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BorderLinks - travel seminars & college credit program on the Mexican
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Before our class trip
to Mexico on February 25, 2004, I had many preconceived notions
surrounding what we were going to see, experience, and learn. I had many
of my previous thoughts squandered by the actual reality of the border
towns, US Border Patrol and the Mexican community. The ideas that had been
implanted in my mind stemmed from the readings that we had read in class,
the videos that were shown, and my basic existence in Phoenix, Arizona.
Some of these myths, the ones that were the most significant to me, were
that all Mexican- Catholic families were large, that United States
citizens could make a citizen’s arrest of the Mexican immigrants, and that
it is simple to get a legal pass into the United States. These all
affected that way that I viewed the Mexican-American population in Arizona
and the perceptions that I associated with the movement and increase of
Mexican immigrants.
We began our trip at 6:30 AM in Glendale, AZ and headed south to
the city of Tucson where we met with an amazing eloquent woman named Jen
Allen, who is with the Border Action Network. She spoke with such passion
and urgency, that one could not help but feel for her cause. She spoke to
us about many topics, but the one that stuck in my mind was of the
vigilantes in southern Arizona. These men and women that live in the
southernmost part of the state describe immigration as an invasion of
their land and their country. In an article read in class entitled Open
Season: As Extremists Peddle Their Ant-Immigrant Rhetoric Along the
Troubled Arizona Border, a Storm Gathers by Bob Moser, a quote is given by
Ryan Scudder, a Border Patrol spokesperson. He says, “Citizen’s arrest is
an American right”. I agree with this statement fully as long as all of
the guidelines of a citizen’s arrest are met. Jen Allen explained to us
that in order to make a citizen’s arrest under United States law, that one
must actually see the crime being committed, which, in this case, would be
witnessing the person or people crossing over the defined border. This is
not usually the case with the vigilantes and the immigrants and yet the
Border Patrol allows them to be taken into custody by a citizen and then
picked up by the police or the Border Patrol themselves, Jen Allen
explained. I found this interesting and also a bit frightening. There
should be mandated and controlled rules that all citizens should follow if
they are intending to defend themselves and their property, as they claim
they are doing.
The next fallacy that I experienced first hand within the Colonias Las
Torres, where we stopped to enjoy lunch, was with our hostess, Yolanda.
Yolanda is a single, thirty four year old mother of two. She lives in Las
Torres with her younger daughter. Her husband died when her second
daughter was very young but they had already decided not to have any more
children for financial reasons. Yolanda was able to afford for her
twelve-year-old daughter to attend secondary school and for her older
daughter to attend college on the American side of the city of Nogales.
She is very proud of her daughters and what she has been able to do for
them. She believes that if she would have had any more children, that they
wouldn’t have been able to provide decent lives for them. Many Americans
claim that they don’t want Mexicans in the United States because they feel
as if they can have as many children as they want and then live off of
social services. This to me seems like a very general, but widely felt
sentiment.
The final fallacy that stunned me was the contradicting statements
between the Border Patrol agent, Levi Faber, that we met with and the
presentation given by Kiko Trujillo. Faber insisted that he had no idea
why Mexican immigrants would choose to pay thousands of dollars to be
transported into the United States by a coyote instead of simply
approaching the immigration agency and applying for a visa or work permit.
He stated that it only costs around $100 and it was very simple and quick
to accomplish. This seemed very odd to me because, if this was in fact the
case, I don’t believe there would be as many problems with people crossing
the desert as there is today. The question was presented to Kiko at dinner
and he suggested that this was a false statement and that he had friends
that had been on a waiting list for years at a time and spent much more
than $100 simply to apply. After hearing both sentiments, I felt obligated
to lean towards the feelings of Kiko because he had real life experiences
with the ins and outs of immigration.
Kiko also mentioned that even if one does get a visa or a green
card and comes to live in the United States, they are still under strict
ridicule and are subject to the Border Patrol questioning at any time.
This immediately made me think of the article Justice on the Line: The
Unequal Impacts of Border Patrol Activities in Arizona Border Communities
that was distributed by the Border Action Network, to which Jen Allen is a
member. The article contains many charts and graphs that opened my eyes to
the day-to-day life of a person living on the border in Arizona. The
people interviewed for the article don’t believe that are treated fairly
or under the same rules as others who “look like” American citizens.
These are all injustices in my mind and more should be done to
expose these non-truths to the Arizona and national public. It is not fair
to treat the whole society of Mexico to one standard and one set of rules
that are not equal punishment for even the worst kind of person. People in
the United States should become involved and stop believing and spreading
the slander of the Mexican immigrants.
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