New Hampshire Has Issues

Immigration (Myths and Realities) in New Hampshire with Grace Kindeke

• Liz Canada

Share episode

Comments about immigration are all over social media, in politicians' speeches, and in politicians' social media...but what is actually happening?

In this episode, Liz talks with Grace Kindeke about some of the myths circulating about immigration, including crime, social services, and higher education. 

New episodes every Tuesday.

Become a supporter of the show.

Have an idea for an upcoming episode? Email Liz: newhampshirehasissues@gmail.com

 Links:

Support the show

Podcast theme music by Transistor.fm. Learn how to start a podcast here.

Liz Canada:

Most important question, though, is what is your favorite

Grace Kindeke:

musical? Oh my God, that's a tough question. So I am a huge musical theater nerd. I did a lot of musical theater. Me too, Grace. Me too. I feel like there's synergy here. So I have a bunch, but I will say like what has my heart right now is of course Wicked. So I was a huge fan of the Broadway stage play. And then when I learned about the reboot, I mean, I damn near lost my mind. And it's incredible. And I'm so excited for the second one. I can't even tell you. Did you go opening night to the movie? No, I didn't actually. I don't know what was going on, probably because it came out when I was still in school. So I've literally, life was a blur between classes and work. But as soon as I could hit the theater, I

Liz Canada:

got to see it. We'll allow it. We'll allow that this time. But the second part, opening night, Grace. I know, there's no excuses now. You're listening to New Hampshire Has Issues, and I am your host, Liz Canada. I'm talking to you from the future because I wanted to share a story. I taught in Denver, Colorado. I didn't grow up in Colorado. I grew up in New Jersey. Yikes. The majority of the students at the high school where I worked were Latino. In my first semester of teaching as a new teacher, the youngest person on staff, I had a student who I will refer to as Teresa. Teresa was a great kid, perfect grades, always willing to participate, which in a high school English classroom, like, oh, what a dream to have a student who wants to participate regularly, raise her hand, read out loud, all of that. The beginning of every class, my students would come in and they would get their journals and they would respond to a prompt that I had on the board. And Teresa, every class would do that and be happy and joyful and all of the attributes you think of when you think of a great kid in high school. One Monday, my students came in and Teresa went over and sat by the window and just looked outside. Didn't take out her notebook, didn't grab a journal, just stared out the window and she looked just absent and gone. As the other students were writing, I kind of signaled to her silently to ask, are you okay? And she did not respond silently. She responded quietly. Very loudly. No, I am not okay. And she shared in front of everyone that that weekend there was a raid on her family's church and her aunt and uncle were taken. I had no idea this was something that was happening. I didn't know about the raids. I didn't know I had students with family members who were undocumented. And I didn't know that I had students who were undocumented. It's embarrassing to admit this now in 2025. My students that day really challenged me. They were all horrified, rightfully so. And one student who was sort of the ringleader of the class looked me in the eye, pointed at me and said, what are you going to do about this, Canada? I think about that day so often. It happened almost 20 years ago now. And in all of my various professional jobs of teaching and being a college advisor, being a family engagement coach, being a director of policy for an education nonprofit, I think about that. What am I doing about this? What am I doing about that Monday and that weekend? So here I am on my little podcast thinking about that still. If you're listening to this episode and you have no firsthand experience, truly, this episode is for you. There are significant horrors happening in our country right now and in our state in New Hampshire, which Grace will talk about. So in closing of this opening, this episode is dedicated to Teresa, to the student who pointed her finger at me, to all of the students in that class who called me out and called me in as well. Thank you. so that they could use that information to fill out their student's FAFSA. To the students who walked into my office and asked, is it safe to apply for DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals? To the students who messaged me the day after the November 2016 election and said, Canada, do you think I should go back to Mexico? To the student whose father worked 80 to 100 hours a week so that she could continue her college education, that they would pay out of pocket to the student in my advisory who, a few weeks before the end of their senior year, said to me in front of everyone, you and everyone at this school has lied to the undocumented students. You said that it would be okay, and it's not. And she was right. My students are now in their 30s. They are older than I was by a lot when I started teaching. But this episode is still dedicated to them. And I am still trying to figure out what am I going to do about it? And I turn it back to all of us. What are we going to do about this? Thanks for listening. Welcome to New Hampshire Has Issues, the podcast that dares to ask, who should we actually be scared of? All right, Grace. We should be scared. Okay.

Grace Kindeke:

Wait, sorry.

Liz Canada:

She's like, I have a list of people. Right.

Grace Kindeke:

Proud Boys, white supremacy,

Liz Canada:

transphobia. That's right. See other episodes, folks. That's who you should be afraid of. All right. So, Grace, what is your tagline?

Grace Kindeke:

My tagline is, how do immigrants make New Hampshire and America great?

Liz Canada:

All right. I am going to get some emails about this episode, and I am so excited. So I am your host, Liz Canada, and joining me today is the American Friends Service Committee New Hampshire Program Coordinator, Grace Kindeke. Grace, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here. I'm so glad that you're joining.

Grace Kindeke:

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited for this conversation.

Liz Canada:

Thank you. Thank you. So... We've got a big topic to cover. Maybe folks have seen some stories about immigration, but I'm hoping we might get into what's real and not real, some of the myths, and maybe to better understand even what the word immigration means. It's a big term and it's thrown around a lot. We can dig into it a little bit more.

Grace Kindeke:

Yeah, sounds good.

Liz Canada:

Grace.

Grace Kindeke:

Yes.

Liz Canada:

I like to start with a simple question. Why are so many folks freaking out?

Liz Canada:

Yeah, it

Grace Kindeke:

seems simple, you know, but I think it's very layered, right? Immigrants, particularly black and brown immigrants, white folks, as we know them now, didn't always include the Irish, you know, the Germans, you know, there are a lot of folks who immigrated to this country and United States likes to know itself as a nation of immigrants, although that's pretty loaded as a colonial power, right? Because there were people that were living here, indigenous Native Americans who were here. here and remain here who really were fighting to survive that invasion but you know over time as the United States became a country immigration was one of the forces that helped build up so much of this country's infrastructure gives the country a lot of its character but we've seen in the history of immigration that there's often been a lot of racial animus ethnic animus towards certain groups of people that did not quite fit the mold or were not easily accepted by, you know, Americans who were here. So we've seen there's been a long history of freak outs over immigration. You know, one of our pieces of immigration history is that one of the first immigration policies was the Chinese Exclusion Act. So barring or making it very difficult for Chinese immigrants to come to this country or to have certain rights while in this country. This freak out around immigration has been going on a long time and it really is tied to a lot of racism, right? Like we got to be honest that oftentimes immigrants are a dog whistle when we say that there is an immigration invasion. It's a dog whistle. It's really focused on keeping out black and brown people who is included in that, although that list of unwanted people has changed over the decades, over the generations. But unfortunately, it has often been used as a scapegoat. Immigrants coming into our country as a scapegoat to blame the ills of our society, the real difficulties and economic insecurities and challenges that Americans are facing that are the fault of the way our systems are structured to preference those who are already wealthy and have the means while taking away over and over any types of supports or undermining any sort of social welfare infrastructure that we have because we have this belief that underscores our policymaking that, you know, you have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, which is actually impossible. People don't even realize a lot of the time it's actually impossible. to do that physically as well as metaphorically. And so immigrants become the stand-in for all of the social ills that people are experiencing, all the economic insecurities that people are experiencing. And it becomes an easy scapegoat for those who are in power, those who have the wealth and the means to more easily shape public policy than a lot of us who are just kind of trying to get through our regular lives. And so the freakouts are long. They're historical. The person, the people on the end of those freakouts change as but it's more often than not, it's an unfortunate scapegoat because it doesn't actually bear with what's the reality of what immigrants contribute, what is actually going on in the country and where the root causes of our problems are actually stemming from.

Liz Canada:

It's so much an us versus them framing that we hear about. Like we need to do something because they are going to, and it's always framed up as folks who are different than those of us who were, born in the United States or those of us who are white or whatever privileged status. the person who's speaking has this us and them mentality. I have done the thing that I have said I would never do, which is engage in social media fights in the comments.

Grace Kindeke:

I'm right there with you. You try to avoid them, but...

Liz Canada:

Some people say things and I'm there like, okay, it is 11.23 p.m. Should I respond to this? Yes, yes, I should. One of the things that I've noticed as I've been, I don't know, lurking in comments on social media, tragically, the word immigrants is being used as sort of a catch-all term. And I think a lot of folks who have maybe big feelings about what they're being told on social media sites or, quote unquote, the news, which I use very generously. So I think it might be helpful. to better understand what that word, immigrants, really means. What are the different immigration statuses that folks can have? Because I feel like a lot of people may not know this.

Grace Kindeke:

So I'll start off by saying that our immigration system is very complicated. So we can think of the immigration system as having different categories. I have direct experience because I'm an immigrant, so I've gone through the system myself. But really, every single person's case is unique, and different people will fall into different categories depending on whether you were the one to choose to come to the United States, whether you did that voluntarily or involuntarily, or, you know, you were brought to the United States. Oftentimes people don't realize that the word migrants is actually the umbrella term. So migration, which we at AFC believes is a human right because it's a natural human activity. We all migrate, whether we, you know, we might not call moving to college or moving state to state migrating, but that's exactly what it is. These different categories, I think a most familiar with asylum seekers, with refugees, green card holders that are people who have, you know, been able to get through the process to the point of receiving a green card, visa holders. So there's different ways you can come into the country, you can come in by going through either a refugee resettlement program, if you are experiencing violence or conflict in your home country, and you have to flee and you're able to getting touch and getting contact with those refugee services that are overseas in different countries all over Literally, we have people who have walked to the southern border or to the northern border in attempt to cross and seek asylum. as compared to the refugee category, which starts usually outside of the country. You can come on a visa. So in the situation, my personal situation, I came in on a visa as a dependent of another visa holder because I was a minor at the time. Those visas can be temporary. They can be a student visa. It can be a tourist visa, but not all visas have a pathway to citizenship. So in order to become a citizen, you have to be able to get a green card and not every visa category allows for that pathway. to a green card but for instance with a refugee or an asylum seeker that is a pathway to a green card but you still have to go through that process first for a visa holder for instance that work and that processing started outside of the country so my mom did all the paperwork in Congo before she came to the United States but it could also start when you're here like I said with that asylum seeker so that's just some of sort of the broad brush categories immigrants are people who migrate to a country and then decide to stay right so we have temporary workers who who would be considered migrants but not immigrants. So we have people who are seasonal workers, people who work up here in the Northeast on some of the dairy farms, including the dairy farms that supply the milk at our local Hannaford's. We have people, you know, people that I think most people when they think of migrants can think of a lot of our vegetable and fruit pickers out in California and the Texas area. So there are these temporary categories that people can come in with the express purpose of working and then returning. And I think one category that people don't always realize is that Depending on how much money you have, you can actually buy certain types of visas. You can buy a pathway to a green card if you have a couple million dollars that you can... Just lying around. Just lying around. Just lying around. Unfortunately, people then fall out of status. So then you have situation or they enter into the country. Maybe they bypass ports of entry for whatever reason and they cross over and then they cross over without any inspection. So they don't have any status to begin with. Right. broad brush types of categories that people can come in on.

Liz Canada:

So Grace, something that people will say, this is sort of similar to the housing episode that I did. Why don't we build more houses, right? Like, isn't that the thing? So my question to you is like, why don't people just become US citizens? Like, why don't they just go through the process, right? Like, that's the question that comes up a lot. Why don't people just become US citizens?

Grace Kindeke:

Yeah, no, that's a great question. And I certainly have heard it before. You've heard it before? Is this not the first time you've heard this question? No, no, it's like, I've heard, you know, why don't people just become US citizens? Why don't people just get in line? You know, and first, I'll start and say, I have lived in the United States since 1989. We are in the good year of our mother lord 2025. We are. It's been a minute. We have arrived

Liz Canada:

at

Grace Kindeke:

2025. So that was 36 years that I've been in the United States. I'm a US Citizen Now, it took me 34 years to become a US citizen.

Liz Canada:

Say that number again, Grace. Just repeat it for me so I can hear the number one more time.

Grace Kindeke:

Yes, absolutely. 34 years. It took me 34 years to become a U.S. citizen. And so people don't often realize because of the complexity of our immigration system. And despite the complexity, we don't have a lot of pathways to citizenship. So people have been working, advocating, rallying in the streets. Yeah. So that status expired and then they were considered undocumented. So when I learned that I was undocumented at 18 years old, you know, right on the cusp of graduating high school. Which many, many

Liz Canada:

young people learn. Yeah. At 17 or 18 years old, because that is when they are applying to college and find out when they go to complete their FAFSA or their college application that they do not have social security numbers. So I need so many people to understand many things. kids don't even know it yet and they won't know

Grace Kindeke:

it yeah and they absolutely that's absolutely true and it's because you know families do whatever they can to protect their children and then it just you literally get to the end of the road right you get to the end of the road whether it's you find out you don't have a social security number you find out that you don't have any sort of visa or documentation literally when we say people without documents we're talking you do not have the right pieces of paper to advance and move forward to the next block you cannot go forward. What then ends up happening, right, is that you look for a solution and there's very few solutions. I will say that in my personal case, I had I fell in love. I got married and I was right. And that's in that some people are able to take that pathway. I was able to adjust my status through my marriage. You know, I happened to fall in love and marry a U.S. citizen. If I hadn't, we would be having a different story. But the reality is, is that If I hadn't gone through, if I had not adjusted my status with my spouse, I would actually still be in a situation where I would still be on DACA, which is Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which is a type of temporary protected status. It doesn't give you a legal status, but it does enable you to have authorization to work. It does deprioritize you on a deportation list, but it's not a secure status. It is simply one that kind of just keeps you going just enough to survive. And so it goes to show, like just to use using the example of my experience, that there are not pathways for me, for instance, if I had not adjusted status through marriage, I had no other pathways. Nothing else exists within this current system that we have that would allow me to regularize my status. And that is the case for many, many people. So you have categories of people who come in or you have groups of people who come in under different categories. And it's like you do get into line, right? There is different pathways. to enter into the United States. You get into that line and it's like you get into that line and then you meet a cliff edge and there is nowhere for you to go. You can't go forward. You can't go left. You can't go right. You could maybe try to go backwards if you're one of the lucky few who might be able to return to their home country if the circumstances are safe enough, secure enough, and you have the means, right? Many people don't. And so we simply do not have the lines that people can get into. And the way that we create those lines is through policy. It is our Congress. that decides immigration law. And what we've seen, especially over the last several decades, is what policy changes have been made is to increase detention and deportation, right? It's to increase enforcement, not to increase pathways for people to actually adjust their status, change their status, regularize their status, because many people want to and they're trying to. And even for those who can, right, for the few who can, the courts are so backed up. Our courts are our immigration courts are overwhelmed we have people who are waiting decades you know I

Liz Canada:

was literally decades

Grace Kindeke:

literal decades grace

Liz Canada:

is not an anomaly in this situation no

Grace Kindeke:

it's such an important emphasis to make that it does take decades and there are people that are still waiting right they're still waiting for a hearing they're still waiting for a response we have people who have filed in the 90s who are still waiting in the 2000s who are still waiting what we prioritize what we pay for is what we value Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. nothing to USCIS which actually is the that arm of the agency that does process a lot of these immigration cases right where people are trying to regularize their status so we always seem to have money for police for jails prisons detention centers for agents but we never seem to have enough money we have enough money to build a detention camp a concentration camp in Florida in a matter of weeks but we don't seem to have enough money to pay officers to process people we don't seem to have enough money or will to create pathways for people to regularize and when we do have policy proposals that have been brought whether that's the dream act or a pathway to citizenship through changing the registry date we get those policies shut down not only by republicans will i say from democrats themselves even our own federal delegation sometimes not supporting specific pieces of legislation which would enable broad swaths millions of people to actually be able to regularize their status. So it's not that the ideas aren't there. It's not that the pathways haven't been created, but over and over our government doesn't invest in them.

Liz Canada:

I really liked the sort of analogy or maybe just the visual description that you gave because people do say like they should get in line. You can get in line and there's no one to process you forward. There's only money to detain and to move them into detention centers. And that is atrocious. It is absolutely horrific that that is how we are prioritizing our money, our time, our people. Grace, thank you for pointing out that none of the money is going towards helping folks do the thing that people say that they which is to move forward and to, you know, quote unquote, get in line.

Grace Kindeke:

Exactly. I mean, and it goes to show when we invest in I could feel my heart rate. I could feel like

Liz Canada:

I'm going to check my watch and it's going to be like you weren't working out for like,

Grace Kindeke:

yes, I am very fired up about yes. Yeah, no, it's absolutely true. The quota that we're looking at, at the at the federal level of 3000 people a day, they're trying to pick up that is an overwhelming amount of personnel of institutions and facilities, which I mean, don't even get me started. I mean, we can we People cannot find each other, right?

Liz Canada:

Exactly.

Grace Kindeke:

Yeah, exactly. And we're just investing in this and strengthening and increasing and building out this horrific, violent infrastructure. And

Liz Canada:

celebrating it and saying that this is what our country or our state should be doing. And it is atrocious that that is what is happening.

Grace Kindeke:

And some folks, you know, some listeners may not know that we, New Hampshire actually does have several, a couple of detention centers. So we have the FCI Berlin, which is a federal prison, which is right now holding about 300 people in pretty deplorable conditions, right? We have advocates and community members seeking a way to increase the oversight, especially from our federal delegation on this facility because people are not being able to access those basic care needs that I just listed out. They don't even have consistent access to a phone to talk to their lawyer, to be able to have their loved ones reach them. And they're in a very remote part of the state, right? We also have the Stratford County Jail, which thankfully we have a wonderful volunteer run visitation program that AFSC co-runs so that there are people in the jail who are there to support people who are being detained but we're seeing the numbers there increase as well over a hundred people being detained and then we've also seen a new contract I live in Hillsborough County and our sheriff just recently entered into a contract with ICE to not only perform immigration enforcement but to also to use the Valley Street Jail a pretty notoriously horrible county jail the Hillsborough County Jail here in Manchester as a detention center and And that places known documented abuses on only of civilians who are being incarcerated there, but also as a detention center when it was used as one in the early 2000s. So in our own little state, we have capacity to hold hundreds of detainees of people kidnapped, not only off the streets of New Hampshire, but also elsewhere.

Liz Canada:

Right. Being taken from surrounding states. That's happening here. So, Grace, I invited you to this podcast because New Hampshire has issues and the top And I think I said this when I reached out to you to say like, it's an issue that is actually, as you know, not the issue that's being put out there. Like the issue is how we are actually treating human beings in our state and what we are allowing to happen every day here. And it's hard to cut through. I assume people don't know this is happening here. And I think folks need to. Bottom line is to know that it's happening first. And then how do you feel about it? How do you feel about people being detained in our state?

Grace Kindeke:

They don't offer interpreters. So you have to learn English in detention, right? You learn English from other detainees because the government officials in the richest country in the world cannot seem to supply to you a French interpreter, a French interpreter. Wow. So you're stuck in a system where no one is listening to you. No one understands you, wants to understand you. You're trying to figure out what is happening. You thought you were coming to a country that overseas, you United States has a reputation of this is the land of the free milk and honey run from our taps. You know, the streets are paved with gold.

Liz Canada:

Everything is

Grace Kindeke:

gold. Everything is great. You know, and my street is not

Liz Canada:

paved with gold and also needs to be repaved in general. Well, paving would be great right now.

Grace Kindeke:

Right? Because that's the real reality. But people come here with such hope in their heart, truly believing that they're finally arriving to safety. And like you were saying, the fact that people are being taken and you do not know where they are. People are being transferred from facility to facility multiple times in a week. Days go by and family members have no idea where their loved ones have gone. And the fact that now part of our deportation policy as a country is not only do we just send, we just get people out. Now we're sending them to prison camps because that's what those are. They're sending them to prison camps in other countries, right? Because we like to export as a country, the United States likes to export our immigration policies to other countries. We'd like to use it as a negotiating tactic to get other countries to adopt the same horrific policies that we have. Otherwise, you know, we will bully them into compliance, right? or will threaten them. Or we'll withhold aid or funds, you know, we'll do whatever we need to in order to ensure that we can outsource this violence and this horror. So it's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking, but it's also enraging because no human being deserves to be treated like that. No human being deserves to not know to have their rights completely usurped and to be taken and tossed around like a bag of cheese. Like that is not how we are meant to be. to treat one another.

Liz Canada:

All of these folks are people. They are human beings. And how do we think we should treat human beings is the question we should be asking ourselves in our state, in our country, period. Can we talk about some of the misinformation that's out there? Some of the myths, I guess. There are a few. The greatest hits of misinformation about immigration. Greatest used very loosely. Yikes. A lot of yikes. So the first one is like, well, what about safety and crime? Are there folks who are from other countries who are committing crimes at a higher rate? Are they not? What's the real information?

Grace Kindeke:

Yeah. So the data has clearly shown for many, many, many years that immigrants overall commit crime. at a much lower rate than the US citizen population. That data is comparative to the size of the population that we're talking about, right? So the rate of crime is much lower. So that in and of itself is a myth. This belief that immigrants commit crimes at a higher rate than US citizens is not true. The other myth is that it is only criminals that are being taken. by the current administration's deportation and detention machine. That is also not true because where people are being picked up, they're being picked up at their schools, they're being picked up while they're running errands, they're being picked up while they're at home chilling, they're being picked up while they're working, right? We've had even here in New Hampshire a number of raids at local businesses, restaurants here in Concord and Milford. So these things are happening while people are doing what they're supposed to do to take care of themselves, to take care of their families. The other myth that leads off of that okay it's only criminals is that well if you have any sort of criminal record and I will say a couple of things to this one is that we have greatly expanded the category of who is considered a criminal so you can have people who have had a charge small charge maybe a small drug charge a small shoplifting charge maybe they got charged with it and you know they went through the whole thing or they didn't they just got arrested but the charges got dropped with the recent past of the Lake and Riley Act, that now means that immigrants are held to a much higher standard when it comes to having any sort of charge of criminal record than most other categories of people, including U.S. citizens. And so even if you have a charge as small as shoplifting that maybe didn't get fully charged, you got arrested, maybe they were wrong, maybe they just reprimanded you and sent you on your way, whatever the case may be, essentially it's a one strike against you. Any sort of interaction with the criminal legal system for very low-level crimes is considered a huge red mark against you, and it can be used to justify any denial of relief or your eventual detention and deportation. I think it's so important for us to see how even the categories of what is considered criminal, who is considered criminal, have expanded greatly. We know that our criminal legal system is racially biased. It has been because we see the data, we see how it is skewed, that we have more people of color, more Black people compared to how many of those people are in the general population. So it's like the population of jails and prisons is like 40% Black men. But Black people... half-ish of them are black men, are 13% of the population, right? So we see that even in New Hampshire, we have racial disparities in who is arrested, who is incarcerated. So we know that whenever we expand the categories of criminalization of who is considered a criminal, that creates a wider net that is used against people of color more often than it is against white people. Not to say that it doesn't also hurt white people, because it does, because these are not fair designation or ways of pulling together who can stay and who cannot stay, right? Who should be able to regularize, who should not be able to regularize. And so we have these categories of criminalization, who is considered a criminal, what is considered a criminal act, and a standard of being held that immigrants are held to that is an unfair standard. They're coming for the immigrants now, and then later they're going to come for us. And not that

Liz Canada:

much later, everyone. Right. It's happening now. In real time right now. And the democratic institutions are being chipped away right before our eyes. And what we keep getting is all of this blame on other individuals instead of the folks who are taking the power and using it against all of us. Maybe you see the target being on immigrants, but it will be wielded against immigrants. Everyone else, that is what happens historically. We've seen it time and time again. Even though I haven't been in a social studies class since junior year of high school, I know that this is the trend. This is what happens. All right, so safety and crime, Grace, you're saying we've been misinformed. I'm hearing from you a little bit.

Grace Kindeke:

Unfortunately, yes, exactly. Like there are real issues that people are experiencing when it comes to safety and security in their communities. So important to remember that if we. actually dealt with the root causes of why those things are happening, right? People hate the fact that they see, you know, homeless people on the street. Just give people housing. Then you don't have homeless people on the street. Make housing affordable rather than criminalizing people for either doing what they have to survive or doing things that they have to in order as a response to their poverty or their marginalization.

Liz Canada:

All of these issues, they are all connected with one another.

Grace Kindeke:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Liz Canada:

Okay, well, what about, Grace? All right, here's another one. What about... how folks who are immigrants, are they taking services away from U.S. citizens? Have they gathered up all the services and taken them for themselves? No. That's what I hear. That's

Grace Kindeke:

what I've seen on the social media. Oh, God, it's so heartbreaking because two things, right? One is most immigrants do not qualify or not eligible for certain social services. Certainly there are circumstances if an immigrant parent documents or undocumented, has a U.S. citizen child. If that child has a disability, they might be able to access some services as the parent and guardian of that child in order to ensure that that child has what they need, right? Most immigrants are not eligible for any sort of social service or welfare unless we're talking like somewhat special circumstances. What we've also seen is a systematic defunding Of our social services, of our social safety net, which, again, we live in the richest country in the world. We do. And yet we somehow cannot seem to manage to feed, clothe, support, house, all of our people. And we absolutely have the means to. We spend billions of dollars and we're spending billions more. And that billion isn't nothing. It's not just not a pocket full of pennies. Right. Those are all of our collective tax dollars going to be used so that wealthy, powerful, mostly men can play war games and make a profit. We have this situation, this idea of scarcity. We don't have enough. Right. And what little we have is being eaten up by people we don't want to be able to access it, right? So we then end up turning on each other, right? Like crabs in a barrel. We turn on each other. We're fighting over what little resources there are We're getting angry and frustrated because we can't access what little resources there are. But we don't stop for a second and look up and go, who's pulling the strings on this? Where are the crumbs coming from? Because last time I could tell, we had enough for a whole cake. Why are we fighting over crumbs? I

Liz Canada:

want a piece of the cake. It's the choice, the conscious choice to not do that, which is why we're here. All right, so Grace, you're saying that immigrants haven't collected all the services for themselves. They haven't taken them all away. Okay, okay, okay. What about colleges? What about folks who are getting into college? Are they taking seats from U.S. citizens?

Grace Kindeke:

God, no. It breaks my heart that this mythology, and I know one of our... You know, one of the folks in the... Someone said a thing. Someone said a thing somewhere. It's impossible to know. For me, it's enraging, right? Because it's absolutely unfair. It is wrong. And it is incredibly dishonest to make that claim that immigrants are coming in, they're stealing college seats that would go to a U.S. citizen. I mean, first of all, everybody has to apply and get chosen. Let

Liz Canada:

me explain

Grace Kindeke:

the

Liz Canada:

college application process. You do have to actually apply to the school. Step one.

Grace Kindeke:

There are minimum, exactly, there are minimum qualifications you have to meet everybody. There is still a process. There are still requirements to get into a school. Exactly. And you still have to meet them, right, regardless of what your status is. I think it's also so important for us to interrogate the underbelly of a comment like that, right? Because when you say, oh, you know, when immigrants come, they're taking seats away. So what you're saying subconsciously or subliminally is that immigrants are not as smart or as qualified as U.S. And so therefore, U.S. citizens are being discriminated against. But I will say that the reality is that there are different standards that different people are held to. And something that I grew up hearing, I think a lot of people of color know are familiar with this, is that you have to work twice as hard, three times as hard, four times as hard to be able to get to the same level as your white counterpart or white peer. My own story when it comes to college is a good example of that. I was in the top 10% of my class when I graduated high school. Hey. Shout out to all the gifted children from the 90s and early 2000s. There they

Liz Canada:

are. We see you all. We see you all out there.

Grace Kindeke:

How's the anxiety? Is

Liz Canada:

it good? It's high. It's high, if I'm being

Grace Kindeke:

honest. It's high. We self-medicate using a variety of things. The heart rate is up and down. It's a whole thing. Exactly. I was in the top in my class. I got into school and I was not able to continue. It took me 20 years from the year I graduated high school to now to receive and earn my bachelor's degree. First

Liz Canada:

of all,

Grace Kindeke:

congratulations by the by. Let's

Liz Canada:

give you the kudos that you very much deserve. Congratulations

Grace Kindeke:

on that. Thank you. Thank you. I'm deeply grateful very proud of myself and just I'm so grateful for all the support that I got because you need that support, right? You were a college advisor. You know how hard college is. And I was a young adult. I was a working adult, right? And it was still a very difficult thing to navigate. But again, going back to it, it's just so important to recognize that there are basic requirements that everybody has to meet in order to get into school, to get into college, any college. And also, we need to interrogate what is actually meant by a statement like that, which is that I don't believe this group for people are good enough, smart enough, qualified enough. And then thirdly, again, we have to interrogate this idea of scarcity, that there is not enough. For everyone, that there's not enough colleges so that everyone who wants to go to college can go to college. When we don't take into consideration, well, why can't people access college? I bet you it's not because Juan or Armando or, you know, Dream or Favor or Romeo is taking your college entrance, right? It's because are there enough funds to support students to be able to go to school? Are there enough academic supports to help students who want to go to college? know what to do? Do we have the structures and the infrastructure in place to truly support students regardless of their status to be able to meet their college dreams? Not why is one person getting in and the other person isn't getting in? I mean, come on. Grace, funny

Liz Canada:

story. The budget that passed in New Hampshire actually cut funding from higher education. So it seems a little bit weird that we would be critical of who is going to college and saying that our U.S. citizens should get into those schools and then give those schools less money.

Grace Kindeke:

Weird. Right. And now they have to increase tuitions. And that is a pretty huge barrier as to who can actually go to college is can you afford it? Can you

Liz Canada:

pay for college? Just a deep sigh. All right. So immigrants are now taking the seats from... students at college. Okay, so so far I'm over three is what I'm hearing here. Not a great record. Tell me the positive ways that immigrants contribute to New Hampshire, to our communities, to our to our lives

Grace Kindeke:

every day. Absolutely. I mean, immigrants contribute in so many ways. People often start with the contributions to the workforce, a big portion of our direct care workers who care for our loved ones with disabilities, our loved ones who are aging, our elders in nursing homes. A lot of those folks are themselves immigrants, right? So we have huge swaths of our workforce, our caregiving workforce that are As well as our service workers. I mean, no single person is an island. This whole mythology of individualism that our country purports and builds entire monoliths on top of is wrong. We are an interdependent species. We always have been. Nothing you are wearing, eating, sitting in on was built by one person. You didn't build it. There are invisible hands all over. our lives everywhere right from the like I said earlier in the show from the milk you buy at Hannaford that milk was milked by immigrant hands, from the loved ones you have in a nursing home, they're being cared for in the hands of immigrants. But it goes beyond that too, right? It's not just what immigrants contribute monetarily, although immigrants pay billions of dollars in taxes, both undocumented and

Liz Canada:

documented. Just for the sake of the podcast life, can you say that one more time for the people in the back of the podcast?

Grace Kindeke:

I would be happy to. Immigrants both undocumented and documented pay billions of dollars in taxes. Billions. I paid taxes when I was undocumented. I filed that IRS tax report every year and I paid my share of taxes as so many other people do. It is absolutely financially that immigrants contribute. They contribute to our social fabric, our social networks, but they also are our loved ones. They are our family members. So often I think people who are in this country you know have maybe been here for generations were born here forget their own immigrant background themselves right unless you are Native American y'all came everybody came from somewhere you know and maybe one portion of your family is Native American but the other portion is from Ireland or Wales or Cameroon

Liz Canada:

okay on the nose there but yes I could just tell I know it's the complexion it's the sunburn it's the Freckles.

Grace Kindeke:

Yeah, totally. So it's just, you know, we forget our own immigration stories, our own immigrant histories, our histories, our communities are interwoven with one another. So when you were talking about that, like intersectional overlapping, that can also be seen in our relationships, right? Immigrants are our loved ones. They are our neighbors. They're our colleagues. They're our child's best friends. They're our spouses. They're our partners. I mean, they are part of our families and communities. And So behaving as if immigrants are the separate other completely erases the interwoven ways that we are in relationship, either through our own history and or through our relationships with immigrant people. And there are those real financial, monetary, social fabric contributions, but it's also just recognizing too, there's the contributions in culture, in flavor, in seasoning, you know, it, It adds, it enhances how we are and who we are. And pretending otherwise just does us all a huge disservice.

Liz Canada:

I'm so glad you came on the podcast, Grace. Thank you. Thank you so, so much for putting up with the myths that are out there and answering those questions and walking me and a listener through what the reality is, what's actually true, and giving the space for folks to hear it and sit with it and process it. I have learned a lot in my journey, and I am always learning because that is my job. We have to keep learning. I will never understand what it is like for somebody who has gone through the process of becoming a U.S. citizen or is an undocumented individual or has a green card, whatever the status is. I will never understand it, but I can try to learn more to educate myself to be better and to do better. You know what we didn't talk about, Grace? Sanctuary cities. I'm

Grace Kindeke:

I think absolutely, because the anti-sanctuary cities laws that were passed just in this session, as well as multiple counties and municipalities entering into 287G agreements. I mean, we are seeing in real time that deportation and detention, mass deportation infrastructure getting built within our own cities and counties. And those are our public dollars, y'all, and there are better ways to use them. So yeah, let's talk about it later.

Liz Canada:

We are in the worst version of the multiverse right now. Thinking about

Grace Kindeke:

all this. We are. But you know what? It's also such an incredible opportunity for us to actually exercise our power. I mean, more so than in any other moment are we seeing just how impactful it can be when people and communities rise up together. So this is our opportunity to do that together.

Liz Canada:

Exercising. It's not just for CrossFit for me in the morning. It's also taking action in other ways. You don't just have to do wall balls. You can also... Squats and calls. Squats and calls. Yes. Don't give my coaches any ideas, Grace. They're like, all right, you want a phone bang? Let's see 150 squats.

Grace Kindeke:

And it can be really easy to other immigrants as if it's like some secret cabal living on the outskirts of our cities and towns. I mean, apparently. I don't get the newsletter, but I think it's a good one. I get my own newsletter, as we all

Liz Canada:

know. The agenda that we send out weekly.

Grace Kindeke:

Exactly.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Liz Canada

Host
Head Shot

Grace Kindeke

Guest

Podcasts we love

Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.

$100 Plus Mileage Artwork

$100 Plus Mileage

OneHundredPlusMileage