Los Angeles County Migration

Despite God's vision for the issue of immigration, often times we found our world living a different reality. A good example of a current area facing immigration directly is the Los Angeles County, a prominent area in the United States known to account for the most people of any one county. Out of the 10 million people that reside in the Los Angeles County, only 3.5 million individuals comprise the overall immigrant community. This fact alone help us to recognize that Los Angeles immigration is a crucial aspect of the county's cultural identity, especially in the local politics of the area ("Los Angeles-University of South California's Dornsife College" 1). Using this knowledge of the large immigrant population, statistics show that the large

What's interesting is that 41% of the immigrant population is made up of the Mexican community; however, over the past 30 years, we've seen roughly the same migration patterns from the Mexican people, as opposed to other immigrant groups in the area. According to statistics from the Dornsife College, there's been a significant rise in the number of people emigrating from El Salvador, Guatemala, the Philippines, and even Korea. Therefore, we can more effectively conclude that most likely violence, despotism, and/or poverty in Latin America and beyond has sparked immigration from those countries, El Salvador being the most deadly. Instead of trying to understand these different circumstances, we try to demonize those immigrating to the United States with three claims: that they're only here to steal American jobs, take advantage of the welfare state, and overrun the country with the same crime they had in their original country. Often times, this sentiment stems from living only one perspective all one's life, which is in this case the average middle-class

Doing so entraps us in a sense of self-satisfaction that causes us to have apathy, thinking that we're superior to other individuals; even James Keenan in "Sin" once said that "at that point of self-satisfaction...we...do not bother to love" (56). When we are tempted to revolve our respective world views around our own experience instead of also incorporating that of the person. One example of a story that could be easily drowned out is that of Brother Raul Diaz, a Franciscan friar who I met recently at the Los Angeles St. Francis Center. Brother Diaz emigrated from El Salvador to the United States (state of Oregon) at the age of 18 to become a permanent resident, after being raised by a widowed mother in an environment of violence and poverty. With a strong Catholic upbringing for most of his life, Brother Diaz decided to take up the commitment to live in community with other people and God. Therefore, he became acquainted with the Franciscan Friars of the Province of Saint Barbara in the state of