Where Latinos Disagree on Immigration | Hollywood’s New Favorite Ex-Con

OZY’s innovative town hall series takes on race, religion and politics in the Latino community.

The teenager rose, somewhat haltingly, to tell her story. The room full of Latino families in the Riverside Church, a soaring Manhattan structure that has served as a sanctuary for so many, fell silent. “I was brought here at the age of 4,” she said, as a few heads bobbed along. She came to the U.S. illegally, from Mexico, with her mother. She remembers a lot of walking and a lot of confusion. Nine months ago, she said, her father died. Her social studies teacher in the Bronx, Justis Lopez, rose to complete the story, noting how the teen’s father avoided seeing a doctor because of his immigration status. “He passed away because he was afraid,” Lopez said.

For the third episode of OZY’s innovative town hall series Take On America, we gathered 100 Latino people together in New York to go deep on questions of faith, identity and politics. By no means is this a bloc vote, and in the discussion moderated by OZY co-founder Carlos Watson, opinions varied widely. Nowhere was the contrast more heated than on the question of immigration, with Donald Trump and an advancing caravan of migrants hovering over American politics as the midterm elections draw near.

Asian-Americans earn more than any other racial group … but only if their parents weren’t born in the U.S.

When Julia Lam told her parents she was leaving her job at Facebook to start her own company, they were quick to warn her of the risks. Lam is the founder and CEO of Tara & Co. — a line of functional fashion bags for professional women. While her parents were supportive of her entrepreneurial path, they always felt a steady job was safer. “My parents were concerned about me starting a business because entrepreneurship is kind of like gambling,” Lam says. “There’s a high risk for failure.”

As immigrants, Lam's parents wanted their daughter to have every opportunity for success. A steady job that pays well is part of that equation, and they’re not the only Asian-American parents who share this view. Asian-Americans place more value on hard work and career success than other Americans, according to the Pew Research Center, a value reflected in their overall success. That success feeds the “model minority” stereotype, and Asians in the U.S. do have much higher rates of upward mobility than all other racial groups, according to a 2018 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research and the U.S. Census Bureau. But this only holds true for children of first-generation immigrants.

Erik Jensen is helping some of TV’s biggest names get it right when they depict prison life.

Erik Jensen was doing time at Clinton Correctional Facility, a high-security prison in upstate New York, for a parole violation on an armed robbery conviction in 2011 when a riot popped off in the yard. Jensen’s time was almost up and he didn’t want any problems, but the guards couldn't have cared less. Anybody on the yard was fair game. The hacks beat up inmates randomly, in Jensen’s telling, and he got it bad. He recalls the officers stomped out his front teeth, zip-tied his hands together and spit chewing tobacco on him.

The dehumanizing moment — Jensen remembers feeling like he was going to die — led to a realization: He could go nowhere but up. The Astoria, Queens, native was at the end of a 30-year downward spiral.

Now he’s hobnobbing with the Hollywood elite, acting in and advising a new Showtime series backed by Ben Stiller, with more doors opening for him. And it’s all because of his vivid storytelling ability, as Jensen lets the world know what life is really like on the inside. He recognizes that his prison knowledge got him in the door, but Jensen, after a lifetime of searching, has much more to offer.