Beyond the financial cost of American citizenship, the most irreversible damage comes from the immigration system’s ability to break down families and communities. By Priyanka Bansal The American immigration system is the mass commodification of bodies. It views us as investments, rather than humans. It leaves us vying for our own individual rights to security...
Tag: immigration
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Electoral Politics Won’t Save Us. Here Is What To Do Instead.
Liberation won’t come at the hands of politicians who benefit from the maintenance of oppressive structures. Four organizers tell us how we can push beyond electoral politics. By Reina Sultan I’ve had many political identities. When I was young—during the George W. Bush years—I was a quiet dissident, knowing the Iraq War and the Patriot...
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The “Self-Made” Wealth False Narrative Gets Confronted In ‘Knives Out’
It directly challenges the myth of the “self-made” wealth-hoarder with a cleverness and levity that feels seminal and timely. This essay contains spoilers for ‘Knives Out’ and mentions suicide. The Thrombey family is mourning the loss of its patriarch, Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), a wildly successful mystery crime writer who was found dead the morning...
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Diane Nguyen and Vietnamese Americans Deserve Better Representation
I want to see “BoJack Horseman” succeed at writing a nuanced portrayal of a person of color and their culture. By Linh Cao “I stepped outside of the Ho Chi Minh airport and felt the humid air envelope me. Palm trees taller than any I’d ever seen in California pierced the skies. In between them...
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It Shouldn’t Have Taken Trump’s Sh*thole Comments For You To Care About Haiti
What will it take for all of us to continue to care about what’s happening in Haiti? There is something adrift — or perfectly in line with the machinations of white supremacy — amongst the current crop of wealthy, Republican elite flaunting their power in D.C., when The Washington Post writer Jennifer Reuben has to describe...
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On DREAMers, DACA and the Model Immigrant Trope
For all the clamor and the rush to post, protest, and support undocumented people, there are millions of immigrants whose experiences have been erased from the story. Earlier this week, Donald Trump’s administration announced its decision to rescind the Obama-era policy of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, shaking the nation’s immigrants, especially the...
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Don’t Mourn DACA Just Yet
We must refuse to uphold the colonial logic underlying claims of legal presence and borders. By Natascha Uhlmann The Trump administration’s decision to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is morally repugnant. This much is self evident — no human being is illegal, period. But we can do better. DACA granted a sense of normalcy to...
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Here’s Why The “My Family’s Slave” Story Is Problematic AF
Like most accounts of slaves and the families they died serving, Alex Tizon’s “My Family’s Slave” seems more about mitigating the feelings of the oppressor than rendering visible the life of the oppressed. “My Family’s Slave,” the late Pulitzer prize-winning reporter Alex Tizon’s final story published in the June issue of The Atlantic, about the...
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4 Mexican and Chicanx Musicians to Enlighten Your Cinco de Mayo
Instead of appropriating Mexican culture and drinking until you are blotto this Cinco de Mayo, celebrate with these musicians. It is not the least bit unpatriotic to say that the United States would be nothing without is neighboring countries. Unfortunately, our current administration wishes to block our southern neighbors with an expensive, xenophobic vanity project. Much...
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Trump’s Misguided War on Sanctuary Cities is Silencing Victims
It’s a cruel twist of fate when a presidential administration is sending the same message that abusers try to imprint upon their victims: You cannot hide. Nowhere is safe. No one can say that the Trump administration hasn’t been busy. Still under the 100 day mark, there’s hardly a demographic that the administration hasn’t targeted...