With immigration-reform advocates fasting on the National Mall for more than three weeks now (a first group of fasters was replaced by others yesterday), immigration reform is once again at the forefront of national consciousness here. The debate, of course, revolves around ‘undocumented immigrants’. Pathways to legalization? Border patrols? Fences? (Not to mention, how to refer to them? ‘Illegal immigrants’ has been banned for ages, already, due to its judgmental—and also grammatically inaccurate—nature. Similarly, ‘undocumented immigrants’ has been hotly debated as being inaccurate—technically they have documents, just not the ones they need, and they aren’t immigrants. So, ‘illegal aliens’?)
Who are these estimated 11 million ‘illegal aliens’, according to a Department of Homeland Security estimate? Estimates vary, of course, but by far the most, almost 7 million of them according to the DHS, are from Mexico. (That’s just a million less than the population of Switzerland.) Between 100’000 and 200’000—or, Basel—are from China. 620’000, according to the DHS, are from El Salvador. (That’s Frankfurt—or 10% of El Salvador itself.) Guatemala, Honduras, the Philippines, India, Ecuador, and Korea are among the other most frequently cited homelands of these ‘aliens’.
While estimates over who they are fluctuate, reasons for why they come remain constant—in search of new opportunities. A new country, a new life. A new community, a new identity. New environments, new prospects.
With pathways to legalization, this will of course be truer than ever before. But with these much-needed reforms (perhaps) on their way, it’s also worth remembering the other side of all immigration, whether ‘illegal’ or not. As New York Times Op-Ed columnist Randy Cohen recently wrote in the Times, “New opportunity is only one side of the immigrant story, its bright star. The other side, its black sun, is displacement and loss. […] There have been sufferers from manic-depression unable to come to terms with the immense struggle involved in burying the past, losing an identity and embracing a new life — as if bipolarity were just that, a double existence attempting to bridge the unbridgeable.”
He continues, “Immigration is reinvention. Lands of immigrants excise the anguish of the motherland. They invite the incomer to the selective forgetfulness of new identity.”
“Be free. Belong. Do not forget. Link the chains that made you.”