Transcript: CAROLINA RUBIO MACWRIGHT on the Intersections of Immigration, Assimilation, and Earth Based Wisdom /226
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Ayana Young Hello and welcome to For The Wild Podcast. I'm Ayana Young. Today I'm speaking with Carolina Rubio MacWright.
Carolina Rubio MacWright And so I think the playfulness of art and giving ourselves permission to play and imagine a better world is what I love about the arts, and the policy and the law is just an opportunity to understand that we can rebuild things, we can do it again, just the same way that we do with clay, you know, like things are fragile, they break but we can build them again.
Ayana Young Carolina Rubio MacWright is an artist, immigration lawyer and activist fighting for immigrant and humanitarian rights. She believes ART is the most powerful way of bringing humans together and dissolving walls and cages that separate us. She has thus mixed her law and art into a Non Profit called Touching Land that uses hands on experiential arts to empower, build bridges and decolonize food.
Well, Carolina thank you so much for coming on For The Wild today. I really respect your work, and I am so looking forward to this conversation.
Carolina Rubio MacWright Thank you so much and I thank you for having me. I'm excited to talk to you.
Ayana Young Well Carolina, I’d like to start our conversation in recognition of Touching Land. I’ve heard you share that this name recognizes the power and memory that physical land holds for many immigrants, and I think about how the United States is responsible for the ongoing displacement of Indigenous peoples throughout Central America, who are being forced to leave because of environmental degradation, climate change, etc. And then upon their arrival in the United States, so many are forced to relinquish their knowledge and practice of land tending in order to survive, and this unfolding is something that I rarely hear discussed in the media; the intersections of immigration, assimilation, and a loss of Earth-based wisdom. So, as an introduction to Touching Land, I wonder if you could speak to this reality a bit, and how the act of working with the land, in any form, can rekindle a sense of empowerment, safety, and pride?
Carolina Rubio MacWright Yes, absolutely. So first, I want to acknowledge that I'm standing in Lenni Lenape land that was stolen, that is the land that I’m in. I'm in New Jersey, New York, so it is of the Lenape people. Yeah, so I mean, there's so much connectivity and so much meaning behind, you know, just the name of Touching Land and the work that we do in connecting land with people and especially their rights, because so much of who we are, is forgotten when we become immigrants. I'm an immigrant myself and so we are forced to assimilate to cultures and systems that are not part of us, you know, and that happens a lot with the Indigenous women that we work with in Touching Land.
So it's really special to create a space where we honor those traditions, where we honor, you know, the knowledge and you know, the incredible wealth of information that these Indigenous people have and that immigrants have as a whole, where they can feel seen, and they can see, they can feel like it's okay to, to embrace our uniqueness. You know, it's not easy to navigate systems where you are seen as a, you know, just basically you come in as an immigrant and you're expected to slave yourself without getting even minimum, or livable wages, let alone you know, practice your culture or find what the land is supposed to give, and what you're supposed to feel as a community, culturally. So it's been really a privilege and something beautiful to be able to build Touching Land, this nonprofit where women, immigrants, and also men come to a space where they can touch clay, work with clay work with food, and use it as a tool to not only empower themselves, but you know, force visibility into spaces of privilege, like the amazing studio, that is Brooklyn Clay, where we base most of our classes that, but also just the ability to, to come together as a community, and just be able to feel seen, I think that's one of the biggest things that we do at Touching Land.
Ayana Young For years, people have pointed out that the notion that immigrants are criminals simply isn’t true, and on top of that, undocumented folks are paying taxes like the rest of us, but for as long as the United States has existed, this white supremacist myth of immigrants and migrants as a social drain has really occupied a permanent space in our collective imagination, in part because it conveniently distorts the reality that without the exploitation of immigrants and migrants, the United States could not function; the people who don’t want immigrants in this country, are also the same people whose lives depend on them for labor and care. Do you think debunking these myths will ever be enough, or is it time to move into a new narrative of migration altogether? Where do immigrants need to be made visible where they aren’t?
Carolina Rubio MacWright You know, I think that it's, it's gonna take everything. I mean, I like starting from the beginning, where our immigration laws were drafted by a bunch of white guys, there were only 15 women in Congress at the time, there were no immigrants in that room and they were a bunch of business owners. And when World War II happened, we needed help from Central American workers so that we could harvest the land. And so we brought in all those immigrants, and we said,” Yeah, you can stay”, and then we continued to just slightly change the law, because as you've learned with Trump in the last four years, you know that the power of immigration and policy really is held by the President.
So we've seen a situation where we've created a system where we depend on immigrants, but their invisibility, and keeping them essentially enslaved is what continues to give us, you know, very cheap groceries and very cheap produce and labor. So this invisibility, as you're saying, is, as you know, we're all benefiting from migrant workers being mistreated, and, you know, Tyson Company, mistreating workers as well. So it's this idea of this dependency, where 11 million undocumented workers really hold our economy. So to me, it's a combination of understanding our history, understanding the whitewashing, like why laws are drafted in a way that corporations are not held accountable, but we punish the people that are doing the work that we don't want to do, right? The American citizen does not want to be in the field picking up strawberries.
And so we have to not only debunk and understand that these workers don't commit crimes, you know, over 30% of Fortune 500 companies are built by immigrants, we are risk-takers. We have to debunk and we also have to come to grips with the fact that first of all policies have to change but also we have to look into our lives and how we're choosing to live and how we're choosing this issue and navigate this issue because it is connected with everything. Like where are you buying your produce? Where are you supporting your domestic workers, your nannies, like are you paying them fairly? So it's a conversation that we have a lot at Touching Land with some of our workshops where we bring these conversations that we don’t necessarily have on the daily, but we bring them to the forefront and we make sure that those issues are connected where people were outraged by border crisis and detention centers and separation of children, not realizing that separations happen every day in our country when people are deported for committing a tiny misdemeanor or just not having a driver's license, it's our inability to have created these systems effectively in order to navigate this world without being a slave of capitalism.
So I think we have to come to terms with the power that we all have as individuals, in generating conversations. And I think nations have to come together with the fact that climate migration is a reality that is happening right now, that will continue to happen, and how are nations going to come together and create policies that will not be separating children in the future in other countries? I spoke at the UN a few weeks ago, and I made sure that this was something that is in the forefront of people's, you know, policies where nations have to come together and understand that climate change is happening. And we're going to have more migration, and we're going to have more victims of climate change that are going to end up, you know, moving north. So I think it's a new way of seeing and understanding, like an awakening that we all have to have not only as an individual but also as a collective.
Ayana Young Yeah and you point out that one of the greatest barriers is that immigrants and migrants in this country remain separate from citizens for many different reasons, but one of them certainly being that the United States continues to be a deeply segregated country. And when citizens and migrants do interact with each other, it’s often in the context of labor, so there are certain power dynamics that color one’s perceptions. And this is one area where Touching Land really seeks to address this discrepancy in a holistic manner. Can you share more about how you see this changing narratives and relationships for immigrants?
Carolina Rubio MacWright Absolutely. When I founded Touching Land, we started doing workshops in nonprofits, mostly with domestic violence survivors, and, you know, victims, of just depression. And, you know, I really wanted to push the spaces like they're very sterile spaces in our cities and where we live, and this idea of segregation, which is pretty much very much alive all over. So I wanted to bring the students into a beautiful space where you would disrupt the space by just having your physical presence in there. And it was Brooklyn Clay, like the studio has been an incredible partner of ours, where they invited us to come in and so immigrants would come in and be sort of confused, what am I doing here? Is this really where I should be?
And so it's been beautiful to see how immigrants through the four-week or six-week programs, how this idea of no you belong here, and how I've laws are not going to change, we're going to change just the social dynamics that are happening in communities. And so women would come in, they would feel a little bit shy, maybe they don't belong in the space, they don't know where things are. And you could even see the change in their body postures as time progressed, and how they felt like they belonged in this community, in a culture of ceramics, which was beautiful. So women, you know, immigrant women would leave almost making friendships with the studio owners and other students that were there. So we started pushing those narratives, and then we started creating the Building Bridges Program where we bring empowered, already empowered immigrants, because there's something really beautiful about giving someone a lump of clay, right, a lump of land and telling them, you know, “Give yourself permission to imagine whatever you want and create it for yourself.” And so there's that freedom that immigrants don't feel every day, you know, there's a blanket of fear and a blanket of “my life could be shattered at any second”, that immigrants navigate with, that mental health toll that they're able to release and ignore when they're working with clay.
And so after they go through the Know Your Rights, you know, because that's an important part of the curriculum, where they understand their rights. They understand their inalienable human rights that nobody can take away from them. Once they go through the program, they can now join a Building Bridges Program where they're placed in a room with more privileged white people that attend the studio or that live in the neighborhood and they can sit down and create something together, where they can have conversations and they can see the commonalities of just being human. You know, they can see their humanity And they can see each other reflected. And so it's a beautiful, sort of symbiotic relationship that happens that really, you know, those connections, human connections will survive and will dictate whatever narrative you tell in your mind of the immigrant that you might have heard it through the news. Now you have somebody to connect it to where it no longer is a myth, but it is a reality is, you know, that person drinks Dunkin Donuts, or they know they did the same shape as I did. And so these simple commonalities really destroy those walls and those barriers that we have of segregation. So it's been beautiful to see the transformation that has happened through time.
Ayana Young Yeah, and I wanted to talk a bit about child separation. Child separation is something that will forever define the Trump administration, but I don’t think it is talked about nearly enough because it is such an abhorrence, and for Americans to speak about this, would require us to acknowledge that these tremendous human rights violations took place as we went about our daily lives. But you are adamant that all of us have a role in this story, and at minimum, it is our responsibility to feel the anger and grief of these stories, in order to ensure that history is told correctly. In recognition of this, I’d like to begin by pointing out for listeners that the Trump administration had always known that they would be unable to reunite children separated at the border; this wasn’t just incompetence or poor planning, or a mistake - this was premeditated. Can you speak about the pilot test run that took place in 2017 in El Paso, what the administration learned from that, and what this all means for reunification? What has reunification looked like for the 2,000 plus children that were separated, and what is going to happen to the 600 children who are currently without parents?
Carolina Rubio MacWright Yeah, I mean, I think just even admitting that that happened, feels like such a nightmare and having children at the time that were very small, you know, I took trips down to detention centers and organized strangers through Instagram and Facebook to come down with me and represent families for seven days at a time at Dilley Detention Center, you know I think that the pilot program that happened in 2017, is just not talked enough. People don't know that that happened and how CBP essentially ran a zero-tolerance program in the summer in El Paso where they started separating families, they started separating kids and parents. And what happened with the pilot program is it was a complete failure. Customs and Border Protection actually had to report what happened during this time, and they recommended to the Trump administration, you know, insisted that the program was going to fail because they were unable to track parents and children. They just couldn't, and they started deporting people before they could get their information.
So essentially, with immigration, it's like they didn't even have a program that could connect parents and children. They started putting children in the unaccompanied minors track, which does not allow for the other, like the other program to make a connection. And you would think that they would at least have bracelets for children and parents in order to track them. But they didn't even do that. So the pilot program is a failure, Customs and Border Protection informed the administration the program is going to fail, you're going to lose children, you're going to lose parents, you're not going to be able to reunify them. And yet, they still went ahead and did it. And you know, I think that that is the part that angers me the most that they knew they were going to fail, and that they would lose this incredible bond that you're never going to be able to repair.
And so being in detention centers when reunification was happening in July, in 2018, you know, mothers were given pieces of paper with an age and maybe a name of their child, or the child would be given a piece of paper not even like a form but like a scratch piece of paper. This is how absolutely abhorrent and sloppy that this execution of the policy was. And so the trauma, the immense fear, the shoving people from the detention center, to the other detention center, is something that I'm personally never going to forget and that I’m going to continue to talk about so that people realize the complete negligence and competence.
And truly, I think that torture was the object, these poor children that whose parents were deported, in the pilot because most of the children that were lost, that we know of, we're, you know, we're from the pilot program, those children are probably not going to be able to be reunified with their parents, because some of them are probably dead. They were seeking refuge, you know, they were seeking asylum, which means they were persecuted in their country of origin. How do you ask a five-year-old to describe? It took me four months with three other lawyers to find a little girl that had a pink shirt, brown eyes and brown hair, a three-year-old won't be able to tell you or describe their parents or know their parents name necessarily. So this is, you know, this is what we're dealing with. And I think those children are going to end up most likely not being reunified, I mean, we know that the Trump administration was releasing some of the information which they were keeping from, from advocates, which is unacceptable. But I guarantee you that the information that they have is not going to be very helpful, because they just didn't have the system in order to, you know, to execute this properly, so that information is lost because it was never captured. So these children will most likely end up in foster care and maybe up for adoption, if that's the track unless there's still some litigation happening. But it's something that we as people that live in this country and Americans are going to have to deal with and are going to have to confront, which I think will be hard, but is necessary in order to never again separate children from parents.
Ayana Young Yeah, and I’d like to ask about the psychological ramifications of these forced separations, but I also know there is a tremendous amount of trauma that develops just from being inside any one of the detention facilities across the country, regardless of whether or not you have a child or are with your family. As someone who is advocating on behalf of immigrants, I wonder if you can speak to the truth of what we are subjecting people to in these facilities on a daily basis?
Carolina Rubio MacWright I mean it's really hard because what the public doesn't know is we have no access to the facilities as a whole. So like I've never seen, where they sleep, where they eat, where the children are, if they're, you know, the alleged daycare, like where it is, we have no access to that. We were graced and thankfully, ICE allows us to have a sort of trailer inside detention where immigrants can come and see us, but we cannot see them. So they can come and meet us, but we can't go and ask for them. They are prisoners, you know, they are treated like you know, you're, first of all these immigrants are fleeing horrific conditions, whether it's violence or climate, you know, flooding whatever it is, they're fleeing and that is the only alternative they have like they have to they have to leave because if they stay, they will die. That's the only reason why you would pack up your family or yourself and leave and they are greeted with uncertainty. Number one, they don't know what's going to happen. They're shoved around from CBP, they're forced into a very, very cold hielera, the icebox, at first, and then they're shoved into a detention center. And they're treated like animals, you know the water is contaminated in some areas, when women come and they have, you know, they need mental support, they give them an Advil, you know, I've seen women that have been suicidal and 15 minutes later, they come in with an Advil, they gave them an Advil and that was supposed to solve their mental health issue of being, you know, detained for days, which shouldn't be happening. But right now we have people and children that have been detained for over 140 days, there have been children that have been detained for over a year waiting to get their case resolved, when there's no reason for that to be happening.
Carolina Rubio MacWright There had been a pilot program that was very successful in the last year of the Obama year, where this program allowed for people to be released, and then just come and report and not have to be held in a prison setting where you have no freedom, you can't receive anything. I mean, I smuggled stickers, I can't bring anything in but letters. So I bring letters from children, so that they can feel seen because they feel forgotten. And so the mental toll of extra trauma after you've experienced a traumatic episode is really tough. Because I think one aspect that we don't think about is you're stuck in this detention for a long time, where you can't really talk to people, you can't really feel like you're a part of a community, you don't know what's happening to your case, this, there's this uncertainty, then you're released to your sponsor, which hopefully is somebody that you have trust with. And from there, you are forced to be in a community where you have no connections to language, no connection to religious organizations, no connection to anything, and you're expected to navigate in this world with zero tools. So I think it's pretty unbelievable that we have this system where there's no net of protection and support, but that they're expected to you know, it's a system that's designed for failure. They're designed to give up from being detained that long. And, you know, the brave ones linger, you know, like stay on and fight, which is most of them, but some of them give up along the way and they end up signing a removal order, they just essentially self deport because they can't live with uncertainty. It's not necessary. It's completely unnecessary, unfair, and a system that I hope the Biden administration destroys, there's no need for it. We need just programs that were established at the end of the Obama administration, where people can just come and check-in and they can sort of start their life again and not be detained like prisoners. Sorry, that was really winded. No, it's,
Ayana Young No, it’s necessary and I’m wondering what sort of reparations do you think need to be made to the children and families who have been forcibly separated from, you know, their parents or their families over the past couple of years?
Carolina Rubio MacWright I think, to begin with, if there's if we can reunify those parents with the children, I think that they need to be allowed to be residents immediately. And some sort of support, the way that refugees come in here, where they have a year of support, like financial and so on, I think that as a minimum, they should also get mental health, you know, the trauma of being separated from your parents for three months, not knowing what's happening, not to mention the abuse that happened in those facilities that didn't, you know, they weren't built in order to hold people this way. Like, there's a reason why we don't have orphanages in this country. And it's because we don't believe in the idea of an orphanage. That's why we don't have them.
And so it's unbelievable that during this time we traumatized these families, and the trust between child and parent is completely broken because they separated some of these mothers, they would tell them that they were giving the child a bath, and that's when they separated the child from the mother. So they didn't even get a chance to say goodbye, or I will see you or it's gonna be okay. Not to mention the touch. You know, we're not allowed to touch women or children inside a detention center. And I think that that's one of the most dehumanizing tools in the world. I mean, we're in a way we're seeing that right now with COVID, where like human connection and human touch is imperative for human survival. And we're not having that and how people in nursing homes are not able to be touched how, you know, I wonder children that have affection from teachers and friends are not getting that at home necessarily. And so I think there's so many layers of trauma and so many layers of invisible trauma and invisible torture that happened inside detention centers that how do you repair it? Like, how do you pay for reparations in that way, like, how can we? How do you even do that? I mean, for me, it's like, let's destroy detention centers and never have them again, because the trauma is immeasurable. So like, that's the first thing we should do. And we should be sure that history is written properly by the actors, the people that lived through this so that we can have a record of what happened. So I'm hopeful that, you know, I'm filled with hope that this administration, the next administration, Biden, Harris, will do the right thing. But also that us as community members take the right steps in order to make this wrong, right.
Ayana Young Yeah, and for awhile, it seemed like the narratives that was being pushed is that it was primarily men who were migrating from Central America to find work in the States and send money back to their families back home, but I’m also aware that the rates of femicide have only continued to increase in Central and South America due to colonialisms’ festering legacy of patriarchy...Can you speak to the gender dynamic of immigration? What is the makeup in detention facilities and who’s release is prioritized?
Carolina Rubio MacWright You know, it's interesting, because I grew up in Colombia and so I know the patriarchal system very well, which I think has made me I guess, I can read a situation very quickly, because I've seen it from a very young age, you know, the makeup in detention centers, their facilities are separated by sex. So women and and men are separated there, there was a detention center that addressed trans folks and, you know, there was huge abuse and, and a lot of resistance from ICE and CBP, to acknowledge individuals that wanted to transition or that needed to be in that trans pod. It took a lot of incredible advocates to bring that to fruition, but you know, it's happening. Luckily, now, there's, there's, there's a lot of advocates that are making sure that, you know, it's not just women and men, but it's also you know, LGBTQ communities.
And so the makeup of men during child separation, and during this zero-tolerance policy, you know, they were actually releasing men much more than women. I think the whole idea of this policy was to punish women that fled that femicide that is horrifically happening. And you know, it'll continue to engulf our Central and South American communities until we start changing those narratives from the top. But again, like colonialism is tough, it's tough to get over, especially in South and Central America where like, you know, the identity is almost unknown. Because, you know, I'll, I'll share quickly, just from the law perspective, like Colombian laws were copied from the Chileans, that copied it from the French and as a student, I could tell that our laws didn't go with our people, you know, they just did not fit our people. And so I think that there has to be an awakening and revamping of values and laws and systems, which I think we're seeing on a global level, at least recognizing Black Lives Matter and that our policing is wrong. So I think that the makeup of, you know, women and men is a little bit different.
Women continue to flee. I don't think there's a space you know, asylum doesn't recognize being a woman as a, as a, as a reason to migrate or like to get an approved asylum, which I really think it should, I think that would change things a lot. I think it's still really difficult to just navigate that when you're the immigrant and you're entering a society that is still very patriarchal, you know, even this society to me, not as much so the work that we do at Touching Land with women is very much about, you know, leaving domestic abuse situation, when there's oppression on every on every front, unfortunately, especially in this country, immigrant men, if they have a partner that is a woman, the woman most likely will have abuse at some point will experience abuse at some time in their lives. And so part of our program is about empowering and recognizing that there is no space for violence and that you can stand up without fearing for, for your life to be ending, right, if you stand up for you to end up being murdered.
So I think that those are realities in that we come in with that I think still, you know, like the patriarchy is still very much alive and that we have to continue to empower, empower women, and also tell them that it's okay to feel their feelings, just not in a violent way. I do a lot of workshops with men that have had violence and abusive histories. And it's really, it's really interesting that they don't have a space where they can feel their feelings and share their feelings. So 99% of the workshops, at the end end up with men crying their feelings and sharing a lot of their frustration. So I think that it's been lovely to see, to see the ability to transfer that anger and frustration into clay and not their spouses or their partners. But I think again, like it's not like you say, it's not talked about a lot, and it's, it's very much connected to this colonialism and this inability to understand your place in the world. And in the hierarchy of, of this society.
Ayana Young Yeah, and I’m thinking about how, with the slowing of the private prison industry, investors and corporations have set their sites on detention centers as a new source of profit. And, it’s more common for us to read about how major tech companies like Palantir, Microsoft, and Amazon are working with US federal immigration agencies, but less so do we think about the other sectors of industry that are making money off of the exploitation of migrants, both in and out of detention centers. Can you speak to this in terms of our consumerism, and how we can re-evaluate our buying practices through the lens of migrant justice? Do any specific corporations come to mind in terms of who should be avoided?
Carolina Rubio MacWright Absolutely, I mean, I think that as part of a society that, you know, like we buy so much, and seeing from the lens of immigration is important. There's a lot, I mean, tech companies especially, but also, just if you look at produce, if you look at Tyson Company, you look at Purdue, a lot of the companies out of Idaho, specifically, are very abusive towards immigrants. There was also a company, if you've seen in the airports, the googly eyes, they're everywhere, that company was known for abusing immigrants, they would get caught with basically enslaving immigrants, then they would deport all those immigrants and they would be fined yet again, like four months later for hiring, you know, undocumented immigrants and keeping them in unhygienic establishments, working them to death, and they would just get fined. I think the fine was $56,000. That was it.
So I think if you do again, like my rule of thumb is you go local, you make sure that you know where your produce is coming from. If you have a local farmer that you can support, like, that's important. I think that also clothing is also an area where there's a lot of abuse, not only locally, but also internationally. So understanding where your clothes are coming from, is also one, one thing that you can look into. I mean, every single sector of our economy is populating and using immigrants, mostly unfairly, because that's what we got used to. Right? Like that was like the rule. It's kind of like we're used to buying the dollar avocados, all of a sudden, it's going to be $2 for us to buy an avocado and everyone's going to be up in arms, but they won't be able to connect it back to the farm worker that's making, you know, 50 cents an hour or something obnoxious like that. And they need to be able to to have a living wage. And so it's better for you to maybe spend that extra dollar on a, you know, a chain that is clean, locally, again, I think is the best thing, and have a greater impact that way.
I mean, I'll share quickly that most of the students that I've worked with, the average salary was $8 an hour in New York City, never got a raise. There was a woman I met that never got a raise in 10 years. She hadn't gotten a raise and she was making $8 an hour and so it's making sure that you as a buyer or as an employer, you're being fair, even if you're paying under the table like, are you being fair? So I think it's, it's, you have to look like you're saying, like the lens of with the lens of immigration a lot, I would say not only is it like your lifestyle and the choices that you're making with where you're buying, but even taking a little bit of time and investigating those companies that you're supporting, I think that that's the first step of really, truly being committed to to a cause.
Ayana Young I do think that the Biden presidency is a rebuke of the past four years; and certainly some of Trump’s policy as it relates to immigration, but at the same time, the Clinton administration ran on an anti-immigrant platform, the Obama administration deported thousands of Central American children, and Democrats have passed and supported trade deals that have decimated the economies of Central America, so it’s clear that neither party has ever been pro-immigrant, and I think, Biden is trying to obscure this reality by appointing a diverse group to head various departments, but this doesn’t mean that we can stop paying attention to border policy for the next four years. So, as an immigration lawyer, what policy do you want to see addressed? Should we be pushing for a moratorium on all deportations, detentions, and raids? Legal status for all currently undocumented immigrants? Getting rid of exploitative visa programs? What is the most important thing for us to hold Biden to in terms of immigrants?
Carolina Rubio MacWright Oh, my gosh, there's so much. I think that the first thing is, you know, DACA. I feel very deeply and people, the majority of Americans agree that people with DACA should live and be here. But most importantly, like, I think DACA is just a bandaid, right? We have to look at policy as a whole. I mean, I think the 11 million undocumented people that have been living here for 20-40 years, should be allowed to, you know, get a pardon and, and just stop living in fear, because that's not good for communities.
You know, I talk a lot about Postville, Iowa, and the raid that happened there, that was before the last one in Louisiana last year, I believe it was the biggest read in the nation. And you take away a huge group of immigrants from a community and it decimated the community. There was a study done over a lapse of 10 years, and it proved how imperative and important immigrants are in our communities. Mental Health went down, obesity went up. I mean, the economy just went to the ground up in this little town in Iowa. So to me, it's, you know, we have to start from the beginning. Like we need to have immigration reform, which hopefully we get the Senate, you know, go GA, but I think we have to start from the beginning. And we have to start with policies.
You know, we haven't really revamped our policy since the 60s. And we need to have immigrants in the room in order to make policies that are going to affect us. Why weren't we part of the making and drafting of these laws? So for me, it's granting permanent residency to the 11 million undocumented which a lot are married to US citizens, but can't, you know, they fear going back and depending on the consulate is too risky, so they stay. I think that absolutely doing away with detention centers is a must. The problem is a lot of economies and little towns depend on these detention centers because they provide competitive salaries. So for me, it's working with these smaller border towns and working and injecting their economy and creating, like, for me, it's regenerating the soil, why don't we start regenerating the soil and try and bring some programming to these towns so that they can, you know, we can push the economy up, there's going to have to be a lot of bridge-building in border towns, not only in Mexico, but also in the US, where we create some partnerships along the way, so that, you know, it's no longer this, this huge separation.
You know, I talk a lot with my Indigenous community friends, where we talk about how natural it was to migrate north and migrate south, and how there are these natural roots that came with the land, and with time, no different than the way that birds or fish, or butterflies migrate. And so this invisible line of separation needs to start becoming a little bit, you know, less tangible and a little more fluid. So I think there's a lot of areas where policy has to change, there has to be, you know, a lot of communities on the border depend on both countries. And so what, why don't we create a program where there's, there's more flexibility, where we invite farmers to come in and work, you know, people don't want to come and live here and learn a new language and a culture, they want to stay home, but they want to be able to work the land, and in the 80s, we change that law, and we basically told people to choose either the US or their country, and Central America, most people stayed here. And so opening up the border, so that they can be more of that flexibility, especially thinking in the rhythm of, of the land and of seasons and that necessity of for work.
So I think I think there has to be a lot of conversations, and to me, it's getting, you know, artists, geologists, you know, people that understand wildlife involved in those conversations, because you know, we can't see things from just one view anymore, everything is interconnected, like climate is going to have an effect on immigration. What are the policies that we need to be looking forward into in order to be ready for this?
So I'm hopeful that they will have at least some diversity that will bring about some, you know, some light into issues and how important the intersectionality of things is. But I think that there has to be a huge revamp of policies and understanding why migration, and how do we support these Central American countries that we have decimated? How do we bring them back to fruition without intervening but how do we support them so that they can, you know, they no longer have this femicide. They no longer have to flee due to flooding? Like how can we address all of those things?
Ayana Young Yeah, I do think staying informed and pushing for policy and calling in representatives is absolutely vital. But I'd like to ask you, in your opinion, what does allyship truly look like for immigrants and migrants?
Carolina Rubio MacWright You know, for me it's in everything that we do. There's a potential and there's a possibility to generate change and to generate conversation around how, you know, like, just as you said, like, looking at how we look through the lenses of immigration when we are making justice for immigrants, when we're buying things. So for me, it's making sure that you are responsible with your workers, if you're hiring immigrant workers, that you're responsible with your choices of who you are choosing, who you're electing, you know, who are you supporting? You know, it goes on every single level of our humanity. Are you informing yourself about the land that you're standing in? You know, a lot of areas in Arizona, the border changed them and you know, the people were just there, they weren't really immigrants. They lived in that land and the line of separation moved on them.
So to me, it's supporting, you know, writers that are immigrants, supporting small businesses that are built by immigrants. It's making sure that you are paying a fair salary that you are standing up if you need to, and protesting, like being uncomfortable, for me the great growth really happens when you become uncomfortable and you are willing to, to change your perspective, I think the American way is very much “I know every answer”. You never hear somebody say, “Oh, I didn't know that, or I don't really understand it, let me think about it”. It feels almost like a weakness. And so it's giving yourself enough grace to embrace the fact that you don't know anything. And that we're all in process, we're all learning. So reach out, maybe you know, take a class, or contact your local nonprofit that deals with immigrants and see if you can maybe mentor a young immigrant or maybe help help translate or help a mom that struggling at home, I think the more connections that we have, on a personal level, that's when change happens, you can donate as much money and that can have an impact, but it'll never change you the way that it'll change you if you have a connection with an immigrant in a moment where you shared something personal, or you built something together, you cooked a meal together.
So I think it's reflecting and also giving yourself some grace and understanding that you have the power in changing the narrative, whether at your workspace, if it means to, to amplify somebody that is of color. So I think it's, we can start immediately, just by doing an evaluation of our lives and seeing how we can we can support and continue to be present, and make sure that history is told correctly, and that we don't just rush through zero tolerance policy and the horrors that the Trump administration did with the Muslim ban, and so on. So I think there's a lot of power that we have, and I'm excited to continue to fight forward.
Ayana Young Well Carolina, as we come to a close, I’d like to go back to where we started this conversation, at the intersection of law and art and how you are tending to each of their edges as a way of being in this world and doing this work. Can you close on what working at the edges has meant for you and how this space can be a really meaningful one to occupy as we imagine a different future?
Carolina Rubio MacWright Yeah, so I always say that I live in the estuary almost. It's the most beautiful fertile space, it's not exactly law, it's not exactly art, it's somewhere in between. But you know, I love seeing people grow in the uncomfortable and feeling empowered and feeling seen, because there's so much invisibility, when you're an other, right, when you are the other, where you are different, where you don't fit. And so for me, it's looking at nature and seeing how like, they all just seamlessly work and they work with each other and for each other. So for me, Touching Land is just a manifestation of working in this area where beauty comes in building the community and challenging others and challenging spaces and being able to, to bring life and joy, because joy is an act of resistance. And I think in so much dread and policy and horribleness we forget about the joy. And so I think the playfulness of art and giving ourselves permission to play and imagine a better world is what I love about the art, and the policy and the law is just an opportunity to understand that we can rebuild things, we can do it again, just the same way that we do with clay, you know, like things are fragile, they break but we can build them again.
And so I see that as a society, as our community where we are in constant change, you know, that's the one constant, we have change, and so embracing that change and, and feeling empowered, I feel so lucky to be able to live in this in this place where I can see to communities and see them together and see them grow and, and come up with other iterations of food and law, and clay in law, and performance and law. So yeah, I'm just I just feel immense luck to be able to to live in this estuary.
Ayana Young Beautiful metaphor I love that. Well, thank you so much for this conversation. We went so many places together and I know it's gonna give me and anyone who's tuning in a lot of food for thought.
Carolina Rubio MacWright Yeah, I'm sorry, I talk a lot.
Ayana Young Oh, gosh, it was so necessary and you're a great communicator. So I was, just sitting with it all, because so much of this stuff we don't hear. And we are not, we don't even, it's not that we don't even hear it, which is true, but we don't give ourselves the space to just sit in it. Sit in the complexities, sit in the gravity of it. So, yeah, thank you for this time.
Carolina Rubio MacWright Yeah, thank you so much for listening and being open and so eloquently, you know, your questions were on point, and are important, and I appreciate you opening up this space to, you know, to have these uncomfortable conversations. And I think it's so important and like you say, we're not talking about it enough. We're moving too fast. And sometimes it takes it takes a little bit to digest and it's but it's important
Francesca Glaspell Thank you for listening to For The Wild Podcast. The music you heard today was by Madelyn Ilana and Samuela Akert. For The Wild is created by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, Francesca Glaspell, and Melanie Younger.