« Confession or Calculation? | Main | His Legacy, A Graveyard »
3 de Marzo, 2008
Us Vs. You. Or Just We?
Categorized under Frontera | Tags: borders, Califas, Chicanos, Hope, Immigration, Mexicans, Migrant farmers, workers
IT MAKES ME SAD to think that something as important to the "we" that we are as migration, hope, hunger, and self-actualization [i.e., "the immigration issue"] is so polluted with racism, fear, greed, anger, and other small parts of ourselves that we can barely talk about it reasonably anymore.
Propz to those who try to bring the conversation back into the realm of the realistic and the humane.
Louis Mendoza took a page from the Forrest Gump playbook and journeyed across the country.Mendoza, a Chicano studies professor and department chair, has returned from his nearly six-month bike trip through 31 states, aimed at better understanding of immigration.
Mendoza started his journey last July in California, finishing Dec. 20 in Minnesota. [..]
Immigration in the United State is more complex than people realize, Mendoza said.
"It's about how complicated of an issue immigration is," he said. "It's not really just Latinos verses whites."
Mendoza found out why immigrants decided to come into this country from the best sources, he said.
"I learned first-hand new immigrants' motivations for coming to the United States," he said. "I learned what a difficult decision it was for them to leave their home country."
Immigrants in this country are an essential part of the economy in rural areas, he said.
"Small towns in America are very much accepting of them," he said. "This generation's young people don't want to do the work that their parents did. These small towns would implode without immigrants."
sombrero tip a manny
| 
| 
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Comentarios (3)
Man Eegee dijo:
thx for the linkage. i have an email in to him, hopefully he'll agree to an interview.
Palabras por Man Eegee spat forth on el 3 de Marzo, 2008 at 10:43 AM
Richard "No dime gringo..". dijo:
True. I lived -- er, resided -- in Iowa for a time, where there has always been a three-generation turnover. The first generation are the immigrants, whose children are the establishment, who, in turn, spawn a generation that can't make a living, and head for the bright lights of ... Kansas City or Minneapolis. When I was living there, the crusty old reactionaries were the left-behind Germans, the new establishment were the Vietnamese, and the up and coming Mexicans (and, surprisingly, Israelis) were the comers.
In my little Texas hick-town, the city fathers and mothers are mostly immigrants of one kind or another. The local judge is an east Texas immigrant, and out of our five city council members, two are "internal migrants" (one a Seminole, which you don't find too often in west Texas), and one a Punjabi. The other two are Hispanic women (the mayor is an Anglo woman) and we are America at its most diverse.
What I think has dominated our thinking about immigration has been the Hollywood image of the teeming masses in the cities, and not -- as has been the reality from the beginning -- of the small towns and rural communities. Even when it's what the right-wing likes to call "chain migration" (sort of the way my early German ancestors all sent for their relatives, who sent for their relatives, who sent for their girl-friends, who sent for their parents.... ending up as in-bred Pennsylvania hillbillies!), it's been to communities where they are more or less accepted, or at least tolerated.
I don't think the Chinese, Mexican, Guatemalan, etc. immigrant experience is all that different from what my relatives went through in the early 1800s, or what the U.S. experienced in the 1850s, the 1880s or the 1920s.
I'm not surprised by the Prof's findings, but nice to see them confirmed.
Palabras por Richard "No dime gringo..". spat forth on el 3 de Marzo, 2008 at 12:50 PM
Joanna dijo:
He blogged his whole trip as well, and posted video of interviews with people along the way. There's a link from the story.
Palabras por Joanna spat forth on el 3 de Marzo, 2008 at 04:38 PM