Jose Antonio Guerrero Martínez, an actor in the celebrated movie Roma, directed by Alfonso Cuarón and nominated for ten Academy Awards, has not been able to secure a visa to enter the US to attend screenings and other industry events in the US, according to an interview he gave in the Mexican lifestyle magazine, Quién. Guerrero says he has been denied visas to the US on three separate occasions.
Read moreBasic Fairness and Decency
USCIS Will Resume Premium Processing But Only for Pending Fiscal Year 2019 H-1B Cap Petitions
US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that the agency will resume premium processing for all pending fiscal year (FY) 2019 H-1B cap petitions, including “master’s cap” advanced degree exemption cases effective Monday, January 28, 2019. USCIS originally suspended premium processing for all cap-subject petitions, including master’s cap exemption cases, in April 2018, and in September 2018 extended the suspension to additional H-1B petitions.
The premium processing service will resume only for pending FY 2019 cap petitions, not new submissions, since sufficient cap cases have been filed to meet the cap numbers. The previously announced temporary suspension remains in effect for all other categories of H-1B petitions to which the suspension applied. If USCIS has issued a Request for Evidence (RFE) for the case, petitioners and/or attorneys should submit the RFE response with the premium processing upgrade request. USCIS says: “We plan to resume premium processing for the remaining categories of H 1B petitions as agency workloads permit.”
In Dreams Awake
In Dreams Awake features six large-scale, figural sculptures by Hudson Valley-based artist Kathy Ruttenberg on the Broadway Malls between 64th and 157th Streets. In her first major outdoor installation, Ruttenberg combines human, animal, and plant forms to allow “viewers a moment to escape from New York's urban intensity with dreamlike fables derived from rural settings.” The pieces are made of a variety of sculptural media including patinated bronze, glass mosaic, transparent cast resin, and LED lighting. I had a chance to visit “Ms. Mighty Mouse” on 79th Street and “In Sync” on 72nd Street. Ruttenberg encourages viewers to come up with their own narrative and “multi-layered meaning” of each piece. I think “Ms. Mighty Mouse” is protecting a walnut she found for the winter against other pedestrians who are trying to steal it (but I don’t know what happen to her arms, that’s very concerning!) and “In Sync” tells the story of a tree nymph and half man-half deer who are in love but are walking to the train to get to their desk jobs even though they dream of running off to the country. In Dreams Awake is on display at various points on the Broadway Malls through February 2019. What’s your interpretation?
The New York Times: “Actually, the Numbers Show That We Need More Immigration, Not Less.”
That America is being overwhelmed by a flood of immigrants has become conventional wisdom for some. Remarking on undocumented immigration and border security President Trump claimed last November that, among many other negatives, “Illegal immigration hurts American workers; burdens American taxpayers; and undermines public safety.” Many immigration experts and analysts, including Shikha Dalmia, a senior analyst at Reason Foundation, argue however that the idea that America is experiencing mass immigration is a myth.
Read moreOne Family
Between Two Worlds
Escher X nendo | Between Two Worlds is a visually stunning exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria (known as NGV) in Melbourne featuring over 150 preparatory sketches, drawings, woodcuts, mezzotints, and lithographs of famed Dutch artist M. C. Escher along with work by the internationally-acclaimed Japanese design studio nendo. The pairing is appropriate since both Escher and Oki Sato, nendo’s founder and principal designer, “share common interests in their love of spatial manipulation, optical illusions and playful visual devices.” In this exhibit, which I thoroughly enjoyed, Sato and his design house nendo have created an immersive installation where visitors can experience Escher’s brilliant 2D graphic world along with nendo’s inventive 3D design world. Sato chose the house shape as a motif for the exhibition because he wanted to create “a house for Escher.” The house motif is repeated in various formats in the exhibition rooms and playfully interspersed with Escher’s own works. In the exhibition’s largest room (the above photo), a grid of black-and-white houses with both open and closed roofs act as a maze that forces visitors to walk through the space to discover tabletop light-boxes displaying works by Escher. Sato says: "I sort of feel like I became best friends with Escher, even though I never met him.” Visitors to the exhibit might feel the same. Escher X nendo is on display at the NGV International through April 7, 2019.
Washington Post: “Fact-checking President Trump’s Oval Office address on immigration.”
Last week President Trump addressed the nation in a speech about immigration and what he has claimed is a “crisis” at the US-Mexico border. Throughout the course of his nine-minute speech (which was made on the 18th day of the government shutdown), numerous fact-checkers and experts agree that the president painted an exaggerated and overall misleading picture of immigration to the US and the situation at the US-Mexico border. Fact-checkers across mediums confirm that the President’s speech pumped up some numbers, exaggerated the public safety risks of immigration, and repeated false claims regarding funding for the border wall.
Read moreTo Really Understand The World
Poetry Jukebox
Poetry Jukebox in Ruth E. Wittenberg Triangle in Manhattan.
Poetry Jukebox is a simple but ingenious project that plays poems on demand. Installed in Greenwich Village, visitors can press a button and hear poems from such New York City residents as Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sara Teasdale, Grace Paley, James Baldwin, Edgar Allan Poe, and Jack Kerouac, among others. Originally started in Prague by Ondřej Kobza, a café owner and cultural activist with passion for poems and literature, along with producer and writer Michaela Hečková, the project has spread to Slovakia, Ireland, Scotland, Bulgaria, and Germany, all with different poems in each location to reflect the literary heritage of each place. The creators of the Poetry Jukebox are focused on animating public spaces in cities and showing “how people can make their own cities more livable.”