The statement "No Human Being Is Illegal" was initially expressed by Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner, and this sentiment resonates through a variety of issues depicted on posters over many years. This title is used in a number of posters designed to evoke compassion, empathy, humor and satire. Some of the more poignant posters present images of a father being separated from a son and a family looking through a chain-link fence. Yolanda Lopez alters this empathetic mood with her 1981 poster showing an Aztec holding immigration papers and demanding, "Who's the illegal alien, Pilgrim?" In Lalo Alcaraz's "FRAID Anti-Immigrant Border Spray," the point is to ridicule California's Proposition 187 - the artist transforms unwanted immigrants into insects and renames the familiar bug spray from "Raid" to "Fraid." The mixture of emotions presented in these posters illustrate the different ways people have dealt with the problems immigration has presented

The immigrant experience is often a contradictory mixture of economic opportunity and exploitation, personal freedom and societal discrimination. During periods of prosperity and low unemployment, new immigrants are welcomed into the labor force. When resources become scarce, immigrants are perceived as rivals who compete for jobs, accept lower pay and poorer working conditions, and their children are blamed for overcrowded conditions in schools. These contradictions appear in the posters: the Statue of Liberty is portrayed both as a beacon of hope and as an instrument of death, while the U.S. flag symbolizes the promise of a better life as well as the threat of oppression. For example, in "Abajo con la Migra" by Malaquias Montoya (1979), the Statue of Liberty holds a meat cleaver in place of her welcoming torch, and she impales an immigrant on the spikes of her crown. Vulfrano Gutierrez transforms the U.S. flag in "Land of the Free?" (1996) by replacing the stars with skulls and superimposing barbed wire over the stripes.

These posters show that the issues surrounding AIDS, affordable housing, children's rights, education, labor, racism, and women's rights are all immigrant issues. As we approach the twenty-first century, it is sobering to look back at thirty years of posters representing a century of immigration issues and realize that the same problems are depicted repeatedly over the years-and there is still much work left to do. These powerful graphics continue to use public spaces in an effort to organize and educate. They challenge the status quo in order to bring the immigrant experience closer to the promise on the Statue of Liberty, and they are a reminder to us all to reflect upon our immigrant heritage. This exhibition is about discrimination and prejudice, but it is also about hope, commitment, and determination-it is about reclaiming the power of art to communicate and inspire people to action.

"No Human Being is Illegal!: Posters on the Myths and Realities of the Immigrant Experience," is a traveling exhibit organized by the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, Los Angeles.