Latina Lista: News from the Latinx perspective > Palabra Final > Immigration > Over 47,000 join Facebook group to show undocumented immigrant life is worth living

Over 47,000 join Facebook group to show undocumented immigrant life is worth living

LatinaLista — The premise for the site PostSecret is simple enough. People anonymously mail in their secrets on the back of postcards.
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After reading the scanned postcards on the site, it’s easy to see why these people want to remain anonymous, but there is one postcard that has not only captured attention but hearts too.
The colorful postcard, posted June 6, has more of a powerful message than a simple secret. It reads:

I have lived in San Francisco since I was young…
…I am illegal…
I am not wanted here
I don’t belong anywhere
This summer I plan to jump off the Golden Gate

Since the posting, there has been a global outpouring of kindness towards this individual with people posting advice, assurances and even offers of new places/cities to call home.
There has even been a Facebook group created called please don’t jump that in one day saw over 11,000 people join and is now past 47,000 members. The “wall” is filled with short posts of encouragement and love for this person.
The creator of the Facebook group plans to print out all the Facebook posts, take them to the Golden Gate Bridge this Sunday and paste them on the bridge. In this age of social media, even this event has its own Facebook page called Together for Life! (Come Together on the Golden Gate Bridge)
As the organizer for the Golden Gate Bridge event says:
I am hoping that this will help the writer of the postcard understand that it doesn’t matter who you are or what others say, but where you feel at home that determines where you belong.
Unfortunately, for the undocumented and especially for the young people who were brought to this country as children, this sense of not belonging or, worse, not being wanted, is an all too real emotion compounded by insensitive state legislation and ignorant and vicious rhetoric.
It’s hard enough for an adult to remain strong in the face of such a situation but a young person who has known no other country but the United States, it is a nightmare with no way to wake up.
Unfortunately, the media and the American public have allowed the immigration debate to be stripped of its human factor — and it’s hurting the most vulnerable of our population.
This secret was a cry for help that triggered an unprecedented response.
This shows that all those “Americans” the GOP and immigration restrictionists like to always refer to can’t be as many as the growing list of Americans who keep posting their words of encouragement and love on that Facebook wall — and that’s an encouraging sign.
It shows that this country, and humanity itself, still has heart and compassion — even if a small group is doing its best to rip both from the foundation on which this country was built.
(Editor’s Update: The creator of the Facebook page, Kimberly Furnell, tells Latina Lista that she created the page on Saturday night, June 6, the day the secret was posted. She has not yet heard from the person who wants to jump from the Golden Gate Bridge.)

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Comment(3)

  • Dave Bennion
    June 11, 2010 at 11:00 pm

    Mark Krikorian’s response: go ahead and jump.

  • El Guapo
    June 13, 2010 at 4:17 am

    About 10 years ago I was at a birthday party, and I noticed a young woman across the room looking at me and smiling. She had just arrived from Central America, and I was the first American she had ever met. She was optimistic and excited about her new life and eager to meet Americans. She thought we were nice. A lot of Latino immigrants were like that back then.
    Nowadays people I come across don’t even make eye contact with me. The anti-Hispanic rhetoric is so prevalent and rabid that people no longer feel welcomed. Maybe this person isn’t going to jump off the bridge, but the feelings that he or she expresses are real and felt by many Latinos. It’s really sad.

  • Alonzo
    June 28, 2010 at 7:10 am

    “Nowadays people I come across don’t even make eye contact with me. The anti-“Hispanic rhetoric is so prevalent and rabid that people no longer feel welcomed. Maybe this person isn’t going to jump off the bridge, but the feelings that he or she expresses are real and felt by many Latinos. It’s really sad.”
    Perhaps she had the very same feeling of a US citizen who would trespass on Mexican or European soil without a visa or passport. How do such feelings corrolate to ethnicity when they actually relate to legal status? If that same person had entered legally, she wouldn’t have such feelings, would she? Her unease is her guilt or fear of being punshed for doing the wrong thing, not due to the unwelcoming nature of this country. Proving to the contrary, we invite more immigrants into this country than all other nations combined. That’s where advocates arguments of US hostility ring hollow.

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