Immigraniada (we comin’ rougher), the new video of Gogol Bordello, directed by Isaiah Seret and shot in Los Angeles, is definitively more than just this, a music video. It starts with the Roosevelt’s sentence ‘Remember always, that all of us and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants…’ and ends with the declaration ‘No human being is illegal’.
In between, Eugene Hütz, with his usual coolness and laid-back attitude, will accomplish all the ordinary immigrant jobs, from car washer, to sweat shop sewer, to restaurant dishwasher.
His adventures are split with black and white footages of 19th century immigrants with Ellis Island in the background as the symbol of the American immigrant experience, and the video mixes humor and strong imagery, like the map of the US progressively painted with blood spots.
Strong imagery just like the lyrics, which vividly depict the immigrant experience: ‘In corridors full of tear gas/Our destinies jammed every day/Like deleted scenes from Kafka/Flushed down the bureaucratic drain’.
It’s genuine, Hütz knows a lot about the subject: ‘It’s a video we always wanted to make, because it completes our story. It’s very autobiographical, and tells a story about eight people who are all immigrants, who came to pursue something in New-York city. That’s our biography. But on the other hand, like it coincides with the idealistic belief that people shall always be free to choose the place of their residence. This ties in to the whole movement of worldwide citizenship.’ He declared in an interview to Boing Boing.
He is very big on this worldwide citizenship, saying out loud that there is no national identity only that of a human being. He added: ‘But it’s not just America. The things going on in France and Italy are far worse. This video could have been shot in Moscow, Rome, or Paris, and still ring true.’
I could not agree more.
Last April everybody in the US was focusing on the tough law on illegal immigration in Arizona, but at a time when French president Sarkozy has ordered the deportation of gypsies (known as Roma) back to Bulgaria and Romania and has seen right away his popularity making a slight bump up in the polls, at a time when he has even suggested that a foreign-born French national potentially would be stripped of citizenship if convicted of a crime, at a time when this decision has received the full support of Italy’s right-wing prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, more than ever, we need to be remembered everything Eugene Hütz has to say.