I worry for my daughter and my grand-daughters. Does she, I wonder, realize that she is directly in the cross-hairs of current ICE efforts, alongside her daughters?
Her father is Afghani (posing as Indian due to some hush-hush diplomatic status in the 80’s) and she is a citizen thanks to our birthright citizenship, which is a legal status that extends through her to her daughters.
Now that this government is using HHS (medical), IRS (tax), and SSA (work) records to track and identify their new definition of ‘illegal’, all three are at risk and I seriously doubt this is even on her radar.
All of the blithe entitlement she relies on in this culture and society could so easily be stripped away and it won’t matter that she’s married.
She doesn’t understand her risk profile is high, though she is always spending a lot of time code-switching and ‘passing’ and has since she was young. It won’t matter to ICE.
I think about this a lot and worry about it more so. I’ve tried for years to get them to get out of the metropolis and into the rural area to lower their risk profile (and for other, health and well being purposes), but she’s addicted to consumerism and status, as is her husband (man child), so no progress and now, likely never to be so.
As someone who has been watching our country revert since the 70s, been talking about it to the scoffing and laughter of most around me, I’ll say for the record — I never wanted to be right about this, and I’m saddened that the backlash and uprising against it seems negligible and is unlikely to foster the kind of change we need as a nation.
These posts are mostly me documenting my long-term angers, fears, hopes, harms, and worries — getting them out of my head (literal brain dump; apparently NTs cannot do this?) so I can get back to living my own life as a me, myself, and I. Core dumping things I have carried for decades because I’ve always been alone in it and the new rule is that I keep no emotional weight that is not shared by the human for whom it exists.
This will eventually feel like a relief, ‘they’ tell me; right now, it just feels horrible. I detest giving up on humans both because I’ve had to do it so often and the track record of how they never bothered or cared to try working with me to keep it from happening, which is seemingly unassailable judging by the utter lack of even a single instance of exception.
I mean, all they ever have to do is show up, do the work WITH me, and stay engaged and present in our shared life and relation. That they never do? Well, par. I’m unhappily used to it.
The good news is that the ‘cost of admission’ to my life is increasing. The shorter my span becomes, the higher it’s likely to be. I’m sick directly due to spending my life energy on humans (i.e., dysfunctional family, friends, work, et al) who refuse to do the same, and yes, that has stopped effective November 2023.
From now on, let them who wish to demonstrate care and inclusion actually DEMONSTRATE it rather than paying it lip service whilst dancing plausible deniability at every opening.
And if no one ever does? Fine, not like they’re establishing a new trend, so ‘as usual’ and thus, unsurprising.