Part of Latina Week of Action (August 1-5) National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health asked members of the community to answer the question “What’s the real problem?” when it comes to how immigrant women are treated.
“What’s the real problem?”
As an undocumented Latina, the real problem for a long time was the silencing of people’s voices whose story did not fit the norm (for example my story, my mom’s story and your story) . The framework around immigration or the dialogue around immigration did not consist of people that were actually undocumented or were actually immigrants. Politicians and “allies” saw it as their job to speak on our behalf. That is problematic because it assumes we want to be spoken for, it assumes we are not knowledgeable about the situation we are in; to us it is not a situation it is our lives.
Communities that have been marginalized from the dialogue have a voice and want their voice to be heard. The real problem is that this continues to occur in many spaces; continues to be the case when we speak about immigration and it continues to be the case when we speak about health care and access to it. The dialogue around affordable health care access seems to leave out Latinas, specifically undocumented Latinas. So when we ask “What’s the real problem?” The problem is that my story, my mom’s story, Tia’s story, your story is not acknowledged in many spaces, and furthermore our voices are preferred to be in silence. Immigrant women continue to be marginalized out of conversations.
Below is a poetry piece I wrote as I Read the rest of this entry »
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