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My Turnby Maileen Hamto |
 |
From The Asian Reporter, V17, #25 (June 19, 2007), page 6 & 7.
Solidarity amid chaos
The man standing in front of the crowd waved a $20 bill, then proceeded to crush it with his hand. In Spanish, he asked — who wants this bill? Children raised their hands earnestly.
He dropped the crumpled bill to the floor, pressed it firmly with his boot, and asked if anyone still wanted the bill. Most of the crowd said "¡Si!"
"I’m raising my hand again!" shouted a child in front.
"The $20 bill didn’t lose its value just because it was crumpled and stepped on. It’s the same thing with our community," the man said (roughly translated from Spanish). "They use us to work the jobs no one else wants, then remove us at will, as if we are disposable. All we want is respect and dignity."
The early-morning raid at the Fresh Del Monte Produce plant in north Portland sent shock waves through immigrant communities in Portland and beyond. More than 160 workers were handcuffed, processed, and detained for not having the proper documentation to work in the United States. Lawyers and community leaders from agencies such as Catholic Charities, VOZ, and others were there to help family members make sense of the mess.
Discussions were conducted mostly in Spanish, but one did not need to understand every word spoken to fully understand the anger and sorrow that filled the room. So many questions:
"How can I get in touch with family members who were detained?"
"What are their rights?"
"What are our rights?
"I work at Del Monte, are they closing the factory? Should I go back to work?"
A woman who runs a childcare center was caring for children whose parents were arrested during the raid. She asked, "What do I do with the children?" Someone told her that the right thing to do was to "turn over" the children to the state.
As if the children themselves were criminals.
A number of local residents who didn’t speak a word of Spanish went to the meeting to grieve the loss and offer support for their neighbors. As a naturalized citizen who arrived in the United States via legal means, I don’t see a huge gap between my status and that of undocumented immigrants.
Sure, we had to jump through many hoops to obtain a visa and come to the United States legally. On any given day, long lines form outside U.S. embassies throughout the developing world, where the right to work and live in the United States is like winning the lottery. In many countries, the process of getting a visa is, literally, a lottery. To win a slot in the quota system, education, skills, and resources are required. In many Asian and African nations, the standards set for U.S. visas are so stringent that only the brightest, most promising — and often, well-to-do — individuals and families have the edge in the lottery each time.
I get irritated by other immigrants who say, "Why don’t Mexicans simply wait in line like the rest of us did back home? We have to wait so long and spend so much money to get here, and all they have to do is cross the border."
Each time I hear it, I respond, "If your country was attached to the United States like Mexico is, trust me, you too would have friends and family members who are undocumented."
Migration isn’t solely an American phenomenon. As long as there are better opportunities to be had, people will always move. Many of my friends are part of a global cohort. I have childhood friends from Manila who live and work in Wales, France, Australia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and elsewhere.
We are a nation of immigrants. The infrastructure and wealth of the United States were built upon the backs of foreign laborers. Africans were brought here as slaves to turn America into a viable agricultural player on the world stage. Irish laborers built towering buildings, the Statue of Liberty, the Erie Canal, and much of the infrastructure along the East Coast during the 1800s. Italian men toiled as laborers digging and mining pits for coal and ore, fueling the Industrial Revolution.
Chinese laborers laid the tracks for the railroad that bridged the expanded American territory. Mexican and Japanese farm workers have been central to the country’s agriculture production since the 1850s, especially after the Chinese Exclusion Act went into effect. Filipinos were hired as migrant field hands in the sugar plantations of Hawaii. Labor was in short supply in the United States during World War II, and the Bracero Program brought much-needed help with growing and harvesting crops.
As Americans, we have long enjoyed the fruits of cheap immigrant labor. Immigration reform is sorely needed to create a navigable path toward legal status for workers who are already here. Raiding businesses, interrupting operations, and rounding up workers to send them back isn’t helping anyone, especially local industry. One wonders how much money — taxpayers’ dollars — was devoted to the months-long sting on the Del Monte plant. How would they measure the return on investment on the raid and court costs associated with processing more than 160 people on immigration violations?
On a more personal level, compassion and solidarity with our fellow immigrants — regardless of documentation status — is the least we can offer. We all came from somewhere, and we’re all in this together.