The Arizona Sun Times reported last week that the migrant deaths recorded this month in Pima County alone could set a record. The county has experienced 38 migrant deaths this summer, which puts the county on track to break the record for July 2005 of 68 deaths in a month. Body counts for 2010 are up by almost 100 recovered bodies in a given time period from 2009, though evidence shows that migration across the Mexico border is slowing. Check out the full article here:
http://azstarnet.com/news/local/border/article_a9828263-acfd-553c-b247-da12c5ae8d9a.html
Showing posts with label Megan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Megan. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Walls Change the Game
I have spent the past eleven summers surrounded by hundred year old pines, basking in 90% humidity, and chasing mosquitoes away from my ankles. So were the summers of my childhood spent in Camp Juliette Low, a camp for the woodsy sort in northwest Georgia. We would often attempt to make the hot Georgia nights a little more interesting by taking to the playing field for intense competitions of capture the flag. We would don a hodgepodge of camouflage clothing and war paint, in the end looking more like a misfit army than cohesive team. We’d gather in a pregame huddle and come up with intimidating chants asserting our superior flag-capturing and opponent-tagging abilities.
We would consult our generals, usually counselors who were the ripe old age of 18, on the best strategies and war tactics to render the other team helpless and establish us victorious. We marched onto the field, crunched up noses, snarled expressions, the look of destruction in our eyes. We constructed a human barrier of counselors – the symbolic fence between our territory and theirs. We strategically hid the flag, positioned guards, established chasers. As you can see, it was a pretty sophisticated operation for a group of twenty 13 year old girls.
The whistle blew and we would all be a little too scared to make the first move. Eventually the younger of the teams would make an advance, sending only the stealthiest infantry troops into enemy territory. But the older girls were quick and knew the drill (for we had once been that age), and would retaliate with a sophisticated defense strategy. You see, we would build a human chain. We would line girls up shoulder to shoulder along enemy boundaries, clasping hands and ensuring no one could steal the flag or stir up a jail break. But inevitably the game would come to a grinding halt. All tagging, jail breaking, and flag stealing would come to an end.
The younger girls would flood the line attempting to find holes, inconsistency in our plan, the weak link. We would stand shoulder to shoulder glaring down at the younger girls, staring blankly and becoming increasingly bored. You see, these human chains, or invisible walls, defeated the purpose of our game. This was supposed to be warfare, retribution, fun. However, constructing a fence erased everything exhilarating from the nature of the game. You see, every member of the team was so fixated on forming the chain and such a strong defensive strategy had left us no infantry of our own to attack and capture the opponent’s flag. Thankfully the human chain kept the younger girls out of our half of the field, but they also kept us in.
Las week I found myself comparing much of my summer in Arizona to these very same games I used to play in the Georgia woods. Granted, Arizona has far fewer trees, not as many mosquitoes, and about 0% humidity, but it does have walls. I’ve heard stories from liberals, conservatives (thank you, Granny), and moderates. I’ve heard them from adults, children, Christians and Jews. I’ve heard them from socialists and capitalists, environmentalists and industrialists. And the one thing I keep coming back to is that walls defeat the purpose of the game. We are keeping undocumented immigrants out, yes, but we are also keeping ourselves in. We are inhibiting the free flow of labor, of resources, of art, of culture, of music, and of life. We are inhibiting fun.
We would consult our generals, usually counselors who were the ripe old age of 18, on the best strategies and war tactics to render the other team helpless and establish us victorious. We marched onto the field, crunched up noses, snarled expressions, the look of destruction in our eyes. We constructed a human barrier of counselors – the symbolic fence between our territory and theirs. We strategically hid the flag, positioned guards, established chasers. As you can see, it was a pretty sophisticated operation for a group of twenty 13 year old girls.
The whistle blew and we would all be a little too scared to make the first move. Eventually the younger of the teams would make an advance, sending only the stealthiest infantry troops into enemy territory. But the older girls were quick and knew the drill (for we had once been that age), and would retaliate with a sophisticated defense strategy. You see, we would build a human chain. We would line girls up shoulder to shoulder along enemy boundaries, clasping hands and ensuring no one could steal the flag or stir up a jail break. But inevitably the game would come to a grinding halt. All tagging, jail breaking, and flag stealing would come to an end.
The younger girls would flood the line attempting to find holes, inconsistency in our plan, the weak link. We would stand shoulder to shoulder glaring down at the younger girls, staring blankly and becoming increasingly bored. You see, these human chains, or invisible walls, defeated the purpose of our game. This was supposed to be warfare, retribution, fun. However, constructing a fence erased everything exhilarating from the nature of the game. You see, every member of the team was so fixated on forming the chain and such a strong defensive strategy had left us no infantry of our own to attack and capture the opponent’s flag. Thankfully the human chain kept the younger girls out of our half of the field, but they also kept us in.
Las week I found myself comparing much of my summer in Arizona to these very same games I used to play in the Georgia woods. Granted, Arizona has far fewer trees, not as many mosquitoes, and about 0% humidity, but it does have walls. I’ve heard stories from liberals, conservatives (thank you, Granny), and moderates. I’ve heard them from adults, children, Christians and Jews. I’ve heard them from socialists and capitalists, environmentalists and industrialists. And the one thing I keep coming back to is that walls defeat the purpose of the game. We are keeping undocumented immigrants out, yes, but we are also keeping ourselves in. We are inhibiting the free flow of labor, of resources, of art, of culture, of music, and of life. We are inhibiting fun.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Look Who's Immigrating LEGALLY
CNN reports that the US Department of State issues about 4,500 passports to registered sex offenders annually. It seems as though we may have double standards in who we allow into other countries and who we allow in ours.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/07/13/sex.offenders.passports/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/07/13/sex.offenders.passports/index.html
Monday, July 5, 2010
Video: Mexico Trip 2010
This is a short slideshow of our experiences in Sasabe, Nogales, and Altar, Mexico. I hope this sheds light on the people who live in Mexico, the walls that separate us, and the risks they take to come to the U.S.
A New Kind of Patriotism
I am white. I am female. I am brunette. I am heterosexual. I am American.
All of these statements characterize me in one way or another – my physical appearance, my personality, my privilege. Being brunette has enabled me never to be characterized as a “dumb blonde”. Being heterosexual has provided armor against hate slurs that many gays and lesbians face on a daily basis. Likewise, being female has left me vulnerable to objectification and occasional marginalization. I, luckily, have been born with more privilege than most, though it is often hard to recognize.
I have always been fairly patriotic, always singing along to the national anthem and tearing up during pre-match fly overs (a trait I inherited from my rarely-teary-eyed mother). However, this Independence Day I’m forced to look at my country through a different lens – the perspective of the less privileged. Perhaps the most difficult part of my American identity is admitting that simply being born white and on American soil has afforded me most of my successes in life. I attended a public high school for free. I had an opportunity to go to college. I live in a house with four walls, running water, and electricity.
We have spent all summer in Mexico and Arizona looking at our country, our government, our society in a different light. I will be the first to admit that it isn’t easy. The intensely patriotic part of me finds myself skeptical of those criticizing the United States. The humanitarian in me finds myself questioning our country, our policies, and what it means to be American. For the first 20 years of my life being American meant being fortunate, being moral, being open, and being able to help. Coming to the border has meant packing many of these ideals into a cocoon of experiences, nervous and skeptical of what America meant after the metamorphosis that is this summer.
I have come to recognize that to be American is an assortment of oxymorons. To be American is to be unconsciously conscious of what’s really happening in American politics. Reading the newspaper, following C-SPAN, watching the nightly news provides a naïve consciousness of politics that will never give white America the experience of living the consequences of failed public policy.
I was recently asked to examine my self-interest in studying the border. Was it résumé padding? An insatiable intellectual appetite? The chance to stand on a soapbox of sorts? No. I don’t think it was any of these. I think my self-interest in studying border politics is patriotism. It’s knowing that I can question my government’s policies. It’s being able to speak the truth of people dying in the desert. It’s my desire to keep America’s good name reputable and respectable. Being American is the privilege to travel, to be educated, to be provided for. Being American means recognizing change and refusing to settle for the status quo. I cannot say this metamorphosis and recognition of change has left me empty or pessimistic. It hasn’t. Patriotism has become more hopeful, more optimistic because I know now that I have the power and the privilege to change what is so obviously broken.
All of these statements characterize me in one way or another – my physical appearance, my personality, my privilege. Being brunette has enabled me never to be characterized as a “dumb blonde”. Being heterosexual has provided armor against hate slurs that many gays and lesbians face on a daily basis. Likewise, being female has left me vulnerable to objectification and occasional marginalization. I, luckily, have been born with more privilege than most, though it is often hard to recognize.
I have always been fairly patriotic, always singing along to the national anthem and tearing up during pre-match fly overs (a trait I inherited from my rarely-teary-eyed mother). However, this Independence Day I’m forced to look at my country through a different lens – the perspective of the less privileged. Perhaps the most difficult part of my American identity is admitting that simply being born white and on American soil has afforded me most of my successes in life. I attended a public high school for free. I had an opportunity to go to college. I live in a house with four walls, running water, and electricity.
We have spent all summer in Mexico and Arizona looking at our country, our government, our society in a different light. I will be the first to admit that it isn’t easy. The intensely patriotic part of me finds myself skeptical of those criticizing the United States. The humanitarian in me finds myself questioning our country, our policies, and what it means to be American. For the first 20 years of my life being American meant being fortunate, being moral, being open, and being able to help. Coming to the border has meant packing many of these ideals into a cocoon of experiences, nervous and skeptical of what America meant after the metamorphosis that is this summer.
I have come to recognize that to be American is an assortment of oxymorons. To be American is to be unconsciously conscious of what’s really happening in American politics. Reading the newspaper, following C-SPAN, watching the nightly news provides a naïve consciousness of politics that will never give white America the experience of living the consequences of failed public policy.
I was recently asked to examine my self-interest in studying the border. Was it résumé padding? An insatiable intellectual appetite? The chance to stand on a soapbox of sorts? No. I don’t think it was any of these. I think my self-interest in studying border politics is patriotism. It’s knowing that I can question my government’s policies. It’s being able to speak the truth of people dying in the desert. It’s my desire to keep America’s good name reputable and respectable. Being American is the privilege to travel, to be educated, to be provided for. Being American means recognizing change and refusing to settle for the status quo. I cannot say this metamorphosis and recognition of change has left me empty or pessimistic. It hasn’t. Patriotism has become more hopeful, more optimistic because I know now that I have the power and the privilege to change what is so obviously broken.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Sierra Club on the Border Wall
This weekend we met with the Sierra Club to discuss border issues. They provided a unique mix between a humanitarian aid and environmental perspective. None of us realized just how detrimental the border wall is to our environment and desert ecosystem. Furthermore, we all found it shocking just how many federal laws the federal government has broken to build the wall. Here is a quick glimpse at environmental problems (flooding, endangered species, etc.) that have come about due to the construction of the border wall:
Monday, June 28, 2010
Isn't Migration Natural?
I spent last weekend spooning with members of the group as we tried to stay warm in our tiny tent parked in the Grand Canyon 
National Forest’s Mather Campgrounds. We took the trip hoping to chronicle immigration issues on our way to one of the nation’s most astounding natural wonders. We stopped by “Montezuma’s Castle”, an old native ruin, on our way to the canyon. The ruin was a multiple story building “nestled” into the side of a cliff. I say “nestled” because to me, it looked like it was hanging on for dear life. The structure itself was amazing. The sheer fact that an architecturally sound structure could be built into the side of a cliff in 1100 A.D. was incredible. The intellect, skill, and liveliness of this village construction amazed me and changed my perspective on the native concept of community.
Many of the signs in the national park, though usually loaded with mundane information, mentioned that this particular tribe, the Sinaguas, disappeared without reason. The signs asked, “Did they flee overpopulation? Fire? Famine? Lack of water? Invaders?” Who really knows? Perhaps they fled their river valley for all of the above. Human nature is to flee what is hurting us, what is not working out. I began realizing that migration and change is natural. My ancestors fled Ireland to come to the United States. My parents fled the North and the Midwest for education. My grandparents flee the harsh New York winters and retreat to Florida every year. Migration and movement is perfectly normal and often even encouraged in the United States. Although our hunting and gathering ways are long gone, the human race still moves and migrates between different sedentary lifestyles.
The weekend passed by quickly and the backdrop of Grand Canyon sunrises, and the cheesiest Imax I’ve ever seen, left me time to ponder the concept of migration. Before I knew it, it was time to return to the desert heat of Tucson. On our way back we stopped by the remnants of a Japanese internment camp close to Phoenix. The internment camp was located on a local tribal reservation. We did not have permission from the tribal council to visit it, so we resorted to viewing a small memorial dedicated to those who had lived there. The memorial told of the hasty construction of the camp in just two months, the presence of two high schools, and the population that lived there. It also told of the Native American’s reluctance and disagreement to the presence of the camp on their land. The sign remarked that we should learn history so as it will never be repeated and the travesties that were Japanese internment camps shall never be again.
This thought, my visits over the weekend, and the current situation in Arizona started to come together. America has a history of embarrassingly sporting blemishes in places where we before had so proudly boasted triumph – the trail of tears, reservations, Japanese internment camps. We are that awkward middle school tween relishing in our own beauty only to awake the next morning to find a serious bout of acne. We boast of causes because they are “right”, because they are “American”. The Native Americans threatened our land, our superior traditions, so we fenced them in reservations out west and kept them from their ancestral homes. We condemned the Japanese, boasted superior morals, superior military power and confined them to desert internment camps.
There is a clear trend here. America, though I love her, builds walls, fences, camps, reservations to keep people out. To lock people up, only to later regret and publicly apologize for her naïve decisions. In some ways that is what is happening on the border here. We are preventing a natural migration process – a process that many of us take advantage of in the United States. We are shaming it, condemning it. We are keeping people out, but also keeping them in. We are not only preventing natural migration to the United States, but we are preventing travel from the United States as well. Why do we feel the incessant need to prevent something that is so human? Why do we condemn something so natural as being so wrong? Why are people no longer allowed to flee depression and desolate conditions? Why do we see it our duty to establish permanency?
These are questions I have been struggling to address for the past couple of days. It is hard for me to think that migrating 2,000 miles to Tucson, AZ is an acceptable path for me to choose. It is harder for me to think that migrating one mile from Nogales, Sonora, Mexico to Nogales, AZ for a day trip without a visa. What dictates one as acceptable and the other as not? What makes one encouraged and the other criminal?
National Forest’s Mather Campgrounds. We took the trip hoping to chronicle immigration issues on our way to one of the nation’s most astounding natural wonders. We stopped by “Montezuma’s Castle”, an old native ruin, on our way to the canyon. The ruin was a multiple story building “nestled” into the side of a cliff. I say “nestled” because to me, it looked like it was hanging on for dear life. The structure itself was amazing. The sheer fact that an architecturally sound structure could be built into the side of a cliff in 1100 A.D. was incredible. The intellect, skill, and liveliness of this village construction amazed me and changed my perspective on the native concept of community.Many of the signs in the national park, though usually loaded with mundane information, mentioned that this particular tribe, the Sinaguas, disappeared without reason. The signs asked, “Did they flee overpopulation? Fire? Famine? Lack of water? Invaders?” Who really knows? Perhaps they fled their river valley for all of the above. Human nature is to flee what is hurting us, what is not working out. I began realizing that migration and change is natural. My ancestors fled Ireland to come to the United States. My parents fled the North and the Midwest for education. My grandparents flee the harsh New York winters and retreat to Florida every year. Migration and movement is perfectly normal and often even encouraged in the United States. Although our hunting and gathering ways are long gone, the human race still moves and migrates between different sedentary lifestyles.
The weekend passed by quickly and the backdrop of Grand Canyon sunrises, and the cheesiest Imax I’ve ever seen, left me time to ponder the concept of migration. Before I knew it, it was time to return to the desert heat of Tucson. On our way back we stopped by the remnants of a Japanese internment camp close to Phoenix. The internment camp was located on a local tribal reservation. We did not have permission from the tribal council to visit it, so we resorted to viewing a small memorial dedicated to those who had lived there. The memorial told of the hasty construction of the camp in just two months, the presence of two high schools, and the population that lived there. It also told of the Native American’s reluctance and disagreement to the presence of the camp on their land. The sign remarked that we should learn history so as it will never be repeated and the travesties that were Japanese internment camps shall never be again.
This thought, my visits over the weekend, and the current situation in Arizona started to come together. America has a history of embarrassingly sporting blemishes in places where we before had so proudly boasted triumph – the trail of tears, reservations, Japanese internment camps. We are that awkward middle school tween relishing in our own beauty only to awake the next morning to find a serious bout of acne. We boast of causes because they are “right”, because they are “American”. The Native Americans threatened our land, our superior traditions, so we fenced them in reservations out west and kept them from their ancestral homes. We condemned the Japanese, boasted superior morals, superior military power and confined them to desert internment camps.
There is a clear trend here. America, though I love her, builds walls, fences, camps, reservations to keep people out. To lock people up, only to later regret and publicly apologize for her naïve decisions. In some ways that is what is happening on the border here. We are preventing a natural migration process – a process that many of us take advantage of in the United States. We are shaming it, condemning it. We are keeping people out, but also keeping them in. We are not only preventing natural migration to the United States, but we are preventing travel from the United States as well. Why do we feel the incessant need to prevent something that is so human? Why do we condemn something so natural as being so wrong? Why are people no longer allowed to flee depression and desolate conditions? Why do we see it our duty to establish permanency?
These are questions I have been struggling to address for the past couple of days. It is hard for me to think that migrating 2,000 miles to Tucson, AZ is an acceptable path for me to choose. It is harder for me to think that migrating one mile from Nogales, Sonora, Mexico to Nogales, AZ for a day trip without a visa. What dictates one as acceptable and the other as not? What makes one encouraged and the other criminal?
Soundstrike and Hollywood's Campaign Against Arizona
Earlier this year Rage Against the Machine frontman Zack De La Rocha
organized the Sound Strike as a direct result of Governor Brewer's signing
of SB1070. De La Rocha explains, "Fans of our music, our stories, our films
and our words can be pulled over and harassed every day because they are
brown or black, or for the way they speak, or for the music they listen to."
The movement has enlisted big names like Kanye West and Nine Inch Nails to
boycott Arizona. The movment's most recent news is the release of a song by
Bright Eyes to speak out against SB1070. Will big name Hollywood bring
attention to this issue and spark a mainstream pop movement against the
discriminatory bill? Only time will tell.
organized the Sound Strike as a direct result of Governor Brewer's signing
of SB1070. De La Rocha explains, "Fans of our music, our stories, our films
and our words can be pulled over and harassed every day because they are
brown or black, or for the way they speak, or for the music they listen to."
The movement has enlisted big names like Kanye West and Nine Inch Nails to
boycott Arizona. The movment's most recent news is the release of a song by
Bright Eyes to speak out against SB1070. Will big name Hollywood bring
attention to this issue and spark a mainstream pop movement against the
discriminatory bill? Only time will tell.
"When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, they arrested her. As a result, people got together and said we are not going to ride the bus until they change the law. It was this courageous action that sparked the Montgomery bus boycott. What if we got together, signed a collective letter saying, 'we're not going to ride the bus,' saying we are not going to comply. We are not going to play in Arizona. We are going to boycott Arizona! "
- Zach De La Rocha, http://www.thesoundstrike.net/
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Forbes Magazine Endorses Immigration
Forbes Magazine features immigration this week and endorses open borders, amnesty. Reconozing undocumented workers would stimulate investment and economic growth. See the full special report here: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0628/special-report-immigration-opening-borders-mexico-let-them-in.html
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Mexico Jumps on Board the SB1070 Suit
According to CNN, Mexico has filed a brief in Federal Court against Arizona's tough new immigration enforcement law, SB 1070.
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/06/22/mexico-asks-court-to-reject-arizona-immigration-law/
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/06/22/mexico-asks-court-to-reject-arizona-immigration-law/
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Culture of Fear
Last week I found myself kissing the feet of my merciless cell phone company once more, as I was coerced into paying high rates and fees for international phone service. My dad had been bugging me for weeks on end to “check into it” and encouraged me to spend a portion of my summer stipend on 50 cent text messages and $1.00 per minute phone conversations. All of his bickering, bugging, constant phone conversations, and multiple texts culminated in my reluctant agreement to the plan. I was to call every other day at precisely 4:30pm, text my dad every night, and give morning updates of my activity. I felt as if I was being sent to war, deployed to some place far, far away with constant attempts on my life. My mom maternally justified his actions with a, “He just loves you.” In reality I was not getting shipped off to Iraq or Afghanistan, I was merely traveling an hour away – to the Mexican border.
All of my father’s insistence on cell phone service made me wonder why he was so worried and if I should be worried too. Should I be fearful? Nervous? Anxious? Doubtful? I was questioning whether going to Mexico was worth what I would learn by being there. Perhaps I really was embarking on a trip to Nogales, Mexico because, as a friend once exclaimed, “it is the cool thing to do,” cool to travel to a dangerous foreign country. I felt myself overcome by an inexplicable fear. Yes, Nogales had been home to some questionable drug related activity in the past months, but so had my hometown, Durham, and even Tucson. I was struggling with extreme nervousness, but I was also struggling to justify my anxiety. Was Nogales even more dangerous than living in a big city in the US?
We loaded a 15 passenger van Sunday evening to head down to the border. Some of us were grappling with the same nerves I was, others were imagining it like casual as a trip to Grandma’s. We easily slipped through Mexican customs and met our Mexican leader, Polita, on the other side of the border. Nogales appeared to be a midsized city, comparable to Durham or Chapel Hill. I was afraid of this. I was afraid of crowded highway overpasses, a downtown full of tiendas, historical statues and, of course, Wal-Mart and Burger King. There was no apparent danger. Everyone seemed to notice I was a gringa but nobody wanted to harm me.
We spent the week being shuttled around town, to and from grocery stores and appointments with non-profits. We also worked at a local community center running a kids’ camp. These kids were latchkey kids. Nogales has experienced such an influx in population from the internal immigration that ensued after NAFTA passed that they do not have enough schools and teachers to accommodate all of the children who live in the city. Thus, each kid can only attend public school for half a day (either the morning or afternoon) and spends the rest of the day at home alone while their parents work.
Many of the kids lived in squatter homes surrounding the community center with minimal plumbing and very little water supplied to them throughout the day. The kids often arrived without water bottles for after futbol refreshments, and many times a seven year-old would show up babysitting her three year-old brother. These kids, however, did show up wearing the biggest smiles you have ever seen. I have spent the past few summers as a camp counselor, and holding a day camp for these kids was nothing compared to watching middle class American children. They were happy with minimalist supplies and materials, a half broken playground, bean soup for lunch every day, paper plate masks, and makeshift maracas. In fact, I even befriended TWO seven year-olds in the course of a few days.
Throughout the week I found myself thinking even harder about my fear upon entering Nogales. Every overpriced phone call and text message was rather mundane and told of no surprise kidnappings or killings. Where did my fear come from? Why are Americans so afraid of Mexico, so afraid of the border? Why has our media, government, and society created such a culture of fear toward Mexico? I spent the week pondering these questions and came up with subpar answers. Mexican life is more dangerous than life in America, but only marginally so. They have drugs, gangs, and corruption – but what city in the U.S. doesn’t? If I could tell everyone one thing about my experience in Mexico it would be this: Our fear of the Mexican border is partly real, but mostly imagined. The people in Mexico hold more life, gratitude, and love than most of our American counterparts.Sunday, June 6, 2010
Why I'm Here
I was awoken late last Monday night by a man opening my car door and demanding I produce what he wanted. “I need documents. From all of you,” he demanded. I was startled awake and clumsily fumbled through my things in the backseat to produce what he was looking for. I was not being robbed at gunpoint or approached by a criminal. In fact, I was not being victimized at all. Instead, I was being interrogated by an attractive young man in a green uniform which clearly read “Border Patrol” and was being demanded to produce identification in the form of a passport.
If you had asked me a year ago whether I would spend my Memorial Day weekend being asked to produce proof of my citizenship I would have told you that you were crazy, delirious, or perhaps abusing hallucinogenic drugs. A year ago I would have looked at you doe-eyed and exclaimed, “Illegal immigrants are just that – illegal. They shouldn’t be here.” I would have run through a laundry list of conservative viewpoints chronicling how undocumented immigrants are soaking up our social services, claiming our jobs, and failing to contribute to the government the way loyal taxpayers do. That is how we saw it in Georgia. Sure, immigrants may clean our gutters, paint our houses, or mow our lawns, but you couldn’t get much further from the border than an urban east coast city. So, how did immigration really impact our daily lives?
However, this much has changed. In the fall of 2009 I watched a documentary called “La Sexta Seccion”, or “The Sixth Section”, as part of a Spanish language class at Duke University. As men chronicled their lives as undocumented workers, I felt myself overcome with a feeling I had never experienced toward undocumented workers. Most people like to call it compassion. These men work to be paid below minimum wage equipped only with hopes and dreams to better the lives of their children and families in Mexico. This newfound sensation was not an epiphany by any means, but the beginning of a struggle to see immigration for what it was – a multifaceted issue. I became more intrigued as class discussion continued. Exactly where are my opinions coming from? What is my personal experience with immigration? Why are immigrants coming to the US? How can I learn more about this issue, which I once thought was so straightforward?
Thus, I found myself applying to a selective program called DukeEngage. Through this program I would travel to Tucson, Arizona to examine immigration firsthand and learn to make my own judgments. Little did I know that soon Arizona would become the spotlight of our nation and its new Senate Bill 1070 the topic of discussion. I found myself entering a political battlefield with an already shaky opinion and struggling to stay afloat in a sea of well established opinions.
This is how I ended up in a 15 passenger van being interrogated by the Border Patrol. I have only been in Arizona for about a week now, but I have visited champions for migrant rights, border patrol offices, Arizona courtrooms, and the Mexican border. I still find myself questioning some of my new found opinions, but mostly I find myself questioning my identity as an American. How could laws so inherently “American” be so oppressive and harmful? Why did I so vehemently defend laws which allowed border patrol to question my citizenship? To what extent am I to tolerate this? Where do we draw the line on infringing on rights, both of citizens and immigrants?
For now I am left struggling to discover my voice in this issue, how I feel, why immigration problems arose, where I fit in, and what I believe. However, this much is true: never judge an issue before you experience it for yourself. Always be skeptical of the information you receive. Look around you. Pay attention. Immigration is complicated, complex, and confusing. The border is all around us. It is in Durham. It is in Atlanta. It is in Tucson. You owe it to yourself to discover why you feel the way you do.
If you had asked me a year ago whether I would spend my Memorial Day weekend being asked to produce proof of my citizenship I would have told you that you were crazy, delirious, or perhaps abusing hallucinogenic drugs. A year ago I would have looked at you doe-eyed and exclaimed, “Illegal immigrants are just that – illegal. They shouldn’t be here.” I would have run through a laundry list of conservative viewpoints chronicling how undocumented immigrants are soaking up our social services, claiming our jobs, and failing to contribute to the government the way loyal taxpayers do. That is how we saw it in Georgia. Sure, immigrants may clean our gutters, paint our houses, or mow our lawns, but you couldn’t get much further from the border than an urban east coast city. So, how did immigration really impact our daily lives?
However, this much has changed. In the fall of 2009 I watched a documentary called “La Sexta Seccion”, or “The Sixth Section”, as part of a Spanish language class at Duke University. As men chronicled their lives as undocumented workers, I felt myself overcome with a feeling I had never experienced toward undocumented workers. Most people like to call it compassion. These men work to be paid below minimum wage equipped only with hopes and dreams to better the lives of their children and families in Mexico. This newfound sensation was not an epiphany by any means, but the beginning of a struggle to see immigration for what it was – a multifaceted issue. I became more intrigued as class discussion continued. Exactly where are my opinions coming from? What is my personal experience with immigration? Why are immigrants coming to the US? How can I learn more about this issue, which I once thought was so straightforward?
Thus, I found myself applying to a selective program called DukeEngage. Through this program I would travel to Tucson, Arizona to examine immigration firsthand and learn to make my own judgments. Little did I know that soon Arizona would become the spotlight of our nation and its new Senate Bill 1070 the topic of discussion. I found myself entering a political battlefield with an already shaky opinion and struggling to stay afloat in a sea of well established opinions.
This is how I ended up in a 15 passenger van being interrogated by the Border Patrol. I have only been in Arizona for about a week now, but I have visited champions for migrant rights, border patrol offices, Arizona courtrooms, and the Mexican border. I still find myself questioning some of my new found opinions, but mostly I find myself questioning my identity as an American. How could laws so inherently “American” be so oppressive and harmful? Why did I so vehemently defend laws which allowed border patrol to question my citizenship? To what extent am I to tolerate this? Where do we draw the line on infringing on rights, both of citizens and immigrants?
For now I am left struggling to discover my voice in this issue, how I feel, why immigration problems arose, where I fit in, and what I believe. However, this much is true: never judge an issue before you experience it for yourself. Always be skeptical of the information you receive. Look around you. Pay attention. Immigration is complicated, complex, and confusing. The border is all around us. It is in Durham. It is in Atlanta. It is in Tucson. You owe it to yourself to discover why you feel the way you do.
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