The popular social construct “immigrants are a problem” is an enigma to me. To vilify the very people who harvest our food and build our homes is tragic and ironic. We eat the food and enjoy the newly built homes. Indeed, we need workers, they need jobs. But often there is more to a story, lifetimes more.
From 1900 to 2006, there have been 162 coups d’état in Latin America.
Many immigrants, their parents, or their grandparents have lived under fascist governments. They know how bad it can get. Men in military uniforms at your doorstep holding guns and with the power to decide your future. I’m describing the daily activities of an ICE agent. But some of our neighbors know all too intimately that political violence can become extreme beyond the wildest imaginations of our friendly neighborhood Trump lovers — criminalization of protest, curfews, youth programs, mass detentions, camps, slavery, disappeared children, extrajudicial killings, cartels reigning free. In Buenos Aires they literally dumped “activists”' bodies into the ocean from aircraft!
Presently, we are bearing witness to the removal of the very community members who are most familiar with what political violence can become.
Not only do we need immigrants for our economy to function — and of course we should pay well and give workers rights — but we need their voices to guide us towards a democratic future. It can get bad enough to where remembering the truth of what happened has become a source of dignity like for the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo who still confront the refusal of what happened by a government that happens to be allied with Trump. But for us, today, there is no better mentor for how to nurture democracy than our Latin American immigrant neighbors with real-life experience!
We are all fools!
Jake Trimble, Salt Lake City
