PATRICIA GOMEZ: En la 4ta parte de la serie VOTE 2024 Table Talk, una producción de Marquette University, Milwaukee, PBS y Adelante, hablamos del tema: inmigración.

[MUSIC] PHILL ROCCO: I'm Phil Rocco.

I'm a professor of Political Science at Marquette University, and I'm excited to talk to some voters tonight about immigration.

TAMMIE XIONG: I'm Tammie Xiong, raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and I am excited to have a conversation around immigration.

STEPHANIE SALGADO: Hi.

My name is Stephanie Janet Salgado Altamirano.

I'm originally from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and have been living for a decade in Madison, Wisconsin and I'm looking forward to hearing from our community members tonight about immigration.

PENNY PIETRUSZYNSKI: I'm Penny Pietruszynski from West Bend, Wisconsin.

I'm looking forward to this opportunity to discuss the immigration policies.

AL HAMDAN: Hi, I'm Al Hamdan, and I'm from Franklin, Wisconsin, and I'm here to talk about immigration.

MARK HOLLAND: My name is Mark Holland and I'm from Germantown.

And I'm really looking forward to having a conversation about immigration today.

PHILL ROCCO: According to public opinion polls, immigration is a top issue in this election.

The Pew Research Center noted that a growing number of migrants seeking entry into the United States at its border with Mexico has divided congress and has emerged itself as a top issue in the 2024 election.

Do you personally consider the situation at the border a crisis, a major problem a minor problem, not a problem and some people have argued that what we have at the southern border is not a border crisis, but an asylum crisis.

STEPHANIE SALGADO: For me being an immigrant is like the elephant in the room because from what I understood growing up, I always had this idea of like, wow, the United States is the greatest country of the world!

There's so many opportunities I can walk on the streets and not get kidnapped.

MARK HOLLAND: It is important to me, and I do believe that United States needs immigrants in order to survive.

AL HAMDAN: I feel like the politics sometimes demonize immigration more than it should.

I mean, I think 90-95% of immigrants are hardworking people.

Maybe you do have you know a few, you know, bad apples, but every society has bad apples.

It's not relevant to you know immigration, migrants, or other natives.

TAMMIE XIONG: It's not just what's happening on the southern border.

Children of refugees like we have, you know, thousands of, you know, Southeast Asians that are being deported that nobody really knows about.

And these are children that came here as children like refugee kids to experience that and to face that and through no fault of their own, you know, have to be having to be facing deportation to be sent to a country that they didn't even grew up in.

STEPHANIE SALGADO: I think everyone wants peace and wants freedom for their own community to be safe to walk around and to not feel like if you are a target or if you are seen as an alien.

What can that look like for you if the world politics becomes sour, like, can you imagine for immigrants that came from the middle east during 9/11 being from those places and then carrying that identity with you was so dangerous.

Or Asian folks during the pandemic, that was so dangerous because you were seen as foreign.

PENNY PIETRUSZYNSKI: I believe that it is a crisis because people are coming, and we need to protect our citizens.

We need to protect the people of America, and there's a lot of people that are coming in that don't have that agenda, that they're here to sell their drugs.

They're here to traffic people.

And I believe that we need to keep our Americans safe.

MARK HOLLAND: We need to monitor and vet the people that are coming in.

You just can't open the border and say, "Come on in."

You need to have a program, a system.

TAMMIE XIONG: I've never, you know, I guess I'm not in the spaces, and I don't hear the conversations of people saying, "Oh, you know, these people that are coming over here are like traffickers and bringing in drugs."

I think the more the spaces that I'm in are like sheer desperation, right.

What are people experiencing in their home country?

Why have they made that trek here?

Yeah, and I can't help but see my own humanity in that and say like, this is horrible, and we need to figure out, like a process.

But at the same time, we need to like treat people with, like, kindly and with respect and holistically because it's not okay how we're treating families that are arriving here on the border.

STEPHANIE SALGADO: I see the border and "border," right, man made borders that we created.

And I see my cousins.

I see brothers and sisters.

I see aunts.

I see families.

I see fathers.

How can I tell myself that I deserve to be here over them just because my parents had the privilege to pay through the process?

Just because I'm now a naturalized citizen just because I was able to make it out and not them?

And all this emotional vulnerability that I think I'm showing and feeling safe to do is because it affects me, it affects my communities who are from mixed status family.

It affects the people who are working in restaurants, maybe even the people who picked up our food and we had dinner tonight.

It's all those people who I see a hardworking people.

In the previous jobs I had, I was a community organizer for the Latinx community.

I've been a youth counselor for youth, and the trauma they just bring is so heavy that for them is survival at this point.

The idea of separation of families is beyond the not okay because we also realize how this separation of families have been done in so many different communities.

I was reading a book about Clint Smith about how the word is passed, and he was showcasing at one point the similarities between slavery in the United States and the same oppression tactics that is used today on how they were separating families who were brought in from multiple communities in Africa to then here and they were separating them by selling them, a human being, and then now here separating them telling, who is the criminal, who is going back.

Like you mentioned, it's unfortunately very polarized, but we really have to connect on our humanity that even if that person looks different from you.

PHILL ROCCO: What would a solution, right, to improving those pathways look like to you?

AL HAMDAN: This idea that you can just apply and just come, it's a misconception.

It's very difficult to immigrate to the United States, so you have people that are desperate.

And that's what we've talked about that solution in the mother country and the home country maybe is a is a better way to do it.

They have no opportunities, there's political persecution, there's murders, and then they're just rushing the border.

And they're rushing the border because there is jobs here.

To me, maybe a work permit program might make some sense.

MARK HOLLAND: Why are you coming to steal cars?

Why are you coming to commit murders, to rape, and all these things?

Why are you coming to the United States to do that?

My thing is, yes, you should get deported in that case.

You're not a benefit to society if you're doing those things.

Granted, it's not everybody.

The majority of people aren't doing that, right, 5% maybe?

That's a very small amount of people, but when you invite masses amount of people, and you don't do the vetting, but if you don't do the vetting, you're going to get more that do that.

TAMMIE XIONG: So much of the conversation about immigration then becomes around the 5%, and it didn't make enough room and space for like the 95% of people that are coming here to flee, you know, for safety, for jobs, for all of that.

STEPHANIE SALGADO: Yes, Latinx people were given jobs because this is where the United States have jobs, but those jobs were not necessarily 40 hours per week, were not necessarily $20 per hour, were not salaried jobs, were not jobs with benefits.

And we're also many, many times subjects of abuse, discrimination, racism, and then also stolen wages.

If you made all that track to have money to then afford with your family to bring them here for yourself or bring money back home, and your wage is being stolen, but then you don't think you have rights because you're maybe be undocumented.

It's a sad reality that we have to confront, the why.

AL HAMDAN: Technically, immigrants are not qualified for social programs.

I mean, you gotta be a U.S. citizen or you've got to be, you know, a green card holder, otherwise you're not gonna get social programs, you know.

And if you get sick and you go to the hospital, they gotta treat you, but as a as a as a general rule, and you guys can correct me on this, you can't go apply for like food stamps.

You can't go apply for unemployment benefits.

If you don't have, if you have legal, you just can't do it, you know.

STEPHANIE SALGADO: And you still pay taxes.

AL HAMDAN: And you still pay taxes.

PENNY PIETRUSZYNSKI: I have a question.

PHILL ROCCO: Yeah.

PENNY PIETRUSZYNSKI: What does everybody think?

Um.

Do we need a wall?

AL HAMDAN: I think we need to govern and know who's coming in, and it should be channeled the right way.

MARK HOLLAND: And so in some ways I think, yeah, a wall would be good.

But then in some cases, I think, um, it's not very inviting, right.

It's like saying, stay out.

STEPHANIE SALGADO: I don't think we need a wall.

I think with a wall or not, people are still going to come in.

PHILL ROCCO: My hope for the future of American politics is: AL HAMDAN: I'd say, civility.

PENNY PIETRUSZYNSKI: United.

TAMMIE XIONG: That people really see each other's humanity.

MARK HOLLAND: Bipartisanship.

STEPHANIE SALGADO: Equitably.