Your Playlist: Heems

My non-immigration teaching course is Civil Procedure. And today we are discussing Ashcroft v. Iqbal with all of its immigration and terrorism overtones.

I was searching for a good song to start off class when I stumbled across this one from Punjabi-Indian-American rapper Heems. Written after 9/11, it's called Flag Shopping. Check out the hook:

We're going American flag shopping
Red, white, blue on our crib
The neighbors threw rocks at the house
They making it harder to live

It's a genuinely moving song. And perhaps a good one for your immigration class on terrorism.

Honorable mention to Lowkey's song Terrorist?, which is great but is both (1) not US-focused and (2) veers into issues of capitalism and Israel that I'm not looking to bring into the classroom today. It might be great for immigration though, as the song starts with a dictionary definition of terrorism and then dissects that meaning through examples.