The American Dream?

            Essay 1 Excerpt

Homesick for Mexico

A teenage Marina set out of Mexico City September of the year 1999; only 17 years old. She was to leave with her eldest sister Lucia, who would join her husband in America- her two year old niece Citlaly and four year old nephew Jair would go along with them on a journey to a foreign place, one they’ve never known before. She was nervous about leaving her parents, she loved them so dearly, but this was the decision that had been made and no one could change it. Mexico City was corrupt, and she had seen it all growing up, it only seemed to get worse and worse. The government did not make the people in her community feel safe. The police stole from their people, robbed them and bludgeoned them. No one could trust the law enforcement- so the safest choice was to leave. “How could you not run?” she told me. Her parents would stay and take care of the rest of the family in Mexico City. She had 5 more siblings there- 7 total people in her home- and they needed taking care of too. 

The trip across the border itself wasn’t as terrifying to Marina, the biggest scare was not seeing her parents again. She was to walk across the border as inconspicuous as possible, there was no one to help guarantee her safety. She was extremely lucky to walk across with no trouble, she couldn’t believe it. After crossing the border they set off to Berkeley, California. She had older brothers there who could take care of her while she finished out her school years, she was glad her family found education to have so much importance in a young girl’s life. Her and Lucia gathered up the little ones into a car and set off on the long ride to the bay area. In the car she began to daydream about what she was leaving behind. She would have no more big family dinners with her family, cousins, brothers, sisters, and her parents all at the table every night. There wouldn’t be 10 table settings any longer, just 1. 

Only one month following her journey to Berkeley, Marina felt terribly homesick. In Mexico she would walk outside her house and she many people she knew, her parents’ old friends who had known her her whole life, and her friends she played with everyday. That was not the case now. She felt alone, her sister had taken Citlaly and Jair and gone to be with her family and Marina lived with her older brothers who had left Mexico some time ago. Her brothers worked multiple jobs with long shifts to be sure they could send money home to their parents; support their family. That meant she had many nights home alone. Marina did her part as well. She went to school, went to work right after, and came home every night around 11 pm. Young Marina felt she had no one. She could no longer walk outside and see her friends anymore. She had enough. She decided to call her father and tell him she wanted to come home. “I don’t want to be here anymore,” she cried, “I want to come home and be with you.” There wasn’t much her father could do for her but he missed her just as much, if not more. He calmly replied, “You’re there Marina, you’re so far away. I will make this proposition to you. Wait one more month. If you feel the same after this month, I will do whatever it takes to pay for your flight home.” She was terribly homesick but she took her father’s words in her heart and did what she was told, she would wait and be strong for one more month. 

Essay 2 Excerpt

An immigrant can be judged, detained, arrested, and criminalized based on what he or she looks like. In a study by the University of Kansas, the authors expand on what Arizona Police Department officers are told to do or look for when applying reasonable doubt to an immigrant before detaining them on the cause of illegal status. “Because immigration status is not something that one can visibly observe, it is important to know what criteria might inform the suspicion that a person is an undocumented immigrant. To answer the question of what constitutes reasonable suspicion (and probable cause for arrest without warrant), proponents of the Arizona law cite not only features associated with poverty and disempowerment (e.g., vehicles or rented housing with too many occupants, failure to make eye contact with law-enforcement officers), but also more clearly racialized criteria such as “grooming” or presence in a neighborhood where there is a history of immigrant residence” (Mukherjee, et al

320). This way of observation before detainment is based solely on generalizations that the general public of Arizona and the United States have made on Mexican immigrants. These stereotypes are so biased and limited, there is no case by case circumstance for these so called “undocumented immigrants,” and it leaves that population extremely vulnerable to the judgement and interpretation of the individual officers making these arrests. 

The news is what really keeps the public distracted from what immigrants are really like. It keeps them divided between blissful ignorance and well information and compassion. Even further to the former statement, it keeps them divided between said ignorance and intermediate knowledge from people who don’t know all the facts, but do know not to generalize. This can contribute largely to racial profiling. Racial profiling is a big part of keeping migrants’ stories from being told. In another source written by members of the Department of Psychology in Arizona, Fryberg et al write about how the media portrays only certain aspects of immigrants to lead us in a direction where race plays a big part in how we view others, especially Mexican immigrants. A bill was signed in 2010 in Arizona designed to limit the amount of illegal immigration by allowing officers to essentially racially profile anyone they assumed to be illegal. The goal was to scare these illegal immigrants into leaving Arizona, and stop trying to cross the border into Arizona, with the threat of arrest or deportation (Fryberg, et al 97). This law here not only violates an immigrants privacy, personal property, and humanity itself, it is a complete dehumanization that takes away all dignity belonging to that immigrant. Not being able to fight back while your house, car, belongings are searched trying to find a reason to make an arrest and assume you are illegal, there are no human rights any longer.

Community Call to Action

The young people of our generation are the future of this country. It is our job to decide how society will progress in the future. It is also our job to represent our communities by voting. When we vote we show our voices, and there are so many opportunities to vote in Oakland on pressing issues, such as police regulation and homelessness. If we get out there and make our voices heard, we can do anything.