Who Can Stay Here?

Who Can Stay Here?

Documentation and citizenship in children’s literature

GRACE CORNELL GONZALES

 A teacher at a bilingual elementary school in East Oakland, California begins sharing a tragic story that is commonly happening at her school and in different cities.

The story:

“Rumors began to fly early in the school day among students and teachers—ICE agents had been seen parked several blocks away from the school. The campus went into a panic, terrified that the agents would apprehend parents on their way to pick their children up from school. Office staff and parent volunteers called each family at home, instructing them to send only documented friends or relatives to get their children at the end of the day. The administration contacted the press. Soon, Mayor Ron Dellums and members of the Oakland police force were gathered outside, denouncing the fear tactics being used by ICE.”

With all the commotion of outside the school, this brought frantic to the students. They began to cry and worry about their families and themselves. Since this is a common in their community, the teacher gathered children books that dealt with immigration issues and memories that dealt with ICE raid. In her search of children books she noticed that the majority of the books dealt with border crossing instead of addressing the issues of documentation and unequal access to citizenship. The teacher states that most children books don’t tell the actual political side of immigration. Grace, the teacher identifies 3 categories of books about documentation and U.S Immigration.

Book 1:

Creating the Image that U.S. Citizenship Is Equally Available to All

Books that choose to ignore issues of undocumented immigration and unequal access to citizenship, portraying a world in which U.S. citizenship is equally (and often easily) available to all people.

1.     

  A Very Important Day, by Maggie Rugg Herold: This book is about families from different countries celebrating their citizenship, they march to the court house to receive their papers and they happily swear their  They happily swear loyalty to the United States of America and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, waving tiny American flags as they exit the courthouse.      

Problem of this scenario is that provides false information to students and families that initially it’s that easy to become citizen in the United States.

2.       How Many Days to America? A Thanksgiving Story, by Eve Bunting: This book does portray immigration and border crossings being difficult on its journey crossing the border but the book has a happy ending of soldiers greeting and helping them.

Book 2:

Someone Else’s Problem

My Diary from Here to There/Mi diario de aquí hasta allá, by Amada Irma Pérez: Is a diary of a girl who immigrates to the United States from Mexico. Her father is a U.S citizen and the family needs to wait a long time near the border while the father secures their green card. The diary portrays the main character fearful and sadness because her family might not get their green card. Eventually the family gets their green card and cross the border legally. But there is an incident on the way into the United States. A police officer arrest a women without papers. This incident is mentioned but not elaborated on, which causes the reader question why some immigrants have documents and others do not.

Book 3:

Tackling the Subject

Hannah Is My Name, by Belle Yang: A family immigrates to San Francisco from Taiwan. They applied for their green cards. During their wait the parents must work illegally. But Hannah’s mother is fired from her job after her boss found out that she did not have papers while her father is constantly looking over his shoulder for immigration agents as he works at a hotel. One day, while Hannah is visiting her father’s work, his job gets a visit from immigration agents and they are forced to leave which causes a change in is work schedule. In the end of the story the family receives their green cards and are allowed to stay.

The author of the points out that families eventually receive their green cards and many families must work illegally.

Here are links to this these amazon books: 

A Very Important Day:https://a.co/d/0sMOqXH

My Diary from Here to There/Mi diario de aquí hasta allá: https://a.co/d/48zAt6Z

Hannah Is My Name: https://a.co/d/8E7I2oE