and works every day, it means that we will lose more than a million people a year. They are housekeepers and construction workers, childcare and health care workers. About one in five workers is foreign born, and about a quarter of those are likely undocumented. Some of these undocumented people have been here for years, making lives for themselves and their families. Others have come recently. Relatively few are receiving government service or assistance. Most live under the radar, paying taxes and receiving no benefits.
What would we do without immigrants, documented or undocumented? Which construction projects would slow? Which hotels would experience labor shortages because housekeepers and landscapers are unavailable? Which elders would lose support services? Which young people would be left without parents and perhaps be forced into the foster care system? How will massive deportations affect the ways we live, and does it matter?
To be sure, the rule of law is to be respected, and those who are here illegally have been delinquent in handling their business. But most of these people are not the “dangerous criminals” that our very dangerous president rails about. He has been using them as a prop since he announced his candidacy for our nation’s highest office in 2015. Then, he disparaged Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals. During his campaign he trashed Haitian immigrants as people who eat your pets. He asked for President Biden’s acuity to be checked. Who is checking his?
Deporting immigrants is an inflationary act from a man who said he could manage inflation. Who will replace the immigrants we deport, and will they work for the same wages? Responding to his base, the 47th president said that workers in agriculture and hospitality would not be deported. A few days later (as usual) he reversed himself, as he often does, texting, “Our Federal Government will continue to be focused on the REMIGRATION of ‘aliens’ (quotes mine) to the places from where they came, and preventing the admission of ANYONE who undermines the domestic tranquility of the United States.”
Who, really, is disturbing domestic tranquility with harsh and inhumane rhetoric, absurd raids to schools, churches and graduations. Who is attacking the economy with inflationary tactics that will increase wages for those in industries not heavily supported by immigrants? Who has incited violence by targeting even legal immigrants, those who once had protected status, with hateful vitriol. And who is diverting us from the economic issues he promised to address by creating a sideshow every time he opens his mouth? And then there is the matter of his low-turnout parade that contrasts with the five million or so who turned out for the No King protest.
Imagine a world without immigrants. What will it mean to you. To be sure, everyone needs to have legal status, but twice bipartisan committees have offered legislation that provides pathways to legal citizenship. Our legislators, led by BIPARTISAN groups of Senators, have declined to move forward. Now, denied a path to legal citizenship, millions live in limbo and in fear. What would we do without immigrants?
