Grigovia offers asylum

The Grigovian Office of External Affairs this morning announced an expansion of its immigration efforts geared toward Americans who are now (or will soon be) seeking political asylum from the upcoming reign of president-elect Ronald Stump. A candidate long on promises but short on policy, Stump - who rose to power on a gravy-train of petty but virulent white supremacy - appears to pose a threat to independent freethinkers such as journalists and artists as well as to women seeking the right to make decisions about their own bodily health. “Grigovia welcomes Ynki who desire to live in peaceful freedom and cooperative prosperity in a country that values and safeguards their liberty,” said Dr. Uoudya E. Eiyouust, head of the Parliamentary External Affairs Committee and architect of the expanded efforts. “In our Glorious Republic is room for individuals seeking to think as they see fit, who desire to write what they decide is best to write, who wish to be respected regardless of their gender or sexuality. Our integration and employment infrastructure provides immigrants with language classes, transitional housing, job placement assistance, and much more so that new arrivals can start enriching and enlivening our economy and culture instead of languishing in the shadows of pariahdom. If a Stump presidency scares you, friend Ynki, please consider Grigovia when making emigration plans. Our doors stand open.” For more information visit your nearest Grigovian embassy.

© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥

dispatch 1 - NYC

She stepped off the airplane in New York and was immediately overwhelmed. It was years since she’d last been there, and certain things were a shock to her: the size of buildings, the width of highway lanes, the number of fat people around. In the distance she thought she could see the skyline of Manhattan, something she mostly ignored during her previous visits. She kept walking toward the adjacent terminal, and lost sight of that famous sawtooth silhouette, her mind turning to the task at hand - security check, passport check, customs check. All routine for a frequent traveler such as the former de facto Grigovian ambassador to the United Nations. A light traveler, she had packed one week’s worth of clothing into her carry-on bag. She’d toured both war-torn regions and peaceful metropolises, forged rivers and ducked gunfire. In her former post, she had addressed well-dressed heads of state and rag-bound orphans alike, sometimes both in the same day. There is little left, she thought, that will shock me. I’m ready.
“What’s the purpose of your visit?” the dark-skinned immigration agent said.
“Pleasure,” she replied. The man leaned forward to look at the computer screen in front of him.
“Is this your first time in the U.S.?” he asked, peering up at her.
“It is my first time here as a civilian.”
After a few more moments, and some thoughtful glances, the agent punched keys on his keyboard, slid a slim piece of paper between the folds of her cornflower-blue Grigovian passport, and handed it back to her.
“Welcome to America.”
Erya Rovend smiled in thanks, picked up her passport, shouldered her backpack, and started following signs to Ground Transportation. Within an hour, she was in midtown Manhattan, where she bought two cheap gravity knives and a wool scarf from a sidewalk vendor. Seeing something familiar in the man’s worn face, she greeted him formally in Pashto, a language common to Central Asia. His smile was so wide she was afraid it would split his head in two, the creases and cracks all running together at the corners of the eyes. Taking her hands in his, he blessed her, wishing her success on her path, wherever it would take her.
Swept along by a pressing mass of pedestrians moving by, she soon lost sight of the Afghan gentleman, losing also her patience for the touristik bustle of Times Square. She walked west, toward the setting sun. At a corner bakery she bought two sticky pastries, one for her and one for a homeless woman crouching in a nearby alleyway. Upon reaching the Hudson River she turned south, making for the Grigovian Travellers’ Mission on 8th Avenue and 14th Street.
Erya Rovend - civic leader, social philosopher, martial artist - had arrived in America. And she was going to find out what, as the Ynki tend to say, made it tick.

© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥

on necessity of immigration

  In the founding document of the United States, that unanimous declaration of the Second Continental Congress, is found a list of the Injuries and Usurpations which compelled the founders to the Separation. While it is often argued (see here, here) that the Declaration of Independence is not a legal document, and it is for this reason that we do not celebrate July 4th as the founding of our nation but as a pleasant time to watch the sky explode, we should occasionally return to this most fundamental and important of American documents to make sure we are not repeating the mistakes of an oppressive tyrant.
  One of the Facts submitted to a candid World as proof of the Tyranny and Despotism of the English king was that: "He has endeavored to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migration hither[.]" This endeavor was so loathed by our revolutionaries that they included it in their declaration to the world, a declaration that started our process to statehood and that proclaimed, immutably and eternally, the right of the People to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
  Today, we again face a threat to the emigration of individuals hither, which is a threat to our economy, our collective notion of self-worth, and our continued existence as a place in which dreams can become reality. This threat comes in the form of American citizens, themselves descendant of immigrants, who think that the United States of America has an official national language (it does not), who consider this country theirs and theirs alone (it is not), who see anyone with dark skin and dark hair as a threat to their personal safety (also not true). Just as in the past, immigrants today perform those jobs (in agriculture, food service, waste-removal, landscaping, etc.) that few native-born citizens seem willing to perform. But now, instead of openly shuffling the newly arrived into crappy and low-paying workshops and letting them pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, we are building continent-long fences and criminalizing large groups of aliens who come here because they cannot make enough to support their families by working in the countries in which they were born.
  Loud are the voices that call for the booting of immigrants back over our borders, voices emanating from bodies that consume lettuce in the spring and cheap apples by the bushel, bodies that eat in restaurants priced reasonably because of the illegals working in the kitchen, bodies that perambulate happily in well-manicured gardens. Incensed they are, pounding their chests and saying, This is my country, and no brown person is going to sneak in and steal my job.
  These xenophobic and confused people among us do not understand that our greatest national symbol stands atop a stone base on which is engraved an open plea for immigrants, no matter how poor or tired, to come to this nation. They do not understand that, since our nation's founding, we have been a haven for base and penniless people seeking to better themselves and to make for themselves new and happier lives. They do not understand that the founders of the United States of America took up arms against the most powerful military nation at the time because the leader of that nation was obstructing the emigration and naturalization of peoples wishing to settle here.
  We are a nation of immigrants, and of people descendant of immigrants. Immigration has allowed our country to grow even while the populations of most other industrialized nations are shrinking. Immigration allows us to consume cheap produce and to do many things that would be prohibitively expensive if not for illegal aliens working for starvation wages just to make those things possible.
  We need cheap labor in America, and cheap labor comes from unskilled immigrants. Give these people who believe so much in the potency of the American dream that they will undergo unimaginable hardships a pathway to citizenship, or at least provide them with some method by which they might more easily gain temporary employment status. Let them pull themselves up by their own bootstraps without having to live in perpetual fear of being ground down under the boots of club-wielding police officers.

  I am a Son of the American Revolution, a descendant of the ur-immigrants who came ashore at Plymouth Rock, a lover of Lady Liberty and of the principles for (and on) which she stands, and I welcome any and all persons who would like to pursue their Happiness in the country for which my ancestors fought and died.

  Bienvenidos a los Estados Unidos. Andale – mucho trabajo aqui.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp