The GOP Immigration Offer

Liberty and the Fire Boat (M.A. Reilly)

Donald Trump and the GOP want to eliminate family-based migration and instead have potential immigrants prove their worth in order to be admitted. Family-based migration allows family members living in the United States legally to bring other family members to this country. Trump wants to do away with that process and instead enter immigrants based on merit.

The merit-based system would select immigrants based on education, skills, work experience, language proficiency and age.  The concern is substantial given the belief that these factors which would be weighted and allocated specific points fail to consider the unknown trajectory of any person’s actual life and the process decries basic American values. Further the plan crafted by Stephen Miller, a nativist, privileges wealth and completion of high level science/technology/engineering/mathematics (STEM) education as if these two factors represented the ideal immigrant.

And isn’t that the problem? There is no ideal immigrant. There is simply immigrants. 

When I came to America I had just turned two. I came from an Irish orphanage in Dublin. There was no way at that time to determine how profitable I might be for my new country once grown. In fact, if conservative sociologists were to be believed, my IQ by virtue of having lived in an orphanage should have been 8 points lower than the average at four years of age. The United States took a chance on me and my two older brothers as it has done for others. Fortunately, I was allowed into the United States and three years later went to court and became a naturalized citizen at the age of 5. My son too was adopted and he arrived in the States at 5 months old and became a naturalized citizen 13 months later. On that August morning, the judge celebrated our son’s naturalization and I still have a photo from that day of Rob, Devon, my dad and me standing with the judge. We were all bright smiles. 

Under Trump’s merit system the majority of Americans who are citizens would likely not be admitted. To be admitted, the potential citizen would need to earn 30 points. The proposed point system favors a particular type of person (wealthy and/or STEM educated) and that is what is most unethical and anti-American about the plan. 

So how do you amass the highest points in each category? First, think young. You need to be young, preferably between 26 and 31, highly educated in a STEM subject—Ph.D preferred, wealthier than the median income of the state you plan to live in by 300 percent. If you lived in New Jersey as I do that would mean that you would need to prove an income greater than $260,000.  If you wanted to live in Mississippi, you would need to demonstrate an income of $120,000. The only place you could live with an income under $120,000 is Puerto Rico. But be warned: if the island is crippled by a hurricane, don’t expect the Unites States government to help. You are on your own. Last, it would be advantageous to have earned already a Nobel prize (you’d be awarded 25 points) or its equivalent.  

So do you think you would qualify? I’m guessing you don’t!  By the way if you are 50 or older you would earn 0 points in the age group. When I examined the criteria, I thought a lot about what was being valued. Given the absence of compassion among Trump and his advisors and a xenophobic attitude about other, the proposal is not too surprising. These folks want to establish the United States in their own image.

Merit is troublesome as whatever is deemed preferable is of course potentially problematic when seen in another light. What would a country of 26-31 year old wealthy people act like?  What about a country of people with advanced degrees in STEM subjects? What about a country where its new citizens largely bought their way in by investing at least $1.8 million in an America based project that the applicants list as their primary jobs, similar to the the Jared Kushner-Chinese investment scheme that was attempted earlier in the year. That alone would net you 12 of the 30 points you need.  Why is someone who has large amounts of cash better than the hard working immigrant that built this country?  My mother’s mom came to America and raised 6 children. My father-in-law’s family worked hard as new immigrants living on the lower East side. They built a profitable company and raised kind children. For Trump and Miller wealth, STEM education, and capacity of speak English are all privileged. No tired huddle mass here. The Statue of Liberty would bow her head and weep at such deplorable gimmicks.  Frankly, we should too. 

When I think about the proposed ‘immigration’ bill Trump just forwarded that pits the DACA kids against the GOPs Wall and nativist immigration policy, I am reminded of the wisdom in Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall,” where the speaker aptly states:

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.

The problem though with the GOP and Trump is they never shy away from giving offence.

.

How Can Those Who Oppose Abortion Remain Mute To Banning Refugees? Whose Life Matters?

Statue of Liberty  (M.A. Reilly, 2011)

I.

I am an immigrant. I came to the United States at to be adopted as a child. Prior, I lived in an orphanage in Dublin. I am the mother to a child we adopted from Korea. Matters of immigration are personal. And so it might not be so surprising that I am confounded by the illogic of those Right-to-lifers who remain quiet on the issue of immigrant bans and yet are consistently loud with respect to the rights of the fetus. This is the same group who helped to put Donald Trump in power regardless of his stances on non-abortion issues.

This morning I am wondering how a group of cells can warrant such empathy from this group, while actual living children do not? Whose life matters to these people? How dare they call themselves right to life. Don't co-opt that title if you don't care for all life.

Me in Dublin, 1960

II.

This is me in Ireland before I came to the States.

Nothing nefarious there, I imagine you would agree. Just a baby. And yet, Trump and his voters want to ban children who are refugees from Muslim countries. It is impossible for me to understand how cells can warrant better protection than actual flesh and blood of a child, but, there you have it.

This is Who Trump and his Voters Want to Ban from Entrance...Syrian refugees

from Trump's Executive Action

Take a good look.

This is who Trump, his voters, and the GOP want to ban from the country that says, Give me your tired.  Trump calls the executive action, PROTECTING THE NATION FROM FOREIGN TERRORIST ENTRY INTO THE UNITED STATES. Does this child look like a foreign terrorist to you?  Is he any more complicit in the war acts of men that have torn his country apart than I was in 1960? Where are your voices in support of this child? Or does your care only stretch as far as the womb?








III.

My dad holding Devon and my mom. 

In 1917, against President Wilson's veto, Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1917. This shameful piece of legislation barred Asians from the United States and imposed a literacy test on all else. People, like my very son, would not have been welcomed here. It would not be until 1952 that this law would be revised and racial restrictions would be removed.

Now racial discrimination is back.

Now, we have Trump--foolish bigot that he is, a man who seems not to have studied history, intends to bar refugees based on religion.

His executive act bans people from Syria indefinitely.  It bans for 30 days all “immigrant and nonimmigrant” entry of individuals from these countries: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. Suspends visa issuance to countries of “particular concern.”

Have we learned nothing? I have no respect for people who rail against abortion and yet remain mute on issues of actual life and death.

I intend to continue to protest.

80 Days of News, 80 Collages & One Truth I've Learned about People & Cultures in Collision

Another Mother's Grief (8.11.14)

Reconciliation Can Happen Between Equals (8.12.14)

From May 25, 2014 to August 12, 2014 I read The New York Times each morning and then created a collage based on some aspect of the news.  (You can see all 80 here and in the slideshow below). It has been a difficult time in the world with wars and coups happening in Iraq, Gaza, Israel, Thailand, and the Ukraine. At home (USA) issues related to economy, immigration, governance, women's rights, rape, and racial and gender injustices have been raised, argued, ignored, pitied and repeated.

Across these somewhat disparate situations, matters of power can be discerned regardless of the topic. Economic injustice rests beneath all of these concerns. There can be no peace without economic justice. Until we not only see other as worthy, but also know other as economic equal--we will continue to be mired in local and global contention. We must become (other)wise.

It was Edward Said who in writing about Palestine and Israel told us:

"I sincerely believe in reconciliation between peoples and cultures in collision, and have made it my life’s work to try to further that end. But true reconciliation cannot be imposed; neither can it occur between cultures and societies that are enormously uneven in power. The kind of reconciliation that can bring real peace can only occur between equals, between partners whose independence, strength of purpose, and inner cohesion allows them fully to understand and share with the other."

To make peace in the world, economic justice is
critical.  We must ensure that all become equal partners, not people colonized who are juxtaposed to one another across vast distances where servitude is insisted upon.

We can do better.

We must.






Cited:

Said, Edward W. (2012-10-24). Peace And Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process . New York: Vintage.

"later that morning, bent/to the earth and went to work."

Horizon (M.A. Reilly, California, 2010)

Bent to the EarthBy Blas Manuel De Luna

They had hit Ruben

with the high beams, had blinded

him so that the van

he was driving, full of Mexicans

going to pick tomatoes,   

would have to stop. Ruben spun

the van into an irrigation ditch,

spun the five-year-old me awake

to immigration officers,

their batons already out,

already looking for the soft spots on the body,

to my mother being handcuffed

and dragged to a van, to my father

trying to show them our green cards.

They let us go. But Alvaro

was going back.

So was his brother Fernando.

So was their sister Sonia. Their mother

did not escape,

and so was going back. Their father

was somewhere in the field,

and was free. There were no great truths

revealed to me then. No wisdom

given to me by anyone. I was a child

who had seen what a piece of polished wood

could do to a face, who had seen his father

about to lose the one he loved, who had lost

some friends who would never return,

who, later that morning, bent

to the earth and went to work.

"Bent to the Earth" by Blas Manuel De Luna. From Bent to the Earth, © 2006 by Blas Manuel De Luna, published by Carnegie Mellon University Press.

Dreaming: The Space Poetry Opens

I was moving some books and came across a copy of the poetry text, Dreaming the End of War by Benjamin Alire Sáenz that I had tucked away after reading it some years ago.  I found myself rereading it and wanting to share a portion of it with you. In this work Sáenz creates twelve dreams that explore the borderlands between Mexico and the United States, father and son, man and country--as well as the violence and hope that accompanies such closeness and distances among people and places.  Matters of immigration are important to me for political and personal reasons. My son, my brothers and I are US immigrants (although we joke that my husband, hailing from Brooklyn, might be an immigrant too) and as such, I feel an affinity with all who come here to live and especially those who die trying. 

We must find better ways to welcome others.  

I had hoped to hear about immigration during the last presidential debate and found the absence to be unsettling.  Perhaps President Obama and Mitt Romney might make room in the weeks leading up to the election to read Dreaming the End of War. It  is an important work--one that conveys the complexities, both personal and societal, of human cruelties and kindnesses. 

Here is a sample from the last dream.  


(from "The Twelfth and Final Dream : A Dream of The Day"  by Benjamin Alire Sáenz)

The Start to Fall (M.A. Reilly, 2012)

                                            ...Summers, I write.
There are poems in my head, stories,
novels, essays,

                    screenplays where protagonists
are as ordinary as the writer. Words clutter
and complicate. They stick in my throat
until I must find a way to clear a path
for air.

                         There are moments

when I wander from the writing.

There are things that writing cannot hold.

I stare out and see only
what is in my head. I dream of things
in the day.

                                            In the day. I dream
that nothing
in my house needs fixing. I dream
the labor it will take to build
a wall--
                   then to tear it down.

                                                              I dream
my mother has no worries. She has worked
and suffered enough,
                         worked and suffered enough
and it is time for her to rest. And though
I know my father's death cannot be dreamed
away, or my mother's memory, or her pain.
or her bills or her crooked bones--
                                         this knowing does not stop

me from my dream.

                                         I dream my mother's young
again. I dream her aging body has no aches.
                         I dream my sisters and my brothers
have no debts, and dream
                                          they have
the time to spend on who and what
they love. I dream abundance
in their lives.
                    I dream Eden and a garden
in their hearts.

                                             I dream. The day.
I dream the poor who come from other lands
will not be sent away. I dream the federal judge
will find an atlas of the world, stand
in awe of their journey--and wave
them safely in. I dream the day.
I dream that all who left my city
will come back. Exiles returning
to build again what has been
left unbuilt.
    
                    I dream. The day. I dream that all
the wars are done I dream the earth, having lost
all patience, rises up in its own revolution,
erasing all the lines we have carved
on her back. I dream there are no more
nations. This is what I dream--that
nations do not matter...



from:
Sáenz, Benjamin Alire. (2006). Dreaming the End of War.  Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press.

On Leaving Home: Children’s Books that Explore Immigration and Residential Boarding Schools

The drama, stories, conflicts, and issues related to and in response to immigration are significant. Often lost in the national "debate" are the human stories, especially those of children whose voices we need to hear. When I think of immigration (perhaps because I am an immigrant and the mother of an immigrant) I think about the several dimensions related to leaving home. In thinking about leaving home, I also think about the forced removal of Native children from their homes and relocation into residential schools, a government-sanctioned practice (in USA and Canada) that did not end until 1984. Children’s literature offers us the opportunity to come to understand some of the dynamics behind these histories, to share stories, to learn empathy, and to question policies, laws, practices, and beliefs. In this post, I recommend a few children’s books related to specific immigration issues and Native residential school practices. The list is not meant to be exhaustive and focuses specifically on contemporary (not historical) immigration issues. 

Mary Ann

I. Detained, Deported & Waiting for the Green Card

One of the most significant fears and difficulties children of immigrants in the United States face is the reality that their parent(s) may be detained or deported.  This uncertainty and the quick removal of a parent from home alters children’s lives.  In Juan Felipe Herrera’s bilingual (English & Spanish) story Super Cilantro Girl/La Supernina del Cilañtro, 8-year-old Esmeralda Sinfronteras worries when her mother is detained in Mexico (she went there to visit) because she does not have a green card. Herrera situates Esmeralda’s worries within a magical dream realm: Esmeralda becomes Super Cilantro Girl, a green giant who flies to the border to rescue her mother.  This dream sequence is powerful. The next morning, Esmeralda learns that her mother is home and safe. The young girl’s fears about the absent green card are manifested in her becoming a super green figure. The child’s fears associated with green cards are well shown and offer teachers an opportunity to discuss how one child attends to her fears, as well as the substance of that fear.

In From North to South/Del Norte al Sur, author Rene Colato Lainez tells the story of José whose mother is sent back to Mexico for not having citizenship papers. The fears and uncertainty associated with family separation are well illustrated in this recent picture book in both the prose and the oil paintings done by Joe Cepeda. Missing from home now that Mamá is gone are her tortillas and her bedtime stories. José and his father visit Mamá at El Centro Madre Assunta, an actual center in Mexico for woman and children waiting to be reunited. Although José and his father must return to their home in San Diego without Mamá, they return with the hope to carry on and persevere. This is an important story to share with children who may be experiencing similar situations, as well as for children whose lives are untouched by US immigration policies.

In América is Her Name, nine-year-old America Soliz, an illegal immigrant living in the violent Pilsen section of Chicago, wants to return to her native Oaxaca. Author Luis Rodriguez lets the reader know that América feels unwelcomed in America. When a poet visits her ESL class, she is encouraged to be a poet of the world. América finds hope and release by writing. The daily struggle of an immigrant is shown.

In Belle Yang’s Hannah is My Name, we see that Na-Li adjusts to her unfamiliar American name, Hannah after she and her family emigrate from Taiwan to Chinatown in San Francisco. In this story, we learn how important a green card is to an immigrant family, and the anxiety and worry associated with procuring a green card. The threat of deportation as the family waits for green cards and hides from officials allows the reader to imagine the level and duration of fear a child experiences.

For older readers (5th grad and older), Ann Bausum's Denied, Detained, Deported: Stories from the Dark Side of American Immigration provides a longitudinal look an U.S. immigration practices and policies.

Works Referenced and Recommended:

1.     Bausum, Ann. 2009. Denied, Detained, Deported: Stories from the Dark Side of American Immigration. Washington D.C. National Geographic.

2.   Herrera, Juan Felipe. 2003. Super Cilantro Girl/La Supernina del Cilañtro. Illustrated by Honorio Robleda Tapia. San Francisco, CA: Children’s Book Press.

3.     Lainez, Rene Colato. 2010. From North to South/Del Norte al Sur. Illustrated by Joe Cepeda. San Francisco, CA: Children’s Book Press.

4.     Rodríguez, Luis J.  1998. América is Her Name. Illustrated by Carlos Vasquez. Curbstone Press.

5.     Yang, Belle. 2004. Hannah is My Name. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick.

II. Being New. Longing for Home

Young Danilito leaves his Caribbean island home to come to the United States in winter.  The first half of the book traces his journey and explicates his fears regarding language, customs, schools, and work. Danilito and his family settle for the first night and the reader learns that Danilito does not want to go to school.  The next morning, the world beyond the window has changed because it has snowed. Danilito describes the scene: “Outside, there were millions of white rose petals floating downwards.” The father and son play in the snow before Uncle Berto arrives to take Danilito to school and Pap to a factory. Playing in the snow and stepping in his father’s shoes as they walk up a snow-covered hill relieves much of Danilito’s anxiety.

Similar to Danilito, young Sumi, a Korean child, is lonely and scared as she starts school in the United States, because she does not speak or understand English. She experiences school as  “a scary place” and as “a mean place”.  After she connects with her teacher and then a new friend on the playground, Sumi rethinks her feelings.  Readers can easily connect with Sumi’s fears in Joung Un Kim’s Sumi’s First Day of School Ever.  Soyunk Pak’s use of oil crayons produces softened illustrations that extend the sense of relief Sumi feels as she connects to others.

In Kim Mak’s My Chinatown: One Year in Poems, the reader follows a young boy from Hong Kong after he moves to Chinatown in New York City.  Like Danilito and Sumi, this child also worries about speaking English. He tells the reader, "The English words taste like metal in my mouth." Told through four free verse poems based on the progression of the seasons, the reader comes to experience the relief the child feels as the unfamiliar becomes familiar.

Young Jangmi does not want to move to leave Korea and move to Brighton, Massachusetts in Good-Bye, 382 Shin Dang Dong. She does not want to leave all that is familiar: her friend, the tree in the yard, comforts of home, and specific food. It is only after she begins to “replace” these memories of home with new experiences that Jangmi begins to feel at home.  Similar to Jangmi and the young boy in My Chinatown, Angelina also longs for home, in this case--Jamaica. The setting for Jeanette Winter’s Angelina Island is Brooklyn, NY.  Like the characters mentioned above, Angelina is lonely and scared until she begins to make connections with people and customs in her new home. It is only after Angelina prepares and participates in the annual Carnival parade in Brooklyn, that she begins to redefine home.

In Allen Say's Grandfather's Journey, the boy and his grandfather long to be back in Japan.  Yet once there the boy says, "The funny thing is, the moment I am in one country, I am homesick for the other."  In all of these stories, loss is no easy thing that can tucked away and forgotten. Making connections, reaching out to someone new, understanding that critical people and possessions may have been left behind when a child emigrates are all important aspects to share with children n an effort to develop each learner’s empathy and potential actions.

Works Referenced and Recommended:

1.     Figueredo, D. H. 2003. When This World Was New. Illustrated by Enrique O. Sanchez. NY: Lee & Low

2.     Figueredo, D. H. 2000. Un Mundo Nuevo. Illustrated by Enrique O. Sanchez. Trans. Eida De La Vega NY: Lee & Low

3.     Kim, Joung Un. 2003. Sumi’s First Day of School Ever. Illustrated by Soyung Pak. NY: Viking Juvenile.

4.     Mak, Kim. 2001. My Chinatown: One Year in Poems. NY: HarperCollins.

5.     Parks, Frances. 2002. Good-Bye, 382 Shin Dang Dong. Washington D.C.: National Geographic Books.

6.     Say, Allen. 1993. Grandfather's Journey. Orlando, FL: Houghton Mifflin.

7.   Winter, Jeanette. 2007. Angelina’s Island. NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

III. Leaving Home

In Luis Garay’s stunningly illustrated book, The Long Road, Jose and his mother must leave EL Salvador and make the long journey to the United State across deserts, mountains, and multiple borders.  Similarly, in Rene Colato Lainez’ My Shoes and I, Mario and his father walk from El Salvador to the United States and Mario is pleased when he is given a new pair of shoes for the journey.  In both picture books, the reader experiences the immense physical and emotional challenges each family faces in their journey North. At the center of each work is the understanding that journeying requires leaving behind family, friends, and familiarity of place and that the journey North requires the child to live with immense uncertainty. 

In Amada Irma Perez' My Diary From Here to There/Mi diario de aqui hasta alla, the reader learns of the journey from Juarez, Mexico,to Los Angeles through a diary kept by Amada. She, like other children, is nervous about learning English and how she and her family will live.

Without doubt Mary William's Brothers in Hope: The Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan presents a most harrowing journey. The reader learns of a young Sudanese boy, Garang Den, who walks nearly 1000 miles from Sudan to Ethiopia and then Kenya in in order to escape a genocide and learns also about an American, Tom, who helps Garang to come to the United States. This book alone could well be studied for weeks as it opens the potential for discussions about Sudan, genocide, who the lost boys are, the emigration of the Lost Boys to the United States, and the return of some of the Lost Boys to Sudan. R. Gregory Christie's illustrations are also significant and offer insight into the journey visually.

Helping students to understand the bravery and challenges that children who emigrate demonstrate and experience are important life lessons for all. 

Works Recommended:

1. Garay, Luis. 1997. The Long Road. Toronto, Ontario: Tundra Books.
2. Lainez, Rene Colato. 2010. My Shoes and I. Illustrated by Fabricio Vanden Broeck. Honesdale, PA: Boyds Mills Press.
3. Perez, Amada Irma. 2009. My Diary From Here to There/Mi diario de aqui hasta alla. Iilustrated by Maya Christina Gonzalez. San Francisco, CA: Chidlren's Book Press.
4. Williams, Mary. 2005. Brothers in Hope: The Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan. Illustrated by R. Gregory Christie. NY: Lee & Low.

IV. Forced Removal of Native Children from their Home: Indian Residential Schools in Canada and the United States

Larry Loyie’s first person account of his life with his family Cree family in Alberta, Canada before his removal in order to attend a residential school for native children provides a significant work for students to study. The contrast between the wisdom he learns via his elders and the immense fear he feels when he is taken by “strange white men” and forced to attend a boarding school is highly evocative. Readers will learn that the children were forced to attend these government boarding schools or their parents would be put in prison.

In gentler-told stories by Nicola Campbell, but no less heart wrenching, Shi-shi-etko and her brother prepare to be taken from their family at the tender ages of five and six and forced to live at church-run residential boarding school.  In Shi-shi-etko, the reader follows the child during her last four days with her family before she will be forced to attend a residential school. In the sequel, Shinchi’s Canoe, the reader learns of the influence of church-run Indian boarding schools as we follow 6-year-old Shinchi who is barred from speaking to his sister, must attend mass, and who nonetheless finds ways to hold on to his native beliefs.

In Chioro Santiago’s Home to Medicine Mountain, the author bases the fictional account of two brothers forced to attend a Native boarding school in California and their adventurous return home one summer on her father’s and uncle’s story. Like the previous stories mentioned in this post, the contrast between the harsh, unkind life inside residential schools and the spirited life beyond and at home is significant and worth discussing with children.

In Tim Tingle’s Saltypie: A Choctaw Journey from Darkness into Light, tells the story of his Mawmaw, who is blind and is undergoing surgery to restore her sight.  The reader learns that when Mawmaw was a child she was forced to attend a residential boarding school in the United States.

For older readers (middle school and high school), Shirley Sterling’s autobiographic and emotionally challenging book, My Name is Seepeetza, chronicles the harsh and violent treatment of Native children forced to reside in an Indian residential school in British Columbia. Seepeetza, who is given the Anglo name, Helen, is beaten for speaking her native language. A goal of residential schools was to make Native children more Anglo, by requiring them to learn English and the dominant culture’s ways.

What makes governments believe that stripping youth of their language and culture and forcing them to learn the language and ways of the dominant culture is ethical, moral or worthwhile? Parallels to contemporary language use policies at schools and in communities (i.e. Only English advocates) would make for important conversations.

Works Referenced and Recommended:

1.     Campbell, Nicola I. (Interior Salish and Métis). 2008. Shin-chi’s Canoe. Illustrated by Kim LaFave. Toronto: Groundwood.

2.     --------------------. 2005. Shi-Shi-etko. Illustrated by Kim LaFave. Toronto: Groundwood.

3.     Loyie, Larry (Cree). 2005. As Long as The River Flows. Illustrated by Heather D. Homlund. Toronto: Groundwood.

4.     Santiago, Chioro. 2002.  Home to Medicine Mountain. Illustrated by Judith Lowry. San Francisco, CA: Children’s Book Press.

5.     Sterling, Shirley (Salish Nation). 1992/1998. My Name is Seepeetza. Toronto: Groundwood.

6.     Tingle, Tim (Chocktaw). 2010. Saltypie: A Choctaw Journey from Darkness into Light. Illustrated by Karen Clarkson. El Paso, TX: Cinco Puntos Press.