(Editor’s note: We are publishing this reflection anonymously out of concern for the safety and well-being of the author and their family. As the author describes, immigrants and their loved ones are increasingly vulnerable to surveillance, retaliation, and denial of legal processes simply for speaking critically about U.S. immigration policy. Fear of retribution — whether real or perceived — has a chilling effect on free speech and human dignity. At Christians for Social Action, we believe it is both faithful and necessary to create space for stories that might otherwise go untold. This essay is shared anonymously not to obscure truth, but to protect those who are bravely living it.)
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It was the day after my wife’s birthday.
She impulsively checked her email — as she has become increasingly prone to do since we began our United States visa application two years ago — and suddenly screamed in elation. Several months after our documents had been approved, we had finally received our interview date at the U.S. Embassy here in the Philippines.
What were once feelings of anxiety and agitation dissolved into relief and realization.
We really are moving (back) to the United States.
And while this lengthy process isn’t over just yet, the reality of my Filipina wife immigrating to the country of my birth is becoming more real than it has ever been. Like my own family did decades ago — like so many families around the world dream of doing — we are going to America.
But just a week prior, Renée Good was shot and murdered by an ICE agent. Then, in a matter of days, Customs and Border Patrol agents shot and murdered another Minnesotan, Alex Pretti.
Over the past several months, glimpses of clips and headlines about immigrants and non-immigrants being assaulted, detained, and deported by federal agents in the country I grew up in have weighed heavily on me from 7,000 miles away.
Now, my wife and I are navigating these very same institutions — institutions that continue to deny justice and dignity to so many. My cautious, hesitant joy at the possibility of bringing my life partner back to the country my family has called home for over three decades is constantly tempered by the reality of what this administration has been doing in the name of “national security” and “law and order.”
And while I feel compelled to cry out against these injustices — abductions of bodies and the taking of lives — I am sobered by how U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and U.S. embassies have become increasingly sensitive to so-called “anti-American” sentiments when reviewing visa and green card applications.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt so threatened by the institutional consequences of practicing my First Amendment rights as an American — especially since it’s not just about me anymore. If anything my wife or I have said is interpreted as “hostile” toward the United States, her visa could be denied, and we would be barred from immigrating as a married couple.
Though these recent escalations have most notoriously targeted student visa applicants, the fact that anyone can be denied entry and residence for critiquing a nation allegedly founded on free speech and self-governance reveals a very different form of governance altogether.
As jarring as these moments are, they don’t tell us what America has become. They remind us of what America has always been.
From anti-Irish riots, to Chinese Exclusion, to anti-miscegenation laws targeting Filipinos and Latinos, the criminalization and exploitation of immigrants offering their labor and livelihood to this country are as American as apple pie and gun violence.(1)
And yet, these increasingly blatant and normalized anti-immigrant sentiments — popularized during Trump’s first term and intensifying in his second — feel deeply ironic to me. As the child of a Filipino immigrant family who grew up in white suburbia, I am painfully familiar with America’s love-hate relationship with people like my family.
In 2001, my mom accepted a position as a family physician at a small health clinic, moving us to the suburban town where I would grow up over the next decade. Year after year, classmates — and even teachers — told me she was their favorite doctor. And yet in 2016, many of those same people voted for an administration that blamed immigrants like my mom for the nation’s problems, stoking xenophobia that culminated in Asian hate crimes in 2020 and ongoing ICE raids.
As Donald Glover told us in 2018, “This is America.”
A country that profits from immigrant labor while scapegoating immigrants when convenient. Where patients thank God for their immigrant doctor while applauding efforts to detain and deport their immigrant neighbors. Where Filipina nurses stood on the frontlines of a pandemic,(2) only for the president to later order hospitals to pay an extra $100,000 per H-1B visa they sponsor.
We eat their food. We hire them to build our homes. We trust them with our health and our most consequential life decisions. And yet, when political points are at stake — when fear keeps congregants in pews — we blame immigrants for our problems and insist there’s “no more room.”
I can already hear my high school Facebook friends and their parents objecting: We like immigrants like your mom — the ones who come here legally.
Immigrants who stay quiet. Work hard. Follow the rules.
We want the “good immigrants,” not the bad ones.
To be frank — and to be biblical — if we are truly going to separate sheep from goats for the sake of national security, then everyone should be counted, including citizens. Many who cheer ICE raids might themselves be considered “bad citizens.” After all, immigrants are not the ones committing mass shootings or starring in Netflix true-crime documentaries.(3)
These legal/illegal and good/bad distinctions rest on profound misunderstandings of America’s immigration system. For many people, there is no legal pathway. Without immediate family ties, employer sponsorship, or asylum granted by DOJ-run courts, immigration is simply impossible under the current system.
So when people say, “Well, then, don’t come here,” they ignore the fact that their own ancestors arrived during an era of virtually unrestricted immigration. They ignore centuries of American imperialism that destabilized entire regions, robbing people of opportunities they now seek abroad.
In the Philippines, U.S. colonialism left legacies of corruption and inequality that persist today.(4) Nixon’s decision to abandon the gold standard destabilized Global South currencies, further entrenching poverty. IMF and World Bank structural adjustment policies traded human well-being for corporate profit.(5)
America is quick to defend the legality of its immigration system — while remaining proudly silent about the illegality it has inflicted on the world.
Petitioning and Praying for Good
Participating in the same immigration process my family once navigated decades ago feels deeply ironic. As a second-generation Filipino American with a naturalized mother and grandparents, I never imagined I would face this backlogged, opaque system myself.
I never expected to live with the constant anxiety that a single misstep — or a single “anti-American” comment — could separate my wife and me.
Nor did I expect to immigrate during a time when America is once again demonstrating state-coordinated violence that appears to care more about skin color and accents than documentation. Our hearts leap at an embassy email one moment, only to break the next as we scroll past another abduction. I don’t know what I would do if the next clip featured my own family.(6)
And yet, I remember people like Renée Good and Alex Pretti — Americans who didn’t have to act, who already belonged, yet gave their lives defending the dignity of immigrants like my wife.
These are our saints.
These are the people I hope to one day tell our children about — the heroes who, in the likeness of Christ, loved their neighbors and paid the ultimate cost so others might live with dignity. While I am horrified by the America that is — and has always been — I thank God for Americans who have fought, and continue to fight, for it not to be so.
Endnotes
(1) See Dr. Dawn Bohulano Mabalon’s exhaustive study on the history of Stockton’s Filipina/o community in California’s Central Valley from the early to mid-20th century, Little Manila Is in the Heart (2013).
(2) See the documentary, Nurse Unseen for a detailed look at the work of Filipino nurses who risked and gave their lives during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
(3) On the fallacy of “migrant crime” and how both documented and undocumented immigrants commit less crime than American citizens on average.
(4) Perhaps the first act of contemporary Filipino corruption was done by Emilio Aguinaldo. Aguinaldo became the first president of the Philippines because of a backdoor deal he made with the United States during the Philippine-American War (1899-1902) that betrayed his own revolutionary ally Andres Bonfacio and allegedly planned the assassination of his Philippine General, Antonio Luna.
(5) Mike Davis’ Planet of Slums (2005) is a great primer for how our global economy became what it is today.
(6) The ICE detaining of US citizen Jonathan Aguilar Garcia has weighed particularly heavy on my heart.
