The Invisibles

From Los Angeles Union Station's newsletter: "[The exhibition] Untitled (Questions) features large-scale queries, alternating between English and Spanish, created by artist Barbara Kruger."

Can I be jealous? Surely I am allowed to. Maybe a little, no? What I'd give to have something so close to me shown in public. A mere "Terima Kasih" or thank you in Indonesia in the Minion movie made me almost cry. There it is. My language. In that instance my homeland seemed not so far away.

I know for a fact that it's wishful thinking. The last full performance that I remember was when a Balinese music group got invited to The Music Center as a part of their World Music program. It was a full show as opposed to filling out the gap here and there. That was in 2016.

There aren't enough of us. There aren't even enough of us to create our own little 'town'. Yet I still hope to see my language, my art being included in the many performance in this beautiful city of immigrants. I am still hoping to feel at home in this land so far away from home.

We talked greatly about immigrant yet how far do we know? How much do we know about immigrants from India and other South Asian countries? How much do we know about immigrants from China and other East Asian countries? Or the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries? Or those from Africa and maybe even Eastern Europe?

The talking point about immigrants has always about how to help them. But how about us who helped ourselves? How about us who tried hard to get in the US and equally work hard to get our paperwork done. How about the many of us who are on the waiting list to get our green card approved, our work visa approved, and other legal means to stay here in the US.

It's a sensitive subject that always come back to "Well, you can afford it." And they are not wrong. For people from countries that has no land border with the US, the only mean to do it is by flying. That means you have to have enough resources to obtain a visa first, and both visa and plane ticket is not cheap.

That doesn't mean the people on the slum in which the current Indian government hide behind the wall as to not embarrassed them on the upcoming US Presidential visit does not exist. That doesn't mean we from those countries don't have the poor and the weak, people who are willing to sacrifice anything to get a better life.

What about us?

It feels we are the invisible. We don't merit a talking point. We don't merit a mention of existence. We don't even merit to hold on to our language as one of the most popular saying I keep hearing here is: "You will learn Spanish soon enough. You are in Los Angeles." 

If this is a country of immigrant, why am I made to accommodate another immigrant group due to their sheer number? If this is a country of immigrant, why don't we get the same assistance and attention? Why aren't we being noticed and acknowledged? Do we have to be a subject of Trump indignities in order to merit it?

"We support immigrants" they say. I recalled the long green card backlog for Indian nationals, almost decades. I recalled the racism against the East Asian thanks to the Coronavirus. I recalled an Indonesian friend that couldn't visit me here because she was deemed a risk of not going back to Indonesia. I wept silently.