An Introduction to Immigration

Courtesy of Barnes and Noble

This summer I embarked upon my journey into Honors 10th Grade English with an autobiography written by Reyna Grande called The Distance Between Us. Her story is one about the hardships of immigration and the toll it took on her family, herself, and her future. Reyna and her two older siblings, Mago and Carlos, were only young children when their father made the long journey from Iguala, Mexico to Los Angeles, California. As I began diving into this lovely memoir, I confronted a personal questioning of opinions I had been avoiding for a while:

Should immigrants to the United States (or any country for that matter) be able to live in the country and receive the benefits of a citizen born in the country even if they migrated into the country illegally?

This five part blog post series will strive to examine the modern status quo on immigration, recent events, and even my own personal beliefs and questions like the one written above.

As I began meandering through the highly controversial jungle that is the topic of immigration, my thirst for information and reasoning to all of the tragic recent events began to rage. Since October of 2013 thousands upon thousands of men, women, and children have been crossing the United States border in hopes of a better life. Those coming from countries ridden by massive drug cartels in Honduras and other Central American countries wish to escape the gang violence that sends thousands of citizens on the merciless journey through Mexico to the United States each year. While watching the news with my family I tuned into a piece on All In With Chris Hayes on MSNBC about a man who took in a family of immigrants from Guatemala.

A picture of the anti-illegal immigration standoff
 in Murrieta, CA on July 2nd, 2014.

Mark Lane, a small business owner in San Diego was watching the news with his five-year-old son about the Murrieta, California bus protest when his son asked him why the people (the boycotters of the immigrants coming across the border) were angry at the buses. Lane told MSNBC, "Why do I have to explain to my five-year-old why people are mad at the buses when really they're mad because the people inside of the buses".

 Mark Lane researched more about those coming across the border illegally and found a local charity called Border Angels which services in having host families take care of immigrants once they got to the United States. The family he attempted to shelter made their way across Mexico after gangs in Guatemala repeatedly made threats to the boys of the family and raped their sister as another threat to join the gangs. Although the family eventually turned themselves in after a tiresome and abusive journey to the United States, the real issue Mark Lane faced was they way families, including the one he nearly sheltered were dehumanized to the public.

In the past several weeks many news sources have reported politicians stating their beliefs of disease like Ebola coming from migrants to the United States. Anti-immigration supporters have also stated that migrants from Central America and South America are "disease ridden" or "vermin". These statements struck myself personally as incredibly close-minded and slightly racist. When reading The Distance Between Us, Reyna Grande discussed how her ideas of cleanliness altered once she lived in the United States. As a child she and her siblings often faced lice issues, didn't bathe often, and could suffer stomach infections such as worms while living in Mexico. Once she visited her home country as a teenager she realized what poor conditions she had been living in as a child, and how fortunate she was to live in a country where all of these issues could be eliminated. When she visited her former friends in her hometown of Iguala, Mexico she realized the rift of opportunity between her old home and her new one, "They stood outside with me and blocked the entrance to their houses with their bodies, and I knew it was because they didn't want me to see the poverty they lived in... They didn't tell me much about their lives because I knew that they thought it could never compare to my life, now that I was living in that beautiful place they all yearned for" (Grande, 280).

The one statement that truly struck me from the piece about Mark Lane was when he was talking about dehumanization and the privileges some have over others, "We can't dehumanize people just because they lost the birth lottery. We won the birth lottery because we were born here; that doesn't make us better than them, that doesn't make them worse than us". The concept of a "birth lottery" moved me because it really shows us how lucky we are to be in the country we are. It even says things about different neighborhoods, cities, and even families, because sometimes you don't win in any of those categories.


Courtesy of Aljezeera

For Reyna Grande all I could think about was her hometown of Iguala; stricken with poverty, over population, unemployment, and violence. She couldn't control where she was born, neither could her parents due to financial instability, but by migrating to the U.S. she could at least dream of a different life than her friends who would live in such poverty till they died. In some aspects of the "birth lottery", Reyna did have privileges that others didn't. Her education, heavily driven by her father, was one that even her half-siblings didn't achieve. While she didn't always fare well with her dysfunctional family, she was able to find resources that supported her both in Mexico and the United States.

Living in the United States my entire life it seems as my problems will never be as great of those attempting to enter my home country for a new beginning. Knowing Reyna's story and the struggles of the family Mark Lane tried to shelter, it brings a feeling of undying gratitude to my ancestors for migrating here over a hundred years ago. Migrants from Central American countries and those from European countries nearly a century ago have more similarities than one would expect. What's interesting is the fact that modern Americans praise the immigrants from the early 1900s yet discriminate and highly protest immigrants from Central America. Our country was built on the diversity and adversity immigrants faced a century ago, but yet many think it will come to a screeching halt if we allow more Mexican, Honduran, Guatemalan, and other Central Americans into the United States.

Make note of the increase in the Hispanic population in the next eighty years or so.
Courtesy of The United States Census

I find it shocking that in a nation built on change and the dreams of our ancestors, we don't realize that immigrants, illegal or legal, are just a brand new bunch of dreamers destined to make our country the "melting pot" that it is. Animosity of the unknown future won't get Americans anywhere, especially when it results in people dehumanizing others just because they don't have the legal documents to enter the country. Many of these people are escaping the same and even worse things that our ancestors faced years ago.

 

After reading and listening to such trying challenges migrants face I wonder what sort of hardships one of the twelve million immigrants from Europe faced back in the early days of Ellis Island and the boom of immigration to America. My goal for my next observation of immigration is to talk to one of my grandparents and ask them what happened to them and their parents when they came to "the land of opportunity". Maybe similarities have already been found between the two, so I'd love to discover what they are! It's a common saying that's often accurate, history loves to repeat itself, but I don't suspect anyone would assume the modern immigrant from Central America to an immigrant from Europe in the late 1800s to the mid 1950s share as many commonalities as they do. The one thing I can suspect is that citizens of the United States have greatly lost the gratitude for the rights they have as a citizen, but I can tell you that I am not one of that majority.

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Links to artifacts discussed in this post:



on.msnbc.com/1ybfuQ5