Social justice took on a whole new meaning at Messiah College’s 2008 Commencement when award-winning journalist Sonia Nazario explained the factors motivating her human-interest coverage of illegal immigration and hunger in California schools.
A reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Nazario started her career at the Wall Street Journal two decades ago. Her book, Enrique’s Journey, recounts the perils faced by a young Honduran boy traveling north on the “train of death” to reunite with his illegal immigrant mother in the United States.
She told Publisher’s Weekly that she was inspired to tell Enrique’s story when she found that her part-time housekeeper had four children whom she had not seen for years after she illegally entered the United States.
During her Commencement speech at Messiah College, Nazario carefully omitted any mention of these persons’ legal status, referring to them instead “immigrants,” “migrants,” or, simply, women and children seeking a better life in the United States.
She labeled Latin American police as corrupt not for taking bribes, but because they deport illegal immigrants back to their home countries. “All along the way, [these children] are hunted down like animals….They must elude bandits who rob and kill migrants along the tracks. Corrupt cops all along the way are out to deport them,” she said.
Despite this, Nazario admits that writing the book changed her view on illegal immigration. She told Publisher’s Weekly that “The main change for me has been to recognize that such a powerful stream will only change if it is addressed at its source, if the economies of these countries that are sending large numbers of people to the United States improves [sic].”
She added, “I talked to one kid in southern Mexico who had made 27 attempts to reach his mother in the United States, and he was getting ready to make attempt number 28. You come to believe that no number of border control guards is going to stop someone like that.”
“[Enrique and his friend] taught me to be grateful every day for the opportunities I have by sheer luck of having been born in the United States,” said Nazario at Commencement. College President Kim Phipps noted that Nazario’s book “has been selected by many campuses as the common reading.”
“Today, as you leave the ivory tower, think about embracing a different kind of learning. Put yourself out there. Take risks. Go places you know nothing about, worlds where people of your economic class or race or education don’t often venture,” Nazario counseled the graduates.
The Pulitzer-winning journalist is also well-known for her 1994 series on hunger among California school-children. Nazario said that one in four children in southern California “come to class undernourished”—a problem which she believes can be blamed on conservatives. She said,
“Still, half of California schools did not offer a ready remedy: breakfast, a federally-funded entitlement. Often these were barred or eliminated by schools officials who opposed this on philosophical [grounds]. Many of them…were Christian conservatives dominating school boards who opposed feeding children breakfast at school. They called it ‘anti-family,’ and a usurpation for what should be a parent’s responsibility.”
“Teachers like Ernie Sanchez were left to pick up the slack,” she continued. She later added, “It was Sanchez who reminded me of another lesson: never lose your sense of outrage.”
Despite these activist undertones, Messiah College advertised Nazario’s journalistic approach as one of “sensible viewpoint[s]” mixed with “sensitivity.” The Commencement program biography reads,
“With a reporter’s eye to the truth, she humanizes the issue, posing new perspectives that fall on both sides, while offering solutions destined to change the national dialogue on the influx of immigrants and the effect they will have on the state of the nation.”
Rice University, which invited Nazario to speak in March, used the same description.
American Prospect special correspondent Sarah Wildman notes in her New York Times book review of Enrique’s Journey that “Nazario also pays homage to people who have dedicated their lives to aiding migrants.” In her speech at Messiah College, Nazario likewise spoke of how these people and other public servants had taught her life lessons. She also insinuated that God’s reward would (and has) come to those who help downtrodden illegal migrants.
Recounting her journey on “the train of death,” Nazario said, “These are the poorest Mexicans who live along the tracks, people who make $1 or $2 a day, who can barely feed their own children tortillas and beans. Yet they give to total strangers from other countries who they will never see again and they told me that they did it because they this is the Christian thing to do, this is the right thing to do.” She added, “They said that this is what Jesus Christ would do.”
Bethany Stotts is a Staff Writer at Accuracy in Academia.
