It’s the line that gets knowing laughs during every performance of Hamilton—not only when Vice President Mike Pence is in the audience. Lin-Manuel Miranda decided to build an entire song around it for The Hamilton Mixtape, which was released last December.
And on Wednesday, “Immigrants (We Get the Job Done)” got a music video.
The song, by rapper K’naan, also features Residente and Snow Tha Product, but the stand-out star is Riz MC, also known as actor Riz Ahmed of The Night Of and Rogue One fame.
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The video opens on a group of immigrants nervously listening to a radio report about the U.S. Congress debating border security and immigration reform. “It’s really astonishing that in a country founded by immigrants, ‘immigrant’ has somehow become a bad word,’” the anchor says.
As each rapper delivers his or her verse, we see those immigrants doing the jobs that keep this country running: picking fruit, working in hospitals, and even sewing American flags. The refrain of “look how far I’ve come” is punctuated by George Washington’s line from the musical: “Not yet.”
The video is just part of Miranda’s largest promotion for what he’s calling the #Ham4All campaign in which he is asking fans, including some very famous faces, to post videos of themselves singing Hamilton songs online for a chance to win tickets to the show in Los Angeles.
Entrants must donate a minimum of $10 to the Immigrants: We Get the Job Done Coalition, which aims to provide services to immigrants and refugees living in the U.S.
