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  • 2018-05-02 (xsd:date)
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  • Is This the First Caravan Member to Be Granted Asylum in the United States? (en)
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  • On 1 May 2018, the first group of people from a controversial caravan hoping to escape extreme violence and poverty in their home countries approached border agents at the United States-Mexico border to request asylum: Those with an explicitly anti-immigration agenda have — since coverage of the caravan first began — used the demonstration as a disinformation cudgel, variously portraying the group as a murderous horde of criminals or disingenuous foreigners seeking handouts. At its worst, these misrepresentations contain wholly fabricated information. In keeping with this cynical tradition is a meme that gained significant viral traction when news first broke that some caravan members had arrived at the El Chaparral border crossing that bridges Tijuana, Mexico and San Diego, California: The premise of this poorly proof-read, insulting meme is that the United States asylum process is a joke, because it lets people like Susana, who is not emaciated, claim she is starving to reap benefits — the free handout flavor of alt-right xenophobia. Among the myriad problems with this claim is the fact that the image in question comes from a pornographic photoshoot that occurred at least before 2009, and which can be found on a variety of web sites, including Plumpersworld.com: The idea to brand an image from this photoset as an anti-caravan statement appears to date back to at least early April 2018. Like so many fevered alt-right machinations, further background into its origins are available on the anonymous message board 4chan. An image of the original tweet can be found in the /pol/ portion of the website — nominally a place for politically incorrect talk, but in reality a haven for hate speech. That (now hidden) 6 April 2018 tweet, from an account that has since changed its name and protected its tweets, contained this additional (and equally typoed) assertion: This description is nonsensical for more than one reason, but it bears repeating that the asylum seekers in the caravan are requesting asylum at a Tijuana crossing, not Juárez. Moreover, Susana González is the name of a popular Mexican actress from whom the name appears to have been stolen to muddy the waters and further the meme's false narrative. The meme is nothing more than a crude misrepresentation of an old pornographic photoshoot using an appropriated name; therefore, its claims are patently false. (en)
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