Why “alien”?
I first encountered the term ‘alien’ when I came to the US for undergrad. When I filed my taxes for the first time, I realized I was a ‘Non-Resident Alien’. I found it a rather strange term to classify immigrants who had come to a country to study, work and live.
While I’m not railing against the use of the term in the legal context, I’m trying to unpack what it might mean to us in the everyday. We encounter ‘aliens’ everywhere and they are no different than ‘non-aliens’. By highlighting the stories of some of these immigrants, we may understand a little bit more about them and ourselves in the process.
Everyday Aliens is about people. Not aliens.
View the rest of the project at Everyday Aliens