Episteme

I'll start by saying that I lived in New York for eight years when I was just a young thing, and you can call me names but I got a little tired of the whole Greenwich Village I-am-so-artistic-and-gifted-but-misunderstood-by-non-Manhattan-people thing. Just a little. I got the feeling the Tarek, a young Syrian musician played by Haaz Sleiman, was emphasizing his accent on purpose, when it seemed he was really, in life and even in the movie, we later find out, from a highly educated, if persecuted, elite, intellectual family. I would say it was a problem with the acting, but I think it is actually a problem with the character's identity and what the director is trying to use it to show.

Or maybe it's just my Village overdose during college. The girlfriend, Zainab, played by Danai Gurira, was great, lovely, cute, and nuanced. Richard Jenkins was brilliant as Walter Vale, and Hiam Abbass was lovely and convincing as Tarek's mother, Mouna.

But let's get to the actual issues that the movie brings up. Immigration - New York is made richer by the multitude of cultures that make up its social and artistic fabric. I totally agree. That was an easy one.

Second big issue - secret detention centers run by private companies. Very weird. Kind of makes you say, we have that here? Yuck. You feel ashamed, embarrassed, saddened by the way things have gone. Not that it's a new feeling, but still, you get it. I went to one of these once to visit someone and I must say that the way they depicted it was totally true to my experience. The entrance is totally unrecognizable as a detention facility, and it is in an industrial district where even if you were curious, you wouldn't spend much time looking around. A bunch of brick buildings you assume are warehouses, quite far from any store-lined streets. A white waiting room and byzantine rules enforced by people who aren't interested in explaining why they are so. Fluorescent lights and plastic furniture and white walls.

The guy I met at one of these places told me that he had been captured in an African country because of an article he had written about the oil industry. He was a journalist, and if I remember correctly it was a freedom of speech issue involving oil fires and a kidnapping and a jail cell beating and lots of other fun stuff. It had been impossible to get a lawyer, he had no one to help him, and he was afraid to go back home. He escaped in the middle of the night and made it to another West African country, flying out to the US from there with the help of a friend. I almost wrote an article about him but I couldn't find any information on him besides what he had told me and no one answered at the place he said was his employer. My first impulse was to believe him, but I needed proof. I still don't know what to think.

Of course there is something horrid about these detention centers. People stay in there for months when they are denied asylum and do not want to return home. Legal proceedings are slow and incomprehensible. I felt really bad for the people in there. But even in an ideal world, where you had tons of money for public lawyers for everyone who wanted asylum here, what if there were cases where you just could not corroborate what the person was saying?

It's easy to say that we have become xenophobic, isolationist, racist and the whole thing since 9/11, but let's try a little harder and ask, really, do we want super lax borders at this or any time? What should the screening process be? What are the consequences if there are loopholes in the borders or the paperwork that gets you through them? Even with the plunging dollar and the low esteem of the US in the eyes of the world, all that, a heck of a lot of people still want to be here instead of where they are. And one way to try it, especially when we are so into this us-them, developed-developing dichotomies, must certainly be to apply for political asylum.

Of course today it's all about people harming us, etc, watching out for that one bad apple in a million. And you feel bad for the people who are really nice, and hard-working, or well-educated, and deserve a spot here, even if it's becoming a less desirable place. And we are a nation of immigrants, proudly so. But I think that if we are going to criticize the way things are being done, then we need to approach the issue with better ideas for how to handle very real problems. More public money for speedy legal counsel for whoever jumps on a plane to New York without a visa? Comfier facilities for those who don't want to go home? If so, then we have to do it with open eyes and a willingness to address all the points involved.