Weekly Recap 9/18-9/25

What I did:


I spent a total of 6 hours researching online and in books.
I spent a total of 2 hours maping out the process as I understand it now.
I spent a total of 2 hours sketching symbols.
I spent a total of 45 minutes conversing with immigration specialists.

What I accomplished/discovered/encountered:

I have found specific statistics about Michigan immigration from the Migration Policy Institute.  These statistics include percentages social and demographic characteristics such as language and education, workforce, income and poverty.  They also break down these statistics into smaller categories by age, race, sex, population, place of origin, citizenship status, household, and children.

The top three countries of birth of the foreign born people in Michigan are Mexico, India, and Canada.
Between 2006-2007 29,021 immigrants moved to Michigan from abroad.
Of the total population of Michigan (10,071,822) 6.1% (609,457) are foreign born as of 2007.
There are hundreds of more specific statistics as well.

I was also able to talk to Susan B. Reed from the Michigan Poverty Law Program.  She is an Immigration Law Support Attorney.  After playing phone tag for about four days we were able to converse for about forty-five minutes.  She broke the immigration process down in to three big categories.  First, the Humanitarian category which includes refugees, people with political asylum, and abused or neglected children of immigrants or unlawful residents.  Second, the employment based immigration.  A person is only eligible for employment based immigration if 1) they are highly educated and have a very special skill that cannot be done by any American/Domestic people, 2) you have a job offer from an American corporation and 3) the employer is willing to go through the mass amount of paper work, pay enormous legal fees and, wait a minimum of six months.  Of course there are exceptions for star athletes and geniuses.  The third category is sparking my interest the most.  The family based immigration.  These are the people who have a family member that has a green card (is a permanent resident) or is an American citizen.  These are also the people who won't have the help that refugees or workers might in lawyers or employers.  These people are often deceived by "lawyers" in their own country who convince them they can help but end up embezzling their money.  These people don't necessarily have the educational background or networking skills that the employment based immigrants might have.  These are also the people who will be tackling language barriers single handedly to try and move to the United States.

This is an image of the very, simple map I made breaking down the 3 categories into subcategories and into the process.  The wait time from applying for a green card to becoming a citizen is any where from 6 to 28 years depending on your eligibility and the wait list.

Susan suggested that I narrow my scope, which I absolutely agree now after hearing all that she had to say.  I am absolutely taking on too much.  Right now I have narrowed my project down to the family based immigrants.  The lists on the top of this image are of who an American citizen can petition from other countries and how they do it.

This is an image from Reason magazine that Susan sent me.  It is a parody of the immigration process for employment based and family based immigration.   Here is the link to the file:  http://reason.org/files/a87d1550853898a9b306ef458f116079.pdf

She also explained to me how the INS (immigration department) was dismantled in 2003 and how there are now 15+ agencies responsible for all of the different aspects of the process ranging from border patrol to security to the judicial system to citizenship and naturalization.  I think coming up with a way to map out what all of these agencies are and what they do and why people go to them would be important both for immigrants and for attorneys who help them.

I am currently overwhelmed with information to say the least.

To take a break from the research aspect of the information, I started keeping track of words that came up frequently in the process as I read through material such as spouse, child, green card, citizen, sibling, unmarried, married, waiting, and money.  I made some very preliminary sketches of ideas for what these might look like as symbols.  I realized very quickly that making symbols that have cross cultural references is going to be very challenging.  I think I may have to make some sort of key to go along with whatever it is that I design.

What I think I should do next:


I absolutely need to continue with research.  Susan gave me a few recommendations of where to go next.    There are a few people/places to contact in Washtenaw county which will be so convenient.  Eventually I will want to make direct contact with people who have gone through the immigration process and people going through it now.  I also need to do more research about cross cultural symbology.  Keeping all of my information organized in my brain and on paper is a challenge in and of itself and will be ongoing through this whole process.