Migration stories

"Do you know what it means to leave everything you have as a human being, for you to leave your family to leave your childhood, memories and go to a country where you are a total stranger to start life over again?  -
                                                    -Nigerian refugee

No, we don't know what it means.  Most of us in this country don't know what that means at all.  We cannot imagine.  And so when people here see refugees, we think... I don't know ...I think we think that maybe these people --refugees-- are greedy and selfish, they want what we have.  Maybe they see this country as an easy life, (and for many of us who hate refugees life is easy.  It's so easy we don't see how it could possibly be anything but easy for anyone else).  I think that is what we think.

Forgive us.  We are blinded by our own privilege.  We cannot see you.  We cannot hear you.  You remind us our own complicity in a "dirty rotten" system that gives some people much more than others (adjectives courtesy of Dorothy Day).  We don't like to be reminded of this.  So we hate you.

You think I exaggerate?  You think that people in this country don't really hate refugees?  Let me tell you this: a few months ago I went to a briefing here by a big civil rights group who was revealing the results of a nationwide survey they had done on attitudes of US citizens towards immigrants and you know what they found? 

The word "refugee" now tests worse than "illegal immigrant".  Really.

So don't believe the xenophobes when they say they don't have a problem with LEGAL immigration, that it's only the ILLEGAL ones they hate.  They feel threatened and vulnerable and so they lash out at the easiest target: those who are still more vulnerable than they themselves.  But I digress.

I saw two really good documentaries about migration today at the Silverdocs Documentary Film Festival here in Washington DC.

The first was called The Infinite Border, by Jose Manuel Sepúlveda from Mexico.  It was about the journey of Central Americans northwards through Mexico to hop on trains on their way to the United States.  There is much waiting and hiding to avoid the Migra.  Some get caught in Mexico, in Guatemala and deported over and over again only to try again because in the words of one young man, "what else can you do"?

Then I saw a movie by Paul Rowley called Seaview about a very surreal place in Ireland: an abandoned amusement park on the sea shore that has been converted into a sort of living prison for asylum seekers from all over the world.  You can see a trailer for it below.  The quote above comes from a Nigerian woman who was interviewed in this movie and I thought her words were hauntingly relevant to the immigration debate in this country, they explain so much of the irrational xenophobia that I've had such a hard time understanding lately. 

Both movies were really well done. Excellent cinematography.  Sepúlveda did a great job at capturing the heaviness of time --the time they spent waiting for the trains-- with these long, slow panning shots.  And the sense of isolation and rejection at the end as the camera slowly pans across this endless dark gray wall in the desert --yeah that wall-- which workers are still constructing, just drives the point home even more. 

But Seaview, I thought, had something extra.  Narrative voice overs with still shots of inanimate objects, empty rooms, dusty furniture-- a bizarre juxtaposition.  And sometimes, as in the case of the Nigerian woman, you never see the person's face, only hear their voice.  And when they translate, the subtitles fade in and out in the picture with the person not under it, like they normally are.  It made their words seem less removed, less translated from speaker to audience, more a part of them.  Their words.  Their stories.  Owned by them.  It was very moving.

Just two of the great films you can catch this weekend at the Silverdocs.  Check it out.