{"id":194,"date":"2018-04-12T17:09:40","date_gmt":"2018-04-12T17:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/borderblog\/?p=194"},"modified":"2023-12-15T11:28:58","modified_gmt":"2023-12-15T16:28:58","slug":"celebrating-illegal-immigration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/borderblog\/celebrating-illegal-immigration\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating Illegal Immigration"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"“Every time you see a cop on the beat, ask yourself what he is protecting, and from who.”
\n— Malcolm X<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Traveling in Israel, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Haifa’s tourist sites include a museum celebrating illegal immigration. It’s actually called the Clandestine Immigration and Naval Museum, but they aren’t fussy about the nomenclature: the book they sell in the gift shop, published by the Israeli Ministry of Defense, constantly uses the term “illegal immigration” and refers to the people who arrived that way as “illegals.” It describes how some paid sailors to land them surreptitiously, some snuck over the Lebanese border, some arranged fictitious marriages, some overstayed tourist visas… in sum, all the current methods by which people continue to make their way to new countries in defiance of various authorities.<\/p>\n

In light of recent headlines I was particularly struck by the museum\u2019s film of illegal immigrants throwing metal cans at British soldiers who were trying to keep them from landing in Palestine (from which I shot a photo sequence):<\/p>\n