I’m done. Fuck all of this.

I haven’t written much recently, which hurts my heart. But then I haven’t cleaned my floors often either and that hurts my feet.

Nor have I read the magazines piling up next to my chair. Or made a dent in the ethnographic project I’d planned to do this summer.

And its been months since I last did one of the online German classes that I found so surprisingly therapeutic in the spring.

Fuck this pandemic. Fuck everything about it. But most of all fuck the fuckheads in government who did fuck-all about it for seven goddam months, AND the fuckers who put them there.

On Revoking Student Visas. Or, what it feels like when the secret fear that organized your immigrant life becomes a reality.

So, yesterday Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) quietly announced that international students on F-1 or M-1 visas will be required to leave the US, if their courses go entirely online in the fall.

Active students currently in the United States enrolled in [online only] programs must depart the country or take other measures, such as transferring to a school with in-person instruction to remain in lawful status. If not, they may face immigration consequences including, but not limited to, the initiation of removal proceedings.

This does not apply to J-1 students, whose visas are overseen by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs

Who Is a True American? The Muslim-ban is About Volk, Not Just Racism and Islamophobia

Protesters at O’Hare airport. Image from The Chicagoist.

Last night many friends of mine dropped everything and went to airports to protest the ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries entering the US. I wrote on Facebook that as an immigrant myself, I am proud of, and grateful for, everyone who did so.

Over the last few months, however, whenever I’ve expressed fear about the attacks on immigrants and positioned it in relation to myself and my own status, some smart-aleck has helpfully pointed out that I’ll be fine because I’m white/European. I’m beginning to lose patience with these comments. And not just because it implies I’m only scared for my own safety, rather than the safety of others.

Yes, as a white British person I have enormous privilege. I would not have been able to live in as many foreign countries as I have if I didn’t carry a British passport, and my reception would have been less welcoming if I had not been white. However, it is important to be precise about the threat that this restriction on individuals from certain countries poses, and to understand what it is stemming from. This is not just racism as usual.

The current situation in the US is racist, fascist, and misogynist. It is the latest and most threatening manifestation of deeply rooted traditions of white supremacy, Christofacism, and disaster capitalism. This new Republican Trump/Pence regime can be all these things at once, but it is important not to conflate them all into one. We need to know exactly what we are dealing with to avoid being blindsided by things like the totally predictable restriction on Green Card holders and citizens (through the ban on duel citizens).

Patriotism

Wilfred Owen before the war, from an exhibition at Dunsden.

This frightening week started with Trump’s announcement of a new National Day of Patriotic Devotion, which immediately attracted scorn and disgust on both sides of the political spectrum for its fascistic vernation of the cult of the nation and expectations of ‘total allegiance’.

It got me thinking about Patriotism, a feeling I would swear I’ve never felt. I associate the word primarily with the First World War poetry we studied in school. Thanks to somewhat repetitive coursework of my English and History GCSEs, the concept of loving one’s country will be forever ingrained in my mind with Wilfred Owen’s poem Dulce et Decorum Est, written sometime between the end of 1917 and the beginning of 1918.

A hundred years ago this month, in January 1917, Wilfred Owen left his training camp in the UK in high spirits and headed for the gas, the mud, and the rotting bodies on the front line in France. He was dead less than two years later.

That’s what I think of, when I hear Trump talk about Patriotism. In a twisted way, I think that’s probably what the Republicans are thinking of too.

But perhaps, as an act of resistance, we should use this new day of Patriotism to imagine the kind of country we would feel proud of. What kind of country we want to live in.

A Piece of Paper. Waking up as an immigrant on Nov 9, 2016.

Naturalization ceremony. Photo from Daily Yonder

The funny thing is, I was actually looking forward to waking up on November 9th. And yet yesterday I discovered that I have lived for the past eleven years surrounded by people who hate me. They may not know it, but they do. And now I know it as well.

***

Back in September I was disappointed that the evening class I’m currently taking met Tuesdays from 6 to 9pm. It meant J and I wouldn’t be able to celebrate the election together at the Grafton Pub, as we had when Obama won in 2012. (We dared each other to drink a shot of Malört if he won. The barman warned us it tasted revolting, and it did.)

Debating Citizenship, post-Brexit and mid-Trump

The entirely unironic leaflet that came with my son’s US passport

Since Brexit, I’ve been asked a few times if I will now apply for US citizenship. Up until this point I had never even considered it. I have permanent residency, and as far as I could tell (although to be honest, I hadn’t even looked that far into it) the only advantage citizenship would give me is the right to vote.

That wasn’t enough to motivate me, especially when the whole idea just felt weird somehow. But these are strange times, and the current climate has challenged me to consider being more cautious.

What the F just happened? For my US friends, a long attempt to Brexplain

Map of the votes from the BBC, comparing the 1975 and 2016 referendum results.

The vice provost dropped by again this morning. He asked how I was feeling. “Imagine how you are going to feel if Trump wins in November” I replied. “That’s how I’m feeling.”

Yesterday I wrote on this blog that I didn’t understand what was happening. But last night as I sat at home watching the results come in and drinking most of a bottle of cheap wine, I tried to figure it out.  I have a better answer now to the question my US friends keep asking me.

Bear with me. This is going to be long and personal.

Brexit From A Distance

The UKIP campaign as seen by Steve Bell

One of the vice provosts dropped by my office today. It didn’t take long before he spun round to the topic of Brexit.

“So what’s going on in your country with this EU thing?” he asked.

“Pretty much the British version of Trump.” I replied.

And not for the first time this week, I found myself struggling to explain the inexplicable.

My sense is that people in the US have only caught on about how serious this is very recently: maybe only since the awful murder of the politician Jo Cox last week. But then to be completely honest, it was probably only a month ago that I realized myself there was going to be a referendum. And even then it took me a day or two to finally admit it was real. It was actually going to happen.

Because the whole idea makes absolutely no sense to me!