Must Read

I didn't link to brownfemipower's amazing post about la familia and immigration, because I wanted to say something. I wanted to argue for open borders. Then I thought that when I get round to writing about open borders then those comments should stand alone.

brownfemipower covers so much in her post including transience:

In Michigan, it’s different. Detroit, Flint or Saginaw may have established Mexican communities–but in the community I grew up in, there wasn’t one single family that had grandparents or even parents who had been born there. All of us whose families had settled in the neighborhood had multiple friends that disappeared after a year–their families moved back to Mexico or Texas or over to other farming states for work. Two of my best friends as a child left Michigan in the second grade. Only one wound up coming back to Michigan–when we were both in high school.

And as somebody who worked in the fields–I can remember falling in love with a dark-skinned, lightly muscled boy who smiled at me every time I walked past. He was there for one season and I never saw him again. A common happening in migrant work.

These disappearances were very upsetting to me, but I lived–just like I know the people who disappeared lived as well. We’re all used to it, and we’ve learned to accommodate shadow figures, shadow relationships into our lives.

Go read brownfemipower now.