Rediscovering Latinidad Season 6 Episode 4 Deportación e Inmigración

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:13):
Dear listeners, we are excited to have you join us
for another season of Rediscovering Latini Dan. We hope you
enjoy this sixth season as we port a tremendous amount
of time, research, and loyalty into our episodes. We also
know that these are unprecedented times, and then many of
our listeners or their family members may be living in
fear and certainly anger about the recent developments with immigration, deportation,

(00:35):
and birthright citizenship. We hold space for all of the
emotions here, and we hope the information we provide you
will help you not only in your journey to discovering
your ancestors, but also leading you to documentation that may
secure your safety. We will list all resources in the
show notes and update them as we uncover more. Now,
we hope you enjoy this episode.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Welcome back, everyone to another episode of Rediscovering Latinidad. This
is season six, episode four, where we will be talking
a little bit about immigration and deportations. My name is Fausto,
I'm Edward, My niem is.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
Briar Rose, and I'm j Lisa.

Speaker 4 (01:21):
And today's just a heavy day. This is just a
heavy topic.

Speaker 5 (01:24):
I mean, what's interesting right? This is going to be
released at the end of February. Hello, future audience, and
we're taping in December, and we honestly don't know what
the incoming administration's policies are going to be.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
But yeah, it has happened by yeah, by this date.

Speaker 5 (01:39):
Yeah, when it comes to history, I will flat out plug.
Preparing for this, I read a book that I read
back when I was a Latino studies Major Harvest of Empire,
Bywan Gonzalez, former New York Daily News reporter and host
of Democracy Now. And it's just it's just a very
good explanation was written in two thousand, but it's a

(02:02):
very good explanation about how we got to the situation
where we are now. It goes through basically his thesis
is that, you know, the the Latino immigration we see
now is the result of US imperial actions throughout the
nineteenth century throughout the twentieth century. And I'll just quickly

(02:26):
go through that. So the push factors for for for
the migration. You know, the US has had a legacy
of making Latino countries quote unquote stable or so where
they've intervened Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Nicaragua, we're seeing
those impacts. Guatemala comes to mind, where they where the

(02:48):
US toppled a pretty much democratic government back in the
fifties and then there were decades of civil war and
because of that, now there's an wave of Guatemalans and
to the into the States. We also have US industries
demanding labor, and you know, the white population is aging

(03:09):
and getting older with each year, and Latino immigration is
able to bring in younger workers who can fill in
jobs and labor as needed. So they're coming from Mexico,
Puerto Rico, Panama to fill in certain labor demands, and
they've changed over history. And then we also have just

(03:30):
Latin America and ongoing economic crisis now since two thousand.
I think it's obvious that the region has a climate
crisis as well, which is increasing insecurities. What's different about
Latin Americans The majority have come after the sixty five
immigration laws. And we'll get into the history shortly, but

(03:51):
you know, post nineteen sixty five immigration, we're seeing mostly
a movement of urban workers within moving within the world.
It's fluid movement back and forth between countries. Whereas earlier
generations think Ellis Island, they crossed the ocean once generally
didn't come back. And these these Latin Americans were arriving

(04:12):
when the US was a dominant post industrial world power.
Earlier immigrants were filling in factory jobs. The fact is,
you know, the the US doesn't you know, has has
decreased its factories. What it needs is service workers. So
you know, not quite the upward career movement which you

(04:32):
can have with your your union factory job. So yeah,
and of course Latin Americans when they come here, they
have to deal with being second classes and racially through
through language. So and also to shoot down some quick
myths about immigration, people say, oh, immigrants come some people say, oh,

(04:53):
immigrants come here.

Speaker 4 (04:54):
For the welfare.

Speaker 5 (04:55):
Well, higher there's a higher percentage of employment among immigrants
and among native born Americans. Oh, immigrants come here, and
they drained public resources. Well, one estimate in twenty twenty two,
undocumented immigrants paid ninety seven billion with a b dollars
in taxes. And the thought of immigrants being the worst

(05:15):
of the worst, as the incoming president said, we're like
the garbage cam for the world. Well, you know, Latin
Americans they have a higher the migrants have a higher
rate of literacy than those who've stayed behind. You know,
this is, as we said, a largely urbanized educated group
coming to work in the US. And also the reality

(05:38):
that immigration is a deadly choice. In twenty twenty two,
eight hundred and ninety five migrants died on the US border,
and depending on the way in which this new administration
does policies. You know, no matter what every administration has done,
people have died. And because of the progress of our

(05:59):
policy through history, it's caused some migration, especially across the
US Mexico border, to become harder and harder, and it's
resultant in death.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
So that's some of the reality.

Speaker 4 (06:11):
Thank you for that walkthrough. I didn't even know where
to get started. I just wrote something small because I
was like, this is just such a heavy topic. I'm
just I don't know. I had to get some thoughts
out on paper. I wrote xenophobia, gambling, rings of immigration qualifications,
and wealth barriers. This is not what our ancestors should
have come to the United States for, but unfortunately most

(06:32):
likely experienced in their plates here. The history of legal
immigration in this country is fraught with technicalities and antiquated systems,
with the results of the twenty twenty four election. The
reality of what was promised has seeped into our veins,
like cold fear activating epigenetics in our nervous system. It
is not only the reality of what happened in our
ancestors' homelands, but what has also historically happened here in

(06:55):
the United States. Let's discuss the history of deportation and
immigration in the United States today. I will be very
honest with you, before we started researching for this podcast,
my reaction and my knowledge about immigration in this country
was pretty pretty elementary, rudimentary. I guess that's the way

(07:15):
I did not I guess I did. I didn't know
about I mean, I think when I think of like
not letting certain groups come in, the first one that
would come to my mind was in the sixties when
there were the Asian the Asian American population, the Asians
were not able to come into the United States, and
my mother used to tell me that growing up, there
were nobody of Asian just sent in any of her classes,

(07:36):
Like that was just not a thing. I mean, yes, yes,
Long Island was heavily red lined, but even so there
was none. And looking back, that makes sense for the
time being. But I looking into like Mexican Mexican U
or was it reparation, reparation, whatever it was called. I

(07:56):
was just I feel like it was just me being schooled.
I was just like, wow, Wow, all these things I
didn't now because I hadn't studied this.

Speaker 5 (08:05):
You're talking about the Mexican repatriots.

Speaker 4 (08:08):
Repatriot okay, okay.

Speaker 5 (08:10):
And what that is. From nineteen twenty nine, the US
obviously went into economic crisis, and so the US thought, okay,
we're going to have whole school deportation of Mexicans. Between
a half million to a million Mexicans and native born
Mexican Americans were deported. Some estimates, forty to sixty percent
were US citizens, mostly children. Up to one third of

(08:33):
all Mexicans living in the US were repatriated by nineteen
thirty four, and there's no accident about it. The first
time that Latinos are mentioned in the US Census is
in nineteen thirty one of the races besides you know, white,
all the others, they specifically list one of the races Mexican.
So they wanted to count all the Mexicans. And I'm sure,

(08:55):
I'm sure that record which we can now search freely
on family Search, only helped with this repatriation, which was
really a giant deportation.

Speaker 4 (09:05):
Absolutely because at one point they were marked as white
like even though they weren't.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
Right.

Speaker 4 (09:10):
So the fact that that, yeah, there was definitely an alternative.

Speaker 5 (09:14):
Well, let's sorry, I'm just going to jump in with
all their history. How did they become white? Well, that's
because way back in seventeen ninety we had our first
Naturalization Act, and naturalization was only given to white men.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
And what was the first.

Speaker 5 (09:30):
Movement of Latino migration when they stayed in place and
the border crossed them during the Mexican American War. So
suddenly the US acquired you know, Texas, California, the entire Southwest, Yeah,
Colorado up through there.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
So you had all.

Speaker 5 (09:47):
Of these Hispanic men who in order to even be
considered citizens, they were considered quote unquote white, because you
wouldn't want to be labeled as of color and treat
it that way. But even then, I mean, there was
a de facto segregation, you know, second class citizen. I
think it was up until the fifties in the Southwest,

(10:09):
schools were segregated for Latinos as well. As for black
people and such, whites, whites and Latinos didn't go to
school together. Yeah yeah, so yeah. Oh, And speaking about exclusion,
there was a whole other exclusion act.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
I mean, what's funny.

Speaker 5 (10:26):
About US immigration history is a lot of it has
the subtlety of the South Park character mister Garrison, when
he's like, can we kick out all the Mexicans? Like,
that's pretty much what some official policies were. Eighteen eighty two,
you have the Chinese Exclusion Act. There was a whole
wave of Chinese workers. They helped with the railroads. They

(10:47):
you know, came with the gold rush in California and
out west. In eighteen eighty two, they were just like,
let's ban Chinese immigrants for ten years. It was made
permanent in nineteen oh two. It was only repealed in
nineteen forty three, sixty one years in which just flat
out Chinese people were not allowed to come to the
United States because they were Chinese. And also two that
same year, eighteen eighty two, you have the first federal

(11:10):
immigration bureaucracy set up so that they can start to
tabulate who's coming from which country. There were major nativists,
anti immigration movements the eighteen forties and fifties. Then the
Ellis Island years eighteen nineties to nineteen twenties, huge nativists.

(11:31):
People were angry about people coming in from Eastern Europe,
Southern Europe. They were quote unquote inferior to northern and
western Europe. By the nineteen twenties, the KKK had six
million members across the United States. Six million, six million members.
So yeahs almost the population of New York City.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
Yep, yep. Oh my goodness. So and with this, well,
have have we passed a lot to count them? Yet?
To count the KKK? Maybe we should count those members?

Speaker 5 (12:05):
Yeah? Yeah, sorry, no, I mean look, and in reaction
to this growing nativist movement and a nation of six
million KKK members, you started to have the first really
big immigration restrictions. So nineteen twenty four you have the
Immigration Act that's set in quotas. Quotas first were set

(12:25):
in nineteen seventeen. By nineteen twenty four, they were you know,
put in across the board, and what happened was they
would set immigration levels based on what percent of a
country was living in the United States at a certain year.
At first nineteen seventeen, they were like, Okay, let's use
the nineteen ten census. By nineteen twenty four, they're counting

(12:48):
how much of each country was living in the United
States in eighteen ninety, So they are deleting thirty years
of immigration history. And at the most, they are only
allowing two percent of the population that lived in a
country in eighteen ninety So Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, elsewhere.
You know, they had lower numbers than they did in

(13:09):
nineteen twenty four. So that was a way to only
get the people that they wanted to come in.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
And then there.

Speaker 5 (13:15):
Were total total caps as to how many people could
come in. This and also this is when you start
needing immigration visas. Nineteen twenty four is the establishment of
the border Patrol. This impacted a lot of people, you know,
and Frank's family famously tried to get visas to the
United States. They clearly did not. Yeah and yeah, so quotas.

(13:41):
My dad and his mother and brother immigrated towards the
end of the quota era, so my grandma was able
to come in nineteen sixty two. My dad and uncle
had to wait two years before they could join their
mother in New York. So yeah, and that was when
they quote unquote had raised the quotas, so and so

(14:03):
the same. The funny thing is the same time as
Mexican repatriation happens and they send out all these Mexicans,
then they need workers because it's World War two, so
they say, okay, let's have the Mexicans come back in.
So nineteen forty two you have the Brassero program. Brassero
like brassos arms and it was a short time. It

(14:24):
was a policy for short time Mexican laborers to come
into the US for agriculture, stay for a short time,
and then you have to leave. At the peak, they
had almost a half million workers coming into the United
States at the same time that they were having the peak.
The US government did something starting in nineteen fifty four
called and I quote you not Operation Wetback. They actually

(14:47):
used the racial slur as their operation. Border patrol officers
were rounding up again Mexicans, getting them out of the country.
One million returns in that first year of nineteen fifty four.
The other big Latino story on top of this back
and forth of Mexican migration, we're going to talk about

(15:07):
Cuba and you know, major Latino immigration story. After the
nineteen fifty nine Cuban Revolution. There's a nineteen sixty six
Cuban Adjustment Act which allowed basically the US government, because
these were quote unquote refugees from a communist country, they
wanted to give them as many opportunities as possible and

(15:30):
lo and behold, if you treat immigrants humanely, it pays off.
Cuban Americans famously became business owners. They developed Miami into
the huge industrial city servicing Latin America, which it is today.
That is in part to the fact that they could
get loans, they could open businesses, all all of these

(15:52):
positive conditions were given to them and they were able
to thrive. Then nineteen eighty have the Mario boat lift,
and what happened was Fidel Castro, you know, sent a
lot of prisoners, including people from asylums and people who
had been hospitalized. And that's when it starts to be

(16:16):
a change, and you start to see, you know, people
not liking Cuban immigration. You know, in the nineties you
have the Balsero's, the raft people who try to cross
into the Cubans who try to enter Florida by raft,
and then it, you know, Cuban immigration becomes more of
a problem than in the beginning when wealthy to do

(16:38):
Cubans were leaving. So nineteen sixty five we're barreling along here.
This is the big heart, the Heart Celler Act. Visas
were no longer given out by these bizarre quotas based
on nationalities. It was handed out on a It was
handed out by first come, first serve. It gave priorities
to individuals who were relatives of US citizens, if you

(17:00):
were professionals, if you had specialized skills. Quotas were finally
abolished in nineteen sixty eight, and then just the nineteen
eighties through the nineteen nineties, Latinos kept on coming Latino voters.
A lot of the Cuban immigrants started to naturalize and
become voters as well as other immigrants you know, naturalized

(17:22):
became citizens. From the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties, Latino
voters doubled from two million to five million, so more
than doubled. And then nineteen eighty six rolls around. You
have President Reagan. It's not well remembered now, but he
did an Immigration Reform Act where he was like, okay,

(17:43):
let's have amnesty for the for the undocumented immigrants. Three
million people had the opportunity if they arrived illegally before
nineteen eighty four, they were able to have a path
to cisenship. And that nineteen eighty six, when most of
us were little or not born in this room, that
was basically the last time that there was a real

(18:03):
immigration deal of that sort. So there's been a generation
plus that we've been in this limbo in regards to
path to citizenship. So the nineteen nineties are coming around
and there's another immigration bill, this time from Bill Clinton.
This is when we start to get a lot of fencing,
building of walls along the Mexico border. It's the start

(18:27):
of the militarized border. More people are now eligible for deportation. Suddenly,
legal immigrants who have retroactive crimes they start to get deported.
That hadn't really happened before. There even had been a
loophole for undocumented immigrants who'd been in the US for
seven plus years. There was a way for them to
get legal status. That got taken away with the thoughts

(18:50):
of well, if we make it tougher, that's gonna stop
illegal immigration as it was called. Then, well that didn't.
What happened was you had more record setting immigration to
the United States fourteen million between two thousand to twenty ten,
and just yeah, and then on top of it, twenty

(19:12):
ten's come around. You have immigrants not only trying to
come to the United States, but now they're coming to
Latin America and the Caribbean. They're either going within the country,
within the region, or they're coming from you know, Asia
and elsewhere around the world, and they're trying to come
to countries where the visa policy is more lax in
the hopes that they can maybe you know, travel up

(19:33):
to the US border. This is where you start hearing
about immigrants crossing the infamous Darien Gap. That's an awful
portion between Panama and Colombia. It's basically jungle like, there's
a reason why it's not inhabited, and immigrants are trying
to cross across there to you know, move on their

(19:54):
way up the Americas and there's many deaths in that area.
Two thousand and seven, Dream Act was first introduced. This
was a way, you know, children who were brought to
the undocumented immigrants who were brought to this country as children,
This was maybe a way to give them a path
to citizenship because they didn't choose to be brought undocumented
because they were little children, Congress wouldn't pass it. In

(20:15):
twenty twelve, Obama said, fine, I'm signing my executive order
DACA Deferred Action for childhood Arrivals. But then that was
declared illegal by a district court, and then there was
an appeal that was it was brought before an appeals
court in November twenty twenty three to see whether.

Speaker 2 (20:39):
It is a violation.

Speaker 5 (20:41):
It may very well reach the Supreme Court, and then
who knows how they're going to decide on it.

Speaker 4 (20:47):
Wait, it still hasn't reached there yet.

Speaker 5 (20:49):
I didn't believe so has it yet that I.

Speaker 4 (20:51):
Didn't say, but now I'm not very hopeful.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
Yeah, okay, yeah.

Speaker 5 (20:56):
And then and then we mentioned it with so lease.
But I saw a documentary Separated. It was made for
MSNBC based off of an NBC reporter's work.

Speaker 4 (21:08):
Oh oh oh, I did see that and actually to
even recommend that, I just saw that on my own.

Speaker 5 (21:13):
Amazing. Yeah. So yeah, that is an in depth look
into how the Trump administration decided to separate children from
their undocumented families more as a deterrent and to use
that as an official thing. So yeah, to briefly go

(21:33):
through that. So technically it started under the Obama administration,
about one hundred families had this separation, but it wasn't
an official policy. And the Trump administration said, let's make
this an official policy. And then what was sad was
that these separations happened for nearly a year before the
administration finally fessed up and said, yes, this is part

(21:56):
of our official we are taking children from adults to
to other immigrants from coming to the United States.

Speaker 4 (22:03):
And as side note, they were also the women that
were detained and separated from their children. Some of them
were sterilized. Hmmm, wow, what you didn't hear about that?
Say that again, some of the women that were detained
when they were separated at the border from their families,
the US basically sterilized them like reproductive organs were like

(22:27):
tied up. And I'm surprised you didn't hear that one
that was kind of buried, but.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
Yeah, that one is kind of buried.

Speaker 4 (22:34):
H And like, I'm confident I know that that happened.
Could I tell you where the detention centers were? Now?

Speaker 2 (22:41):
But how is this ethical and or legal?

Speaker 6 (22:44):
I mean, we that's a whole conversation that's happened in
the States before. Like I work in ob G, I
N and when I you know, just being in the
field for so many years, like I'm just an admin,
but you hear stories of in exchange for healthcare, women
would be sterilized or they're I mean, the US has

(23:04):
a long history spe particularly like Puerto Rican women and
black women women of color, that in exchange for say
like okay, you're eligible for financial aid, all right, well,
in order to have your application process, then you can't
have any more children, so we're going to have to
have your tubes tied and then you know, things of
that nature. It's there's there's a long history of the

(23:25):
of the government.

Speaker 4 (23:26):
Having and as aside from the fact that there were
illnesses that were tested out in the United States, right
put down in Puerto Rico, right right, right, Yeah, Yeah,
that's going down a different rabbit hole.

Speaker 6 (23:37):
But yes, this is a recent issue. I know, this
was still happening in the last like ten fifteen years
that women were being sterilized for in order to get
like food stamps or to have government aid assisted to them.
That in exchange for this, then you know, you can't
have any more children if we're going to put you
on welfare, but you can't have any more babies.

Speaker 4 (23:57):
So that's that's that's such a nineteen eighties like well, or.

Speaker 6 (24:02):
If you need a termination, if you need an abortion,
then we'll give you an abortion, but no more babies
for you.

Speaker 4 (24:07):
So that's a that's such a nineteen eighties like welfare
queen propaganda, like wet stream. I'm sorry, like that's that's
I'm sorry, I'm sorry to put it so, but that's
that's what I feel like I would have heard proposed
back then.

Speaker 5 (24:22):
Sorry, well, I mean episode one, we talked about eugenics.
I mean that's just true. Yeah, this is the continuation
of that idea.

Speaker 4 (24:30):
Yes, you're absolutely right, You're absolutely right, just a couple
of weeks ago, right, yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (24:36):
So the Trump administration first internally in the Office of
Refugee Resettlement, the films separated.

Speaker 3 (24:45):
There.

Speaker 5 (24:46):
They profile this one employee, Jonathan White, who noticed that
there was an unaccompanied baby that was in their custody,
and he said that that was the moment where he
had a wake up call to you know, try to
do something to help these children. It took basically a
year before the executive order was signed in June twenty

(25:06):
eighteen that had stopped it, but even then separations were continuing.
Through twenty nineteen. In total, five and a half thousand
children were separated from their families.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
This is, of.

Speaker 5 (25:18):
Course, the images of children in cages with those strange
foil blankets, and at twenty twenty four, the documentary ends
by saying about a thousand children have still not been
reunited with their families. And just in November twenty twenty four,
the man in charge of one of Trump's immigration heads,

(25:41):
Thomas Homan, he's an incoming quote borders are and he said, oh,
now families can be deported together. So it looks like
we're swinging back to a Mexican repatriation kind of program
where we're just gonna, you know, parents and their potentially
US's and children are just gonna get deported and kicked out.

Speaker 4 (26:02):
That when you were saying, when you were referencing that
time with the children in the cages in the foil blankets,
that was around the same time you were saying that
there are children that have still not been united with
their parents. I'll take it even further. There are children
that they literally don't know where they are that have
been separated. And then that even goes further because there's
conflicting reports if whether these children are being detained and

(26:25):
they don't have record of them or they lost it,
or we don't know, or that child actually has been
released to family members, not the immediate family, but the
family members that have been that child the children have
been released to are not telling anyone where these children
are for their own safety and that's all.

Speaker 2 (26:43):
Or the children are being trafficked by the US government,
yeah right, and essentially putting up put up for adoption
right or in the foster system, and then you know, whatever,
the paperwork, it's lost, like well if they've been keeping
paperwork in the first place. The big thing of the
document was that the you know, the the higher ups
were discouraging people within the Office of Refugee Settlement and

(27:07):
a couple other bureaus from keeping actual lists of children.
They were like, can we stop keeping the list? And
the workers kept on doing it because they realized they
would need to keep track of these children who were
getting separated to try to reunite them. But of course,
you know, some of these children were so young you
could barely have any information from them. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

(27:28):
And like these kids probably under you know, four or three,
Like even if they were adopted by another family, were
taken in by another family, would not remember you know,
their well their childhood and who their their birth families were.

Speaker 4 (27:42):
Yes, but also you'd be surprised of what the body
remembers even if their mind doesn't remember.

Speaker 6 (27:46):
The children are probably you know, traumatized for good. But
it's not as that they could tell you that.

Speaker 4 (27:51):
Well, they can't tell you what happened.

Speaker 6 (27:52):
Yeah, my family, you're not my mommy.

Speaker 3 (27:55):
No, yeah, No.

Speaker 5 (27:56):
One other thing to bring up because this may as
this new administration moves forward. There's a law all the
way back from seventeen ninety eight, the Aliens Enemies Act.
It authorizes the president to apprehend into port resident aliens
if their home countries are at war with the USA.
Trump has said that he will use this. Some pundits

(28:19):
have argued that he'll use the argument that we're quote
at war with cartels, and so that's how he will
invoke this two hundred plus year rule to allow for
deportations unilaterally coming from the president.

Speaker 4 (28:35):
And I don't mean to sidestep that for a second,
but he didn't mention that he would use the nineteen
forties Japanese and terming camps as a president. He said
he could use it as a.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
President internment to concentration camps. Yeah right, okay, so what
we've been learning the entire time in school, it's not
right to do We're going to go ahead and do
it anyway.

Speaker 6 (28:56):
President what was it Clinton was the one who formally apologized, sorry,
aren't meant to do that, And she's going to say, no,
never mind, We're going to do that again.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
Yeah, almost one hundred years later. The more things change,
the more they stay the same. This is this is
incredibly upsetting, right, So thank you Edward so much for
it was such.

Speaker 4 (29:14):
A very that was a really thorough walkter obviously painful
to hear, like step by step, but very thorough.

Speaker 6 (29:20):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
And you know, I do hope that whoever listens to
this also shares this out because you know, even I,
as an immigrant myself, you know, from the age of one,
did not know you know about all of these you know,
all of these laws really and sort of barriers that
have been that have been put up, and it's it's insane,

(29:41):
right as you were saying Edward, right, like, a lot
of the reason why so many of us are are here,
right Parama, Colombia. You know, the Dominican Republic is precisely
because of the destabilizing presence of the United States in
our countries. I've told this story before, right, Like, had
it not been because the United States propped up the

(30:03):
Truhidio regime for thirty years and then decided, you know,
to help assassinate him, to facilitate his assassination, right and
then through the entire country into chaos. Had it not
been for that, like, my family wouldn't have to be here.
We would have we would much rather stay, you know,
have stayed in our warm, you know, tropical country where

(30:24):
we could have grown you know, food sustainably and whatever.
And yet because wealth was stolen right from the population,
from the people because of US policy, is the reason
that we're here. Like, you know, to those I'll say,
to those Americans who are like anti immigration, you know what,
we don't necessarily want to be here. We don't want

(30:45):
to be here to begin with. But you know, the consumerism, right,
the capitalism, the the the the ridiculous notion of having
to quote unquote be number one. This this Monroe doctrine, right,
this this idea from the seventeen eighteen hundreds that is
still alive, that the United States just because it's people, well,

(31:08):
the people in power are certain race that they are
allowed to, you know, to exercise power over everybody else.
Like this is ridiculous. And so then this is this
is the result of it. The result is people come
here in ways, right, including most recently with the destabilization
of like Venezuela over the last twenty five years because

(31:31):
of US sanctions. Right, We're going to talk later on
about you know how the about the economic situation in
Cuba precisely because of US sanctions, right, And so this
isn't this isn't our doing, those those of us who
are immigrants, right, Like, this is a doing of the
US government and the private right like industry right, and

(31:53):
the and the the wealthy right, who are essentially manipulating
our economies, our political systems. And then thereby are stereotypes, right,
and all of the ugliness that lives within us in
order to pin us against each other. So now we're

(32:16):
going to be doing this ridiculous thing, which again, right,
like I do get really worked up because one would
hope that we learned history in order to not repeat it. Right.
But then again, given the way that education has changed
the United States over the last twenty five or thirty years,
kids are also not learning history, right, People are not
learning that these things have happened before. Again right, Like

(32:38):
I would there to say, those of us in this
room are over educated and yet did not know all
of the intricacies of the history of immigration in the
United States. And I think the most insidious or one
of the most insidious parts of this is precisely the
way that the media also manipulates the narrative and then

(33:02):
manipulates people's perception of what is actually going on. So
like I will say, and I don't know if I've
told the story before, forgive me, I I have, but
a few years ago when it was all over the
media that these families were traveling. You know, we're coming
across the border, people with their children, right, or even
un accompanied minors. Like my mom for the most part,

(33:25):
is Spanish dominant, so she watches television and Spanish and
so on. Univisiong Unibisong has become incredibly I don't even
want to call it conservative I just want to call
it disgusting, is actually what it has been. And so
this was, this was on the news constantly, right and
making it seem as if as if these mothers, of

(33:48):
these fathers of these as if these entire families who
were coming with their children, we were coming here to
harm us and then harming them, as if again our
policies had not already put them in harm's way, right,
And so I remember a comment from my mother where
she was just like, you know, I think it's absolutely
ridiculous and like unfair and irresponsible of these parents to

(34:09):
come across the border like that. And I literally just
turned around and looked at her, and I was just like, oh,
you mean how the Virgin Mary had to run away
from persecution with Jesus Christ into an island, I mean,
into a land that was not their own, And that
shut her up. And I literally was just sitting there
and I was just like, how dare you? Like literally

(34:31):
like I was just I was angry because I was
just like you, we were almost in that situation when
I was born, right like that United States didn't know
that you were pregnant, and they had given you your
green card. You thought that I was going to have
to stay behind that you were going to have to
leave me a newborn, like with someone in your family.

(34:53):
And so I'm sitting there and I'm just like, where
where did your empathy die?

Speaker 4 (34:57):
Right?

Speaker 6 (34:58):
Like?

Speaker 2 (34:58):
Who killed it along the away for you to like
instead of looking at people with compassion, right, instead of
I'm just trying to understand that they are here not
because they want to. Again, nobody wants to track three
thousand miles coyotes.

Speaker 4 (35:14):
That may not come or may assault them on their way.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
They might die, money and run diseases, right, get killed
by but you know, by cartels or whatever like, or
by or by gangs or by any other criminals.

Speaker 5 (35:26):
Right.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
And so it was just like, and this is something
that I have actually witnessed grow within the immigrant Latino community,
right because not all Latinos are our immigrants or descendants
of immigrants, but within the immigrant Latino community, especially this
past election, it was disgusting to me.

Speaker 4 (35:46):
But again, and we're going to have to talk about
it later that season that is going to be Latinos.
And that being said, though, first I just want to
say I appreciate everything you just said. I I've been
having a hard time putting into wards like the I
guess vistual reaction. I'm having to the reality of this
seeping in because I think I've told my father's immigration story,

(36:10):
and I've protected some parts of it to a Peeth
family member who don't want to hear the unpleasant parts.
But no, I think I think it's time. Think I'm talking.
She's gonna rip the band aid right off and see
what happens. My Ablita she was she had a pretty
interesting life in Al Salvador, and she traveled to Guatemala.

(36:31):
She was a nurse at one point. I think she
worked either she was either a nun or she worked
by a comment but she was a highly educated woman.
In the United States was offering green cards because they
want at the time in the sixties or late fifties
or early sixties, and she was able to legally get
a green card to come to the United States. She
has my father. At some point she gets married to

(36:55):
my grandfather. I don't think they were married that long,
but she they came here to work in the United
States on her green card. He decided cruelly he no
longer wanted to be married her, and it probably only
married her for that green card. He got his own
green card, shipped her back here to raise I'm sorry,

(37:17):
tripped her back to Alsavador to raise my dad with
her mother started a new family immediately and had two
more kids, you know, he already had five, and ol
Savagor that slowly came over, slowly. He let them stay
in the war and then slowly came over. But my
father's a story. There's one part that I'm going to

(37:38):
keep for now close to the chest. But when the
Civil War was happening, I remember my father saying that
they were driving into houses. He knew he had to leave,
and he was writing, he was writing letters. He was
writing letters to get his father to bring him his father.
At that point, I think my grandfather had become a citizen.
I'm pretty sure at that point, because he was bringing

(38:00):
other family members, you know, his wife's family to the
United States where they are here now, and wasn't hearing
back It's getting worse and worse and worse, and he
knew he wasn't going to stay alive there in this war.
And he got all the way to the Mexican border, trucks, buses, whatever, however,
he got there and he stood there by the Rio Grande,

(38:23):
and he was going to go and knowing he was
going to die, you're not going to survive that. And
he contacted my grandfather one last time and told him
that he was at his absolute woods end because he
was either going to choose to die here trying to
get his freedom, that his father is not bringing him
over when he has the ability to, or he's going
to die over there in the war and he has

(38:43):
to choose which way he's going to go. My grandfather
flies down to Mexico, brings my father back, takes him
to the embassy and Alsavador, saying, I've been sending paperwork
to get my son here. Why isn't it happening, They said,
we never got any paperwork. He fills out the paperwork
at the embassy. Two weeks later, my dad's in JFK.
That story could have went really, really differently. Only and

(39:07):
there's another part of that story that Foulestone knows, but
I'm not ready to stay it on the air. But
these that there were other they could have been also
a lot worse for my father, and he could have
been sent back. And that's a story for another day.
But my father did he came here, and I believe
it was March nineteen eighty two. He was eighteen going

(39:29):
on nineteen, and he had to start high school to
which he had to drop out and get his ged later.
And when my sister, I think he failed his first
citizenship test from what I heard. I don't know what
happened there, but he became a citizen. I think he
was even torn in at Fort Hamilton, which is right
near where I live now in Brooklyn, when my sister

(39:51):
was one and I was about four years old. So
he went to Brooklyn to get his citizenship and we
went back home to Long Island. He has been a
US citizen since nineteen ninety two. My father does not
in any way believe he is better than anyone else.
And also, you can't I hate the blanket statements of immigration, like, well,

(40:12):
why did they if it was so bad, if it's
so dangerous to come into the country, why would you
even bother bringing your children? So you would be saying
the same thing. If they came here to work or
try to get in and left their kids in a
war torn country, then you'd say, what kind of parents
have selfish are they? They left them to die in a
world so people cannot win. My father, Now, I think

(40:32):
my dad was like me, having hope for the selection,
having hope for this policy, that things weren't going to happen.
But my father has been taking the results of this
selection really hard. And not because he's afraid of his
own safety or being deported back to a Salvador. I
don't believe that's a concern. At least, it's not what's
voice to me. But he's starting to text me articles

(40:55):
about the deportations that are happening. I think a woman
this week was deported with there are four kids, and
this her husband's had was left here, but him and
his wife and four kids gone like deported this week,
and he's sending articles and.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
And of these US citizen children. Okay, no, not not clear,
that's not clear. Okay, not clear.

Speaker 4 (41:16):
And when those families were being separated in the border
years ago, my father took it extremely hard. And now
this deportation, like, I don't think he's sleeping. I don't
think he can think of anything else. And I really
think this is consuming him. Not again, not because he's
afraid of his own safety, but it's just a human
issue and knowing knowing that in any legal immigrants journey,

(41:40):
here is a path of a thousand technicalities that could
have went long at any point. Okay, yes, at any point,
this one path that happened from point A to point B.
Any little kink in that path, yes, and you would
not have been here legally. You may not have gotten
your life. And every legal immigrant who remembers that knows

(42:02):
that it could have been them at any point.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
Anyone who remembers that. But apparently a lot of people
have forgotten a lot in these past years, Like I'll
I'll open up myself and say, yeah, no, I have
not been doing well myself since the since the election,
either because it's because because look I I it's not

(42:27):
because of a political opinions, right, but it is literally
because of the I guess, the the politics and the
laws that these people are saying that they're going to
implement and are implementing currently. Right, it has felt like
like a betrayal, in particular from the immigrant Latino communities.

(42:50):
That's why my mom never didn't want me to be
political in college, because she was just like, you're not
a citizen yet, so just keep your mouth shut.

Speaker 4 (42:57):
Wait, so you could become a citizen until she came
a citizen, right.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
So she became a citizen when I was when I
was fourteen in nineteen ninety eight. No one told us
that I was a citizen when she automatically became a citizen,
so I was fourteen, But it wasn't until I was
eighteen that I had actually learned from a counselor at
an after school program because I was telling her, are, yeah,
my mom became a citizen, so I'm really excited to, like,

(43:22):
you know, go through the citizenship process myself. And she
was like, how old were you? And I was just
like fourteen, and she was like, foulsto, you are a citizen.
And so, you know, I didn't really know it or
like pursue the legal avenues. I actually even renewed my
Green card at the age of sixteen and my Dominican

(43:43):
passport several times as well. And one time this is
so ridiculous because it's a little bit of a shallow reason,
but I wanted to travel with my friend to Bermuda,
and so if I went with a green card, I
would have to pay like a six hundred dollars for
the visa or some thing, or I could just pay
one hundred fifty dollars or however much one hundred dollars

(44:06):
for a US passport, so which was cheaper. Was well.
So I called I in s right because I wanted
her to make sure, you know, spoke with a very
nice lady and I explained to her the situation and
she was just like, yes, you are a U a citizen.
And so she said what you can do is apply
for your naturalization certificate. But she was kind of like

(44:28):
that is an extra step. You could also just get
your US passport and that will be your proof of citizenship.
And so that's what I have a US passport and
I'm a US citizen right and again right, It wasn't
like I just went up to I ins It was
just like, hey, y'all, I'm a US citizen, right. Like
I literally had to send in past passports from when

(44:50):
I was a baby, any Green cards I had had
actually only had one from you know, when I was younger.
And then I had to send in my mom's information
as well, so literally the original certificate, which my mom
was just like, are you sure we're supposed to send
the original that. I was just like, it says they're
right here on this paper that it can't be a copy. Thankfully,
everything went well and it was returned to her, right,

(45:11):
but like you're.

Speaker 4 (45:11):
Saying, you have to legally return everything.

Speaker 2 (45:13):
Yeah, but like it's it's I guess what was my point?
It has been, Oh, I am not doing okay, I
am not doing okay. Since then, it has felt like
a betrayal, in particular because I have also learned that
people in my family, in my Dominican family, not any
other type of family, right, whose parents crossed the border illegally, right,

(45:37):
So not even that they came here on no visa
and then overstayed. They're welcome, so they came here legally
but technically are undocumented.

Speaker 5 (45:44):
Right.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
That those people then turn around and were like, oh, yeah,
we shouldn't be having all these immigrants, you know, blah
blah blah, blah blah blah, and like what is this
all that they This is just a it's a result
of them listening to an echo chamber of ridiculous people
who are uninformed, who have microphones, right, who are not

(46:05):
overly educated like the people in this room, but who
have these ridiculous like uninformed you know, like notions and
ideas of what immigration is and what deportation is, who
have not done the homework like you know Edward did
for us, to tell us the entire history of I
guess the legalization or legal immigration and naturalization in this country.

(46:29):
So all of that to say, I am hoping for
the best and preparing for the worst. I am hoping
that the guard rails, as they say, you know, the
media said last time, the guardrails of like you know,
our democracy hold, but at this point, like we're understanding
that they most probably are not because they have been
set up over the last eight years to not. And

(46:50):
so yeah, it's going to be incredibly harmful for people
in our families. Well I don't know your situations, but
definitely in my family. Right if what the what this
administration said is you know they're going to do if
they actually get it done, and I may not be
able to stay in this country. Right if some of
the ridiculous notions of like revoking right like US citizenship

(47:14):
or removing birthright citizenship, which we'll talk about in our
right like in our next episode, right like it m
this country will see pain like it has never seen before,
and this country will literally slide back into the third world,
like I shouldn't say third backwaters country that it was,

(47:37):
and it actually continues to be because every other nation
is actually you know, is industrialized and has health care
and takes care of its people, right, And yes, there's
homelessness and there's property everywhere, but not to the degree
that there is a United States. It's going to get
worse in the United States, and the people who voted
for this administration are going to understand that nothing is
going to get better for them simply because there's a

(47:59):
scapeg anyway. Sorry, that's where I'll know it. Also, to
the betrayal is not only through the presidential elections. I
think the betrayal is through the Congress as well, because
the entire whole pages and pages of notes that I
found are you know, these laws which could have been
passed but then they fell apart and or they didn't
get enough support, and it's like just a continued history

(48:21):
of that. Like really our recent immigration legal legislative history
has just been stasis and not really taking action. And
so with this lack of action, we're having you know,
deportation being presented as the solution, which you know, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (48:43):
I mean they say things like we're gonna here's the thing. Okay.
I was actually talking to my cousin who's half Chilean
and half Carucasian like me, and she I think she
used to identify more as conservative, probably more modern, but
left leaning. Now she said to me, she said, you know,
there's a big difference between a conservative policy.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
And these policy policy.

Speaker 4 (49:05):
And he said, you know, sometimes if you were to
say reform, if you were to say that there's going
to be additional stipulations, maybe you don't agree with it,
but it doesn't seem inhumane. Like, okay, now we're going
to we're going to require certain documentation to get in,
you know, that kind of thing. Maybe you don't agree
with it, but it doesn't seem inhumane. What's being presented

(49:26):
now feels anti people. And that's a big.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
Difference, anti human. It is absolutely so illss right. The
people who claim to be Christian, the people who claim
to have you know, direct communication or closer relationship to
God or to their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Right,
I'm the atheist here, and yet apparently I'm the only
one who has read the Bible, you know, the recoverying

(49:52):
Catholic who has read the Bible, because I was just like,
as far as I remember, when they asked Jesus Christ, like,
what are the two most important commandments? He was just like,
you know, there's two. Love got above everybody else, and
then love your neighbor the way that you love yourself right,
and that is insidiously and disgustingly like has been removed

(50:13):
from American Christianity to the point where, now if you
say that at a not necessarily a Catholic church, but
at a present maybe at a Catholic church, at a
Christian church, if you say Jesus said these things, someone
will come up to you and say, where in the
Bible does it say that Jesus didn't actually say those things?
Like look up these articles, you guys, Like there are

(50:34):
literally churches that are closing down because or pastors that
are getting fired because apparently they're too liberal and apparently
Jesus is too woke on and.

Speaker 4 (50:43):
Also putting that aside for a second, just I don't
disagree with you, but I have heard on the other
side of that political aisle propaganda with my own ears
that even though people can identify as Christian and people
can also be Republican, they had a hard time reconciling

(51:04):
the exact notion that you're saying with their government beliefs,
because whatever they believe on a personal level with Jesus
Christ does not mean that it's not it's supposed to
be reflected in government policy. So they even in their
they want the infiltration of Christianity and government, but then

(51:26):
at the same time it is supposed to be separate.
Don't don't put it too much.

Speaker 6 (51:30):
In their camel and the eye of the needle and
all of that. A lot of people aren't going where
they want to go.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
No, exactly. Again, regional Bibles, y'all. Like, and if you
don't want to read the entire thing, just read one
of the Gospels. How about that? How about that? All right?
I think I'm done with that.

Speaker 4 (51:46):
I think that's all I can I handle.

Speaker 2 (51:47):
Yeah, one more thing. I have a cousin who is like, oh,
I've been reading the Bible, and I'm like, girl, you
have no context for any of these things. Looking at
you think you think this is actual like history, just
like you, you have no context for what a lot
of these things mean. Right, And so she's sitting here
thinking that she's all high and mighty and that she

(52:08):
voted for someone who is family oriented, who was more
family oriented than the other candidate. And I'm like, girl,
show me where more firm family oriented? I'm sorry? How
many children, by how many women? By how many bad Obama?
More family man had? Obama in two thousand and eight
has three different baby mamas and got being divorced twice.

(52:32):
We would there would be no we would not know
his name today.

Speaker 6 (52:35):
Who was that man that ran for president?

Speaker 2 (52:37):
I don't know who tried he tried it? That guy maybe.
So I mean, guys, I'll leave it there, and I'll say,
I hope that we can provide some resources at the
very least, you know, in our show notes, where people
can you know, you know, at least go and look
up some information. There isn't really much that we would

(52:58):
be able to do like now, individually or except just
like provide some of these, you know, references and resources
where people can can hopefully go.

Speaker 4 (53:08):
Okay, thank you, that was hard.

Speaker 5 (53:10):
If you want to learn more about your own ancestors
immigration records, we have the perfect help for you. We
have someone from FamilySearch FamilySearch dot Org joining us. Let's
talk to Debbie. Now we have a real treat. We're
talking to somebody from Family Search, the Church of Latter

(53:31):
Day Satans immense library for family history researchers. And we're
not just talking to anyone. We're talking to Debbie Girtler,
who is the head researcher, who's the assistant director of
the Family Search Library in Salt Lake City and the
head researcher for Latin America. She's coming us to us
live from Salt Lake City. Debbie, thanks, thanks for joining

(53:53):
Rediscovering Latini DoD.

Speaker 7 (53:55):
Thanks for having me. I'm excited about.

Speaker 5 (53:57):
This, wonderful thank you. So yeah, we've been talking about
immigration history and all the different records which are available.

Speaker 2 (54:06):
Maybe if you could.

Speaker 5 (54:06):
Break down what's available specifically on FamilySearch dot org and
what's available for US immigration.

Speaker 7 (54:15):
Okay, so for US immigration, we have of course Passeer
list for those who may be coming in from anywhere
in Latin America or Europe, which are very helpful. We
also have border crossings if you're coming up from Mexico
and so those can be very helpful. Just keep in
mind that those are better after nineteen hundred because they

(54:36):
didn't really keep super great records before that, so those
would probably be my two go tos. And interestingly enough,
World War One and World War two draft records can
also be very helpful, although they're not considered immigration record
per se. That they often have the person's birth date
and where they were born, and so those can be

(54:57):
super helpful as well. And then of course you have
her now vitualization records if they come to the US
and they have become a US citizen, you can look
at those, and again those are better. Later in the
nineteen hundred, late eighteen hundred, those are better for that.
There's some good things that you can find that might
help you to trace your Latino back to his home country.

Speaker 5 (55:19):
Got it now? When I was interviewing you for NBC
Latino article which I wrote last year, Humble Bragg, you
told me a wonderful story about a Mexican American woman
who was looking for her ancestors in border crossing records.

Speaker 7 (55:34):
Yeah. Yeah, So this is with a young woman, she
was probably in her early to mid twenties. And we
were sitting at a computer and we were looking at
records and we came across a border crossing record and
it was for her was her great great grandmother, but
in border crossings. Oftentimes you get pictures of ancestors because

(55:55):
it kind of like a passport has a photo. These
border crossings would have photos. Well, this one had a
picture of her with her two sons and one of
those sons with her grandfather, and she let out a squeal,
and everybody in the library and looked at me was like,
what did you do to her? She was just so excited.
And it's just so much fun for them to find

(56:16):
that one record, because sometimes we know our ancestors didn't
always maybe they couldn't afford to take professional photographs, but
they probably had photos made when they were immigrating in
a record, and that's a good place to look for
a photo.

Speaker 5 (56:30):
Interesting, So about which time did these records usually start
to have photos.

Speaker 7 (56:35):
The border crossing records. It's kind of hit or miss,
but border crossing was our best starting about nineteen oh eight,
nineteen ten and going to the present. And so it
just depends, and I see them in some and I
don't see them in others. I was researching a woman's
ancestry just yesterday and I found a picture of the
grandmother and the border crossing record, and so I don't

(56:57):
see them a lot but every now and then you
come across one. Another time I found one for a
woman and she had seven children, and all seven of
those children were in the picture with her.

Speaker 2 (57:09):
Those areaing wow wow.

Speaker 5 (57:12):
So you raise a good point with that story. Sometimes
you know people are looking at the website at home.
Sometimes they're coming into a family search library. What do
you get if you come to a family search library
to do your research?

Speaker 7 (57:26):
So you generally get a little bit higher access to
some records. Sometimes at home you may see a camera
that has a little lock on it. Sometimes due to
contractual obisations who the record keeper who allowed us to
film those records may require that you'd be in one
of our facilities, and so you can get probably greater access.
We also have access to a lot of free subscription

(57:49):
websites like ancestry and my Heritage, find my Pass that
you can use institutional versions in our facilities. If you
come to Salt Lake, you get access to a wonderful
expert that speak the language, that read the records. They're
all professional genealogists, credentialed and they are wonderful and lots
of kind, friendly people to help.

Speaker 5 (58:10):
And let's guess you up a little tell us, tell
us about how you became a credentialed in Latin American
genealogy and how'd you come to focus specifically on this
geographic area.

Speaker 7 (58:20):
Okay, sure, Well I grew up in southern Arizona and
a copper mining town and pushing Amorenci area For anybody
out there that knows where that is, those people don't.
But more than half of my high school was Hispanic.
And so while some of my friends were all taking French,
I'm like, no, I want to take Spanish. I want
to know what they're talking about. I want to know
more about the culture.

Speaker 3 (58:41):
Nice.

Speaker 7 (58:42):
And then fast forward to nineteen ninety five and we
moved down to Chile. My husband took a mining assignment
down there, and so we were down there for four
and a half years. And in the meantime, before we'd
gone down there, I had worked in our local family
history center because I love family history. And then when
they found that when I got to Chile that I

(59:02):
did family history, they asked me to work in their
family history center there, and I just fell in love
with the Latinos and the people and their records, and
so I just really loved it. Then when I got
my degree in family history from Brigham University. Because I
was fluent in Spanish, I took all of the classes
that related to Hispanic research. And then fast forward, a

(59:24):
job opening came up in the Family Search Library downtown.
I applied and I worked there as a Latin American
research specialist, and then I managed the Latin team at
one point and managed the whole international floor. But I've
always loved the Latino people. They are so into their ancestors.

(59:45):
They love it. For the most part. There are a
few that have had some bad experiences in the passion,
so they don't talk about it. But for the most part,
they love their ancestors and they're very close to them,
and they have that great desire to be connected with
them and to find out more about them, who they
are and where they come from.

Speaker 5 (01:00:02):
Wonderful. And you yourself are a member of the Church
of Flatter Day Saints. Can can you talk about your
own personal connection with family history?

Speaker 7 (01:00:12):
Yeah? Yeah, So just to correct the name, it's the
Church of Jesus Christ. The Latter Day stands to garden. Yes,
Christ in the picture, because he is the center of
our religion. But just as a very young age, as
a teenager, I was in a church class and we
were all talking about our ancestries and our pedigrees and

(01:00:32):
how we were connected. And then I started researching my family.
I've been particularly drawn to my mom's side of the family.
They are all from the South, and just to learn
more about them and their lives, because it's not something
that my mom has talked a lot about. I was
able to talk a lot with my grandmother before she
passed and got a lot of information that helped me

(01:00:53):
get started. So that's a big tip for those of
you that are getting started. Talk to those elderlies in
your family before. You can't talk to them, but I
talked to them, and then I would start doing the
research and find out more about them, and which just fascinating.
I don't know this might interest your listeners, but one
of my I think it's my second or third great
grandfather died in the Mexican American War. Wow, that's kind

(01:01:17):
of ironic that I like to help people find their
semic ancestors. But I don't know if he died as
a result of battle or as a result of illness.
I'm still tracking him down, but yeah, I'm finding out
more about their lives. Then it just helps me to
feel that strength that they had, you know, when they
pick up and they moved to an entirely different area.
Can you imagine how hard that was without a U

(01:01:39):
haul and all of the things that we enjoy today.

Speaker 5 (01:01:43):
Yeah, really true? All right, any questions from our co
hosts for for for Debbie here, I'm trying.

Speaker 7 (01:01:51):
Yeah, I say, I wanted to add one more thing
that I thought of earlier, especially with regards to immigration.
We know that the Hispanic she's a double surname system.
Oftentimes I have seen when they come to the US
they flip their maternal surname and use it as their
maiden name. So keep that in mind researching your immigrant

(01:02:12):
ancestor that they may have flipped that in and sometimes
the records when their index don't always it makes it
seem like that's the paternal name and it's not just
a tip.

Speaker 5 (01:02:23):
There, wonderful tip. My dad's last names are Corilla Vasquez.
He's gotten so many letters addressed to doctor Vasquez. So yes,
I completely understand that I have a question because I
did notice on family search again, how you guys find
these sources and digitize them. I'm very impressed but you

(01:02:44):
guys had passport applications from Columbia, and so I'm wondering
how many, if it's widespread through Latin America that you
have immigration records from those countries specifically.

Speaker 7 (01:02:57):
Yeah, it's kind of i'd say hit or miss. It
just depends on the area and how willing they are
to work with us. We do have some, and of
course we're always on the lookout to acquire more and more.
The types of records that we especially look for are
those that will help us connect families together, that give
this vital information that allows it to connect the generations.

(01:03:20):
We have some things in Spain as well, it just
it's hit or miss as far as those particular types
of information. Unfortunately, passenger lists out of Spain into Latin
America are not the greatest. So your best bet when
you have that type of an ancestor is to look
through church records and see if you can find a

(01:03:41):
church record that says where is from, for example, Nataleis,
and then the name of the place so that you
can frace them back. And that's sometimes an obstacle for
Latinos tracing immigrant ancestors.

Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:03:55):
Yeah, I've also found wills too, sometimes are good about
saying where they're from. Yeah, I think we're good, all right, Debbie,
thank you so much.

Speaker 4 (01:04:04):
Hello listeners, thanks for joining us, and we are here
with an updated segment under better circumstances. We wish it
was in a better circumstances. Absolutely, thank you, Melyssa. This
is Brian Rose and Melissa the co host for Rediscovering
Latini Dan and we hope you well, I can't say

(01:04:24):
we hope you enjoyed this episode. We hope you found
this episode interesting. Yes, go ahead, yeah, useful, interesting and lightening, sobering,
whatever your adjectives may be. However, at the time of
every recording, we hope, and up until this point, we
have been very successful at keeping the content as relevant

(01:04:45):
as possible and as up to dat as possible. However,
we did record this episode before the inauguration of the
second term for Donald J. Trump, and to say that
things have changed would be the the understatement of the decade.
Extremely extremely quickly.

Speaker 8 (01:05:04):
Times are changing, right, and I think as bad as
we assumed it would be based on previous experience, based
on promises, I think that the weights of how fast
things have been moving have caused us.

Speaker 4 (01:05:20):
A bit of whiplash. I'm sure all of you could relate.
So here we are using this information. Where in this
episode we've talked about the history of deportation in the
United States, we are also just going to recap what
has been happening because obviously as a population and our
politicians do not learn from US history, and they do

(01:05:42):
not learn from worldwide history, and we keep repeating really
horrific patterns within the first and the first hundred days
of this administration are not even complete yet, barely thirty days.
We're only thirty days in. We're only thirty days in,
and at this point, there has been a massive movement

(01:06:02):
to remove undocumented immigrants from the United States. At first,
it was stated that it would just be It should
not have been a stated this way, but originally it
was told that it would be Asian Americans in like Chicago,
and the raids would start there. However, they have hit
every metropolitan city, and at this point there are cities

(01:06:23):
I can confirm in the Northern United States that are
constantly working with their city councils and state government to
try and push back on the federal government moving in
with these raids and trying to remove people from schools
and being able to override any sanctuary areas. And if

(01:06:47):
this horrifies you, I mean you're living through it, But
then I would congratulate you and being, you know, an
empathetic Cuban, because this is everyone else's you know, And
a lot of fathy going around right now and solightly unfortunate,
a lot of cognitive dissiness, a lot of misinformation in
the news about who is being taken and how. And

(01:07:10):
in the Northern United States area, they're trying to prevent
ice from coming in or around the schools. They're also
trying to invoke remote learning options for students or families
that are afraid to send their students to school afraid
that the child will be taken at school, if children
afraid being afraid that they go to school and their

(01:07:32):
parents won't be there when they get home.

Speaker 3 (01:07:33):
Or there was just that terrible story from the child
in Texas that committed suicide because she was being bullied
by fellow students that told her that her parents were
going to be deported and she was going to be
left alone. Maybe it's just a horrible time.

Speaker 4 (01:07:47):
This is this is I think beyond I think this
is just beyond where most of our hearts could possibly
have imagined this would have been. And I feel like
I have facts for you that I will recap, and
yet I don't think it. I don't think it even
comes close to encapsulating the horror that we're all feeling
and watching and feeling helpless, because I know for myself

(01:08:10):
being in New York City, feeling that we were once
protected and we're not anymore. It was a sanctuary city.
New York City's mayor, if no one is aware, is
a mayor who was recently charged with several crimes, several
several crimes, and while he was a longtime Republican, he

(01:08:33):
ran on the Democratic Party ticket as a different kind
of Democrat and he was elected. And since he and
his administration or falling. I'm sorry, we're just, I want
to say, falling like flies, because they were all everyone
was getting charged from this administration. So certainly, yes, So

(01:08:55):
that was a situation where as soon as Trump was
in office, he made very nice with Eric Adams made
very nice with Trump, and magically Trump has now sided
with him and the dj is looking to drop charges
against Eric Adams, and in return, Eric Adams is very
much looking like he's going to not stop any federal

(01:09:19):
movement to remove undocumented migrants.

Speaker 9 (01:09:22):
So he's selling our city out, he's selling the he's
selling residents out complete yeah to for his own benefit.
And that all being said, Listeners is not while it
feels very close to us as New Yorker, it's definitely
not the norm of politicians doing this selling out their residents.

(01:09:42):
And I will even say they're taxpayers, because undocumented immigrants
do find ways to pay taxes, even if it is
not through their own numbers, their own social Security numbers.
That being said, people being targeted, there are families on
Long Island.

Speaker 4 (01:09:56):
I can confirm that they are afraid to go out.
They're afraid to go out and about. They're afraid to
go food shopping. And Listeners, my father, as I've stated,
as a Salvenorian immigrant. He has been a US citizen
since nineteen eighty two. He has a US passport he
now carries on him at all times, along with his
driver's license. And yet every day I sit there and

(01:10:20):
I hope to God that my sister, who is severely
disabled mentally impaired with very few verbal abilities, I am
always afraid that she may have a mel done in
public with him, and just the wrong people will see
him trying to calm her down and seeing how different

(01:10:41):
they look and how different he sounds from her and
assume the worst. And my father, being as passionate and
upset as he is about this whole situation, even though
he is a US citizen, I just worry every I
literally hold my breath every day, and I am one
of the privileged ones, and I hold my breath every day.
So I can't imagine. I mean, I can't imagine, but

(01:11:04):
I could never be able to be in those shoes.
I can only imagine what that is like to also
feel stateless because many people didn't realize they were not
born here legally or that their birthday citizenship may be
stripped from them at any point. So and that's for
our next episode, actually citizenship and.

Speaker 3 (01:11:24):
The town for sure under that, guys, of I'm lucky
because I mean when my parents came, obviously, they came
about ten years before I was born, and by the
time I was born, they were not citizens. They were
here legally under green cards, but they became citizens when
I was about eight years old. So Adama does not
have dual citizenship if by some horrible knock on wood

(01:11:47):
that it ever happens my citizenship with the United States
were to be rebroked, I've got no country to go
to because I don't get Pannamanian citizenship under my parents.
So I'm sure there's a lot of people out there
listening who are are in I mean, I'm extremely privileged
that I don't have to worry about that route, but
there are those who do not have an option of

(01:12:08):
anywhere else to go if they are here with you know,
they came with parents who were undocumented and do not
have another country that can claim them.

Speaker 4 (01:12:18):
Yes, thank you, thank you, JULYSSA scary times is. But
being said, listeners, I would also like to decry that
there are laws being passed and officials trying to move
Venezuelan to Guantanamo Bay of Venezuelan migrants. And let's just
say we have an episode later this season on the
Latino voting for voting proximity to whiteness and Latinos who

(01:12:41):
had voted for Trump and the effects of that. I
feel like we're many of us feel betrayed on a
national level because our country of origin, our ancestral homes
have also sold US out. So there are countries such
as Elsavador, where my family is from, Panama where Jelyssa's
family from in Costa Rica that are willing to take

(01:13:02):
in migrants of any nationality to aid President Trump in
this deportation effort.

Speaker 3 (01:13:08):
They're currently about three hundred foreign nationals being held in
Panama right now and hotels that are refusing to be repatriated.
So God knows what's going to become of these people.

Speaker 10 (01:13:18):
It's unfathomable, Like I don't even have the words reading
these articles every single day the Venezuelans held in Guantanamo,
one hundred and seventy have been flown back to Venezuela, but.

Speaker 3 (01:13:30):
Who knows how many more are going to be? Like
is this going to be a never ending process? Is
this going to just become a cycle of people being
shipped all around the world?

Speaker 4 (01:13:39):
And what happens if.

Speaker 3 (01:13:40):
These people refuse to be repatriated, Like it's only been
a month, but what happens if this goes on for years?
And if it's you can't even imagine.

Speaker 4 (01:13:50):
Right, And if there are listeners here that think that
they are safe because they are US citizens. I beg
your finest pardon, but if you think that they won't
come for anybody who is just a critic next, you
are so sadly mistaken. You're so sadly mistaken.

Speaker 3 (01:14:04):
We can anticipate what the next change will be. We
can anticipated this a month ago before the inauguration. So
I think she knows what the landscape's going to look
like a month from now, a year from now, two
years from now.

Speaker 4 (01:14:16):
Yes, And I want to say that I think part
of us didn't know it was going to happen this fast.
This It feels like a racing train on fire and
to this extreme. We will keep you updated listeners. This
podcast has been recorded and we will update this podcast
as the season progresses as we know more. However, this

(01:14:39):
is the first episode of the season where we really
had to have a tremendous update such as this, and
actually was it representative christin Noam. She also said it
a warning that people have until the end of February
to leave voluntarily or else they will be deported and
not be able to return to the United States ever again,
So that is that's where we're doing.

Speaker 3 (01:15:00):
We really don't even have the words because it's it's unthinkable,
like who could have even imagined this situation so quickly,
so extreme, and we can't even predict what's going to
come next. It's like, honestly, I'm like, I really don't
have the words to even describe what's what's happening in
our country right now.

Speaker 4 (01:15:21):
Well, thank you so much, Melissa, and we hope you
enjoyed this episode and we will have an updated segment
for next week's episode on citizenship. Thank you, maake care,
thank you shall thank yep, I can do that. Yes, Hey, folks,
if you love our podcast, Rediscovering Latini Dad, please follow
our subscribe. It is different from downloading, and please leave

(01:15:43):
us a five star rating and review. For more family
history tips, visit rediscovering Latinidad dot com to learn how
to join our Patreon and gain access to our exclusive
lessons and bonus interviews. You can also send us an
email at rediscovering Latini dot at gmail dot com or
call our text us at six four six four seven
zero ninety two four, and follow us on our social

(01:16:06):
media at rediscovering Latini Don on Facebook and Instagram, at
redisc Latini Don on Blue Sky and x and r dash,
Rediscovering Latini Don on Reddit. Join us next week as
we discuss citizenship.

Speaker 2 (01:16:19):
Bye bye bye bye bye

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