The Visitor

Wow! This was a powerful movie. It is about a college prof named Walter, who returns to his New York apartment, after being gone for some time, and finds a couple living there who were taken in by some rental scam. They were illegals: the girl, Zainab, is from Ghana and the young man, Tarek, is from Syria. Walter befriends them and lets them live there. Tarek, gets nabbed by the police, when they thought him to be trying to skip over a subway turnstyle. He is then found to be illegal and sent to a detention center.

Well, I'm not going to tell you the whole plot. But this does show the human side of this immigration stuff. I fully understand the feelings post 9\11, but as the kid said: "the terrorists all have money and connections". The young man was here for political assylum, had had a hearing but did not make it due to a misunderstanding. So, he was put in detention. Later on his mother comes to New York to the apartment where Walter lets her stay.

Well, shit, I don't even think that Tarek and his mother were Muslims. But Syria being a so-called terrorist nation made the immigration Nazi's felt they had to rush to deport the kid. His mother (it never said whether she was here legally or not) followed him to Syria and had to have a tearful departure with Walter, whom she had fallen in love with.

I liked the film, because stupid people in this country have to see Arab and Muslim characters as humans and equals. I will continue to root out blatent examples of Islamophobia and Xenophobia, when it comes to people from the Middle East in Zim's Rants. I don't know about the right-wing Christians here, perhaps they want Armegeddon to happen in Jerusalem, so Jesus can come and save their ass. Me, I want the he Middle East to grow weary from fighting and for peace to break out. Especially since the young man named Tarek was so fucking cute!