’90-DAY FIANCÉ’: WHAT REALITY TV TEACHES US ABOUT THE REALITIES OF MIGRATION
BY: JEN EVANS
Now entering its sixth season, TLC’s ’90-Day Fiancé’ has become popular programming among audiences. The reality show depicts couples as they navigate the K-1 visa process, a pathway to immigration for foreign nationals who are engaged to marry U.S. citizens. Originally established to expedite the immigration process for Asian-born brides of Vietnam War veterans, the K-1 visa requires applicants to marry their respective sponsor within 90 days of entering the United States.
In today’s world of rapid globalization, it is easier than ever before to meet a foreign partner. The couples of ’90-Day Fiancé’ have met on vacation, on the Internet, and while volunteering abroad. And while overseas romances may have previously resulted in tales of lost love and what-could-have-been, new media now perpetuate these transnational relationships. Technologies such as video chat and text messaging are critical to the couples of ’90-Day Fiancé’, serving as the primary tools for communication and intimacy as they establish their lives together from separate continents.
Like many reality shows, ’90-Day Fiancé’ is often celebrated by fans for its dysfunctional plots and characters. But behind this melodrama lies important truths about migration in the United States. Amid political and media narratives focused heavily on illegal immigration, there is little discussion surrounding the plight of the legal migrant.
The couples of ’90-Day Fiancé’ frequently face doubt from those around them. Families surmise that the relationship is fraudulent, the immigrant simply seeking a pathway to U.S. citizenship. Meanwhile, friends are unaccepting of Americans changing their own traditions to accommodate a fiancé’s cultural beliefs. More than anything, ’90-Day Fiancé’ makes one thing clear: there is a critical lack of understanding regarding the immigration process in the United States.
It just seems like you’re rushing. I don’t understand why everything has to happen so fast. Why can’t you wait? These questions and complaints are commonplace on ’90-Day Fiancé’, plaguing the program’s couples amid the hugely stressful period of dual immigration and wedding planning. Certainly, 90 days is a short time to prepare for a wedding and a marriage. This is especially true when considering that, due to logistical and financial reasons, many of these couples have spent only a few weeks together before embarking on the K-1 Visa journey. But under current American immigration policy, this is the hand these individuals have been dealt: marry within 90 days or remain oceans apart.
In our modern world, it is perhaps time to begin approaching romance as a global domain akin to trade, communications, and transportation, and ease the process of bringing international couples together. But in the absence of such contemporary policy, it is our duty to educate ourselves; to understand the tremendous financial cost of immigration, the emotional struggles faced by migrants, and the legal framework of immigration. Despite its calamitous portrayal, ’90-Day Fiancé’ ultimately offers a genuine, informative perspective on the American immigration system.
NOTES ON LATIN AMERICAN ACTIVISM IN THE HOT 100 BILLBOARD CHART
BY: SOFIA CARVALHAES CHERTO SILVEIRA
It is September 17th, 2018. According to The New York Times, population levels at federally contracted shelters for migrant children have reached a total of 12,800 detainees. In May 2017, there were 2,400 children in custody.
The Times sources were members of Congress who were briefed on the rise of migrant detention centers throughout the United States, specially along the Southern border. It is not the number of children allegedly crossing illegally that has increased, but there was a drop in the group who would normally be able to leave the shelter to be with a family. Relatives and family friends are disincentivized from coming forward to sponsor children. Often suffering the pressures of having illegal status themselves, it becomes harder for actual relatives to offer the children a home while facing a zero-tolerance administration.
The psychological trauma in institutionalized children is well known by sociologists, psychologists and a host of health professionals. Children in foster care have disproportionately high rates of physical, developmental, and mental health problems while their medical and mental health care needs are often unmet.
In a society where open discrimination acts against immigrants are growing (shrugs remembering the Manhattan lawyer who yelled at restaurant workers for speaking Spanish among themselves https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ8s_W3R-T0), there seems to be an ongoing battle of imaginaries and representation: Latin American music is all over the The Billboard Hot 100 – the United States industry’s standard record chart for songs. Meanwhile, Latin American children sit in cages. Erg… detention centers.
1 train – 28th street, September 18th, New York City. Two private school boys with skin white as snow come in, making their way uptown. I recognize the song blasting in the ear plugs they share: Mala Mía, by Maluma, a Colombian régatton artist with 35.5 million followers on Instagram. The boys sing along in Spanish, at times rubbing their hands on the fancy uniform, moving their fingers up and down from the chest to the pelvis – a cultural clash: New York Royalty imitates the Prince of Bell Air, Colombia blasting in their ears. Next to them is a girl in a hijab – but that’s another story, another reflection on multiculturalism.
The arguments given by the Trump administration for a zero-tolerance policy on immigrants goes way beyond a mere appreciation for the law and a persecution of crimes of all sorts. They come from an imaginary that Latin American immigrants, even children, have high potential to be criminal – bad hombres. Would the 28th street blondies disagree?
With Latin American artists having increasing power over an American audience, why haven’t they used their influence to gather money and attention towards discrimination against migrants? Where is Maluma’s declaration against Donald Trump?
In any case an artist needs to politicize their songs towards a specific direction. Their art is theirs to meddle with, but why not use the social media platform to deliver information to a world-wide audience about human rights violations against the people responsible for Maluma’s rise to fame? His career did not start with New York private schools.
So I started investigating Maluma’s political stands and all I found was… vague. No public declarations or high-profile donations (there was one to a fire that happened in Chile, but still). The only moment where Maluma seemed to address the Latino discrimination “directly” is in El Perdedor a song with a video clip that has over one billion views on youtube.
The lyrics themselves are not directed towards a political movement, they talk about love, about how the only mistake the poetic narrator made was to love (her). In the video clip the girl Maluma (the main character) loves is a white American suburban daughter of a police officer. In the story Maluma is arrested (see photo below) simply because he is… Latino?
At the end of the video a message is placed in black, white and Spanish: “That race, color, religion, gender or social status never be a barrier to love – Latinos United”… uhum. Not that I disagree with the premise, but isn’t this a little a) vague and b) missing what a Latino is?
The message seems to be the equivalent of an Instagram star painting their hair green for the Amazon: it means nothing. If if doesn’t do anything, it is nothing. There’s no link to donate, organization to know, actions to take. It signals a message that has been discussed since the beginning of time and should only be revisited if it is part of a bigger political move. If a vague message for tolerance is all Maluma could offer, so far he has offered nothing to the community who supported him and now suffers in the hand of the “greatest republic in the world.”
Also, if you are going to “paint your hair green for the Amazon” at least try to define Amazon in a proper manner. Latinos are not a race, a religion, a gender or a social status… It is a geopolitical identity that has reached all layers of American society and has all social extracts present in its composition. Maybe just the “Latinos Unidos” would have worked better, although it still wouldn’t have hit the target. After all, one should not have written in Spanish a message that wasn’t for Spanish speakers. Isn’t it better to ask for tolerance from the one who practices than the one who suffers?
Maluma, next time, direct the message to the ones who need to hear it: in this particular case, the American audience you were able to reach with your unquestionable talent. If you made them hit the play button for you, you can make them do a whole lot of other things.
Maluma is not alone in his vaguely-political tantrums. Just recently, Brazilian singer Anitta (30.8 Million followers on Instagram) said she is not obligated to share her political opinions with fans and she is right. Unfortunately, the current global atmosphere makes it so that she should. Someone, anyone, with the abilities to reach millions of people should stand up for social causes they believe in, because, most times more than governments, these are the players that make a difference. These are the people that can help pressure Congress, non-profits, the UN and whoever else holds cards in the game.
Lin Manuel Miranda (see photo at right), creator of the hit Broadway show Hamilton and Disney collaborator, knows that. He – son of Puerto Rican parents – has used his significantly smaller platform to engage in immigrant rights. Part of the immigrant coalition and several initiatives to reconstruct Puerto Rico after hurricane Maria, he helped raise money, donations that made a difference in real lives of neglected American citizens. When the state fails, private players come to the rescue and Latin American stars have reached a net worth that allows them to play. If they waste the opportunity, what is the point of having so much power?
The Latin Music awards are coming up in October. With children still in cages, will the people we admire stand up or back down?
FOOTNOTES:
- https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/12/us/migrant-children-detention.html
- A Netflix show recently did a brilliant depiction of that exact scene. With a lot of dark humor, Samantha! shows with a lot of criticism that exact type of empty activism.
REFERENCES:
American Academy of Pediatrics, Committee on Early Childhood, Adoption and Dependent Care. (1994) Health care of children in foster care. Pediatrics. 93:335–338.
Garbarino J, Guttmann, Seeley JW. The Psychologically Battered Child: Strategies for Identification, Assessment, and Intervention. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass; 1986
ADDRESSING A FAMILIAR PROBLEM: THE UNIVERSITY IN EXILE CONSORTIUM
BY: JEN EVANS
In the Fall of 1933, a very special school opened its doors in Manhattan. The University in Exile, founded by New School Director Alvin Johnson with the support of several donors and collaborators, offered a new kind of education. Initially staffed with 12 European professors, the school provided a safe haven for Jewish and left-leaning academics who faced persecution under Nazi rule.
Throughout the reign of Adolf Hitler, the University in Exile sponsored over 180 scholars and their families. But physical and intellectual safety was not the only benefit of this landmark school. University in Exile faculty were consulted on topics such as economics, politics, and sociology, with European theory shaping Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ and America’s World War II military strategy. This integration of European and American thought — a process less common before modern globalization — was ultimately used to combat the very fascism which displaced these refugee scholars.
The University in Exile eventually became The New School for Social Research: still a beacon of progress, but no longer required to shelter refugee scholars thanks to renewed political freedom following World War II. But such freedom can no longer be celebrated, as we find ourselves once again faced with the dire and progressing persecution of our academic colleagues. Intellectuals around the world now face violence and imprisonment at the hands of governments such a Turkey, Syria, and Iran, who seek to control the thought of their people.
Amid this new threat to intellectualism, the University in Exile has been reformed. Launched on September 6, 2018, the University in Exile Consortium is comprised of 11 American universities and is administratively headed by its original founder, The New School. Like its predecessor, the University in Exile Consortium will allow endangered scholars the freedom and safety to continue their academic inquiry.
To learn more about The University in Exile Consortium, please visit https://newuniversityinexileconsortium.org.
REFERENCES:
Todd N, Shaw L. Aiding émigré scholars and promoting the development of the American social sciences. Transatlantic Perspectives. https://www.transatlanticperspectives.org/entry.php?rec=105.
The New School. The New School Joins Forces with Universities Across the Country to Assist Endangered Scholars. https://blogs.newschool.edu/news/2018/08/the-new-school-joins-forces-with-universities-across-the-country-to-assist-endangered-scholars/#.W6q-vC3MzBI