'Migration Is Beautiful' Documentary Upends Negative Views About Immigrants And Illegal Immigration

Immigration may be one of the country’s most intractable political problems, but for many people, it’s a beautiful thing.

Rapper Pharrell Williams’ “i am OTHER” YouTube channel released a three-part documentary series Monday titled “Migration Is Beautiful”, that aims to upend negative views of immigrants. Adopting the butterfly as its symbol, the film instead portrays migration as the result of corporate greed.

As narrator Favianna Rodriguez, an artist and activist, says in the film:

Migrants are the ones constantly blamed for stealing jobs, but the fact is that corporations are the ones taking jobs overseas. And you know they only do that so that they can make larger profits by exploiting workers in other countries.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas offers a similar assessment:

When it comes to immigration I feel that we’re stuck in the same paragraph and we’re stuck in the same conversations and we’re not really asking the harder questions. Why are people moving? And what does the United States have to do with people moving here? What are economic agreements like NAFTA, U.S. foreign policy, wars that the United States has started -- what does it have to do with people moving? But we’re not owning up to our own history, and that’s why it’s biting us in the ass.

To tell the story of the battle over immigration in the United States in recent years, Rodriguez and her crew travel to Tucson, Arizona to watch Operation Streamline in action, hop on the "No Papers No Fear Ride For Justice" and stop by the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina.

“Migration Is Beautiful” also features appearances by actor Rosario Dawson, undocumented activist Julio Salgado and Presente.org co-founder Roberto Lovato.

Check the documentary out above and below or head over to “i am OTHER’s” YouTube Channel.”