|
Caught in the Middle
"This time, when my friends ask me about immigration reform, I won’t lie. For me, there is a lot of gray area..."
By Antony Jaureguí
May 7, 2007
Listen
to this Commentary!
As a first generation Chicano youth, Youth Radio's Antony Jaureguí feels caught in the middle of the immigration debate. He feels the pressure to join rank with what appears as two opposing camps: "for" or "against" the immigrant community. Antony tries to appreciate the complexity of the debate - and how it relates to his own changing identity - in the midst of the pressure to "take sides."
YEAH, I LIED! I’m not really an immigrant. But I said I was for most of high school, just to fit in with my immigrant friends. I used to feel left out because I am a Mexican born in the U.S. So when my peers asked me where I was born, I would lie and say I was born in Mexico.
And now I’m the outsider again. This time, when my friends ask me about immigration reform, I won’t lie. For me, there is a lot of gray area; it’s not just black or white.
For the first two years of high school, I was politically active within the immigrant community on my campus. I only wanted to speak and read in Spanish. When I was in 9th grade, I passed out flyers and organized an event at my school about immigrants’ right to driver licenses.
Now I’m about to graduate from high school. The debate about immigration continues, but my relationship to it has shifted. I no longer feel embarrassed about being a US citizen, and I identify as Chicano because I was born in California, and as a Mexican by cultural origin.
Because I now hang out with ethnically diverse groups, I approach information differently. Instead of just blindly going along with the crowd, I do my homework about the politics behind immigration reform.
If you ask me to pick a side in the debate, I’d say I stand with the immigrant community. But I often feel like I’m forced to pick one of two extreme positions.
I don’t believe in amnesty for all undocumented immigrants, but if I say that within my community, I’m afraid people might get the impression that I’m in favor of building a giant wall at the border.
I tell my friends that I do worry about terrorists sneaking through the border, but at the same time, I appreciate the economic contributions brought by migrant labor. I wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for my parents taking the risk to travel North from Mexico.
I don’t want to be that Chicano Minute Man. But I do want the freedom to see this issue from many points of view. I won’t hold back from asking questions or challenging assumptions, which means I take a lot of heat from my peers when we debate about immigration in class.
Many political activists in this debate don’t believe there is an in-between when it comes to immigration. But I think that if the divide is bridged, we can achieve consensus. In my opinion, the role of a political activist is not just to shout drastic opinions, but also to consider the differing points of view and evolve over time.
- Antony Jaureguí is a high school senior Los Angeles. His story was produced by Youth Radio.
|
|
