visas part 2
Inspired by Green Papaya Salad
Isn't Jamie's art just GREAT? She's carrying Around the Table, honestly.
lmao that’s fake news
Anyhow, we hope everyone's getting to enjoy (hopefully) good weather and summer vibes. Stay safe, and DM us if any thoughts/questions come up as you read this newsletter :D we've loved hearing from you.
Q: What's your comfort food?
Love,
Melinda & Jamie
News
🏅 Suni Lee wins gold at the Tokyo Olympics in women's all-around gymnastics. She made history as the first Hmong American to make the US team, and she's supported back home by her community - and, in particular, her father - in St. Paul, Minnesota. I liked this article from Time: "Sunisa Lee Is Representing America in the Tokyo Olympics—and a Community America Left Behind." (also #tb to our newsletter on the history of Hmong Americans from almost a year ago)
🥈 Erica Sullivan won silver in the 1,500 meter freestyle at the Olympics. We loved when she said, "I’m multicultural. I’m queer. I’m a lot of minorities. That’s what America is." Sullivan is a 20-year-old from Las Vegas who speaks fluent Japanese. Her maternal grandpa was an architect who helped design some of the buildings at the Tokyo Olympics.
⚾ Last month, Kumar Rocker from Vanderbilt University was drafted by the New York Mets! He's the 21-year-old son of a Black American father and Indian American mother. Rocker is making waves as a Black and South Asian American in baseball, likely inspiring "legions of little Indian and Pakistani kids with that [his] name on their jerseys" in the future, Professor Gautham Rao says.
⚠️ [TW: suicide] Japanese American Gunther Hashida, one of the D.C. officers fighting off the Capitol insurrection on January 6, has died by suicide. He leaves behind a wife and 3 children.
🎭 Alvin Ing, a pioneer for Asian Americans on Broadway, has died from breakthrough COVID at the age of 89. Only in 2016, at the age of 84, did he publicly come out as gay. He was born in Honolulu, Hawaii and is most well known for his roles in *Flower Drum Song* and Pacific Overtures.
Chef's Specials
🥘 This is a s/o to Shreya, who first introduced me to Patel Brothers. Did you know that not only are they the largest Indian grocer in America, but they also have their own separate food label SWAD?
🏓 This is a slightly more comprehensive list of the AAPI athletes in Tokyo. Some athletes I hadn't known about - Paige McPherson (taekwondo), Rajeev Ram (tennis), Nikhil Kumar (table tennis), Nyjah Huston and Heimana Reynolds (skateboarding), and Sandra Uptagrafft (shooting). Btw Asian Americans make up the entire badminton and table tennis U.S. teams!
👙 Yumi Nu made history >week ago as the first Asian American plus-size model to be in Sports Illustrated. See the pictures and interview with her here.
👶🏽 Tan France brought his first baby home after he spent 3 weeks in the newborn intensive care unit.
TIL... family visas (visas 2.0)
A continuation of last week's saga on visas! This time, more on family visas.
OMG i learned so much last week?? Also, so surprised that Australians have special visas? Why is that? What's the history there? It might be beyond the scope of our newsletter, but that's really interesting... Makes me wonder what other countries have those special things?
The brief note on last week's TIL mentioned that family-sponsored visas were the biggest immigration pathway for Asians (around 65%).
What is a family visa?
When a US citizen or lawful permanent resident petitions the government to allow family members to immigrate to the US. Petitions can also be made to allow someone currently on a different visa to stay in the US under a family visa. These arrangements are also referred to as "green card" sponsorship.
Immigration has long been family based, but the 1965 immigration law formalized this as the primary way that people migrate to the US. Sometimes, family based migration is also called "chain migration".
What types of family-based visas are there?
The family-based visas distinguish between "immediate relatives" and "preference" categories. While citizens can file petitions for all types of family members, permanent residents are only allowed to file petitions for their spouse or unmarried children.
There are no annual limits on immediate relatives. Preference categories have annual limits. This one website mentions that the max is 480k each year - a limit that was set in 1990. What I found more interesting was the fact that Congress can "place limits on the precent of people who can immigrate...from certain countries". No country can have more than 7% of issued family visas, and backlogs can take years to get through (in some cases, more than 20 years!).
Source: Batara Immigration Law
Each year, there is an average of 247,682 petitions filed to start the immigration process, over 30k of which get denied. I totally would summarize the whole process of submitting things and issuing forms, but it was quite honestly kinda confusing (which is a huge testament to the people who have actually gone through this process omg...). From what I can figure, it requires filing a petition formally, proof of the legitimacy of the relationship, some sort of income requirement (?), background checks, etc.
And more....
My parents got their citizenship when I was quite young (elementary school?), and I remember hearing more about "green cards" and "sponsorships" when my cousin was coming here for grad school.
Stay tuned soon to find out more about refugee visas later... :) Also, I'm personally very curious about seasonal worker visas because I know those are huge in the agricultural industries (also thinking about early early Asian migration history and work on sugar plantations and railroads and things of the sort)
Small Feelings
so far i've really liked living alone. i can literally do whatever i want and not feel like anyone is watching and that feels so liberating! i've also felt more responsible for myself :P since i'm sort of in charge entirely on what goes on. do you live alone / do you wish you lived alone? i suggest it!
also the summer is going by so quickly :o i'm trying to resist the urge to try to squeeze in a ton of things and pack my schedule like i did in college. so far i think i've had a good balance of work / personal time / social time.
oh and i just read When Breath Becomes Air and thought about mortality :D not an unfamiliar thought-space for me
✨ S P O T L I G H T ✨
Source: TexasMonthly, photo by Mackenzie Smith Kelley. Priya Krishna and her parents in the kitchen showing off baking materials and ingredients.
Priya Krishna
I'm shocked we haven't done this before, but given the love for ~ food ~ that both of us have, it was just a matter of time before we did a spotlight on Priya Krishna. She's a food reporter for the NYT (previously at Bon Appetit, which is where I first found out about her), and wrote the best-selling cookbook Indian-ish.
She was raised in Dallas, Texas by Indian immigrants (who love to make yogurt) and studied at Dartmouth with majors in government and French. At school, she wrote a Dining Hall Hacks cookbook. After graduation, she got her start in marketing at *Lucky Peach* (food publication company) and eventually made her way to Bon Appetit and their youtube channel. After quitting the publication in 2020 because of racial and pay inequities, she joined the New York Times and is thriving! While she self-admittedly is not a "professional" with trained culinary school experience, she does her best to combine American cooking with the traditional Indian meals she grew up eating.
"I wanted to write a book and explicitly call it an American cookbook and have there be dal chawal, have there be dips, have there be pizza made with roti and noodles seasoned with turmeric and mustard seeds, and not present it as exotic or foreign or other, but just as the food that I grew up with. This is the food my mom put on the table when she came home from work and only had 20 minutes to cook."
I am SUCH a huge fan of all her stuff, and if I had more time, I would definitely check out her cookbook. Find Priya at her website and on instagram (good stories and also she and her boyfriend (?) bake a ton). Some of her writing is featured above in this newsletter.
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AAPI Artists Spotify Playlist (it's collaborative again!) :