The Link Between an Indian Elephant and Immigration Reform the Answer May Surprise You

Nine years ago I was a recent college graduate and the only question I kept asking myself was: How is it possible that we continue to repeat history?

I was under the impression that in the 21st century our humanity would be well advanced by now. I believed we were dealing with new social issues–new struggles. Little did I know that today’s struggles are also history’s struggles and hopelessly will continue to be our future struggles if we don’t begin to think and act differently.

As I delved into books and classes from a myriad of centuries and topics, I began to connect the underlying struggle that has become part of our humanity for centuries. The struggle that many great leaders all over the world have tried to overcome–inequality. The struggle that today, unless we in the 21st century begin to think and act differently, will linger on; and centuries from now another college graduate will be asking the same question: How is it possible that we continue to repeat history?

It all began after graduating from film school when I decided to become a social activist. I had had enough reading and learning about the world through other people, I needed to see the world for myself. In 2004 I participated in a California protest demanding a fair wage for Taco Bell tomato pickers, whom at the time and possibly still now happen to be undocumented immigrants. From that moment on, Immigration became my topic of interest.

I started seeing how employers would decrease the hours of citizens to part-time, while they hired undocumented workers for the same positions at full-time hours and then paid them half of what their citizen counterparts had earned previously. In addition the employers would not provide overtime, health benefits or pensions to the undocumented workers while at the same time they negated those benefits to the citizen because they were now part-time. As I continued to participate in more immigration events the more aware I became to the intricacies and injustices of this issue.

In 2007 I attended another protest in Arizona where a business owner hired off-duty police to keep day laborers (mostly immigrants) off his property. It was during this protest that the premise of my first feature length documentary, “The Immigration Paradox”, takes place.

Although the documentary examines and reveals many themes that directly or indirectly play a crucial role with immigration, (such as inequality, exploitation, globalization, colonization, law, socio-economics and ideology among others), in this blog I will focus on information and its influence to our perception on immigration. How have we come to be so divided on an issue that is part of our identity? And why is it that we continue to accept the same “solutions” yet expect different results?

During this protest I stepped out of my comfort zone to find out why others were opposed to the side I was standing with. To my surprise we had much more in common than I had imagined. I was surprised to hear the other side say, “We are against big corporate assholes who make money off of the sweat and brows of people”. Someone else also said, ““Mexican people should be allowed to come here and work under a structured program for their protection just as well as everybody else’s because they are treated as the modern slaves and it’s absolutely wrong.”

How was it possible that we were so divided, when we all wanted the same basic things any human ought to have… food, shelter, security, opportunities and community. One side was upset because they were being called “criminals” while the other side was upset because they were being called “racist”. I was curious to know though, how it was that we came to think of each other as the enemy, before we had even met?

Have you ever questioned, how it is that you came to think about the concept of immigration and the people who you perceive either as allies or enemies?

I explore this question in the documentary as it is my intent to take the viewer on an investigative journey with me to find the root-causes of immigration, to explore in-depth the various dynamics that create or interconnect with immigration and once and for all begin making real “comprehensive” changes to what many people call a broken immigration system.

As a human I tried to be aware of my biases while filming “The Immigration Paradox”, however I believe it is safe to say that everyone’s perspective is limited. With so many various viewpoints out there, not every perspective can be highlighted in a 90 minute documentary. For that reason, it is also my intent to blog in order to foster more critical thinking, in-depth, constructive and holistic conversations on a topic that has kept our nation, communities and spirits divided.

I hope that you as a reader will share your constructive thoughts with me and others, so that together we may begin to create a more positive and inclusive conversation that will move us beyond our limits and allow later generations to focus their energy on something else other than asking: How is it possible that we continue to repeat history?

During the protest I attended in 2007 I became aware of our similarities, as well as one very important misunderstanding that keeps us divided. As I was crossing to the other side of the street in order to find out first hand, why they were opposed, I began to get yelled at and called an “illegal”. I wanted to find out what “illegal” meant for them because as I was growing up that word, meant a hard working person who was victim to a broken system, but their delivery made me realize that was not their interpretation of “illegal”. How did one word come to have different meanings to people?

As Professor Dr. Alan Gomez states in the documentary:
“That’s the problem, right, are the ideas that people have about others. It’s not the fact that people are migrating to this area to work.”

It is this same scenario that keeps the United States’ Congress from passing an Immigration Reform Bill. Our inability to communicate constructively with one another dates back to the old narrative of the Tower of Babel, when humans were divided because they were unable to understand one another. It appears that we continue to entangle ourselves in misunderstandings, misinformation and blaming each other, which ultimately keeps us from finding solutions and advancing our humanity.

You would think that in the 21st century with all the technological advances in communication we would all be more connected and better informed. Yet, we seem to be somehow more disconnected, misinformed and misunderstood, than ever.

In the documentary I decided to explore the main sources of information. When I asked some of my interviewees if they thought the mainstream media or other sources of information have anything to do with the way we are leading the immigration conversation, this is how they responded:

“I think that the mainstream sources of media often lead it off a cliff or shut the conversation down. They lead it in very unproductive directions.”
-Angela Kelley from Center for American Progress

“It’s pretty hard to get serious analysis from the mainstream media. It doesn’t fit in the media frame, the media frame is about sensational conflict and extreme points of view that make for good drama. But serious analysis of immigration I think it’s pretty hard to come by in the mainstream media because it is a complicated issue and it takes some time to sort it out and to see what’s really going on… that’s part of it… and the other part of it I think is that, basically the media, the mainstream media in the U.S. is corporate media and so they’re tied into the same power structure that benefits from immigration and I think benefits from keeping the issue from being clearly understood.”
-Sociology Professor Dr.Schwalbe

Today, although we may speak the same language, we are still divided through confusion, variation of ideologies and the ideas we attach to people and situations from our perception, circumstances and what those around us tell us.

As Dr. Alan Gomez says, “ Our ideas are developed from our circumstances and if your circumstances are limited monotonous homogeneous and you don’t sort of talk to people that are different you are going to have pretty simple ideas about things, does that mean that those ideas are not real? No, they’re real for you, but they’re real within the constellation of possibilities, that you create your reality from, so if you have 3 channels and that’s all you have then your world is going to be created by those 3 channels, period.”

This issue of immigration can best be represented by the Indian parable of the elephant with five blind men.
There is a group of blind men who begin to touch an elephant. One blind man who was touching the head says, “It’s like a pot’. Another blind man who was touching the ear says, “It’s like a kite”. The one touching the tusk says, “It’s like a sword”. The one touching the leg says, “It’s like a pillar. The one touching the tail says, “It’s like a rope”. Suddenly all the blind men begin to argue back and forth as to who is right. They get into a huge argument and stop talking to one another each sure that he and he alone is right and all the others are wrong. They begin to tell their friends what the elephant looks like and their friends believe them, further vindicating their perception of the elephant.

That is why we need more constructive communication. Communication that reaches out to create win/win solutions, communication that listens to understand and not just to prove a point. Through this style of conversations we will begin to see how everyone is being impacted by this issue of immigration. We will begin to see the bigger picture, which will lead to a fair consensus and a much more expedient comprehensive reform.

As Joseph Joubert once said, “The end of argument or discussion should be, not victory, but enlightenment.”

Today’s conversations seemed to be filled with one-side perceptions of the issue and the agendas are innumerable that is why we continue to be stuck arguing back and forth, as Dr. Alan Gomez says:

“One of the things that we don’t recognize is that we are fighting over the meaning of facts, do immigrants take jobs away from Americans? are immigrants a drain on the U.S. economy? Is America being overrunned by immigrants? Are immigrants not interested in becoming part of society? do immigrants not contribute to society? well there are all sorts of fact and figures that will emphasize one side or the other. The question that you need to ask yourself watching and listening now is who frames your world, for you? And do you choose the framing? and I don’t mean “Oh I choose to watch Fox news” , no, the question is what are you omitting in the choices that you make? and it’s those omissions, where I think the debate is taking place.”

The blind men where omitting the perceptions of the other blind men. While our subjective experience is true, it may not be the totality of truth.

It wasn’t until the blind men stopped trying to prove their point and started listening that they began to “see” the full elephant. They were able to piece together their perceptions to “see” a more accurate picture of the elephant.

While I was filming “The Immigration Paradox” I realized I had been omitting the perspectives of those who opposed my perspective. And by omitting I mean I had not reached out to understand their view, rather I had reached out to only prove my view. By acting that way I became limited on my perception of immigration.

Various groups, think tanks, organizations, politicians have their own views and agendas, which limit their view of immigration.

When I asked two opposing think tanks (CIS and IPC) why their facts on immigrants differ, IPC answered, “Well I think I would need a specific example, but we’ve certainly looked at their studies and their research, and in many cases we’ve found their methodology to be very flawed.”

CIS answered, “Well they’re the immigration lawyers, and so I mean that’s, it’s the immigration A list think tank. they’re a trade association, and their job is to promote the interests of their – the financial interests of their members. And more immigration means more work for immigration lawyers…”

As Dr. Schwalbe says, “So there’s no raw, neutral, unmediated information, it’s always from a particular point of view and its always interpreted from a particular point of view. The question you have to ask is ‘what are the interests shaping the information? what are the interests behind it? So if you’re evaluating information, you’d like to understand where it’s coming from and what the interests are of the people who produced it. And ideally, you’d want to reflect on your own interests as you assimilate the information, if you have a particular way of interpreting it to serve your own interests, you’d be well-served to be aware of that.”

Although the blind men were able to touch the elephant for themselves, often times I have observed that we are not able to touch, see or hear the facts for ourselves. We are constantly hearing it from a third party, whether it may be our family, community, mainstream media or a think tank.

Have you ever wondered where it is that we get these ideas about others? Where do you get your information from? And is that information being constructive or destructive? Are you touching the elephant for yourself or is someone else touching it for you?

Mark Krikorian from Center for Immigration Studies, stated in the documentary “You should take into account a whole lot more than just facts, you have to take into account even before facts are values. The question is how do the facts interplay with your values?
While I agree that before facts are values, I feel it’s important to also ask through whose values are you interpreting those facts?

At the end of the day both facts and values are someone’s subjective perspective. At times many will try to be objective, but the bottom line is that we are human and we have limits to our perception. The more ideologically diverse sources you have the broader your perception of reality becomes. And it is by having a broader perception of reality that we’ll have a more comprehensive immigration reform.

It is by how we decide to approach one another that we will end this vicious cycle. It is by reaching out to understand rather than to solely prove our point that we will overcome the struggles that our humanity has faced for centuries.

As Dr. Alan Gomez states, “How do we recognize that how we speak with someone the first time affects the possibility of there being a second time? and it also affects how that second time will take place. So if we meet for the first time and we just go at it… this is for political strategist this is for organizers. This is that if the first time you meet somebody that you talk in a different way then it leaves the possibility for a second discussion. and i think it’s those types of interactions and then the people who would respond to that are where we need to put our energy.”

And that is how we will make best use of our energy, time, and talent and pass a true democratic immigration reform bill that will unite our humanity and move us forward.