The undocumented AMERICANS among us
Americans hate "illegals" in the abstract but often love the ones they know.
This week on Neighborhood Matters I spoke with Itzel Hernandez, an immigration policy coordinator at the American Friends Service Committee, a group run by the Society of Friends, otherwise known as the Quakers.
Itzel, 32, has lived in Red Bank, NJ since arriving from Puebla, Mexico as a 10-year-old. It didn't occur to her until she was applying for college — and asked her mom for her social security number — that she was undocumented.
We talk about the distance between the virulently anti-immigrant politics that Americans often support at the polls and the positive feelings they have towards the immigrants in their own communities. This has become very clear over the past year, as we see Trump voters shocked to see their own coworkers, neighbors and friends get deported.
We cover a lot of ground: how immigrants typically and ironically reflect the values (entrepreneurial, hardworking, religious, traditional families etc) espoused by the American right, why even recent immigrants buy into anti-immigrant politics, political correctness in immigrant advocacy & much more!
Watch below on YouTube or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel or follow it on Spotify/Apple Podcasts. And please share widely!
