On February 16th, immigrants all across the United States participated in an immigrant strike in the hopes of proving how valuable they are to the United States. The hashtag #daywithoutimmigrants was trending. Many companies showed massive support for their immigrant employees.

The popular local restaurant, Pizza Luce, stirred up some controversy in their open support for the demonstrations. This is their statement they issued Thursday:

"Today [Thursdat] we're offering a limited menu of Pizza, Salad and Appetizers as many of our restaurants are missing key employees who are participating in 'A Day Without Immigrants' demonstration. We support our employees, the immigrants in our community, taking a stand against the anti-immigrant talk and administrative action coming out of Washington DC."

I spoke with an employee from the downtown Pizza Luce who explained,

"Almost all of our kitchen staff are either Mexican or Ecuadorian immigrants. They all went on strike [Thursday] in light of the recent anti-immigration talk, and rightfully so. Our restaurant can't function properly without them. We couldn't have possibly offered our full menu without our immigrant employees. There was plain and simply just no one there to cook half of the stuff. We had mostly drivers and managers filling in the kitchen trying to make pizzas. I think it made a point to the public how valuable they really are."

There were many angry and frustrated customers. Some people criticized Pizza Luce for not just closing the restaurant for the day. But that would have defeated the purpose. If the restaurant had closed altogether, people wouldn't have been able to see just how much immigrants really do for our local businesses. Of course, there were also large masses of people who showed great support and understanding for the company and respected their decision.

Another incident that acquired a lot of buzz was the Massachusetts museum that removed all their immigrant created art. The Davis Museum at Wellesley College decided to cover all the work that was either created or donated by an immigrant with a black cloth for the duration of President's Day weekend.

This idea was employed to symbolically show how the museum would look without any immigrant contribution. The statement was very clear, with roughly 20% of the museum's art being covered. "Absences created by the removal or obscuring of works from view will be marked with labels that indicate 'made by an immigrant' or 'given by an immigrant,'" explained the museum. The initiative is being called #ART-LESS