Asad L. Asad — Omkari

Asad L. Asad Transcript

Omkari Williams 0:20
Hello, and welcome to Stepping Into Truth, the podcast where we have conversations on social justice issues and how we all get free. I'm your host Omkari Williams, and I'm very pleased that you're here with me. Before I introduce today's guest, I want to mention that my book Micro Activism: How You Can Make a Difference in the World (Without a Bullhorn) is available now from your favorite bookseller, and I hope you'll grab a copy for yourself. This book is my guiding hand to all those who are looking to find their sustainable way to be a change-maker in this world.

Omkari Williams 0:53
Now, onto today's conversation. Today, I'm speaking with Asad L. Asad who is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Stanford University, and a faculty affiliate at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. Asad's research considers how institutional categories in particular citizenship and legal status matter for multiple forms of inequality. His book, Engage and Evade: How Latino Immigrant Families Manage Surveillance in Everyday Life examines how, and why, undocumented immigrants who are worried about deportation, navigate the delicate dance of engaging with certain government institutions while avoiding others. Using stories from undocumented immigrants themselves Asad brings nuance to the perspective of the undocumented and shines a light on some of the contradictions between what the government says they want, and the economic and personal realities of the immigration system as it applies to Latinos. And it is my great pleasure to welcome Asad to the podcast. Hi, Asad, how are you?

Asad. L. Asad 2:00
Hi, Omkari. I'm doing great. How are you doing?

Omkari Williams 2:02
I'm doing really well, thank you. As I was reading your book, which I found fascinating for so many reasons, but the thing that struck me first, I believe, was you begin your book with these stories of why people leave their home countries and take all of the risks that are involved in coming to the US without documentation. And some of the stories we're definitely familiar where people are fleeing violence, but some of them are so much more ordinary, where people simply want to be reunited with family members who are living here. And I wondered if you would start by just talking about the range of reasons that people take the risks of coming here, because I think it puts a very different face on the community that is undocumented people in the United States.

Asad. L. Asad 2:59
Yeah, well, first, thank you for reading the books so deeply. It's great to be in conversation with you here today. I think you're absolutely right, much of the public discourse around why people migrate, sort of centers around these very dramatic extremes, right. So if you're fleeing from violence, or political risk, or you know, someone has threatened your life in some way, shape or form, we almost understand like, of course, people had to migrate. And that is a very important and relevant aspect of the migration experience. That certainly applies to a fraction of people who are migrating to the US. And yet, we have to think about the reality of migration flows to this country. And especially, which is the focus of the book, Mexico US migration flows, which is been going on for well over 100 years, such that the people who are migrating are not always fleeing poverty and violence.

Asad. L. Asad 4:00
Some are some are simply migrating because their family members left decades ahead of them. And they have been waiting for an opportunity to reunite as they sort of continue living their daily lives in Mexico. But that opportunity doesn't seem like it's coming. The visas are unavailable. Their parents are getting older, their siblings have grown up, maybe they have children or you know, nephews or nieces they've never met. And so it's just a matter of wanting to be with the people that you were born with. The people who are your family unit. It's about finding home in a country that is not your own, but that you've made your own, simply because we have militarized a border that has prevented a back and forth migration, which has historically been how people have migrated.

They used to enter the US just for a small period of time and then they would circle back to Mexico and then reentered to follow the crops and so on and so forth. But now that we've really militarized that border, people have decided that the cost of going back is far too high. But they still want to be with their families, they still want to reunite with their communities.

And so they come to the US, and they settle here. And so it's this perverse dynamic where these very, almost simple reasons for migrating, of course, I want a little bit more money, of course, I want to be able to buy a house or some land back home. But really at the heart of it is just this need this desire to be in a place where it makes sense for you, because you have the people who help you to make sense of your life, your family, your friends, and other loved ones that you may have encountered back home, but who, for some reason or another have just lived in the United States for 10 years or more at this point.

Omkari Williams 5:56
I think it's really interesting that you say that because we live in a country that espouses family values and the importance of family and family first, and how family is everything. But that seems to only apply to white American families. Everyone else, it's like, oh, you have a family. Oh, nice for you. And the dishonesty in that. And, frankly, the racism in that is so profoundly painful.

As I was reading the book, I found myself getting really, really quite angry. Many times it's like, what are we even having this conversation for? And then if you look at it from an economic perspective, who are we kidding? If you like your fruits and vegetables, who do you think is picking those things? It is not your kid, neighbor down the street, whose last name is Johannessen. That's not it. That's not the family that is picking these fruits and vegetables that people want on their plates. So I wish you would speak a bit about that psychological split that we have here in the United States that drives so much of our legislation.

Asad. L. Asad 7:18
Yeah, there's I mean, there's a lot there, right, a lot to unpack. So I think the first thing to keep in mind is that yes, family reunification is a sensible, it's sort of an advertised cornerstone of the immigration system. And yet, the Department of State doesn't really hide that how family reunification works, it's going to take a bit of time, depending on where you come from.

And so you can look at what's called the visa bulletin. And it is publicly available, they update it every month. And that visa bulletin tells you the date of application submitted that the immigration system is processing for consideration of a visa. Right, so maybe the typical date for most countries, is about a year or so. So applications submitted last year, you know, I haven't actually checked recently, but I'd say it's about a year or so there. But then you look at Mexico, China, the Philippines, and these other kinds of countries and for Mexico for family visas from Mexico, you are asked to wait at least 20 years for some of these visas. 20 years.

Asad. L. Asad 8:27
And so yes, you are in line, this is the line that everybody talks about, right? You're in line. But I mean, who wants to wait 20 years in line when you know, I'm in my mid 30s, I've got parents who are in their 70s. 20 years could mean the difference between seeing them again and never seeing them again. Right. And that is one of the realities that Mexican migrants in the United States, especially those who are undocumented, have had to grapple with in making the decision to migrate.

The first thing is, do I want to see my parents? Do, I want to see my relatives? Say, okay, well, what are my options for doing that?Option one is to go ahead and try to get a visa, but I may be waiting for some visas upwards of 20 years. Or there's this really well established way of me being able to enter the country. It's dangerous, I put myself at risk. I may or may not make it. But if I do make it, the reward is very sweet, which is simply just being able to see my parents again. So that's the other thing to keep in mind.

Asad. L. Asad 9:31
But I think the broader dynamic, the racism that's inherent in this system, I think is so lost on the most lay observers, right? You sort of see these very dramatized news media stories of what's happening at the border and it's a dire situation and then the discourse that they talk about in these news stories is often sort of divorced from the underlying causes of migration flows. People from Central America are not just migrating all of a sudden to the United States because they've decided, Oh, well, maybe I'll journey 1000 miles on foot all the way through multiple countries just to make it into the United States, because I'm up for the challenge.

No, that's not what they're doing. There is such a legacy of US intervention in that region that has destabilized those different countries politically, economically, has extracted so many resources from these countries. And all of a sudden you say, well, there are so many people trying to enter the US from Mexico and Central America. Well, yes, of course, of course there are. And it's because this is the only country they know to get to, because you've destabilized the all the other ones around them.

Asad. L. Asad 10:43
And so I think the point that you make about so much of what is happening in the context of just to move forward economically, you talked about farming. But it's also even beyond that, you know, even if these people offered nothing to the economy, they should still have the opportunity to be with their family. That's number one. But having said that, you're fundamentally right, that it's not just farm work. It's also the service industry. It's also hospitality. A lot of people have house cleaners who are, or were once, undocumented. You've got people who are nannies and child care. You've got people even in California, where I live now, a lot of people who are servers who may be undocumented, but who are working in front of house, because this is a particular state that allows them to work to be a part of the communities that they're a part of, you know. And I grew up in Wisconsin, and certainly there are a lot of undocumented immigrants there, many of whom are from Mexico as well.

Asad. L. Asad 11:44
And whether you are farming or just living, you know, your student who is attending high school or college on on the good fortune of a, of a state law that allows you to do so I think that is, that is the the fundamental reality that undocumented folks are everywhere, and they may or may not be so pivotal to our economy. And they absolutely are statistically right. The only reason, for example, Social Security is solvent, is because of the contributions of undocumented immigrants who will never benefit from this system. And yet, it's still one of these things where even without the psychological toll of living undocumented in this country, no matter how good you are, no matter how hard you work, that is a burden that these people carry with them every day. And especially if you are from Mexico, or Central America, you can be very easily racialized, as undocumented, right? Even if you yourself are a green card holder, or a US citizen, just by the look of you, someone might say, Oh, well, you might be undocumented, and that is its own burden to carry, that it's very hard for folks to grapple with or to maybe even appreciate if you're not a member of the community, and not dealing with those experiences directly.

Omkari Williams 12:59
Yeah, you said a couple of things there. And for myself, as a Black woman, I was born here. My parents were born here. I mean, I'm only second generation but I'm an American citizen, I have all the rights of an American citizen, I am well educated, I understand my rights better than probably most people. And I still find myself anxious. When I have any kind of encounter with the police, which is really casual, more like there's a police officer behind my car, or having been pulled over once, I wasn't even driving, but the level of fear that I experienced in that encounter, was just so disproportionate to what actually was happening. And I can't imagine being someone who is not documented and does have an appearance that is more likely to invite scrutiny. Just the psychological toll of that has got to be so intense. And everyone you interviewed has at least one child.

Asad. L. Asad 14:14
That's right.

Omkari Williams 14:15
And many of those children were born here in the United States. So it's not just that they risk deportation, if they engage with the authorities. They risk deportation while their American citizen child is left here.

Asad. L. Asad 14:33
Yes.

Omkari Williams 14:34
Which makes my head spin. And I think, how do you even do that? And why? From the moral standpoint, why would we ever put people in that kind of position? And in your book, you talk a lot about the choices people make about where they engage with the systems that they need to engage with. So given that because they're undocumented, they are very much at the risk of being predated upon by unscrupulous employers. So they're not making as much money, they have no recourse to the law. Sometimes they don't get paid at all for work they've done. But they can't do anything about that. So they're typically functioning at a very low level of income. But what happens when their kid gets sick, their American born kid gets sick. So if you could talk about how those two things clash?

Asad. L. Asad 15:34
Yeah, absolutely. This is, I think, the central tension of the book, right? It's it's as much a story of why people migrate, as it is a story of what people encounter in the US once they've settled here. I think the broad assumption is that undocumented immigrants are undocumented immigrants. And that's it, you know, we don't have to look beyond that category to be able to understand their life experiences. And yet, I think that category in and of itself becomes less relevant, I will say, or at least fades to the background, when they have kids, their life goes on. It's not like they're coming here with a purpose of having children. A lot of the people in my book came here, sort of young, late teens, early 20s, were just sort of setting up their new lives as adults in Mexico before they decided to join either relatives or friends in the US, because they thought they could make a better life for themselves in this country.

Asad. L. Asad 16:36
And of course, many go through this realization, that it's actually quite hard to live in the US undocumented, especially in a state like Texas, which is the setting of the book, I did a lot of my research in Dallas, Texas. And so Dallas itself is maybe a relatively friendly immigrant city. But the larger state context makes life very difficult for undocumented immigrants. And yet, they still find a way, they find jobs either working in the kitchen, for many people on the books, some have companies where they clean houses, some are painters, house painters, things like that.

And this all sounds nice and good, until they run up against these structural impediments that you've identified. They've got employers who don't pay them, they've got employers who pay them low wages, if they do pay them. They've got these everyday risks of policing and immigration enforcement they confront because they have to drive to work. I'm sorry, you know, I am a middle class young, professional, but like living in Dallas, I lived in probably a nice little area, but it was not walkable, I still had to drive everywhere.

Asad. L. Asad 17:44
And so that is one of these things, that is a reality for everyone in Texas. And even if you can drive somewhere, like I have a driver's license, nobody in my study did. And so just the simple act of getting behind a wheel is already dangerous enough. Now you've got all of these constraints that you're dealing with, as you're setting up your life in the US, then life goes on, right, we all get older, we all you know, find partners, or maybe we have a kid with that partner, regardless of whether we stay with with our partner, and all of a sudden your life changes.

The constraints and the challenges that you face as an undocumented immigrant continue to exist, those don't go anywhere, because you've had a US citizen kid, it's just that now you're dealing with a whole new set of challenges. Now, you're undocumented, and in my study, that means you're also Latino, it means you're also poor. It also means that you sort of buttress some of these negative effects that you can deal with as an undocumented immigrant every day in the US. But now you're a parent. So now I'm undocumented, Latino, poor, and the parent of a US citizen, Latino kid, who is going to be enrolled in public schools in Texas, who's going to face the scrutiny of doctors and teachers and nurses and social workers, who are making sure that my child is taken care of, despite the constraints that I am facing as a parent. And so that is, I think, one of the big central tensions.

Asad. L. Asad 19:16
A lot of the time before you have a kid, you try to stay out of big systems, you don't necessarily want to interact with the police. Nobody really wants to interact with the police, right? Nobody wants to call the police. And so you know, you don't call the police necessarily. You mind your business, you sort of go to work, even if bad things are happening to you, like your employer is not paying you. You're probably just going to accept it and move on because the risk of calling the police is too high. But then the kids change all of that. If you were sick, maybe you just took a Tylenol, didn't go to the doctor, you haven't had a checkup in years. But you can't really do that with your kid, right? A baby's born if you're the pregnant parent, you have to have prenatal care. Hopefully, if a kid is born healthy and safe, and then hopefully you are also healthy and safe following the delivery of the baby. But at the same time, the kid now needs regular post natal checkups, and vaccinations and all these things, especially through age five.

Asad. L. Asad 20:17
If you are the parent of a US citizen kid, no matter your own legal status, you're going to be at that doctor every few months. And after age five, that kid needs to be in school, you need to go to parent teacher conferences, you may be called in because the principal wants to talk to you about something, so on and so forth. And eventually the kid grows up. And you know, I don't see this in my study, because most of the kids were probably between the ages of three and eight, and the focal point of the study, but eventually the kid grows up, maybe the kid gets pulled over by the cops. So there's all these sort of compounding risks that you have to experience. And you have to do this dance about where am I going to make myself visible to systems and authorities within these systems, even if they're not outwardly threatening, like teachers or doctors, for example, and where am I going to make myself invisible, or I'll say, perhaps less visible. And so I don't want to go to the doctor for myself, even though I'm feeling sick. But I'll make sure to go on behalf of my kid, because they need their checkups. And so it's this dance that we sort of force undocumented folks with US citizen kids to do to both preserve their kid’s well-being even as their own well-being might be sacrificed. Because they don't get to go to the doctor, they don't get to go to school, things like that.

Omkari Williams 21:39
And anyone who's been around small children knows that their function in society is basically to be a walking germ factory. So they are going to be sick all the time, which makes it much more likely that you are sick, which also means you may or may not be able to go to work, depending on how sick you are. But you can't even if you wanted to, you cannot ignore your child's illness, because the last thing you want to do is get into any kind of struggle with Child Protective Services, because then it really hits the fan. And everything can completely go sideways from there. And yet, that dance that you talk about is just so fraught. If you're a parent, a sick child is already enormously stressful. And to think that you have to make a conscious decision to take that child to a doctor, rather than, of course, I'm taking the kid to the doctor, it's not even a choice. And then once you're there, you're constantly being judged. You're being judged at the doctor's office, you're being judged at a parent-teacher conference, you're being judged in all of these circumstances where people have the authority to report you as an inadequate parent, which creates tremendous, tremendous danger for you. And I just wonder how the people in your study, emotionally navigate all of that, because honestly, I think I would kind of have a panic attack truthfully,

Asad. L. Asad 23:21
I think it's right to say that it is a lot because it is a lot. I think many of us have a basic understanding that if you don't take care of your kids, you know, someone can report you to CPS, and they'll be removed from the home after an investigation, or at least there'll be an investigation, which itself is very traumatizing. So we can start there. But I think what people don't appreciate all the time is that when you are not normative in some way, and by that I mean you are sort of a person of color who occupies multiple disadvantaged characteristics in the United States, or I'll say subordinated characteristics you are made to be disadvantaged in the United States for various reasons. Like these undocumented parents in my study, you carry that weight of the stress and the risk and the potential fallout that might happen following us if a CPS investigation were to come, but you also accept it as normal. It's sort of both an added weight that you carry, but eventually over time you forget that you're carrying this weight because it is just your everyday being.

Asad. L. Asad 24:39
And so the parents that I talked to, if you were to ask them, "Well, how stressed are you every day because you have to think of these dynamics?". People will be like, Oh, I'm not super stressed. But then you ask them other questions like okay, so you have to take the kid to the doctor, what's the first thing you do? Well, first, I dress this particular way so that they don't identify me as sort of a quote unquote, "bad" undocumented immigrants. Once I'm there, you know, I don't speak good English. So I always tell my kid to tell the doctor, or to tell the receptionist, their name, and what brings them there. And then the receptionist often looks at me and says, Well, you can't speak English. And, you know, this is Texas, we're talking about, there's a lot of bilingual folks. But then there are also some folks who are not super bilingual, and who are working in these positions.

Asad. L. Asad 25:24
And these interactions can make all the difference between sort of how good you feel in that particular moment when you are arriving at the doctor's office. And then what happens when you are brought to the back, right, and the doctor is ready to see you, the nurse comes and gets you takes the kid's blood pressure. And hopefully the nurse is bilingual, for example. But at the end of the day, you have already entered this space feeling like you are under attack. And perhaps you stiffen up. Perhaps you don't communicate all of your kid's needs while you're there, because you don't want to rock the boat any further. And so there is a lot of stress that is carried within the body, even if the folks that I talked to may not be super cognizant of it in a sort of sit down everyday interview, like, oh, yeah, it's fine.

I think just to sort of zoom out a little bit, we all carry some stresses, but we don't realize how big they are. Right? I think you know, in my case, writing a book is very stressful. And I didn't realize how stressful that book was until I pressed submit on the final copy, right. But then once you sort of release the beast, so to speak, this weight gets lifted off of you and your body relaxes. And I think for a lot of the parents, it's something similar that right now they are just in the midst, in the throes, of all the stress. But they don't necessarily appreciate with 20-20 vision, you know, how much stress they're carrying. How much of their body is being crushed by the weight of these expectations that they have to navigate around.

Asad. L. Asad 27:01
But I think were they come to transition from an undocumented status to a green card or even one day US citizenship, maybe just maybe they would say, Wow, not only did I do all of that dance that they expected of me, but I also survived it. And of course, the long-term physiological consequences of all this stress we know from research on racism and health is, is profound, higher blood pressure, higher stress, higher psychological distress, it's not an easy feat to be oppressed, right. And this is one of those things where I think for the people who are living through the moment, maybe they don't feel super good. But they don't necessarily know that it's different from what a US-born citizen would be experiencing, right?

Because there are US-born citizens, especially if you are Black, and a low-income mother, for example, who are dealing with similar hurdles of CPS intervention in their lives and horribly racist scrutiny of their parenting from other authorities that they're dealing with. And it's just, I think that the key gap here is, at least you know, you're not going to be deported following this investigation. And so that is always the added weight. You know, they share some of these stressors. And then there's that added aspect where it's like, am I going to be deported when my kid is removed from the house, because I'm trying my best to take care of them. But there's only so much I can do given that everything around me is oppressive. I can't work for a living wage, I can't get a promotion at work, I have no recourse if my employer takes my wages, they could fire me because they discover my papers are not legitimate to work. They're taking payroll taxes that I'm never going to get back. And I'm making social security contributions that I'll never benefit from, I'll never be able to retire, my kid will never have an inheritance, and so on and so forth. All that stuff compounds. But I think at the end of the day, it is daily life. And so we forget amid the monotony of daily life, so to speak, that these are just accepted as everyday risks that we are aware of, but perhaps we're not aware of just how much they're burdening us.

Omkari Williams 29:18
And also just how much generational trauma gets passed along from that, because I think often the children of these people, the children who are themselves, US citizens and don't have that fear of deportation, are more cognizant at a certain age of the stress on their parents and the sacrifices of their parents. And that actually brings me to something else I wanted to talk about, which is it's not only that these people come for their immediate families. There's also a really rich history of community in the Mexican culture in Central American culture that we don't really have in the United States in the same way, it's just not the way our society is structured. So the impacts aren't just on the individual, it's on the whole community. And the community can consist, and generally does, of people who are both here with legal status, and those who are here without that legal status. But they are all part of this really important enmeshed, strong social structure. So you yank one person out and there are actually ripple effects that are more profound than I think we might recognize. Could you just speak to how they really create these very strong communities of undocumented and documented people all supporting one another?

Asad. L. Asad 30:58
Yeah, I mean, it's one of these things where when you share a status of being undocumented, this idea that all for one and one for all sort of becomes, becomes the mantra. Well, not explicitly stated, but functionally, it's what it is. And so you might work at a factory or a meatpacking plant, or you may work at like a Jack in the Box, some other kinds of fast food restaurant, wherever you work. Let's say there's some kind of enforcement raid planned. And your employer alerts you immediately before and says don't come to work today, and in fact, probably don't show up again, because ICE is coming to take whoever is here away who's undocumented. Well, maybe we don't appreciate this as US citizens, but WhatsApp, which is a sort of texting service, a secure encrypted texting app that you can get, I use WhatsApp regularly because I have many family members who are abroad. But WhatsApp is very prevalent among Mexican and Central American immigrants in the United States. The most recent survey data I saw said that 50% of Latinos in the US are using WhatsApp relative to like 18% of Black people, and 15% of white people. And the reason for that is because these everyday enforcement actions become the currency of communication for a lot of people who are vulnerable.

Asad. L. Asad 32:30
Their vulnerability to deportation becomes the reason why they communicate, and they bond together, in the sense that, Oh, I heard there's going to be a raid at Jack in the Box today. And all of a sudden, everyone stays home. You know, even people who are not working at Jack in the Box, everyone stays home. That means kids might be kept home from school that day. There's a lot of evidence that suggests that when ICE picks up their behavior on the ground, and that they're deporting more people, kids, quote, unquote, "vanish", to quote one of these academic articles, and where did they go? Well, they stay home, they don't come to school that day, or they switch school districts, or sometimes there's even a self kind of deportation where people just uproot their families and leave to Mexico. And so there's a couple of things here. Number one is that, yes, this is a community with a strong social fabric that is both through direct communication through WhatsApp and other sort of social media channels.

Asad. L. Asad 33:33
But it's also through news media. So like Univision, for example, is a big source of news for a lot of the people in my study, and Univision, you know, it's like national sort of news reporting. And so you might see something that's happening in Florida and say, Oh, my God, all of the US is like this now. And I have to make sure that I don't work on the farm anymore, because they're checking farmworkers papers better now. But that's really just what's happening in Florida. Right. So that's one thing. But then the other thing, I think that we should appreciate is that people who are so scared of deportation, whether they're deported or not, that stress becomes a lot to carry. And for some, it becomes too much to carry.

So there's one family in my study, who completely uprooted from Texas and went back to Mexico. And the only reason I was able to learn that is because the brother and the sister in law remained in the study, because they have we randomly selected these households. And we just happened to get in law set of households in the study, which I think is an example of how community works, right? People live close by, and they sort of see what's happening to their loved ones, and then they report out. So that family is now back in Mexico, they have two US born kids who are there with them. And if we think this is an exceptional story, there's really good evidence in social demography, so the population studies, suggests that about 500,000 US born kids now live in Mexico.

Omkari Williams 35:06
Wow.

Asad. L. Asad 35:07
Yeah. So let me just say, let me say that again, for the listeners out there 500,000 US-born kids who are citizens now live in Mexico. And the reasons they live in Mexico are very diverse. But at the end of the day, they all probably center around immigration enforcement. If an undocumented parent is deported, maybe they send for their kids to join them back in Mexico. That's number one. Number two, if it's like the family in my study, where they're just so scared of being deported, that they just uproot the family anyway, that's the second reason. And then the third reason is simply just because what it means to live in the US as an undocumented immigrant, but one who is racialized as illegal, foreign or otherwise sort of a menace to society. That is a lot to bear, as we've mentioned, right, and so maybe you don't want that life for your kid anymore. Maybe you've recognized that the American dream is not so dreamy. And it's very tough to make it here, even if you're a US citizen, and perhaps you want a different kind of life for your kid. But I'd say it all centers on the same principle, which is, you know, we live in a deeply unequal society. And when you have these overlapping characteristics that are associated with oppression, you know, being a racial minority, being poor, being undocumented, and so on, and so forth, the burden becomes a lot to bear. And people respond to that differently.

Omkari Williams 36:36
It's funny you say that, because I remember having the experience of the first time I left the United States and went to a predominantly Black country, I the first time I went to the Caribbean. And it wasn't until I got there, that I realized how much pressure I live under every single day in the United States where I was born. And I was born in Manhattan so it's not exactly like I was born in some lily white place. I wasn't. And yet, that pressure of being otherized was so profound, and I'd never noticed it until I went to a place where I blended. Nobody was looking at me, I looked like everybody else. And that was really an amazing awakening of understanding like, oh, okay, that has taught me something I did not recognize before. I think it's something that's really important for people to understand. Because it does take a toll. Even if you're not consciously aware of it, it does take a toll it does affect how you move through your day, and it affects your mental well-being.

Asad. L. Asad 37:52
Yeah, and if I may just add on, it's not just undocumented folks, or Latinex folks, as you're, as you're well describing here. Your experience is a very common experience, also inside the US. So if you think about it, there's a lot of research that says that low income Black people in the US perceive less discrimination than high-income Black people in the US or higher-income Black people view us. And the reason why is thinking thing, residential segregation. And in the sense that low-income Black people are living in majority-Black neighborhoods where they're around people who share their demographic characteristics. Whereas higher income Black people, even as they are living, sort of among middle-class Black people, or you know, living in majority-white neighborhoods, where they're one of a few Black families, they're also navigating white spaces way more than low-income Black people. And in those white spaces is where all of the stressors come. Because someone might micro-aggress you, someone might macro-aggress you. You worry about how you're being perceived in this white space.

And so the dynamics that we hear about these undocumented immigrants that I talked to, in my study are dealing with are very common dynamics across racial and ethnic minority groups in the United States. It's just something where if we, if we accept and appreciate that this is a common experience across racial groups, that's where the power is, actually there's a lot of oppression that is similarly structured, even if it manifests differently. To be undocumented, as one experience to be a Black person in the US is a different form of oppression that you're experiencing. And yet, it all boils down to this idea of white supremacy and maintaining white dominance. And I try to cover some of these themes in the book, but it's fundamentally what is underlying many of the experiences of oppressed populations in this country.

Omkari Williams 39:52
Yeah, it's such an important thing, and it's something that I think about a lot, because I think this shift needs to start with these diverse groups having a conversation about the things that we share. So someone from Mexico, we don't share a common language, but we share many common experiences, whether they are undocumented and I am a legal-born US citizen, there are still so many things where there is overlap in how we have to navigate this system. And if we could just get it together, we'd be able to apply a great deal more pressure to address some of those imbalances.

Omkari Williams 40:44
Our time is getting short. And I want to ask you one more question before I ask you to give us three things that the listeners can do. And it really is about how do we apply political pressure? Because one of the things I noticed when I was reading your book was that it was head spinning, it's like in one administration, it's this way, and and then the next administration, it's that way. And, and I thought, How does anyone even keep track of all of this, and it has such a profound impact on your well-being. But I was like, honestly, you need a spreadsheet.

Asad. L. Asad 41:24
So I have a PhD, and I have been working in this area for maybe I shouldn't even quantify, over 10 years, and it was difficult for me to keep track. I mean, difficult. Of all the things that were happening between Obama and Trump, and then Biden, I mean, Trump himself every Friday, something was happening. And I would have to spend my weekend deciphering what it meant for the book, for the immigrants that I talked to, for those who are still in my study. And so I want to add pressure on politicians so that we can change some of these institutions. It's something that's super difficult, right, because nobody really wants to fix immigration, because it's one of the most politicized issues in this country. Immigration, I mean, it's toxic to the politician to touch it, unless for some reason or another, you have the magic solution to everything. on the national stage, Joe Biden doesn't really talk about it, Vice President Harris was sort of tasked with it early on in the administration and honestly, she's kind of stopped mentioning it too, because it's, we're now in an election year. And you don't really want to do too much on immigration, because God forbid, we allow people to come to this country. And so I don't have an answer based on the people in my book, this book that I talked to. But in fact, this question, what do we do about all of this, is motivating my next book project.

Asad. L. Asad 42:49
So I've done interviews with immigration advocates in organizations big and small, across the United States, in the western region, very California, based in the South, in the Northeast, and in the Midwest. And we asked all these advocates, myself and my research assistant, dozens of questions about well, where does change come in? How do you think about change? What does it mean to change the immigration system? How do you know that you've changed the immigration system, and so on and so forth, at the end of the day, and this is a very both disillusioning and somewhat disheartening, punchline, there are just so many fires to put out every day that even these advocates who are working just around the clock for low pay, the changes are more micro that they're focusing on, even if their organization is intended to be sort of a big structural change kind of organization. But it's hard to have a big structural kind of change when these laws are changing every day, from administration to administration, things might be different.

Asad. L. Asad 43:54
Congress may or may not decide to act. And fundamentally, the problems that we see characterized in the book is that these are commonplace to the system as it currently exists. The long waits for visa, the long waits for any kind of opportunity to citizenship, the possibility of deportation every day. These are features not bugs of the system. And so when you're dealing with the feature of the system, the system itself keeps adding gas to the fire such that okay, maybe you've gotten somebody off from deportation. And now you can focus now, your attention on pressuring Congress to do something. Well, turns out, you know, somebody else is next in line to be deported. And so now you got to turn your efforts to there. So these micro victories, where you're stopping, you know, a couple hundred people a year from being deported. So important, but it's not changing the system, because there's only so much that you can do to change that system. And so I don't want this to be a pessimistic take. And I actually think there's a lot that we can do to pressure our state politicians to sort of change laws to be to limit probably his cooperation with ICE and so on and so forth. But at the end of the day, the buck is really with Congress. And that's a very dangerous place to put the buck, right?

Omkari Williams 45:09
For anything. I mean, anything! And especially because there is economic incentive to leave things the way they are. I mean, if employers actually had to pay all of the undocumented workers a wage that an American worker would accept, it would cut into their profit margins. So for all of the talk about let's fix this broken immigration system, I feel like so much of it is just frankly, bs, because they don't want to fix it, because fixing it will cost people money. And those are the people writing them checks that keep them in office. So that's my cynical take on it for today.

Asad. L. Asad 45:51
I appreciate that. So yeah, but yeah, I think I'm right there with you on the cynicism.

Omkari Williams 45:56
Yeah, it's disheartening. And yet I refuse to give in, because just No. So I do want to ask you, what are three things that people listening can do to make some micro impact on this, because micro activism is my thing. And I think it's really important that we not give up, and that we do the thing we can do, and that it matters, even if we're just helping one person, it matters so much. So what are three things people can do?

Asad. L. Asad 46:30
Yeah, so you know, cynicism, I think is the name of the game when it comes to politicians, and politics more generally. But that doesn't mean there aren't action items that we can take to make life better for people right now. And so I thought long and hard about what my three would be. So here's what I came up with. So of course, we can volunteer and volunteer regularly, in any capacity with a community based organization that's local to you. So at Stanford, I'm a professor at Stanford, there are people who teach classes where they allow the undergraduates to do a kind of service learning experience, where they work with Freedom For Immigrants, which helps people who are currently in immigration detention, to make phone calls to people outside of the walls of the detention facility. And that is just so important to just give people who are detained the opportunity to just be a regular person to some degree, to interact with people who are not detained, who are outside, who can communicate messages, who can field complaints, and so on, and so forth.

So find an organization local to you, and your community. And it's a quick Google search, you just type in immigration organization near me, and Google will take it from there. These organizations are always looking for volunteers to do any kind of small tasks, like even shuttling people to and from appointments in your car that you might not be using regularly. Maybe things like helping with paperwork, filling out, just contact forms for people who walk into the office, and so on, and so forth. So the task of volunteering is not itself very difficult. But I would challenge listeners to volunteer regularly, don't just show up once and then let it go, right, these organizations have invested in you, some time to train you. And so I would say at least six months, more if you can do it, but at least some reliable, consistent presence would be great.

Asad. L. Asad 48:31
Number two is I understand that some people want a deeper commitment than just volunteering, you know, every so often, every single week and every few weeks. So one other action item that I think you could do is train with this organization called VISTA. So it's V I S T A. And so it stands for the Villanova Interdisciplinary Immigration Studies training for Advocates. It's an online program that trains students to become immigrant advocates, who help folks to file petitions to US Citizenship and Immigration Services. So if you want to apply for DACA, or a green card, you could be trained to help a person do that. But you could also do training that allows you to both fill out these applications, but also to represent people in immigration court. So you would not be an immigration lawyer. But you would be more than what most respondents in immigration court have, which is someone with knowledge about the law at a very foundational level that would allow them to manage the process of being alone in immigration court, because there's no right to public defender there. So the training here requires a couple of months, a couple of months of commitments and training and it's an online course with a wonderful team of staff. But then after that you have to partner with a community-based organization to host you. And there are all kinds of matches that are being made every day.

Asad. L. Asad 50:05
And some, you know, some people late in their careers have moved on to this to try to do this. Some early on in their career, you know, they don't want to be an immigration lawyer, but they want to have meaningful, impactful change every day. They're doing it now as sort of their, their early career. And I think that if you have the time and resources to invest in this kind of long-term program, there's a real need for these kinds of advocates across the country.

Asad. L. Asad 50:32
And then the final thing, and this is just for those of us who may not have the time, but we have the means, money goes a long way in fighting the immigration system. And so I always suggest that people, if they have the opportunity and means, donate to a bond fund. And so there are local bond funds that I always I always tried to promote in the Bay Area, we have the Bay Area Immigration Bond Fund, which helps people who have been granted bond in immigration court, but who can't afford the $5 to $10,000 bond, because that's an unreal amount of money. And so contributions monthly, yearly would go a long way. And you can also find one, listeners, wherever you are, in your local community, again, with our dear friend, Google, just type in, you know, Milwaukee immigration bond fund, and it would pop up. And these organizations are legitimate, reputable, and they go a long way toward helping release people who have no reason to be detained from detention so they can reunite with their families and, and move on with their lives.

Omkari Williams 51:36
Those are amazing. Thank you so much. And I will put those in the Episode Notes so that people can reference them easily.

Asad. L. Asad 51:45
Oh, good.

Omkari Williams 51:46
I just want to thank you so much for this conversation, Asad, it's been really wonderful. And it has expanded my understanding both of the immigration system and of the experience of immigrants. And I think it's going to make me think about these issues in a different more profound way. And I appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Asad. L. Asad 52:07
I'm so glad to have been here with you today, taking the time to engage with the book so deeply, and to spend some time talking with me about it today.

Omkari Williams 52:15
Thank you.

Omkari Williams 52:18
The Statue of Liberty standing in New York Harbor has inscribed on it Emma Lazarus his poem with these lines, give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these the homeless tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door. Are those words still true? Were they ever as true as we would wish them to be without favor? I think that we need to reassess who we are as a country and who we wish to be. And to begin with rigor and intention to bring those visions into alignment. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back with another episode of Stepping Into Truth very soon. Until then, remember that change starts with story. So keep sharing yours.