Fear is the emotion most commonly associated with undocumented immigrants living in the United States today. Fear of being discovered during a routine traffic stop or a worksite raid. Fear of being deported and separated from one’s family.

But it turns out that fear is only one part of a complex emotional landscape that immigrants without legal status confront in their daily lives. A recent study of undocumented immigrants from El Salvador and Guatemala found that many “linked the current threats to their families posed by deportation to a history of conflict and terror in their countries of origin.” In other words, they escaped the war at home only to relive their war-related anxieties in the U.S.

The study by the Center for Human Rights and International Justice at Boston College, also discovered that the undocumented immigrants it surveyed reported symptoms including anxiety, weight loss and difficulty sleeping. Their children often had trouble keeping up in school and developing language skills.

The Boston College study is notable, not just for it’s troubling conclusions, but for its place in a large and growing movement by academic researchers. Studying undocumented immigrants — who according to most estimates number around 12-million in the U.S. – has become its own academic specialty.

The interest among researchers was highlighted last weekend as hundreds of professors and students from across the country met on the campus of Connecticut College in New London, Ct. for a conference called Undocumented Hispanic Migration: On the Margins of a Dream. (more…)

Less than a year ago, at the dawn of the Obama era, there was a lot of talk about how the nation had just elected its first post-racial president. With his multi-racial and multi-religious background, and African immigrant roots, Barack Obama represented the hope of millions that the country was moving beyond its long, tragic history of divisive racial politics.

To be sure, Obama’s election as the first black president of the United States was an historic event of immense significance. But the idea of a post-racial presidency was a fantasy. Comments this week by former President Jimmy Carter reminded us that racial politics and prejudice are alive and well in America.

“I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African American,” Carter told NBC’s Brian Williams.

The issue of immigration was directly implicated in Carter’s remarks. The now infamous shout of “You lie” by Representative Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) during President Obama’s address to Congress last week came after the president asserted in his speech that undocumented immigrants would not be covered under the proposed health care overhaul.

“I think it’s based on racism,” Carter was quoted by the Washington Post as saying of Wilson’s outburst. The former president made the remark in response to a question at a public forum on Tuesday at the Carter Center in Atlanta.

The entire episode — Wilson’s shout, Carter’s critique, and all the various charges and counter charges, accusations and denials flying around Washington and in the media – suggest a very rocky future for immigration reform. (more…)

By John Rudolph, FI2W Executive Producer

For many Americans, May 1, 2006 was when they first began to comprehend the power of the nation’s Spanish-language media. Hispanic radio and TV played a key role on that day, urging Latino immigrants to take time off from work to demonstrate for immigration reform. Millions participated in the protests in cities across the country.

But while Hispanic media was credited for its role in bringing out the masses on the “day without immigrants,” most people remain unaware of the long history of the Spanish-language press in America, and its tradition of advocating for Latino interests.

The first U.S.-based newspaper for Spanish-speaking readers – El Misisipi – made its debut in New Orleans in 1808, nearly two centuries before the historic marches of 2006.

By the mid-19th Century Spanish-language newspapers were editorializing and covering news in New York, California, Texas, New Mexico and Pennsylvania. Among the causes they supported were independence for Mexico and Cuba, which at the time were Spanish colonies.

The nation’s oldest continuously-published Latino newspaper, – La Prensa – was founded in New York in 1913, and exists today as the daily El Diario/La Prensa.

“We’ve been around for years. We’re not a new media,” said Juan Gonzáles, who chairs the Journalism Department at the City College of San Francisco.

Gonzáles is producing a film that tells the story of America’s Spanish-language media, Voices for Justice: The Enduring Legacy of the Latino Press in the U.S. Along with fellow filmmaker, Félix F. Gutiérrez, a professor of Journalism at the University of Southern California, Gonzáles recently showed a preview of the film to an audience of ethnic media journalists in Atlanta.

Gonzáles told Feet in Two Worlds that the film intends to dispel myths about Latinos both among Hispanics and in the wider society. ” Through the pages of our newspapers we really get an impression of what Latinos are like,” he said. “Mainstream media always shows negative stories (about Latinos) — about gang activity and crime.” Gonzáles noted that many Latinos don’t know the history of the Spanish-language press. “We’re feeling a big gap of knowledge,” — he said — “the film is going to fill a void in telling the story of a people.”

The film project is also a way for Gonzáles and Gutiérrez to prod the Hispanic press to be more aggressive in the way it reports the news.

Today there are hundreds of Hispanic newspapers and magazine across the country. Spanish-language radio is a huge business, and Hispanic TV networks Telemundo and Univision have become as mainstream as their English-language counterparts.

Despite the numbers, Gonzáles, who founded El Tecolote, a bilingual community newspaper in San Francisco, laments that there’s “a lot of fluff” in journalism aimed at Latino audiences. “It does a disservice to the community,” he said.

“When it comes to hard stories, it’s something I continue to push for,” he said. “However much you don’t want to do it, you have to do it. Your simple existence is not enough. You need to help the community change conditions through your solid reporting.”

By Valeria Fernández, FI2W contributor

PHOENIX, Arizona  — President Barack Obama arrives here today to speak at a commencement ceremony at Arizona State University in Tempe before an audience expected to number 71,000 people. Should the president have some time to look around during his visit he’ll find himself at ground zero of the immigration debate.

A border state, Arizona has become the center of a crackdown on illegal immigration spearheaded by state elected officials and local law enforcement agencies geared towards the deportation of undocumented immigrants.

“First and foremost (the president) will see the great division that the issue (of immigration) has caused in Arizona and the hate that has been created because of it,” said Daniel Ortega, a civil litigation attorney and Hispanic activist. “He’ll see a population that is frustrated on both sides by the lack of the federal government’s ability to move forward.” (more…)

By John Rudolph, FI2W Executive Producer

With Mexico presumed to be at the epicenter of the swine flu outbreak and Mexicans comprising one of the largest immigrant groups in the U.S., it didn’t take long for people to start making connections between the flu and immigration. Officials in Dallas and San Diego are reaching out to large Mexican immigrant communities in those cities with advice on how to prevent the possible spread of the disease. According to San Diego station KFMB-TV:

Health officials are concerned about the spread of swine flu from Mexico to the U.S. by illegal immigrants. Migrants in San Diego may not have access to medical care, which could lead to the spread of the virus within those communities.

In another related development, the L.A. Times reports that fear of infection is causing immigrants living north of the border to reconsider returning to or visiting Mexico.

At least one member of Congress, Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) recently called for the complete closure of the U.S.–Mexico border “until the virus is contained.”  Republican congressman Duncan Hunter of California, has called for a U.S. ban on all nonessential travel to Mexico.

Meanwhile, conservative bloggers and commentators are blaming the flu outbreak on “illegal aliens” and using the health threat to advance their call for sealing America’s borders.

And so in addition to legitimate public health concerns (some of them related to immigrants from Mexico), the flu outbreak has spawned a nasty war of words over immigrants and their place in American society. Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin is widely quoted on the Web for her comment, “Hey, maybe we’ll finally get serious about borders now.” Pro-immigrant columnists have responded to Malkin and others with equally blunt language. The headline of a blog post by Bonnie Fuller on Huffington Post screams, “Hate-Mongering Conservative Commentators Using Swine Flu to Promote Racism!”

The flu scare comes just as the Obama administration is ramping up efforts to bring about immigration reform. In addition, on Friday pro-immigrant rallies are planned in cities across the nation to keep pressure on the president and Congress to address the plight of undocumented immigrants.

The vitriolic exchange kicked off by the flu outbreak certainly won’t help efforts to reach a national consensus on immigration policy. It also won’t help anyone who has the flu or is at risk of becoming ill. But could it have an impact on the pace and scope of immigration reform efforts? Maybe. Has it revealed new racial fault lines following Obama’s historic election as the nation’s first African-American president? Perhaps. Do we have any idea where this is all headed? In both medical and political terms the answer to that question unfortunately is no.

By John Rudolph, FI2W Executive Producer

For a new president who is still in the process of defining his administration’s policies, the media scrutiny can be intense. Almost immediately after taking office President Obama experienced what it’s like to be under the microscope as he and his White House team began to grapple with the economic crisis. Reporters guided by the advice to “follow the money” in the stimulus package began pulling apart the president’s proposals even before a penny was spent.

But, it seems, all issues do not rise to the same level of media attention – even highly controversial ones like immigration reform. Last week Mr. Obama went on the popular Spanish-language radio program Piolín por la Mañana and stated that his administration will start to draw up comprehensive immigration reform legislation, “over the next several months.” The president also told the show’s host, Eddie “Piolín” Sotelo that before proposing new legislation:

“We’re going to start by really trying to work on how to improve the current system so that people who want to be naturalized, who want to become citizens, like you did, that they are able to do it; that it’s cheaper, that it’s faster, that they have an easier time in terms of sponsoring family members.”

Mr. Obama’s comments – striking in their specificity — were reported by Spanish-language media, but virtually ignored by mainstream English-language newspapers, TV and web sites. It’s a continuation of a pattern that was established during last fall’s presidential campaign. When he was running for president, virtually the only place where Mr. Obama talked about the issue of immigration was in Spanish-language media. His Republican rival, Senator John McCain, followed an almost identical strategy. As a result, consumers of Spanish-language media heard a debate over the two candidate’s positions on immigration that was missing from mainstream media.

According to Los Angeles Times’ James Rainey, by making himself available to the often-marginalized ethnic press, the president “has signaled that he may shake up the traditional protocols of Washington journalism.” But there’s more to it than that. Even as Mr. Obama says “we are one America” he seems to understand that there are groups – including journalists – in this country that don’t talk to one another, never compare notes, and hardly acknowledge each other’s existence. The powerful anti-immigrant sentiment that can be found across the country is, at least partly, a product of immigrant and native-born communities that exist side-by-side, but seem to inhabit parallel universes. And it is the anti-immigrant forces that the president will have to win over if meaningful changes to the nation’s immigration laws are to be enacted.

You can’t fault the president for his choice last week of a friendly environment to talk about immigration reform. But at some point Mr. Obama will have to take his proposals to the whole country, not just the Spanish-language radio audience. That’s when the gulf separating the different sides in this debate will come more sharply into focus. It will be the president’s challenge to bring all the factions together to find a way to fix an immigration system that just about everyone agrees is broken.

More than once in his inaugural address President Barack Obama celebrated America’s diversity and the nation’s immigrant heritage. “We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth,” he said near the end of the speech. At another point the president talked about those, “who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom. For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.”

The president also referred to his own heritage, mentioning the “small village” in Africa where his father was born. But Mr. Obama’s speech did not contain the words “immigrant” or “immigration.” He did not say what he intends to do about the nation’s immigration system. In fact, he did not even acknowledge that in the view of many Americans, both on the left and the right, the U.S. immigration system has failed.

An inaugural address is not typically a laundry list of problems and the president’s proposals to fix them. That’s what State of the Union addresses are for. But it is worth noting that in a speech that described in stark and somber language a whole host of challenges facing the nation – the economic crisis, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the health care crisis, climate change – President Obama did not devote even one line to the need to reform immigration laws. To find a discussion of his administration’s immigration policies you need to go the White House web site.

Maybe that’s because compared to the collapsing World economy, the troubled immigration system seems less important than it once did. A survey released this week by the Pew Hispanic Center shows that even among Latinos, immigration reform has taken a back seat to fixing the economy. But another reason could be that Mr. Obama understands how dangerous talking about immigration can be, even if you have lots of political capital to spend.

Following Mr. Obama’s speech, the benediction by Reverend Joseph Lowery included these words:

Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back; when brown can stick around; when yellow will be mellow; when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right.

The idea of “brown” being allowed to “stick around,” is the closest anyone came during the inauguration ceremony to calling for more compassionate immigration laws.

Hours after he spoke, Rev. Lowery, an icon of the civil rights movement who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Martin Luther King Jr., was being attacked on conservative talk radio for making “racist” comments, and putting a stain on a remarkable and profoundly emotional day in our nation’s history.

By Martina Guzman, FI2W reporter

For decades Latino immigrants have achieved the American dream through the U.S. auto industry. Manufacturing plants provided a way for first-generation Latinos to acquire wealth, stability, and the means to send their children to college through good salaries, health benefits, and union protection. Now all of that is in jeopardy with General Motors, Chrysler and Ford near collapse.

Next Sunday, January 17, The North American International Auto Show opens to the public at Detroit’s Cobo Center. Close to seven thousand journalists from 60 countries will watch as automakers unveil 60 new production vehicles and concept cars, and discuss green machines that will help shape the future of hybrid and battery-operated vehicles.

Six degrees from Detroit. (Photo: MichiganMoves)

While some of Metro Detroit’s most established socialites will be pulling out tuxedos and designer evening gowns for the show’s gala charity events, Hispanic autoworkers, one of the groups directly affected by the downfall of the Big Three, are pondering their fate in this economic recession.

Assembly worker Cindy Garcia is a second-generation autoworker. Garcia attended Wayne State University but opted to work at Ford because, like her father, she saw it as a secure way to achieve a better standard of living.

Her father, Jose Ramos, immigrated to the United States from Tamaulipas, Mexico in the 1970s. Drawn by the auto industry’s solid wages and excellent health care benefits, Ramos worked in auto manufacturing for 30-years, made his way into the middle class, and was able to send his children to college.

“He came here, got the American dream like the rest of the immigrants who came back in the day when they were trying to form the union,” Garcia said. “They did as much as they could but now the whole dream has fallen apart.”

Garcia’s sense of economic insecurity is shared by many Latinos. According to a new report by the Pew Hispanic Center, “Latinos hold a more negative view of their own current personal financial situation than does the general U.S. population.” The report goes on to say:

More than three-in-four (76%) Latinos, and 84% of foreign-born Latinos, say their current personal finances are in either fair or poor shape, while 63% of the general U.S. population says the same.”

Garcia has nine years seniority at Ford Motor Company. A relatively short time compared to many Latino assembly workers who have built cars for more than 20 years. A wife and a mother of two, Garcia is already thinking the coming year will be worse than this one.

“Unless things shape up, the next few Christmases we’ll probably be in another house or living with family, and having smaller meals and sharing clothes and passing food cans around within the family… it’s going to be very rough,” Garcia said.

“When I wake up every morning I wonder if I’m going to have a job, if I’m going to be able to feed my kids, be able to put them through school, if I’m going to be able to keep this house that I have, am I going to be able to keep the car, am I going to be able to keep up with the bills?” (more…)