An American Family, head and heart.

I’ve kept my feelings — and frustrations — about the trashfire that has been our national debate on immigration pretty much locked down for most of the past four years … it was just too painful to try to engage with both head and heart when the sludge being thrown around in the political arena was so toxic. My family story is the story of immigrants, from pioneer generations to refugees fleeing conflict, so this has all felt personal.

And yet … now is a different moment. Now that we have the promise of a kinder policy stance in the executive branch, and the possibility, however faint, of efforts to find common ground in the legislative branch, I thought I’d unlock that box in my head and bring myself up to speed.

And it turned out that most of what I feel is important was captured in the ONE thing on this topic that I allowed myself to write during these recent times: the article I co-wrote with my sister Sarah for the issue of the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs in Fall 2019, which celebrated the school’s centennial. It’s a bit of an odd piece for GJIA, written as an intertwined narrative partly in the objective analytical third-person and partly in the confessional first person. Head and heart. Here it is.