Citizen Orange

Those of you who regularly visit my site have probably deduced that I am pro-migration and that I am firmly on the side of people "who move around."  It would be inconsistent with my personal history and experience to be anything else.

The rhetoric coming out of the U.S., the U.K. and Germany about migration and assimilation is both ill-informed and quite frightening even to those of us who do have papers and are legally living in our countries of residence.  I doubt that many of the people screaming "total immersion and assimilation" or "English/French/German Only!" ever had to struggle with such difficult and emotionally complex topics in their own lives.  Having no direct experience with being migrants themselves, they then compound their ignorance with a failure of imagination and of empathy.

Citizen Orange is a U.S. based site that I discovered very recently. They do not speak for migrants (migrants can speak for themselves quite nicely), they simply offer a forum where migrants can speak out, find allies and exchange information and where non-migrants can learn something about the migrant experience.  From the Citizen Orange website:

This does not mean that we cannot relate to the migrant experience through our common humanity. We constantly strive towards understanding and empathy through Citizen Orange and our daily lives. It just means that we will not profess to speak on behalf of migrants. Citizen Orange is not the place to look for a space representative of the migrant voice. If you are searching, look through our blogroll for answers, or in a community near you. Citizen Orange is not the migrant voice, but we do seek to support it and amplify it through our efforts. 

Much of the content is U.S. centered but even if you are outside the Americas you will still find useful information and good reads about Human Rights, Assimilation,  Global Citizens, and International Migrant Discrimination.