Over the summer I was an intern at the Camden Center for Law and Social Justice, a non-profit law firm that does domestic violence and immigration work. I spent a lot of my time doing country condition research on the factors that drive immigration and translating client interviews. The film hit very close to home with me because these were situations I was familiar with. I have met dozens of people who made that same crossing and suffered through the same struggles.
My time at the Camden Center left me highly familiar with the violence and poverty that causes people to flee their homes. Much of my research focused on the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18, the gangs responsible for terrorizing migrants on the way up to the border. Since most of our clients were interested in claiming asylum, I encountered a lot of stories about the havoc these gangs would wreak in the central American countries where their presence was strongest.
The story Maria told of a girl getting raped, shot, and having her breasts cut off was not uncommon at all. I had clients who were familiar with a gang in their home town murdering two parents who could not pay their extortion fees and leaving their infant child lying in his parent’s blood.
I had a client whose sister was tortured and murdered by a gang who threatened to do the same to her whole family. These gangs are responsible for massive amounts of child rape, extortion, murder, torture, femicide and any other violent crime one could possibly think of. One thing the film taught me was just how much this abuse continues as people travel up to the border.
I have my doubts that immigration is a net positive for the countries receiving and for the countries people are leaving. I don’t know if helping people to get out of Honduras makes Honduras better, or even if helping people leave Denmark makes Denmark better. But my experiences have taught me something that the film really reinforced for me. The major point that economic or nationalistic arguments about immigration frequently miss is that immigrating to the U.S is by far the best option for the immigrants themselves in almost all cases. Whether that creates a moral burden for our country to accept them or not is debatable, but what is undeniable is that every one of my clients and all of the people from the movie would have marginally better lives if they lived in the United States.
Every political party and ideology has a way to respond to this notion, but I would encourage especially those on the right to keep this in mind. I’m not saying that they should change their policy preferences after recognizing this fact. (I may agree with most if not all of their positions) I simply believe that any analysis of immigration as an issue, especially an analysis of immigration from countries where organized crime, judicial ineffectiveness, corruption, lack of security, poverty, and so on make living there hell for the average citizen should include a consideration of the realities on the ground for those who desire to immigrate.