guatepolitics:

guatepolitics:

“It is surprisingly easy for gringos to look past the reality of undocumented migrants as human beings, and most gringos imagine immigrants as caramel-colored, Spanish-speaking Mexicans, not indigenous, Q’eqchi’-speaking Guatemalans.”

—

“Don’t Just Pay It Back, Pay It Forward: From Accountability to Reciprocity in Research Relationships” in the Journal of Research Practice

Seriously, though, I haven’t seen one single news article that acknowledges that some of the detained immigrants don’t speak Spanish, much less asks questions about the quality of credible fear determinations that are not conducted in immigrants’ native languages.

I was starting to wonder if my expectations for media representation were unreasonably high. Nope.

This isn’t the clearest graph I’ve ever seen, but here’s what this recent report from the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) reveals in its study of more than 400 unaccompanied minors who were held in US federal custody. Of 100 Guatemalan minors, more than 40 spoke one or more languages other than Spanish. The study did not sample for ethnicity (as it did for nationality & gender), but by chance 48% of Guatemalan children self-identified as indigenous (also ~5% of Mexican and 3% of Honduran children).

The study did not discuss whether any of these children spoke Spanish as a second language or whether interviews conducted in Spanish might miss key elements of claims for international protection / asylum.