Separated based on race in U-Hauls,
they waited hours for their captors
to release them, no due process,
no access to lawyers, detained
without constitutional rights
in a land known for freedom,

our city under siege.

As a trained social psychologist, I’ve spent nearly two decades serving as a crisis hotline, peer, and grief counselor for hundreds of people from around the world. I’ve been an outcry witness, held people experiencing suicidal ideation, supported families and communities who have lost loved ones to suicide, and have been the only person who knew where to find the notes my friends left behind because I knew them – and because I knew where I would have left my own. 

The statistics on suicide rates in the US are staggering. At one death every 11 minutes, it is one of the leading causes of death, the rate increasing by 37% in the past 25 years. In 2023, 16.5 million people seriously considered and/or made a plan for how to escape their pain. That same year, 1.5 million people made a documented attempt, with 49,000 people dying, most of them Indigenous Americans and people aged 15-85+. The risk is both evenly and unequally distributed among us all. 

Studies show many suicides are attributed to feels of “dread, despair, loneliness and hopelessness.” Other factors include academic performance, economic standing, financial struggles, and of course, mental health. Another major factor is the nature of the society in which we live, and as a society, we must work intentionally to create a world where we don’t just survive, but thrive. 

To be sure, we are living in a moment where resources like the National Suicide Hotline for LGBTQ+ youth are defunded, reproductive and abortion care are gouged and restricted across the US, and $182 billion dollars per year are ‘invested’ in a sprawling, inhumane mass incarceration system, not to mention the increasing presence of ICE and its ability to surveil and detain those deemed ‘not American enough’.

In my practice as a facilitator and educator, I create and uplift resources, spaces, and programs to support the collective, holistic well-being of my communities and networks. And so, since we cannot rely on our federal government to lead the way, allow me to offer other ways of navigating these challenging times:

• Seek out Mental Health First Aid classes. These classes are available in-person and online. Participants learn how to identify mental health issues and crises, provide initial help and stabilization, and find and contact appropriate resources. The national 998 Suicide and Crisis hotline is also still active.  
• Explore resources like the Open Path Collective, which hosts skilled therapists at sliding scale. They purposefully recruit counselors from diverse backgrounds who are well-versed in both individual mental/emotional conditions, as well as the social conditions that may either help or exacerbate them. 
• Practice learning about and discussing mental/emotional health. I have created a list of media and resources to help begin exploring these topics and be patient; exploring feelings like shame and guilt take time and care.

In a time where ‘Breaking News’ alerts seem to constantly warn of war or deliver another sobering story about gun violence, it is reasonable to be heartbroken and frustrated, to want out.  I understand the pain, the heartbreak, the feelings of despair. I was born as Hurricane Hugo, the first of the superstorms, decimated my island of St. Croix, graduated into two recessions, and have lived my entire life in a world at war, not to mention in the fist of colonization. I’ve also experienced cycles of active and passive suicidal ideation for most of my life. 

At this point, I view it almost as a companion, one I can predict will arrive to spend time with me, sometimes content to quietly observe, and at others, insistent with its purpose – as a warning that I am not the only thing maladapted and unwell. I have suffered greatly, yes, but have been saved by the care of brave, diligent friends, my training and awareness of the resources available to me, and my stubborn insistence on not being beaten by a hostile game I never agreed to play. 

We are not powerless, however. It is important to remember that this is a blink in the eye of human history, that we have agency in how we respond – where we re/direct and pool our attention, effort, care, and skills. Those of us who live, love, and create on the margins of a society that only ever wanted us for the bodies, minds, and spirits it used to build itself know that there are always other paths.

When I reflect on what we can do as a society to address rising rates of suicide, Octavia Butler’s guidance as a skilled, prolific social historian, worldbuilder, and humanitarian ring powerfully true: “There is no magic bullet. Instead, there are thousands of answers – at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.” 

As items are lifted from the suitcase, an aroma carries itself into the vacant space – a smell of comfort and care. Distance makes the heart grow fonder, and this familiar smell makes it weak with missing. A deep inhale stirs the memory of your mother in the kitchen boiling sprigs of mint, poured into a modest cup, the flavour complimented by a snap of cinnamon and citrus. She reminds you to eat a spoonful of honey before drinking. Her once possessive tone now becomes one of adoration. Lifting a layer reveals bags of dried mint, moringa and chamomile – herbal remedies known to calm the stomach, heart and mind. 

Behind every weed, stalk and spice lies cultural roots, with migrancy strengthening bonds with folk pharmacology. The herbal remedies and rural practices my first-generation Turkish immigrant mother was brought up with had become commonplace in our London home. Seemingly personalised approaches to health care had been formed through cultural ancestry, generationally preserved and evolved in the turbulence of geographical relocation. In juvenescence, I reduced them to maternal guttural enforcement of odd pastes and decoctions, dubious of their efficacy. But through sickness, a violent yet enlightening shift would occur.  

In December 2022, I was diagnosed with Stage 2 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. This health dilemma pushed for greater regard for diet, and the enforcement of herbal remedies. A notable blend included quince seeds soaked in water, forming mucilage with a taste reminiscent of a Bakewell tart. With Turkey recognised as a sizeable producer of quinces and my mother’s agricultural upbringing, these remedial purchases were no surprise. Surrendering to its favourable flavour – and my mother’s claims of its healing properties –  the quince seeds became integrated into my treatment routine. Yet, discovering quince’s recognition for cancer treatment, the undefined nature of what cancer it targeted meant that its address of specific malignancies was debatable. 

Skepticism was afoot. The bodily intake of chemotherapeutic drugs as my mother smuggled in gelatinous seeds and desiccated berries stirred the age-old contention between folk medicine and biomedicine. The unbroken debate of the true panacea for mankind’s afflictions. Defining these two healing practices allows for a greater distinction beyond its forms. Whilst folk medicine is seen to recognise the body’s entirety – with cultural beliefs and values attached – biomedicine differs, approaching healing procedures with a Cartesian mind-body dualism dedicated to specific bodily units.  

Whilst the overriding notion appears to delegitimize the reliability, value or officiality of folk medicine, both health systems warrant equal degrees of scrutiny. Biomedicine-affiliated patient care is often reduced to an impersonal process which neglects pervasive influences to sickness. Patients are handed a diagnostic report but are rarely given insight into a sickness’ root causes. With lymphoma delineated as a ‘genetic mutation’, I could not help but feel that there had to be more to this hostile takeover. I sensed a rewardless chase, with leads that fail to point to a prime suspect. The offences of biomedicine can provoke trauma and we are left to wonder if an alternative treatment could have achieved the elimination or reduction of disease. Albeit, studies into folk pharmacology’s anticancer reactions show promise, the dismissal and discouragement by medical practitioners denies curated care.

Understanding these therapeutic forces is aggravated by globalised contemporary media – particularly its chokehold on our day-to-day realities. In an attempt to heal, we are attacked by a heavy cavalry of online information. The asserters of this information vary in degrees of expertise and direct personal experience – practitioners, researchers, patients, conspirators – distorted by informational inconsistency, provocation and fiscal incentive. The public expressions of advocacy and aversion to these health systems have led to regional-specific folk remedies becoming globally recognised, participating in the battlefield of cultural and medicinal debate. This new-found popularity pushes folk remedies into the hands of factories and global distributors, with mass-production warping our assertions on their successful cultivation and efficacy. 

So, what relevance does this hold for stories of migrancy and the continued consumption of folk remedies against ongoing contention? Whether it meant cultivating, shipping or revisiting Turkey to obtain ingredients, sickness allowed me to understand my relatives, surpassing their knowledge and use of folk remedies. Sensitively taken and heavily researched, I reshaped the wicker basket to carry roots and shoots outside the Turkish folk pharmacopoeia. As I listened to my relatives’ response to my malignancy, I realised that the presence of folk remedies was not simply to preserve culture or tradition, but to practice care in response to scarcity of information, resources and control. 

With decades passed since their arrival and achieving conversational fluency, moderate comprehension and use of the medical system, the responses of my relatives were evocative of recent migrancy – a barrier experience. Suggestions were made to head to Turkey, affirming that the system would offer prompt diagnosis and effective treatment. Yet even as a native English speaker, the confrontation with sickness, medical jargon, and the shifts in reality – it appeared that cancer presented a barrier experience of its own dissimilarity. The prospect of receiving treatment in a country where communication and navigation of the medical system relied heavily on others would have only achieved greater aggravation for all involved. 

For the majority, curing sickness hands control to biomedicine’s methods. Folk medicine can become viewed as a source of reclamation. A practice of using what we know and have in the most effective way possible. Individuals stricken by illnesses such as cancer may not possess the information cultivation necessary, substantiated by patient experiences of being sat into the recliner shortly after diagnosis and thrown into survival mode. Making sense of the treatment we receive becomes difficult, its future implications and how it drastically alters our lives even more so. For my mother, myself and migrants in medical distress, folk remedies become key to creating a sense of control and contribution to survival. They may not only act as part of our practices of care in moments of informational scarcity but a potential aid to medical oncology. Consolidating this demands greater research, putting an end to falsities associated with folk medicine and a hopeful expansion to the systems of treating illness. 

I teach critical race feminism, and I am a critical legal scholar. I am also a hate refugee. I left my job in Georgia, because what I teach prompted members of my then-university community to speak acts of violence and challenge my sense of safety in the classroom. The defining event that precipitated my departure was when a white, female campus police officer threatened me and a speaker for a Critical Race Theory campus event, both of us Black women. She stopped us on the way to the speaking venue. We were running late, and I said to the officer “Hi! We need to get to the presidential dining room where she (motioning to my passenger) is the keynote speaker.” The officer placed her hand on her gun and replied, “You need to? Or you need me to let you?” After that incident, my family and I decided it was time to move.

Shortly before the 2016 presidential election, I recall walking the streets of my neighborhood to get a sense of how my neighbors were voting.  As I walked down each street, it seemed that my neighbors’ lawn signs reflected the angst my friends and I were experiencing as we pondered the future of the country.

We all know how that future turned out. It is the specter of that outcome that haunted the 2024 Presidential election, the inauguration activities, and that is now a waking nightmare for those who stand against divisiveness and hate.  While many believe that the rhetoric of the 47th president and his party is hyperbolic and not cause for alarm, those of us who are Black, brown, women, gay, trans, physically challenged, immigrants, unhoused, and members of any other marginalized group are afraid for our safety and our futures.  This past election did not feel like a simple disagreement about political ideology.  On the contrary, this election felt like a question: Is the United States a country that is comfortable with any group who is not rich, white, male and straight making gains?

The ballot, or more accurately the Electoral College, answered no. Making America Great Again means reminding women and the minoritized of our place again. And that place is back in the margins.

Instead of focusing on the cruelty and indifference that is to come over the next four years, it is our charge to focus on what we can do in our communities and networks to advance our multiracial democracy.  We must reject any rhetoric that links America’s ills with racism and xenophobia as simplistic and challenge ourselves to see the humanity in each person that we encounter. Our vision must be contextual and historical if we are to understand who we are as a nation and how we got to this present moment.

We now live in a country where teachers who want to teach accurate accounts of history, science and literature from varied perspectives can only do so in the states that have eschewed book bans and attempts to subvert curricula. Over half of the states in the U.S. have either anti-Critical Race Theory legislation, divisive concepts legislation, book bans or all three.

Furthermore, abortion providers and those seeking abortions can only do so without threat of prosecution in slightly more than half of the U.S. Effectively, this means that our freedom of movement in the country is limited based on which rights we are willing to forego.

Parents seeking diverse and inclusive educational experiences for their children are restricted to half the country. Professors who do not wish to cede control of their courses to state legislatures can only search for career opportunities in a smattering of states.  Women who desire full access to healthcare, including reproductive healthcare, can do so only within the nooks and crannies of a disjointed U.S. map that rivals the maps of the most creatively gerrymandered districts.

Americans who want the full rights promised to us in the Constitution, and by our lived experiences of the last 50 years, now must travel the 21st Century version of an Underground Railroad.  We risk departure from states that meet our needs with violence or neglect to be carried by networks of mutual aid to other states that offer different freedoms even as we remain the same.

For as many of us who flee, there are those who choose to stay. Whether connected to place and space by kinship, friendships, or just plain stubbornness, residents of the beleaguered states stay to vote, to fight, to organize, to nurture, to resist.  While they are needed and appreciated where they stand, their presence alone cannot change how state and federal laws restrict who can be called to fight alongside them and how they are even allowed to fight. They may not be hate refugees, but they are hate hostages.

Authoritarian regimes have only one border: the border between us and them. This particular border crisis in which we find ourselves threatens to separate us from our neighbors and put all of our notions of freedom in a cage.

Before becoming an adult ESL instructor, I never knew the letter ‘u’ would be a culprit in so many spelling and pronunciation foibles. The English language is filled with absurd patterns, and an even more absurd lack of patterns. There are so many things that are senseless and confusing. Beyond the fact that the same sound can have eight different spellings.

Since the presidential election, I’ve been facing what feels like many senseless and confusing realities. One being the man we elected to the highest office in our country has made his anti-immigrant agenda very clear this coming term, which will likely have a direct impact on the dozens of students who will soon shuffle into this classroom.

I want to invite you to spend a day in my classroom. I arrive on campus and walk up the stairs to the second floor of the continuing education building where the ESL department is. I pass students trickling out of their morning classes on the stairwell, hear their voices echo in the hallway. Some of the students I’ve taught before pass. “Hi teacher!” they greet me with wide smiles. I open my classroom and turn on some music. Some days I put on a playlist of students’ favorite songs. (How else could I learn about Senegalese rappers and Brazilian electronic music producers?) I’m teaching a Level 1 Literacy class. Usually this means the students in my class have been in the U.S. for less than a year. My roster is made up of students from the following countries: Afghanistan, Russia, Ukraine, Angola, Turkey, Senegal, Venezuela, Syria, Brazil, Guatemala, Cuba, China, Haiti, El Salvador, Mexico, Vietnam, Iran. All in one class. All speaking dozens of languages.

My students work at Panda Express. My students work in agriculture. They clean hotels. They work at the carwash, the mechanic, as a dishwasher, an Uber driver, a housekeeper, babysitter. My students are mothers. They are fathers. They are caretakers. In their home countries, they are also architects, psychology professors, professional soccer players, chefs, teachers, Instagram influencers. They are, let me be clear, human beings.

I’m not an immigration expert, but I am invested in the upcoming administration’s proposed immigration and border policies, especially for my students. One of the largest voter issues of this election centered on immigration and border policy. And we elected a man who has not only called immigrants animals, but during his first presidency presented outlandish ideas around border control, including building a “water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators” and shooting migrants crossing the border in the legs. A country whose immigrant population is 51.6 million (Center for Immigration Studies, 2024), elected a man, who at a rally in New Hampshire this fall, said that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” (ACLU, 2024).

I live and teach in San Diego, the biggest border city in the U.S. Over 27% of all San Diego county residents are foreign-born, compared to 13.7% of the rest of the country (Wong & Sanchez, 2020). San Ysidro is the busiest border crossing in the western hemisphere. Every day, migrants and asylum seekers arrive at the southern border, 16 miles from my apartment, and if you believe a word Donald Trump says, you’d think I should be scared for my life.

Back in the classroom, students between the ages 18-75 begin trickling in. They cluster together, typically by language. Spanish-speakers at one table, French and Haitian Creole, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Russian. They grab the Long U vowel sound worksheet and begin chatting together, comparing answers. They work independently for a while. I usually start class late to give students a chance to arrive. They are taking the bus. They are dropping their kids off at school. They are coming from work. Every day I have the students stand in two circles. The inside one moves like a clock to greet one another with dialogues that change every few weeks. Today it reads:

A. Hi. How are you?
B. I’m pretty good, thanks. What about you?
A. Not too bad.
B: Nice to see you.
A: Nice to see you, too.

They shake hands and laugh. A chorus of hellos fill the room. I remind students the difference between “nice to see you” and “nice to meet you” as most weeks there are new students arriving to class for the first time. Classes are open-enrollment, so for the span of a semester, a new student could potentially enroll every day, and they often do. Students do not need any kind of documentation to attend classes. Classes are free. Textbooks are free. Who pays for the lights to stay on in the building? The projector filling the screen with my color coordinated slides? The salary I make teaching a language that hopefully helps people survive, work, contribute to their communities? Well the government does, through a number of local and federal grants, or at least it does for now.

I got into this field initially through my love of writing. As an undergrad, I worked as a writing tutor and would often meet with international students to help them polish their papers before submission. Typically, what they wanted most support with was grammar. And yet, I could deftly swipe a red pen across the page, but couldn’t answer when asked, but why is this wrong? I didn’t have the language to explain subject-verb agreement, count and noncount nouns, adjective order, definite and indefinite articles, and the myriad of endlessly confusing English grammar (and spelling) rules. So I took a TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) certification course and then seven years later, circled back to grad school. It’s an interesting field, really. On the one hand, I sometimes feel like a cog in the U.S. imperialist project, propelling the long business of colonization onward via the English language. That in teaching English, I’m an active perpetrator of linguicide. That I’m assuming some kind of pseudo white-savior role. And despite contending with the ick of this, I still get paid to try to make English if not unbearably irritating, at least a little bit easier for people who are simply trying to survive in what seems like an unsurvivable world.

The stories I’ve heard in my classroom are as diverse and complex as the students themselves in regard to why they left their countries. From religious and political persecution, to war and economic instability. From marriage to education. Economic opportunity. Fleeing a country that deems their sexual orientation illegal. Human rights. Climate catastrophe. Gender inequality. Safety. Family reunification. I can’t speak for my students. I can’t make anyone begin to understand the kind of horrors that make human migration necessary.

People say migrant like it’s some kind of dirty word. But migration has always existed. Before borders. Before tribes. Before humans. Migration is one of the most natural, essential, and necessary phenomenons of existence.

If we didn’t see human beings as separate from the world around us, we would see the way migratory birds disperse seeds over 92% of Earth’s land surface, contributing to the world’s incredible biodiversity. That the pollination of nearly 75% of the world’s crops is due to other migratory species like hummingbirds and butterflies. And what about salmon? A keystone species who transports millions of tons of invaluable nutrients into freshwater ecosystems from their oceanic journeys. And to speak of resilience! Did you know the Arctic Tern can traverse up to 50,000 miles annually between the Arctic and the Antarctic? They say that in their lifetime, an Arctic Tern can fly a distance equivalent to three round trips to the moon.

This doesn’t even begin to uncover the epic migratory history of Homo sapiens or the endless stories from the students in my English as a Second Language class.

Human migration isn’t a crisis because it exists. It is a crisis because the United States and other colonial powers have spent decades destabilizing foreign countries. It is a crisis because the wealthiest echelon of humans and corporations are contributing the greatest to climate change, which disproportionately affects people living in the global south, resulting in widespread, necessary migration.

One day, likely in the near future, we will all be migrants. Elon Musk and the rest of the one percent will colonize Mars and leave the world they helped destroy behind. Won’t we be migrants then? When rivers dry? When wildfires burn? When tsunamis crest our coasts? Won’t we be migrants then? Come to my classroom and you will learn that no one leaves behind everything for nothing. You will learn that the poison in our country is not immigrants, but unchecked capitalism. And the lengths horrible people will go to amass wealth and power at the expense of others. Environmental degradation. Government destabilization. Genocide. What is the true poison? And is it being administered from borderlands or from ivory towers?

There is no shame in seeking safety. There is no shame in migration. There is no shame in wanting to live.

What can I do to convince you of someone’s humanity whose story transcends labels of migrant, immigrant, refugee, asylum-seeker? Perhaps I could tell you about my student from Afghanistan, who once wore white rubber knock-off Birkenstocks bedazzled with rhinestones to class. I exclaimed how much I loved her shoes and she beamed with joy. A week later, there was a gift bag on my desk. Inside, a large (and expensive!) bag of pine nuts and a new pair of sparkly sandals, with the tag: size 7. She told me she needed a few days to look at my feet to guess my size. And she was right. I could tell you about the student from Vietnam who waited fourteen years for her visa so she could finally come to the U.S. and be reunited with her family. I could tell you about my student from Guatemala, who often missed class because his work as a landscaper took him across town. How, one class right before Christmastime, he arrived with his hair neatly gelled, button-down shirt tucked into crisp jeans. He handed me a card and said thank you, and that he couldn’t stay for class because he had to go back to work. I opened the card later at home. Inside was $50 cash and a note that said “Thank you for teaching me. Merry Christmas.” I wept.

I could tell you about the time I taught a lesson on emotions and adjective + preposition combinations. Each emotion was represented in a realistic photo. When we got to the clip of a woman smiling with eyes closed over an abundant dinner table, one student offered: she’s hungry. No, she’s praying, another suggested. I chose the photo to represent gratitude. Grateful for. Thankful for. What are you grateful for? I asked. I could tell you about the student from Iran who offered to the class in a timid voice, “I am grateful for a country to live with no war.”

The temporary protective status of Haitians, Afghans, and Venezuelans is set to expire in 2025 and there is little confidence it will be renewed. Earlier this year, the mayor of San Diego defunded the Office of Immigrant Affairs, a department formed only recently through the work of dedicated community advocates. I’m not an immigration expert, but it seems to me there is no lack of creative solutions to solve our country’s immigration and border issues, but there is a severe lack of compassion in our lexicon. It’s like we need a new language, but our voices haven’t learned how to produce the right sounds.

Regardless of what further immigration policies come to light under the new administration, I want to suspend, if only in my imagination, my belief in the necessity of borders. To remember my ancestors, many of whom were characters in the story of human migration. To pledge allegiance not to my country or ruler, but the inherently borderless lands we all live. To fight to protect my friends and neighbors who may not speak my language or share my culture. To envision a future where no one is dehumanized for needing to leave home.

References
American Civil Liberties Union. (2024, June 6). Trump on immigration: Tearing apart
immigrant families, communities, and the fabric of our nation. American Civil Liberties Union. https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-releases-legal-legislative-and-advocacy-roadmap-to-combat-immigration-threats-posed-by-a-second-trump-term

Camarota, S. A., & Zeigler, K. (2024, October 31). The foreign-born share and number at record highs in February 2024. Center for Immigration Studies. https://cis.org/Report/ForeignBorn-Population-Grew-51-Million-Last-Two-Years

E360 Digest. (2010, January 12). Migration of Arctic Terns can reach 50,000 miles per year. Yale Environment 360. https://e360.yale.edu/digest/migration-of-arctic-terns-can-reach-50000-miles-per-year

National Geographic Society. Protect our pollinators. National Geographic Society. https://www.nationalgeographic.org/society/protect-our-pollinators/
Oxfam International. (2023, November 20). Richest 1% emit as much planet-heating pollution as two-thirds of humanity. Oxfam International. https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/richest-1-emit-much-planet-heating-pollution-two-thirds-humanity

Ritchie, H. (2021, August 2). How much of the world’s food production is dependent on pollinators? Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/pollinator-dependence

Wong, T. K., & Sanchez, M. (2020, June 29). Immigrant integration in San Diego. University of California, San Diego. https://usipc.ucsd.edu/publications/usipc-immigrant-integration-san-diego-final.pdf

World Population Review. (2024). Countries the US has overthrown. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-the-us-has-overthrown

The reaction to racist jokes made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at Trump’s rally in New York last Sunday has been swift. The comedian also made disgusting comments about Latinos and Black people.

Latino celebrities, including Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin, have voiced support for Vice President Kamala Harris. Singer Nicky Jam withdrew his endorsement of Trump. The Archbishop of San Juan, Puerto Rico and others have demanded an apology from Trump. 

The Trump campaign released a statement to say those comments don’t represent the campaign. But Trump said the comments were not a “big deal.” Trump called the rally where speakers eschewed racism, misogyny and bigotry a “love fest.” At a Tuesday night rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a city with a large Puerto Rican community, Trump said, “Nobody loves our Latino community and our Puerto Rican community more than I do.”

Those comments ring hollow from a person who started his campaign calling Mexican immigrants “rapists and criminals,” and whose idea of celebrating Latino heritage is eating a taco bowl on Cinco de Mayo. Let’s not forget he is promising mass deportations on day one and that will impact the Latino community, including U.S. citizen children of undocumented immigrants, and possibly legal immigrants, such as Haitians he falsely accused of eating cats and dogs.

The election is a dead heat and in many states Latino voters could play a decisive factor. An estimated 36.2 million Latinos are eligible to vote in the U.S. this year, according to Pew Research. Also, nearly one million Puerto Rican voters live in swing states. Around 81% of Latinos in the U.S. are U.S. citizens and Latinos make up 8% of the veteran population amounting to 1.5 million veterans.

What’s concerning is some polls show that as many as a third of Latino voters could vote for Trump.

As a Latina, who is fourth generation Mexican American, I am struggling to understand why any Latinos would vote for Trump. Reporting from The Atlantic this month revealed that Trump disparaged a Mexican American family.

According to journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, Trump offered to pay for the funeral of  Vanessa Guillén, a 20-year-old Army private, was bludgeoned to death by a fellow soldier at Fort Hood in 2020. But when the bill came he said this: “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!” He turned to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and issued an order: “Don’t pay it!” 

He later said, “F…..g people, trying to rip me off.”

Maybe some Latinos don’t feel upset by these insults because they’re not of Mexican heritage. Or because they are second or third generation. They think that’s them, not me. As Latinos, we shouldn’t close the door on immigrants just because we got here first.

It’s also important to acknowledge machismo is playing a role. I’ve heard interviews with some Latino men who question whether a woman can do the job of president. I have one response to that. If Mexico can elect a woman president, so can the United States. Claudia Sheinbaum was sworn into office on Oct. 1 as Mexico’s first female president.

The Harris campaign is running ads on Spanish-language radio with a daughter making a plea to her father to vote for Harris. “But don’t you see how he insults  immigrants? Men like you. He’s disrespecting us,” a translation of the ad states. “Look what he did to women’s rights. And if he wins again, what will my future look like? Dad, I need you by my side.”

This is a compelling argument and I know Latina women who are making similar speeches to their fathers and grandfathers. One of them told me she convinced her grandfather not to vote for Trump.

My Mexican-American parents, who are very religious and don’t believe in abortion, still plan to cast their votes for Harris. They don’t agree with how Trump has demonized immigrants and as retirees they want their Medicare and health benefits to be protected.

Trump can’t be trusted. Remember how he promised to build a wall and that Mexico would pay for it? Didn’t happen. 

Trump doesn’t respect Latinos. Remember how he threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans after Hurricane Maria? All the insults add up.

Latino voters, particularly Puerto Rican voters, can make all the difference in swing states like Pennsylvania. As the saying goes, “su voto es su voz” or “your vote is your voice.”

Hearing these words sent a shiver down my spine. As a political scientist studying American politics and immigration, I was shocked but not surprised. I know that when leaders attack immigrants, citizens are next. Historically, these are citizens with the “wrong” ideas, sexuality, ethnicity or religion.

There are many tragic examples of this phenomenon across the globe, but in the U.S., a few that come to mind are the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, the Red Scare and Lavender Scares of the 1930s-1950s which cast suspected communists and LGBTQ+ workers out of universities, the government and the military, and the mass surveillance of Muslim Americans after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. In all of these cases, the U.S. government, including the U.S. military, wielded its immense power against minority populations—all of whom were also U.S. citizens.

All of these incidents were carried out in the name of national security. And the connection to anti-immigrant sentiment is intimate.

For example, the fencing that was used to confine Japanese U.S. citizens who had been stripped of their property and possessions into unsanitary desert camps, was literally reused to build the first permanent border fences at the U.S.-Mexico border. Also, underlying motivations for the Red and Lavender Scares or “McCarthyism” such as the House Un-American Activities Committee included unvarnished xenophobia, anti-intellectualism and anti-Semitism. After Sept. 11, federal immigration enforcement was moved under the purview of the newly created Department of Homeland Security, and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau was created.

The incarceration of Japanese Americans is now considered to be one of the darkest chapters in U.S. history. Japanese American survivors of these events received reparations in 1988 under the Civil Liberties Act signed by Ronald Reagan in 1988. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned and rebuked the 1944 Korematsu v. United States decision. Similarly, public opinion eventually turned on red-hunter in chief, Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who called U.S. military leaders “mental midgets” and carried a copy of Mein Kampf, and he was formally censured by the government in 1954. Today, the term “McCarthyism” is used to describe censorship, extreme interrogation tactics and modern witch hunts.

But it is important to remember that at the time, Japanese Internment and the activities of McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee were legal and supported by public opinion. The harms faced by Muslim Americans after—and since—Sept. 11 are still unfolding. I believe that one day, history will recognize the government spying on citizens based solely on their religion as an injustice.

Today, political scientists around the world in my sub-field, political psychology, have found substantial evidence that citizens who hold anti-immigrant attitudes are also more likely to support authoritarian regimes. This relationship is intuitive since,  again,  xenophobic nationalistic attitudes often precede government crackdowns on citizens.

And more Americans would be willing to accept a definitionally authoritarian ruler than you might think. A 2024 Pew Research Survey found that around 32% of Americans expressed support for military rule or authoritarian leaders—leaders who make decisions without legislative or judicial interference.

Since the early days of Trump’s presidency, political scientists have sounded the alarm about his authoritarian tendencies. And, once again, the Trump team is running an explicitly anti-immigrant campaign. Trump’s former White House chief of staff John Kelly warns that, if elected again, Trump would lead like a dictator noting, “he’s certainly an authoritarian”. Now, President Trump’s defenders’ only cover is that he does not really mean what he says.

When Trump lies, we are asked to believe him. And when he tells the truth, we are told to ignore him.

Let’s not repeat the ugly history of targeting immigrants and citizens and apologizing later. Now is the time to speak up and to vote. These precious rights should not be taken for granted.

The romantic notion I now have of my village is that it was simple then. People went to bed at 7 PM as there was no electricity. The last bus passed the village at 7 PM. We studied using oil lamps and wiped the black soot from our noses in the morning that emanated from the kerosene lamp with faulty oxygen supply during the night. The native healer treated all ailments free of charge but the villagers paid him with their produce. An egg, some veggies, a coconut or two, you name it. The school teachers led exemplary lives. The village priest and the local politician were decent and educated people. The villagers helped each other at troubled times and or at busy times such as changing the old roof covers or bringing the harvest in.  Neighbors disciplined the kids and the parents thanked them. I watched my society change over time as it is inevitable.  Then I migrated to the U.S. in the late Eighties.  

Over the years, I saw that the village priest and the local politician becoming the biggest crooks. Healers gave faked medicine to make a buck. The Minister of Health and his secretaries are still in jail for alleged involvement in the procurement of counterfeit intravenous human immunoglobulin, which is used to help fight infections and cancer.

A man who is considered to be a former gold chain snatcher in public trains, (a claim that he has denied) was elected in March 2024 as the chairman of the Committee on Public Enterprises, a key parliamentary committee to fight corruption.  Teachers do not teach much in the school but teach the same kids for money after work and on weekends and holidays. Everyone is for themselves.  Yes, the village is now divided.  As the ancient Greeks said, we have more idiots and tribesmen, than the citizens. 

The factors that changed the Sri Lankan society over time, as I see, are several.  

1. Historical and cultural influences such as migration of people from neighboring countries and the arrival of major religions; 
2. Colonialism and foreign influence by the European invaders and then the economic invasion by China; 
3. Religious and ethnic tensions created by the local politicians; 
4. Civil War and the reconciliation came out of the above; 
5. Large-scale corruption and the decline of morality in the religious and civil order; 
6. Globalization and modernization (i.e., internet and social media); 
7. Economic factors such as the crisis brought through the widespread corruption; and 
8. Educational system that does not address the local needs.

As we are facing elections in both Sri Lanka and in America, I asked a good American friend (Dave Kerr) of the same age what he thought had changed American society in the wrong direction. He has been to Sri Lanka in the Seventies and he said the following:

‘I would say the reasons the US has changed for the worse over time include most of the same ultimately detrimental influences that you have outlined in Sri Lanka, although they may have affected the US in different ways or by different mechanisms than in other countries. Some changes that have affected the U.S. more than others include:

1. IMMIGRATION: The influx of large groups of migrants — both legal and illegal — from very different cultures and moral backgrounds has had both positive and negative effects on the moral foundation of the country. Immigration literally built the US, and generation after generation of migrants have integrated successfully into American life. In recent decades, however, there has been a sizable influx of immigrants that have not integrated well, establishing homogenous enclaves that held themselves culturally separate from American melting-pot culture, often openly rejecting the morality and societal belief systems that millions of Americans have adopted over the years. The very nature of America and her morality is based on the peaceful integration of many different kinds of people into one unified whole. The arrival of groups of individuals who reject American morality but still choose to migrate here — often choosing to demean or destroy the things that Americans cherish — has had a significant detrimental effect on our society.
2. IDENTITY GROUP TENSIONS: Religious, sexual/gender, ideological, and ethnic tensions created by the media, politicians, and a very aggressive activist and lobbyist class. We’re far from a perfect society, but there is a growing and very vocal group of people and organizations that exist to promote grievances of every possible kind. Politicians and most media thrive on these grievances, pushing them front and center of every political campaign and media story. A culture of victimization has bloomed from these heavily promoted grievances, convincing large swathes of the population that racial, sexual, ideological, or religious victimization is the reason they have problems or lack the kind of success they feel they’d like. This not only degrades the morality of a country that was built on principles of equality and opportunity, but it can destroy the motivation and resilience of people living in a country where self-starting and individual responsibility are the true pathways to success. Instead of overcoming obstacles and persevering through headwinds, the constant refrain of victimization can understandably cause some people to believe the American Dream has been unfairly denied them because of characteristics they have no control over, and morality suffers when you are told over and over again that your country as a racist, sexist or ideological nightmare that will never let you succeed.
3. GLOBALIZATION & MODERNIZATION (particularly the internet and social media): While there are universal moral guidelines that most of humanity has embraced, including things like murder and child abuse, much of our morality is a local — or at most national — construct. Different groupings of people naturally have different beliefs, organizational structures, and religions, and they therefore develop different morality. Globalization tends to throw all those different local and national identities and moralities together as part of a single global entity, which by nature minimizes regional differences by throwing different cultures into potentially profitable contact with each other.
4. But modernization — particularly the internet and social media — has changed the social fabric of all modern societies more than almost any other factor. Not only does it throw different people into direct personal contact with other people around the world who hold dramatically different belief and morality systems, but it is designed to make those interactions addictive and self-perpetuating. In addition to exposure to knowledge, positive human interactions, and inspirational writings, in a shockingly short amount of time, the internet has made it incredibly easy for anyone of any age to get access to a wide variety of harmful ideas, pornographic images, and situations, and a drastically different morality than they have been raised with. Worse, the internet and social media are where predators and people of ill will tend to hunt, and their very presence has a negative effect on morality.
5. EDUCATION: The American educational system has largely failed to educate and promote our historical morals to our youth. In many cases, education has become indoctrination, some mild and some quite aggressive, and over time it has attracted more and more educators — and particularly administrators — who are focused on indoctrination more than on education. This fire hose of contrary indoctrination causes our youth to be angry, divisive, dissatisfied, anxious, depressed, detached from the principles that make the country free and successful, and totally unprepared to compete with people educated in countries that focus on actual learning (i.e. Japan, China). Today, American students are largely unable to read or do math at their own grade level, and a plurality of high school graduates in large swaths of the country can barely read, write, or do math at an elementary school level. Schools in many areas are actively usurping parents’ ability to influence the morality of their children, which interferes with the social contract that has been effective for centuries all over the world. History, Civics, and Citizenship are either taught poorly, negatively or not at all, which can make an angry, divisive youth both ignorant and disconnected as well. Protests by educated, informed individuals are protests. Protests by ignorant, uneducated individuals is a mob, and the January 6th Capitol Riots and the Summer of Antifa and BLM riots are both horrifying examples of this disastrous, accelerating trend, by their very nature a collapse of morality and American social values.
6. TRUST IN INSTITUTIONS: These and other issues have caused a near-total collapse of trust in every major institution, including religion, government, media, technology, and education/ colleges. Most of that distrust has been well-earned, as too many public institutions have been poorly run, lacking in any sense of duty to the public good, and rife with corruption and ideology. Without trustworthy institutions to act as the skeletal infrastructure of morality for the country, the population becomes cynical, lacking in belief, and disassociated from the things in society that bring people together. Without trusted institutions, people become focused solely on themselves and their immediate family, and a focus solely on the self has historically been considered immoral in and of itself. Instead of a country of 300 million people aligned in common affiliation with America and her institutions, we are becoming a country of 300 million siloed individuals lined up in opposition to other Americans and most American institutions, working solely towards their own selfish needs and guided by 300 million different moralities.

In other words, I see the decline of our countries — and most other relatively free states– to be caused by the same factors that are happening everywhere, on a global scale, although it progresses (or declines, actually) at a slightly different pace in each given country. While ideology certainly plays a part, it is more due to all the other factors listed above, and the different ideologies just tend to align themselves in arbitrary opposition to each other in each of those factors.

Do I have hope we can return to the simpler, more moral societies we had in the past, without also reviving the immoralities that even those eras labored under (ie racism/slavery, social caste systems that allowed the powerful to take advantage of the less powerful)? No, that is probably a forlorn hope. We can’t put the toothpaste back into the tube: technological advances have changed the way humanity learns, interacts, politics, entertains themselves, and experiences sexuality, and those things are changed forever.

Also, we struggle with racial/ethnic politics that refuse to be resolved and disarmed; the gradual dominance of most of our institutions by the left, many of which used to be imperfectly dominated by the right years ago; and the effect of globalism that has undermined — and often openly wants to obliterate — the concept of small gatherings of humans living under their own morality, operating a small local economy loosely affiliated with the larger regional and national economy.

The more globalized the world gets, the more we all share the same information, technology, morality, and economy, and the more homogenous the nations, institutions, and people of the world become. Theoretically, that could benefit countries that weren’t doing so well, but it brings down the most unique and successful countries that no longer have the unique identity and morality that made them successful.

The end game of this progression into globalism — i.e. one world government — is already being devised and openly talked about in centers of global power such as Davos, the WEF, the WHO, and the UN. Our simple, relatively moral small towns are probably gone forever. Sadly, our distinct national identities are heading in the same direction.

I believe our best hope is what I’m calling “benign nationalism” — the unwillingness to let go of the things that make our countries, regions, and towns different from other places, while at the same time accepting and even celebrating those cultures, nations and peoples who are different — without the expectation that importing millions of those very different peoples into our own unique, benign culture will naturally make them drop their own beliefs and morals and assume ours.

That simply has not been happening often in today’s world, and many countries are harming themselves trying to prove that it still CAN happen. Nationalism has had an occasional history of turning into something that is far from benign, and what I’m calling “benign nationalism” is so little like those systems that I’m sure we need to find a name for it that doesn’t include the loaded word “nationalism.”

For instance, I think every healthy country needs robust immigration, with policies that benefit the country first, but that can also benefit those with genuine need and equally benign intent. Perhaps this too is a forlorn hope. But I applaud any effort to slow or stop the slide into moral bankruptcy, widespread corruption that is fully integrated into all our institutions and economic systems, and the globalized homogeneity of a world government.

And those efforts can only start at home, with neighbors and local government, education, religion, and media. Benign nationalism isn’t a weapon to be wielded against those who believe different things. It is a virus that infects people of goodwill in every country, providing a small example of a better way to do things that gradually infects other people of goodwill, until the entire organism of the state is infected with goodwill and a belief in the things that make that particular gathering of humans unique, effective and moral.

And it can’t be organized; it can only happen organically from the bottom up unless we are blessed with an impossibly rare appearance of a truly moral, inspiring leader who can act as a signpost for the populace. But let’s be honest — it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen in our lifetime.

The quality of our leaders in recent decades makes the appearance of a truly inspiring, moral leader unimaginable, at least one that the whole country can support. They either don’t exist in today’s world, or they refuse to subject themselves to the gauntlet of horrors that is our modern political process, or the lousy leaders we have in most governments and institutions of power and influence make sure no one of high morals and inspirational talent ever gets close to a position of power.

So, in summary — yeah, we’re all pretty much screwed. But no matter how bad it gets, I can’t help but live in the pale light of hope’.

Dave’s analysis of American society begs us to deep dive into what exactly happened in Sri Lanka.  I invite people who are more informed in these areas to share their thoughts. 

Dave Kerr is a retired Media Executive who has visited Sri Lanka.

Then On November 6, 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed IRCA, the Immigration Reform and Control Act, enabling 2.7 million undocumented immigrants to become Legal Permanent Residents, otherwise known as green card holders.

Sporting a drab dark brown suit with a row of white men behind him, a flurry of cameras captured President Ronald Reagan signing IRCA into existence, immortalizing the moment one of the most significant immigration laws excluded my family.

IRCA reserved eligibility to undocumented immigrants living in the United States before January 1st, 1982. We were the new arrivals and found ourselves excluded under a grand bargain to provide protection for some in exchange for major increases in border enforcement.

Ten years old at its signing, 20 years passed before I became a Legal Permanent Resident in 2006.

“WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,” read the heading of the green card approval letter I received 21 years after arriving in the United States. “It is with great pleasure that we welcome you,” the letter said.

Standing in my kitchen, I stared at the torch of Lady Liberty printed on the letter’s background. The soft yellow walls, mint green cabinets, and abundant sunlight that normally filled my kitchen with light and airiness darkened, and the air vacated through my nostrils.

After 21 years as the excluded undocumented immigrant, I never imagined inclusion would feel like a clenched jaw and pounding chest. The welcoming tone of the notification of the approval letter and the warmth of the torch of Lady was jolting. Lady Liberty, what changed? Why am I just now being welcomed?

When I left Ecuador, I longed to be welcomed in the United States—to feel safe again. A few months after my father immigrated, I witnessed my older sister’s hit-and-run car accident. I sat next to my sister’s unconscious limp body, blood dripping from her forehead, and her ankle turned a full 90 degrees from her leg.

Through the many months of recovery after her accident—requiring all my mother’s attention—I found myself alone with the unnamed demons penetrating my childhood. My sister eventually physically recovered. Her broken leg and arm healed. Her hair, shaved to replace the broken skull bone with a metal plate, grew back. But my shattered sense of safety never fully recovered.

Rather than finding safety in the United States, I discovered my humanity and worthiness would be endlessly debated. For twenty-one years, I was the demonized immigrant who did not belong, whose mere presence was contentious, and who was excluded by IRCA.

Since IRCA, the United States’ exclusion arsenal has magnified, with border enforcement spending increasing from $263 million in 1990 to $4.9 billion in 2021. In the meantime, Congress has failed to pass legalization reform and recent negotiations between the White House and Senate negotiators appear headed to impose further border restrictions and expand the government’s ability to exclude new arrivals.   

The anger I hold surprises me. I am in, after all.

In her 2021 book, Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence and Grief, author Victoria Chang grapples with the unanswerable questions she carries about her family’s history and immigration story from China. “I wonder why any of this matters,” she writes. “Lucky people are supposed to live in the future.”

I lucked out. After three failed petitions to become a Legal Permanent Resident, the first in 1990, the second in 1997, and the third in 2002, my fourth petition—based on marriage to a U.S. citizen—was approved. If I had never married a U.S. citizen, affording me the privilege to petition and the financial means to cover the many filing fees and years of attorney costs, I may not have been granted citizenship.

The grief my anger hides craves acknowledgment of the harms of exclusion: feeling unsafe, unworthy, and invisible as a full human but hyper-visible as the unwanted alien. My grief craves meaning beyond luck. My grief struggles with the fact that my humanity never mattered to politicians negotiating immigration law.

In 2021, I attended my sister’s naturalization ceremony holding hands with my anger. When I realized the ceremony would be held outside because of the COVID pandemic, anger squeezed my hand. It was a windy Chicago morning failing to reach 50 degrees and my jacket was in the car. 

My sister was ushered to plastic chairs spread six feet apart. There were no chairs for the guests. Some leaned against the fence surrounding the courtyard of the Dirksen Federal Building. With the cutting look I perfected during my doctoral studies at the University of Chicago— arms crossed, slight head tilt, unflinching eyes, and smirk—I sat on the corner of a long gray bench and waited for the judge’s remarks. 

From where I sat the judge appeared to be a young white woman about 5 feet tall. She walked to the podium in black heels at least three inches tall and a long black robe, her long blond ponytail swooshing. Her remarks were brief. 

She welcomed the new Americans by thanking them for the sacrifices they made to be in the United States. “It was a long and difficult process,” she acknowledged. She then quoted something she read about how immigrants make the United States a more just, good, kind, and welcoming place. “I hope this country lives up to the hopes that you had when you came,” she concluded.

For a moment, anger let go of me. Maybe it was the full blue sky or the sun shining directly on my body, making the cool morning bearable and warming me up in between the gusts of winds, or the sounds of the birds and the city waking up. Maybe it was because it was the welcome I had been waiting for.

Today the White House appears ready to trade asylum seekers for aid to Ukraine and Israel. Texas recently passed a law, SB4, making crossing into the state illegal. In Chicago, where many new arrivals are being bused, some City Council aldermen want the city’s sanctuary status repealed.

The conditions new arrivals are facing are dehumanizing. They are being used as chess pieces by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who started busing migrants to cities such as Chicago and New York. 

My journey feels far from the experiences of recent arrivals and the scale of the needs of current migrants is much larger. Yet, the experience of being dehumanized and used as a chess piece, while politicians develop new forms of exclusion, stretches across time. 

As I witness politicians use new arrivals as bargaining chips and develop new ways to exclude people seeking safety and opportunity, the anger of feeling unwelcomed for 21 years resurfaces.

I wonder how it would feel if immigrants were welcomed instead.

It’s been a long and difficult journey. Immigrants make the United States better. I hope the United States lives up to the hopes and dreams you had when you came here. I know this is what I needed then and now.