Who Do We Think We Are?

This morning I woke up and read a motivating op-ed in the New York Times by Hirokazu Yoshikawa and Carola Suárez-Orozco on how terrible deportations are on the American-born children left behind.  I highly recommend it, not just if you’re into issues of immigration but also if you are interested in crafting a more benevolent country for you and your children.

Here’s my (first) letter to the editor:

Re: “Deporting Parents Hurts Kids” (Opinion, April 21, 2012):

Since the beginning of humanity, when meeting basic needs has proved difficult, families have migrated.

How our national government responds to this age-old affair symbolizes our sense of hospitality. With little regard for American-initiated engagements in foreign countries that spark migration, our system of authorizing entry creates the very categories of people that are unauthorized.

Then the same politicians that praise “family values” do little to protect the lawful American-born children. Only Somalia and the US have refused to ratify the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. Like the authors’ work, my research with undocumented youth in Paris and New York shows how crippling status is for kids that have grown up dreaming of giving back to their families and community.

Obama must forcefully restructure the agencies under his aegis to respond in a humane way to the millions of American families with at least one undocumented member.

Stephen Ruszczyk

And my second, I got carried away:

Re: “Deporting Parents Hurts Kids” (Opinion, April 21, 2012):

The authors write how deportation of parents needlessly places American children in danger. Why we have come to such desperation in the US as to need to tear apart families, leaving children without mothers and teenagers without fathers?

Obama’s immigration policy relies on the legitimacy of massive deportations. While this may respond to a perceived political need, being tough on the border, what it really does is pacify interest groups with nativist convictions. These groups are aligned with the Republican Party, whose support he needs to find a legislative compromise.  

But there is no compromise! And the coarse culture of meeting deportation quotas sweeps asunder the apparent good news of Obama’s new discretionary policy for deportation, supposedly based on immigrants’ security risk. The security risk seems to come from separating families, not from them living together.

We need to re-think solutions.  

Stephen Ruszczyk

Education Not Deportation

At UCLA, student protestors claim their right to be educated in the place where they have lived and live.

A Cauldron of Dreams Bubbling

The political activism of undocumented youth has started to gain the ear of American media. This week, an Atlantic writer who did a good job portraying the way status really drags people off their heretofore path as they finish high school. The Connecticut kids find themselves especially blocked. New York City kids actually have the advantage of a formidable, if chronically frustrating, public transportation system. I, for one, am a documented person that does not have a car. The car is often a key resource when looking for a job, or looking for a romantic partner. I still remember a woman I worked with at Marshall's in Buffalo who had to take three buses to get to work, and I remember her crying when she was fired for being late to work, when it took her an hour and a half to get there. But a driver's license is still the norm to buy alcohol or cigarettes in New York City.

The Huffington Post also has a blog series by 12 young writer-activists that tells personal stories and shows the resolve of young people in gaining their shot at the American Dream. The organization of activists seems strongest in California, where 10 of the 12 writers live (the other two seem to live in Florida according to the site). Illinois also has a strong organizational base. If these regional strengths were extended, and the moral standing of kids growing up without papers was deepened in local communities, we might finally start to see political shift. If they could talk more openly about their status, if schools addressed their needs straight-forwardly, and if church and other religious groups spoke out on the universal aspects of being a person, people who living, instead of fighting out battles on sexual practices, if, if, if...

Some Dream Act Protesters

What can you do? You can search out a local organization that helps undocumented immigrants or organizes protests. You can subscribe to groups on Facebook that keep you updated on stories: New York Immigration Coalition, Make the Road, New York State Youth Leadership Council, National Immigrant Youth Alliance, MALDEF, Define American and more. When you read the stories of how the US is treating kids, there is no other choice but to start to act. You can write a message about it on your Facebook, you can write your Senator, your Representatives, you can participate in marches, you can start an online petition, you can talk to your friends about it, you can write a letter to the Editor. Those things won't solve all the problems but will at least start to organize New York so it acts as a leader on undocumented issues like Los Angeles and Chicago do today. And when the kids who face the biggest risk can protest, so can we.

The proof I WENT ON A VACATION?

My fiancée’s niece walked to point out the secret door Marie Antoinette had used to escape from the Women’s March on Versailles in October 1789.   The woman next to me jutted out her arm with a ‘STOP’ so her friend could take a photo of her in front of the Queen’s bed. 10 year old Brianna jumped back and apologized. When she finally pointed out the side door to me, the two picture-taking friends were busy shooting portraits from a different angle on my left. 

These women’s need to take a photo of themselves in the luxurious background of an 18^th century French queen’s bedchamber was matched by scores of tourists snapping shot after shot of themselves in front of a gilded molding or a molded guild. They were not alone. (And you can take pics of them and post them here.) 

WHY ARE TOURISTS TAKING SO MANY PICTURES OF THEMSELVES?!?!

I reminisced about the days of film canisters and focus eyeholes. Yes, the zero additional cost of snapping an extra photo in the digital camera age is part of it. After purchasing your phone or camera, the only cost is your time. Time to unload and sort through your overly-snappy (clicky?) hand doesn’t seem so burdensome as you barrel from room to room from one ‘branded’ tourist site to the next. 

Modern vacation goers

Nearly everyone with a phone has a digital camera attached to it. And the number of international tourists is up. Will I ever get to look at the Mona Lisa without being pushed out of the way? [And not just the Mona Lisa but every single painting in the room as cameras scurry to blink in front of every worthy work!]

In the next room, a young woman entered the door with her camera already outstretched, snapping away like a trigger-happy video game soldier. She didn’t look at the furnishings, the garden view from the window, the Temptation of Darius painting on the wall, or read the description.

In a certain way, I get it. Most of the camera holders had traveled far to a city that was expensive, from the hotel to the bourgeois restaurants. But the shots gave them a chance to show family, friends, and facebook friends. They wanted to show that they were a little bit more fancy and more cultured than when they spent all that money. And if a picture of manicured trees and a gold-embossed painting frame looks nice by itself, the message registers with an image of your relaxed self next to the 17^th century seascape. And taking pics is free!

 

This set of New Yorker photos of people being tourists starts to get at that idea.  When people tell others they vacationed in Paris, they expect a certain cachet, and a shot in the gold and mirrors reflects a moment when you rose to a respectability you might not feel at your daily rounds. Or maybe it is just proof that you are not stuck at work that week.

That’s not all it is, however. We are developing a need to share everything before experiencing it, I think at the risk of not absorbing it deeply first.  As I went to a Los Van Van concert and people snapped away their future visual memories of the Cuban salsa-son band, and the man in front of me videoed the entire last song, I wished for a audience of people so enveloped in the present they would not think of the camera phone in their pocket. And so I could see the musicians on stage!