It’s interesting to look at the timeline of immigration throughout the years of our country’s existence and compare it to what we have today, especially considering the magnitude of tensions surrounding the issue of immigration. We started the so-called “immigration problem” we have today, and most people don’t even know about it. The Bracero Program set into motion a pattern of coming and going that wouldn’t be stopped by a mere piece of writing on a paper; by giving people the option to commit this type of seasonal work, people’s livelihoods began to depend more and more on doing so. Combine this with the surges of immigration since then, particularly within certain nations, and the current makeup of immigrants is established.
So it’s of no surprise that the immigrant population is noticeable, at the very least (whether it’s a problem or not depends on what section of the political spectrum one lies upon), and has been in the public eye as a hot topic for quite some time. What’s most distinguishable, which has been greatly exacerbated by the current administration, is the border crossings; the most perpetuated idea in the media, whether true or not, is that the majority of immigrants (illegal ones, at least) come through the southern border between the United States and Mexico, which the current administration opines needs restriction to stop such flow.
This all has led to major public discourse around the way to handle the immigration issue; the right propagates tough legislature and audacious federal projects to curb immigrant arrival, while publicly denouncing the lives and livelihoods of all immigrants in America, legal or not. And most opponents of immigrants in our society outright refuse to give an ounce or two of humanity to those crossing the border, or coming by train, or car, or plane. The documentary really highlighted to me the way knowing a story intimately, or even at a more base level, changes an opinion, because much of the time what interacting with a person’s story does is force humanization upon them; how much more did we feel for the woman who couldn’t go to Mexico to visit her dying father, or the girl who was afraid she couldn’t go to college, or the parents afraid of being deported away from their children?
annie 