Monday, February 18, 2008

Video game helps bring immigration issues to the foreground

By Marisa Treviño of Latina Lista

The hype for the video game, ICED — I Can End Deportation, has been ongoing since last spring when it was first announced by its creators at Breakthrough tv.

With its online debut, it’s bound to bring the issues of immigration, family separation and deportation into the foreground of public discussion — exactly where its creators want them to be.

The object of ICED — I Can End Deportation is to become a citizen of the United States. The game’s characters are different teenagers who are all in the United States either illegally or as Green Card holders. With a big city backdrop complete with honking horns, traffic and police sirens, the game attempts to educate players on unfair immigration laws that violate human rights by denying due process to people and deporting them without hearings and/or holds them in detention indefinitely.

Players can elect to be any of the five teenage immigrants: Javier, an undocumented from Mexico, Marc from Haiti seeking asylum, Anna from Poland, who thinks she is a citizen, Suki who is on a student visa from Japan, and Ayesha from India who holds a Green Card.

After downloading the game, players choose which immigrant they want to play. To help players decide, each character has a backstory that can be heard in the character's own voice - complete with accent.

The goal of the game is to lead a productive life and make good moral decisions while waiting to apply for citizenship. Each player starts with 100 points and is given the opportunity to do good deeds like donate blood or plant a tree, which award additional points — bad choices subtract points.

The characters are chased throughout the game by immigration officers as they make these life-enhancing decisions. There are also questions about immigration law posed to players who must answer correctly or risk being thrown into detention.

Once in detention, the player endures what many detainees endure now: separation from family, not knowing how long they will be detained, unjust conditions during detention and the random whim of a judge in deciding the outcome of the case.

The game site also includes resources on learning more about immigration policy, how to get involved with the issue and puts players in touch with real-life scenarios among today's teens who find themselves in this sad situation.

With four possible outcomes when playing the game: deportation, indefinite detention, voluntary deportation or citizenship, new games can be played repeatedly since there's always hope that each time the character reaches the final prize of becoming a citizen.

Pegasus News content partner - Latina Lista

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