Forum highlights unfair treatment of undocumented immigrants in U.S.

Josh Holderbaum
Western Herald

Western Michigan University presented a forum on the subject of  immigration. The forum was designed to humanize the condition of undocumented immigrants to students, staff and members of the community.

Eta Eta Sigma, the undergraduate social work organization and the Michigan Organizing Project, sponsored the immigration forum, which was held Jan. 29 in the Bernhard Center’s Martin Luther King room.
The forum began with information about illegal immigration from Linda Reeser, Ph.D., social work professor and Eta Eta Sigma advisor.

“Right now, there are 12 million immigrants with no legal status,” Reeser said. “We have had periods with more. Forty percent come in legally, but overstayed their visa, believing they could come over and get a green card. But there was a backlog in the bureaucracy. It was 1980 when the systems were last updated.”
Ninety-eight percent of immigrants would become legal if they had the opportunity, Reeser said.
The hardships extend beyond normal immigrants as well.

“Political refugees are sort of an exception, but they still have a very hard time getting in,” Reeser said. “They have to prove they are refugees from a refugee, but those who try to flee from impoverishment don’t get a chance.”
Reeser continued with myths about undocumented workers.

“There’s the myth that immigrants take jobs from legal citizens,” Reeser said. “That’s not true: they take jobs that few others would do for very low wages and some of them also become entrepreneurs. They also pay taxes: state, sales and social security. Some states couldn’t survive without those undocumented citizens.”
The first immigrant speaker was Javier Ballesteros, who came to the United States from Mexico in 1982 and became legal in 1986.

“When I walked through the mountains to come here, you can see bones,” Ballesteros said. “We need help. I know everybody has a friend, uncle, brother or sister who’s illegal.”

Spanish hip-hop music by Emerson Marroquin, an immigrant from El Salvador who goes by the rap name El Diaz, also played with Marroquin’s explanations of the lyrics.

“My family came over in 1983, when I was eight years old,” Marroquin said. “We were running away from a civil war in our homeland. We lived in a poor neighborhood in Los Angeles. Coming here, we didn’t know what it was like to have a political voice. The only way to be masculine was to join a gang.”

Experiences with fellow immigrants in Los Angeles inspired Marroquin to record around 20 songs about their experiences.
“I would walk around the soccer fields in Los Angeles picking up stories from those who just came over,” Marroquin said. “I do it in hip-hop so youth can grasp it at an early age so they can get involved in their own movements.”

Sergio Brito, a Mexican immigrant from Kentwood, explained that he has a son and a “wife,” both born in the U.S., even though he hasn’t been able to legally marry his wife.

“The system is so complex, I could talk to you all night,” Brito said. “There is something wrong right there. We can fix it the right way or the wrong way.”

The night concluded with comments from John Musick, M.O.P. director.
“If people don’t have basic human rights, they are allowed to move,” Musick said. “People have always moved when they needed to. Think of immigrants as friends and neighbors who have come here and respect them, not persecute them.”

Following the forum, students were also encouraged to join M.O.P. or write letters to Congressman Fred Upton. The M.O.P. will present the letters to Upton when they meet with him in February.
For more information on the Michigan Organizing Project, visit www.miorganizingproject.com.

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Posted by HeraldAdmin on Feb 2 2009. Filed under Campus, Nation, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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