Tonight, we went to see the play Queens at the Clare Tow Theater at the Lincoln Center. The play is about two generations of immigrant women, seven of them, who come to the U.S. in hopes for a better future for themselves and their future families. They share living space in a basement apartment and their concerns about trying to make ends meet, even though most of them spend all of their waking hours trying to earn just barely enough to cover their heavily discounted rent. The woman who ultimately ends up owning the building where that basement apartment is located leaves her home country hoping her daughter will come join her, but she never does. Instead, she grows up and builds her own life back home in Poland. She even had a child and got married and never informed her mother in the U.S. Their family and friends back in Poland just assumed her mother was having a grand old time living the easy money-making life in New York.

When I watch shows like this, I always feel even more frustrated and angry at the current political climate which is so anti-immigrant, so anti the American dream… well, according to President Dipshit, the “American dream is for Americans.” He wants a merit-based immigration system. He wants to deny people who are trying to flee life-threatening political situations in their own country the right to come to the U.S… those are people in situations like my mother once was, like so many of the people I know have descended from. People leave their home countries and everything and everyone they know and immigrate for better opportunities, not to enter foreign countries where they can commit mass terrorist attacks and laugh at all the pain they want to cause others. At the end of the day, we all have more in common than we think. We just want to live happy, healthy, prosperous lives and be free. We all have that in common. It’s just a shame that people like Dipshit and idiots on the right don’t seem to get that commonality. People immigrating today — their intent isn’t any different than the people who immigrated after World War II or the Vietnam War. They just want a shot at a decent life. That’s all.