Latinos growing frustrated, angry about migrants and border

Xochilt Nuñez is not the typical person who comes to mind when thinking about critics voicing their displeasure with U.S. immigration policy or the influx of migrants.

Nuñez crossed the border into California in 1999. She left her hometown of Morelia in Michoacán, Mexico, in search of a better life. The trip took her just over a week, during which she spent days without food and water.

Days after crossing, still exhausted and dehydrated, Nuñez began working at a carwash in San Diego. Soon after, she took on a second job in construction. Her hope then was to save enough money to own a home — her version of achieving the American Dream.

Today, people from around the world come across the U.S. border, many just as eager to work and potentially reach that dream.

Yet, Nuñez — now 53, a farmworker and a single mother of three — has mixed feelings about the overwhelming majority of these migrants. She uses words such as “anger,” “frustration” and “jealousy,” when asked to describe her feelings toward the migrants. All the while, she shares the same undocumented status and participates in grassroots activism for immigration reform.

“Right now, this immigration is out of control,” Nuñez said. “And now, they don’t come to work. They come to live from the system.”

She represents an increasing number of Latinos — both native born and undocumented — who, according to several polls, are concerned with the immigration system and, at times, direct their frustration at the arriving migrants.

Their views are rooted in a litany of reasons, from decades