This editorial originally appeared in the Metro Times. Read in full here.
Here we are again, enduring yet another election season filled with inflammatory political rhetoric and campaign ads attacking immigrants. Attacks that seem to be everywhere. I can’t even casually scroll through social media without being traumatized.
The tactic of scapegoating and vilifying immigrants is far from new. But the intensity of these attacks, and the crazed turn things have recently taken, is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.
I came to the United States from Mexico more than 40 years ago, moving here at the age of 4, when my farmworker parents brought our family to Michigan. For most of my childhood, we weren’t documented. Like the overwhelming majority of immigrants to this country, we worked extremely hard, obeyed the law, paid our taxes, and helped sustain the communities we became part of.
Life wasn’t easy. After leaving Mexico, we split our time between Michigan and Florida, following the harvests. At age 11, I joined my parents working in the fields, doing the back-breaking work of picking tomatoes, peppers, apples, oranges, and more. Always on the move, I would attend two or three different school districts every year. But having a better life meant receiving a good education, and so we persevered, despite the obstacles and discrimination we faced.
When I was 16, President Ronald Reagan’s amnesty program went into effect, putting me on a path to citizenship. As a result, eight years later, I was able to cast my first vote in the 1996 presidential race, and have been doing so in every election since then.