The wall, the fight over sanctuary cities, Jim Acosta getting chewed out live on television, the DREAMers, the Muslim Ban — immigration is on the national consciousness in a way that it hasn’t been since the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Just today, Reuters reports that Jeff Sessions said, “Cities and states with so-called ‘sanctuary’ policies make us all less safe,” after which he chastised four police departments in particular, telling them that they needed to step up enforcement against undocumented immigrants.
One undocumented immigrant, Mballa, decided enough was enough, and that she had to take a stand.
Hailing from Cameroon, Mballa is an undocumented immigrant who is also a musician.
Looking to express her journey and what it is like to be the type of immigrant that currently serves as a political heel, Mballa wrote a song called “Illegal,” the video for which Blavity is happy to premiere.
The visual was directed by Rebecca Ward and Mandy Padgett, and features a collective of undocumented women working to build their own society outside of the mainstream.
Mballa told us that having two women direct the video was important to her, because she felt her song “was very much from the perspective of a woman, and an immigrant woman at that. I felt only a woman would be able to both understand and showcase the duality of women's emotions and states of being: the ability to be aggressive and still feminine — rugged, but still sexy — hurt, but still strong and powerful.”
Director Rebecca Ward said that she saw the song as a chance to help change the perception of what an undocumented immigrant is. “Strong, black, feminine beauty is not what most Americans envision when they hear the word 'illegal' in regards to the undocumented. This music video was made to turn the stereotype of 'illegal' on its head, and challenge what most people interpret undocumented folk to look like.”
Director Mandy Padgett added that she sees the “Illegal” video as a perfect conduit to “to showcase [Mballa’s] inner strength,” and that having a “collective of women represented in the video … just added to the theme of female empowerment.”
The Pew Center estimates that there are currently around 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, and the 8 million of those are in the workforce.
Mballa hopes that the song and video can reach all of them, and that through her music, she can help other undocumented immigrants in “overcoming any fear they might feel as a consequence of their immigration status.”
For more music from Mballa, visit her website.
