Department of Homeland Security and Pentagon officials announced Monday that they will send 5,200 troops, military helicopters, and razor wire to the US/Mexican border in advance of the potential arrival of a large group of Central American migrants. This troop deployment, according to the Washington Post, appears to be the “largest U.S. active-duty mobilization along the U.S.-Mexico boundary in decades and amounts to a significant militarization of American border security.”
Read moreTrue Lived Experiences
Museum of Illusions
The Museum of Illusions in New York is an interactive museum featuring optical illusions, holograms, puzzles, and educational games. Located at 14th Street and 8th Avenue in Manhattan, the museum promises to teach attendees about “vision, perception, the human brain and science so it will be easier to perceive why your eyes see things which your brain cannot understand.” Highlights of the museum include the Head on a Platter, which (spoiler!) cleverly uses mirrors to create the effect of a decapitated head; the Chair Illusion, which shrinks whoever sits on it using angles of perception; and the Rotated Room, which makes it look like gravity has no effect. It’s all worth seeing before it disappears! (Yes, that was a magic joke).
USCIS: Revised Policy Guidance for the Validity Period of Form I-693, Medical Examination and Vaccination Record
US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) announced they are revising their policy concerning the validity period of Form I-693, Report of Medical Examination and Vaccination Record, which is used to determine whether an applicant for an immigration benefit is inadmissible under the health-related grounds of inadmissibility. The updated policy, effective November 1, 2018, will require applicants to submit a Form I-693 that is signed by a civil surgeon no more than sixty days before filing the underlying application for an immigration benefit.
Read moreBloomberg Law: “High-Stakes Lottery for H-1B Visas May Become Simpler Next Year”
L. Francis Cissna, director of US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS), has announced that the agency is making plans to simplify the H-1B visa lottery program beginning in 2019 for the 2020 fiscal year. These changes would potentially include an employer’s ability to preregister electronically for the H-1B lottery and, if selected in the lottery, file the H-1B petition with USCIS, instead of submitting full petitions before the lottery is completed. Cissna tells Bloomberg Law that he hopes that the agency will implement changes in time for when H-1B cases can be filed in April 2019, although the agency may not have sufficient time to do so. "[Y]ou don’t have to file and go through the hassle and effort and cost of preparing a full-blast petition,” Cissa says, touting the benefit of preregistration. “I think that’s a lot easier than the current situation.”
Read moreTogether We Stand
Candy Nation
Candy Nation by French sculptor Laurence Jenkell is a series of oversized candies displaying flags of different countries. First exhibited for the G20 Summit in Cannes, France in 2011, Candy Nation is now installed on the Garment District malls on Broadway between 36th and 39th Street as part of Garment District Alliance’s 15th Annual Arts Festival that runs from October 18th to 20th. The nine-foot tall sculptures each weigh 1,450 pounds and are wrapped in polyester resin. Flag featured in the series are from such countries as the US, European Union (plus member countries Germany, France, and Italy), Great Britain, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and many others. Barbara A. Blair, president of the Garment District Alliance, says: “Through her remarkable exhibit, Laurence Jenkell leverages both simple and universal imagery to remind New Yorkers of our global character, right at a moment when such reminders are so timely and valuable.”
Brookings Institution: “A dozen facts about immigration"
The Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, D.C., has released a report about immigration in the US. The document, an update of a previously published report, aims to provide economic facts about the role of immigration in the US economy and discusses patterns of recent immigration (including levels, legal status, country of origin, and US state of residence), characteristics of immigrants (including education, occupations, and employment), and the effects of immigration on the economy (economic output, wages, innovation, fiscal resources, and crime).
Read moreA Decent Life
Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power
American People Series #18: The Flag is Bleeding by Faith Ringgold
Brooklyn Museum’s exhibit, Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, features the work of over sixty black artists from 1963 to 1983, “one of the most politically, socially, and aesthetically revolutionary periods in American history.” Over 150 artworks in the exhibition address the unjust social conditions facing black Americans. These include Faith Ringgold’s painting of a “bleeding” flag (above). Ringgold, who was inspired by Amiri Baraka, one of the key leaders of the Black Arts Movement, developed a style that she called “super realism” to accurately depict the “oppression faced by Black people as viscerally as possible.” The exhibition is at the Brooklyn Museum through February 3, 2019.