Comparison of Race and Immigration

For several months now, mainstream media has been consistently carried the news of the progression of about 4,000 migrants mainly from Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala as they try to get into the United States. A good number has reached the Tijuana which is at the border with Mexico and an immigration battle is looming. The move has angered US President Donald Trump who tweeted earlier in April that the caravan “better be stopped before it gets there” (Romero, Ramos, & Silva). This essay compares the issues of race and immigration as mentioned in the film The House we Live in and the current immigration struggles by members of the immigrants caravan.

The House we Live in which is the title of episode 3 of the 3-part documentary titled Race- The Power of an Illusion states that race is not about one’s biological make up but it is a definition that resides in economics, politics and culture (RACE - THE POWER OF AN ILLUSION- Episode Three: The House We Live In). Essentially, all people are the same, but political leaders and decision-makers in various countries create differences between races to help them gain assert that people having certain physical traits such as hair color, skin color and other superficial traits are different from the rest who do not look like them. It is this creation or shaping of race that has led some countries to loot resources of other countries, acquire a false power over other groups and basically act in a discriminative manner.

The main factors pushing such large numbers of immigrants to seek asylum in the US is the upsurge in rate of gang related murders, youths being forced to join gangs, and hard economic times in countries such as Honduras. The film shows that race ought not to be the main factor causing divisions among people. It has been increasingly hard to define people by their race owing to the inability to define where people of varied mixed ancestry belong. For instance, in some states in the United States one would be considered black by having an eight of black ancestry, others a sixteenth and yet others considered one to be black by having any black ancestry.

There has been threat and stringent policies to curb immigration crisis in the US. They even have been labelled as criminal just as an excuse to deport them back to their native nations. There has been a proposal to build a Mexican wall to curb illegal immigration. Even with such a measure, the immigrants still will find ways in to US soils asserting rightly that being of a different race from white does not make one a criminal and that is not in anybody’s choice to be born bearing certain traits that put one into a race.

Those born on US soils by immigrant parents also face policies that seek to bar them from acquiring US nationality. Currently in the US, there is a policy that an immigrant has to prove to have been on US soils for at least twelve consecutive years in order to be considered for a US nationality application.

Nations surrounding US have been threatened by US that all forms of relief to them may be cut off if they continue to offer transit means to immigrants. Some of the nations also offer transportation, food, and even protection for the caravans. Some policies drafted against immigrants have been so discriminative to an extent of barring any planes from Arabic nations and from some African nations. All these issues are becoming complicated as people from different races continue to see themselves as one human race. As it stands, the arrival of the Latino Caravan at the US southern border is expected to test the definition of US immigration policies and to a good extent the meaning of race in the whole debate.

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