“He tortures toys, just for fun": The Rotten State of Immigration Politics in 2023
The Cost of Being Treated Like Playthings (& scroll to the end for an inspiring new newsletter)
Let’s start 2023 by talking about the 1995 film Toy Story. Alongside the beloved and well-franchised world of Woody and Buzz and friends, the first film in the Toy Story series introduced an adolescent villain, Sid. Let’s quote from the Disney wiki:
Sidney "Sid" Phillips is the main antagonist of the 1995 Disney Pixar animated film, Toy Story. He was Andy's troubled next door neighbor. Unlike his neighbor, he did extremely horrid things to his toys instead of treating them with love and care, until he learned to his horror that the toys were really alive, which gave him such a fright that he vowed to change his ways.
As Rex (the toy dinosaur) describes, “He tortures toys, just for fun.”
I couldn’t help but think about Sid at the close of 2022. On Christmas eve, amidst one of the coldest winters on record, more than one hundred men, women, and children stepped off a bus that had transported them from Texas to Washington D.C. This was not a new stunt for Texas Governor, Greg Abbott. He loves to pack up buses of people on a semi-regular basis and send them on lengthy routes to sanctuary cities across the country.
Abbott’s actions are similar, of course, to those of Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis. His more widely publicized stunt over the summer found a plane full of immigrants deceived and confused when they landed at Martha’s Vineyard. In a commentary for Salon, we questioned the lessons such cruel acts might offer to the world at large. We wrote there about how even progressive outlets treat immigrants as playthings: “As usual, the news is focused on talking about immigrants, not on talking with them.”
When politicians treat people like cargo, the longterm lessons taught to the American public are profound. We cease to be seen as human. The lasting effects of racial bias can be seen in how nearly half of medical trainees believe that Black patients are less receptive to pain. Similar to how white supremacy shapes the experiences of individuals in medical offices every day, how does the gleeful logistics of politicized human trafficking lead to a lack of care or action when it comes to immigration policy?
When politicians treat us like cargo, we cease to be seen as human.
Like Toy Story’s Sid, dismantling and harming toys, politicians are all too eager to use the limbs and bodies and faces of immigrants for punditry.
Of course, there’s a crucial difference here: Sid was a villain in Toy Story because he didn’t know he was actually harming individuals that were alive with feeling and desire. The actions of elected leaders in the U.S. are made knowing they are torturing and harming families, “just for fun.” It’s a perverse realization that can be impressed upon even the youngest members of our society—if an anxious plastic dinosaur can see the vile nature of such acts, surely the rest of us can as well.
There’s a crucial difference here: Sid was a villain in Toy Story because he didn’t know he was actually harming individuals that were alive with feeling and desire.
As we write this, the U.S. House of Representatives has failed—for the second day in a row (and the first time in more than 100 years)--to elect a Speaker of the House. We agree with House Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries, that it doesn’t fall on democrats to save the GOP from “their dysfunction.”
And yet, neither party is off the hook when it comes to the shameful inaction around humane immigration policy. Progressives had two years to do even less than the bare minimum. The best they could muster: not parading immigrants on chartered buses and planes.
Every day that congress is at a stalemate to act is another day wasted and a demonstration of just how little this country cares for its most marginalized and most essential members.
Despite being treated like America’s playthings, immigrants are not without political agency. We may not vote, but our voices are heard, are shared, and are here to confront you with our humanity every week in 2023.
Happy New Year to everyone except Govs. Abbott, DeSantis, and members of the U.S. Congress.
Propina
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See you next week.