One word, many meanings
Published 3:40 pm Wednesday, June 20, 2012
First there was the Time magazine cover story, released last week, titled “We Are Americans — Just Not Legally.”
Then there was President Barack Obama’s announcement on Friday that he would use an executive order to cease the deportation of many illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children.
And finally, yesterday, there was the release of the Pew Research Center’s report, “The Rise of Asian Americans.”
If a single thing can be taken away from this flurry of news, it’s that immigration isn’t a single thing. For starters, take the Time article, written by Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who revealed last year that he is an undocumented immigrant. He came to America as a 12-year-old and didn’t find out his legal status until he applied for a driver’s license at age 16.
He often gets asked about his ethnicity. People hear he’s an illegal immigrant. They see his name. They assume: Mexican. He’s not. He’s Filipino.
Misconceptions like that can breed misunderstanding.
We saw other types of misconception after Obama’s Friday announcement. Under his plan, the U.S. won’t enforce deportation for about 800,000 people here illegally. A number that large can cause a gut reaction. It may sound like a free pass for everyone.
Not the case. To make the cut, the individual has to have moved here before they were 16, have lived here for five years or longer, completed some schooling or military service, not have a criminal record and be under the age of 30. Vargas, who has faced no enforcement action since revealing his status, still doesn’t qualify to stay. He’s 31.
The change comes on the heels of a spike in deportations. During Obama’s first three years in office, the U.S. deported 1.6 million people, according to Time. By comparison, 1.2 million people were deported during George W. Bush’s entire eight years in office.
The focus on illegal immigration also has blurred the face of immigrants. Many stories stress our border to the south. Of course, immigration isn’t confined to one country or ethnicity — far from it, as the Pew Research Center makes clear.
According to its report, Hispanics no longer are the largest group coming to the U.S. They were supplanted by Asian Americans in 2010.
That year, about 430,000 Asians arrived here, compared to 370,000 Hispanics. The change can be attributed to increases in deportations and a rising demand for highly skilled and highly educated labor.
At least those are some of the reasons given in the 108-page report. The actual truth is, of course, more complex. No surprise there.
