Educating Illegal Immigrants Can Foster Solutions

Released_By: USANews PR Network
Date: Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Time: 06:25:46 AM

For_Immediate_Release

The term “an elephant in the room” refers to a situation where an issue or truth is being ignored or unaddressed. Unfortunately, illegal immigration is one such “elephant”. Of course the media and legislators talk about illegal immigration and there are laws in place designed to curb numbers of illegal immigrants that come to America, but in a city such as Los Angeles we interact with and see illegal immigrants on a daily basis; some of us are neighbors or coworkers of people who are in this country illegally.

If illegal immigrants are here to stay, shouldn’t we try to reach out to these individuals so they can understand our customs and way of life? While there are no easy answers, if we can begin to help educate illegal immigrants they in turn can become better members of our communities and help reduce the fear and misunderstanding that exists about these people.

Millions of immigrants are illegally living in our country and will not be deported any time soon – if ever – back to their native country. These men and women buy goods, use cell phones and drive cars just like any legal citizen. So instead of hoping they know about our laws and how our government operates, we seek to proactively introduce them to our way of life and basic laws in order to strengthen and acknowledge the contributions they make to our country.

The government is taking action to reduce the number of illegal immigrants, such as the Bush administration’s proposed 14-mile, $8 billion border fence. The actual effectiveness of such a measure is greatly debated, along with its price tag. Even if every illegal immigrant was deported there would be a negative economic impact that Congress would need to account for and address. The government is struggling to cut the flow of immigrants from crossing our borders illegally, but there is no end in sight.

The reality is that many illegal immigrants are here to stay. CULTURESonFILM is one organization reaching out to immigrants in all walks of life, including illegal immigrants, with educational tools to aid newcomers (legal and illegal) with their transition to life in America.

Our new DVD, Welcome to the Law, is one such tool that can help many people, from immigrants to citizens, to understand how our country’s complex legal system operates. Welcome to the Law can be a catalyst toward better understanding one another and knowing we are all responsible for being upstanding members of our communities.

If we can all look at the elephant in the room we can see that illegal immigration is a complex issue and we must find positive ways to address the matter with real-world solutions. If we can reach out to help and promote harmony rather than looking at illegal immigration as a problem that can only be solved with fences and crackdowns, we can foster a new way of thinking about how to address the issue and how to treat illegal immigrants as people.

Adam Williams is the founder of CULTURESonFILM, www.culturesonfilm.org,  a not-for-profit organization dedicated to raise humanity’s awareness, acceptance and understanding of our changing world through documentary films.