I’m not a loser per se, but the truth is I never win anything. Just this week my dental insurance wrote to tell me I didn’t even win a root canal that my dentist nominated me for. So I’m shocked to realize that this Saturday I will be sashaying along under the great domed ceiling of Federal Hall in downtown Manhattan to collect an award. An “Alexander Hamilton Immigrant Achievement” award for my “outstanding contribution to Lower Manhattan and New York State”.

The award is presented by the Lower Manhattan Historical Association, an organization that honors multicultural diversity and celebrates “the dynamic cosmopolitan optimism that defines so much of the American spirit”.

Americans handing out awards to immigrants is such a beautiful and important act, I could cry. I could cry about a lot, though. Hot tears of fury bubble up every time I see a wounded Syrian baby on the news and remember that Syrian babies are barred from this country, and those same tears run right down my face when I learn about Marco Antonio Muñoz, a 39-year-old Honduran father who killed himself in a Texan jail the day after his three-year-old son was physically wrenched from his arms by border patrol agents. Every day, there is a new attack on the dignity of immigrants in this country, making this a strange time to be celebrated as one.

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My friend and fellow comedian Hari Kondabolu says that America hating immigrants is like a body rejecting its own blood. Living here today feels exactly that way, like the auto-immune system meant to protect us has gone berserk and is attacking the healthy parts, becoming more inflamed and sicker and weaker with every assault. I fear that eventually that system will drag our whole self down, but many fight back.



On Saturday morning, a 15-minute walk from Federal Hall in Foley Square, the New York Immigration Coalition has planned a march to demand an end to the separation of thousands of immigrant children from their families. I’ll go along and join in the shouting; then I’ll get false lashes put on because without them I tend to look sleepy in photos. I want to get photos taken with my award so I can show off about it on Instagram, naturally, but also to share the message that many Americans really do care for and appreciate immigrants.

The US is already a fortress. I first got in to the country on an O1 visa, an artist’s visa, helped hugely by the fact that I’m white, European and well-connected within my industry. Every day I’m grateful for my life here, and I abide by the campsite rule to leave this place as good as, if not better than, I found it. Most immigrants do the latter: we make the country better.



We contribute 15% of the national economic output despite being 13% of the population and we actually improve wages and job opportunities for US citizens. When we step off the boat, all boats rise. And despite President Trump’s obsessive attempts to link crime and immigration, the numbers don’t add up. Immigrants commit fewer crimes than people born here. Perhaps that’s because we’re not camping here – this is our home. Immigrants are invested in the US. Often we’ve left a whole other life behind, and all of our futures are meshed together. We do our best to love this country. Having to point all of this out feels quite desperate, and it also feels necessary.

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I’m tired of pointing out that the Kushners and Millers and Trumps all come from immigrant families. They’ve long since pulled the ladder up behind them, and now stomp on the hands clinging to the walls. Besides, saying that the US is a “nation of immigrants” isn’t quite accurate because it sidesteps the genocide of Native Americans perpetrated by the first Europeans here, and it negates the experience of millions of enslaved Africans who were forced to come here. But that dark past does go some way to explaining the present. The sounds of white supremacy booming from the highest offices in the land, cementing into place our ever more racialized immigration law? Those are not new.

Here is what is new, here is what is changing. Minority groups will outnumber non-Hispanic whites in the United States by 2044. No matter how vicious this administration gets, the demographics of this country are shifting, meaning the future cannot be a repeat of the past. So, I am hopeful. On Saturday, I will walk up those steps where George Washington was sworn in as the first president, and go inside where I’ve been invited, and accept this wonderful honor, an honor I am happy to share with any immigrant who wants a part of it.

