Immigrants Fear Trump’s Xenophobic Stance

A poem written against the Iranian government was all it took for Nooshin’s family to consider moving to the United States.

Members of the government had broken into Nooshin’s father’s office, destroyed everything and shut it down completely.

They feared for their lives, and their solace came only after Stanford University offered the family visas to come to the U.S.

After leaving Iran, Nooshin’s family discovered that friends had been killed and others had been arrested, held in jail for prolonged periods of time.

Another immigrant, Maria Ruiz recalls moving to the U.S. from Mexico with her family nearly 20 years ago.

Cramped in a single bedroom apartment, Ruiz, her parents and her brother rent out their living quarters with two other families to make ends meet.

Ruiz longs for her old home in Mexico, where the family had enough to live comfortably, but she knows that life in the U.S. has the potential to be even greater.

Forced to adapt to the different culture and lifestyle, both Nooshin and Ruiz started their new lives in the U.S. from almost nothing. Now, under the Trump presidency, immigrant families like Nooshin’s and the Ruiz’s question if their endeavors to fit into the country they now call home was worth the sacrifices.

According to American Community Service (ACS) data the immigrant population in the U.S. stands at approximately 43.3 million, or 13.5 percent of the total U.S. population. Approximately 3.9 percent, nearly 11 million, of immigrants are undocumented.

Of the 1.38 million foreign-born individuals who moved to the U.S. in 2015, India was the leading country of origin for recent immigrants, with 179,800, followed by 143,200 from China, 139,400 from Mexico, 47,500 from the Philippines and 46,800 from Canada.

California is home to approximately 10 million immigrants. 51.2 percent of these immigrants were born in Latin America, 38.6 percent in Asia and 6.4 percent in Europe.

Immigrants make up 64 percent of California’s labor force of which 1.75 million are undocumented.

Within the immigrant labor force, 15 percent work in the arts, entertainment, recreation, accommodation and food services, 13 percent in manufacturing, 13 percent in professional, scientific, management, administrative and waste management, 12 percent in construction and 11 percent work in agriculture according to the Migration Policy Institute.

Most immigrants in California are documented residents, with 49 percent being naturalized U.S. citizens, and 26 percent having some other legal status including green cards and visas. This leaves approximately 25 percent of the immigrant population in California undocumented.

On Jan. 27, 2017, President Trump signed an executive order blocking citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. The order caused protests nationwide and has been blocked by a federal appeals court.

On March 6, 2017, Trump issued a revised travel ban, removing Iraq from the list of countries blocked and also exempting permanent residents and current visa holders.

However, tension from Trump’s travel ban along with his disrespectful attitude toward immigrants in general has continued to upset the immigrant community in Fresno.

“As an immigrant it makes you question, ‘is this what the American dream was about?’” said Nooshin, now a 20-year-old student at Fresno City College.

“Coming here, getting all these racist comments and not being able to travel back. This country was made up of immigrants and now [Trump’s] trying to ban everyone from coming here.”

Nooshin and her family immigrated to the U.S. from Iran when she was 10 years old, due to her father’s political troubles in their homeland.

“I was always told that if you go to America, life is going to be so much better, that life in the U.S. is so much easier,” Nooshin said, “but I wouldn’t get treated this way in my home country.”

More than 130 members of America’s foreign policy establishment have denounced the revised ban, claiming it is just as damaging to U.S. foreign relations as the original order.

FCC student Maria Ruiz also shared her experience in coming to a new country and how Trump’s presidency has impacted her. Ruiz came to the U.S. from Mexico with her family at age 14.

“The way Trump talks about [Mexicans] isn’t a correct way,” said Ruiz, now 42 years old. “Now that he’s president and leading a big nation, he’s spreading these negative ideas.”

Trump is known for his notorious comments about Latinos and proposition to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border during his presidential campaign.

“I didn’t think deeply about the situation regarding Trump’s position on immigrants at first,” said Ruiz. “I didn’t think he was going to win. Now because he’s the president, it’s more difficult; I’ll see more things in the news about what he says and it’s scary. I know a lot of Mexicans and other South Americans that are scared of being deported.”

Up to 8 million people in the U.S. could be considered for deportation, according to research done by the Los Angeles Times.

“I have family that don’t have their papers, they’re scared to even go out on the streets,” said Ruiz. “They’re scared that if they go out they’re not going to be able to come back. They have kids who were born here, so they are scared about how their life might be if they get sent back to Mexico and get separated from their kids.”

In Fresno County, there are over 200,000 foreign born residents. Fifty-eight thousand of those are undocumented immigrants. Trump’s immigration law enforcements pose the risk of separating families and deeply hurting the community.

“People don’t understand that being an immigrant is extremely hard,” said Nooshin. “You literally start life from zero. You’re just pushed into a new environment so you’re forced to adapt to it and get used to it.”