Immigration reform. We keep meaning to do something about that is this country. We really have, but you know we’ve got this whole big thing with Iraq, four dollar gas, and this important election which hinges on who can wear the most flag lapel pins and supply dehydrated babies with bottled hot water. We just haven’t gotten around to it yet.
Both McCain and Obama have a record firmly in favor of a path to citizenship for America’s twelve million illegal immigrants, so maybe we’ll eventually cross it off the to-do-list but, until then, a lot of people’s futures hang in the balance.
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On one side you’ve got two men who helped found two very sketchy, very different organizations.
Wally Wheeler was an original member of the LA gang The Crips, but blames immigrants for increasing violence, even though the immigrant population has doubled since 1994 and crime rates in cities with large immigrant populations have fallen by 34 percent.
On the other side, there’s Dov Charney, the founder and CEO of American Apparel, whose inclusion might catch flack. For one, he’s been known to cross some sexual borders, the legalities of which are being worked out in a series of law suits, and his company is also a major advertiser on VBS, as well as in it’s print forebear Vice.
The least annoying participants are a group of teenage skaters, born in Mexico, most living in LA without documentation. They’ve been there since they were children and are as Americanized as McDonald’s apple pie. They speak English as well as any kid in a skate park, and a few of them even make a point not to lose their Spanish. Undocumented, they’re at risk, and they’re opportunities in the country are jeopardized; their faces are blurred out.
VBS plans to cover immigration heavily for the rest of the year, and Illegal LA is their first offering.