Journey of Hope

The United States of America, since the time of the thirteen colonies, has built its population through immigration of poor individuals seeking economic advancement. Similar to how the United States was viewed by people in distress one hundred years ago, people today from all over the world see living and working in the United States as a endless economic opportunity for themselves and their offspring. Although this country has been built through immigration, and is the reason why many of us could trace back our ancestry to another country, many people living in the United States today see immigration in a negative light, making the process of immigrating to the United States and gaining citizenship much different than it was one hundred and fifty years ago. Immigrants today, for the most part, are people of color, meaning they are not “white” in the American sense. I feel that these new immigrants are being ill received by Americans because they do not have the same skin tone as the so-called “American”. Not only does this happen in the United States, but also in countries where they are usually the “sending” country and not the “receiving” country as the case in Mexico and Central American immigrants. I use the United States as a prime example because information is more readily available. This half fasted welcome, that these new immigrants un-willingly possess, is detrimental to their health and curtails their ability to become full-fledged citizens, although many adapt the new culture.

Immigrants today, as they did one hundred years ago, come from countries that are experiencing political or economic unrest. The difference between American immigration one hundred years ago and now is that the immigrants back then came from European backgrounds. Most of today’s immigrants essentially come from everywhere else in the world other than Europe; I will focus on Latin America. Because Latin America is an ethnically mixed group, they consist of a variety of different “shades” of skin tone. Most Latinos have Hispanic backgrounds mixed with various ethnicities such as, African, American Indian, and Asian. Most of these Latin countries were once Spanish colonies therefore most of their populations speak Spanish as their first language. I say most because there are large groups in southern Mexico and in some parts of South America where indigenous languages are spoken at a frequency higher then that of the Spanish language. Nonetheless, this “mixture” of ethnicities seems to be “desirable” in the United States and therefore un-American. Not only is their skin pigment an obstacle but also these immigrants, who come from Spanish speaking countries, confront a language barrier that inhibits them to assimilate quickly into American society.

Poor Immigrants who wish to enter countries like the United States and Mexico are finding it more difficult to pass international borders because of quotas that government’s place, as the case in the United States, when they installed immigration quotas in the 1920’s. Because many of these immigrants feel they could not economically survive in their home countries, they turn to illegal entrance, whether it is into the United States or Mexico. But growing anti-illegal immigration has swept through the American southwest, where war rhetoric has been applied to illegal immigration, “ As the War on Drugs was coupled with enforcement efforts against undocumented immigration, state officials have shown an increasing penchant for using war terms when discussing border issues”(Menjivar,107). “The Militarization of the southern U.S border has created an atmosphere of warlike characteristics that has contributed to a wide range of civil and human rights abuses”(Menjivar, 107). Similar to the American southern border, Mexico’s southern border has been “militarized” to keep illegal Central American immigrants from entering the country. These Central American immigrants often have the United Sates as a destination point, which means they have to pass both Mexican and American borders illegally, furthering their mercy on whomever they come in contact with. “Migrants crossing into Mexico face rape, murder, robbery, injury from train wheels, shakedowns from government officials, and abandonment in the forests”(Hagan, 94). At the United States border, where heightened security has been placed at major border towns like, San Diego, El Paso because of campaigns such as “ Prevention through Deterrence” in the 1990’s. “ The new campaign prevents migrants from crossing in these well established corridors and deters them to more remote rural areas where they are exposed to greater dangers and risk of death”(Hagan, 93). Immigrants who decide to cross the deadly deserts often find themselves at the mercy of vigilante groups that patrol these parts in shifts, most popular being the Minutemen Project group, who “Protects the country against a 40-year invasion”(Mejivar, 109). Many of these migrants find themselves seeking a smuggler or “coyote”, who in which “… charge $1,500-1,500 a person for taking them across the border (Gonzalez, Menjivar, 108). Paying a smuggler is not economically feasible for many migrants and does not insure passage, on the other hand, the migrant (especially women) according to Cecilia Menjivar is taking the risk of being robbed, extorted, raped and assaulted. Because there are high number of human assaults and deaths along the U.S/Mexico border, religious groups have stationed themselves along the border to aid those in need.

Religious leaders from both Catholic and Protestant churches have longed lobbied against government policies that put human lives in danger. These religious leaders, according to Hagan, believe that immigration from Latin America into the United States is due to globalization of labor. These leaders feel as if the current U.S immigration system is in need of assistance, “The consequences of the current syste, religious leaders argue, are morally unacceptable- the exploitation of migrant labor and the abuse and death of migrants who seek to enter”(Hagan, 94). They argue that these conditions threaten human dignity and violate human rights. In response to the treatment of migrants, religious groups and churches have become sanctuaries for migrants in the mother country and in the new country. At home, churches have become a community outreach center with a variety of services that provide physiological counseling for families, to informing