It's Raining Cats and Dogs!

If you don't take a damn second to learn about immigration then you don't get to enjoy a margarita, Susan!

Oct 15, 2024

Welcome back to the most demoralizing newsletter to kick off your week! I had a fun multi-state, bicoastal break from regaling in talking about the never-ending horror of living, laughing, and loving in the world today, but all good things must come to an end. That’s why today, we’re diving right back into the deep end and once again unpacking everyone’s preternatural favorite topic: immigration.

Since we last spoke, conditions in this realm of political discussion have somehow managed to deteriorate. Sure, Donald Trump’s outlandish claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating pet dogs and cats made us all laugh during the presidential debate, but the joke quickly stopped when the community was the target of more than 30 bomb threats and other violent threats.

When politicians talk about immigration, they often say stupid shit with their whole chests which, in this day and age, regularly leads to people feeling vindicated in their anger and violence. And yet, said politicians constantly talk about immigration because it remains one of the most important topics to voters. The cycle keeps repeating itself, often at such a rapid speed that by the time any fact-checking is done, the confirmation bias has already led someone somewhere to grow more comfortable in their hatred.

The issue of immigration has become inextricable from every race on ballots this year. Washington Post analyzed over 700 campaign ads and found that “more than $247 million was spent in the first six months of this year on television, streaming platform and digital ads that mention immigration, according to AdImpact, which tracks campaign advertising. That is $40 million more than ads that mention any other issue.” Mind you: the piece only looked at ads that ran between January and June.

Over the next four weeks, as part of my civil duty series leading up to Election Day, I want to talk about some of the major issues that continue to keep the political climate way too fucking tense. For every reason listed above and so many others we have yet to get to, I wanted to kick things off this week by talking to an immigration expert whose identity I’ve yassified to preserve anonymity. We discussed the rhetoric we’re seeing about immigration on campaign trails this year, what misconceptions they want to dispel for all of you, and how they plan to cast their vote in three weeks.

Hey y’all! I’m an immigration professional in an employment situation where my opinion of certain topics could be imputed to my organization and it’s just better for everyone if that doesn’t happen. And before you E4P sleuths try to figure me out, NO, I am NOT Michelle Obama!!!!!!
One thing about me is that ~~graphic design~~ immigration advocacy is my passion. I love to peel back the curtain and make this topic a little more accessible so that you, dear reader, can go out into the world and explain to your MAGA uncle why his life is NOT in danger because of the “border crisis.”

As a reminder: I interviewed my friend and immigration lawyer Hallie back in January 2023 and the resulting piece is a great primer for today’s discussion. We covered the basics of immigration language, rhetoric, and misunderstandings—think of it as the level one to today’s level two conversation.

Also, I would be remiss not to pull this section from that conversation as we talk about immigration on Indigenous Peoples Day:

1.) Technically, a lot of us reading this are the descendants of actual illegal immigrants, by which I mean people who stole land from Indigenous populations (robbery, which is a crime), 2.) the idea of who is considered a “good immigrant” has changed in every generation, and 3.) a significant number of those who “immigrated” to this country did so against their will.

Cloudy With a Chance of Cats and Dogs

According to the Pew Research Center, immigration is the sixth most important issue to voters in this election. Among Trump supporters, it is the second only to the economy with 82% of those polled saying it is very important to them.

Chart shows The economy is the top issue for voters in the 2024 election — Source: Pew Research Center.

Additionally, while a slight majority of Trump supporters polled (59%) “say that the increasing number of immigrants will make things worse for people like them,” a solid majority of Harris supporters (65%) say that “the increasing numbers of immigrants will make no difference in their lives” (X). This data is coupled with Pew’s finding that the immigrant population in America grew “from 9.6 million in 1970 to 31.1 million in 2000 and almost 48 million in 2023” (X).1 More to it, as of 2022, 1 in 10 eligible voters are naturalized citizens, meaning 10% of the electorate is now made up of immigrants.

I can yap on about the facts and stats but crazy enough, that’s not really what gets discussed during conversations about immigration. So instead, I wanted to meet voters where they are and talk with today’s guest about the influence of immigration rhetoric on this specific election cycle.

Of course, I had just one place to start:

Emily: I hate to question anything noted truth-teller Donald Trump says but...are immigrants really eating cats and dogs?
Anon: Oh god, I don’t even know where to start with this one…Let me preface this by saying that I did not watch the debate. I have since gone back and watched clips and read recaps and laughed at memes, but the truth is I cannot listen to Donald Trump’s voice. Listening to what he has to say makes me embarrassed to be an American citizen, but also (I am nothing if not a hater) it’s just an annoying and uncomfortable timbre.
Possibly the craziest part of this whole “they’re eating cats and dogs” bullshit is that it's one of the oldest tricks in the book. “Othering” is a tactic used by politicians on all sides, and has been used since the first non-Indigenous people arrived on this continent. What’s easier to “other” with than food? At this point, the US is so diverse that the way we sound and look doesn’t quite have a centralized enough vibe to be othered. But damn if we as a society aren’t obsessed with the American-ness of our food—otherwise, this deranged bit wouldn’t have inspired several attempted acts of domestic terrorism against noncitizens in Ohio.
I think the more interesting part about this whole thing is what it says about the state of Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign. So many of his key talking points have lost favor with his two-time voters who finally came to their senses, and he knows the one thing he’s still got going for him is his anti-immigrant rhetoric. He was the Border Wall King, after all.
Modern conservative Americans may disagree about the role of government in people’s personal lives (it’s an invasion of privacy to ask someone trying to purchase a gun for their license, but not to monitor a person’s period tracker app to see if they clandestinely got an abortion, right? Right????), but the one thing they stand united on is that Greg Abbott was right to put razor wire in the Rio Grande.

It really shouldn’t be any surprise that immigration has become an inescapable issue in a race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump—one candidate held the title of “Border Czar” and one candidate is xenophobic.

But immigration has also become a key issue in countless down-ballot races: last night during a debate for New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District in the House, Representative Tom Kean (R-NJ) just stopped responding when asked if he supported Trump’s mass deportation plan (more on that later). Meanwhile, the AP put out an article last week detailing how Democrats in close House races are using immigration talking points to appeal to undecided voters. As Congressional reporter Kevin Freking explains:

Every House Democrat last year voted against the House GOP’s sweeping crackdown on immigration that included more border wall and new restrictions on asylum seekers The vote opened House Democrats to fresh criticism on an issue that about half of voters consider one of the most important going into the November election (X).

I was curious if our guest had any insight as to why immigration has come to feel so omnipresent in politics:

Emily: Immigration has become one of the most important issues for voters during election seasons. How and why has it become such a sizeable issue, and what is the relationship between the rhetoric on campaign trails and the policies our government passes?
Anon: I think immigrants are a really easy group to blame virtually every problem on.
Don’t want to talk about how the federal minimum wage simply hasn’t caught up to the modern cost of living? Blame immigrants for the housing crisis! Don’t want to talk about how pharmaceutical companies are mostly to blame for the opioid crisis? Pretend the cartels are using every child that comes across the border as a fentanyl-carrying drug mule! Don’t want to talk about how crime statistics don’t magically go down if you hire a billion more police? Tell everyone that immigrants are just biologically susceptible to murder! I think you get the point…
With the conservative right becoming more vocal about their anti-immigration stances, this has certainly affected how politicians on the left talk about the issue. I mean, in case you weren’t already aware, the Democratic Party is basically that one friend group you hated in college that bonded because they were the only ones who were brave enough to tell everyone in sight that they’re “fiscally conservative, but socially liberal.”
It's no secret that the Biden Administration did not deliver on its immigration-related campaign promises. I mean…we’re currently waiting on a decision from the Court of Appeals that will likely decide DACA’s fate, once and for all. In a perfect world, Joey B could’ve at least done something original with Obama’s DREAM Act.
I would say the move toward the center has intensified over the last year or so, especially since VP Harris became the Democratic nominee. She doesn’t want to look “weak” on border issues, blah blah blah, whatever. That’s fine. Hopefully, if (when) she is elected, we get a Punk’d-style reveal and find out that she’s been concealing the first-ever actual, real, meaningful, comprehensive immigration reform plan this whole time.

Of course, this is not just something that sprang out of nowhere. While we simply don’t have time today to unpack our country’s entire history of xenophobia, I did want to ask my guest for the SparkNotes version:

Emily: Can you briefly summarize the modern fear of immigrants in America? Is it that modern at all?
Anon: This is one of my favorite things to talk about re: immigration!!! I have only been around for [redacted] years, and only within the last decade have I even become politically/historically aware in a meaningful way, so even to me it feels “new.” Still, the fact of the matter is that hating immigrants is as American as apple pie.2 It’s so strange to me how colonialism eventually morphs into xenophobia when, by definition, colonizers go into a place that isn’t theirs and Goldilocks-style make themselves at home. Why were we taught to hate the bears??
There are a few standout periods in American history where immigrant hating has been our country’s national sport. Even when anti-immigrant rhetoric is not at the forefront of the national discourse, it’s never THAT far below the surface. At one point or another, noncitizens from all parts of the world have faced varying degrees of xenophobia, whether by formal law (i.e. The Chinese Exclusion Act), not-so-subtle policy mandates (i.e. Reagan and his War on Drugs), or even some good, old-fashioned home-grown hate (i.e. “No Irish Need Apply”).
Something that strikes me as different about today’s particular flavor of xenophobia is the constant spread of misinformation through the tiny computers we keep in our pockets. No longer do lies about what that immigrant family down the street was doing in the privacy of their home travel by word of mouth; instead, the 24-hour news cycle and the Musk News Network (aka Twitter aka X) have used this new era of overconnectivity not to learn how the system works and what difficulties those who go through it face, but rather to amplify lies about the immigrant community that become too deafening to fight back against with the truth.
Even recently, in the wake of Hurricane Helene, the Trump Campaign has been saying that FEMA’s running out of money because most of their funds are supporting undocumented immigrants instead. In fact, less than 3% of FEMA’s annual budget goes towards supporting immigrants, and these miniscule funds are pulled from the agency’s Shelter and Service Program. The Disaster Relief Fund, which is used to help communities recover from natural disasters like hurricanes and tornadoes, would be entirely cut under a new Trump Administration. But I digress…
All of that is to say that while the fear of immigrants is not modern, the means by which it is spread certainly are. There’s no doubt in my mind that social media is one of the primary reasons why so many people feel like immigration policy experts in 2024, and perhaps also why middle America feels such a deep (and unnecessary) fear of what’s happening at our southern border.

Did you sense that? Somewhere, somehow, Ted Cruz heard me say southern border and got hornier than he did while liking Twitter porn on 9/11.

Breaking the Fourth Border Wall

One of the most frequently used right-wing talking points lately is that we have an “open border” with Mexico through which drug smugglers, gang members, and human traffickers regularly waltz—of course, these claims are made with absolutely no racist or xenophobic implications at all.

If you believe this, I hate to burst your bubble but that’s just not how immigration works. Even without that ugly fucking metal picket fence “wall,” an open stretch of land is not the same thing as an open border. But I wanted my guest to lay it out in the literal most specific terms, so I asked:

Emily: What is the current standard process of immigration in the southern United States? Is it actually just open borders with people flowing in?
Anon: Unfortunately, the border wall is alive and well (and no, we haven’t gotten Mexico to pay for it yet). There are a myriad of possibilities of what can happen to someone if they survive crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, and some of it just depends on how the CBP officer they encounter is feeling that day.
Let me take half a step backward—yes, a lot of people cross the border, arrive in the U.S., and sit and wait to be picked up by CBP. Of course, there are people who try to make their way in undetected, either out of fear or for more nefarious reasons, but I wish people knew how willing a significant percentage of noncitizens are to comply with the system that was built to shut them out.
Although the talking heads want us to think the situation at the border worsens with each passing day, we recently hit an all-time low of border crossings during Biden’s tenure. Now…the way we got here is nothing to be proud of. You may remember hearing about “Title 42,” an FDR-era public health law that the Trump Administration used to nearly halt new entries in order to curb the spread of a virus their Aren’t You Glad I Didn’t Say Orange-hued hero publicly denied the existence of.
Essentially, the policy was aimed at kicking people out before they even had a chance to claim any kind of relief in front of an immigration judge. For context, many people cross without lawful permission to do so and end up in some form of immigration proceedings. There, they can contest the grounds of removability that ICE has charged them with, and either apply for some form of immigration relief (i.e. asylum) or request removal before reaching their merits hearing.
Under Title 42, the goal was to have as few people reach the immigration court stage as possible.3 When Title 42 was finally laid to rest about halfway through 2023, the current administration decided it needed a regulation that was facially less controversial, but still a kick in the knees to longstanding procedural precedent.
Enter Circumventing Lawful Pathways (CLP). While Biden has emphasized that the goal of CLP is to encourage the use of dedicated pathways and technologies—such as CBP One—to enter the U.S., immigration advocates see it for what it really is: the President of the United States saying “fuck you” to nearly 80 years of international law.
Although we hear the terms “asylee” and “refugee” thrown around as if they are fundamentally different, the definition of “asylee” is merely a refugee who chooses to seek asylum in their country of choice rather than going through the UNHCR refugee process abroad. The modern definition of “refugee” that was laid out at the 1951 Refugee Convention and modified in 1967 to remove certain geographic and time-based limitations is a person who is outside their country of nationality and is unable or unwilling to return because of past persecution, or if they have a well-founded fear of future persecution, and that persecution was/is on account of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.
This is an internationally recognized standard and while countries may modify the process of applying for and receiving asylum or refugee status, it is generally agreed upon that a nation shouldn’t alter the eligibility requirements. Or, I guess I should say, it was generally agreed upon that the eligibility requirements stay the same—until CLP went into effect.
The CLP rule adds a caveat: even if you meet the already high standard for asylum status, you are likely barred from applying if you are not a Mexican national, you entered at the southern border, you have not “availed [yourself] of an existing lawful process, presented at a port of entry at a pre-scheduled time using the CBP One app, or you have been denied asylum in a third country through which you traveled.”
In practice, that last stipulation is what’s affecting a large number of noncitizens who would otherwise be able to claim asylum once in the United States. TL;DR, if you’re not from Mexico and you enter at the U.S.-Mexico border, you can be denied asylum if you didn’t apply for asylum (and weren’t subsequently denied) in every single country you traveled through on your way.
One of the trademarks of asylum status is that it eventually permits an asylee to apply for a green card, and, (unless any complications arise in the approximately 100 years it takes to become eligible) citizenship. The Form I-589 also allows people to apply simultaneously for something called Withholding of Removal, and/or Protections under the Convention Against Torture.
A good immigration lawyer will hedge their bets and, so long as none of the claims are frivolous, advise their client to apply for all potential forms of relief at the same time. CLP bars people from qualifying for asylum, but this bar does not apply to withholding or either of the protections under CAT.
However, these forms of relief do not actually provide noncitizens any form of status. Withholding of Removal is exactly what it sounds like—it’s basically a “see ya later, maybe” from ICE and the IJ which acknowledges that the noncitizen has a reasonable fear of returning to their country but isn’t deserving of any concrete immigration relief that would make it easy for them to put down roots in this country.

It also should be said (in case it was not yet abundantly clear) that a lot of talk about “immigration,” particularly as it pertains to borders and walls and elections, all is coded language for talking about immigrants of color. Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY) tries really hard on her website to show you how much she cares about protecting both our northern and southern borders. However, her policies on the northern border all center around “strengthening our U.S.—Canada Partnership,” while the south is only referred to as “the border crisis.”

There is so much racist dogwhistling in these conversations from regular elected officials but as he’s wont to do, Trump has started to say the quiet part out loud: earlier this year, he “bemoaned a lack of immigrants to the US from “nice” countries ‘like Denmark [or] Switzerland’” during a speech at Mar-a-Lago, and just recently claimed that “migrants have ‘bad genes’” (X).

So when Noted Voting Rights Activist Lara Trump forcefully told “illegal citizens” that they will be “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law” for interfering in the election, I couldn’t help but wonder…

Emily: Are noncitizens really voting in our elections? Does Lara Trump really have her hands full with that?
Anon: I probably sound like a broken record by now, but overexaggerating noncitizen voter fraud is just another antiquated scare tactic. It also happens to be closely tied to the Great Replacement Theory, and I know you had another guest speak a little bit about that so I won’t dive too deep into it here.
What matters for what we’re discussing today is that the statistics just don’t support any of the GOP’s claims when it comes to noncitizen voter fraud. The penalties for even registering to vote without being a U.S. citizen are pretty steep—doing so can disqualify someone from ever naturalizing. I know I proclaimed from my soapbox that deterrence-based tactics hardly ever work, but this is one of those rare situations where it seems to keep people from participating unlawfully in the democratic process.
The Brennan Center for Justice surveyed local election officials after the 2016 elections and found that in 42 jurisdictions with high immigrant populations, there were only 30 cases of suspected noncitizens voting out of 23.5 million votes cast, or 0.0001%. A state audit in North Carolina around that time found 41 cases of green card holders who voted out of nearly 4.8 million votes in the state. According to the report, many of the noncitizen voters had been misinformed that they could vote.

Anon (cont.): There are two other major plot-holes with this specific flavor of conspiracy theory: Firstly, many people who become Legal Permanent Residents (aka green card holders4) never naturalize. There are a number of reasons why someone might choose to remain an immigrant rather than becoming a U.S. citizen, and although there are major drawbacks to staying in LPR limbo for long periods of time, I have to say I generally understand why people hesitate to take the final step.
From a purely logistical standpoint, there are several countries around the world that don’t allow dual citizenship in their founding documents. When people still have family members living abroad, it can be difficult to make frequent trips (within the limits required to maintain LPR status) as someone who has renounced their citizenship there.
As hard as this may be to believe, some people just don’t want to become American citizens. Of all the noncitizens I’ve spoken to and encouraged to start the naturalization process who have given me this answer, there’s no unified reason or trend I could summarize for you here. Although everyone’s reasoning is a little different, what they have all proven to me is that the vast majority of people are not coming here to suckle Lady Liberty’s teat.
Secondly, this seems so obvious that I feel a little silly actually saying it, but not all naturalized citizens vote blue. There are several bi-cultural groups that tend to vote for conservatives; for example, the Pew Research Center reported in 2020 that the majority of Cuban-Americans identified as Republicans. The Indian-Americans have also been known to lean conservative, which will make things especially interesting in this race where the Democratic nominee is, herself, half-Indian.

I feel like this piece has gone on for too long without me stating that immigrants are all people under the labels and headlines and polling we tack onto them. They are individuals with lives, beliefs, and experiences that shape their ideologies and actions. In case it wasn’t abundantly obvious (because to some people, it isn’t), immigrants and noncitizens are not and have never been a monolith.

Literally as I was writing this piece, I saw political commentator Brian Derrick share an article that pertained to immigration. Like a masochist, I went to the comments section and found this:

Not giving this person the source credit <3

Wherever conversations on immigration go, comments like this follow. “Americans” pay for immigrants, “Americans” pay taxes to house them, and then “Americans” are left to deal with rampant violent crime—otherwise known as the #5 most important issue to voters this election.

Presumably, this is why 56% of polled Americans support Trump’s mass deportation plan—they see it as a viable solution to the ills soooo clearly and obviously brought on by noncitizens. What then of the fact that “FBI data show U.S. border cities are among the nation’s safest. And a 2023 report from a group of economists found immigrants are at least 30 percent less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born individuals” (X). What then about the proven uptick in the radicalization of young AMERICAN men, the very demographic Trump himself has spent so much time courting?

As my guest explained earlier, blaming noncitizens is far easier than admitting our role in the very problems we’re trying to vote our way out of. But creating misconceptions instead of taking accountability allows falsehoods to fester and mutate and eat away at brain cells until the citizens of Springfield can no longer live without watching over their shoulders. The backslide into fascism will not start only if and when we re-elect Trump—it’s starting right now as people feel empowered only by forcing others to live in fear.

It is a small effort—I know how many people read this newsletter each week—but I wanted to make sure I asked my guest the following in the hopes of doing my part to mitigate more harm directed at noncitizens:

Emily: Last year, I spoke with a guest about some of the misconceptions about immigration she wants to dispel. In that same vein, what is the number one truth about immigration that you want people reading this to take away from our conversation?
Anon: I guess if there’s one thing I would want people to take from this, it’s that there’s no single image of what a noncitizen looks like. Why was it so easy for us as a society to understand that there’s not some generic version of someone who’s had an abortion, or someone who is experiencing homelessness, and yet we still have a picture of An Immigrant in our minds?
Not everyone with DACA is from South America, not everyone who is here on an employment-based visa working in the tech industry is from China or India. I think we’re so obsessed with trying to make immigration as palatable as possible that we’ve gone too far and forgotten that every noncitizen has a story, a different path that has brought them to this country.
It's dangerous for us to combine all of these stories and paths into one homunculus-style caricature of an immigrant because, in a way, it means we do not see each individual as anything more than a statistic.

hope is a dangerous thing for an immigration advocate like me to have—but i have it

Despite what this entire piece (and my literal next question) have been implicitly and explicitly saying, I am never going to tell you who or what to vote for. But I think it’s hard for me to have these conversations about the horrors—the horrors—of this election, to see how there is very clearly a Greater Evil in the form of Donald Trump, and not speak truth to that.

With that in mind, I asked my guest:

Emily: Given what we’ve covered today, I’d like to know if you’d be comfortable sharing who you’re voting for in three weeks and why.
Anon: Absolutely! While I stated earlier in this interview that this wasn’t solely a MAGA hate piece, you may have noticed many of the criticisms were launched against one particular side. It’s not because I wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to seeing how the Democrats have handled immigration over the past four years, or because I acknowledge “how bad the border crisis has become” and “see the need for more drastic measures.” The truth is that one side is worse. That’s the Donald Trump side, by the way.
Is the Democratic ticket my ideal duo? No. Are they two hot best friends? Honestly…kinda yes??? Either way, I’m voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. There has been a lot of support for those on the left who plan to abstain from the presidential election because of what’s happening in Palestine and Lebanon, and I get that, I really do. But I can’t sit back and just watch when there is such a real possibility that one of the most vile human beings on earth becomes the president of this country again.
I find myself in kind of a funny position where, over the past two administrations, I’ve kind of looked down on single-issue voters, primarily conservative men who only voted for Mr. Trump because of his stance on abortion. While I try to stay informed about several different social and political issues, I do think the main thing that justifies my vote for Harris and Walz is my role as an immigration advocate. I have become, dear reader, the dreaded single-issue voter.
The way I’m able to justify it (not to say that what I’m doing is right, but how I sleep at night because at the end of the day, we’re the only ones who have to live with ourselves…) is that I have sat across from hundreds of noncitizens, some in cushy offices with nice chairs, and some in ICE Detention Centers, and I feel an obligation to get them the best deal possible.
Well, folks, I hate to break it to you, but this is part of that best deal.
We can either have one party completely decimate our immigration system as it currently exists and finish building the wall, or we can have one party that makes empty promises of “comprehensive immigration reform” and silently doesn’t really do anything at all.
In the end, and because it is the year of our lord 2024, it was a graphic I saw on Instagram that gave me my election szn motto for this year. I’ll leave it here for yout in case you need it: do not vote for who you like best, vote for who it will be easiest to organize against.

I have found myself on the HopeCore side of TikTok lately which I feel like is the algorithm’s way of telling me to get the fuck offline. In that vein, I tried to come up with the E4P version of touching grass and asked my guest:

Emily: I find there's so much heaviness in discussions around immigration—mainly because for some people, the threats are imaginary, while for others, the threats are very violently real. Is there any kind of hope or levity you have found in this realm and how do you hold onto it when things feel bleak?
Anon: This is going to sound cheesy, but maybe a little cheese is just what this dish needs—I love, love, LOVE working with, working for, and learning from immigrants.
The diversity of ages, experiences, and traditions, etc., etc. within the immigrant community makes our country so much better in such an unquantifiable way. It’s the reason I still live in the United States and didn’t catch the first place to Literally Anywhere Else-istan after finishing grad school.
There are hard days in this profession. Most, if not all, days are hard days. But, having spoken to colleagues and mentors about what to do with the secondhand trauma dumped into my lap at regularly scheduled intervals, the reason many of us keep showing up is because we love immigrants and believe that the promises of the U.S. Constitution are owed to anyone who sets foot within our borders.

It’s rare for us to end on a truly positive note here at E4P, I know, but we finally have the opportunity to this week. This election has been one of the most anxiety-inducing, violent-rhetoricking, frequently demoralizing things to endure. And yet, there are still glimmers of Something Better that exist if we survive it in tact.

With that, I wanted to close out today’s piece by asking:

Emily: Is there an American identity without immigration?
Anon: I love this question. I mean, the answer is obviously no, but then I started trying to think about how to articulate the “American identity” and I…couldn’t.
It’s a bit strange because, as someone who is generally aware of what’s going on here, there have been countless times I haven’t felt particularly American. I have never put my hand over my heart during the national anthem, I only recently learned the pledge of allegiance, and Thanksgiving is my least favorite holiday. . . But at the same time, it feels “American” to question what it means to be American, if that makes sense.
When people traveled by boat and entered Ellis Island, who did they want to be? What did they want to bring with them, what did they want to shed? No country is perfect, no culture completely humane, and there is certainly no place in the world where a middle school “cool girl” bully does not exist.
From a purely practical standpoint, immigrants are basically the only people keeping the American Dream alive. Americans have become so obsessed with fighting for control over America that we’ve forgotten how lucky we are to be here, what it means to be American. We may not be able to see it or feel it, but this place is still a beacon of hope to people around the world, it still symbolizes what can be if you want it bad enough.
Immigrants, whether they fled their homes in fear or were privileged enough to go through one of the lawful pathways to status, remind us that with strength, resilience, gratitude, kindness, and community, we can overcome anything.

Thank you so much to my guest for being so game to answer these questions and doing their part to de-mystify a key issue for voters!!! I’m so fortunate to bear witness to someone making a real difference in this world and incredibly grateful they took the time to talk with me.

Make sure you’re registered to vote at Vote.org and make a plan to vote today!!!