kottke.org posts about immigration
I don’t normally say this, but if you watch one thing on kottke.org today, this week, this month, make it this speech written by Shakespeare and performed by Sir Ian McKellen on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The segment starts at ~20:00; McKellen sets it up:
It’s all happening 400 years ago. In London, there’s a riot happening. There’s a mob out in the streets and they’re complaining about the the presence of strangers in London, by which they mean the recent immigrants who’ve arrived there. And they’re shouting the odds and complaining and saying that the immigrants should be sent back home wherever they came from. And the authorities send out this young lawyer, Thomas Moore, to put down the riot, which he does in two ways. One by saying that you can’t riot like this. It’s against the law. So, shut up, be quiet. And also, being by Shakespeare, with an appeal to their humanity.
The riot took place on May 1, 1517 and is referred to as Evil May Day:
According to the chronicler Edward Hall (c. 1498–1547), a fortnight before the riot an inflammatory xenophobic speech was made on Easter Tuesday by a preacher known as “Dr Bell” at St. Paul’s Cross at the instigation of John Lincoln, a broker. Bell accused immigrants of stealing jobs from English workers and of “eat[ing] the bread from poor fatherless children”.
The same as it ever was. The text of the play, Sir Thomas More, is available at Project Gutenberg; here are the bits that McKellan performed, after the crowd calls for the removal of the strangers (some translation help, if you need it):
Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise
Hath chid down all the majesty of England;
Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding to th’ ports and costs for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silent by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
What had you got? I’ll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another.
You’ll put down strangers,
Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,
And lead the majesty of law in line,
To slip him like a hound. Say now the king
(As he is clement, if th’ offender mourn)
Should so much come to short of your great trespass
As but to banish you, whether would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give you harbor? go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,
Nay, any where that not adheres to England,—
Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased
To find a nation of such barbarous temper,
That, breaking out in hideous violence,
Would not afford you an abode on earth,
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made not you, nor that the claimants
Were not all appropriate to your comforts,
But chartered unto them, what would you think
To be thus used? this is the strangers case;
And this your mountainish inhumanity.
And of course, McKellen performs this wonderfully — he originated the role and has been performing it since the 1960s. Again…I urge you to watch it.
Diego Luna is guest-hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live this week and for his first monologue, the Mexico native spoke about immigration and what he’s experienced and observed in the US and LA during his time here.
Diego steps in as our first guest host of the summer and talks about how much Los Angeles means to him, the very important immigration issues happening here and across the United States right now, the authoritarian policies of Donald Trump, his son being born in LA, finding community here, the importance of immigrants and the amazing things they bring to America, how unfair it is that they are living in fear, the violence and separating of families being unacceptable, and he encourages everyone to call their representatives and let them know how they feel about it, and support organizations like Public Counsel and Kids in Need of Defense.
This afternoon on Twitter, the official White House account posted an ASMR video of an immigrant deportation flight. Elon Musk quoted-tweeted the video with “Haha wow 🧌🏅”. Here’s a screen recording I made of the video & tweet:
A popular genre on YouTube, ASMR videos are designed to trigger feelings of relaxation and low-grade euphoria through sounds and imagery. In this video, the Trump White House invites us to relax to the clinking of handcuffs, the rattling of chains, and other sounds of immigrants being shackled like criminals and placed on flights out of the country. Some of those being deported are not criminals, are being imprisoned in countries other than their own, could be sent to a detention center in Guantanamo Bay, or might be sent back to countries with autocratic regimes to face persecution or death.
This is unfathomably cruel and monstrous. Vile. Evil. The stuff of sadistic dictators and terrorists. Nazis. People who killed cats for fun when they were kids. From the top down, the people serving in the Trump administration are sick, inhuman, heartless. This video absolutely gutted me. I am so very ashamed to be an American today. (via @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social)
Augustus Sherman worked as a registry clerk for the immigration station on Ellis Island from 1892 to 1925. Sherman was also an amateur photographer and while he worked, he took portraits of some of the immigrants that passed through Ellis Island, many dressed in traditional garb.
These images of people wearing their folk costumes were taken by amateur photographer Augustus Sherman who worked as the Chief Registry Clerk on Ellis Island from 1892 until 1925. The people in the photographs were most likely detainees who were waiting for money, travel tickets or someone to come and collect them from the island. In 1907, the photographs were published in National Geographic, and they were also hung on the walls of the lower Manhattan headquarters of the federal Immigration Service.
A selection of the photographs are housed by the NYPL (also on Flickr).
This interactive map shows where the 79 million people who have immigrated to the US from 1820 to 2013 came from. In the past, incoming residents from Canada, Italy, Germany, and Ireland were prevalent, but more recently Mexico, China, and the Philippines have led the way.
What I think is particularly interesting about immigration to the U.S. is that each “wave” coming in from a particular country has a story behind it — usually escaping persecution (e.g. Jews escaping Russia after the May Laws were enacted, the Cuban Revolution) or major economic troubles (e.g. the Irish Potato Famine, the collapse of southern Italy after the Italian Unification).
There are plenty of dark spots on United States’ history, but the role it has played as a sanctuary for troubled people across the world is a history I feel very proud to be a part of.
The graph of incoming immigrants as a percentage of the total US population is especially instructive. Though higher than it was in the 60s and 70s, relative immigration rates are still far below what the country saw in the 1920s and before.
Among the requirements that all immigrants must meet to become a naturalized US citizen is a civics test covering US history and government. The test contains 100 questions, 10 of which are verbally posed by a Citizenship and Immigration Services officer…no multiple choice. Applicants must answer 6 out of 10 correctly to pass. The questions include:
What is the supreme law of the land?
What is freedom of religion?
What stops one branch of government from becoming too powerful?
The House of Representatives has how many voting members?
What is the name of the President of the United States now?
Under our Constitution, some powers belong to the states. What is one power of the states?
What are two ways that Americans can participate in their democracy?
The Federalist Papers supported the passage of the U.S. Constitution. Name one of the writers.
When must all men register for the Selective Service?
Name one war fought by the United States in the 1800s.
What was one important thing that Abraham Lincoln did?
Why does the flag have 13 stripes?
Before he was President, Eisenhower was a general. What war was he in?
Name one of the two longest rivers in the United States.
Name two national U.S. holidays.
You can take a 20-question multiple choice test on the USCIS website or if you want to see how many you can answer out of 100 with no multiple choice, I knocked up a Google Sheets version here — access is read-only but you can make a copy and take the test by choosing File / Make a copy… from the menu. Here’s a full list of the questions and suggested answers to check your work. Without studying, some of the questions are more difficult than you’d think, particularly if your last political science and American history classes were 25 years ago in high school.
And like all tests, this one is imperfect.1 In 2001, Dafna Linzer wrote about her test-taking experience.
Then there is Question 12: What is the “rule of law”?
I showed it to lawyers and law professors. They were stumped.
There are four acceptable answers: “Everyone must follow the law”; “Leaders must obey the law”; “Government must obey the law”; “No one is above the law.”
Judge Richard Posner, the constitutional scholar who serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago, was unhappy. “These are all incorrect,” he wrote me. “The rule of law means that judges decide cases ‘without respect of persons,’ that is, without considering the social status, attractiveness, etc. of the parties or their lawyers.”
The Simpsons lampooned this aspect of the test in 1996 when Apu answered a question about the Civil War2 during his civics test.
Examiner: “Alright, here’s your last question: What was the cause of the Civil War?”
Apu: “Actually there were numerous causes. Aside from the obvious schism between the abolitionists and the anti-abolitionists, economic factors both domestic and international…”
Examiner: “Hey, hey…”
Apu: “Yep?”
Examiner: “Just… just say ‘slavery’”.
Apu: “Slavery it is, sir.”
This would never happen in a million years, but I would love for someone to sit down with Donald Trump to see how many of these he could answer. Like I said, if you haven’t studied, some of the questions are not that easy. But surely the President of the United States should be able to get almost all of them correct…
kottke.org will not be updated today in support of the Day Without Immigrants Strike. From the Washington Post:
Immigrants in D.C. and across the country plan to participate in the “Day Without Immigrants” boycott, a response to President Trump’s pledges to crack down on those in the country illegally, use “extreme vetting” and build a wall along the Mexican border. The social-media-organized protest aims to show the president the effect immigrants have in the country on a daily basis. The boycott calls for immigrants not to attend work, open their businesses, spend money or even send their children to school.
The regularly irregular publishing schedule will resume tomorrow.
In October 2011, after 20 years of living legally in the United States, Atanas Entchev and his 21-year-old son were detained by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, given orange jumpsuits to wear, and held for 65 days. Entchev is writing a book about his experience called My American Lemonade.
Day after day from my bunk, I listened to the immigration stories of my roommates. We all had one. Mine involved over 20 years of countless dollars spent on lawyers who would help me navigate the paperwork and court dates necessary for immigration, based on my request for political asylum. Meanwhile I strived to be tops in my field, starting with a presidential certificate from George H. W. Bush and receiving an Outstanding Professor designation from INS, ICE’s predecessor agency. I started my own company, paid taxes, and raised two children here. But that obviously wasn’t enough. I had failed at giving me and my family what we wanted most: U.S. citizenship. I dug deep, used what my family had taught me about resolve and hope, and thought a lot about my past to remind myself why I’d left Bulgaria. Why I’d bothered. The irony was especially palpable to me lying in that bunk, recalling the moment I knew for sure I must leave.
Entchev is one of kottke.org’s most thoughtful readers…he’s been sending email, links, and typo corrections regularly for more than four years now. From what I understand, he’s completed a book proposal consisting of the first three chapters and is looking for an agent. If you can help him out in that regard, drop him a line.
Thomas Friedman: “I think any foreign student who gets a Ph.D. in our country — in any subject — should be offered citizenship.” Extend that to those who enrich our country in other areas (Bjork, Yao Ming, Rem Koolhaas) and I’m in. (The whole article is behind the Times’ paywall — I didn’t even read it — but I thought that one line was pretty interesting by itself.)
Update: Here’s the full text of the article. (thx, daniel…and everyone else who sent this to me via email)
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