In the public debate over immigration, it is easy to get caught up in the politics and complexity of the laws and to see immigrant rights as an “issue” rather than as the personal lived experience it is for so many people. But the Albany Park Theater Project (APTP), a Chicago-based award-winning youth theater ensemble, was created to tell personal stories. Its latest production, Home/Land, humanizes immigration in ways that those of us focused on law and policy cannot. APTP’s high school-aged actors created the play based on dozens of interviews as well as their own experiences as immigrants and members of immigrant communities, and as targets for marginalization and demonization.
“We’re telling the stories of people who are often ignored or stigmatized,” said Maggie Popadiak, APTP Associate Director, in an interview with PBS Newshour. And people are listening. Home/Land has garnered media attention and rave reviews.
NIJC has had the privilege of partnering with APTP and even of having some of our clients’ stories represented on their stage. NIJC’s clients’ experiences have always informed the direction of our policy advocacy and litigation work. But seeing their stories recreated on stage is a profoundly moving experience. For two intimate hours, the rest of the audience and I felt the suffering that NIJC’s clients and thousands of other immigrants experience.
Home/Land reveals how inhumane, draconian immigration laws deeply hurt our communities and affect everyone living in the United States. The immigration crisis in America is our problem—all of us who live here.
The government should take a chapter from APTP and focus on the people, families, and communities at the center of its immigration laws and policies. Perhaps then our immigration system would be more humane and effective.