Tuesday, May 24, 2011

We Are America

I felt that I knew as soon as I saw this website that it was exactly what I was looking for to exemplify how contemporary America is to me today.

The site is called "We Are America" and it focuses purely on the stories of immigrants who have been either detained and/or deported from the United States over the years and those of the families they have left behind. I think that it is symbolic to me because of how this perspective of immigration and the impact that it has from this angle is rarely thought of. I admit that I myself had not previously considered what it must be like for a legal- be it either male or female citizen to suddenly have their partner taken away from them, not knowing whether or not they may ever see them again.

I think that this is strongly representative of the age in which America now lives, where immigrants were once treasured as a valued member of the community, but are now treated as vermin to be removed. And these are not special cases of deportation, the men and women being displaced from the country may be hard working, tax-paying citizens, whom themselves may have a family but will be denied access to them.

The video featured on the front page is topical because of the situations under which the husband was detained. Having lived in the country since he was eight years old, Mr. Guzman would have been fogiven for calling Americ his home. However as this example shows, even those who have spent their whole lives living in the United States as a good, honest person can suddenly find themselves unwelcome in the only country that they could call home, just because they were not born there.

http://www.weareamericastories.org/

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