Thread: The changing faces of Iowa

Since 'outing' myself as an undocumented immigrant, I've come to see that the real election story is America's manifest diversity

guardian.co.uk
Jose Antonio Vargas
Monday 2 January 2012 15.36 EST


Mitt Romney campaigning in Sioux City, ahead of the Iowa caucuses.

"Where did my country go?"

It's a familiar question heard from many Republican voters in this first-in-the-nation caucus state, and it's asked in varying degrees and varying combinations of anxiety, confusion and exasperation. The question's unmistakable undertone – reverberating not just in predominantly white Iowa, but across the American heartland – is the country's irreversibly changing demographics.

Iowa looks different than it did 10 years ago. Though the state's white population increased by nearly 2% in the past decade, that's no match for the dramatic growth of its minority groups. African Americans are up by 44%, Asians by 45% and Latinos by a whopping 84%, according to latest census figures. The numbers are evident not just in schools and businesses in Polk County, which includes Des Moines, the state's largest city, but also in the rural counties of Crawford and Buena Vista, both home to meatpacking plants.

The Hawkeye State's demographic transformation mirrors an unprecedented and culture-shifting American makeover. Whites are a shrinking share of the total US population. Slightly over a third of Americans belong to minority groups. What's more, their offspring make up nearly half of America's children. Every 30 seconds, a Latino in our country turns 18 years old. And there's a good chance that that new eligible voter is a first-generation American born to immigrant parents: most of them citizens, but many without their papers.

This transformation goes beyond race and immigration. In early 2009, Iowa became the third state (and the first and only one in the Midwest) to grant marriage licenses to gay couples, thanks to a unanimous ruling by the state supreme court. By late 2010, three members of that court were removed from office following an orchestrated campaign by groups opposing same-sex marriage. As our country's minority population continually grows and becomes even more visible, this demographic makeover is about the increasing role of "the other" – blacks, Latinos and Asians, gays and immigrants – in American life in the age of Obama.

The coalition of these groups was key in electing the nation's first minority president. They may prove even more critical in keeping Obama in the White House. Similarly, how the eventual GOP nominee in particular, and the Republican party in general, attract these groups will surely determine their future. In 21st-century American politics, diversity is destiny.

I grew up at a time in which diversity wasn't a mere buzzword but an inevitable reality. I look Asian. I have a Latino-sounding name. I "came out" as gay in high school. In my 12 years as a working journalist, there have been times when it was an advantage for me to be in the minority; in newsrooms that were largely white and heterosexual, my varied background was a reportorial asset. Other times, however, it was a disadvantage. You get pigeonholed, or worse, you pigeonhole yourself.

This past summer, I revealed that I am undocumented immigrant in an essay for the New York Times. In telling my very specific story, my aim was to illuminate a greater universal truth about our broken immigration system. And with the help of close friends, I founded Define American, a non-partisan, story-centric campaign that seeks to elevate how we talk about immigration.

Some of my colleagues in the media have argued that I've ceased being a journalist, that I've crossed the line to becoming an advocate. But journalism comes in many forms, especially now in the era of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, when the "me" in "media" flexes its muscles like never before. And in my mind, every piece of journalism is a work of advocacy: for hard facts that breed insight, for perspective that leads to a certain truth.

In my career as a journalist, I've written hundreds of stories – but avoided writing about immigration. Facing my own reality scared me. But now that I've faced it, I intend to write fully not just about immigration, but also about the larger theme of the evolving American identity. Indeed, more than the struggling economy and the rising deficit, what's truly at stake in this election is American identity itself: about who we are and whom we deem to be Americans.

Around this time four years ago, I drove about Iowa covering the caucuses for the Washington Post. For the 2012 campaign, I came back to Iowa, this time as an undocumented American talking to American citizens about immigration, and as a journalist trying to ask tough questions of the Republican candidates.

The latter proved more difficult than the former.

I went to a town meeting for Mitt Romney, at an animal feed warehouse in Cedar Rapids. I took with me a homemade sign, a poster board that I initially kept down as Romney took questions ranging from Medicare to climate change.

When a voter asked a sensible question on immigration – what do we do with undocumented immigrants already in the country? – I shot up my sign to speak not just for me, but for the estimated 11 million people who are stuck in the same legal limbo.

"I'M AN AMERICAN W/O PAPERS," the sign read.

"Illegal immigrants shouldn't get special treatment," Romney told the voter. "They will have to go home and get in line to apply for legal status."

I raised my hand to ask a follow-up question. I wanted to say something along the lines of:

America is my home. I grew up here, I went to school here, I've paid taxes here. When you say, 'get in line' to apply for legal status,' where is the line? What is the process here in the US?

(Yes, undocumented Americans pay taxes. In fact, undocumented workers paid $11.2bn in local and state taxes in 2010, according to the non-partisan Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy.)

Alas, I was never called on. I was kicked out of the building when I tried to stay for the press conference.

Two days later, at a Rick Perry meet-and-greet at a small cafe in the college town of Ames, I spoke with Rod Freeseman, an operator specialist and Perry supporter from Des Moines.

I told him about my immigration status. He looked confused: I'm not what he expected me to be, and he didn't understand how people like me didn't have a path to citizenship. "But I have to tell you, I don't agree with just opening up the floodgates, with just having people come over," Freeseman said. "As the governor has been saying, we should secure the borders."

The border has been secured, I told him: arrests of people attempting to cross the US border have plummeted to levels not seen since Richard Nixon was president.

"Oh, I didn't know that," Freeseman said.

Most people don't.

"But I do think that something has to be done. Let's keep talking."

Addressing our country's direction depends on a civilised and informed dialogue. So I'm all ears.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...ing-faces-iowa

What part of illegal doesn't this person understand...he wants to know where the line is any one want to tell him where it begins...I guess were supposed to feel sorry for him.....So now all over again what part of illegal is not understood....there is legal and then there is illegal!!!!!! Comprande'