The invisible immigrant
mmigrant rights marches were fewer and less populous this year. Nonetheless, many dark-haired, olive-skinned (and lighter) people in white T-shirts, some of them carrying Mexican flags, came out into the streets to make America’s immigrants visible. And for that, as an immigrant, I am grateful.
For many of those people, America was the place to survive — and thrive. America for them was and is a place where life can be easier, where jobs are available, and kin communities offer a sense of belonging. America for them was real, and when they came here it was a physical act, mostly, a journey, frequently on foot or on a set of wheels, with ground under your feet. In a sense, they never left.
Consider the invisibles. Graduate students, visiting scholars, foreign-born professors, wives, artists, asylum seekers. The white, non-working-class immigrants. The ones for whom America was a word in the news, a source of political and intellectual discourse, the place whence ideas came — not a land to walk on, a set of streets to navigate, a supermarket shelf to take products from. They are here through the force of life circumstances, as an afterthought almost — America came with a marriage or a career move, a record deal or a research fellowship. What about us?
UNP blog 