Donald Trump is not the problem. The real problem is that there are apparently millions of Americans who agree with Trump.
Soon after announcing his bid for the presidency, Trump made one of many controversial statements in regards to Mexican immigrants. Trump said, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.”
And yes, Trump did receive a lot of backlash.
But what is even more disturbing than his discriminatory comment, is that the comment brought about a surge of support for Trump among people who agree with him.
A couple of months ago, my father was standing in the customer service line at Walmart in Goshen, Ind. My dad is a Mexican American and it was obvious that he was not the only Latino in that customer service line. As a white man walked past the line, he loudly said, “What is this? The immigration line?”
Latinos in the U.S. face discrimination like this every day because of the issue of illegal immigration. But I can understand how someone who is uneducated about the history of Latinos in the U.S. can share Trump’s views because of common assumptions about illegal immigrants. It is often said that “Mexican” immigrants steal American jobs, do not pay taxes, and want to impose the Spanish language on others.
Perhaps if the American public was more accurately informed about the Latino community (which is not all “Mexican,” but rather consists of people from various Latin American countries), then fewer people would agree with someone like Donald Trump.
The first step in becoming educated about the immigration issue is realizing that not all Latinos are undocumented immigrants. The regions most heavily populated with Latinos in the U.S. are in the West and South. Up until the 1840s, most of the western and southern U.S. was Mexico. The movement of Americans to the west culminated in 1848 when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed and the U.S. annexed the last of Mexican territory above the Rio Grande. Mexicans living above the Rio Grande were given the choice to either move south and remain a part of Mexico, or stay in their land and become U.S. citizens.
Mexican Americans then began to face discrimination and still do to this day because they are stereotyped as undocumented immigrants despite the fact that they are U.S. citizens. Many other Latinos are also citizens because they are American born or because, like my father, they applied for citizenship and received it after years of waiting and paying a lot of money to file the paperwork.
Another misperception is that Latino immigrants steal jobs, while history shows that the waves of Latino immigrants coming to the U.S. came during times of labor shortages. During both World War I and World War II, American companies struggled to find labor due to the absence of American men who had gone off to war. Companies sought to hire immigrants and during World War II, the U.S. even made an agreement with Mexico to give temporary work permits to Mexicans so that they could work in factories and fields in the U.S. This agreement, known as the bracero program, made a way for Mexicans to come to the U.S. and many stayed, some even becoming U.S. citizens over time.
To this day, Latinos come to the U.S. in response to labor shortages. In the 1990s, Elkhart County saw a growth in its Latino population as the recreational vehicle industry sought out immigrant workers.
Last August, Trump retweeted an attack on Jeb Bush that said, “Who cares that he speaks Mexican, this is America, English!”
The tweet was referring, in its own disparaging way, to the Spanish language. Some Americans believe that Latinos refuse to speak English, but the truth is that some people simply lack the resources to learn the language.
In the city of Goshen, where Latinos compose about 30 percent of the population, the demand for English classes is high. Goshen College recently began offering a 12-week English course for $300. The classes take place on Monday through Thursday evenings. There are about 60 Latinos enrolled in the course and the wait list for the next course is 50 and growing.
One Latina enrolled in the course was a bank teller for 15 years in her home country, but is working in a factory in the U.S. because she does not know English well enough to work at a better job. A full-time, factory working mother would not go home, cook dinner for her family and then go to a late-night English class if she did not want to learn.
I would like to believe that people support Trump not because they are cruel and hate Latinos, but because they are simply uneducated about Latinos. But Donald Trump is not the problem. The American public simply needs to take a moment to truly see their Latino neighbors for who they really are: people.
