Dr. Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa Proves There's No "Illegal" Immigration

New America Media is one of the most important aggregator of news from the "diversosphere", the regional and national ethnic media outlets that cover many of the stories happening across the country that rarely get equal play on "mainstream" media. It's why I was perusing it, on the look out for some more uplifting stories.

So lo and behold, I see Dr. Alfredo Quiñones Hinojosa's mug, demanding my attention from the bottom of the NAM front page. In an article titled, Undocumented Farm Worker Becomes Brain Surgeon, Dr. Quiñones tells his story of coming to the United States with his parents when he was 19 years old and working his way out of the back breaking world of a being a farm hand through community college and university work.

Yet it's this video from "The Big Think" that give us more information. Like the fact that one of his grandmothers was a curandera and partera -- a folk healer and midwife. His love for science and for helping people didn't come from anybody with a college degree, but from a country midwife and healer.

Yet what most captured my attention was the title of the story. New American Media has been at the forefront (and for a good reason) of reporting the success stories and the human rights violations stories that are coming out of the "war against illegal immigration".

In their editorial practice, NAM refers to people w/o citizenship or visa who work in our country as exactly what they are "undocumented workers". They stay away from the now mainstream non-sequitur "illegal immigration" because it is a term introduced to politics and media by nativist and anti-immigration groups, most of them with white supremacist histories. And there is no better example of why wanting the dignity of a job, no matter how lowly, and the dignity of a education, no matter how basic, should not be denied to anybody coming into our country.

Sure, Dr. Quiñones is the exception to the rule of the thousands of poor and undereducated immigrants who come to our country in search of a better life. We really can't expect many of them to become neurosurgeons. Yet Dr. Quiñones proves that when we treat people with respect and dignity and the basic precepts of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, everybody wins. To respect the Humans Rights of every single person on US soil,no matter their citizenship of residency status is indeed needed for the greater good.

It's the only way we may well indeed see more farm hands turning into neurosurgeons.

Dr. Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa Proves There's No "Illegal" Immigration

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