The immigrants contributing to rural towns and economies

Their future success depends on many factors, including comprehensive immigration reform, which will better enable people to get the education, resources and jobs they need to become full members of U.S. society. But that also depends on the nation’s willingness to reframe the way it talks about immigrants: not as social problems to be kept out by a border wall, but rather as opportunities to contribute to the communities they live in, while helping to build a more inclusive America. When one of Gaspar’s former colleagues learned about her situation recently, she wanted to know if she could help. “Can I sponsor you in some way?” she asked. Unfortunately, Gaspar explained, there is no way. It didn’t matter that she was brought across the border as a child, that she graduated from high school in America, that she now had a job and three kids who were U.S. citizens. The laws offered no way for people like her to belong. America’s immigration laws — dictated largely by labor needs and race discrimination — have alternately shaped and shattered the lives of immigrants across the West for generations. Laws like the Immigration Act of 1924 were deliberately designed to permanently restrict immigrants from "undesirable” areas of the world — particularly Asia, the Middle East, and southern and eastern Europe. When severe labor shortages followed, particularly in agriculture, the Bracero Program was created, bringing millions of temporary Mexican workers to the U.S. That was followed in 1954 by Operation Wetback, which sought to deport many Mexicans who could not prove their citizenship, often without regard for due process.