VivirLatino

Hoo, boy, this video just *reeks* of “good immigrant/bad immigrant” logic.There’s the good immigrant Cubans who just want to come to the U.S. legally to be with their families (and resist a brutal dictator)–and then there’s the unnamed “bad immigrants,” that surprisingly, look a lot like Mexicans and sneak into the U.S. through Mexico.

I think we need to be real here and recognize that Cubans claim a very privileged status in a corrupt system. They are not “privileged” in the sense that white U.S. citizens are (clearly, as shown by the woman in the video), but compared to other immigrants, they have a lot of privilege because of the U.S.’s interest in eliminating the communism of their home country.

Hence, you have Cubans that are given citizenship within a year under family reunification acts–and then you have Hatians that are “repatriated” (or sent back to) Haiti after they take the same route to get to the U.S. that many Cubans do (those rickety boats mentioned in the segment) and Mexicans, Guatemalans, Arabs from multiple countries and others that are now sitting in federal prisons after being forcibly rounded up and separated from their families by ICE.

Why do the families of one group of people count more than the families of another group of people doing the same thing?

What this all says to me is that there are some definite undercurrents of tension that exist within the immigrant community. I don’t blame or in anyway sit judgment on Cubans for capitalizing on the small amount of benefits that they get within the system–but I do think it’s really important to call out “good immigrant/bad immigrant” logic whenever we see it.

Immigrants who are “legal” are not better than those who are not–and all immigrants, no matter where they come from or how “legal” they are, deserve to be with their families. And the immigrant community really needs to start talking amongst ourselves about all the differences that we have–so that we can be a stronger, more united community.