Since before the founding of this country, people have been immigrating here, both legally and illegally. Yet recently, immigration has become criminalized.
It is too easy to ignore this plight and label it as something that is “not our concern.” With 1,500 or more Latin American immigrants pouring into this country every day, I challenge that belief. This is very much our concern.
Far too few Americans realize the desperate circumstances that drive people hundreds of miles from their homes, their cultures and their families to work hard jobs for long hours in hopes of scraping together a little money to send home.
Noemi Gonzalez with BorderLinks and Celeste Escobar with the Mexico Solidarity Network spoke at ETSU on Oct. 12.
In Mexico, Oct. 12 is known as El D?a de la Raza, the birth of Mexico’s identity. It celebrates the first meeting between Europeans and the Indigenous Tribes that came to form the ‘mestizo,’ or mixed race. In the United States Oct. 12 is Columbus Day.
This day of immigration could not have been more appropriate for Escobar and Gonzalez’s speech on ‘Border Issues and Immigrant Rights.’
Gonzalez and Escobar believe the root of the problem is the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Though 12 years ago it promised a higher standard of living throughout the U.S., Mexico and Canada, it is considered by many to be a failure.
Mexico’s social and economic divides did not start with NAFTA, but Free Trade may have contributed to these problems. According to citizen.org, NAFTA’s harm to Mexico was obvious through ‘the explosive rural crisis,’ the ‘horrifying levels of poverty, increased economic inequality and NAFTA-related environmental damage,’ and the ‘diversity of Mexican workers and farmers united in their outrage about NAFTA.’
So what can be done to slow immigration rates, and to help our neighbors to the south? These problems cannot be solved independently of each other. Until the domestic situation in Mexico is resolved immigrants will continue to cross the border.
Desperate times call for desperate measures and immigrants have already proven that they will face dangers, violence and even U.S. troops to get here.
Not even a 700-mile long fence will stop immigration. The Secure Fence Act of 2006 was recently approved. It calls for the Department of Homeland Security to “take control” of the border within 18 months. It will use surveillance, cameras, foot patrols and 700 miles of fencing to ‘secure’ the border.
And it will, ultimately, fail.
I was privileged enough to interview Gonzalez directly. I knew about as much Spanish as she knew English, which is to say, un poquitito (a very small amount). Speaking with her would not have been possible without the help of Wendy Saucedo, to whom I am grateful.
Gonzalez is expressive, the kind of delightful person who can make someone else understand despite language barriers. Speaking with her, shaking her hand and exchanging blessings was all it took to convince me that she is a woman who cares.
Gonzalez smiled and charged me with the duty of being a bridge between this issue and anyone I could reach.
“I invite [ETSU] to hear independent news, not just CNN or FOX, and to have critical eyes and ears, to see another reality,” Gonzalez said. “I also invite them to visit the border, not as a tourist, but as an observer.”
“History unites Mexico and the United States. We are brothers. The fences and borders cannot break those ties of brotherhood, because we are all immigrants,” she said.
Some students echoed these sentiments.
“People often forget that being American isn’t a right – it’s a privilege. We are all immigrants, we all came from somewhere. The 700-mile wall is only going to create more problems,” said ETSU sociology major April Berge.
When I asked Gonzalez if there was anything else she would like to say to the students of ETSU, she nodded and smiled.
“You are my hope,” she said, “because we, the immigrants, really don’t have any voice.