On US immigration panic

                                                                                                                      Francesco Gissi

One may genuinely ask why the migration debate has reached such proportions. It’s very clear that the migrants-native ratio today is far lower than at the start of the 20^th century. We may overestimate even the number of Mexican migrants today, as the INS has refused to release the data for repeated entries from attempting immigrants. The situation is very strange, as capital demands clearly poor and cheap labor, and only rarely minds over the legality of it. Furthermore, much of the wall/fence at the border is being built by illegal immigrants[1] as they are much cheaper. The comedy television show Penn & Teller, on their chapter on immigration, hire illegal immigrants to build and test a piece of fence. It takes for them on average 3-5 minutes to cross.

As to whether walls or fences are decisive, the judgment is yet unclear, it has been pointed out that the wall keeps people in that may want to travel between countries. To me this seems fairly analogous to the Great Wall of China, which was really a collection of walls built by many dynasties, none of which really worked. The biggest, most impressive wall was built by the Ming after the Yuan dynasty that the Mongols governed. This still didn’t stop the Manchus from taking over the capital and founding the Qing dynasty. Yet Manchu and Mongols were both integrated into the greater Han culture, even making some of their traits stereotypically Chinese (e.g. the long braid is a Manchu haircut). 

The question may still be asked: How much migration is consistent with national stability? The answer depends on what we mean by stability. If by stability we mean ethno-cultural continuity or ‘no change at all’, then any migration is a problem.  One may then wonder who it that wants no change at all. I bring the problem as the population has been strongly opposed to much of US intervention and by now some sectors show utter contempt for their institutions. Since elites and WASP (see Huntington’s “Who we are” model of the USA) are the ones that govern the country[2], we can remind ourselves of the strong opposition to Irish and Italian migration in the beginning of the 20^th century, born out of the initial puritan utopia in the country. This puritan fear of becoming contaminated prevails mass culture entertainment.

How real is it, though? Chomsky has suggested that to know about what the cold war was really about, one would look at what happened after it ended, pointing out that two weeks after the Soviet Union collapsed there was an attack on Panama against “radical populism.” In this light, recent islamophobia and migration fear could be seen as a strategy to keep the public mind occupied and unified through fear of other. On the Mexican side, we see republicans from Latin-American origins, such as Ted Cruz, senator for Texas. Nothing new under the sun, I’d say. Migrants, and generally peripherals tend to be ethnically-alienated to remedy their hopeless impotence[3]. In Chile it has been common to identify with Spanish conquistadors as “us”, even for people who clearly look of indigenous origin.     

If the US is like the roman empire and the Mexicans are the ‘barbarians[4]’, one could see, as historians of Rome since Tacitus have seen, that the death of the old enemy, Carthage/The USRR bring about confusion and all manner of doubt as to the moral superiority of the empire. Like the Germanic tribes, it is vox populi in Mexico today the serious joke that ‘we are recovering the land they took from us. We are more civilized, so we do it peacefully.’

Absent the political will, it is unclear what will happen. However, if seen from the examples I give, there are larger socio-historical factors at work here. The economic factor, the demand for cheap labor from capital, like the legion commander, does not occupy itself with the migrants who don’t make it. Therefore it is only natural that migration comes with high risk, as they are not part of the national community, either before or after they arrive. At which point will there be a Mexican integration on current predominant culture? When will pizza and tacos achieve the same status as our food? Some would say it is already taking place. I am more cautious. Fears are very powerful; it may yet occur that a perceived new enemy unifies migrants under the banner of Americans.

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[1] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6626823. Accessed 4^th of June of 2014.

[2] See Ferguson’s ‘Investment theory of party competition’ and Wright Mills, The power elite.

[3] See Fanon, F. Black skins, White masks.

[4] Yet another interesting example as to how the French and Germans today study roman history from the point of view of “us westerners” and not “them romans.”