I’ve been studying my historical atlas and I’ve come to the conclusion that America’s so-called “border problem” is mostly manufactured, politically-driven (both parties love it), "assholery." Because, in the long run, as my atlas maps demonstrate, migration is best understood as a phenomenon arising from overwhelmingly powerful human instincts (self-preservation, self-betterment). Can such “natural” herd displacements be successfully and definitively halted? Well, the maps offer little evidence that walls and razor-wire are effective, at least in the context of groups over time. Hard as our neo-Know Knothings try, they simply cannot “do” much of anything to stifle the primordial human impulse to migrate toward a greener pasture whenever such a pasture becomes available and for as long as its grass remains greener and more desirable than the left-behind turf. In short, self-interested migration is basically beyond the control of individual governments, except in very limited and unsustainable contexts (eventually, the walls will be breached, the rivers forded, the rules circumvented, the posses outrun).
Mass migrations do eventually end, of course. But they generally do so of their own accord, rather than in response to legislation or police action. They simply peter out when the destination country, hitherto considered golden, is no longer found particularly desirable—either because the home country environment has improved substantially or because the destination country has changed internally and grown appreciably less welcoming and “livable.”
Exceptions to these patterns do occur, of course—in cases such as involuntary displacements (slavery) and transitory impediments of the sort mentioned above—those desperate, stopgap attempts to legislate/regulate human movement with walls and incarcerations and deportations, etc. But none of this finger-in-the-dike stuff really works in the long term, does it?
No, the uncomfortable (for some) truth is that immigration cannot, in fact, be definitively halted except by something too extreme for most reasonable Americans even to contemplate: accepting or inaugurating “negative” changes to our society and economy that would make the United States itself considerably less desirable—for outsiders, but also for us native-born citizens. This is the repressive, white supremacist agenda of the right-wing: keep the immigrants out by making America a thoroughly brutal, hate-based state—a place no “outsiders” (and, indeed, few sane insiders) would want to live in.
What, for goodness' sake, is the point of such willful, self-inflicted loss (of attractiveness and decency)? What sense can be made of a fight for national “purity” if this battle can be “won” only if we choose to make our country unattractive and unlovable—by deliberately altering our constitutional framework and by deliberately compromising our economy—which depends upon a workforce augmented by immigrants? What justifies such self-destructive behavior? Tribal loyalty? Racial prejudice? Religious bigotry? All amount to little but unpardonable “excuses.”
Surely we urgently need to "snap out of" such puerile clan mentality and confront the REAL problem—which is--yes--the necessity to change--but in desirable, positive ways. In my view, the best we can, and should, do at this juncture is strive to make the inevitable (absorption/ integration of newcomers) more humane and less disruptive—both for immigrants and for the society they are determined to enter. Yes, they are likely to influence and change that society, at least in some measure. Is that scary? Yes, of course—all change shakes and jerks us about. Nevertheless, as the cliché has it, change is inevitable and it is also a motor for growth, provided it is understood and shaped by creative minds.
Let's get on with it, then! As I noted in consulting my migration maps--and this is an important point--the most successful of human societies throughout history have faced change without self-deception, adjusted to it, evolved and progressed in response to it and in alliance with it.
On the other hand, those societies that have recoiled into protectionism, nativism, xenophobia—all those defense strategies generated by atavistic fears-- have generally devolved into unhappy, repressive and fascistic states—North Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Guatemala, Colombia, Venezuela. Such places have no "immigration problem", of course, (lucky them??), because who, really, given an alternative, would choose to live in one of these miserable states?
No, these are the undesirable countries people leave (if they can)--remember Donald Trump's pungent adjective "shithole"-- in order to move to the United States—precisely because the United States remains (for the moment, at least) a relatively desirable place to live. Let’s do our best to keep it that way and not, by committing immigration assholery, transform ourselves into an undesirable shithole just to keep "those people" out. We must find ways to welcome the migrants rather than seek futile and shitty ways to exclude them. Immigration has always made America great! (Just consult ancestry.com.)
