{"id":679790,"date":"2025-07-13T15:00:31","date_gmt":"2025-07-13T12:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/yes-superman-has-always-been-an-immigration-story\/"},"modified":"2025-07-13T15:00:31","modified_gmt":"2025-07-13T12:00:31","slug":"yes-superman-has-always-been-an-immigration-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/yes-superman-has-always-been-an-immigration-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Yes, Superman Has Always Been an Immigration Story"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tWhen filmmaker James Gunn called his new Superman<\/em> film an immigrant story<\/a>, critics accused him of politicizing Superman. But you can\u2019t politicize the truth. Superman has been an \u201cillegal alien\u201d for 87 years\u2014a fact we helped America remember when we launched our 2013 campaign<\/a>, Superman Is an Immigrant.
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Of course, we couldn\u2019t have predicted Donald Trump\u2014the man DC Comics literally used <\/a>as their model to reboot Lex Luthor in 1986\u2014waging war on the very immigrants Superman represents. In 2000, Luthor became president in the comics, complete with an anti-alien agenda. No one imagined the real President Trump would follow the same playbook.
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Superman entered America without papers, a baby refugee fleeing a dying planet. Like countless immigrants before him, he changed his name from the foreign-sounding (in his case, Hebrew)\u00a0 Kal-El<\/a> to the anglicized Clark Kent. He learned new customs, balanced his heritage with his adopted culture, and used his unique abilities to serve the nation that initially feared him.
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This isn\u2019t subtext\u2014it\u2019s text. Superman\u2019s creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, were children of Jewish immigrants who understood displacement intimately. In 1938, as Hitler rose to power, they created a hero who embodied their American dream: someone who could protect the vulnerable because he knew what it meant to be cast aside. Superman\u2019s very essence springs from being what he called \u201ca universal outsider<\/a>.\u201d This outsider status isn\u2019t incidental to his heroism; it\u2019s the source of it. Those who have known rejection become champions of acceptance. Those who have felt powerless fight for the defenseless.
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Today, that outsider would be deported. In fact, without birthright citizenship, Superman would never have existed at all. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, born in Cleveland to Jewish immigrant parents, would have been strip<\/a>ped of citizenship and deported to Nazi-controlled Europe\u2014to face certain death in countries they\u2019d never known.
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No Jerry and Joe means no Superman. No Superman means no superhero genre. The children of immigrants who followed their lead\u2014creating Batman, Captain America, Spider-Man, and at least 90 percent of all iconic superheroes\u2014would have met the same fate. The modern mythology that defines American popular culture worldwide: all erased.
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Superman endures because he represents something larger than politics: the American paradox itself. We are a nation built by the displaced\u2014willing immigrants and unwilling slaves, refugees and dreamers, all orphaned from somewhere else. Superman, the ultimate orphan, transforms this shared wound into purpose, proving that our greatest strength comes not from where we\u2019re born, but from what we choose to become.
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In 2013, our campaign sparked a national conversation through a simple selfie challenge: Americans sharing their family immigration stories while declaring \u201cSuperman Is an Immigrant.\u201d Critics inadvertently amplified our message\u2014every time they said the phrase to mock it, they reinforced the undeniable truth of it.
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As Gunn\u2019s film opens and Trump\u2019s deportation machine accelerates, that truth feels more urgent than ever. Superman returns to theaters just days after America\u2019s final Fourth of July before its 250th birthday. The question isn\u2019t whether we\u2019ll continue celebrating our independence, but whether we\u2019ll remember what made us super in the first place.
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At Monday\u2019s premiere, Gunn said<\/a>, \u201cThis is a movie about kindness, and I think that\u2019s something everyone can relate to.\u201d But media<\/a> on the right, in fact, does not seem able to relate to this message of kindness. On Fox News<\/a><\/em>, Jesse Watters joked under a \u201cSuperwoke\u201d chyron that Superman\u2019s cape reads \u201cMS-13\u201d and questioned whether he is \u201cfrom Uganda.\u201d The conservative outlet Outkick<\/em> argued that America doesn\u2019t have \u201cto be \u2018kind\u2019 just because a fictional character from another planet brought some good to a fictional Earth,\u201d and that \u201cAmerica is desperate for apolitical entertainment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAccusations of \u201cpoliticizing\u201d Superman come laughably late. Since 1938, Superman has defined \u201cthe American Way\u201d through action. In 1940, while the isolationist America First movement preached neutrality, Superman took on Adolf Hitler. In 1949, he spoke directly to schoolchildren: \u201cIf you hear anybody talk against a schoolmate because of his religion, race, or national origin\u2014don\u2019t wait: tell him THAT KIND OF TALK IS UN-AMERICAN.\u201d He promoted vaccines, helping fund the polio vaccine. He exposed the Ku Klux Klan\u2019s secrets on national radio. When a gunman opens fire on immigrants, blaming them for stealing his job, Superman blocks every bullet. He stood between peaceful protesters and riot police after Ferguson. After the murder of George Floyd, he declared: \u201cDreams save us. Dreams lift us up and transform us. And on my soul, I swear\u2026 until my dream of a world where dignity, honor and justice becomes the reality we all share \u2014 I\u2019ll never stop fighting. Ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSuperman is America\u2019s conscience<\/a> wearing a cape\u2014and that terrifies critics because they\u2019re supporting a real-life supervillain.<\/p>\n

\n\tOur greatest superpower as a nation has always been our ability to welcome the stranger and watch them soar. Like Superman himself, America draws its strength not from what it was born with, but from what it chooses to become\u2014a place where the orphaned can find home, where the powerless can discover their power, where those who flee dying worlds can help build new ones.
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In choosing fear over hope, walls over welcome, we don\u2019t just betray Superman\u2019s legacy\u2014we abort our own future. The real superheroes have always been immigrants. It\u2019s time we started acting like we believe it.
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Andrew Slack is a narrative strategist who co-founded the<\/em> Harry Potter Alliance<\/em><\/a>, mobilizing over a million fans worldwide for social justice. He writes about how ancient and modern myths shape democracy and is working on a book exploring mythology\u2019s role in American civic life.<\/em>
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Jose Antonio Vargas is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Emmy-nominated filmmaker, and founder of the immigrant storytelling non-profit <\/em>Define American<\/em><\/a>. An updated edition of his memoir, <\/em>Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, for 2025 is now available.<\/em>
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When filmmaker James Gunn called his new Superman film an immigrant story, critics accused him of politicizing Superman. But you can\u2019t politicize the truth. Superman has been an \u201cillegal alien\u201d for 87 years\u2014a fact we helped America remember when we launched our 2013 campaign, Superman Is an Immigrant.\u00a0Of course, we couldn\u2019t have predicted Donald Trump\u2014the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":679791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/MCDSUPE_WB045-H-2025.jpg?w=1296&h=730&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[19315,5221],"class_list":["post-679790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-james-gunn","tag-superman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=679790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/679791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}