Project Vision 21

Francisco Miraval

Last week, I was invited by a local school in Denver to give a 15-minute presentation about immigration. As I said to the audience of mostly religious and community leaders, it would have been easier for me to explain Einstein’s theory of relativity in a foreign language than trying to explain the current immigration situation is such a short time.

I believe it is easier to understand all the complexities of Greek mythology than trying to understand the mysteries of current immigrant laws.

For that reason, I spent the 15 minutes given to me to share three reasons why I decided not to talk about immigration anymore in spite of the importance of the issue. Of course, I will still accept invitations to share ideas about this topic.

First, I do not speak about immigration due to historical reasons. The phenomenon of people moving from one place to another is as old a humanity. In fact, due to migration, humanity is no longer living in just a remote corner of Africa, or, if you prefer, we are no longer living just outside the doors of Eden.

We ignore our own immigration history. For example, in Colorado, where I live, schools practically do not teach anything about the early presence of Hispanics (Mexicans and Spaniards) in this state. In fact, Hispanics arrived in Colorado 250 years before the area become part of the United States.

When we ignore the historical context of immigration, we greatly distort the issue. Therefore, I prefer to about the topic.

Second, I do not talk about immigration due to linguistic reasons. I believe the vocabulary and the ideas we use talk about immigration, that is, the narrative, has been already decided for us. We are forced to use that narrative regardless of whatever position we may have about immigration.

A recent study of newspapers in the United States revealed that for each positive mention of immigrants in the print media there are ten negative mentions in those newspapers. Many of those stories include words as “illegal,” “alien,” problem,” “crisis,” “invasion,” “war,” and “battle.”

The negative attitude towards immigrants is nothing new. Another study revealed American media had published negative stories about immigrants for more than 150 years.

The prevalence of such attitude makes difficult and perhaps even impossible to have an open, sincere, and productive debate about immigration. Therefore, I prefer not to talk about this issue.

Finally, I do not talk about immigration for existential reasons. I think one of the most prevalent elements in the debate about immigration is the dehumanization of immigrants. I also believe that process of dehumanization is possible because we have been dehumanized ourselves.

Dehumanization is real. Anybody needing a proof should turn the TV on and watch how people are presented in the commercials.

We need to re-humanize ourselves, that is, we need to recover our own history and free ourselves from pre-imposed narratives. Then, we can talk about immigration. In the meantime, all dialogue seems to be irrelevant.