Like many other films focus on globalization and immigration, Crossing Over is also a multi-character canvas about immigrants of different nationalities struggling to achieve legal status in Los Angeles.
As an officer in the Bureau of Immigration, Max Brogan takes care of the boy of a deported Mexico immigrant Mireya Sanchez and try to track her, ended up finding her dead body in the desert between borders.
In the same time, Max's colleague Hamid Baraheri, who's an Iranian American closer, was informed that his little sister was shoot dead. As Max getting more familiar with Hamid's family and getting to the truth, Hamid got involved into a robbery in Korean Town and changed a Korean boy's life forever, who will take oath to a US citizen right next day. Max eventually figured that it was Hamid's brother that killed their sister in the name of their father's will, and his brother was arrested when their father was taking oath and become a US citizen.
Gavin as a struggling England musician pretends to be religious Jew to get a job in Jewish School and luckily get a green card. However,his girlfriend Claire who tries to get a green card with an immigration officer by having unlimited sex within two months, was deported.
Taslima Jahangir, a 15-year-old girl from Bangladesh, presents a paper at school promoting that people should try to understand the 9/11 hijackers. The bureau arrested her and her family was forced to divided, Taslima and her mother was deported and her father and bros remain in US.
As clear as we can see from this movie itself, the immigration policy in US has strictly restricted and narrowed after 9/11, still people around the world seek for any means, legally and illegally, to get a status and stay in the states. America is the only country that was born to be multinational and multiracial. But it was never as friendly as Uncle Sam seems to be. Nor as hospitable as the Statue of Liberty appears to show. Not to mention how the "separate but equal" policy twisted the constitutional law in history, just take a deeper look in the past decade. The US government and US people have never been so terrified until 9/11. The domestic focus began to move from east Asia to Muslim and Islam world. What a typical western mind will take it for granted that only public election,take ruling turns and the already established western political roles can make a country prosperous and modernized. What they don't know is, however, just as the teenager girl in the movie try to formulate, how people in the other side of the world think and feel.
This movie tries to show the audience how far people will go and how much they'd like to pay for a status in the US, a green card or an Immigration certification. The young Mexico woman died for it. The young Korean boy had a bloody lesson. The Iranian family all became US citizens but deep inside they are still think in a conservative way and murdered one of their own. The England boy and Austrian girl, despite the fact they are all Caucasian, ended up differently by chance. And the Bangladesh girl was deported from the country she had grown up since three years old, only for a presentation she thought she had the right to free speech.
When we study immigration culture and more specifically speaking, American immigration culture, there is always a question haunting around my mind. Why do people prefer to sacrifice or risk everything to stay in States? It is no longer the old time that we hold the belief that there is gold everywhere in US. People nowadays hold different dreams and different lives to the US are actually doing the same as the in Mayflower. US cannot guarantee you a successful future, but it provides you more opportunities. Along with that, you also need to suffer the consequences. Different backgrounds are making different little communities. It's hard to say how many first generations can really blend into the mainstream. Take Hispanics for example, there're still prejudices that most illegal migrations are Hispanic, while in fact,the number people speaking Spanish in US is bigger than all they other language speakers exclude English.
Rome was not built in a day, and US can never be a perfect country as it claims to be. But we cannot ignore the fact that it inspired people who're struggling, who still have dream, who must have a life to lead to . The distinction of nationality and border are the outcome of industrial revolution, and all the bittersweet an immigration tastes can never be fully empathized. That's why this movie cannot be really popular. That's also the reason why the study of immigration culture is so attractive.
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