Editor’s Note: For the last few months, RANGE has been working with the junior and senior students at The Community School to help each of them develop a piece of journalistic writing about a local or recent news topic that interested them. As they reached the end of the capstone project, we selected a few articles that we professionally edited and will be publishing on our website in the coming weeks as part of a series we’re calling The Young RANGE. Through this project we’ve been constantly in awe at the level of student engagement, the quality of work and the RANGE of topics the youth were passionate about. We’re beyond excited for the penultimate piece in the series, Lydiah Young’s story on the gaps in care for immigrants in Spokane and the organizations addressing those gaps . – Erin Sellers
Ve Morales was born in Maryland to a mother who immigrated to the United States from Peru. Like many children of migrants who bridge the gap between languages and cultures, Morales grew up helping their mother navigate the immigration system. They became used to translating for and filling out paperwork with their mother, helping her connect with social services, traversing the process with less friction than if she’d had to do it alone. From the vantage these duties gave them, Morales was able to see the obstacles immigrants faced in a country that can be unwelcoming, specifically to migrants of color.
“It was pretty hard to see all the struggle,” Morales said. “You just feel the indirectness of the barriers hitting you, and so those don’t make you feel very wanted in the community.”
Moving to Spokane with these hardships fresh in mind, Morales immediately began working with AmeriCorps and Spokane Public Schools. Seeking more ways to help, Morales began volunteering and then applying for positions with nonprofits in the Spokane area that fit with their personal mission to help others. Latinos en Spokane (LES) — a non-profit focused on empowering and serving immigrants in the Lilac City — spoke straight to their heart.
“A lot of what LES does resonated with me,” Morales said. “I was missing the diversity factor in my life a lot.”
From both a professional and a personal perspective, Morales shared about the practical troubles immigrants face.
“With the minority groups in Spokane,” they said, “there’s a lot of pain. Housing is a major issue, food is a major issue. You see a lot of people struggling, a lot of people in limbo.”
Morales’ experience — and the experiences and challenges of those they work with — is nothing new for both legal and undocumented immigrants in the United States.
Immigration and the difficulties associated with it started before our country was founded: European colonizers migrated to the Americas starting in the 15th century and brought indentured servants and enslaved people from Africa. Since then, other immigrants came to the US fleeing famine, war and other traumatic world events, and the Americas became a web of diverse nationalities, ethnicities and races. During the 62 years Ellis Island — once the busiest migration processing facility in the United States — operated, more than 12 million immigrants passed through the gates into a new life.
Despite this influx of new cultures and diversity, anti-immigrant sentiment grew within those already living in the US, fueled by the belief that immigrants were taking away their jobs and rights. Laws such as the Immigration Act of 1924 were created to form boundaries and restrictions, and favored immigrants of certain races and ethnicities, specifically Western European immigrants, and completely excluded others, such as Asian immigrants. Before the enactment of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which erased the proceedings of the Immigration Act of 1924, many immigrants faced religious and workplace discrimination.
Today, immigrants, regardless of legal status, continue to face challenges — in simply maneuvering the elements of establishing a new life or battling the persistent misunderstandings and mistreatment of perceived differences.
Opposition to immigration has escalated in recent years. In April 2018, then-President Donald Trump’s “ Zero Tolerance ” policy led to thousands of migrant and undocumented families being forcibly separated from their children at the US-Mexico border. Although the policy was revoked on June 20, 2018, hundreds of children continued to be divided and kept in facilities where living conditions were dangerous. Families were split up months before the policy was publicly declared. While this may seem inhumanely atrocious, it’s only one struggle in a long list of offenses, barriers, prejudices and challenges that undocumented immigrants face in our country.
Undocumented immigrants, defined by the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) as “foreign-born people who do not possess a valid visa or other immigration documentation” in the US, are widely misunderstood by the American public.
One of the most harmful misconceptions of undocumented people — especially those from Latin America — that has been proliferated by anti-immigration political pundits assumes they are bringing crime and violence into the country while also taking well-paying, beneficial jobs from upstanding, tax-paying citizens. In reality, migrant and undocumented workers fill in essential gaps in the job market, from agriculture to healthcare. Some of these jobs are low-paying, back-breaking, labor-intensive work that often doesn’t offer benefits, proper training and safety gear, or fair wages.
According to Boundless , an organization focused on assisting immigrants through the documentation process, “Nearly 19% of the labor force is now composed of foreign-born workers, reflecting the vital role of immigrants in sustaining American businesses.” Not only do they occupy the positions unfilled by American citizens, they face constant scrutiny and prejudice from those around them, living in constant fear of deportation, discrimination, or assault.
“We’re really bringing (migrants and immigrants) over to pick our food but we don’t want them to be like us,” said Ana Trusty, the spokesperson for Mujeres in Action (MiA) , a Spokane-based organization focused on reducing domestic violence against Latina women.
“We’ve picked on different communities to make them ‘othered’, so that white people in power can feel like they are better, like they are right,” Trusty said. “It’s just about power and control, really.”
As a mother, Trusty has made it her job to empathize with and aid those who desire a better life and future. Originally from Puerto Rico, she moved to the continental US to finish her college education in Miami, Florida. She moved to Spokane to lay down a foundation for herself and her daughter.
Still, Trusty says she felt like she had lost who she was. “I was assimilated,” she said. “I had a job working for Spokane County, I had friends — everybody was Anglo. So I really was losing my roots and my Spanish.”
It wasn’t until Trusty saw an ad for MiA on social media that she connected with people from her community in Spokane. She started as a volunteer at MiA and slowly worked her way up to the position of communication director. Now, she spends her days supporting the Latinx survivors at MiA by helping them to obtain federally-funded services .
“I’ve learned a lot through MiA about what it really means to be an immigrant,” Trusty said. “There’s people that get here, and just by them being here, you know that they’ve been through a lot.”
Organizations like LES and MiA provide resources for undocumented immigrants to form roots in their new home.
LES provides tax assistance, childcare, health coaching and cultural events like El Mercadito , where fresh, culturally fulfilling food is distributed for free. LES also connects migrants to local health resources such as CHAS for vaccinations or prescriptions. The organization is building a legal department to help immigrants navigate the immigration process and already offers free legal clinic nights once a month.
“We make sure the Latino community doesn’t feel lost or alone,” Morales said.
When asked about how people can participate in supporting immigrant communities, Trusty encouraged speaking up. “Just advocating for services to be available to others,” she said. “It’s a low-effort, high impact kind of way.”
The post The Young RANGE: Bridging the gap for undocumented people in Spokane appeared first on RANGE Media .
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