The Immigration Crisis – the rise of “nativism.”

In August of Nineteen Fifty-four my father decided, after a family quarrel, that he would take his family and immigrate to the United States of America. It wasn’t difficult in those days: we stayed with Aunt Josefa, who lived across the border in Texas, and in two weeks my father’s immigration application was accepted. All of us, father, mother, sister, brother, and myself got brand new resident cards like the ones now known as “green cards.”

We went to live in a beautiful Gulf Coast town called Corpus Christi, in Texas. It was paradise. Our teachers were kind and stayed after school to teach us English, the school’s principal took me to the school library and told me to take home and keep any two books I wanted, so I could learn to read English faster. Our neighborhood was filled with refugees and immigrants from Europe and we could hear Italian, Portuguese, German, and French, among others, spoken and shouted at kids warning us not to fall in the water as we played among the ships anchored in the shipping channel.

Oh, how things have changed!

Immigrants, not only in the US but all over the world, are vilified, accused of taking jobs from the “native” workers, described as “murderers and rapist” by idiots such as Donald Trump, beaten by police, chased and jailed by border guards, and generally made to feel unwelcome.

How quickly the welcome signs were taken down!

Europe, which just a few days ago welcomed the refugees from the Middle East, has now begun to grumble that there are just too many. Germany has suspended train traffic with Austria; Hungary, acting like the right-wing police state that it is, has sent more guards to its borders to keep refugees from crossing through, and France, always wishy-washy concerning the issue, has decided to rethink the problem...again.

Immigrants against immigrants

The rejection of immigrants by people who are themselves immigrants or children of immigrants is nothing new. If you have watched Martin Scorsese’s bad film “Gangs of New York” or the excellent PBS documentary “The Irish in America”, you would be aware of a historical fact: that the most vehement, vociferous proponents of deportation or blocking of immigration are immigrants who now consider themselves “natives”, permanent residents, or citizens of the home country.

This has happened as far back as there have been humans on Earth. I can imagine the Neanderthals and other species of humans watching with trepidation as Homo Sapiens invaded their hunting grounds. (And, it seems they had good cause to be afraid since there are indications that our specie contributed to the extinction of other human species such as the Neanderthals).

In the Nineteenth Century, the Irish in the US rioted against the influx of other Irish. During the 1830s, riots broke out in rural areas among rival labor teams from different parts of Ireland, and between Irish and "native" American work teams competing for construction jobs.

Once the Chinese had helped to build the railroads in Mexico, an anti-Chinese sentiment that worried about an “unchecked influx of Chinese” grew to the point of frenzy causing riots and massacres of Chinese immigrants. (The Yaqui Indians were more native than anyone else in Mexico but their customs were “strange” enough to seem foreign so they were massacred, too).

According to Wikipedia, studies done in 2000 regarding opposition to immigration show that this phenomena is common in many countries because of issues of national, cultural, and religious identity. The phenomenon has been studied especially in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, as well as Europe in recent years, where immigration is seen as lowering the wages of the less well-paid natives. Thus “nativism” has become a general term for 'opposition to immigration' based on fears that the immigrants will distort or spoil existing cultural values.

In scholarly studies nativism, Wikipedia asserts, is a standard technical term. It goes on to say that "those who hold this political view, however, typically do not accept the term. A study done in 2010 found that "nativists...do not consider themselves as nativists. For them it is a negative term and they rather consider themselves as Patriots. Anti-immigration is a more neutral term for opponents of immigration."

Even in countries that were built by immigrants, such as the United States, anti-immigration has been common. It would surprise many to know that such an erstwhile and enlightened person such as Benjamin Franklin was hostile to Germans immigrating into his beloved state of Pennsylvania (named after an immigrant, by the way).

Countries such as Brazil, which in my experience is very racially tolerant and where the mixed blood population is significant, the rich and elite have always desired that the country be “more white.” Hence, there, as in Argentina and Uruguay, “white” immigration was encouraged but “other” races were discouraged from coming into those countries.

One can sense something similar happening in Europe as the media seems intent on showing us the “whitest” of the immigrants as people we should be compassionate with and the blacks as hooligans who riot and fight with the police.

This European Union, which in this matter as in so many others has shown it is far from being united, is ambivalent about what to do with this river of humanity flowing from east to west. One day we welcome the immigrants and shower them with gifts and kindness and the next we’re kicking them out (literally) like that Hungarian camerawoman who kicked and tripped a man carrying a child. One day we are citizens of the world and the next raving nativist.

We have to come to terms with the problem and accept that we are partly responsible for this diaspora. Europeans and Americans (in the sense of countries of the Americas) in our misguided efforts to impose our will on the Middle East and Africa, and in our greed for their natural resources and oil, in the hubris-fueled desire for empire and conquest, set up the situation from which wars and destruction emanate. 

We can’t go on lamenting that our economies “can’t take the burden”, as a commentator said in a television program. Even if the entire population of Syria were to come over, it would represent less than 5% of the population of the European Union.  This so-called European Union has to, for once, show some unity and come up with a solution not only by receiving the immigrants in several of the European Union countries, not just the UK, Germany, and France, but also by helping to end the cause of the immigration, that is, the wars in the Middle East and the despotism and terrorism in Africa, which we have exploited for our political and economic benefit.

The Migrant Crisis, a crisis "Made in Europe" and the US.

 

 

Background

In his book “Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly, and the Making of The Modern Middle East,” Scott Anderson, a veteran war correspondent for several news agencies and who has seen up close the conflicts in Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Northern Ireland, Bosnia, and several more, reminds us, if the title of the book has not done so already, that the recent conflicts in the Middle East are a consequence of the muddled politics, greed, and imperial desires of the United State and several European powers, France and the United Kingdom most prominent among them.

"Before most, "writes Anderson, "Lawrence seems to have accepted the modern concept of History as something malleable, that the truth is what people are willing to believe."

And, surely, with the avalanche of information we get from twenty-four hour news services, social media on the Internet, magazines, and newspapers, the malleability of History is sadly evident and the "truth" of events such as the so-called "Emigrant Crisis" is what the European and American public, lulled by decades of banal newscast and the silly rantings of "talking heads" like those of Fox News, that are more interested in muck raking for political purposes than talking about the political-economic motives that drove the United States and its European allies to invade Iraq (see documentaries such as "Breaking The Silence: Truth and Lies in The War on Terror" (2003)). (Note: Why is it (at least in France, it is) that these interesting documentaries are shown at midnight or later?).

The malleability of History is also disgracefully evident in the way that it is taught (or rather not even mentioned) in schools and how it is described in books that pretend to explain it to non-scholars and children. For example, during my research to gather material for a novel I was writing, I discovered the complicity (unknown to me, at least) and enthusiastic collaboration, not only of the French authorities but also of a sizable portion of the general public, in the persecution and deportation to concentration camps of French Jews, Communists, and anti-Nazis. But worse, I discovered that it is not only not taught in schools but that the public is deliberately misinformed, facts ignored, or taught in such a way that things such as the many concentration camps that existed in France soil before, during, and after World War II are portrayed as something the Germans forced on the French.

But, this "complicity of silence" is not particular to France. There is no country in the world that is not ashamed of some chapter or other of its history and tries to suppress it, ignore it, or simply deny its existence. Therefore, it is not strange that the people of this country, and particularly the people with whom I have frequent contact, ignore completely the historical reasons for the diaspora that we are now witnessing.

The writing of T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia, as he is popularly known) and of historians (most of them from western countries) tell us the that Middle East as we know it today was created, mostly, by the United Kingdom, or the British Empire if you will. It was that British Empire that carried out a war against another empire, the Ottoman one. For that reason, the British felt they were entitled to, as well as their staunch ally France, to redesign borders, create countries, and assign territory to others, as they saw fit. And, I might add, as it suited their economic and political purposes. It was these political and economic interest that guided the British and French to "invent" Irak, redesign Iran, designate Saudi Arabia as a Saudi kingdom, and to hand out spoils to sheiks and princes, creating a herd of small kingdoms poor in culture and world knowledge but rich in natural resources. Big enough to exploit but small enough to control.

In this "new" Middle East, the European powers repeated the same mistakes they made in the Balkans, or perhaps I should say, hey intentionally made in the Balkans. That is, to invent countries throwing together cultures, religions, and traditions highly antagonistic to each other, as they did, for example by creating Yugoslavia where Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians were set up for continuous strife. In Irak, these powers installed a repressive minority Sunni regime to control a Shiite majority. In Iran, they installed and protected for decades a repressive, corrupt regime run by the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi who was overthrow by a social-religious revolution only to be shunned by the same countries who had set him up in power.

Speaking of Palestine, Lawrence once said in 1917 that if the creation of a Jewish state was allowed it would have to be created by the force of arms and only by the force of arms would it continue to exist given that it would be surrounded by a huge and hostile majority. Nevertheless, the United States, with the complicity of its European allies, did exactly that and sold it to the US public and general world opinion via propaganda and Hollywood movies (Exodus, for example). This is not to say that the Jewish people should not have a homeland but that the Palestinians did not deserve to lose theirs.

In 1920, French troops defeated Arab forces in the Syrian Kingdom, king Faisal (who had been an ally during WWI, had to flee, and in the San Remo Conference, Syria was chopped up, into present Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine (which would be later chopped up to create Israel). Syria and Lebanon became French protectorates and Palestine a British one. This arbitrary chopping up by the Europeans led to decades of strife as the different countries and peoples sought independence. The Europeans answered with brutal repression. While at home and abroad the US and the Europeans raved about Democracy, Free Speech, etc. in the Middle East they practiced quite the opposite. This political and economic domination and exploitation lasted up to the end of World War II. After the War, it began to crumble.

All of this is to say that the European and American interventions in the Middle East were motivated by the need to control politically so they could exploit economically a region highly unstable but rich in resources. The place was a bomb. The fuse had been lit and it was just a question of time until it exploded.

The Explosion

In March of 2003, the United States and a "coalition" of its allies invaded Irak. For reasons that are still obscure and uncertain, Saddam Hussein, who had in the eighties been an ally, and who the United States had covertly armed and supported in its war with Iran, was designated, along with Al-Queda, as the co-conspirators in the 9/11 attacks. Worse than that, he was accused of having hundreds, if not thousands, of Weapons of Mass Destruction who he was (allegedly) waiting to use on the American and European public. None of the powerful intelligence services of the US and its European allies, nor UN inspectors, nor anyone else ever found before or after the invasion, any such WMDs. Colin Powell, who should be ashamed of himself, showed cartoons, drawings, and blurry pictures of truck to claim "mobile laboratories of deadly chemical agents." They were old trailer trucks. Nevertheless, George W. Bush was adamant in finishing what his father had refused to do, that is, invade Irak and topple the Saddam Hussein regime. They did, they found the old dictator in a hole in the ground, and had him hung. The result of this unbridled hubris was a disaster of world-wide proportions.

The Consequences

The destabilization brought to the region by the War soon changed the configuration of the Middle East forever. Immediately after the fall of Saddam, a civil war started in Irak between Sunnis and Shiites; Iran, given that its archenemy, Irak, was in turmoil, started interventions in several of its neighbors supporting Shiite militias and rebellions with the idea of reducing the power of Saudi Arabia, the great ally and provider of the United States; a rebellion started in Syria, the Arab Spring brought dictator allies of the West: Mubarak in Egypt, Ben Ali in Tunisia, Gaddafi, the newly refurbished French ally, in Algeria. Bahrain, Yemen, and other Emirates were also affected or infected by these regime changes.

The terrible wars in Syria, Afghanistan, and Irak, the civil wars in Algeria and Irak, and the unrest in the Emirates opened up a space for the deadliest of the turmoils manifestations, ISIS. The trickle of refugees that all of this caused was soon to become a river that threatens to develop into a human tsunami.

Other parts of the world

The wars in the Middle East affected more than just that region. North and Central Africa are also in crisis. All those countries that were a paradise for the oil and raw material companies, where the Western Powers installed repressive dictators friendly to global giant companies, are also in turmoil, suffering violent regime changes and/or terrorist attacks from Al-Queda affiliates like Boko Haram.

The chickens are coming home to roost

A commentator in an American TV program said that he hated liberal politicians saying that "the chickens have come home to roost" whenever there is a terrorist attack in a Western Country. On uses that saying to mean that all there is no action without consequences and that the decision taken today will have repercussions tomorrow. The imperialist ideas of centuries past, the collusion of western companies and dictators in African, Arab, and Latin American countries, the overthrow of legitimately elected governments that did not suit the interest of the Western Powers, the support of criminal governments like that of the Shah of Iran, Pinochet in Chile, and Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe have created conditions of war, crisis, and the hate we see demonstrated toward Western Countries.

Through cultural domination expressed in the Internet, the movie industry, and other media, we have sold the idea of "the American Way of Life", an endless source of wealth of Europe and its Union of countries, and that peace and security is much better here than "there", wherever "there" is. People "there" know that our economic paradise is, in a large part, due to the exploitation by our western companies of their countries. Is it any wonder that they might want a part of it?

This crisis is not going to go away soon. It is not an airplane crash that is forgotten a week later when a new "breaking news" item occupies the news channels. This crisis is here for the long run. An "expert" in massive migration cases said in an Al Jazeera interview that the majority of immigrants would go back home "as soon a conditions in their countries improved and were appropriate." I almost laughed. There are 25 million Mexicans and Latin Americans in the US. A great part of them ARE NOT migrants; they are the sons and daughters of migrants. They have been born or have grown up in the US and consider themselves Americans; they have no relation to or desire to return to Mexico. Does this gentleman, or anyone in Europe for that matter, think that once these African or Arab children grow up into adolescents or adults, once they get a job, go to school, become part of our European societies in France, the UK, Germany, Austria, Spain, etc., they will want to go back to Syria, Irak, Togo, Ethiopia, or wherever?

No, sir. We're in this for the long run. "The chickens have come home to roost." We are suffering the consequences of the actions of our past policies, our dependence on oil, our prejudices, ignorance, and misunderstandings of other cultures. And now we have to live with that.