Last week during the Grammy Awards ceremony, Billie Eilish spoke out against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in support of ongoing protests in major cities like Minneapolis, stating, “As grateful as I feel, I honestly don’t feel like I need to say anything, but, that no one is illegal on stolen land”. This criticism, akin to many activist voices, forced me to confront the tension between “illegal” people and land which was “stolen.”
Initially, Billie Eilish’s statement rubbed me the wrong way. I grew up watching my immigrant parents treat legal status as one of their most precious possessions, a testament to two decades of clearing meticulous hurdles. Their image of the “American Dream” was treated as a sacred, literal contract: if you feverishly follow the law, you earn your place. My parents described how immigrants on student or work visas are pressured to certain positions due to limited sponsorships or to remain silent in workspaces. All of these restrictions are things they had to deal with as immigrants. When the thin line of legality determines not only presence, but the ability to speak and work freely, maintaining that legality also feels like a moral achievement.
My parents’ sacrifices were structured around earning lawful belonging, so questioning the meaning of legality can feel like questioning the value of what they endured to obtain it. If that legality was arbitrary, I worried that the years they spent limiting their choices and voices to remain here would suddenly seem meaningless. However, this concern began to crack as I looked closer at the historical United States government and Native Americans, and further asserted that legal legitimacy is not a fixed moral truth, but a shifting political one. Within this view, I also think we can still be fiercely proud of our parents’ accomplishments while accepting the complex, often lawless history of the land where they built their lives.
In 1785, the federal government established an official treaty with the Cherokee, establishing the sovereignty of their territory in the Southeastern United States and “perpetual peace and friendship”. However, with the growth of the colony and the establishment of the United States, many indigenous populations were forced out of their lands. For the Cherokee, the government completely broke their treaty with the controversial “Trail of Tears” campaign, forcing them out of ancestral lands and out west. The Cherokee Nation now exists in Oklahoma, far from the hills of Georgia they were promised in perpetuity. This history challenges the idea that American land was acquired through purely righteous war or fair exchange. On the contrary, the expansion of America relied on coercion, broken agreements, and violence against Indigenous peoples. Following that, if the government repeatedly breaks its own laws without consequence, can legality alone determine moral worth? That is the hypocrisy which the phrase “no one is illegal on stolen land” tries to illuminate. Once this hypocrisy was clear, it forced me to look at my own family’s history.
My parents are both Korean immigrants who came here during the 2000s in their mid 20s to seek a better life in the U.S., commonly referred to as the American Dream. Now, as permanent residents, they enjoy the privileges of being American and were able to pass that on to my sister and me. However, less than six decades prior, the Immigration Act of 1924 (Oriental Exclusion Act) cut off nearly everyone from Asia. Only through decades of activism did Congress finally end America’s Asian exclusion laws. If my parents had lived in the 1950s and attempted to immigrate, they would have been denied for being “aliens.” In 2026, they have all the rights of a permanent resident. Therefore, the legality of one’s presence in the United States is more about when you choose to enter and the political will of that era, more than moral qualms. If the law was once wrong about me and many of my friends, we must question if the law is currently wrong about the legality of people, as Eilish mentioned, especially when that law is being enforced on land that was acquired through the very breaking of legislation it claims to despise.
For many children of immigrants, pride in the legal achievements of our parents and the criticism of the lawfulness of America as a system can feel at odds. Their stability depended on a sense of obedience to the law, so questioning that system’s moral authority undermines the structure that gave them that “American Dream.” To a larger vision, gratitude to America is then expressed through enthusiastic belief in legal righteousness, and making any critique feel wrong. However, I also think that we can acknowledge that this system, which led to many sacrifices by my parents, is rooted in deep, unlawful characteristics. This system, due to its history of breaking dozens of treaties with Indigenous populations, should also be critiqued.
The bold words of Eilish don’t seem as inelegant, but rather clarifying. They remind me that my existence as a second-generation immigrant is a chapter in a much older, ongoing story of this land. As extensions of immigrants, we are implicitly told to choose between celebrating our families’ success within America’s system and acknowledging the history of the land we are on. However, this is a false choice. Recognizing the contradictions in American history doesn’t diminish their achievements, but places them in a larger narrative of American immigration. By accepting this complexity, we can honor the resilience of our families while also acknowledging the rights and histories of Indigenous peoples whose land made those journeys possible.
