Author: Allison Jiang (Page 2 of 2)

The language describing the Southern Border crisis in the United States presents it as one inextricably tied to the preservation of American democracy; meanwhile for the migrants themselves it has become a sullied label of their personal journey that’s marked with overcoming intense hardship—from their path to the U.S. to their preexisting troubles in their home countries.

Jonathan Blitzer in his novel Everyone Who Has Gone Here describes immigration as the pressing issue to the shaping of how we govern as a nation, stating that immigration is a “democracy issue” that may fuel the rise of populist authoritarianism. However, for such a pervasive topic in recent political history, he reveals that the last major immigration reform happened in 1990. In the New York Times book review of Blitzer’s novel, it summarizes his work as illustrating “the American immigration system as a victim of its own dysfunction.”

As for the description of immigrants, Blitzer says that migrants’ immigration status had become a “defining, immutable fact of who they now were.” Further, migrants and how they were labelled became a xenophobic mechanism in the immigration dialogue that painted them in a way to deter the average American resident. Michael Bennet, a Democratic senator from Colorado, described this strategy as portraying immigrants as “shadowy, isis-controlled, Ebola-carrying people disguised as Central American children flooding across the border” and being “effective” in deterring politicians from further progressing immigration reform and increased legalization efforts.

We notice through the retelling of migrants’ narratives how they function as chess pieces serving the convenience of the U.S. immigration system, in how government authorities choose to move people around to various locations as well as the ease at which they are thrown out of the country deported. See, for example, the decision of California cops and immigration authorities collaborating to “clean out” city and state jails because “it was much easier to deport someone than it was to convict him of a crime.”

The decision around doing what best serves the interests of the immigrants and what they can provide to America whilst assuaging the interests of Americans manifests in what is described as a “moral imperative” in the New Yorker piece. Most pervasive on the Democratic side of the immigration debate, and the Biden administration’s tackling of asylum, is the struggle around towing the line between controlling the influx of migrants at the border and the ethical/moral boundary that government officials were or weren’t willing to tow. Trump’s separation of migrant families at the border served as the most glaring example of this morally shaky effort, one that proved to work in deterring migrants at the border to some capacity, but more so became cemented as a sensationalist representation of aggressive and ethically ambiguous border policy.

The article on the Darien Gap presents a harshly realistic perspective into the tumultuous journey of migrants. As Americans, we see so much extensive coverage at the Southern border and this fearmongering effort both photographically and anecdotally of an overflow, an invasion. However, the jarring reality of the unrest of their hometowns and the journey they take to get to the U.S. slips out of the conversation. When the Biden administration has been taking such deliberate efforts to improve the Latin American countries that are homes of those migrating, how has this story of the path to the U.S. and immigration reform targeted at the source point fell so far out from the national conversation around resolving the border dilemma?

These articles all unite in their mission of exposing and illuminating the humanity behind the Afghan story in relation to a context of a conflict-driven stage of U.S.-Afghanistan relations. The Azmat Khan piece is quite a stunning and bitter encapsulation of how a promise, one centered in the “extraordinary technology” of the American government, became a misguided attempt ridden with ignorance to civilians, yielding a bloody and unjustified outcome.

But what happens if the humanity is removed from this story, replaced by technology?

Khan and the Times speak to the logistical flaws of what boiled down to making sure that any expected civilian casualties must be proportional to the military advantage gained. Civilians had been collateral damage in this military system, the harm produced left unaccounted for.

This astonishing indifference to civilian presence and a lack of accountability in military action reminds me of the conversation around A.I. weaponization (technology known as lethal autonomous weapons) and its looming prevalence in the future of warfare. When the article discusses notions of confirmation bias and the ethical debate around a civilian toll as a “strategic necessity,” how does this fare in a technologically centric model where the humans aren’t making the decisions?

Some statements from the Pentagon files seemed appalling to me, how the military mistook civilians for enemy fighters nearly in 1/5 of the cases, often undercounted civilian deaths, how targets on “no-strike lists” like those in schools and hospitals were removed. Specifcally, the human decision behind this reads as morally depraved due to the lack of acknowledgement of civilian deaths. Khan says that this situation is “not a series of tragic errors but a pattern of impunity”; however, how do these decisions translate if we implement lethal autonomous weapons?

The other narrative through this week’s readings focused on the immigrant story of Afghans seeking to find their place within the U.S. and its communities. The MPI article was very helpful in painting a picture of the immigrant story of Afghans in the U.S. They explain how migration of Afghans is historically a conflict-driven one, and we see how the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan fits into this pattern. However, what shocked me was the large discrepancies in English proficiency, educational attainment, and labor force participation for Afghans. I find myself asking what mechanisms explain this gap in opportunity for Afghan migrants.

The PBS News Hour article on Afghan refugee communities in Missouri had me thinking of the housing conversation that has been so rife since the intense scrutiny on Haitian migrants in Springfield, OH. St. Louis has an F in affordable housing for the most disadvantaged renters, struggling with affordable housing supply issues. This article paints the traditional bright-eyed benefits of immigrant settlement, a phenomenon that brings a vibrant touch and cultural difference. However, there seem to be these fundamental lingering issues that perpetuate an inflammatory dialogue around the influx of refugees in America and how they are negatively impacting the livelihood of American communities and their existing residents.

WASHINGTON — The US sent back 116 Chinese migrants in the “first large charter flight since 2018” to China this July, according to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

In recent years, the U.S. has struggled with an uptick in unauthorized immigrant entries. Between 2020 and 2022, illegal entries increased by 630,000. DHS announced continued cooperation with China “to reduce and deter irregular migration and to disrupt illicit human smuggling through expanded law enforcement efforts,” eliciting concerns about the safety of migrants.

An influx of Chinese nationals has entered through the U.S.-Mexico Southwest Border in recent years. US Border officials arrested 37,000 undocumented Chinese migrants in 2023, 10 times the number of the previous year.

“We will continue to enforce our immigration laws and remove individuals without a legal basis to remain in the United States,” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas in the DHS statement said. “People should not believe the lies of smugglers.”

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to requests for comment from the Associated Press about the collaboration between Beijing and Washington or the number of Chinese citizens awaiting deportation.

China suspended taking back undocumented Chinese nationals in August 2022, pausing cooperation on repatriation following then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in 2022. To deport undocumented Chinese nationals, the US must get approval from the Chinese government.

Since then, cooperation on the deportation of illegal Chinese immigrants in the US has resumed in November 2023 after President Joe Biden’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping that reviewed “people-to-people exchanges” amongst other issues.

“I suspect that China may wrongly believe that in ‘cleaning up’ these illegal migrants and violations of other countries immigration law, that will increase their soft power amongst Western countries and Southeast Asia,” sociologist of Chinese migration Jacob Thomas said.

This statement follows international efforts to block main migrant routes connecting China to Western countries. In August, Panama’s government deported over 100 people, including Chinese migrants, to reduce the flow of US-bound migration passing through the Darién Gap.

“There’s a balancing act,” Thomas said. “Politicians in the US historically played between being concerned about human rights and having too many people. The Biden administration wanted to send a clear message: they’re not going to stop people ahead of time, but legally the goal is to prevent migrants from reaching the US.”

Panama President José Raúl Mulino had vowed to shut down the Darién Gap, entering a deal with the US stating it would cover the costs of repatriation for illegal migrants entering Panama.

Large deportation flights and border arrests have exacerbated tensions over immigration during the presidential election. Amidst an amplified a sense of nationalism across the US population, deportation flights echo the growing national sentiment around hardening control of the US border.

“A trend in immigration policy is that it’s very geopolitical. The presidential election is a moment of nationalism that lends itself to an ‘us versus them’ idea and nativism,” Beth Lew-Williams, a professor of history specializing in Chinese immigration law at Princeton University, said.

Anti-immigrant stances have become a uniting front for the Republican party. Notably, Chinese migrants have been targeted for espionage and intellectual property theft under policies like Former President Donald Trump’s China Initiative. Trump’s anti-Chinese rhetoric, such as labeling COVID-19 the “Chinese Virus” in a tweet has perpetuated anti-Asian racism.

Asian community organizations have expressed concern over the safety of Chinese residents in light of larger deportation numbers and the call for firmer border control.

“Since COVID, it is very much on our radar how hate crimes have been rising, even still today against Asian American communities.” Sophia Wan, a neighborhood planning associate at Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation. “We see that deportation is an example of that xenophobic and sinophobic sentiment on a national level.”

The growing xenophobia toward Chinese migrants coupled with issues of gentrification and affordability may impact the desirability of immigrating and the physical safety staying in predominantly Asian neighborhoods like Chinatown, according to Wan.

There are nearly 350,000 undocumented Chinese immigrants and around 1.7 million from Asia and the Pacific Islands in the US as of 2022.

“Chinese migrants, numerically, are not the main story of deportation in the US right now. It’s surprising and noteworthy, in part, because we assume a certain amount of deportation and exclusion at the Southern Border of mostly Central Americans,” Lew-Williams said.

JRN449 Reading Response Class 4 – Allison Jiang

In these week’s readings, we saw how novel and special creations sprouted from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a central and shared experience of the Ukrainian communities impacted. 2-years out from the inciting event of the Russo-Ukrainian War, these articles bring to light new technological and artistic infrastructures built in response to the shared experiences and needs of Ukrainians.

In the utilization of digital tools, there is the advent of new technology has reshaped the approach of immigration agencies that are aiming to optimize the efficiency, accessibility, and accountability of supporting Ukrainian refugees. Notably, I was surprised by the private tech sector’s involvement in the situation, with organizations such as Airbnb and Uber rising up through “#TechforUkraine.” In continuation of last week’s discussion around the discrepancy between attitudes toward Ukrainian refugees and the Haitians, Venezuelans, Mexicans, and Ecuadorians passing through the Southern border, we see this response expanded into how profitable companies completely removed from government are willing to implement themselves in a social justice-adjacent advocacy role. It’s important to note that the article on digital tools was posted on the site of the platform housing these very tools; perhaps this explains this rather saccharine picture of Ukrainian settlement.

But, with tech comes the inevitable onslaught of security and protection issues. With the vulnerability of the digital system that’s been crafted, the extended application of technology clearly threatens the refugees’ safety if private information is breached. However, there remains a question about access, especially for rural Ukrainian refugees who may not have the means to communicate with family back home, creating a hole in the aid for refugees who don’t have accessible coverage plans.

Dance for Ukrainian artists has also taken on a different identity under a shared trauma, one built on the history of censorship by the Soviets as well as the current military attacks. These artists have spoken to the notion of “selfhood” in the context of claiming their Ukrainian culture. While books and language were banned, the performance arts remained as a mode of preserving the self and culture of a group. Katja Kolcio, professor of dance who worked closely with Ukrainian war-relief workers, the Ukrainian National Guard, Ukrainian Armed Forces and veterans said: “It was such an explicit attempt to erase a sense of Ukrainian-ness,” she said, and yet that was preserved “through the embroidery, through the chants and songs and movements.”

When examining the theme of selfhood within the trauma-rife and emotionally stripping experiences of being a refugee, this art has functioned as an “uncomfortable intermingling of life and art” for some. For example, ballet choreographer Alexi Ratmansky has found his thoughts entangled with the war in Ukraine, where his family lives. “My parents in Kyiv are awoken at night by explosions,” he said in an interview at Lincoln Center. “It gets harder and harder and heavier because no one sees any light. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

The violence of the Russian airstrike has transferred to the work he creates, perhaps in a cathartic way that creates emotional solidarity and resonance in a puzzling and conflicted time for Ukrainians.

Reading Response Class 3 – Allison Jiang

The central theme of this week’s readings appeared to me as how Americans’ perception of immigration and immigrants are shifting. When I use the term “American,” this encompasses government officials down to the average city resident. Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s busing of migrants to democratic-run cities has been described as a “political stunt” by officials in Washington.

From a different perspective, Abbott’s political move also served as a catalyst to bringing the border from the policymaker’s concern to that of the average city resident. Alongside the rampant and prevalent discussion of immigration in the 2024 presidential election, cities are having to grapple with handling this influx in migrants as well as the impact of this sudden increase on public opinion and political discourse.

There has been a dramatic increase in migrants, with more than 205,0000 migrants arriving in New York City since spring 2022. These stories spotlight how uniquely recent years’ conversations around immigration have been a popular media-powered discussion.

On one side we see the conversation that is an empathetic display towards those seeking refuge, most prevalent in the Uniting for Ukraine clip. Jana, the young daughter of a Ukrainian immigrant, paints a bright-eyed image of the United States and the American Dream. Her mother supports this positive rhetoric on the United States’ successful border policy. It was surprising to hear about how non-controversial Uniting for Ukraine was. Evident even in its name, this geopolitically driven policy is widely perceived as more compatible due to its bipartisan stance against an anti-American regime. Additionally, race plays a factor: the entry of white Ukrainian refugees is uncapped, meanwhile, Biden has capped Cuban, Haitian, and Venezuelan migrants and these policies have been challenged more than Uniting for Ukraine.

Contrarily, there is a far-right anti-immigrant sentiment brewing. This has been powered by Abbott’s busing and the Take Our Border Back convoy, making this rhetoric increasingly heightened, violent, and extreme. Take the YouTube livestreamers: these new online stars proclaim themselves “illegal hunters” staking out migrants along the Southern border, monetizing a sensationalist tendency and further feeding a far-right fanbase.

Additionally, with the migrant influx and dwindling resources and space for shelter, the growing number of homeless migrants on the streets has amplified the issue to a pressing public and political front; it’s the dramatic convergence of U.S. megacities’ issues of street homelessness and overwhelming migration. The busing has strained cities like New York who have been dealing with a crisis, as well as Denver who are not accustomed to such a mass intake of migrants.

The policy response has been highly defensive, with Biden announcing new immigration restrictions capping grating asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, and Mayor Adams distributing fliers at the border that warn migrants that they are not guaranteed shelter/services once in the city. I thought the New York Mayor’s chief of staff summarized this situation well: “If one of [Abbott’s] goals was drawing attention to what happens at the border in a way that many interior cities don’t feel on a regular basis, then yes, that was successful.”

There is no other way to describe my immersion in the new cycle of the 2024 Presidential Election other than sudden, unprecedented, and intense. When Trump was planting the seeds of his anti-immigrant vitriol during his 2016 campaign, I was living and going to school in Shanghai, China. At that time, I would not describe myself as “political” in any sense of the word; I was far-removed from this political conversation. Yet, through these readings, the dramatic and sensationalist nature of Trump’s approaches to immigration policy—specifically, that pertaining to Mexican migrants—is starkly familiar to me. He has conjured up such an image and approach to immigration that has been a prevalent cultural and political message through the past decade.

In “Trump promises to deport all undocumented immigrants, resurrecting a 1950s strategy − but it didn’t work then and is less likely to do so now,” Burgess writes that Trump’s militarized approach to deportation of undocumented immigrants is “playing to unfounded and dehumanizing fears of an immigrant invasion” and “misrepresents the context and impact of Eisenhower’s policy while ignoring the vastly changed landscape of U.S. immigration today.”  Trump’s fearmongering of immigrants made the national stage during the presidential debate, as his comments on Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio gained internet virality.

His comments are rather reminiscent of Eisenhower “Operation Wetback” Era where the popular opinion of immigrants was much more hostile. However, in Fear & Hope: What’s It Take to Make Sanctuary Real? [NYC Immigration Stories], the immigration lawyer describes immigration as the pivotal driver of the economy, dynamism, cultural capital, and enrichment in sanctuary cities. Mass, sweeping deportations do not translate in the same way as the 1950s due to this dramatic shift in the immigration policy sphere: the undocumented population is increasingly dispersed and diverse, and many live in cities where sweeps are hard to carry out.

Additionally, these readings helped me gain a fuller perspective of Biden’s approach to the border. In the political conversation, democrats are often described as ‘unsure’ around the issue of immigration compared to their republican peers. Perhaps this manifests in the language that these reporters use to describe Biden’s history on immigration: ambivalent, a balancing act, mixed bag… Biden has come out strong on his support for migrants, in his 2020 presidential campaign stating that the U.S. must take on the role as a “safe haven for refugees and asylum seekers.” He retained Trump’s deportation policy, Title 42, during the beginning of his presidency and has also enforced more punitive orders that shut down the Southern border which originally directed migrants to seek asylum between ports of entry.

As Harris runs on a campaign that looks toward the future, I’m left wondering about how the departure from a Biden presidency may impact the intensification of regulation along the border.

In my opinion, the reading that provided me with the newest insight was “Will Mexico Decide the U.S. Election?” There is a general narrative that Mexico lacks strong immigration policy of its own, instead reacting to the continuous demands of the U.S. The impact of Mexico’s National Migration Institute suspension of deportation proceedings, and how it aided with American efforts is an interesting reflection on how the dialogue around Mexico-U.S. immigration issues is more symbiotic than we assume. This insight may be central into how the U.S. continues to develop border policy for the upcoming administration.

If you asked Charlie Roth how his summer was, he’ll probably tell you he was manually inputting property tax records of the Witherspoon-Jackson neighborhood, one number at a time.

A college student’s summer break is a precious thing. Charlie was surrounded by the splashes of his younger brother in the pool as he drummed his fingers away at the kitchen counter, gazing into rows of excel spreadsheet cells. “I could have been miserable, sitting in my house while everyone’s at the beach or at an a cappella tour,” Charlie said. “But I’m typing numbers into a spreadsheet and having a blast—making the find that 20 houses doubled in property tax overnight.”

When Charlie was taking classes as a public policy major at Princeton University, he oftentimes found himself off campus grounds. He served as Head Data Editor and Senior News Writer for The Daily Princetonian, the university’s student-run newspaper, and was regularly reporting on local government meetings.

“In the very, very first meeting, I asked the editor if I could report on the Princeton town council because that wasn’t something that we did,” Charlie said.

In one of his interviews with a town council member, representatives directed him towards a blaring property issue that rested just north of Princeton University: the tax revaluation that had hurt the Witherspoon-Jackson neighborhood, a historically Black, low-income community.

“A few years ago, there had been a tax revaluation that like hit that neighborhood really hard, because their property taxes hadn’t gone up in a while. Then in one year, it went up 25% on average, in which he said, ‘You should look into it.’”

That summer, far from beachy waters, Charlie has been finding a key slice of information that allowed him to solve this economic housing puzzle. Helping elucidate local and national issues through journalism rests at the core of his studies at Princeton and his career aspirations of becoming an investigative journalist.

This fortunate moment got Charlie hooked on journalism, and led into the opportunity of the property taxes investigation which would end up as an award-winning piece titled: “‘Our community has become a commodity’: How Princeton’s historically Black community is fading.”

Charlie grew up in Baton Rouge, La. Despite being born in New York City and then moving to the New Jersey suburbs, he became stationed in Baton Rouge very young. His parents moved from cushy PR jobs in New York to support the family business, a dental and vision insurance company named Goudchaux.

“My mom, before she was in PR, was a producer at CBS News. Growing up, I watched a lot of news because, you know, she couldn’t help it, and I loved it,” Charlie said.

Notably, he was drawn to political satire—something that contrasted from his mother’s career.

“His passion, at least at the beginning was the writing gig, to write for the amazing Stephen Colbert, right? That was not my passion,” Deborah Roth, Charlie’s mother said.

To Charlie, these shows incorporated an element of the theatrical, the funny, and the political: all wrapped in a neat broadcasting-media package. Shows like “The Colbert Report,” “The Daily Show,” and “Last Week Tonight” were central to forming his media and writing voice.

Perhaps this was because Charlie grew up in a household that analyzed showtunes during minivan rides.

“Charlie and his father, who’s also musically inclined, would ride in the car and put on Phantom of the Operaand go through and stop and pause and explain the show,” Deborah said.

However, from this first taste of musical theatre, Charlie was fully aware of the operations of the theatrical world. “My mom was in the car with us during ‘A Heart Full of Love’ and she turned to my dad and said, ‘There’s no way they understand what this is about.” My dad motioned to me and I explained what a love triangle is. I was no older than eight,” Charlie said.

From there, Charlie has become involved in on-campus theatre through Princeton’s comedy musical troupe Triangle and the theatre production club Princeton University Players. He is also pursuing a musical theater minor in which will produce a political satire thesis project, titled “What’s the Issue with Charlie Roth?”

“I’m like, ‘Holy cow, you’re like an encyclopedia of this!’ But it’s so cool. He loves it,” Deborah said.

The people around Charlie see him as someone who is generously curious. Take his girlfriend, Madeline LeBeau who he first met before even stepping foot on campus. Charlie had called the university’s Center for Jewish Life to learn more about the reformed community at Princeton, and by luck, Madeline ended up answering.

“I was dazzled that he reached out to the Center for Jewish Life before choosing the school and to weigh his options,” Madeline said. “He’s inquisitive and hardworking, and just a really great person to be around.”

Charlie’s inquisitive nature permeates his experiences, relationships, and fine tunes the way he approaches challenges and questions in his life. During a trip to Newport Beach, R.I. with Madeline, while she was writing her research paper on the founding brothers of the Newport Jewish community, Charlie’s investigative passion rung out.

“Charlie made an active effort to find everything there was about Jewish Newport. He found this one random tour we went to, random houses that he looked up and found out that they were like related to his family,” Madeline said.

“He found all of these things that he knew would be really special and interesting and important to me. And, you know, that’s the type of person Charlie is.”

Reading Response #1 – Allison Jiang

A mantra that McPhee refers to whilst describing the essentials of a strong lede is that “A Thousand Details Add Up to One Impression” (56). This specific phrase stuck out to me as a philosophy that carries great impact in the stories that have been—and are currently being told—about immigrants in the U.S. What McPhee advises is that the “crude tool” of handpicking what words, people, and places bring out the most relevant, essential detail of the subjective situation at hand. However, he mentions a tactic that may reveal certain patterns in how migration reporting has portrayed specific individuals:

“I include what interests me and exclude what doesn’t interest me… [“Interest”] in this context has subdivisions of appeal, among them the ways in which the choices help to set the scene, the ways in which the choices suggest some undercurrent about the people or places being described” (57).

Reading through how immigration policy has changed over decades in Goudeau’s writing, this idea of “interest” stood out to me. In Chapter 2 detailing refugee relationships with European refugees during 1945-1951, the way that immigrants were portrayed in the process of postwar America sought to appeal to the morality of the public, as well as a broader national mission of being a global champion in freedom, justice, and peace spoke to how they portrayed immigration policy decisions. For example, Goudeau writes that the U.S. saw themselves as “a home for the displaced people of the world” after the atrocities of the Holocaust. The American public carried deep sympathy and shock towards the genocide of the Jewish people and the crimes of the Nazis, a kind of joint appeal of supporting victims of these war crimes, manifesting in foreign aid policy and the Nuremberg trials.

However, later came the influx of immigrants during the period of 1880-1945 that included a larger variety of nationalities—namely, nationalities that did not conform to the standard of desirable U.S. immigrant: literate, upper-class, white, Northern European, and without disabilities (97). What was being created was a hierarchy of what traits were valued in an immigrant, amidst an America that was growing increasingly restriction towards immigration.

In examining the history of anti-immigration sentiments and policy in conversation with an evolving American identity, what “details” and “impressions” that are being presented become the driving factors behind what specific narrative is being pushed to a nation that, generally, was trying to reconcile with being the global ‘good guy’ as well as implementing self-protection “better-safe-than-sorryism” through measures of increased national security, racialized & economic fears as commonsense policy.

McPhee’s description of an interest-capturing “undercurrent” in this era was one that praised immigration policy that were based on eugenics, population control, and a biologically backed notion of cultural superiority: buzzwords that spoke to the distrust of nonwhite immigrants. A notable image from the reading is the political cartoon leading up to the Chinese Exclusion Act, where an Irish and Chinese man eat at Uncle Sam: a striking symbol of what messages, impressions, and details of immigrants the nation fell back onto. In this context, the scene being set rests in othering immigrants and using handpicked details to illustrate them as a threat, as something other.