Decorate your undocumented home–while you can./Image: Licensed Adobe stock, Savapanf Photo.
If you’re an undocumented citizen, wherever you sit as you write this, you won’t be there long, because the callous Trump administration is doing everything it can–fast–to make your very existence a crime. The crying babies, loud neighbors, poor temperature control, constant sense of insecurity, and yes, soon those ICE agents banging on your door, they’ll all be part of your past before you can say, “Please have mercy,” It’s not worth your time to get too invested in any particular design concept for your domicile. Still, the followin my provide some fun ideas!
Imitation Is the Sincerest Form of Hopelessness
Soon, you’ll be thrust back into a life you thought was in your past, but isn’t. It’s now part of your uncertain future, So the popular trends from the year you fled in a desperate panic across the border, away from poor living conditions, might make for some fun choices. The good folks at Inside Out have some great ideas for incorporating design trends from the past into current living spaces. Then again, poverty has always pretty much been poverty. So, dirt floors, cramped quarters, low light, flimsy walls, leaky roofs, ravenous vermin, and poor plumbing (if any) could send a warm, inviting atmosphere for no one, including you.
Related: Serve up some dishes of discomfort a la General John Kelly.
Pitching Ain’t Just for the Ball Field
You, being a dirty foreigner, wouldn’t even know, but in America (not your America, our America) we play baseball, and pitching is a baseball term. It’s also what you do to a tent. Tents have come a long way, so try purchasing one for the refugee-camp-like place you’ll be staying in as you’re forcibly expatriated from one country and into another. Set it on a display table in a prominent place in your home to remind yourself and any visitors that that compact box could be your home soon. Yes, you’ll live in a box, you’ll lox, as the term goes in the undocumented community. Go for a Freestanding Tent. For, as the good folks at Bass Pro Shops point out, a Freestanding Tent is, “A tent that does not require stakes or guy lines to stand erect. And that’s really what you yourself are, because you’re freestanding, too, unmoored and unaccompanied in a harsh world.
Government Handouts for Those Pushed Back Across the Border
Use what you don’t have and never did have to spruce up your lodgings: government benefits. It’s hard to get benefits even as a citizen, and it was probably downright impossible as an undocumented person. And why shouldn’t it be, huh? As an undocumented immigrant, you’re taking benefits away from so many people who were born here through an accident of random chance that neither they nor their “merit” had anything to do with (their birth) or who had the decency to have enough money to pay an immigration lawyer to help them successfully jumped through a bunch bureaucratic hoops to get a passport. Perhaps, then, fashion some wallpaper. or upholstery out of the government forms you couldn’t fill out during your time here, blank food stamps applications, blank Medicaid documents, blank government-assisted housing requests, But don’t feel too sad, most of these programs are being gutted by the Trump admin anyway, This is, after all, “the greatest country in the world,” a phrase we like to use often but rarely actually give any thought to the meaning of.
And: See how Ivanka plans to get all her family and friends found not guilty in the Mueller probe.
Darkness Visible
Play with light, or the lack thereof. Think of how you had to leave your country of birth for economic hope, because you were persecuted, or just generally had bleak life prospects. You came here, where the streets are paved with gold for people with rich, white feet, only that you were entering a county rife with racism and xenophobia. They didn’t want you here, and they’re telling you. So draw all the shades to make your living space match the way that must make you feel inside (assuming your abode has windows), Remove all lamps and other lighting devices, and just sit there waiting to be busted by ICE.
Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Bloody-Soled
A DIY unwelcome mat might be a joyous way to remind yourself every one of the last few times you enter your U.S. digs that it may be your last. Get some straight razors and adhere them to a welcome mat of your choosing from any trashy home goods chain store with a hot glue gun–razor side up, Now, every time you walk in your cuddly cave of kill-me, you’ll get a visceral reminder of the pain you’re in for when your deported and how brutal it’s been while you were here.
Mix it up and get eclectic. In Nazi Germany, Jews were forced to wear a yellow Star of David on their person to identify them as “other.” How has your experience as an undocumented U.S.-er manifested your “otherness?” Have you felt invisible? How about hanging on the wall a picture of yourself and your family with the faces cut out, then?
Also: Take a tour with us around Robert Mueller’s FBI offices.
Au Revoir, Mes Enemies
In reality, it’s technology that’s plays the largest role in taking jobs from American workers by changing the job landscape and making skills that require expensive training a necessity. But that reality is too complicated, as are all the other forces altering the way we live and work, to think about. It’s much easier to scapegoat and demonize people who don’t belong to your tribe, And now the government is helping us, headed by Don Don. Soon we’ll be able to have meth-ed up secret service police agents roaming the streets barking, “Show me your papers1” Aah–something to look forward to.
As we said, avoid getting too fancy with any design endeavors in your undocumented home project, Keep it simple, like President Donald Trump’s and his cabinet’s minds. We can commit to helping you with design trends for the overpopulated, hot-because-of-climate-change, city of raw sewage and high crime you fled in a future post, So, dry those tears. You may have a bleak future, but you have that article by us to look forward to!
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© 2018 Akbar Khan
