We have done four issues on immigration and migration. When you start hearing the same things over and over, you have to wonder whether you’re asking the right questions to the right people.
The same talking points around immigration policy recycled with every presidency, every campaign, and every talk show. The political rhetoric, however, creates a theoretical, emotional world that exists far from the border itself. The border remains more or less the same.
We wrote this in August 2021; our thoughts, and the border, remain mostly unchanged. As we return to an issue-based format, we also return to the topic for a fifth time. The next eight weeks will be dedicated to understanding migration as policy, not as a political question. It’s not a question without emotional weight, but as Elisa Gonzalez writes:
“Perhaps the first thing is to abandon outrage, not because it is unjustified but because it is profoundly individual, rooted in the selfishness of dramatized empathy. The next step is to ask what’s actually happening and why, why, why.”