Nikki Myers
San Ysidro, USA
One of the most influential quotes that I encountered when I first began discovering my passion for migrant justice was written first by legal scholar Alexander Bickel, reprinted in the front pages of Mae Ngai’s seminal migration text Impossible Subjects. The quote reads, “It has always been easier, it will always be easier, to think of someone as a noncitizen rather than a nonperson.” This quote has remained in the back of my mind as we have discussed the nature of human rights as a concept as well as the application of human rights work on pertinent issues like migration. This summer, my work at Al Otro Lado will contribute to the visibility of migrants as people and as cultural citizens that shouldn’t have their humanity debated as part of the so-called “border crisis.”
Al Otro Lado is an NGO based between San Diego, California and Tijuana in the Baja California region of Mexico. Tijuana and San Diego are separated by a land border that even extends into the shared coastline, with a physical wall that separates the two countries well into the ocean that they share. This “wall on the beach” has been subject to scholarly thought, artistic projects, and other visual and academic endeavors in hopes to succinctly describe a complex and devastating migration process. Al Otro Lado attempts to address this process and its difficulties for migrants by working with those coming through the San Ysidro port of entry, the fourth most-crossed land border in the world. Most of these migrants are Haitian, Mexican, Central American, and more recently, Ukrainian.
My responsibilities at Al Otro Lado will be varied, especially since the organization has several different programs to address all of the issues that migrants face when crossing the border. One large, ongoing project that Al Otro Lado offers is the Family Reunification Project, which addresses the horrific legacy of the Trump administration’s family separation policy. The organization is also involved in several lawsuits against U.S. detention centers for a number of human rights violations, which pertains directly to the question of how to define human rights for migrants and what the underlying issues are in doing such. My focus is mainly to get more hands-on experience working with migrants and taking these experiences back into the academic realm in order to encourage human rights thinking from those affected rather than those who have studied it solely within other academic circles.