American Dreams

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass, is patted on the back during a press conference in which he tried to gain support for comprehensive immigration legislation.  The bill, which would have given an estimated 12.5 million illegal immigrants a path towards legality, was later defeated in the Senate.

A Border Patrol Agent who declined to give his name looks over a group of immigrants found in a field outside Carrizo Springs, Tx. while other agents search for those who fled arrest.

Carl Segvich, a Republican Committeeman in the 11th Ward of Chicago and a Minuteman member, rolls up his American flag after a day of protesting illegal immigrating outside Chicago's Mexican Consulate.

Augustine, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, works on a horse farm outside Lexington, Ky.  He can to the United States eight years earlier so he could afford to pay for his mothers medical bills.

With their hands on their heads, a group of illegal immigrants heads out of the south Texas ranch where they were found hiding from the Border Patrol Agents who caught them, and the midday sun.

I sat in the backseat of a big, government-issue SUV as Jade Woodruff floored the throttle across the South Texas desert.  The sun had set a few hours ago, and the only things lighting our path were the truck’s high beams and a spotlight my colleague Nathan Weber was holding.  We hit a blind ditch and ripped the exhaust off the car, turning it into a throaty monster as it cut through the brush.  Woodruff was there looking for a group of illegal immigrants spotted moments earlier by another border patrol agent.  I was there with my camera trying to learn firsthand on the front line of the immigration debate.

A couple months before, I had begun my second summer covering politics and politicians on Capitol Hill.  I was working for Roll Call, a small but prestigious paper that covered every press conference and fresh rumor in halls of Congress.  Political fever over the immigration debate was heating up as senators and representatives of their respective parties dug trench lines facing each other.

Perhaps the biggest proponent of strict enforcement on illegal immigration was Colorado Rep. Thomas Tancredo, a Republican, who announced in 2005 that he would run for the presidency if no other candidate legitimately addressed the “illegal immigrant problem.”  In a speech, he said that President George W. Bush should “understand the threat illegal immigrants pose to this country.” 

In 2007, after officially announcing his bid for the presidency, Tancredo’s campaign aired an ad titled “Tough on Terror,” which depicted a fictional attack on a U.S. shopping mall, the antagonists having slipped through an undefended border.  Over imagery of an injured child in a wrecked train, a narrator stated, ”There are consequences to open borders beyond the 20 million aliens who have come to take our jobs ... the price we pay for spineless politicians who refuse to defend our borders against those who come to kill."  A month and seven days later, Tancredo withdrew himself from consideration for the Republican nomination and announced plans not to run for Congressional re-election.
    
On May 21, 2007, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., alongside Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., introduced a bill to Congress that would allow the estimated 12 million undocumented workers living in the United States “to earn the privilege of remaining here and working legally.”  Kennedy added, “Our values are tarnished when we allow 12 million human beings to live in the dark shadows of abuse as undocumented immigrants.”  Even with the support of President Bush, Kennedy’s proposed bill was defeated in the Senate on June 28, a little over a month after it was introduced.

I began to feel like all the opinions, all the positioning and all the proposed solutions were treating this segment of our population as if they were a statistic, some sort of arbitrary workforce demographic.  I wasn’t sure how I felt about the issue, but I knew, like everything else, it was an issue about human beings, and philosophically the most American issue at the forefront of the nation’s minds.

This country has always been a nation of immigrants, a cultural Diaspora of the downtrodden, impoverished and exiled.  Modern-day Central and South American immigrants are just the new wave in a long history of individuals and families looking for a new future in this country.  We (except for possibly the most persecuted group in our country, the American Indian) are part of this tradition; it is in our language, our food and our clothes.  It is what makes up every genetic and cultural trait that signifies who we are and how we live our lives.

In 2007, the Pew Center for Hispanic Research estimated that there were about 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States, and about 4.9 percent of all those working were undocumented. Of that population, 78 percent of undocumented immigrants come from Latin American countries, and of those, 56 percent are from Mexico.  Given these numbers, a little more than half of all Hispanic adults in the U.S. reported that they worry a family member, a close friend or they themselves could be deported.

While my opinions began to congeal, I headed southwest; my summer was at an end and I had a couple weeks before the start of my fall semester.  I wanted to see first hand, politics and statistics were jading me. 

Weber and I showed up at the Carrizo Springs Station, located strategically in the middle of nowhere, in south Texas, just as the morning shift of border patrol agents were headed out.  Weber was a long-time friend and a more experienced photographer; whenever a long drive or a sticky situation would present itself, we would team up for adventure and support. 

We rode with Agent Brian Demmit all day as he explained to us the details of what the immigrants do and what the agents do to stop them.  It can be quite an intricate game of cat and mouse; the agents start monitoring one river crossing, and the “coyotes,” or human traffickers, switch to another.  The agents find groups by catching their footprints on the dirt ranch roads that crisscross the region.  If they find footprints in and none out, they know the group is still in the field.  As the sun slipped below the horizon, we still hadn’t found any crossers. 

The day was over for Demmit and he wanted to head back to his wife.  He wanted us to experience a good capture and insisted we stay on for a second shift.  After 18 hours of seeing not much more than arid desert and a few footprints, we heard over the radio that there were footprints into a field and nothing out.  Agent Woodruff floored the throttle, and in moments we were on our first group.

The following spring I was enrolled in the capstone class of my journalism degree.  My first trip to the border had only whetted my appetite and I was more interested than ever in the national immigration discourse.  I continued work on my project, this time looking at the debate inside the U.S. as well as at its borders. 

My research took me to Chicago, where the Illinois chapter of the Minute Men was protesting in front of the Mexican Consulate and demanding that all illegal immigrants go home.  The Minute Men are an anti-illegal immigration group that goes so far as to post sentries along the U.S.-Mexico border. 

Carl Segvich, a Republican Committeeman in the 11th Ward of Chicago and Minuteman member, told me, “Everyone should be sovereign and we should visit each others countries, but we should not invade each other’s countries.  They’re invading our country in big numbers and throwing our culture upside down.”  The group called for a boycott of Mexican goods and services in an attempt to force illegal immigrants home.

My project later took me back to the border, where tempers and sentiments were a little less hostile.  I spent more time with the Border Patrol Agents on this trip and got to know one, Jim Clanihan, quite well.  He was sympathetic to the individuals he was charged to arrest, and he treated them as human beings, offered them water and joked with them in Spanish. 

“If I was to put myself in their shoes, I may do the same thing trying to get a better life for my family.  They’re human beings just like anyone else,” he said.
    
Later that month I met Augustine.  He works on a horse farm in Kentucky, taking care of the stables, feeding and medicating the horses, and tending to the grounds.  He came here illegally eight years ago, so that he could afford to feed and medicate his mother back in Mexico. 

He has carved out a good life for himself.  He lives in a house with his brother on the farm property, works seven days a week and plays guitar for a band in his church.  He says he likes America, but he still longs for his homeland.  He didn’t come here to be a burden on society, or to sell drugs or be in a gang; he came to support his family. 

“I’d prefer to be in my country with my mother,” he said. “I hope that some day I can see my mom alive.”

During his campaign, President Barack Obama promised to work to secure the U.S.-Mexican border.  On March 24, 2009 Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the administration would spend $700 million to help the Mexican government track the activities of drug cartels.  The money would also go toward beefing up other segments of border security but is primarily targeted at stemming drug violence along the border. 

During his campaign, Obama also promised to improve the immigration bureaucracy already in place, crack down on illegal employers, and create a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already living in the United States.  These ideas follow the same framework presented in the unsuccessful 2007 bill.  Aside from promised money to combat drug violence, Obama hasn’t yet taken any substantive move forward on his campaign promises.  

Regardless of the political or social iterations, this issue will continue to spark debate.  It affects the way we view healthcare, education, employment, the role of the state, the philosophical meaning of who we are as a nation. 

It asks the question, what is the American dream?  Is it a white picket fence, or the promise of being able to care for your sick mother?  Is it a country club, open only for those with the influence or money or heritage to get in? Or is it a refuge, an extended hand, a promise that somewhere in the world you will be accepted, regardless of color class or creed, and where you might even excel? 

Speaking to the Anti-Defamation League on May, 1 2007 Sen. Kennedy said, “We face a critical choice – between a future as a nation of immigrants, or a future measured by higher walls and longer fences.”