Talking Politics

(By Jeremy A. Rud, guest author) What do Donald Trump, George Santos, and every migrant applying for asylum in the United States have in common? They’ve all recently been charged with fraud. Rather than defaming abuse victims , defrauding campaign donors, or lying to Congress , asylum seekers face much subtler accusations: that their stories are untrue and their experiences insufficient to deserve life in the United States as refugees. Our global system of rigid national borders does more than divide territories. It also restricts access to resources and human rights by categorizing people. In many ways, our political and social institutions make this unavoidable. An immigration system that legally distinguishes refugees from other migrants requires categorization. Categorization requires a comparison between an individual’s claim and a legal definition, which results in an asylum adjudication—an official decision about whether that individual does or does not belong to the category of...

(By Yookyeong Im, guest author) Rainbow and BLM Banners Hung on the U.S. Embassy in South Korea…and Removed Content advisory: mentions of anti-Black violence and police brutality, quotations of anti-queer slogans On June 1, 2020, the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, South Korea hung a large rainbow flag on its building to celebrate LGBT Pride Month. The flag was supposed to stay throughout June. However, it was removed after only two weeks.  The rainbow flag was not the only flag removed from the façade of the embassy building that day. Embassy staff also removed a large Black Lives Matter banner which had been displayed since June 13. According to media reports, the U.S. State Department might have requested the removals because of restrictions that prohibited local U.S. embassies to fly a rainbow flag on their flagpoles in Germany, Israel, Belarus, and many other countries. The State Department explained the reason for its request to remove the BLM banner by asserting that “Black Lives Ma...