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Somerville comes out in force for immigrants

Sign in Somerville: We are all immigrants

Craig attended the One Somerville rally today.

Somerville rally

Meaghan O'Malley also attended:

Somerville rally

Two two photos posted under this Creative Commons license and in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.

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Comments

ehh, no. as the first child born to a family that came here on a boat (as i like to say, "not even a nice boat", it was a freighter.) i do not consider myself an immigrant nor do i pretend to know what that experience was like.

solidarity, etc, but come on.

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I think you know that.

Every human on this continent migrated here at some point.

Or, as I like to say, some of my ancestry migrated here a long time ago. Others migrated a much longer time ago.

The point isn't that you came directly - the point is that it is ridiculous to play nativist games when someone in your family got on a boat and came here at some point. Very few of the anti-immigration crowd had family that walked here over a land bridge.

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But when all of my family arrived here they did so in a legal fashion.

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Do you have the records and papers?

Also, that used to be much easier - plenty easy to read up on the history of that.

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Framed in my office.

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You do? Why?

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So did a bunch of the people who are now being turned away despite valid visas.

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and since you are correct in the near ubiquity of "immigrants", the phrase we are all immigrants means, in my opinion, practically nothing. because it isn't being debated that all people, at some point, migrated here. specific races, nationalities, and religions are being targeted and told they aren't wanted and aren't valued.

so no, i do not think we are 'all immigrants' because not all immigrants even today are viewed similarly. this is a specific issue that is targeting specific groups of people. i can assure you my parisian and german friends have had vastly different experiences than say, my turkish girlfriend or my south american family. (or, to make it less personal, lets use gisele bundchen and john oliver versus say... the thousands of students/family members/war collaborators that are from places like iraq, iran, so on and so forth.)

i also think that the 'all immigrants' thing deflects attention from the core issue.

clearly you disagree, thats fine, it isn't the first time and unless one of us ceases to exist or stops posting here it won't be the last.

again, i acknowledged the sentiment but disagree with the message. <---edit: or, i guess more accurately, the way the message was being communicated

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I'm a 3rd/4th generation descendent of super white European immigrants. My boyfriend is an immigrant from a predominantly Muslim country. Saying "we're all immigrants" diminishes and trivializes the discrimination, harassment, racial profiling that brownish immigrants contend with.

Im not an immigrant, i'm a privileged white person.

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Or because of your socioeconomic background and status? I passed several homeless young 'super white' men today, and they certainly aren't 'privileged' ; they were in the vicinity of a group of young college aged women out clothes shopping, sipping their Starbucks drinks, and they, by comparison to the homeless and similarly aged young white males, are indeed privileged in the scheme of things.

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i had a long post typed up but im gonna make it shorter and easier

privilege:

  • people dont assume youre a terrorist
  • people dont assume you're illegal
  • people dont call the police when you try to enter your own home
  • cops in arizona dont pull you over for ~*CITIZEN CHECKS*~

not privilege:

  • trying to receive equal wages for equal work
  • if you wear the wrong head attire or facial hair youre detained
  • people in power actively work to disenfranchise you
  • people find it more remarkable that you were shopping for shoes in a macy's rather than the fact that you were illegally carrying a gun and used it in said macy's

we could keep going forever, i shouldnt have posted because you and i both know i wont change your feelings towards anything.

i'm also not an authority on the subject because as a matter of course i find people that whine on about privilege to be largely contemptible. primarily because i find a lot of them actively sabotage their own efforts ie, trying to guilt & shame instead of inform or teach. in my opinion, this played no small part in why trump is now president, either.

but at any rate, to deny the existence of privilege is up there with denying the existence of moon landings or global warming, imo.

me personally? i've checked my privilege. i think its great. i use it all the time. if you have it, you should use it too, every chance you get. i just try to recognize where other people are coming from the best that i can and understand that while my life has been far from 'easy', i'd still rather be a white guy than, well, literally anything else.

i guess it got long again

edit: im reminded of a small thing that happened to me a couple months ago. i spent a decent amount of 2016 unconscious, on the verge of death, in the hospital, or in rehab learning to walk again, et cetera.

i was readmitted to the hospital ~again~ a bit ago and as i'm waiting in the ER, fresh scars all over my body from the incisions they had to make so that i could be hooked up to a breathing machine, or from tubes that were coming in and out of my abdomen removing infectious fluid and draining necrotic gooey tissue, wounds from bed sores that i hope aren't permanent (the ones on the back of my head, anyway, at least. come on hair, grow back)- anyway- im sitting on my stretcher thing in the ER waiting for a room and an older black hospital maintenance guy/custodian is cleaning the floor. an ambulance arrived and they rush somebody scuffing/dirtying his freshly cleaned floor.

dude shakes his head and looks at me and says "aint life a bitch"

i don't recall my reaction, i probably smiled or nodded. i appreciated the absurdity of the whole thing i suppose, but my point is

id still rather be me lmao

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I needed the longer explanation for perspective. Thanks for writing it out.

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To take this one step further, we are all immigrants to the land itself. I know the ancestors of my ancestors once had gills but eventually evolved small, webbed limbs and left the comfortable shallows of their swampy homes to crawl ever farther onto Pangea.

That's What I'm Marching For!

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For those that think everyone (or the majority of people) are outraged at Trump's action, there's this poll....that shows most are happy with the recent immigration restrictions.

https://polling.reuters.com/#!poll/TM1140Y17/type/smallest/dates/2017013...

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According to the City of Somerville, there were 4,800 people there. It was hard to get a sense of the crowd while in the midst of it, but a great turnout.

Also, the best sign was one I wasn't able to get a clear shot of, alas. It was a poop emoji with a Trumpian combover. Awesome.

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I can go anywhere in the world, say, anywhere in Central and South America, any Caribbean island, and Euro country west or east, the UK, Canada, any Asian country including the PRC, etc., etc., and declare myself an immigrant and citizen? And because I would be a minority in, say, an Asian country and Asian cultures are notoriously insular and dare I say racist, even against fellow Asians) I should demand 'affirmative action' privileges? And, since the U.S. is one of the very few nations that automatically accept children born to 'immigrants' (legal and illegal) as citizens, we should be demanding all nations in the world do the same?

FYI:

My mom and dad where both 'immigrants' to the U.S., LEGAL immigrants. They never expected any kind of preferential treatment and would have been insulted by the suggestion; unlike today's cult of victim-hood.

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After 9/11, people all around the world said "We are New Yorkers." You saw a similar thing after both the Paris attacks. Why, lookee here: Photos of people standing outside the French consulate in Boston with signs reading Boston is Charlie.

You think they were being literal? That they think Boston has become a physical manifestation of a French magazine?

Think for a moment about what somebody holding a "We are all immigrants" sign at a rally for immigrant rights might be saying. It might come to you.

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Most of the countries of the New World practice "jus soli" and grant citizenship to individuals born on their soil. That includes Canada, Mexico and Brazil.

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Is a child born in Canada a Canadian citizen?
Section 3(2) of the current act states that Canadian citizenship is not granted to a child born in Canada if either parent was a diplomatic or consular officer or other representative at the time of birth and neither parent was a Canadian citizen or Canadian permanent resident.

Canadian nationality law - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_nationality_law

The U.S. grants automatic citizenship to any baby born on U.S. territory, even if it's parents (in 99% of cases just mom) was not a legal resident or U.S. citizen. Very few countries go to such an extreme. Mexico is one of them, along with the U.S., but not Canada.

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The case you cite is similar to US law - the child of an official of another country does not become a citizen on birth (that's why the recently late king of Thailand, born at Mount Auburn, could not claim US citizenship - his father was a prince at the time).

The link you provide states what happens with non-nobles and people who aren't prime ministers or cabinet members in other countries:

Under paragraph 3(1)(a) of the 1977 Citizenship Act, any person who was born in Canada after 14 February 1977 acquires Canadian citizenship at birth.

It adds:

In one 2008 case, a girl born to a Ugandan mother aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Boston was deemed a Canadian citizen because she was born over Canadian airspace.

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Affirmative Action covers illegal immigrants? I've never heard of a business getting in trouble for not hiring enough of them.

Oh wait, maybe you are just throwing out words you don't understand.

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Greg Cook attended the rally and reports:

“We’ll go to jail for you. We’ll take the hits,” Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone told more than 4,000 people who came out in freezing temperatures this morning for the city’s “We Are One Somerville: Sanctuary City Rally” to support immigrants in the face of threats from President Donald Trump.

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Yes, but we didn't have the things going on in the world back then like we do now!

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Osama bin Laden? Yep, you're right. The former happened on the watch of W, the later was ended on the watch of Obama.

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What did Obama end?

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Osama bin Laden's life, for one thing.

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Interesting to note that our current President was not in the Situation Room for the Yemen operation, which by most accounts failed bigly.

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but i am curious how the apprentice is doing

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