A topic that I am very passionate about that I have seen many current issues about is immigration policies. A fact I have seen is that across Ohio, Franklin County has more immigrants facing deportation than any other Ohio county in the state, with a total number of 4,531 pending cases. In comparison to other Ohio counties, Hamilton County has 3,624 cases and Cuyahoga County has 1,100 cases. This is a very sensitive issue to me, as one of my best friends’ parents and extended family in Franklin County are all going through their immigration process right now. This is a very scary process because for their final immigration interview they have to go to Tijuana, Mexico and if they are approved they can come back to the US, but if not they must stay in Mexico. This is very unfair because this can happen to people who have been in good standing with the government and who have lived here and raised families here their entire life.
The impact of these numbers specifically in Columbus is very upsetting. The impact on many families and friends is heartbreaking. An example of how horrible it is is if my friend’s mom is deported. She is 37 and has lived in the US since she was 16, she has raised 4 children here and is the sole caregiver for them. If she was deported, there would be no one to take care of the kids and all of their family’s lives would basically be ruined. I cannot imagine how many of these 4,351 cases have similar situations to this. This can be categorized as systemic injustice because this is a deeply ingrained practice against a lot of times in this case the Hispanic community that has been going on for a long time and still progressing today. A big factor that led to this was when our last president referred to Mexicans as “rapists” and that they “bring the drugs into the US”. This made it systemic because it made many of his followers have more racial prejudice towards anyone who looks Hispanic. It is well known that we need a change in this unfair immigration system but it seems that all presidents no matter their political affiliation do not make immigration politics the first choice.
An important topic that I can connect this back to in-class is Lisa Ko’s novel The Leavers. I think an important thing to note is that immigration in the United States is just not a Latin American issue, it happens to all sorts of different cultures (see link below). It is normal to commonly think of Hispanic people when thinking about US immigration policies, but not understanding that it is not only them, is a reason why the immigration system is so messed up, to begin with. Her book lays this out for the reader and allows them to follow the story of a young boy which can reach people’s emotions and allow them to connect with the novel in a way and tie it back to US politics to be able to have a more educated stance on the topic.
Links: http://trac.syr.edu
https://asiasociety.org/northern-california/not-just-latino-issue-undocumented-asians-america
Hello.
I come from a family of immigrants myself. I live in franklin county as well and I never knew Franklin county deported immigrants. It is definitely shocking to hear Franklin county deports more immigrants compared to other Ohio counties. Deportation sounds like a scary concept especially if a immigrant family was innocent or did nothing wrong. Not all immigrants are horrible people. I hope the stereotype of immigrants being horrible people gets replaced with a more positive image.