Listening to authentic voices on the immigration issue

by Julio Ricardo Varela

There is a running joke within the Latino community that all we do is talk about immigration.

Perhaps so, since the topic dominated the national conversation for years. Yet, as a friend told me once, “Immigration might not be the most important topic for Latinos today, but it is the soul that currently defines us. We are all bound to it, since we either know someone affected or we know of someone who knows someone. It still matters, and it will always will.”

For me, the story of immigration reform didn’t really resonate until a 2006 spring day in Chicago while attending an education conference in the Loop. As I walked outside of the lobby, I was literally swept up by thousands of people chanting in both English and Spanish about the need for reform. Even without a smart phone or Twitter or Facebook, I bought a disposable camera and snapped pictures. It was an day I would never forget. Latinos had arrived.

I would have never thought that the immigration debate would still be limping along seven years later.

Activists thought President Bush's promises would materialize into a bill, but that didn’t happen. I thought that when Latinos stood behind President Obama in the 2008 election because of a promise to pass reform in the first term, the reform would pass. President Obama didn't deliver, and when he admitted it in 2012, voters gave him a second chance. They are still waiting.

It is now 2013, and the country is still not close to passing reform. In the meantime, the lives of real people, both those living in the shadows and those who are not, are being put on hold.

Which is why immigration still matters, and why it is a narrative that must continued to be told.

The current partisan story (Democrats are good for Latinos, Republicans are just anti-Latino nativists) is too simplistic, and it is one of the reasons why I believe The Stream is primed and poised to amplify the real stories of the immigration debate.

Those real stories of immigration are not just those of committed activists who stage actions across borders to publicize the news that under the current Obama administration, more than 1.7 million people have been deported. It is not just the stories of the tireless groups that continue to push for reform. As a Digital Producer for The Stream, we plan to explore other overlooked realities, such as:

• How thousands of unaccompanied minors get deported each year, many of whom do not receive legal representation.
• How some of the safest cities in America are “southern border towns,” even though mass media and politicians continue to hammer the calls for increased militarization of the border.
• How private prisons are basically being contracted by the government to keep immigration detention centers full.
• How immigration is not solely just a “Latino” issue and how the mainstream media overlooks other groups as if they don’t exist.

In the last few years, I have seen the real faces of these stories, all through social media. There are those who see these stories as critical ones, and those who think these stories do nothing to paint a fuller picture of the immigration issue. The online voices that speak to these issues are passionate and unfiltered. You won’t see them at the table of the Sunday talk shows, but you will see them contribute to The Stream, and become an integral part of our community.

Because in the end, immigration does indeed matter. It is our country’s soul, a story that needs to be told completely.