Of All Colors and From All Continents
March 9th, 2007 by insighter
I thought this was very interesting piece of news. Undocumented (illegal) Irish immigrants demand legalization in Washigton Hill. Well, I bet not many folks would expect to see that in the news. From a minority perspective it is great they decided to do that – it really gives less reasons to keep thinking of only one group of people when we speak of undocumented immigrants.
We know that most undocumented immigrants overstay their visas – this means they came in legally and probably flew in. The stereotypes of brown skinned farm workers and day laborers who illegally crossed the border is more and more inaccurate.
One way they have been measuring illegal immigration statistics is by relying on border patrol information. So, as a result, our understanding of illegal or undocumented immigrants is usually that of Mexicans crossing the Southern border illegally and we really seem to be stuck with that mentality.
In the meantime, a more accurate picture of illegal immigration would paint them of being global citizens: Asians, Africans, Latin Americans, Europeans, Middle Easterners and all could come from any number of countries under many different economical and political situations.
Then we have the different treatment of the borders. The U.S. has two borders, the infamous Southern borders and the almost invisible Northern border. Why is the Northern border almost invisible? Never seen in the media – a bit like the Irish march yesterday. Why don’t we ever hear about Canadians crossing the border illegally? Why does ICE not target those groups during their raids? In general we don’t look upon white immigrants with as much disapproval or resentment. In fact, we don’t think of white foreigners as illegal immigrants. We have learned to think that “Mexican” immigrants are criminals, lazy, dirty, uneducated, poor, nuances for the country based on information that could really apply to any group legal or not, brown or white.
Then the administration decided to spread the war on terror to the Southern border only. It is not a mystery that those involved in the 911 attacks came in legally and making themselves as unnoticeable as possible through the legal doors. It is also absurd that any possible terrorist would want to come through the Mexican border and not the Canadian borders or legally. My point here is that the arguments about the Southern border don’t make sense. They are based on outdated information. The border is not the principal source or entry of undocumented immigration - legal overstayed entry is.
The U.S. is now focusing on building a wall in the Southern border but not in the Northern one, although there are plenty of indications that Canadian illegal immigration exists.
It’s not a science. Our immigration system is as broken as it can be and it’s functioning under fairly racist policies. Most anti-immigrant sentiment I have seen has been targeted towards “Mexicans” and this usually ignorantly groups all Latin Americans together. However, in my larger community the reality is much different - undocumented and documented immigration comes in all colors, shapes, sizes, and from all countries and all continents.
Unfortunately if you look online or browse your TV you will not find much coverage about the Irish immigration rally. You got to wonder why? I looked online and I couldn’t find any imagery of the event except one! So what would happen if the media allowed the citizens of this country to understand that anti-immigration sentiment would have to extend to non-Latinos including whites as well? Well, then the attacks to Latinos would have little excuse. The brown Latino face would no longer be the poster child of illegal immigration and perhaps, in the still racist world we live in, it has been convenient to keep a lawbreaker image of Latinos - it is this way that ICE teams can concentrate their “return to sender” operation efforts only in Latino neighborhoods. Come to think about it, perhaps ICE raids are direct retaliation for the protests of last May where Latinos said we’re not afraid and we want our human rights to be observed as wellâ€. So considering the issue is obviously not about breaking laws but about racism, we got to think about where human rights have gone?!
Returning to the 50,000 illegal Irish community I’m glad they came forward to help illustrate that the immigrant community (undocumented and documented) is diverse, not just from Latin America. It would be great if the different immigrant communities joined efforts to show the significance of the issue and to help stop the focused attacks on Latinos only. Hopefully other immigrant communities have not been intimidated by the raids focused on Latinos and this won’t put them in the endless path to life without law that protects them.
Some News articles about the event:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7761621