By Claire Pimentel in Rhode Island’s Future
I am a Rhode Islander and an
immigrant.
But I am not only an immigrant, I am
undocumented.
I am what some people choose to
label as beneath worthy of the same dignity as my neighbors. All due to the
fact that, in 1998, I was brought to the United States from Portugal at the age
of 10 months.
In fact, I grew up mostly oblivious
to this, to the fact that I was undocumented, that I didn’t have the papers
necessary to live a normal life.
I grew up in fear, I suffered from
anxiety, worrying whether or not I would see my parents when I got home from
school. I worried about whether I would be allowed to drive, or work. And yet,
what is not talked about is the psychological toll of the rhetoric that we hear
today. The rhetoric that is present within these very chambers.
The demagoguery. The dehumanization
of immigrants. The calls for mass deportation and the splitting apart of our
families.
And today, we are here to reject
demagoguery. We are here to reject dehumanization. And we are here to reject
the calls for mass deportation.
But it goes beyond that. House Bill
5093, introduced by Representatives Corvese, Ucci, Philliips, Coughlin, and
Nardolillo is an attempt to divide and conquer and pull the wool over the eyes
of voters.
The sponsors of the bill will spread the narrative that immigrants are stealing our jobs, that immigrants are costing us hundreds of millions of dollars. The sponsors will canvass their districts come re-election time, and have the audacity to tell their constituents that they are fighting for them. Something that couldn’t be further from the truth.
The sponsors will claim that their
constituents are poor because of immigration. They will blame immigrants for
their economic plight. They construct a false narrative to distract the voters
from who is truly at fault for the wealth divide.
The sponsors neglect their actions
after the financial crash of 2008, which only exacerbated the massive transfer
of wealth to those at the top.
And today, that divide is clearer
than ever in Rhode Island.
As of 2015, 1 in 5 children live in
poverty. Many more are food insecure. Rhode Islanders struggle to make ends
meet, and yet our legislators respond by voting against measures to ensure a
living wage, they respond by cutting the top tax rate on the rich, while
advocating for the deportations of those who work and actually contribute back
to our state.
They ignore that mass poverty is
caused by the billions of dollars monopolized by the rich, instead preferring
to blame me. An immigrant.
And once and for all, we must reject
this false narrative. We must call out it out for what it is. It is dire
attempt to distract voters from the inaction of their own Representative. It is
a dire attempt to blame the poor and middle class workers, instead of themselves
and the ultra-rich.
Once and for all, we must reject
this narrative that appeals to nativism and xenophobia, and instead speak to
the real causes of economic plight in our state.
Claire Pimentel is an undocumented immigrant. Their work on immigration and
social justice has been featured in RI Future, The Providence Journal, GoLocal
Prov and The Guardian.
