Category: Uncategorized (Page 12 of 15)

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.

I found a lot of the articles this week incredibly engaging and particularly useful in connecting some of our past readings and clips to what was being discussed pertaining to Ukraine.

The first article I read, “Ukraine war: Putin has redrawn the world – but not the way he wanted” by BBC’s reporter Alan Little was interesting in the way that it went about calling out the people. When Little writes, “If these tactics are unfamiliar to you, you haven’t been paying attention” I found this quote so incredibly interesting because it calls out those who have not been made aware or are paying attention to what is going on around them. In a way, it’s calling out these people and making fun of them, calling out their naivety and asking them to wake up and take in what is going on. How much of what is going on is a byproduct of people not paying attention? Are people not paying attention to the route because things are only escalating and getting worse? If this is the case, should we ensure that we pay attention to make certain that things are not escalating and that money doesn’t continue to be laundered and used fraudulently?

At the end of the day, we can understand that many of these war trends or conflicts come down to wanting freedom from another entity and feeling as though they have to push back against governing bodies to achieve that freedom. This is seen especially in the case of Ukraine and Russia currently. However, upon further investigation, we can understand that history repeats itself the same way these conflicts between varying countries repeat themselves. In a sense, complete denomination or control over another country is achieved by stripping it of its identity or narrative. In the case of Ukraine, this is something that they are currently fearful of and believe is happening to them. The BBC article explicitly states, “Ukraine’s identity, too, will be strengthened further by the Ukraine’s have fought.” In order to sustain its identity, Ukraine needs to continuously push back and stand up for itself, fighting against Russian suppression.

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought up an old question” was also incredibly engaging from the very beginning. I felt as thought the lead was incredibly engaging and immediately caught my attention by prompting “Is aggressive war legal?” This opening lead prompts an interesting question about the legality of war. Often, we think of war as just a byproduct of differences between two different countries and groups of people. However, when does the legal point of view interfere with the law? Can actual charges be made regarding the law? How are these boundaries set up, and how do we make sense of them in the context of defending ourselves in war?

“crimes against humanity, genocide and the aim to make war itself illegal, to hold leaders accountable for the crime of aggression, says Douglas.” This quote in itself makes me wonder how we would even go about making war itself illegal and how we would get other countries and people to agree to those standards. To a certain extent, it’s impossible, with the foundation of war being based on arguing and misunderstandings/disagreements. It seems silly to think that a comprehensive agreement could be made regarding the legality of war.

With the article titled, “How an Innovative Algorithm Helps Ukrainian Refugees Find New Homes”by Brian Zumhagen focusing primarily on some of the new systems in place to prioritize the preferences of migrants my attention automatically connected this reading to some of our previous readings.

With established systems in place, like the ones that Max and Yuna utilized to resettle, migrant stationing can be streamlined into a much faster process that makes things easier for both the migrants and the host country. In addition, having these set programs and foundational structures in place before migrants come over can alleviate the stress placed on systems that might be full or abundant with too many people. This technological process and form-filling process make me think of the influx of migrants that New York is experiencing. Especially when thinking about the bus route episodes and content we read and watched last class, I am left wondering if some of these programs are already in place to help alleviate the stress of those coming over or if they are in the process of developing systems to make processing migrants easier.

Another massive part of RUTH is the idea of transparency in this process. Often, I feel it is easy to look at just how efficient a process like this will make things. However, the idea of transparency and ensuring that migrants can be honest and effectively communicate everything that they need in their designated forms is also huge in ensuring primitive safety measures and long-lasting stations for these migrants upon arrival.

I really enjoyed reading perspectives from such different corners of the world and Ukrainian society. I used to be a Slavic major and I have followed the war in Ukraine very closely on Twitter; reading some of the accounts from 2022 reminded me of the shock and chaos that unfolded then, and it really did feel like a paradigm shift in which anything could happen. I enjoyed Allan Little’s overview of the conflict and his explanation of the historical context. I read Catherine Belton’s book Putin’s People, which explains how the KGB never really relinquished control of Russia and how many of the current Kremlin elite’s worldviews are informed by Soviet ideas of a greater Russia and a traditional Russian sphere of influence. It was interesting to see his experiences chatting to older Russians chime with this sense of a greater Russia.

I was very interested by Gia Kourlas’ piece in the NYT. What does it mean to profile one small segment of Ukrainian society in the midst of a war? I saw an article of a similar genre in the Times of London today profiling a casino in Beirut that is undeterred by the prospect of war with Israel. I think the effect of these pieces is that they can show how far war penetrates society. It leaves nothing untouched. Wars, like pandemics, touch more things than you could possibly think of by yourself.  I think there is also something very interesting about profiling dancers who are attuned to the effects of trauma on the body. This subject matter allows the journalist to show how the war has affected on a physical as well as situational level. I also like how the article draws upon the history of ballet dancing in Ukraine and is able to locate the dancers within the history of their country and culture. This all adds up to a profile of Ukraine as a country and society without ever having to say Ukrainians are x,y, or z.

I was fascinated by the topic of refugees and technology. The report by Preputnik, Nzuki, Yayboke, and Strouboulis did a great job of giving an overview of the implications of Ukrainians being so internet and smartphone-connected and how this is generally unprecedented in historical refugee populations. When I was reading the report, I kept thinking about how there must be a million human stories of technology being some kind of deus ex machina event in refugees’ lives. For example, being able to begin the asylum process online, receiving money from the UN on the DIIA app, or connecting with someone to take you and your family in abroad through social media. However, there must also be all kinds of horror stories of people being exploited in ways that were not previously possible. In this report and the article on HIAS by Zumhagen, technology was generally presented as a positive thing: for example, refugee preferences being taken into account in ways that were never before possible in granting them aid etc., but I think a job for journalists now and in the coming years will be telling the stories of the fewer people for whom technology was not helpful and may have actually made things much worse.

I sat in a silent room full of people doing homework, and said out loud, “oh my God, I love this graphic.”

Being a data journalist, I can’t help it when I see a graphic that so elegantly presents information like the migrant movement graphic in the New York Times’s “Bus by Bus” piece. It is such a great illustration of the movement of migrants and why the influx of people is such an issue – the different-colored dots literally bleed into each other. Put together with the rest of the readings, it shows how flooded the system is. I also appreciated the graphs in the Wall Street Journal article about the economic impact of the migrants.

In my opinion, the bussing situation is a (somewhat) shocking display of interstate rivalries and bitterness. We are supposed to be a united country, with states that help each other. What Gov. Abbott did was make his problem other states’ and city’s problems – states and cities that he disagrees with politically. There are much better and safer ways of dealing with the migrant crisis rather than reportedly tricking migrants to get on a bus and ship them to huge cities (that already have homeless crises). And the Wired article about people livestreaming “hunting” migrants is equally troubling – especially the quote from one of the men saying, “I say we shoot ’em all.”

The timeline of how New York City has handled the migrant crisis was also useful in laying out the crisis the city is facing. I’m more surprised that Governor Hochul didn’t step in sooner – especially to help spread out the migrants to different New York counties. And I’m always disappointed when counties fight against being humane and taking some of the burden. The pieces about New York reminded me of an article I read from The Atlantic about how, while the homeless shelters are full, many luxury apartments are vacant; and another more recent from Bloomberg about how more office buildings are vacant with the rise in working from home. I found the discrepancy fascinating.

The story of the Ukrainian refugees is a somewhat hopeful one, but I couldn’t help but wonder why their situation was so different from the migrants from Central and South America. Then Camilo answered it for me: geopolitics and policy – and potentially race. That reminded me of a story I worked on at CBS News: a migrant child died after being denied medical care in a Texas migrant camp. This isn’t necessarily a story about bussing, but it is about the failure of the system – the girl died after a week in the camp, but migrants are supposed to be processed and let out within 72 hours – and the parents told CBS that they suspected racial profiling due to their darker skin. Another interesting statistic that I found: according to a University of Texas/Texas Political Project poll in April 2022, 60 percent of Texans believed that Texas should take in Ukrainian refugees while 22 percent say they should not. The same poll found that 46 percent of Texans believe the state should take in hispanic refugees while 40 percent say they should not.

Much of this week’s reading has focused on state and city approaches to managing migration. Recent events have shown that migration is as much a concern for city and state governments as it is for the federal government. In fact, the impacts of a large influx of migrants—positive or negative—are often highly localized. The case of New York City illustrated how a city can find itself at the center of national debates about how the country as a whole is dealing with migration, and how policies at the federal level—like the elimination of Title 42 or the extension of Temporary Protected Status to Venezuelans and the recent wave of Haitians—have local implications. This case also shows how migration often brings to light (and exacerbates) pre-existing local challenges. Migration does not occur in a vacuum. Migrants are affected by and react to situations on the ground which are then made even more complex by their heightened vulnerabilities. In New York City, migrants have added to the housing and homelessness crisis which the city has been grappling with for a while.

However, migration management is challenging but not impossible. The example of Ukrainian integration teaches us that where there is a will, there is a way. Between 2022 and 2024, a total of half a million migrants have been relocated to the United States under the Unite for Ukraine program in response to Russia’s invasion of its neighbor.

Photo Source: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/putins-war-gives-america-a-chance-to-get-serious-about-refugees (Photograph by Mario Tama / Getty)

The integration of Ukrainians in the Uniting States has been smooth overall. What can we learn from this example and is there anything that can be applied to other such instances? As shown by the CBS News piece, bipartisan support and coordination among federal and local actors play an important role and are proving replicable. The most important aspects of that success are slightly less replicable. This includes a broad consensus that the migrant population “deserves” to be welcomed. This is more difficult to achieve because many factors come into play in this determination, including race, geopolitics, culture, and so on. Montoya-Galvez, the CBS News correspondent briefly discussed these points. So we may ask, to what extent can the success of the Ukrainian refugees really be replicated?

In conclusion, this week’s readings have highlighted one key point: buy-in from local governments (state or municipal) is extremely important for effective migration management policy that seamlessly executes the vision set by the executive. This is easier said than done for the same reasons mentioned above, in addition to the complexities surrounding notions of merit. This is becoming increasingly difficult due to the highly polarized nature of politics today. I hope we can use this week’s class to discuss this issue of merit and whether there is anything to be done when some groups are de facto considered more or less deserving of protection than others.

Before reading this week’s articles, I was very much ignorant of recent developments and trends in migration across the US. My first reaction and point I want to address centers on scale; the number of migrants in a specific time that the articles highlight, and how my perspective changed upon being able to reflect with relativity to the reception and intake of Ukrainian refugees.

The NYT’s interactive infographic was a particularly insightful tool in understanding the spread of migrants as a result of Governor Abbott’s bus policy. As the swarm of dots increased it relayed to me the increasing gravity and impact of such large numbers of migrants – or so I thought. My initial reaction to the seemingly immense number of arrivals after reading the NYT migrant busing article was of an unwilling understanding of the seemingly infeasibility of the current situation regarding migrant arrivals of such as scale in Texas, especially after having read the having read the City & State timeline, which relayed all the funding and budget complications, backtracking and inefficiencies with the Adams administration’s handling of their then arrival in NYC. However comparing the numbers (119,000 bused over two years to the democrat led cities) to the 535,000 Ukrainians who arrived over a similar span of time made me question the framing of this as an inevitable crisis rather than one that could have been managed in a more organized and humane way. Additionally to this, I wondered more about the funding of these programs and schemes. In the UK, many current and previously proposed programs spend thousands and thousands on the deportation and creation of schemes to house immigrants offshore in order to avoid legal obligations; funds which if had been more directly funneled to immigrants would have helped with their settlement and integration in many cases; there tends to be a common theme of misspending and wasteful allocation of resources, motivated by political schematics of not wanting to be seen as giving migrants handouts, leaving many in the situations detailed in the NYT article on homeless migrants.

Governor Abbott’s policy highlights to me however the importance of equal migrant distribution. The articles made it clear that there was a pointed political aim behind busing them to exclusively democrat-run cities; however, it did bring direct attention to the issue and pointedly showed how difficult the unstructured reception of migrants can be. However it does highlight the potential for such a method to be implemented successfully if done either in a proportional manner to the state’s population and ability to receive migrants (for example if they have the necessary accommodation and infrastructure) or areas potentially facing labor shortages. Nations, such as states should be prepared to take on more equal roles in receiving migrants; the UK is as guilty of this by creating furour and anti-immigrant rhetoric despite taking in far less migrants and refugees proportionally than many worse hit southern European states.

The last thing I wanted to drop in was a reaction to Title 42 upon learning about it – can the way this was implemented have gone against Geneva conventions? I understand the impetus for blocking people from certain nations when preventing the spread of disease, but when other types of travelers were being allowed to enter the US with no restrictions or testing, refusing asylum seekers seems like a violation of refugee rights. Where does the line get drawn balancing receiving asylum seekers and containing diseases; especially when quarantine and testing are options?

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.”

The NYT piece on the interconnected issues of migration and homelessness lays out an intriguing observation: many migrants are choosing to sleep on the streets voluntarily because they were assigned to housing locations that were too far from the jobs they have found. I see this phenomenon as a result of two key policy failures: the first is the city’s inability to address its long-standing homelessness problem through greater investments in affordable housing and other social services, and the second is the effective integration of migrants into host communities in a way that is mutually beneficial for the migrants and the host. It would be both in the city’s favor and the migrants’ favor if they are assigned to housing locations which are within a reasonable distance from job opportunities, as this would increase migrants’ access to these opportunities and also increase the benefit to the city from filling in roles which are vital to the city’s economic activities. This article also shows that there is sometimes a gap between public opinion or perception of an issue and its reality, such as New Yorkers’ concerns over declining quality of life which they perceive to be a result of the influx of migrants.

Another challenge mentioned in both the NYT piece and City and State piece is the time limit on migrants’ ability to stay in shelter locations provided by the city: 60 days for families and 30 days for individual adults. This either forces migrants into homelessness following this window or leaves it completely  up to them to figure out how to find housing on their own. However, the migrants are straining the city’s shelter system, so it is important to also understand the nonprofit landscape and how independent organizations may be filling in a gap for needs that the city is not able to provide adequately. It is also interesting to see the pushback from other places such as Canada which Mayor Adams tried to convince to accommodate some of the migrants that are being bused to New York without any coordination from governors of states such as Texas.

The CBS video highlights the racial undertones and interconnectedness of racism and xenophobia in controversies surrounding the influx of migrants. There was significantly less public pushback and dissent against allowing Ukrainian refugees into the U.S., and there were also relatively easier pathways for them to legally work in the U.S. (as opposed to the asylum process described in the NYT article which sometimes takes years). The video mentioned that over 230,000 refugees were allowed into the U.S. in a matter of weeks, which is in stark contrast with the timeframe it took some of the migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean. I find it interesting that the reporters mentioned geopolitics as a reason for lower levels of controversy; refugees from Ukraine are seen as victims of an unjust war perpetrated by an anti-American regime, but this same sympathy is not granted to migrants fleeing from violence and conflict settings in Latin America. However, there is still the challenge of having to renew their status and not having a direct pathway to citizenship.

My underlying thread when reading the articles of this week was a sense of policy disorientation. The stark differences in processes for Ukrainian refugees and latin americans (particularly Venezuelans) showed the fluidity of our system. In the series Immigration Nation, there’s a moment where it’s shown that refugees who could be released from southern detention centers are kept for political reasons, a moment where the ambiguities in the legal processes are instrumentalized. Watching the video about the comparative ease with which Ukrainians came in, I was shocked. But then reading the article by Sahalie Donaldson and seeing the NYT graphic showing the influx of refugees to New York, I saw how unprepared major American cities really are for that influx. (We) were able to handle Ukrainian immigrants, what is it about their Latin American counterparts that destabilizes the refugee system? Is it that they tend to land with better-established family members? Or that their presence incites less political backlash? 

Reading the chronicle of Mayor Adams’ failures and experiments, it’s clear the city is struggling with how to adapt. Adams was faced with pressure on all sides; while human rights groups decry the conditions refugees find themselves in, native New Yorkers (like Barry Bliss) and conservative politicians push back on the camps and housing developments. A great part of that struggle is definitely due to Abbott’s busing programs, but regardless it seems like New York is unequipped to handle migrant influxes. I wonder what policies have worked as responses to mass migration in the past? I see a lot of valid complaints, but I have no idea what the answer to refugee influxes is. The issue is often presented in monetary terms – one NYT article says that Abbott has spent more than 230 million to bus 120,000 migrants to New York. Wouldn’t that money be better spent if we thought of it tangibly as (nearly) 2k dollars for each immigrant? First off, where’s that money going? And especially as New York spends many times more than that, what would be the best use for that money? The most tangibly beneficial? 

A “methods” question, because I’m still trying to read this with an eye for how to improve: how are visual elements best utilized in these articles? The interview on CBS is a great example of face-to-face time forcing empathy, and the NYT interactive visual model that shows migrant busing does a fantastic job of making the issue feel more understandable. But in general, how are photos (especially of people) used (because they are “used”) without dehumanizing their subjects? The Ferré-Sadurni and Bensimon article has great photos, and I think part of my attraction to them is from the fact that they’re not always straightforward – the second to last photo of the drying clothes is deeply powerful, despite the lack of a human subject. In looking for images that help, I hope to find telling details.

The readings this week brought up a few things for me. The first: I really had no concept of the scale at which migrants were coming into the United States. I grew up in Baltimore, which, in my understanding, has generally been a place migrants come to as a second or third stop after arriving in the U.S., but not as a port of entry. Far from the Southern border, and with the much bigger cities of D.C., Philadelphia, and New York just a few hours away each, the stories of mass-migration always felt pretty abstract and far away. I’d read and seen news before, of course, documenting the sheer numbers of people fighting to find a place to exist, but reading about the overflowing shelters and emerging camps of homeless people really put some visuals to it for me.
Governor Abbot’s bussing plan is unlike any policy I’ve ever heard of; it just sounds sort of absurd. “Bus by Bus, Texas’ Governor Changed Migration Across the U.S.” shows how inhumanely it was done, not coordinating with groups that receive immigrants, sending them at odd hours to different places, and refusing to work with the receiving cities. It was clearly not a plan created with the interest of the migrants in mind, and there were parts that are downright petty (two buses showing up at Kamala Harris’ house in the middle of the night?!).
But the plan has also done what it set out to do. I know how abstract migration through the Southern border felt growing up on the East Coast. Abbott is right that Democrats (myself included) have ranted on about his harsh border policies with no understanding of the reality of the situation, and it was important that the rest of the country see the scale and stakes of what is happening. It was wild to read about New York City, go back on its policy requiring the provision of a bed to people that need it. It is obvious that more resources are needed to help transition migrants into the U.S; New York’s ICE appointments are booked through 10 years out (City and State NY).
And yet, the readings also showed that we know how to do this. The United for Ukraine policy created a seamless entry for Ukrainian refugees into the country. They were sponsored by families, spreading out all over the country, and immediately allowed to work. There was no narrative of the “burden” the migrants were putting on the country, nor of them “stealing” jobs.
This point of work seems to be the essential one. In NYC, the mayor was pleading with the federal government to extend TPS to the migrants coming in so that they could work, which people desperately wanted to do. As soon as the government granted Venezuelans TPS, 60,000 began working, allowing them to become self-sufficient (City and State NY). Why would the government refuse to allow asylum seekers to work, ensuring that they remain unable to provide for themselves? The articles highlighted how differently immigrants coming from different places are greeted.