Immigration: a pox on this house apparently

A friend asked me recently what the import of Black History Month might be to Caribbean-American immigrants and before I had time to formulate a series of intelligent thoughts, the 45th spake and in his speaking the reality was made known: MLK Day and Black History are life to the transplant, the immigrant - documented or not - to the POC native born or adopted, because people like the resident of the WH are out there and they have become far more bold in the last 12 months.

Some of us from developing nations come to the United States and take the view that the struggle for Black equality & justice here is not ours. We come knowing ourselves to be equal. We believe that our equal-ness will be evident and it will carry the day. Some of us choose not to know, and choose not to care, about the battle for the soul of this nation. We are here to participate in its bounty. We are here to work hard, pay our taxes and make our way smartly to the top. We are immigrants! We know about hard work and are willing to do it. Why have we need to participate in the freedom struggle of African-Americans? That's their journey not ours, or so we think. And then men and women like 45 come to town and we discover that we could not be more wrong.

When a sitting president can refer to economically challenged nations as sh*tholes, it's clearly past time for immigrants to sit up and take notice to the struggle.

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In October 2016, in an interview about the Saint Cloud, MN stabbings, the Donald said that Somali immigrants present a cancer from within in our society. What was the cancer? The cancer was immigrants. 

Between the October 2016 event and the events of the second week of January 2018, attacks against immigrants (especially Muslims or individuals who are thought to be Muslim) have increased. But this is of no moment to 45. While he has had time to create a VOICE - victims of immigration crime engagement - office, he has little to nothing to say about harms being visited upon us. We are a pox on his house after all.

Within the last two weeks, the Resident of the House of White has offered that Haitians all have AIDS and that the entirety of Africa, along with El Salvador and Haiti, are shitholes. (I'm going to presume that any and all non-White non-native born persons are also from shitholes, perhaps lesser shitholes, but shitholes all the same.) Poxes are Us.

And so while Republicans continue to hem and haw over whether their dear leader is in fact a racist; while White journalists continue to wrestle with the label 'racist'; while folk like Rand Paul continue to hair-split and claim that calling Donny a racist will harm the advancement of this or that piece of legislation, it behooves us Sh*tholians from Sh*thole lands near and far, to see these things for what they are and to understand where we need to stand at this time of existential crisis in our adopted nation.

Immigrants must be as invested in the freedom & justice struggle as the native born POC and if we didn't know that before this week, we know it now. Equality and justice are absolutely our fight too. MLK is our champion too. Black History is our history too, even if only after the fact.

There are but two sides to freedom struggles: for and against. There is no Switzerland. And as immigrants, we'd better be ready to suit up and pick the 'for' side because while the 'against' side may not harm us today, it surely will come for us tomorrow. (cf. Martin Niemoller).


The reason we immigrants are immigrants in the first place, is that First World policies towards our home countries have so hampered our growth; have so destabilized our politics, that this was our remaining choice: relocate right into the belly of the very beast that has sought our deaths. The lucky among us are able to do so legally, the not-so-lucky do not have that choice. Are our homes sh*tholes? That depends who you ask and what metrics you use. I'm not about that today but I've written about that here.

Yes, we who have relocated must acknowledge the dissonance of tying our fortunes to the very thing that has destroyed the fortunes of our countrymen. But we make the move, we immigrate, because the urge to survive is strong. Ask any Native American about survival. Read a slave narrative on what men and women have done to survive. The survival instinct ain't called an 'instinct' for sh*ts and giggles.

When a person in authority talks of cancers and of sh*tholes, maybe that individual should consider that perhaps the real cancer is in his nation treats foreigners and refugees? Maybe the true sh*tholery is in the extortion and economic violence meted out by his nation to less powerful ones? Maybe the real cancerous shitholery is in the way colonialism has stolen from others to enrich a few great men and make a few great nations? Maybe the cancer is the speaker's ignorance?

Whatever the source of the thinking that gave rise to those words, new immigrants; old immigrants; first gen Americans with hyphenated American parents; second gen Americans with strong native accents, are being reminded that the fight for justice for the children of Sojourner and Harriet; Martin and Malcolm is absolutely our fight too, not simply because the current resident of the House of White said what he said, but because there are so many people who quietly agree.

Niemöller was right, first they came for the communists. We may not be communists, or socialists, but we're definitely on the list. They will come for us. Correction, they are coming for us already. 




Garcia (above) was deported after living in this county 30 years. Brought here as a child. Married. Two children. Deported on MLK Day. 

There is surely a pox on this  house, but we who are new here are not it. We reveal it. That is all.