Lost in Translation: Indigenous Latin American Migrants in the U.S. Asylum-Seeking Process

Abstract

Despite the presence of 42 million Indigenous people across Latin America and wide linguistic diversity among immigrants, Indigenous identities and languages are often overlooked, especially in legal immigration processes such as the United States (U.S.) asylum-seeking process. Research focused on immigration barriers often center on Latin American people broadly but does not investigate the unique experiences of Indigenous people, such as denial of identity and inadequate language access. Despite the U.S. having the legal obligation to provide language access, this obligation often goes unmet for Indigenous migrants, limiting their access to a fair and equal shot at asylum. By examining the histories of exclusion faced by Indigenous migrants and the construction of a Latin American monolith, this paper explores how colonial ideals and a linguistic hierarchy contribute to Indigenous people’s linguistic exclusion and lack of access to equitable resources. This research centers Indigenous case studies and perspectives to identify four main ways that linguistic exclusion manifests in the asylum-seeking process; it ultimately showcases how linguistic exclusion in the asylum-seeking process operates as a form of racial discrimination that denies Indigenous identities and systematically undermines Indigenous Latin American migrants’ access to due process.