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Travel Ban: An Inside Look

A colleague and I were talking the other day and she said something along the lines of, “It’s weird to see people on Facebook posting normal things and going about their lives.”

I agreed with her, because for those of us who work closely with refugees, everything changed the day the president signed the executive order. Well, maybe not exactly on that Friday, since most of us at work walked away from the coverage of the live press conference in one of our ESOL classrooms confused and wondering what exactly he’d signed, but by Saturday we all knew. The news wasn’t good.

The days that followed have been a whirlwind of mixed messages about the travel ban, last minute arrivals who were given one final chance, and worry as we tried to imagine what the next four months (and most likely the next few years) would look like for us and for the refugees who were facing long years of waiting before being given a chance at a new life.

There’s no worse feeling than telling someone “Your wife is going to join you in America very soon” and then telling him a week later “Sorry, your wife isn’t coming anymore.” It’s raw and painfully personal, something I doubt that those in charge have ever been unfortunate enough to experience. I’m sure it’s a lot easier to make blanket statements and laws about groups of people the size of ants in your perspective, and a whole different feeling when you have to stoop to their level and work up the courage to look them in the eye as you destroy their futures.

I’m going to try to dispel some falsehoods.

1)     Contrary to what the president and his supporters have been insisting, there already is a rigorous vetting process in place. It involves several agencies and departments (UNHCR, IOM, and USCIS to name a few) conducting interviews and doing background checks that last years. I was speaking with someone just today who had gone through the whole process over the course of 12 years from the moment the UN granted his family refugee status at a camp in Kenya. The next time someone says the vetting process isn’t enough, ask them this: What is the process? Most people don’t know that refugees are even vetted.

2)     People aren’t going through the refugee resettlement process to come here and blow stuff up. Refugees are registered with the UN because of just that: they are refugees. They’re escaping war and hunger. They’ve lost children and parents and siblings. They wind up in neighboring countries where they spend years in camps just existing from one moment to the next, desperate for a way out of their misery. To them, being resettled in the US is a distant dream that will most likely never happen. And when it does, it’s surreal and overwhelming. The love most of these people have for this country is unparalleled.

3)     This ban is just the tip of the iceberg. My agency welcomed its last refugee arrivals on Thursday. For everyone else who was scheduled to arrive on Friday and this coming week, their flights have been cancelled (although this latest development in the travel ban saga has made some of us hopeful that we’ll squeeze in a few more refugee families). They’ll be on standby for the next four months, but there is no guarantee that IOM will immediately fly them over. Their documents will expire. They might have to start the process over, which means more years of background checks and health screenings await them. Not to mention that the current administration isn’t just going to open its doors after these next four months. They’ve asked for changes in the vetting process—a process that works. They’ll never be satisfied. This isn’t an attempt to keep the country safe. It’s to keep refugees, immigrants, and Muslims out. Bannon’s appointment only serves to highlight this.

On the brighter side of things, I think that this travel ban has brought out the best in this country. People banding together to protest the ban, appointed officials sticking their necks out to combat the executive order, lawyers camping out at airports to fight for the rights of those affected by this (including people who are lawful residents of the US who ended up caught on the other side of the figurative-for-now wall).

I comforted a Somali mother and father separated from their daughter, who is in a camp by herself, struggling to juggle her education and her safety, with these words: There are thousands and thousands of people out there marching in the streets of America for your rights.

And you know what? They said that it helps. That it eases some of their pain knowing that complete strangers support them. It also gives them hope that, if enough people care, something might change. Their daughter might be given a new travel date soon and reunite with her family.

It’s wonderful to see that there’s so much good in this world. I only wish the circumstances were better.

#refugees #muslimban

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After seeing the Fear of the Walking Dead cast nonchalantly explore a crashed plane full of potential zombies, I wish The Walking Dead’s cast would drive by in their RV and shout “Booo! Noooobs!”

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It’s incredible how much of an effect Harry Potter still has on me after so many years.

“you are more powerful than you know and they fear the day you discover it.”

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Story of my life.

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I love that Wattpad lets me whip up something like this in seconds.

#WithinTheseWalls

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One of the best writing articles I’ve read.

#writing

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In the Zone

Wrote three times as much as I usually do and I must be on a sugar high or something because it’s 1am and I want to keep going and going until I crash in an unintelligible mess of consonants and apostrophes.

I need more of whatever I’m having tonight.

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Bought a new phone with money I don’t have, because why not? Hooray for monthly payments!

I think that about 90% of people I know have the iPhone now. But as a die-hard android user, I’m determined to be an special snowflake. So I got this gold Galaxy S6 instead. So soft and shiny. *pets it some more*

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House in a Nutshell

I decided to give House another shot, and this is basically the plot of the first 6 episodes:

Enter patient with crazy symptoms.

Someone pretends to know patient to get House interested.

House: “Let’s start brainstorming, folks.”

PATIENT HAS SEIZURE. LIVER/LUNG/KIDNEY/TOENAIL FAILURE.

Everyone: “I think patient has zombie shuffle syndrome.”

House: “No, he has sparkly vampire syndrome.”

Everyone: “You’re going to kill him if you give him blood instead of brains, House!”

House does something illegal so he can give patient blood.

Everyone: “ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND, HOUSE?!”

House pops pills.

Patient recovers.

Everyone: Why did we ever doubt him?

House smirks and gloats.

THE END.

#House

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Maybe it’s not such a bad thing...

Did a lot of writing-related soul-searching this past month. Experimented a lot. Nodded in approval at my computer screen a lot, only to toss up my hands in frustration a lot. Dreamed the plots I’ve been ruminating about every waking moment a lot. Lived and breathed and ate world building a lot (and threw up some of it). Went on vision quests and spoke with my characters a lot. Got yelled at by them a lot.

And after all of this...I’m literally back to square one.

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I’m in two perpetual states lately as far as my writing goes.

“This is all crap. Absolute garbage! What was I thinking?”

“This is amazing. I’m a friggin’ genius!”

I miss that middle ground.

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You know you’re a grownup when your first reaction after scraping most of the skin off your knee isn’t “ohmyGODithurtssobadmommymakeitstop”, but “Oh, frick! This is going to make earning my paycheck so much harder.”

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Rollercoaster Week

Got my tax refund!

Got a speeding ticket.

Got invited to include one of my stories in Wattpad's Best of Supernatural in anticipation of the new show The Returned (http://www.wattpad.com/list/170678170-best-of-supernatural).

Got a parking fine.

Got my laptop back from manufacturer since it broke two weeks ago (which means I can finally write with wild abandonment)

Found out my dad's chronic cough might be more serious than we realized. We'll know more after the lung biopsy.

I need a nap.

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Amisra from Conduit. Not a perfect drawing (especially around the eyes/eyebrows), but screw it. I'm driving myself crazy trying to fix it. Amisra has brown skin, an oval-shaped face, and green eyes, and I think I conveyed that as well as I could. Only difference is that her hair should be more wavy and this almost looks straight. But wavy hair is surprisingly complicated to draw. The eyes took me the longest. So hard to draw symmetry. I feel like I'm getting the hang of the shading, though. The drawing is rough because it's impossible for me to make finer details. My pen doesn't seem to go where I want it to and when it does, it makes jerky/uneven lines. It might just be inexperience. One really cool thing I've learned to do is moving parts around and then texturing around them. Like, her head was longer, so I squished it lol. These drawings are a hit or miss and I think this one came out better than I expected.

#Conduit #Amisra

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An absolutely gorgeous rendition of the gang. Feeling sad all over again that it's over.

谢谢! - Thank you!

I am going to miss The Legend Of Korra so much. A huge thank you to all the creators who were involved in the making of this series! 

I hope you like this image with Korra and her crew that I drew! :)

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Dabble dabble

Tried my hand at a drawing of a side profile.

The shading is rough and the features/shape of the head are a little off, but I'm still proud. I've been drawing on some website, but there aren't a lot of options in terms of drawing tools and the pencil tool is too thick to do the finer details. Might be time to invest in something a little better.