That’s how we came across this project, which aimed to make easy-to-use and accessible technology that anyone with any piece of technology could run and use to find resources for themselves if they were undocumented. Below is a full description of the project as well as author notes about the steps taken. On more of a technical side, I went out of my way to incorporate automatic translations via this tech framework supplied by an open-source company but it’s not incredibly reliable. I made the website accessible to colorblind and blind people, as well as having screen readers and alt-text wherever was needed. Immigrant violence is popular nowadays due to the actions of ICE, but discrimination against immigrants, specifically disabled immigrant mothers, has long preceded these events. Discrimination against immigrants with disabilities has been present since 1882.

One of the first major immigrant laws, the Act of 1882, denied entry to any “lunatic, idiot, or any person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge.” The government has made it clear that physical and mental disabilities are not important to support. Recent and past government actions have not only denied care to individuals but have also directly resulted in permanent injuries to immigrants. Examples of this include the Bracero Program, ICE, and NCSSER. One of the biggest issues we want to cover is the invisibility of disability. We don’t refer to disabled immigrants as disabled first, but rather as “people-of-color”, “immigrants”, “aliens”, and “non-US-citizens”, all before disability ever becomes a factor. Nationalism and capitalism have caused disability in immigrants to become an invisible topic that isn’t addressed or showcased. The treatment of ICE against disabled immigrants, the generational trauma caused by hiding disability, the inability to receive care for disability due to being an immigrant, and these labels we enforce all hide disability behind a huge wall of difference and othering. This project attempts to bring that disability to light, and hopefully address the long-standing pain in each of these communities by making a website full of toolkits for each community to help deal with these long-standing pains.