Las Americas + Border Patrol

Hi, everyone! As our trip is winding down, we are still continuing to learn more and more about border issues. Yesterday we visited Las Americas, an immigrant advocacy group, to learn about the immigration process and what exactly makes it so difficult for incoming immigrants to become citizens.

The people at Las Americas were really welcoming and they provided us with helpful handouts. The very first one (and my personal favorite) was a flowchart comic that basically (or not so basically) illustrated the complexity of the immigration system currently in place. What we learned was that the "easiest" way to become a citizen in the U.S. is to be the parent, spouse or child of a current U.S. citizen. Despite the fact, this process would still take at least 6 or 7 years. The more complicated ways to become a citizen included people with no familial links or no "special skills" (athletics, investments, genius). In these cases, citizenship would not be achieved for as many as 30 years - if at all.

We also received a table that the U.S. government releases monthly to inform immigrants who have applied for visas. This month, those in China who applied in 1997, in Mexico who applied in 1995 and in India who applied in 1998 can finally get their paperwork together to make the move. We all thought that this was pretty crazy. Ray, our speaker, told us that many immigration laws are anti-family value: they disregard the basic need for families to stay together.

For the rest of the day we got to watch the inauguration which was basically a lot of speeches and us going, "aww, I love him!!" We also did a reflection that night on the differences among helping, fixing and serving another.

The next morning we set off for the Border Patrol Museum. Inside, there were models of vehicles once used for patrolling the border. There was a skidoo, a firebird, one of those olden day cars from the early decades of the 20th century, and helicopters. We got to get into the helicopter which was pretty cool too. Then we walked around to look at the history of the border patrol including the technology used by both the patrollers and the immigrants who seeked to cross the border. The museum also presented us with a training movie and a slideshow. The training movie was a little intense and slightly... poorly edited. We learned from our speaker, J. Perez, that he felt that his job was to uphold the law and that it was very necessary. However, he did see the need for the improvement of the slow immigration process.

Another exciting part of our day is when we got to visit the home of one of Aimee's contacts. The family was so fantastic and welcoming! We watched a movie called Drug Wars: Plato o Plomo (silver or lead) which was a pretty intense documentary about the decades long drug war in the U.S. We also were served delicious snacks! But back to the movie... we learned where the drugs were produced and why, as well as how, they make it to the U.S. Since drugs are strongly linked to violence and power in Mexico, the movie was appropriate for our interest in Juarez and its current problems. We were also lucky to talk to the lawyer who hosted us about his cases and the things that he has seen. Afterwards, his wife was kind enough to show us parts of the city like the oldest mission in Texas and the Indian Reservation.

Later that night, Jackie and Mara made a wonderful stir fry dinner as our last night cooking. Then we reflected on the day by finding the connotations of words that we were given such as border, citizen, and coyotes/smugglers.

It was a really informative couple of days. I personally think that learning about the immigration process - and how complicated, confusing and outdated it is - was great.

I hope everyone is enjoying the below freezing weather in Maryland!! :)

-Lien

Quote of the day: "If someone is not weird, that means you just don't know them well enough."