Speaker 1: Push it. I'm Khalide Jubon Mohammad.
Speaker 2: I'm Ben Austen. We are two best.
Speaker 1: Friends, one African American.
Speaker 2: One white Caucasian.
Speaker 3: I'm a historian and I'm a journalist. And this is
Speaker 3: some of my best friends are.
Speaker 2: You know, like I'm not a racist, some of my
Speaker 2: best friends are immigrants. In this show, we wrestle with
Speaker 2: the challenges.
Speaker 3: And the absurdities of a deeply.
Speaker 2: Divided and unequal country.
Speaker 3: And today we're going to talk about immigration. It is
Speaker 3: an ongoing humanitarian crisis. But we have someone on the
Speaker 3: show today who is going to help us understand what
Speaker 3: is happening at the border, in Chicago.
Speaker 1: And New York, all over the.
Speaker 3: Place, and help us figure out how to do something
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, we are talking to Carolina Rubio mcwright. She's
Speaker 2: an immigration lawyer, artist, and activist fighting for immigrant rights.
Speaker 2: Carolina immigrated to the US from Bogata, Columbia when she
Speaker 2: was nineteen, and really she's committed her whole life to
Speaker 2: improving the system. She's going to talk to us about
Speaker 2: current immigration policies and share some innovative ways that we
Speaker 2: can all lend a hand in this crisis. Khalil. That's right,
Speaker 2: So let's get to this interview.
Speaker 3: Let's do it. Carolina Rubio mcwright. What an amazing name
Speaker 3: and an amazing person. Welcome to some of my best friends.
Speaker 3: I'm so excited to have you on the show.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much. Killy, I'm so excited.
Speaker 5: I've always been a big fan and very excited to
Speaker 5: finally meet Ben.
Speaker 2: That's wonderful. I'm excited to meet you too.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: We love.
Speaker 3: We love when our guests are not only among our
Speaker 3: best friends, but also our listeners to the show. You
Speaker 3: and my wife are big running buddies, like close friends,
Speaker 3: and our family spend a lot of time together. But
Speaker 3: this is a new relationship. So so here's my confession.
Speaker 3: On one of the first runs that I joined with
Speaker 3: this group, I meet you and you know, you have
Speaker 3: all this running gear on, like this vest and this
Speaker 3: water pack, and even to this day, I don't on
Speaker 3: one of those fancy water packs. But here's the thing.
Speaker 3: We were doing like some speed work and I was like,
Speaker 3: she's snow as shit, Like in my head, that's what
Speaker 3: I was thinking.
Speaker 2: This is where I have to apologize for my friends.
Speaker 3: So here's the thing, though, here's the thing, Carolina, I
Speaker 3: had no idea at the time that you are a
Speaker 3: fucking badass ultra marathon or and that like literally you
Speaker 3: are right now training for a seventy mile race somewhere
Speaker 3: in the world, somewhere with elevations and one hundred degree temperatures,
Speaker 3: and so I'm like, holy smoke. So I learned this later,
Speaker 3: I was like, oh man, did I get that wrong?
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 5: I'm glad that you thought I was so slow. And
Speaker 5: one day, you know, maybe I'll gift you a vest
Speaker 5: so you can join me in these like longer excursions
Speaker 5: in the woods.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's right, Carolina. I'm excited to learn more from
Speaker 2: you about US immigration issues and what feels like a
Speaker 2: crisis and maybe it's a perpetual crisis. And maybe a
Speaker 2: way to start is could you just describe what your
Speaker 2: work is on immigration.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so it's it's been kind of a long journey,
Speaker 5: and it really starts from being an immigrant myself here
Speaker 5: when I was nineteen, and so a lot of where
Speaker 5: I am right now is dictated by that very long journey.
Speaker 5: I've created sort of a place where I call the Estuary,
Speaker 5: which is a mix of law and art, which is
Speaker 5: what I do. I do a lot of activism depending
Speaker 5: on who's in power. I went through policy, I did
Speaker 5: capital punishment cases. I've done a lot of different different
Speaker 5: pieces of work connected to immigration always, but my focus
Speaker 5: is really in producing resources and sort of staying in
Speaker 5: this place of the imagination where we can think of
Speaker 5: new options and routes and ways for immigration to occur
Speaker 5: in the world. And so currently I produce resources. I
Speaker 5: run a nonprofit called Touching Land. I don't represent people
Speaker 5: in courts anymore. I do only if I'm working inside
Speaker 5: a detention center, and I usually only do that when
Speaker 5: there's a crisis, which seems to happen like a lot
Speaker 5: in this country far as immigration, if we're not like
Speaker 5: using it as a pond for political gains and so so. Yeah,
Speaker 5: So I created this nonprofit where I create ways in
Speaker 5: which people can learn their rights in somatic ways, whether
Speaker 5: it's through sound, through singing, through clay, through all sorts
Speaker 5: of different ways, so that the information stays in their bodies,
Speaker 5: so that it's not just like completely inaccessible words that
Speaker 5: are passing through their heads.
Speaker 3: Two things quickly, I love the metaphor of an estuary
Speaker 3: I'm thinking of like this swirl of water and it
Speaker 3: just sort of sits there. That's beautiful. And then this
Speaker 3: notion of like art and things that stay in your
Speaker 3: body as opposed to words that just pass over and through.
Speaker 3: You really, really, really beautifully said.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think we are so brainy, you know, and
Speaker 5: we're stuck in the brain and in our phones and
Speaker 5: sort of we're in bodies for a reason. Otherwise we'd
Speaker 5: be like flying brains, right And to me being in
Speaker 5: the body, I mean, that's why I run so much.
Speaker 5: It's the way that I feel freedom in my body
Speaker 5: when I live in structures of oppression that don't like
Speaker 5: the way I sound, the way I look, or the
Speaker 5: way I move the way I think.
Speaker 2: Carolyn, I want to talk about try to even understand
Speaker 2: what's happening in the country right now, even on a
Speaker 2: policy level, And a way maybe to frame our conversation
Speaker 2: is to describe what's going on in Chicago right now,
Speaker 2: which is where I live. I know you guys are
Speaker 2: in the suburbs in New Jersey, and to use to
Speaker 2: use Chicago as a way to try to understand the
Speaker 2: bigger issues nationally. And so you might already know this
Speaker 2: but last August, the Texas governor Greg Abbott, he sent
Speaker 2: a first bus load of migrants to Chicago as a
Speaker 2: kind of political stunt, using human beings as a political
Speaker 2: tool and you know, making more liberal parts of the
Speaker 2: country have to deal with what places on the border
Speaker 2: have been grappling with, and in a lot of ways,
Speaker 2: his stunt has worked. So since then, in the last year,
Speaker 2: Chicago has seen about ten thousand refugees come to the city,
Speaker 2: mostly from Central America and South America, you know, via
Speaker 2: Mexico and then Texas, and it's been kind of crazy
Speaker 2: in Chicago. So in the city, we've put up these
Speaker 2: emergency shelters. They've been set up there. There are hundreds
Speaker 2: of families who are sleeping in Chicago police stations on
Speaker 2: the floor and you know, as if the police are
Speaker 2: the ones who were prepared to take care of people.
Speaker 2: There was this debate in the city council last week
Speaker 2: about another fifty one million dollars going to care for
Speaker 2: these people, and there's been all kinds of backlash that
Speaker 2: this has created, especially in black communities and historically under
Speaker 2: resource communities who worried about these resources now going to
Speaker 2: new arrivals, which is sort of maybe exactly what the
Speaker 2: Texas governor hope would happen. So all of this is
Speaker 2: going on, it's incredibly visible and visceral here in Chicago.
Speaker 2: And then so here's my question, what is going on
Speaker 2: nationally that's creating the situation here, this crisis? What are
Speaker 2: the policies that are happening.
Speaker 5: The crisises Our communities are sort of going through the
Speaker 5: aftermath of COVID nineteen and so many businesses like not working,
Speaker 5: and then you dump all these immigrants with no process,
Speaker 5: no structure. And what's interesting is this is what I've
Speaker 5: been dealing with at the border for the last twenty years.
Speaker 5: This is what activists have been dealing with at the
Speaker 5: border from the beginning, except that with these buses, they
Speaker 5: actually lied to people and they just put them in
Speaker 5: buses like they did with Martha's Vineyard.
Speaker 4: They're like, you're to go to.
Speaker 5: New York or we're going to have resources for you.
Speaker 5: And unlike your responsible shelters in borders, make sure that
Speaker 5: whoever people migrating and that have successfully crossed will make
Speaker 5: it to a family member, a cousin, someone they know
Speaker 5: that can help them in this situation. They just grab
Speaker 5: people and dump them in Colorado. They did that last
Speaker 5: last week in uh in Chicago and in these these
Speaker 5: very you know, or progressive cities in order to really
Speaker 5: pin us against each other, which is the whole that's
Speaker 5: the whole point. Unfortunately, the Immigration Naturalization Act, which was
Speaker 5: drafted in the sixties, has not changed.
Speaker 4: Our policies have not changed. And while policy.
Speaker 5: Remains obviously in like Congress, there's a lot of leeway
Speaker 5: for for the president.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, So like while Congress is fighting over new legislation,
Speaker 2: who's ever president can take their our own actions and
Speaker 2: set some policy. So the situation on the ground feels
Speaker 2: like it's always shifting and it's confusing.
Speaker 5: Correct, And so with each presidency you have like new rules,
Speaker 5: new regulations that completely shift the way that we welcome people.
Speaker 5: And in between these two you have international laws, like
Speaker 5: asylum laws that have been enacted. We are supposed to
Speaker 5: welcome immigrants that cross and are in American soil, whether
Speaker 5: through the river or through the bridge. And so there's
Speaker 5: nothing new here except that they're just pushing our cities
Speaker 5: and our resources and creating and causing chaos.
Speaker 3: Nothing you here, yeah, yeah, I want to jump in
Speaker 3: on this because a couple of quick points. One, I
Speaker 3: have a relative, a cousin, who works for the Boston
Speaker 3: Medical Center, and she was sending me texts about how
Speaker 3: many asylum seekers were staying in various parts of the hospital.
Speaker 3: I think Ben's question raises the question as to sharing
Speaker 3: the burden of our failed immigration policies from red states
Speaker 3: to blue states, from the border to blue cities. And
Speaker 3: the Boston City administration, which is liberal, you know, was
Speaker 3: like blaming the state for not having a plan, and
Speaker 3: the state was putting it on the hospital to deal
Speaker 3: with it, and so no one was taking ownership of
Speaker 3: like the crisis, the humanitarian crisis that exists.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, And I want to say, like, obviously this is
Speaker 5: creating a crisis, but this is the aftermath of Trump's
Speaker 5: policies and sort of bottlenecking everyone at the border.
Speaker 3: That now are you talking about two?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: We'd love to hear a little bit more about that. Yeah.
Speaker 5: So Title forty two was enacted right in March of
Speaker 5: twenty twenty, and it was a bullshit policy, basically saying
Speaker 5: nobody can be allowed in because they're going to bring
Speaker 5: like a terrible disease.
Speaker 3: So everyone has this was COVID. This is March twenty
Speaker 3: twenty a COVID policy. This was basically using the COVID
Speaker 3: pandemic as an excuse to build on Trump's family separation policy,
Speaker 3: which really was really about self deportation. Right, We're going
Speaker 3: to scare the hell out of immigrants. We're going to
Speaker 3: tear their families apart so they don't even think about
Speaker 3: coming to the United States. And then Title forty two
Speaker 3: is initiated during COVID to say and don't bring this disease.
Speaker 5: With you exactly exactly, you know, with Title forty two,
Speaker 5: then so much more happened in the sense that now
Speaker 5: people are stuck. Now we don't have farmers, now we
Speaker 5: don't have enough people working in like the kitchens, because
Speaker 5: this is the normal flow of people north and of
Speaker 5: reunifying with your families. So then Biden tried to shut
Speaker 5: down Title forty two and bring it down, which was
Speaker 5: one of his promises during his elections. Right, it is
Speaker 5: a humanitarian crisis, I mean it continues.
Speaker 4: This is sort of the.
Speaker 5: Aftermath where now Biden was trying to lift it, and
Speaker 5: then the attorney generals from certain states got together and said, actually, no,
Speaker 5: we think that Title forty two should remain, and it
Speaker 5: ended up in the Supreme Court. However, with Biden then
Speaker 5: declaring that COVID, you know, is no longer a crisis,
Speaker 5: a health crisis in our country, that made the issue
Speaker 5: moot for the Supreme Court to review. So right now
Speaker 5: Title forty two is no longer you know. It was
Speaker 5: lifted May eleventh, and so there.
Speaker 4: Was complete chaos at the border.
Speaker 5: Because now we're going to have Title eight, which is
Speaker 5: like sort of a new old policy but with a
Speaker 5: lot more with a lot more sort of issues. But
Speaker 5: asylum law allows people to claim asylum regardless of where
Speaker 5: they enter, and this new policy is preventing people from
Speaker 5: coming in through the river. They will be deported and
Speaker 5: they will be not allowed to come into the country
Speaker 5: for at least five years.
Speaker 4: So people are scared.
Speaker 5: I was at the border two weeks ago, and you know,
Speaker 5: it feels the same as it did in the last
Speaker 5: two years. I mean, same chaos, but I'm seeing more
Speaker 5: Chinese immigrants, more Russian immigrants.
Speaker 2: Coming through Mexico, the border with Mexico.
Speaker 5: Through the border of Mexico because now, you know, and
Speaker 5: I think all of this ties in with the fact
Speaker 5: that we are not connecting the climate crisis with immigration.
Speaker 5: And I have been seeing, you know, last in December,
Speaker 5: I took we spent Christmas as a family at the
Speaker 5: border and we met a lot of Ecuadorian indigenous people,
Speaker 5: and like when indigenous people migrate, you know, I'm like,
Speaker 5: why are you coming here? You have so much ancestral knowledge,
Speaker 5: and unless it's like political persecution, like why are you here?
Speaker 5: You're working at Walmart is just not going to do
Speaker 5: it for you. And they had a flood last year
Speaker 5: that destroyed huge indigenous region and now there's no agriculture
Speaker 5: and there's no tourism and there's nothing. So they're migrating
Speaker 5: north to whoever family member lives up in the north
Speaker 5: so that they can find a way to live.
Speaker 2: I love that you had that simple question of why
Speaker 2: why you know, why come? If you know it's so
Speaker 2: difficult to hear people's stories, just to clarify, to try
Speaker 2: to understand. So Biden's policy, which is called Title eight,
Speaker 2: which is not a new policy. The difference I think
Speaker 2: I'm understanding is that it's more punitive. Is that supposed
Speaker 2: to be a deterrent to others stories?
Speaker 5: It's supposed to be a deterrent, and that's only for
Speaker 5: people crossing in the river. And the other big point
Speaker 5: is that anybody that is seeking asylum has and if
Speaker 5: they didn't come from Mexico, are going to have to
Speaker 5: prove that they seek the asylum somewhere along.
Speaker 4: The journey prior to entering the US.
Speaker 5: So like if you come from Columbia, like you better
Speaker 5: look for asylum in Panama, Atemala, you know all of
Speaker 5: these other countries that you're going to cross through before
Speaker 5: you come to the US. And that's not what asylum
Speaker 5: lies about. That's going to be challenged.
Speaker 3: That's really clarifying. And I also think it's important to
Speaker 3: note because the title a policy was already in place
Speaker 3: in the Obama administration at a time when Obama was
Speaker 3: sort of the first post George Bush president to toughen
Speaker 3: up border patrol and make a kind of political stand
Speaker 3: on excluding people who had been here a long time
Speaker 3: but for those who were young people in college, the
Speaker 3: so called dreamers, and so Obama ended up with the
Speaker 3: nickname to Porter in Chief precisely because his own border
Speaker 3: policies were considered to some degree unfair, inhumane, and ratcheting
Speaker 3: up this notion that these people are unwelcome Carolina. Obviously,
Speaker 3: this is a mess. Policy wise, it's complicated. It's easy
Speaker 3: to point fingers at the Trump administration for most people
Speaker 3: who are listening to this show. But as I just
Speaker 3: pointed out, this is a problem. As you've continually said,
Speaker 3: that is an old problem, and we haven't done much
Speaker 3: to fix it. So when we come back from the break,
Speaker 3: we're going to talk about what laws and policies need
Speaker 3: to change in order to fix this mess. So listen.
Speaker 3: America has often beat its chest as the most exceptional
Speaker 3: place on Earth, and you'll often hear talking points from
Speaker 3: conservatives and Republicans that if it's so bad in America,
Speaker 3: according to racial justice and social justice advocates, why do
Speaker 3: immigrants keep coming? And I'm taken with the contradictions, to
Speaker 3: be sure, but the truth is America has always exploited
Speaker 3: immigrants for economic game. The trade off here is that
Speaker 3: you can come to this country if you're willing to
Speaker 3: do the lowest, most dangerous, and least paid kind of
Speaker 3: work in this country. And so the narrative of a
Speaker 3: nation of immigrants is the narrative of poor people coming
Speaker 3: here in search of opportunity in search of their pot
Speaker 3: of gold, only to find that they're doing the scut
Speaker 3: work in this country. And it's also a country that's
Speaker 3: had incredible xenophobia, a country that has had nativist political
Speaker 3: movements that go back to the eighteen hundreds, you know,
Speaker 3: shortly after the country was founded. So let's talk about
Speaker 3: Congress and its failure to not pass new immigration laws.
Speaker 3: I mean, what is the conversation among immigrant advocates about
Speaker 3: solving that problem.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think you can't sort of dive into
Speaker 5: the solution without understanding that immigration policy was enacted in
Speaker 5: the sixties, right, you know, after the Second World War.
Speaker 5: All our men were gone, so we were like, oh it,
Speaker 5: no one's garden, no one's doing the agricultural stuff. We
Speaker 5: need our stuff, So okay, I guess let's do the kids.
Speaker 5: And also, oh wait, there's the Mexican people can come
Speaker 5: and like harvest for us. And guess what they're asking
Speaker 5: for way less money than what other people are asking for.
Speaker 5: And so we sort of create this reliance and dependency
Speaker 5: on seasonal workers.
Speaker 4: You know, they don't want to be here.
Speaker 5: I think that's sort of one thing that I try
Speaker 5: to tell people, and it's like I wanted to be
Speaker 5: in my country, and I wanted to be with my people,
Speaker 5: with my flavor, with my things.
Speaker 3: I didn't have to.
Speaker 5: I didn't want to go through this entire transformation of
Speaker 5: fitting in and the chameleon and sort of code switching
Speaker 5: and language barriers.
Speaker 4: But it's forced.
Speaker 5: Migration, right, like you're forced because that's your only option.
Speaker 5: And so in this situation we create this dependency. But
Speaker 5: the border is sort of fluid, right. People can come in,
Speaker 5: they work, they leave. And then in the eighties we said,
Speaker 5: you know enough we need We're not doing this. We're
Speaker 5: going to create a three and ten nearbars And so
Speaker 5: if you stay in this country with no documentation for
Speaker 5: more than half a year, you are going to the
Speaker 5: moment that you step out of the country, you're not
Speaker 5: going to be allowed back in for three years. If
Speaker 5: you stay for longer than one year, you can come
Speaker 5: back for ten years. And so that caused a huge
Speaker 5: problem for people because they were you know, they were
Speaker 5: investing in their communities, making the money and building a
Speaker 5: house at Ranchito, you know, and their count in their
Speaker 5: country and in their place.
Speaker 4: And they had to choose.
Speaker 5: So a lot of separation happened there where you know,
Speaker 5: moms and dads or dads came and they started working,
Speaker 5: sending money back home. And so when that that created
Speaker 5: a that changed the dynamic because there was no longer
Speaker 5: this movement.
Speaker 2: Across right, Carolina, just I want to understand this clearly
Speaker 2: when you're describing the policy in the nineteen eighties, that
Speaker 2: changed what came before it, and was what came before
Speaker 2: is sustainable. If things had not changed in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 2: we had something that was more viable, more humane.
Speaker 5: I don't know if it was necessarily viable, but I
Speaker 5: do think that it was more human because the issue
Speaker 5: you have now is amongst those twelve million undocumented people
Speaker 5: in the US are people who entered through the river
Speaker 5: we call them ewis entering without inspection.
Speaker 4: So they entered, they maybe never had.
Speaker 5: A passport, they stayed here, and then now they married
Speaker 5: a US citizen. But because they entered without being inspected
Speaker 5: in a passport, in a stamp, they can't adjust unless
Speaker 5: they go back to their country and seek a waiver
Speaker 5: of like a pardon. If they say you're not allowed in,
Speaker 5: you're not allowed in. And so you have all of
Speaker 5: these people that are married to US citizens with US
Speaker 5: citizen children that are in limbo that can't you know,
Speaker 5: are paying their taxes because like immigrants pay billions of
Speaker 5: dollars in taxes, there's literally no way for them to
Speaker 5: make a line and become legal, Like there's no line,
Speaker 5: there's no viable visas, no viable route for them to
Speaker 5: come into the country.
Speaker 4: So it's a failure. It's a huge failure.
Speaker 5: And unfortunately it's what is a political pawn for every election.
Speaker 4: You know, they start talking.
Speaker 5: About caravans, they start talking about their invading our country,
Speaker 5: and so it's and in reality they are keeping our
Speaker 5: economy going because the avocado that you and I get
Speaker 5: in the supermarket that we paid two bucks for actually
Speaker 5: costs eight dollars. If you're going to humanize and pay
Speaker 5: labor workers what they deserve, yeah, nobody wants that.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, you know it is so both rich
Speaker 3: and complicated about this conversation is how much the problem
Speaker 3: that you describe been talking about this change in the
Speaker 3: nineteen eighties. You know, what happened before that was really
Speaker 3: trusting the agency of people whose own self interest was
Speaker 3: still back home, which is to say they came to
Speaker 3: work to to remit payments back to their families to
Speaker 3: build what they needed back home, and of course occasionally
Speaker 3: those people made lives for themselves here. Of course, some
Speaker 3: of those people married and had children, which is of
Speaker 3: course why for over twenty years Republicans have talked about
Speaker 3: repealing birthright citizenship in the fourteenth Amendment, which is just fascinating, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's literally undercut one of the core pillars
Speaker 3: of our constitution, which grows out of the end of slavery,
Speaker 3: but represents kind of this commitment to people who are
Speaker 3: born in this country. But here's the thing. This is
Speaker 3: the thing, Carolina that I always teach my students on
Speaker 3: this subject, and that is that if immigrants came here
Speaker 3: and shut up and did their jobs and went home
Speaker 3: when they were told, if they were subjected to all
Speaker 3: of the workplace violations that happened and meet meat packing plants,
Speaker 3: if they were subjected to abuse picking oranges in Florida
Speaker 3: or harvesting sugarcane in Louisiana and Texas and they never
Speaker 3: complained about it, then everybody who is in control of
Speaker 3: these policies would be fucking happy. But guess what, when
Speaker 3: people demand to be seen, when they demand their dignity
Speaker 3: when they demand respect. That's the problem. That's where those
Speaker 3: laws came from in the nineteen eighties because immigrant people
Speaker 3: had it to marry it and say, you don't have
Speaker 3: a right to treat me this way, and they started
Speaker 3: to organize, and so these laws have become more punitive
Speaker 3: because people who were giving backbreaking labor to this country
Speaker 3: demanded to be treated like human beings.
Speaker 2: Yes, so Carolina, you're you know what Khalilsid is really
Speaker 2: powerful and you maybe are starting to answer this a
Speaker 2: little bit yourself and what you said, But what what
Speaker 2: would a more humane and even sensible immigration policy look like? Like?
Speaker 2: What do we want?
Speaker 5: I mean, I think we want to allow people that
Speaker 5: have been here, you know, those twelve million documented people
Speaker 5: that have been living here for years, to actually live
Speaker 5: without having to worry about every siren that they hear
Speaker 5: and and living sort of in constant anxiety and fear.
Speaker 5: I think that, you know, we could create new systems
Speaker 5: and new visas and new alternatives to living where you know,
Speaker 5: people want to live in their country of origin.
Speaker 4: The problem is American politics also.
Speaker 5: Have completely intervened in government elections and brought weapons down
Speaker 5: south and done so much sort of intervening that people
Speaker 5: don't want to go back to their countries because they
Speaker 5: might not be safe. But for me, it's like we
Speaker 5: can invite people and welcome people with dignity.
Speaker 4: I think, you know, when you have violent.
Speaker 5: Crimes against women specifically, I feel like for asylum law,
Speaker 5: women should be given the ability to seek asylum just
Speaker 5: because they're women. You know, the macho, the machismo and
Speaker 5: femicide is so prevalent that I would you know, I'd
Speaker 5: love for that to be included in an asylum to reckon.
Speaker 5: But I think we could create welcoming centers and a
Speaker 5: lot more visas that are specific. You know, I was
Speaker 5: working in Brooklyn and we were talking about a potential
Speaker 5: program in the border in order to develop and invest
Speaker 5: in border cities. And the idea was people that didn't
Speaker 5: quite qualify for DHAKA would be given two or three
Speaker 5: year contracts where.
Speaker 4: They could work in border towns and.
Speaker 5: Teach sort of whatever it is that their gift was,
Speaker 5: and they would have a salary, they would have dental,
Speaker 5: they would have everything sort of promise to them so
Speaker 5: that the anxiety of being in limbo could be sort
Speaker 5: of forgotten and they could go back to breathing, you know,
Speaker 5: they could just breathe lightly for a minute, and that
Speaker 5: all got destroyed with the Trump administration. Women's Refugee Commission
Speaker 5: did a project and they actually found out that if
Speaker 5: we had a caseworker at the border working with people
Speaker 5: in their cases and seeing how viable migration and success
Speaker 5: would be in this country, they had ninety nine percent
Speaker 5: of success as far as people showing up to court.
Speaker 5: And so there's been some studies and other alternatives to
Speaker 5: asylum and migration that have been proposed that are successful.
Speaker 5: Perhaps it's like temporary visas. Maybe we prioritize families and
Speaker 5: people that have connections to this, you know, the ground,
Speaker 5: the soil here.
Speaker 2: There is a proposal in Congress now, I don't know
Speaker 2: how much traction it has. It's called the Dignity Act.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you followed this. And it's bipartisan
Speaker 2: in the sense that it has both Republican and Democratic
Speaker 2: sponsors from border states, and it has a little bit
Speaker 2: of everything. You could see a kind of compromise bill
Speaker 2: like that. There is a lot of money for building
Speaker 2: the wall, you know, like more border security. There's also
Speaker 2: a pathway for Dreamers to get full citizenship, and sort
Speaker 2: of maybe the heart of it is that there are
Speaker 2: these programs for you know, all eligible undocumented immigrants to
Speaker 2: stay here permanently, you know, if they follow a bunch
Speaker 2: of rules and over a bunch of years, have you
Speaker 2: followed that? And does that seem like a possible solution
Speaker 2: or does it seem like the kind of proposals that
Speaker 2: always get put up by by just one or two
Speaker 2: or a handful of lawmakers.
Speaker 5: So I'll answer it this way. So, right before Trump
Speaker 5: took office, I worked for Mom's Rising. They work for
Speaker 5: economic equality for families around the US, and I did policy.
Speaker 5: I was basically did policy for immigration matters for this nonprofit,
Speaker 5: and I realized that nothing was going to change if
Speaker 5: the Dream Act did not pass in twenty ten, if
Speaker 5: the Dream Act did not pass during Obama.
Speaker 4: Like, the Dream Act is not going to pass.
Speaker 5: I think we have some advocates in Congress that are
Speaker 5: that are strong and that are advocating for many years in.
Speaker 4: Order to change legislation.
Speaker 5: But I don't really follow too many of those legislations
Speaker 5: because I'm actually busy trying to find ways to not
Speaker 5: gain the system, but to make sure that people have
Speaker 5: an opportunity the people that are coming here, the people
Speaker 5: that are already here, so that they have an opportunity
Speaker 5: to actually establish themselves legally here and to fight back
Speaker 5: and demand higher salaries, demand you know, call the cops
Speaker 5: if they're being abused, Demand that their kids have the
Speaker 5: proper access to education or to resources, you know, health
Speaker 5: and services resources. So I don't I mean, I keep
Speaker 5: tabs on some of it, but it's just a game,
Speaker 5: and the border is the same as it was twenty
Speaker 5: years ago. So I prefer to give tools to my
Speaker 5: people because I do believe making sure that these new
Speaker 5: immigrant citizens feel like they belong here, feel like they
Speaker 5: can really be who they are. They're the ones that
Speaker 5: are going to end up in Congress one day, and
Speaker 5: they're the ones that are really going to change the law.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, Carolina, we're going to take a short break
Speaker 2: and we come. We want to hear more about the
Speaker 2: work you actually are doing and that you're excited about
Speaker 2: these creative responses that you're describing.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to some of my best friends are Carolina.
Speaker 3: You've done a really masterful job helping to explain really
Speaker 3: really complicated public policy. I mean the kind of stuff
Speaker 3: that most people simply don't really understand.
Speaker 1: There's one like me.
Speaker 3: There's one big There's one big takeaway that you just
Speaker 3: left us on before the break, which is that Congress
Speaker 3: isn't going to fix this anytime soon. Meaningful legislation in
Speaker 3: Congress is a tall order these days. But that being said,
Speaker 3: I really want to lean into the bread and butter,
Speaker 3: the heart and soul of what you do. I've heard
Speaker 3: you talk about, I've seen your work. You know, as
Speaker 3: an artist first before you became an advocate, you turned
Speaker 3: to the imagination. You turn to the ability to help
Speaker 3: people to tell stories, to see themselves. And I'm going
Speaker 3: to quote you here in this Ted talk you gave.
Speaker 3: You said, art is the embodiment of that better future
Speaker 3: you can imagine for yourself. So let's talk about you
Speaker 3: as the visual artist turned advocate and blending all of
Speaker 3: those skills and to legal representation, human rights, creative interventions.
Speaker 3: You are an award winning artist. You've been telling your
Speaker 3: story of being from Bogata, Colombia, where civil war ravaged
Speaker 3: the country. What is this art practice that you engage
Speaker 3: in as you do your immigrant advocacy work.
Speaker 5: So, like I said, it's it's very somatic at the beginning.
Speaker 5: It's very somatic andocus in teaching immigrants their rights and
Speaker 5: also creating spaces where people from different communities can come together,
Speaker 5: so citizens non citizens can come together and sort of
Speaker 5: really see each other as humans. I have all sorts
Speaker 5: of different workshops, but let me tell you about the
Speaker 5: salsa making Fourth Amendment workshop for delivery.
Speaker 3: That sounds yummy already. I'm like, you know, I want sauce,
Speaker 3: I want to know my rights.
Speaker 5: Yes, I mean so, I do these workshops mostly at companies,
Speaker 5: say Spotify or other bigger corporations, And I bring fifteen
Speaker 5: delivery workers and fifteen workers from Spotify. I sit them
Speaker 5: down and then we cut tomatoes. We talk about the tomatoes,
Speaker 5: about the onions.
Speaker 2: Is the sauce and chips just a social way to
Speaker 2: spend time together and break bread, so to speak? Or
Speaker 2: is it actually a teaching tool? Do you talk about
Speaker 2: you know, the experience of the delivery workers or where
Speaker 2: the food is sourced?
Speaker 5: Absolutely, I mean a lot of the food we will grow,
Speaker 5: like in Bruckner Garden in the Bronx, where where it
Speaker 5: gives us an end to talk about how one in
Speaker 5: three kids have asthma in the bronx and one in
Speaker 5: four kids once they reach the age of eighteen will
Speaker 5: end up in the car sool system. At some point
Speaker 5: we talk about Fourth Amendment, stop and frisk, We start
Speaker 5: talking about just all the rights that you have and
Speaker 5: for allies to understand that.
Speaker 4: YO, if you're in.
Speaker 5: The subway and you see someone being stopped and it's
Speaker 5: a person of color, like stop, make eye contact, turn
Speaker 5: on the app that I have them download so that
Speaker 5: they can videotape everything and make sure that you in
Speaker 5: that moment, can become part of a community and you
Speaker 5: can make sure that this person will be safe.
Speaker 4: We give cards that say, hello.
Speaker 5: Officer, I'm exercising my right to remain in silence. I
Speaker 5: will not say a word until I speak with my lawyer.
Speaker 5: I know I have a right to a call. And
Speaker 5: then keep it with you so that if you are
Speaker 5: stopped any time, you know that you can cover yourself
Speaker 5: and protect yourself with this card.
Speaker 2: This is simultaneously you're both educating the immigrant communities and
Speaker 2: other people about immigrant communities and how to be part
Speaker 2: of that's that's going on simultaneously.
Speaker 5: That's happening on simultaneously because it's humanizing the other.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: Delivery workers are the most invisible people in the world.
Speaker 4: I mean, like they give you your food.
Speaker 5: You don't even know if they have black hair, if
Speaker 5: they talk to you short, tall. You just got your food.
Speaker 5: That's all you care about, and you don't realize the
Speaker 5: hard work that it takes navigating the city, you know,
Speaker 5: in the snow and the rain and the heat, and
Speaker 5: so in sharing a chip, so it's in you know,
Speaker 5: seeing that the person is you know, likes mountain dew
Speaker 5: cherry or whatever it is that you're like, oh, somebody
Speaker 5: else likes the And it's those interactions that when this
Speaker 5: person thinks about an immigrant, he's going to think about
Speaker 5: Josse that took that class with you, and he's not
Speaker 5: going to think about the dude he read about or
Speaker 5: the numbers he read about on the news. So everything
Speaker 5: is very I approached my artwork in a very lawyer way,
Speaker 5: and I approached my law work in a very artistic way.
Speaker 5: So yeah, it's you know, a really cool project that
Speaker 5: we did two years ago during the pandemic was we
Speaker 5: did the ice Cream Truck of Rights, where we created
Speaker 5: twenty four flavors of rights, like edgymanshipcation justice, and we
Speaker 5: created cards with QR codes that led directly to the resources.
Speaker 5: And the eleven languages in New York City has sanctioned
Speaker 5: as languages to the city. It's really fun because it's
Speaker 5: you know, we go into communities. We visited the hardest
Speaker 5: COVID hit neighborhoods, the Five Boroughs, and we made sure
Speaker 5: that community had you know, we focused on housing rights,
Speaker 5: environmental rights, and immigration rights.
Speaker 4: Those were the three that we focused and we had house.
Speaker 3: One of your flavors I have here is stop rum
Speaker 3: raising the rent.
Speaker 5: Yeah, stop raising the rent. So it's all of these
Speaker 5: different flavors so that people could remember, could have like
Speaker 5: a point of reference in order to remember in their
Speaker 5: bodies what that right felt like and how they could
Speaker 5: speak up for themselves and tap into their power.
Speaker 2: Carolina, as you're as you're describing this work, you will
Speaker 2: sound and you are so hopeful, and before as you're
Speaker 2: talking about national policy, you sound a little hopeless. And
Speaker 2: maybe maybe it's just about controlling the things you can
Speaker 2: control and the spaces where you can can do something.
Speaker 2: You can do something, And I wonder, you know, what
Speaker 2: does that mean in terms of advice? You might have
Speaker 2: for our listeners, people who are listening to this, like
Speaker 2: in their local communities, you know, how can they pursue
Speaker 2: justice and equity and tap into these issues in a
Speaker 2: creative and meaningful way.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, Ben, And you're right. I mean I am so
Speaker 5: much more animated by this type of work because it's
Speaker 5: the estuary, right, it's sort of the mix of both worlds,
Speaker 5: and it's not like the policy in the hill. And
Speaker 5: I think that you know, as humans, we think there's
Speaker 5: like an aha moment in our lives, or we think
Speaker 5: that climate change is going to be a ball blowing
Speaker 5: up and killing all of us, and the cockroaches are
Speaker 5: going to invade, and it's actually like very small, gradual
Speaker 5: habit changes that need to occur.
Speaker 4: And for me, it's our community.
Speaker 2: And so you say our community whatever your local community
Speaker 2: is exactly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's working with your local community. It is in
Speaker 5: those smaller steps. It is in realizing I can donate
Speaker 5: these shoes to a family in the border and a
Speaker 5: person that has crossed for three months barefoot or in
Speaker 5: sandals is going to be comfortable, and that makes a
Speaker 5: huge difference to that one person. I think we want
Speaker 5: to create this like huge change, and like as kids,
Speaker 5: you know, and as hopeful youth where like We're going
Speaker 5: to change policy and I'm going to be in the
Speaker 5: Supreme Court. And in reality, it's those connections that you
Speaker 5: make in the every day, right, It's tapping into your community.
Speaker 5: What can I do in this community in order or
Speaker 5: to shift narratives the very same way that we do
Speaker 5: with the workshops. You know, the clay workshops happen in Brooklyn,
Speaker 5: and we bring different communities like stay at home moms
Speaker 5: that are you know, doing pottery, and we bring the
Speaker 5: immigrant communities, and then in the humanity in working next
Speaker 5: to each other, they realize, man, I'm not paying them
Speaker 5: necessarily for holidays. I should really pay for that. And
Speaker 5: so it's in those smaller actions that true change happens.
Speaker 5: So for the listeners, it's like, don't be hopeful and
Speaker 5: actually reach out to whatever you're passionate about. If immigration
Speaker 5: is not your passion then like, don't don't do that
Speaker 5: because you're going to need a lot of momentum. If
Speaker 5: it is racial equality, if it is you know, at
Speaker 5: the environment, like tap into those communities and really get to.
Speaker 4: Connect with human beings and others.
Speaker 2: And Carolyne I just want to say, not just thank you,
Speaker 2: but you know you're you're inspiring. Thank you for that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I just want to add you know, I've
Speaker 3: spent a lot of time with you, but I learned
Speaker 3: more about what you actually do today, and in particular,
Speaker 3: I always thought that you were so focused on immigrant
Speaker 3: rights and advocacy, but what you're really talking about is
Speaker 3: changing this country and the world for the better no
Speaker 3: matter who you are. When you're talking about know your rights,
Speaker 3: it's not just immigration policy. It's about your right to
Speaker 3: a living wage, to a decent home, to dignity, and man,
Speaker 3: that is really inspiring. So I'm going to leave our
Speaker 3: listeners with a quote from you, because I think this
Speaker 3: is the perfect like wrap up to what you've described
Speaker 3: about your work. You've said for me, if you don't
Speaker 3: feel like you have a place at the table, you
Speaker 3: don't just build a new table, you build a new house.
Speaker 3: All right, Carolina, you are one badass woman. So you
Speaker 3: keep on doing what you've been doing. And we're really
Speaker 3: grateful to have you on the show.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 5: What a pleasure to be able to talk about what
Speaker 5: I love with you.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Thank you right, all right, Khalil.
Speaker 2: It was amazing talking to Carolina, and she made me
Speaker 2: think about what I said at the start of the
Speaker 2: show about Chicago and all that's going on here with refugees,
Speaker 2: and I talked about a backlash, but I have to
Speaker 2: reevaluate that and accentuate the positive, because man, we have
Speaker 2: also been a welcoming city. People have stepped up, black churches, neighbors,
Speaker 2: community groups. You know, my father rode his bike over
Speaker 2: to a soccer game the other day where the refugees
Speaker 2: where they're living, They like do this every weekend. Okay,
Speaker 2: there was a funeral that was held for somebody who
Speaker 2: was in one of the shelters. And yeah, and I think,
Speaker 2: you know, one of the things that this political stunt
Speaker 2: from Texas has proven is that, you know, we can
Speaker 2: do better. And I'm also I'm also proud of the
Speaker 2: city because because this is important to welcome people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think you're right.
Speaker 3: And I think that hearing from Carolina and having her
Speaker 3: peel back the layers of all the ways that people
Speaker 3: like herself who advocate on behalf of immigrants, who are
Speaker 3: inspiring other people in communities small and large near the
Speaker 3: border away from the border is exactly the antidote to
Speaker 3: the politics of.
Speaker 1: Fear and.
Speaker 3: Danger and scarcity, like the notion that we don't have enough,
Speaker 3: particularly since we are a country as wealthy as we are,
Speaker 3: and part of our wealth comes from foreign policies that
Speaker 3: take from other countries like Latin America, take their people,
Speaker 3: take their resources. We actually have an obligation to not
Speaker 3: only figure this out for the long term, but we
Speaker 3: have an obligation the sh your term to do something
Speaker 3: to help people. And I'm really proud of Carolina, and
Speaker 3: I'm proud of your pops for helping out too.
Speaker 2: One small thing I'm gonna do when this episode comes out,
Speaker 2: I'm donating to the Chicago Refugee Coalition and I'm going
Speaker 2: to do a fundraiser so all the listeners look out
Speaker 2: for it and and give generously.
Speaker 3: All Right, You're going to spam them with a Kickstarter
Speaker 3: and go fund me solicitations.
Speaker 1: It's going to work out, all right, man. I'm proud
Speaker 1: of you. You are stepping up.
Speaker 2: I love you, man, I love you too.
Speaker 3: Some of My Best Friends Are is a production of
Speaker 3: Pushkin Industries. The show is written and hosted by me
Speaker 3: Khalil Jbron Muhammad and my best friend Ben Austin.
Speaker 2: It's produced by Lucy Sullivan. Our associate producer is Rachel Yang.
Speaker 2: It's edited by Sarah Nix with help from Keyshel Williams.
Speaker 2: Our engineer is a Man Wang and our managing producer
Speaker 2: is Constanza Guyardo.
Speaker 3: At Pushkin thanks to Leital Mollad, Julia Barton, Heather Fain,
Speaker 3: Carly Migliori, John Schnarz, Retta Cone, and Jacob Weisberg.
Speaker 2: Our theme song, Little Lily, is by fellow chicagoan the
Speaker 2: brilliant Avery R. Young, from his album Tubman. You definitely
Speaker 2: want to check out his music at his website Averyaryong
Speaker 2: dot com.
Speaker 3: You can find Pushkin on all social platforms at Pushkin
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