immigrant

By @buttronica: I ramble and maybe I’m too dark at times, but damn!

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poniesEconomists say once a person has been unemployed for six months it is highly unlikely they will reenter the workforce.

It’s been a year since I was fired from my job and I feel like a BIG GIANT LOSER.

It wasn’t anything I did in particular. I thought for sure that one time I asked Floyd Mayweather if “he likes to take his work home with him” would do me in, alas, it was far more uneventful.

“We’ve decided not to renew your contract.”

“Um, OK.”

And it’s not like I’m totally unemployed. I regularly walk a dog named Jimmy Fallon — this causes great confusion when I nonchalantly say, “Jimmy Fallon growled at me today,” (though for the most part he is quite lovely, other than eating his own poop).

Mas…By @buttronica: I ramble and maybe I’m too dark at times, but damn!

Can you spot the Latino in this photograph?

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salvadorlitvakI’m pretty sure I was the only redhead at the NYU Latino Law Students Association Gala in the spring of 1990. The food was delicious, my date looked stunning, and I was glad I had jumped on the opportunity when I received the LALSA invitation.

My journey to that moment began 25 years earlier. I was born in Santiago, Chile in 1965: a third generation Chilean on my father’s side (whose people came from Odessa), and first generation on my mother’s side, who arrived when she was 12 from Hungary.

We left Chile in 1970 after the election of socialist president Salvador Allende. For Mom, socialism was close enough to the Soviet regime she’d fled in Hungary.

I started kindergarten at P.S. 81 in the Bronx. With a curly mop of flaming red hair and speaking only Spanish, I immediately embarked on a lifelong career of not fitting in. I learned English fast, but I still felt like an outsider. I got into X-Men comics because I identified with the mutants.

Mas…Can you spot the Latino in this photograph?

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‘Meet an (orange is the new black) Immigrant’ (video)

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Thought experiment? Guerrilla theater? A prank?

When Sergio Mieja (he’s @SMieja95 on the Twitter) got the idea for this video, he didn’t know exactly what the message was. He just wanted to see who supported Donald Trump.

“But as I was filming it,” he explains, “many of the people I met expressed their feeling and emotions towards this subject and it was then I knew what the purpose of this video was and realized it had a much more significant meaning. Please share this message with your friends and family.”

Sometimes you just need to break the cycle

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farewellI always said I wouldn’t grow up to be like my mother.

When I saw her, I saw a woman who wouldn’t leave her husband. A woman who didn’t put her children first.

I grew angry that my father’s temper prevented me from having teenage sleepovers. I grew resentful that they wouldn’t let me go to my high school football games. And I grew bitter as I got older, because she chose not to leave him.

Mas…Sometimes you just need to break the cycle

What the past can teach immigrant advocates of today

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[POCHO amiga Nancy Landa aka Mundo Citizen was a DREAMer before it was cool. Brought to the U.S. as an undocumented child, she was elected student body president at Cal State Northridge. And then she got deported.]

In paying my respects to those who came before me and their struggle due to their legal status, I share an excerpt of this 1995 L.A. Times article featuring the first undocumented student body president of California State University, Northridge, Vladimir Cerna (1996-1997), about his life and advocacy efforts to fight the Donald Trumps of his time.

Mas…What the past can teach immigrant advocates of today

Dear President Donald Trump: Confessions of an Anchor Baby

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cucaanchorbabyhistoryJanuary 20, 2017

Dear President Donald Trump:

Now that you’ve become our new emperor, I mean, the 45th President of the United States, I have a confession: I’m an “anchor baby.” Given that you represent the best white hope to “Make America Great Again!” I’m confessing in exchange to be pardoned for my birthright citizenship crime.

Honestly, I didn’t know that being born to Mexican immigrants on work visas violated the law or that pesky little thing called the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. If I would’ve known of your novel interpretation of our Constitution, I mean your Constitution, I would’ve pleaded in my mother’s womb to be aborted.

Oh, I forgot, Republicans don’t believe in abortions. Does the GOP make exceptions for brown fetuses?

Mas…Dear President Donald Trump: Confessions of an Anchor Baby

Happy Rosh HaShanah from the Jews of Tijuana! Happy 5776! (video)

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tijuanaMexico, like the United Estates, is a “nation of immigrants.”

In the 1900s, Tijuana welcomed Jewish refugees fleeing wars, hate and poverty in Europe, Asia and the Mideast.

Tijuana Jews, the story of the extended Artenstein family, has become a POCHO Rosh HaShanah (New Year) tradition ever since we noticed rosh-ha-shanah rhymes with Tijuana.

The Jewish year 5776 begins at sundown Sunday, September 13. We wish all who celebrate a happy, healthy, peaceful, loving, prosperous, and sweet New Year. In Ladino — the hybrid Spanish-Hebrew language Jews spoke in Andaluz before the Inquisition — that’s ANYADA BUENA I DULSE!

Mas…Happy Rosh HaShanah from the Jews of Tijuana! Happy 5776! (video)

Ramiro Gomez remembers ‘The Forgotten – Los Olvidados’ (video)

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ramiroLos Angeles artist Ramiro Gomez, Jr. first captured our attention when he began placing carboard cutouts of immigrant laborers in front of fancy mansions in Beverly Hills. Why? He wanted to celebrate the workers who are usually invisible by making them visible for all to see.

Gomez subsequently began creating cutouts memorializing immigrants who died on their journey to El Norte, and installed these new figures in the Sonoran desert on the border with Mexico.

Gomez and his partner David Feldman documented the project in Los Olivados — The Forgotten. Their documentary — which has been playing the film festival circuit for a year — is now online for the first time.

Here’s what they wrote on YouTube:

Mas…Ramiro Gomez remembers ‘The Forgotten – Los Olvidados’ (video)

Quetzal tells a tale of urban survival in ‘The Coyote Hustle’ (video)

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quetzalEast Los band Quetzal dedicates this video to the street vendors of L.A., the only major U.S. city where street vending is illegal. To learn more about the efforts to help hard-working families like the ones in this video, check out the Los Angeles Street Vendor Campaign on Facebook. Quetzal is the collaborative project of Quetzal Flores (guitar), Martha González (lead vocals, percussion), Tylana Enomoto (violin), Juan Pérez (bass), Peter Jacobson (cello), and Alberto Lopez (percussion).

Mas…Quetzal tells a tale of urban survival in ‘The Coyote Hustle’ (video)

Pocho Ocho changes to expect after Indios + Chinos > Mexicanos

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immigrationscaleChina and India now top Mexico as leading sources of new immigrants to the United Estates, new data reveals.

What are the Pocho Ocho top changes we can expect from these evolving patterns in immigration?

8. Indian actors will replace Puerto Ricans playing Mexicans on TV

7. San Jose, California will be known as Sanjay, California

6. White people will be considered “the model minority”

Mas…Pocho Ocho changes to expect after Indios + Chinos > Mexicanos

My True Story: ‘At first I said F*CK YOUR DACA!’

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dacacardThis process was a long one. At first it was about me saying fuck your DACA. Then finding out ways to help my sister pay for hers. Then having my dad call me out on my bullshit because he could have benefited from one. Then me trying to get a green card instead. Then that not following thru cos shit happens. Then trying to get my shit together. Then finding out that my parents could potentially benefit. Then finding out that they didn’t. This thing right here. This thing that wasn’t given to us. This piece of document that many fought thru sleepless nights and courageous actions. This thing right here. Love you mom. Love you dad. Love you sister. Peace.

PREVIOUSLY ON JULIO SALGADO:

Mas…My True Story: ‘At first I said F*CK YOUR DACA!’

Day laborers sing ‘Ese Gúey No Paga’ (That dude doesn’t pay)

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thatdudeNot only is getting the work really fracking hard – you have to hang outside Home Depot and chase contractors’ trucks – but lots of times day laborers work all day and then get ripped off for their pay.

This cumbia music video from Los Jornaleros del Norte (The Day Laborers of the North) and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network highlights the fight against wage theft.

“Ese gúey no paga,” they sing. “That dude doesn’t pay!”

Mas…Day laborers sing ‘Ese Gúey No Paga’ (That dude doesn’t pay)

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