Someday You Will Find Me

My internship gives me a lot to think about. I’m constantly researching films, filmmakers, hot topics, youth organizations, and anything else you could think of pertaining to human rights and media. Today I watched a number of youth films about immigration rights. They all touch upon the fact that the United States’s economy depends on immigrant labor, and that families should not be separated.

I enjoyed watching these movies because I felt changed. I didn’t feel as if they repeated my own sentiments. For a while I’ve felt torn on the issue of immigration. My grandfather bought a name and passport and came here illegally, but at the same time, I believe in the law. With that said, it doesn’t mean that the law shouldn’t change. I listen to the arguments about immigrants taking jobs from Americans, to which I reply “do you want those jobs? Will you take those jobs?”

Last time I checked, everyone wants the American dream. More and more people are going to college and applying for white collar jobs. Have you heard about an explosion in the agricultural job market? Are there hundreds of thousands of Americans trying to work on farms or clean houses or do restaurant work? I think not. So what jobs are immigrants taking from “real” Americans?

Those who are not accepted as real Americans almost always do the hardest, ugliest work. And I am a product of two of those groups – my mother’s Irish side and my father’s Chinese side. So how can I deny immigrants their human rights? Just because I’m a natural-born American citizen? How can we deny people reasonable working conditions and minimum wage? Anyway, just some things I was thinking about today.