El Paso Unveiled: Humanizing the Immigrant Experience Beyond Stereotypes

El Paso's vibrant heartbeat and its people's soulful stories have long been overshadowed by the stark narrative of immigration politics. As someone deeply rooted in this border community, I take you through a journey that challenges the biases and stereotypes facing immigrants, particularly in places like El Paso. It's a narrative often twisted by misconceptions and racial prejudices—distorting the truth about the impact of immigration on crime and society. With an invitation to look beyond the color of one's skin, I share experiences that paint a truer picture, aiming to reshape the dialogue around those who cross borders in pursuit of dreams and a better tomorrow.

Shining a light on the human aspect of immigration, this episode unravels the complex dimensions of this social phenomenon—from economic implications to the push and pull factors that drive individuals to make life-altering decisions. By intertwining my own immigration story with the data-driven findings from reputable sources, I confront the fallacy linking immigrants with criminality. This isn't just a talk; it's an awakening to the rich, individual tales woven into the fabric of communities like El Paso, stories that deserve to be heard and acknowledged for their truth and humanity. Join me as we advocate for a perspective shift, viewing immigrants not as a monolith but as a diverse array of people with aspirations and potential, much like our own.

Enter a world of fear, resilience, and generational trauma in "The Devil That Haunts Me". Follow Isabella and Julitza as they confront their demons in a tale of suspense, mystery, and the supernatural.

Explore the first seven chapters here

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Oh we could, we could fly. Welcome to this new season of the Habit Cup of Jahani podcast. So I want to title this new season that I'm embarking on with I'm Growing, so this is going to be the season of growth and that's what I'm going to share with you throughout the season. So I thank you for coming over here and sitting with me and I hope you enjoy All right, folks, on this episode, we are going to talk about a subject that have seen its fair share of headlines, and my spidey senses are telling me that it will have even more so as we progress towards November 2024.

Speaker 1: 0:54

Because this is a subject that gets used quite a lot by candidates in at all echelons to gain votes and yet is still something that has progressed very little. So the way I see it, folks, is that this subject is used and abused, but no one really has or is willing to implement a solution and, I would say, a humane solution to it. Because it's very easy to demonize others, demonize folks that we don't really know, we don't understand, those that we deem outsider based on geographical location. That's very easy to do, and it's very easy to paint an us versus them and get the regular folk like me to be pitted against somebody else just based off of that very simplistic dilemma. And if you guessed that we were talking about immigration, you guessed right. Are you ready? Dang it, let's go, all right.

Speaker 1: 2:20

So, if you don't know, I have a house in El Paso. I've lived in El Paso currently not living there but I love El Paso to death. That is like I am an El Pasonian, you know, even though I have lived in so many places and that's now where I came from, I have rebaptized myself as an El Pasonian. I just I love the place and the perception that people have of that place is wild to me sometimes, just because it's a border town. So El Paso borders Mexico.

Speaker 1: 3:00

If you didn't know that, if you've been living on the rock and it's one of the border towns in the Southwest border, and those that are not from there, that have never lived there, they tend to have this very skewed point of view of the place and I think that point of view it has this negative connotation just because of the negative connotation that people have of immigrants that come through that border, because usually immigrants that come through that border right, they're not white looking immigrants, they're brown or black folks that come through that border and, as we know, they're not white looking immigrants. Our biases in the United States are very ingrained when it comes to to raise and the color of someone's skin. That they're so ingrained that sometimes we don't even know it, that we act a certain way based on on the color that we see on someone's skin. And I think some of that negative Connection has to do with that, because we have gotten so comfortable with demonizing Folks a melanated folks, that is, just have become something that we do without even thinking about it. So I think some of that, some of those biases, come from that and, like I said before, the immigration Situation has so many intersectionality, so many ties that I will need to have several episodes when it comes to that. But it has economic ties, it has geopolitical ties, it has Geographical ties, it has diplomatic ties you name it. It has so many ties and it's interconnected with different nations, different countries, different cultures, because as human beings we have traversed the world.

Speaker 1: 5:06

If you look back in history, we're not where we started. That's one and two. We have all migrated from various points into where we are today and the thing about humanity, if you look at nature is that we will go to places when we can survive and where we can prosper. And, and something that I have already said is that I wish people will understand that the decision to leave what you know Into somewhere that you don't know it's not one that comes likely, and I know this from experience because, as human beings, we don't want to get out of our comfort zones, we don't want to have to start over, we don't want to have to learn a new language and be embarrassed by the whole learning process and all of that. So when we make that decision to uproot ourselves and uproot our family, it's, it's something that doesn't come likely, is something that came through a lot of hardship and, at the end of the day, is something that Someone will say fine, I will sacrifice my discomfort and all of this for either myself or Myself and my family so we can have a life, or so that way we can have a better life.

Speaker 1: 6:35

Okay, and I know this just because I went through it myself, and I know this from as well, having lots of conversations with other people that are immigrants, that have made the passage Into another country that is not their home country, and this is not just happening in the United States. I have family members that immigrated into Europe, into Alemania and Germany and in other countries Canada, tambien, uk, you know and all of that just because where we were at it was a nearly impossible To get ahead, to prosper. And then, when it comes to having children, we we already saw that hardship as well, overwhelming the, the children as well. So we made that decision. So I have family members really in a lot of places Because of that, because of immigration, because we wanted to Help our, our next generation, our children, so that way they can have better access to Education, better access to a health care, better access to all those things that you need to live and prosper as a human being.

Speaker 1: 7:51

But, like I said, there are a lot of biases when it comes to immigration and to an immigrant. That's what I want to tackle in this episode, just because it's such a big issue. And this is when we can actually say that something is complex, because it is, and it's not as simplistic as politicians make it out to be, because it's not. And if you go through the threads that tie it all together, you may see that some threads go back to the countries that are complaining about these immigrants running over borders, but nevertheless, let's go into the economic impact of immigration, because this is one of the most prevalent misconceptions. I see on social media quite a lot how the whole immigrants are here to take our jobs and immigrants are here to take all our resources and stuff like that. Essentially, in a nutshell, that immigrants are a burden on the US economy. But according to a report from the National Academies of Sciences, engineering and Medicine, immigrants bring vital skills that complement those skills of those born in the United States and because of this, they actually boost innovation and help to create new jobs. And in a study done in 2017 by the New American Economy, it found that immigrants started more than a quarter of new businesses in the United States and 45% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by either immigrants or their children.

Speaker 1: 9:40

Another thing that I get from comments when I say that I live in El Paso or I'm from El Paso, is the crime rate, because brown immigrants or black immigrants usually people have a connotation with violence, with savagery, with crime rate, and once again, that is tied as well to the racial biases that we have, and we have racial biases, racism and the United States is very prevalent. There's a lot of it as well in Latin America. But when it comes to Latin America because we're so mixed in those countries that it doesn't look like it looks in the United States In Latin America it's a little bit different, it's not as blatant, but it's certain things that we do that we say that paints a picture that the lighter a person is, the better they are, and it just goes with mejora la raza. It goes with we have to straighten our hair right. It goes into marry somebody that is lighter than you. It goes into a lot of those things because we have been colonized by a European folk that we feel we need to emulate them in order to be better.

Speaker 1: 11:04

So because of that that racial bias in Latin America and that racial bias here in the United States we see the connotation happen between immigrants and crime and we automatically assume that immigrants are going to increase the crime rate. And the thing that doesn't help is that when an immigrant breaks the law, headlines are all over the place and it's almost like for those people that have this connotation of immigrants equals higher crime rate, it's almost like those headlines validate their point of view right away. But then those headlines of immigrants doing like great things. You don't really see them very often. So it's almost like the news, the media. It's also aligned to that same bias, which just helps to ingrain this idea even more in society. But multiple studies have shown this to not be true. I have here Cato Institute found that in Texas, which has the highest immigrant population, hello, the crime rate among immigrants was significantly lower than that of native born Americans and that there's little evidence to suggest immigrants commit more crime than those born in the United States.

Speaker 1: 12:43

While there's not really a big study and I will dare say that sometimes certain news media, they will show studies or things that will accommodate their point of view, that will validate their point of view as opposed to one that shows a different point of view, and they will also show immigrants doing crimes and doing heinous things, because it's more sensational, it drives more clicks, it drives more viewership, it gets people angry, excited, violent, you know. So they're going to go back to that channel and they're going to see more of it, because that is addictive, folks, you know. So I would say just be careful with getting yourself all riled up of some things, especially when you only consume from one source and also, especially if you haven't bothered to look for, read or have conversations with someone that thinks differently than you, I would say, for those that have this perception, I would say go find somebody that is not from here and get to know them as a human being. Get to know them as a person and you may find yourself finding out that those headlines are not very true. And don't try to validate your bias by saying, oh well, this immigrant is just one of the good ones, one of the exceptions, because then you know, you just like attaching yourself to your point of view and then we see that quite a lot, right, particularly in racism.

Speaker 1: 14:34

You're like oh well, that's just one of the good ones, you know, that's just one of the good ones. Everybody else is bad, that's just one of the good ones. And remember, nothing is as simplistic as that. And just look at the population that you come from. Are all of you good and just a few are bad? Or vice versa? No, right, we're human beings. We're so many different shades of good and bad. There's a whole spectrum of it. You know, we have a little bit of everything.

Speaker 1: 17:16

It really is what we action as people and it really is why we action the things that we action as people as well, and some of it has to do with our environment, some of it has to do with our mental health, some of it has to do with being pushed into a corner and not having anything else, anything left that is good within our environment, and some of it is genetics. But I will say very few things are genetic, like very few people. I did an abnormal psychology class a long time ago, so this is what I mean when I say genetics that very few people are like pathological liars. You know very few people are narcissists, even though we'd love to call out almost everyone as a narcissist right and abnormal psychology. When I took it, the professor exclaimed that actually very few people are born that way. The majority of the people is just a regular old behavior or mental aptitude that we have or what we have gotten away with. That people let us get away with. But very few people are actually genetically disposed to having those kind of narcissistic behavior or pathological liars and things of that nature abnormal psychology, things Moving on.

Speaker 1: 18:47

What I often get because of my path to immigration was a whole sit and wait kind of path of immigration where I had to wait quite a long time before my paperwork came through, and in between I had to redo paperwork, redo interviews, go see doctors, go see this and this and that, until finally the stars lined up and I was able to come to the United States with a green card, with a residency card. But not every path is the same way, because the comments that I get is like well, you're one of the good immigrants, you know, oh, and I hate it, I cringe whenever I hear that from somebody. Well, you're one of the good immigrants. I will say I'm one of the lucky ones that didn't live in a country where my parents didn't have to drag me through a border because people were about to kill us or we only had enough to live on for one day, and after that that's it. We would have just either starved to death or died right there.

Speaker 1: 19:57

So it's not as simplistic as well. Why don't you just get your paperwork correctly and then come legally? It's not. It's just not that easy. The reality is that the US immigration system, like I said at the beginning, is just fraught with the backlogs, with legal hurdles, with quotas that they got to make in order to give people legal entry and then a citizenship process that can take years. So remember that it's like everything for me to get that card and I got it way later. I had to wait like five years I think I don't remember that well, but it was a long time where I was without my mom and my dad and my grandma, who was very old and she had her own health issues, was the one that was taking care of my sister and I, and we were a handful to take care. You know what I'm saying. And we are into Dominican Republic and she can't work, so we depend on the little that my mom is making out of factoring the US to send to us, and then she also had to send extra money whenever we had to redo certain paperwork and all of that. So either way, it's not easy.

Speaker 1: 21:16

So it really is what that family or people is able to do at the time when they meet their need or when they meet that deadline of like this is it for me and my family? We can't go any longer here, we have to move, we have to do something. So whenever they cross that path, depending on what they have in their environment available to them monetarily, financially, whatever that is really what will determine which path they will go. But not all of us can have the luxury to wait, as my family did, or had the luxury, the luxury to really put money together and things of that nature and put it all together, so that way, eventually the kids can also get paper. Sometimes it's just people don't have that luxury or people don't have family Like my mom and dad had my grandma that they can leave us with. So sometimes they don't have family members that they can rely on and do that. Sometimes leaving the kids on their own behind will put those kids in a predicament that they don't want them to be in. So they have to cross with their kids, they have to bring the kids over, you see.

Speaker 1: 22:34

So I wish people would look at immigrants the same way that you would want other people to look at you as a human being that struggles every day, as a full human being that have your very unique situation, that you have your very unique hurdles that you go through every day of your life, as opposed to just painting people that come across the border with one brush when, as human beings, we all are very complex and we are so different while at the same time being so similar. So I just wish that people will see immigrants in that manner and don't demonize them, and I think if we start doing that, then a lot of these issues may sort themselves out, because now we are seeing these quote, unquote, air quotes here outsiders as human, just like us, and then maybe perhaps we will go after making laws that help everyone in the process, all right. So, oh, this is another thing, this is another bias that I hear quite a lot. Well, immigrants come over and they take all the public benefits.

Speaker 1: 23:58

First of all, people, if you're illegal and you don't have paper, you cannot get benefits you need. I can't believe it. I, oh, my goodness, I hear this so often. But it's like, if you don't have paper, you cannot, you just you cannot. You cannot ask for public assistance, and most of the time, illegal immigrants are so afraid of going into any government office folks that they go through certain things, such as violence, such as crimes being committed on them, such as employers that harm them as well, and because they're so afraid of being sent back that they don't go to any governmental office to seek help. So, if anything right, if we're talking about illegal immigrants here, they hardly, hardly like this person will have to be a mastermind in creating fake documents and something like that to be able to get government assistance. And when it comes to those like me when because I used to have a green card that are legal immigrants, it really. Once again, the Cato Institute found that 39% or less utilize public benefits than those born in the United States 39% or less. Okay, so just think about that. Okay, think about that. That always blew my mind when people were like, ah, they're taking all our benefits. No, no, no, they're not, no, they're not. And if anything, just from experience, I don't speak for every immigrant, right, but because of the group that I'm in, right, and because I'm a human being just like you all, and I tend to go towards those groups that I have a lot in common with Most of us really come over here with dreams of having our own business and having our own independence and then being able to work on things that we love and like and make a living out of it.

Speaker 1: 26:09

And those are the dreams that I came with, that my parents came with and even my sister, right, and from those conversations that I have had with other immigrants, they came with that same dream, because in our own countries we would not have been able to open up these business, we will not have been able to make a living out of doing something that we love. Because of the sacrifice that my mom and dad made, I have an LLC where I can publish my own books and, hopefully, publish other marginalized authors. My sister has a gluten-free bakery that does something that she loves. She has always loved cooking and now she does that for a living. These are the dreams and aspirations that we came here with and that other immigrants that I have talked to came up here with. But are there, like those that have nefarious reasons? Sure, sure they are, just like there's native-born Americans that have nefarious reasons as well, that like to take advantage of a system. Yes, there's bad people in every group, but to put the onus and the spotlight on just one, it's very unfair when that group, when it comes to racial, has the least of those people.

Speaker 1: 27:37

And then, lastly, the contributions, the diversity and contributions that immigrants bring to this country. It adds on, it doesn't take away, it adds on. We're talking about food. We're talking about music, technology, science. We're adding to the American life, we're adding to this rich tapestry.

Speaker 1: 28:07

Various immigrants have been awarded novel prices, representing the United States, and have had, like, big contributions of science and technology. For example, albert Einstein I would say that he's like the most famous immigrant that we have, born in Germany. He came into the United States and he won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the photoelectric effect, who was crucial in establishing quantum theory. And then, oh, by the way, we have Mario Molina de Mexico. He was one of the scientists who discovered the hole in the ozone layer and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in atmospheric chemistry. See.

Speaker 1: 28:50

And then we have Abdul Salam, born in Pakistan, and he won the Nobel Prize for his contribution to electro-weak unification. We also have Sir Ahmad Sawali, from Egypt, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in femtochemistry. Don't ask me what that is, but he won it. You see what I'm saying. And soon you will have Johani Ortega, born in the Dominican Republic and getting the prize for literature. You see, you see. So all I'm asking you to do, folks, is to paint us with the human brush you paint yourself with. That is all, nothing more, nothing less. All right, I'll see you on the next episode. Bye, oh, we can, we can fly. Thank you so much for listening. I want to hear from you. Leave me a comment, do a rating if you can on the podcast, share it with somebody you love, but, most importantly, come back. See you next time. Bye.