14 DAY TRIAL // The University of Texas in Austin decided to hold a not-so-common awareness event focused on illegal immigrants. The Young Conservatives of Texas (YCT) came up with the idea of organizing a controversial “Catch an Illegal Immigrant Game” on campus on November 20.
The game is meant to stimulate student participation, and every person involved will get rewarded. According to “Catch and Illegal Immigrant Game” Facebook page, “there will be several people walking around the UT campus with the label ‘illegal immigrant’ on their clothing. Any UT student who catches one of these ‘illegal immigrants’ and brings them back to our table will receive a $25 (€18.5) gift card.”
The idea behind the game belongs to Lorenzo Garcia who claims he is intending “to spark a campus-wide discussion about the issue of illegal immigration, and how it affects our everyday lives.” The best way he thought he could start an immigration debate is by playing a game where for a $25 gift card students can harass one another yelling ‘Border Patrol Got Ya.’”
When asked about the controversial event, Garcia replied “We're not afraid to be politically incorrect. We don't espouse to the belief that politics is immune to offending someone,” according to Chron. Speaking like a true conservative, Garcia seems to overpass the fact that his name sounds really Latino and that his ancestors probably were immigrants as well.
Officials took their time in responding to the event, so it's no surprise that the illegal immigrant hunt is not Garcia's first event of this kind. In September, The Young Conservative held a controversial bake sale where brownies were priced according to the race and gender of the buyer. The University called it “inflammatory and demeaning” but did not proceed on avoiding future events of this type.
The Facebook event page for the game started a wave of comments from viewers debating the morality of the event. One of the viewers commented “I think this is a wonderful thing the campus is doing. I feel more students should get involved. The illegals in this country get by with so many freebies that our own legal citizens can't get. Talk about unfair.”
Others found it incredibly racist and demeaning and stated the obvious “let me see if I understand this correctly... a Hispanic boy, named LORENZO V GARCIA (and the V probably stands for Victor, or Valentino), who is from Corpus Christi made this event? Seems there might be some self hate issues going on there.”
Besides the fact that the game itself is racist and promotes all the wrong parts of solving the problem of immigration, these students couldn't have picked a more uninspired moment to hold their event. With Thanksgiving approaching, they should be celebrating peace between natives and immigrants, but instead they are promoting an illegal immigrants hunt game.