Grammy-nominated artist 21 Savage stated that immigrants who as children lived in the United States illegally should automatically become citizens.
21 Savage Speaks Out On Citizenship
Rapper Says Children In Us Illegally Should Be ‘Exempt’
By JONATHAN LANDRUM Jr. AP Entertainment Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Rapper 21 Savage believes immigrants like him who lived in America illegally as children should automatically become U.S. citizens.
The Grammy-nominated artist who this year was held in federal immigration detention told The Associated Press on Thursday night that such immigrants also shouldn’t have to endure the lengthy process to obtain visas. He spoke in an exclusive interview before receiving an award from the National Immigration Law Center.
“When you’re a child, you don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “Now, you grow up and got to figure it out. Can’t get a job. Can’t get a license. I’m one of the lucky ones who became successful. It’s a lot of people who can’t.”
NILC honored 21 Savage for being an advocate for immigrant justice. He was arrested in February in what U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said was a targeted operation over his expired visa.
He spent 10 days in a detention center in south Georgia before being released.
The Atlanta-based rapper, whose given name is She'yaa Bin Abraham-Joseph, is a British citizen who moved to the U.S. when he was 7. His visa expired in 2006, but his lawyers had said that wasn’t his fault.
“When you ain’t got no choice, you should be exempt,” 21 Savage said. “It’s not like I was 30, woke up and moved over here. I’ve been here since I was like 7 or 8, probably younger than that. I didn’t know anything about visas and all that. I just knew we were moving to a new place.”
He said people in his shoes should be made citizens.
“I feel like we should be exempt,” he reiterated. “I feel like we should automatically become citizens."
Federal immigration officials have known 21 Savage’s status since at least 2017, when he applied for a new visa.
The 26-year-old rapper’s immigration case still remains pending a hearing before a new judge, according to his lawyer.
21 Savage said the process to apply for a visa discourages a lot of other immigrants who don’t have documents because it “hangs over your head forever.”
“They just lose hope,” he said. “I feel like kids who were brought here at young ages, they should automatically be like ‘Yeah, you good to stay here, work and go to college.’ It should be nipped in the bud before it gets to a point before you come of age.”
Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors applauded 21 Savage for becoming an advocate for social justice and also shedding light on immigrant issues for black people.
“Up until the moment when he was arrested, there wasn’t a nationally or public conversation about black immigrants,” said Cullors, who introduced 21 Savage and handed him the Courageous Luminaries award. Her activist organization led a coalition to facilitate his release from ICE custody.
“The conversation primarily revolved around Latin immigrants,” she continued. “His detention really pushed a national conversation and it made us talk about what’s happening with black people who are undocumented. All the black people in America aren’t just citizens.”
21 Savage was thankful for the award, but said there are countless immigrants who are battling to stay in the U.S.
“We got a fight that we need to continue in this country,” he said. “It ain’t over yet. Even after everything is cool with me, we still have to fight and help people who can’t fight for themselves.”
___
Follow AP Entertainment Writer Jonathan Landrum Jr. on Twitter: http://twitter.com/MrLandrum31
Hispanic Outlook is an education magazine in the US available both in print and digital form. Visit https://www.hispanicoutlook.com/education-magazine for information about our latest issue, including our new supplement Physician Outlook.
Hispanic Outlook’s Job Board allows applicants to search for jobs by category, by city and by state. Both Featured and Latest Job Positions are available at https://hispanicoutlookjobs.com/
And for employers, Hispanic Outlook’s Job Board offers a wide variety of posting options. Further information is available at https://hispanicoutlookjobs.com/employer-products/
Other articles from Hispanic Outlook:
Health Simplified And Expanded Back To School
I couldn’t resist the urge to join in on this cultural trend and post my OWN tongue-in-cheek “first day” picture as I celebrate starting what I hope to be my new forever job as the medical director at St. Bonaventure University’s Center for Student Wellness. After spending a year on the road as a locum and Urgent Care Physician, it feels good to set down roots. Prior to July of 2018, I had been struggling with Physician burnout. For every 15 minutes I spent with a Patient, I often spent an additional 30 minutes (sometimes more) on my work laptop, clicking away in an EHR that created a pages-long document that didn’t tell my Patient’s story, and that very few read. I was trained to be a medical detective, and my documentation style is very different from the “note bloat” produced by most systems. EHRs are designed to comply with complicated and…
Read full article here
America Can’t Kick The Habit
Drug abuse has always been part of the American landscape since the founding of this country. And it all follows a familiar pattern – introduce a drug with great fanfare and promise, but with little warning about its habit-forming indications or possible side effects. Predictably, people become addicted, and this is followed by restriction and regulation creating criminal enterprise and a criminal class of addicts. Access to illicit drugs like opium, cocaine, marijuana and heroin, as well as prescribed and Physician administered legal drugs such as amphetamines, oxycodone and morphine, continue to make America the world’s leading marketplace per capita for drug use. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. How many times do we have to live through this…
Read full article here
Hispanics’ Deadly Response To Opioid Bias
Opioids are sometimes necessary to treat Patient pain, but Physicians are now being cautioned about prescribing them. In an article entitled “How Racial Inequity Is Playing Out in the Opioid Crisis,” by Jenae Addison for Health Magazine, it is noted that the stereotyping of Patients of color influences the number of prescriptions dispensed. Addison quotes Kenneth Leonard, director of the Clinical and Research Institute on Addictions at the University of Buffalo explaining, “There is a bias issue there in terms of either believing [minorities are] more likely to be substance abusers or they can endure more pain.” The result is while overprescribing opioids is the most recent scourge in America’s war on drugs, under prescribing opioids to Hispanics is contributing to more and more addiction and death in those communities of…
Read full article here
Chi-Chi Rodríguez’s Youth Foundation
As another academic year begins at his public-private school in Clearwater, Florida, this 83-year-old golfer often thinks about his childhood friend. They both grew up in Puerto Rico. As teenagers, they became very close and eventually played on the same amateur, baseball team on the island. One was a talented, right-handed pitcher while the other – a pinch-runner – was an agile ballplayer who always hustled around the base path. The pitcher’s name was Juan Antonio Rodríguez, who one day became an acclaimed golfer where millions around the world still recognize him by his childhood nickname: “Chi-Chi.” Growing up in Puerto Rico, the pinch-runner also had a nickname too. His family and close friends called him “Momen.” But today, millions around the world recall his extraordinary life and legacy. He was called “The Great One,” “Arriba” and “Humanitarian,” but…
Read full article here
La Feria Del Libro En Madrid
More than 400 youngsters began lining up at 8 a.m. and remained in line until noon as the heat descended upon the Retiro park in Madrid, Spain. They weren’t waiting for some concert or latest video game on sale. Instead, they were on line to meet one of more than 1,800 authors who were signing books at Madrid’s historic book fair, La Feria del Libro de Madrid, in late spring from May 31 until June 16. “We are super happy to be able to have the success that we have had. The book has returned, and the people are very happy,” the fair’s director Manuel Gil told me in Spanish with a contagious passion. “The weight of paper is important, and, in the end, people want something physical, and they want that direct relationship with the author.” As an author myself, with my own novel, “NIÑA DUENDE: UN VIAJE DEL ESPÍRITU,” translated to Spanish and with…
Read full article here
5 Latino Authors You Should Be Reading Now
(AP)(THE CONVERSATION) You likely recognize that the depiction of Latin American immigrants in politics today – as a menacing mass of recalcitrant Spanish-speaking invaders – is overwhelmingly negative. What you may not know is that stereotypes suggesting that Latin Americans represent a threat to United States culture are not just morally repugnant – they’re also historically inaccurate. Spanish-language literature actually predates the Puritans’ writing in English by nearly a century. As my research reveals, many renowned Latin American writers actually produced some of their finest work while living in the United States. Latina and Latino writers have made exceptional contributions to American literary history. For a fresh take on what it means to be a Latina or Latino in the U.S. today, check out these five…
Read full article here
