My dear friend Deepti, who shared her immigration story with Migrant Nation two years ago, started a podcast that explores how we become who we are. Hello Stranger launched last month, and is already four episodes into the exploration of identity and all the things that make us human.
I feel fortunate to have been one of the inaugural interviewees. I got to share my story about being a refugee, a feminist, a mother, someone desperately in search of a kindness revolution. I was a bit nervous to put myself out there like this at first, but I think that sharing our stories is the most powerful connection tool we have. So here’s my story, or at least a part of it. What’s yours?
Immigrant children, many of them taken away from their families, sit in a cage at a facility in McAllen, Texas. (U.S. Customs and Border Protection/AP)
You know, we usually wait until after a horrible mass-scale human tragedy unfolds to hold people accountable for their contribution in the horror. This time around, let’s not waste the time.
If you are in any way helping or supporting the Trump-Sessions immigration nightmare happening in America, you are complicit in a mass destruction of human life.
If you are a border patrol agent picking up families at the border knowing that they will be separated, you are complicit.
If you are eyeing the new ICE job postings for Detention and Deportation Officers (because, hey, the $75,628 to $116,181 per year salary sounds pretty nice), you are complicit.
If you are a local or state law enforcement officer working with ICE agents to escort the migrant parents or children to different detention facilities, you are complicit.
If you are a clerk or some other sort of paper pusher processing the intake documentation for migrant families, you are complicit.
If you are an ICE/DHS analyst or administrator not meticulously keeping track of where the children are being sent so they can be reunited with their families, you are complicit.
In fact, if you are an ICE employee who has not yet boycotted your job, you are complicit.
If you are pilot flying a plane or a flight attendant on the flight transferring the children across America, you are complicit.
If you are a guard or a supervisor or a cook or a maintenance person at one of these detention facilities, you are complicit.
If you live next to a detention center, and do not join in the protests at the facility, you are complicit.
If you are children and families social services agencies who is collaborating with ICE by allowing them to use your system to place children away from their parents, you are complicit.
If you are a psychiatrist prescribing psychiatric powerful drugs or a nurse administering those drugs to sedate migrant children in the child prisons, you are complicit.
If you are an immigration judge detaining parents or children in prison, or expecting children to represent themselves in court, or not simply throwing out these horribly unjust cases, you are complicit.
If you are the owner or a shareholder or a person in any way profiting from the construction, running, or maintenance of immigrant detention centers, you are complicit.
If you are a journalist or a news (or “news”) agency circulating information that the migrants deserve such treatment or that the children are not suffering, you are complicit.
If you are a governor of a state that’s allowing the use of state resources, whether money or law enforcement support, to help ICE to separate, transfer, or detain migrant parents and children, you are complicit. (Here’s one who’s not.)
If you are a U.S. Senator or Congressional member who has not chained themselves to the Capitol building until appropriate legislation is passed to stop family separations, reunite already separated families, and prevent indefinite detention of migrants, you are complicit.
If you are Donald Trump or Jeff Sessions or Kirstjen Nielsen or Mike Pence, FUCK YEAH, you are complicit.
If you are any member of Trump’s cabinet, White House, or one of his political appointees, you are complicit, too.
If you voted for Trump, you are complicit.
If you plan to vote for a politician who supports Trump in November, you are complicit.
If you are not speaking up, or showing up, or contributing money, or in some way–no matter how big or small–trying to stopping this madness, YOU. ARE. COMPLICIT.
Yes, I am finger-pointing and gladly so. There is still time to act, to make things better before they get much, much worse. But nothing will happen unless everyone responsible does something to stop it. Think of it, if all ICE border agents were to collectively walk out of their jobs in protests, this nightmare could be stopped overnight. If all governors stopped their state agencies from collaborating in children separations, where would the feds go? I know, it’s not that simple, but it could be a start.
Today is the International Women’s Day. For the first time in many years, my mom and I are together on this day, a gift of presence I find beyond poignant in these dark times. Just days ago, the Trump administration announced that they were considering plans to separate women and children crossing the US-Mexico border illegally as a deterrent to others who might attempt such a feat.
“Were Trump even part human, had he been reared with even a morsel of compassion, encouraged even for a moment to imagine the feelings of others and be careful not to cause them pain, he could not even consider the viability of such a horrific immigration policy.”
I cannot help but think of a time, twenty-five years ago, when we came to the United States, when my parents were the one lifeline I had to security and safety I so desperately needed in the midst of so much change. I was twelve, on the verge of angsty adolescence, and oh-my-god did I need my mom by my side! I cannot even imagine the horror I would have experienced had I been separated from my parents and thrust into the care of a foster family in a land I did not know. After enduring nighttime air raids and fleeing to the bomb shelter for safety under the cover of night, after secretly packing suitcases and leaving early one morning without saying goodbye to my friends, after leaving everything and everyone we knew behind, THIS would have been our safe haven?
“Welcome to America, the land of tragedy and horror and sadness!”
I also cannot help think of my own son, an infant who still breastfeeds, whose first teeth just came in, whose smile lights up my world, and whose brain just started to comprehend to the idea of separation, causing his little arms to hug me tight, tight, tighter each time, afraid to let me go. My mind imagines if I were in these women’s shoes, crossing the border with my baby in search of a better life for our family, only to have him snatched from my arms…
The intensity of the stabbing pain I felt in my heart as I wrote that last sentence cannot be put into words.
So I ask you, friends, dear readers, what kind of monster has this country elected to the highest office in the land? Were Trump even part human, had he been reared with even a morsel of compassion, encouraged even for a moment to imagine the feelings of others and be careful not to cause them pain, he could not even consider the viability of such a horrific immigration policy.
Yet, he does.
On this International Women’s Day, let us all vow to never let this happen. If this policy goes into effect, we need to take to the streets!
Mothers, fathers, sons, daughters… we are all just PEOPLE who deserve basic human respect and dignity. As my friend Rob Leveridge wrote in his recent Migrant Nation guest blog, “All people belong, because all people are people.”
Let’s drive that message home to the Monster-in-Chief! Today and every day!
Trump sure does not miss an opportunity to let his bigotry shine.
Without blinking an eye, he used today’s White House press conference as yet another opportunity to insult the immigrant community, this time targeting undocumented individuals who entered this country as minors–and more specifically, if we are being perfectly honest, immigrants from Central and South America.
[I know, I promised Migrant Nation would fall silent today to honor the Day Without Immigrants, but I simply cannot do it. The press conference was so maddening on so many fronts that it warrants immediate reaction.]
Lisa Desjardins from the PBS NewsHour asked Trump what his plans were for DACA, whether he planned to continue or end the program. (DACA stands for “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” and it basically creates a path to legal immigration status for undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as minors. Here’s a good summary from UC Berkeley.)
And here’s what Trump had to say (read the full conference transcript at WaPo here):
TRUMP: “We’re gonna show great heart, DACA is a very, very difficult subject for me, I will tell you. To me, it’s one of the most difficult subjects I have because you have these incredible kids.
“In many cases, not in all cases. And some of the cases, having DACA and they’re gang members and they’re drug dealers, too. But you have some absolutely, incredible kids, I would say mostly. They were brought here in such a way — it’s a very — it’s a very, very tough subject.
“We’re gonna deal with DACA with heart. I have to deal with a lot of politicians, don’t forget and I have to convince them that what I’m saying is — is right. And I appreciate your understanding on that.
“But the DACA situation is a very, very — it’s a very difficult thing for me because you know, I love these kids, I love kids, I have kids and grandkids. And I find it very, very hard doing what the law says exactly to do and you know, the law is rough.”
Trump completely evades answering the question, and attempts to drum up some sort of compassion we all know he lacks toward undocumented minors (“I love these kids…”).
But more importantly–and unsurprisingly–it is his bigotry and purposeful misrepresentation of DACA that just blow my mind. He acknowledges that yes, some of the DACA applicants are “absolutely incredible kids,” but he does not miss the opportunity to label some as “gang members” and “drug dealers.”
WHAT?!
FACT CHECK! Trump is lying about who is eligible for DACA in order to tap into that deep, deep pool of fear and hatred in his base. Based on DACA requirements, a person can “NOT been convicted of a felony, certain significant misdemeanors (including a single DUI), or three or more misdemeanors of any kind.” No gang members or drug dealers here, Trump! But good thing you threw in some good ol’ fashioned racism for good measure, how else would we have recognized this statement as your own!
CALL TO ACTION: Call out Trump about lying about DACA! Twitter! Facebook! Email to your friends! Repost this blog post! Let’s not let him get away with this!
Here’s the press conference in full. I you don’t have the stomach to make it through the entire thing, fast forward to 1:06:16 when Lisa Desjardins asks her question.
During my time in Germany, I was struck not infrequently by the passivity with which the German government dealt with issues of racism and xenophobia. I noticed this rather pervasive attitude of “selective intervention” when it came down to issues of hate speech in particular; at times the government would step out and forcefully reject speech it deemed as racist or inflammatory (ex. Mein Keimpf has been banned since WWII, although the ban is about to expire), and at other times, incredibly racist and xenophobic speech targeting a specific minority group would be allowed to stand, even though, in my humble opinion, it had great potential to entice hatred and propagate negative stereotypes about ethnic groups (e.g. NPD campaign posters were plastered all over Berlin for weeks).
So I was not at all surprised to hear about the row that ensued after Thilo Sarrazin’s anti-Turkish and anti-Arab racist remarks in 2009, the Berlin government’s lack of action, and the the recent UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) decision regarding just this matter.
In short, in 2009, Thilo Sarazzin made incredibly racist remarks about Turks and Arabs in Germany. I mean, this stuff was vile. In response, the German Turkish Association filed a complaint with the public prosecutors in Berlin:
On 23 October 2009, the petitioner, “as the interest group of the Turkish citizens and citizens with Turkish heritage of Berlin and Brandenburg” filed a complaint of criminal offence against Mr. Sarrazin to the Office of Public Prosecution. It claimed, inter alia, that Mr. Sarrazin’s statements constituted incitement of the people (Volksverhetzung), pursuant to article 130 of the Criminal Code4, in particular because “Turks and Arabs were presented as inferior and denied a right to existence in our society”.
The complaint was rejected. According to a great overview of the situation by Konrad Werner of Exberliner, the complaint “was rejected on grounds that the comments were permissible under Germany’s freedom of expression law. An appeal to the decision was rejected as well.”
If you have a minute, I’d highly recommend reading CERD’s report. Statements from Germany in defense of its actions are rather mind-boggling, especially coming from a country that claims such sensitivity to issues of ethnic and religious hatred as a result of their WWII experiences. According to the German government, “The Turkish Union in Berlin-Brandenburg is not directly affected in its own rights by the statements of Mr. Sarrazin.”
Apparently, the German authorities also attempted to make a case that
“… considering the context, purpose and content of the statements, an offence of incitement to racial or ethnic hatred could not be established. It further notes that the context of the interview shows that Mr. Sarrazin expressed his personal views rather than giving any official or semi-official view. There was no indication that Mr. Sarrazin intended to incite hatred against certain segments of the population. His statement was neither objectively suitable nor subjectively determined to engender and strengthen an emotionally increased hostile attitude against people of Turkish and Arab origin, nor did it include any indication that violent or arbitrary measures should be used against the mentioned groups. Hatred based on intolerance was not incited, promoted or justified.”
So, according to Germany, then, making public statements that a specific ethnic group (in this case people of Turkish or Arab origin) are inferior to others in Germany, and that that they contribute to many ills that befall Germany (e.g. crime) is not inciting hatred? Wow, I wonder what would be considered as inciting hatred in Germany.
ANYway, in its decision, CERD made the following recommendations:
14. The Committee recommends that the State party review its policy and procedures concerning the prosecution in cases of alleged racial discrimination consisting of dissemination of ideas of superiority over other ethnic groups based on article 4 (a) of the Convention and of incitement to discrimination on such grounds, in the light of its obligations under article 4 of the Convention.
15. The Committee wishes to receive, within 90 days, information from the State party about the measures taken to give effect to the Committee’s Opinion.
Bam!
Now, I am not sure how enforceable these recommendations are. What happens if Germany doesn’t comply? I am assuming there will be a response, if only to save face in the international community. I will continue to follow the situation as it unfolds. Understandably, it’s a delicate issue, one that will required Germany (and the UN community at large) to balance free speech protections with hate speech limitations.
What do you think? Should the German government officially reprimand/punish Sarazzin? Does his speech “entice hatred?” How effective, if at all, will the UN decision prove in furthering the cause of elimination of racial discrimination in Europe? What could be some unintended consequences of their decision?
There is a specific experience that only migrants can have, that of returning to a former home. They come back and find these places changed, at times disfigured or destroyed, at times only superficially redesigned, but ultimately, irrevocably, altered.
I started thinking about this yesterday upon arriving in Bonn, Germany, after almost one year away. Bonn was my first home in Germany, a place where I spent four idyllic months last summer learning German and getting “integrated” into German life. It holds a special place in my heart. As I walked the streets of the Altstadt and Zentrum, I found many things unchanged: the quiet Sunday afternoon streets, the shop windows, the incessant rain that makes late June feel like early November.
But there were enough changes to remind me of the passage of time: the bus fare from the Bonn-Cologne Airport to Bonn Hauptbahnhof had gone up; a women’s clothing store that we constantly made fun of for its gaudy window displays had closed, windows boarded up, trash piling up in the doorway; and the entrance to the Altstadt is now graced with a new, tacky neon sign that says “Altstadt,” just in case, you know, you needed help figuring that out.
As I walked the rainy streets full of melancholy for the careless days of last summer, I wondered: when we come back to find a place changed, does our memory also alter, or do we continue clinging to the memory we first formed and that has stayed with us all the time we were gone? Can we see and accept the place for what it has become, not what it used to be?
Would this new memory of Bonn replace the ones from last summer?
This is not my first experience of coming back after a migration. After coming back to Croatia for my first trip back home in the mid-90s, I experienced much of the same feelings, although stronger and most disorienting. And as I continued to come, the more I noticed that not only had Zagreb changed, but that I had changed, morphed from a Croatian to a hybrid Croatian-American identity, and that I would never see things the same way no matter how hard I tried.
Yet although I changed—although we all change, all the time—this expectation that “home” will remain “home” remains the same. How silly. Perhaps it is simply a part of the human condition, this deeply seated drive inside of us that makes us hope that the life we left behind will always stay the same, just waiting for us to return and take our place. There is comfort in that thought; there is peace in that notion.
And as I prepare myself for the visit to Sarajevo, I can’t help but wonder how many refugees and IDPs from the Balkan war came home, only to find their towns and villages permanently altered, at times crushed to the ground, with graves of their family members and neighbors covering what used to be a peaceful meadow, or a school yard, or a park.
And I wonder how many of them have not yet gotten to go home, and how all these places survived preserved in their memories for the last 20 years, untouched, peaceful, whole.
“Grief produces an abundant energy that must find a way to burn itself up. And that is the fundamental problem, one that can take a lifetime to exhaust.” ― Bill Carter, Fools Rush in: A True Story of War and Redemption
One goal of this blog is to collect my own reflections on the current topics in integration and migration, to gain a better understanding of issues by pausing, reflecting, and spending some time writing about things that would otherwise remain unexamined. To date, this reflection has focused on government policies and programs—happenings that rest mostly outside my personal experience with migration. My posts have focused more on what I read about than on my personal experience.
That is about to change, at least for a couple of blog posts.
From June 27 through July 1, I will be taking part in Humanity in Action’s Third Annual International Conference in Sarajevo. For the most part, the conference will focus on Bosnia’s post-war recovery, reconciliation between the ethnic groups, and the experience of Bosnian’s internally displaced and refugee populations. To give you a sense of what I am talking about, here are a few workshop titles from the conference program:
Toward Durable Solutions for Bosnia’s Internally Displaced
Genocide Film Library: Oral History Project with Srebrenica Survivors
Divided Schools: Educational Segregation in Bosnia Today
Enduring Displacement: The IDP Experience in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Minority Rights for All? The European Court of Human Rights and the Bosnian Presidency
Denying Genocide
In addition to the workshops, participants will take a day-trip to either Srebrenica or Mostar, or do a tour about Sarajevo under siege to learn more about what happened there during the ’90s war. I am not sure which one I will be assigned to yet, but I stated a preference for Srebrenica and Mostar as it is unlikely that I would go there on my own. I also signed up for a private tour the day after the conference ends. The tour will focus on Sarajevo under siege, and will include a visit to the Sarajevo tunnel which was built by Sarajevo residents during the siege of the city and became a lifeline for the supply of food, medicine and other life essentials during the city’s almost-4-year siege.
Needless to say, this will be a highly emotional experience for me. While this will be my first visit to Sarajevo, my mother grew up there, my grandfather sang in the Sarajevo opera, and my grandmother told us many stories of life there in the late 1950s/early 1960s. We followed the siege of the city through media coverage from the time we arrived in the States onward, often with tears in our eyes and in absolute shock and disbelief that the international community could let something like that go on in the heart of Europe at the end of the 20th century. Stories like that of the a 25-year-old couple he a Serb, she a Muslim, shot to death while trying to flee the city and dying in each other’s embrace in no-man’s land) continued to pour of Sarajevo for four long years, and nobody did anything to stop it.
When I visit the city, I will cross the Vrbanja Bridge—now called the “Lovers Bridge”—where the two died.
It is not often that I get an opportunity to interact with such recent history that left such a mark on my life and on the lives on millions of others. Pending a reliable internet connection, I plan to blog during the conference and share some of my observations, and given the theme of this blog, especially those about the issues of migration, refugees and IDPs in Bosnia. If the internet connection proves difficult to find, I will publish my posts upon my return to Berlin the first week of July.
Stay tuned, and please do share your thoughts in the comment section of this blog. I would love to read about your reactions.
Worldwide, about 230 million people—or about 1 out of every 30—are currently living in a place different from their country or region of origin. If they came together today, migrants would create the fifth most-populous nation on Earth—the Migrant Nation—joining the ranks of such global power-houses as China, India and the United States. In other words, were the migrant voices ever to unite, were their collective political power ever to be harnessed, they would become a global force to be reckoned with… and in many ways, they already are.
Whether they migrate for economic reasons or cross national borders from fear of ethnic or religious persecution, migrants continue to make an undeniable and lasting impact on their adopted countries, from multi-ethnic neighborhoods that support international entrepreneurship and arts, to bilingual schools and offices, to industries that leverage the ingenuity and hard work of their migrant employees to benefit the whole society.
But while progress in building such multi-cultural societies continues, a number of challenges to a coexistence between native and migrant populations still remain. Fears of “the Other” still lead to hate speech, and at times, violence. Economic crises still spark (real or perceived) competition between natives and immigrants for scarce jobs and resources. Access to high quality education and housing remains out of reach to many immigrant families. Racism and prejudice still exist. Discrimination still exists. Xenophobia still exists.
As part of this blog, I hope to examine the social, cultural, political and economic issues related to migration with a special focus on co-habitation by migrants and natives in countries of destination, issues of identity in international migration, and on the dialogue about best practices in support of migrants. I make no claim that I know all the answers—nobody does—but I hope to raise awareness, provoke thought, and further the dialogue on these issues.
I also want to note that this is an exploration and a learning experience for me as well, and any feedback or suggestions on potential blog topics I receive from readers will be most appreciated. I look forward to hearing from you and learning from you about this global Migrant Nation so many of us call home.
The Migrant Nation 