Census 2020 Impacts Everyone
There is an intersection with the structural issue I’m researching, with is the anxiety or stress caused by immigration. In Oaxacalifornia there are so many mental stress issues on the families, but Odilia Romero really helped bring the image to life by providing her own perspective when she explained her first time in LA from Oaxacalifornia, “It was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. I think I suffered from depression, but I didn’t know it” (Oaxacalifornia, p. 41). This shows how even children, since she came at the age of 10, can have mental stress or PTSD from migrating to a whole different community and have to adjust their whole lifestyle. It’s not an easy task to do, but sol many people brush it off as if it’s something that’s so easy because living in the U.S. is a privilege to them when really it’s just their best chance at making a better life but in no way is it easy or fair. Odilia is just one person, out of millions, who have trauma and chronic stress-related to experiences. Not only this, but this article speaks upon an issue that is not really addressed publicly as much as it should be. Personally, I have been oblivious to this issue until now, but reading this article makes me realize that there is a high demand for it, and it needs to be resolved because people are being treated unfairly just for cultural barriers that can be resolved. This issue is the language barrier that causes a high demand for interpreters. They spoke about how court cases have been misjudged due to some people not being able to understand, or medications being given promptly because the patients don’t know what to do or the reasons why, and etc. Now, you might be wondering, how does this relate to mental health for the people? I found an article called Endless fear: Undocumented immigrants grapple with anxiety, depression under Trump that speaks about the statistics of mental health in immigrants, and the reasons why. In this article, they start out with this mind grappling statement,
“Immigrant families that avoid routine activities out of fear of immigration enforcement are more than three times more likely to experience psychological distress” (Olivia Sanchez, USA Today).
This is because these people are scared to go back somewhere that they tried so hard to escape, and because if they are caught or have any issue, even as small as going to the hospital, they have trouble communicating and understanding.
The issue of anxiety is hard to count because the 2020 census does not specifically ask if you have anxiety. What it does ask is if you have mental health disorders, and many people with PTSD or anxiety will say no because they brush off the fact that they have anxiety because they don’t think it’s big enough to count as a mental health disorder. Not only that, but the people within my community are already hard to count because many of them are scared thinking the 2020 census will share their information and report them to ICE. Although this fact is false because the 2020 census date is used to give resources to those and have a headcount but your information is private and will not be shared, it’s just many of them don’t know that. For example, Odilia states, “ With higher participation, the aim was to get more accurate estimate of the number of indigenous peoples living in the US and, therefore, gain better representation and services for them in the public sphere” (Oaxacalifornia p.49). The idea of this census is to provide resources for those who need it, but they won’t know which communities need it we they don’t have data of those communities existing. The resources that could be given could be interpreters like Odilia, funds for school or college, funds for Canal Alliance itself, benefits for those living in the canal (healthcare and food), and etc. The people who attend adult ESL at the Canal are struggling to support their families or themselves, but with more people like them being counted, it will show that the government needs to provide more help to them in order to ease the process.
The community members I’m working with so far are a representation of the language barrier being a major cause of stress on these people. I work with Canal ESL and they’re there so that when placed in certain situations like the cases mentioned in Oaxacalifornia, they can understand and handle situations by learning English. This, of course, helps support my research but I’ve also learned about the idea that these people suffer from stress but also are experts at dealing with it. They have learned through years how to beat the stress, and they’re doing it currently just by putting themselves in the ESL class. They are facing their fears and finding ways to overcome them.
