Virginia Lora (VL):  This is A Better Life? from Feet in 2 Worlds. I’m Virginia Lora.

Danya AbdelHameid (DA): There’s something 26-year-old Xuan Liu never leaves home without.  

 Xuan Liu: I can show you actually…[sound of wallet unzipping]. So I always keep the first, like, prototype card in my wallet. 

DA: Is this like your wallet? 

 Xuan: It is[laughing]…so I keep it as, as if it’s a actual card. 

DA: She reaches past her vaccine card, bank card, and work permit to pull out a small laminated piece of paper.

 Xuan: So this card in my hand is a hand drawn green card that I made for myself. So it says United States of America permanent resident.

VL: Last year, about half a million people applied to become Lawful Permanent Residents of the United States. If approved, they’re issued a government document known as a green card, or a Permanent Resident Card, allowing them to live and work legally in the U.S.

It’s an expensive and often nerve wracking process that can take years.

So what if the process to get a green card took 15 minutes? And what if everyone was automatically approved? 

This is the world that two immigrant artists from Philadelphia invite us to imagine through The Fake Green Cards Project. 

On this special edition of A Better Life? we bring you a story from Immigrants in a Divided Country, a new multimedia series from Feet in 2 Worlds exploring the current political landscape from the perspective of immigrants. 

We’re asking: what role do immigrants play in these controversies—and how arethey impacted?

The social-engagement art pieces created by Xuan Liu and Youkun Zhouexplore both the symbolism behind this government-issued ID, and what it means to belong in America.

Producer Danya AbdelHameid spent time with them at a recent art fair in New York City.

Danya AbdelHameid (DA): Maybe you’ve seen a green card before…or maybe you haven’t. They look like most other ID cards. There’s a headshot in the corner, a fingerprint. And then of course things like the person’s name, birthday, and country of birth. 

All that to say—everything about a green card is very serious and official-looking. And I don’t think anyone has ever looked at one and thought, “oh, how cute!” 

But maybe after seeing Xuan’s green card…they would. 

When you look at hers…The lines are a bit crooked. The word permanent is missing a letter. There’s a smiling cartoon drawing of Xuan where a stoic headshot usually goes. In the background is the Supreme Court Building and the Statue of Liberty, painted with blue and yellow watercolors.

 Xuan Liu: And then there’s your surname, your given name, the U S C I S number. I think it’s the immigration department that’s handling all the documentation, or the process. And category, which I still don’t know for sure what that mean, but I just put art. And then country of birth, date of birth, your sex…

And the “card expires date” and then “residence since”, and I put “card expires never” and “resident since now.” 

I wanted to feel like whenever I look at this card it always starts from this moment. And that is what I wrote on every card that I issued.

DA: Yes, there are other green cards floating around in the world issued by Xuan…

Xuan: I’m not afraid to deliberately say that I am making fake green cards.

DA: Xuan is an artist and filmmaker. 

She makes these look alike documents as part of the Fake Green Cards Project. It’s a public art project issuing “fake green cards” to anyone, anywhere who would like one. 

They do pop ups at community fairs and art markets—like this one in February 2023 at a small storefront turned art gallery in Brooklyn. 

Xuan and her project partner Youkun Zhou (Joe) had a small table set up right by the door. 

Anyone could walk in, fill out a short form—like a quarter of a page short—and get a fake green card made by Xuan and Youkun. And the whole thing took less than 15 minutes. 

It’s quite the contrast to a real-life green card application process, which in some cases, can take years, involves a lot more paperwork, and as of 2023, costs thousands of dollars. 

Xuan uses art to address political and social issues. And she says the project grew out of a difficult experience she had in her first year as an international student in the U.S. 

She had just graduated from film school in China and found herself in a masters program at Syracuse University in central New York.

 Xuan: I just applied all the schools with programs that has video in their title without knowing much about the school or where exactly is the school.

DA: And Syracuse was very different from Kaifung—the city in north central China where Xuan grew up. To start—it  was smaller, colder…

 Xuan: And I was speaking a language that I wasn’t that familiar with. Trying to make new friends, trying to figure out how do I go to groceries…cause in China the house I grew up in is actually in a farmer’s market so the whole street is an agriculture market every day. And I was just so surprised. How do people go to grocery stores?

DA: Groceries aside—the transition was hard. And it got even harder when tax season rolled around. 

Xuan: I just heard a friend casually asking did you file your tax yet. I was like, what? What are they talking about?

DA: As an international student on an F-1 visa, Xuan had to fill out something called a Form 8843. It’s a four page document that asks for your name, address, immigration status, passport number…those kinds of things. 

And at the time, Xuan lived in a very small apartment. And the only place she could work was in her bedroom closet. 

 Xuan: In a closet there’s a rack, which is a closing rack. So I just brought my laptop and put it on the rack and I sat down.

I don’t even know where those informations are from and what those numbers and letters stands for.

DA: According to the IRS it takes on average 13 hours to file a standard, individual tax return. Xuan wasn’t filling out a standard return…but she was filling out a tax form written in a language that she was still learning…all alone, in a new country, with no support system. 

On top of that, filing this form out correctly could be part of what determined if she could stay here, because paying taxes is one way immigrants can demonstrate quote-unquote “good moral character” when applying for citizenship or permanent residency. 

So, when Xuan was on her laptop in this cramped space, it was so much more than just the form in front of her.

 Xuan: It was quite depressing, when I think back to where I was… but back then my struggle was mostly about being an alien to this country.

DA: That’s the other thing—Form 8843 has a bolded line at the top that says “For use by alien individuals only.” 

Alien is a word used on immigration forms and other legal documents. 

And on these forms it refers to anyone who is not a citizen of the United States. Not green, extraterrestrial creatures beaming out of a spaceship. Someone who’s on a student visa like Xuan is legally an alien. Someone who is a refugee is an alien, someone with a green card…They’re all legally aliens. 

But legal term or not, hunched over in her bedroom closet Xuan just found it all to be…

 Xuan: So strange and also overwhelming at that moment.

I was just thinking, oh, what if I have a green card? I don’t have to file all those documentations just to prove who I am or just to prove that I am legal to be here, whatever that means. 

So I looked up the images of green cards cause I’d never seen one before.

DA: She noted the layout. The colors. The words.

 Xuan: And I just duplicated.

DA: Right then and there, she issued herself a green card. And by making this fake document, she temporarily created a different reality for herself. One that was easier. 

 Xuan: The card added on casualness or a layer of playfulness to something that’s heavy and serious.

DA: She even made one for her dog, Hegel. 

 Xuan: Hegel is the, um, German philosopher. Hegel is also the pronunciation of a Chinese word, “black dog.”

DA: But once the ink and paint dried, Xuan was pulled back to her current reality. 

 Xuan: I still need to go back and face all the actual things that I was struggling about.

But I felt good about being able to laugh about what I did.

DA: It was a laugh. But it certainly wasn’t a social engagement art project. And for the next two years, that would be the case. It wasn’t until Xuan finished her grad program at Syracuse, moved to Philadelphia, and got a job at an arts nonprofit that she met her collaborator Youkun Zhou. Together, they created the Fake Green Cards Project.

Youkun Zhou: She and I ended up getting lunch, and we just started chatting. I think we connected over our time, like being student in the US. 

I had just started my program in educational linguistics and very much thinking about language, the use of it… Also I guess having had, um, relatively recently immigrated to the US and kind of going through that process.

DA: Like Xuan, Youkun moved to the U.S. on a student visa back in 2013 for college. But a few years later, she was able to get a green card through her mom. 

Youkun Zhou: She had me much later in life, so she retired early on when I was going through middle school and high school. 

DA: While Youkun was in school, here in the U.S., her mom was having some major health issues. They decided it would be best if they weren’t thousands of miles away from one another. So her mom started a green card application process. By 2016, both Youkun and her mom were here in the U.S. as permanent residents.

And over lunch, Youkun and Xuan talked about all of this. It didn’t take long for them to realize that they had both been thinking about green cards and what they represent. 

Youkun: So I remember that one time in Dallas, I was travel, I was coming back from, um, traveling for work.

DA: Youkun had a connecting flight from Dallas back to Philly but she got pulled aside for further questioning going through customs…

Youkun: Typical waiting room, kind of rows of chairs.I was facing the front and then on the right side it was like glass windows.

DA: Behind the glass, were Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents. Youkun could see her maroon passport with her green card tucked between the pages sitting on the shelf. She tried to ask the agents to review her documents promptly so she could catch her flight…but she says they just told her to sit and wait. 

Youkun: You think about having this right and that would make all your transitions so much smoother and then you realize, well, it doesn’t mean anything. Like what means more is like how I look and, um, how I present.

So I think that in the way that that relates to our project as well…

DA: When Xuan pulled out her fake green card at lunch and showed it to Youkun, Youkun was thinking about that experience in Dallas. She was also thinking about her experience as a new permanent resident in this country, and about a paper she wrote for one of her classes…which she told Xuan about. 

 Xuan: An essay on the terminology and language used in immigration documentation. So I said, oh, that’s exactly what this project is about.    

DA: Remember, Youkun is studying linguistics. So for this paper she looked into a few different terms used to talk about immigrants and immigration. One of those terms was the phrase illegal immigrant. 

And in her research, she came across the Drop-the-I Word campaign – a big, public push in 2010 to get people—including everyday people, politicians, the media, really, everyone—to stop using the word “illegal” when describing immigrants.  

Rinku Sen was the executive director of the organization behind the campaign—a racial and social justice nonprofit called Race Forward. And today she leads the communications strategy organization Narrative Initiative.

She says at the time the campaign launched…

Rinku Sen: The feeling among immigrants was mad. They were furious at having, having that word, chase them everywhere they went. Whether they had papers or not.

So Drop-the-I Word came out of wanting to use our power in a way that also changed some part of the culture.

DA: She said this was also an era when immigration advocates were having a hard time getting pro-immigration policies through Congress.

So, they thought, where else can we move the needle…? And then they realized…

Rinku: Power operates in culture. The popular conception is that power only operates in politics and economy, and that everything else is somehow natural, you know? And that’s just not true.

There’s very little you win politically that you haven’t also won culturally.

DA: And culturally speaking, the term “illegal immigrant” was often referring to immigrants from certain countries…

Cecilia Menjívar: For most people, when they think of quote unquote illegals, they think of Latinos. Especially individuals from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.

DA: This is Cecilia Menjívar, professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She told me that the term “illegal immigrant” associates immigrants from these countries—especially Black and Brown immigrants—with criminality. 

And that has real impacts…regardless of someone’s immigration status. 

Cecilia: They tend to be more likely to be in placed detention, deported, as consequence of their quote unquote illegality.

This is not just language, it has very real consequences for people to live in this condition.

DA: So, when Rinku is talking about “winning” culturally, this is what she means. It’s about changing the cultural narratives about immigrants. Narratives that can impact their lives just as much as laws and policy do.

So Rinku and her colleagues at Race Forward decide to put pressure on one outlet in particular…

Rinku: We decided to focus on the Associated Press. Their style guide sets the content for millions of outlets around the world.

DA: It’s hard to say exactly how many outlets reference the Associated Press style guide—but either way, it is the standard for a lot of newsrooms. 

Rinku: Our one demand was—remove illegal immigrant from your style guide.

We insisted that it wasn’t okay as a noun and it wasn’t okay as a descriptor, either of the immigrant or of the immigration. 

DA: And after more than three years—they won. The Associated Press dropped the term “illegal immigrant” from their style guide.  But this didn’t totally phase out the term…

In fact, in 2018 during the Trump presidency, CNN reported the Justice Department put out a memo asking U.S. attorney’s offices to use “illegal immigrant” instead of “undocumented immigrant”—which is what some people started using as a replacement. 

And then in 2021, the Justice Department under the Biden administration issued another memo recommending the opposite thing. This one asked staff to use language that is quote-unquote “[consistent] with our character as a Nation of opportunity and of welcome.” 

So, there’s been a bit of back and forth…

But still when Youkun read about the Drop-the-I word campaign for her class paper, she could connect the dots between the campaign, the fake green card that Xuan had issued herself, and her own experience going through customs in Dallas.  

Youkun: Not only do IDs define us, they also define us with an expiration date. Like, you’re legit till this time. 

DA: And after that time—which for some immigrants is the starting point—you’re illegal. 

Youkun: And that’s when Xuan and I started talking about this and I’m like, oh, like language plays a huge part in this and we could kind of play with it so that people think about language and particular words or ways that they’re defined by these words in this tiny little card.

DA: That’s why the fake green cards Youkun and Xuan make, they say…resident since now and expires never. With these fake green cards, Youkun and Xuan are saying the same thing Rinku at Race Forward was saying over a decade ago…that no one is illegal. 

Youkun: I think that’s very much the center of it is like, this is not valid, but we’re saying it is, you know?

DA: At the community arts market in Brooklyn that you heard earlier… nearly 20 people got fake green cards. 

Youkun: People can really put whatever on it, you can make things up… Yeah, we’re not taking your answers like, of like, why you’re here, like really asking as they would in actual, uh, application for a green card.

DA: Xuan neatly copies over the person’s biographical information and draws them using colored pencils. But no one seemed to mind the wait. In fact, it made even more space for people to reflect on their immigration experiences. 

Elisa Castro (at Market):  My name is Elisa, um, Castro, and…when I got here like six months ago, I got a job and I had to get my social security number. So it was like this document that had the box alien. And I was like, this is so weird to me. Like, why am I considered an alien? And it just… using that word says a lot about how the US perceives us.

 DA: This is Leya – 

Tape from Brooklyn Event: I’m actually Canadian, but I still do wake up every day in a sweat thinking about my visa and my green card. I’ve been in the US on a student visa. And it’s always the thought of like, at the end of eight years, like I will have built a life here. The last time I’ll have lived in my home country I’ll have been 17. 

DA: By “faking” the green card application process, Xuan and Youkun invited people to play and gave them permission to share openly and honestly about what’s gained and lost in the immigration process. 

And Xuan says that might not have happened if this was a seminar or a lecture instead of an art project…

 Xuan: ​​I feel like sometimes a lot of questions couldn’t be answered or explored in any other ways.

Youkun: The one thing that surprised me was a few people were like, yeah, I’m not thinking about applying for one. Like in real life, not with our table. Or like, they have a green card now and they’re not thinking about citizenship.

Yeah, it was nice to kind of be removed from this, like US centric perspective. Engaging with many people who are like yeah, I don’t want to give up my citizenship because it means a lot to me. Or, because I don’t want to go through this process, it’s not worth it. It’s laborous and emotionally taxing and I don’t want that.

DA: Hearing stories and experiences like these was a breath of fresh air for the artists. It was unexpected.

And as the small gallery in Brooklyn emptied out and Xuan and Youkun processed the last fake green card application, they felt proud of the project they had nurtured together. 

 Xuan: It makes me feel good to see people are sharing that they actually have the same struggle and they’re glad to see that I’m doing this.

DA: Xuan and Youkun don’t know where exactly they’ll be issuing fake green cards next, but they can already see the Fake Green Cards project growing into something bigger. 

 Xuan: We are hoping to build up some kind of community throughout this whole process and eventually make some kind of publication, like books or zines.

Youkun: I think both of us like the uncertainty of this, you know, very much in line with both of our lives.

I like that this project’s kind of like coming along with both of us. 

DA: For Feet in 2 Worlds, I’m Danya AbdelHameid.

VL: This story was produced for A Better Life? By Danya AbdelHameid.  To see images from the Fake Green Cards project visit our website at Fi2W.org. That’s F I the number 2, W, dot org.

This story was mixed and mastered by our technical director Jocelyn Gonzalez.  Quincy Surasmith is our managing editor. Alejandro Salazar Dyer is our director of marketing, and Isabela Rocha is our intern. The executive producer of Feet in 2 Worlds is John Rudolph.  Our theme music and original score are by Fareed Sajan. 

Immigrants in a Divided Country is a multimedia online magazine series by Feet in 2 Worlds that explores the current political landscape from the perspective of immigrants. You can find links to additional stories in the series in our episode notes.

To listen to earlier episodes of A Better Life?, visit abetterlifepodcast.com. That’s abetterlifepodcast.com.  I’m Virginia Lora. Thank you for listening. 

John Rudolph: A Better Life? and Feet Into Worlds are supported by the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Katherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the David and Katherine Moore Family Foundation, the Ralph E. Ogden Foundation, an anonymous donor, and readers, and listeners like you. Support our work that brings immigrant voices and award-winning journalism to public radio podcasts and digital news sites. Make a tax-deductible contribution today at abetterlifepodcast.com. That’s abetterlifepodcast.com.