By Daniel Stoller
Representatives from academia, immigrant advocacy groups and health care providers participated in a panel discussion where they attempted to break the myths surrounding immigration and undocumented workers.
Held in Raytheon Amphitheater, the “Dialogue on Immigration” was hosted Tuesday in part by the Latin American Student Organization (LASO) as part of Hispanic Heritage Month.
The event centered on three panelists who spoke and then fielded questions from the audience.
Elena Letona, director of Centro Presente, an immigrant advocacy group based in Cambridge, debated Stephen Sadow, a professor of Spanish and Latin American literature, and Karla Guzman, access analyst from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. Although each panelist focused on specific issues – immigrant rights, education, and health care access – all responded to points the others raised.
Letona addressed what she said were the top three biases against immigrants: that immigrants “break the law, steal jobs [from Americans] and refuse to assimilate.”
The mainstream media, she said, dehumanizes the 13 million immigrants in this country that have arrived by illegal methods.
Letona discussed the difficulty of applying for a visa-a process she said has become increasingly complex.
In the 1970s, Letona said, an immigrant could expect to receive a visa in as few as two weeks. Less than 10 years later, however, the same process took about five years to complete, she said. Today, she said, the wait can be more than 15 years.
Sadow spoke second and discussed historical and current approaches to English as a second language (ESL) education, and the greater areas of assimilating undocumented workers into the higher education system.
He applauded states like Nebraska, Oklahoma and Kansas, for passing legislature that allows undocumented children of migrant workers to attend public universities for in-state prices.
“There are a few schools where it’s like the Dominican Republic,” Sadow said. “You walk in, and in the halls, everyone is speaking Spanish. … In classes, they are speaking both languages.”
But he stressed these examples were the exception, not the rule, and that more needed to be done to integrate the large generation of immigrant children into higher education.
Karla Guzman, sitting in for former Massachusetts senator Jarrett Barrios, spoke about the difficulties of providing health care for a group that is largely distrustful of services funded by the federal government.
“They have this belief that everything is interconnected,” Guzman said. “I will have a person walk in and say, ‘Type my name into the computer, I might be in there.'”
The assumption that receiving health care is risky hurts most involved in the long run, because undocumented workers typically avoid health care until an emergency. He said additional costs of the emergency procedure are charged to Medicare.
Guzman said the 1996 Medicaid/Medicare reform bill denied health care subsidies to recent immigrants and only covers undocumented workers in emergencies.
The points presented by the panelists resonated with many audience members, who often nodded in agreement or gave verbal responses.
Roodley Dorleans, a senior mechanical engineering major, asked the panelists why immigration, which he said in the greater sphere of American politics is “not that important,” received so much attention and vitriol.
Letona answered his question by saying, “A failing economy needs a scapegoat [which immigrants provide]. Our standard of living is changing for the worse.”
Dorleans was born in the United States, but his parents are first-generation Haitian immigrants, he said. He came to support LASO and because, “it’s an important issue … it does me good if I’m educated [on the myths],” he said. “I don’t think it’s [comparatively] as important as issue as people want it to be.”
