We The Aliens

A science fiction junkie, I first locked eyes with the Xenomorph, in all its cold, menacingly sleek black glory when I was just seven years old, gaping in horror as it burst out of Kane’s chest in the seminal James Cameron film Alien, embarrassingly glad to be on the other side of the screen.

Now I know that it was the screen, and only the screen, that separated us.

Because I’m also an alien.

For those immersed in the multiverse of science fiction, aliens represent a powerful and foreign entity, that which we hope to witness but secretly fear and hope to never encounter. Referring to immigrants as aliens is an ironic acknowledgment of their power and the fear that nativists hold of them. We oil the American machine, facilitating technological advancements and maintaining the economy. According to the Pew Research Center, immigrants are projected to drive the growth in the working U.S. population until 2035, if not longer. But even with all this influence we remain subdued.

One cannot argue with the promise of America, with its apple pie democracy and hamburger politics, but can comment on its inaccessibility for many. Hardworking immigrants wait decades for their Green Cards and citizenship, but receive deportation papers at light speed. In 2016, after the presidential election of Donald Trump, we tearfully sent off friends in U-Haul trucks, in our minds fearfully packed and ready to go.

We balance on a fine line, on borders of land and mind, gymnasts in a failing balancing act. In our home countries, Western influence has made us fancy strangers. In America, we are aliens.

The lack of a middle ground is disconcerting.

A report from the New York Times revealed that President Biden’s administration is phasing out discriminatory language from legislation in attempts to reclaim the “‘vision of America’”. That vision is steeped in anti-immigrant sentiment which bubbles in the nation’s core, having seeped out in 1790 from the inked words of the Naturalization Act, sealing the fate of generations of immigrants to come. American, democratic law tried to dehumanize us with this word, alien, trying to break our tremendous will to survive. And we can be sure that even when the law is changed and inked anew, the feel of the word will remain, etched in the nation’s cultural landscape, present in the breath of covert and overt white supremacists.

One day, we will metamorphose into our true skins and you will know us as you know yourselves, as faultily human, with inalienable rights, with stubborn dreams and a remarkably enduring spirit.

But until then, we the aliens are here to stay.

This is us, we the aliens, signing off…for now.

– Pihu J.