Alejandra’s mom first took her and her younger brother across the border in 1983. Her father worked as a ranch hand in Corona, New Mexico, and her family was tired of being separated.
They tried several times before they made it into the United States for good. Once, her mother paid a guide to help them across. He was supposed to get them to Alejandra’s father, but the guide left the mother and two young children in some bushes just past border highway between Mexico and the United States.
Rather than trusting another guide, they took a bus on their next attempt. Alejandra’s aunt and cousins joined them and they changed their names before they rode across the border. They thought they had made it when they got to El Paso. Then the bus stopped in a small town in Texas where officials told her family to get off the bus. They were held in a county jail cell until they could be deported. Alejandra said the sheriff fed them microwaved burritos.
“I’m like, ‘dang it,’ just because we are Mexican doesn’t mean that we love burritos,” Alejandra said. “They could have fed us something else. I just remember thinking, ‘God this is like the worst stuff that I’ve ever had’.”
Alejandra said her family left Mexico out of necessity. Her father tried to get work in Mexico as a mechanic, but couldn’t earn enough money to provide for the family. He started going back and forth between Mexico and the United States, working as a migrant ranch hand. He would spend eight months away and four months with the family. Alejandra said her family grew tired of being separated, so they decided to move to the United States so they could be together year ‘round.
Judy Ancel, director of the Institute for Labor Studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, said a lot of families emigrate from Mexico, legally or otherwise, out of necessity or economic desperation. She said globalization had taken a hard toll on Mexico, and the cost of living had risen sharply after the implementation of NAFTA while wages remained stagnant. She said one person would have to work 48 hours a day at the minimum wage, barely $5 USD per day, in Mexico to earn a living wage.
“When they say ‘illegal immigrant’ I feel like they are saying that this person is illegal. I think it’s just a little too harsh to be using, especially if you are a student or a kid who doesn’t really know what’s going on and you are being referred to as illegal.”
“We are talking about real hunger and desperation of Mexican families,” Ancel said. “People don’t voluntarily split up their families in order to eat. They do it when they have to.”
Alejandra’s family lived in a one-room house in Chihuahua, Mexico before they immigrated. She said they lived in poverty, and that she and her brothers were not allowed to go out by themselves because of gangs. A gang burned the house to the ground shortly after the family moved to the United States, erasing all the photos and physical childhood memories from Mexico save for the blue plaid blanket Alejandra’s grandmother wrapped her in before she crossed the border.
Alejandra said many of the students she encounters are offended and confused by the language of the immigration debate.
“When they say ‘illegal immigrant’ I feel like they are saying that this person is illegal,” Alejandra said. “I think it’s just a little too harsh to be using, especially if you are a student or a kid who doesn’t really know what’s going on and you are being referred to as illegal.”
Eric Haas, senior fellow at the Rockridge Institute, a non-profit group in Berkeley, Calif., that analyzes political rhetoric based on cognitive science, said people tended to link social problems to illegal immigration.
“If we have unemployment it’s because immigrants are taking jobs; if there are environmental issues, it’s because immigrants are using resources,” Haas said.
He said the solutions to those problems were jobs with livable wages and proper environmental laws, not mass deportation and expensive walls.
“If we could secure the borders in Iraq, we would do that,” Hass said. “If we can’t do it there, we aren’t going to be able to do that here. I can’t think of a wall in history that worked.”
Alejandra said that every time her family was caught or sent back, it gave them more motivation to get back into the United States. She said the last time they crossed the border, they went before a judge who told them to stop going back and forth or they would never get residency in the United States; so, her family stayed in the United Sates until they got legal documentation.
Haas said that if the “illegal immigration problem” were called something different, different solutions would be possible. He suggested the term “economic refugees” would better describe the vast majority of people who are desperate enough to risk their lives and leave everything they have to come to the United States.
“How we think about things changes by the language we use,” Haas said.
The terms “illegal immigration” and “illegal alien” create subconscious stereotypes and overemphasize the criminal activity of immigrants, according to Haas. There are differences between criminals and lawbreakers. For example, we don’t call jaywalkers illegal walkers; we don’t call speeders illegal drivers.
