We know what they say about the past: those who forget it are condemned to repeat it. Knowledge of the past, though, is useful for another purpose as well. It gives us a perspective on matters that have a historical record. This can both inform our current attitudes and acts and serve as a benchmark of our honesty as we become actors of history.
This opening came to my mind as I try to grapple with current Western attitudes toward immigration, which has become one of the hottest political issues in Western countries. Negative attitudes toward immigration are responsible for Brexit, and the rise of nationalist parties in France, Germany, Italy, and other European countries. The anti-immigrant message has brought to power far right parties in Hungary and Austria. The same message galvanized the successful campaign of Donald Trump in 2016 and keeps fueling his present comeback.
The anti-immigration message of politicians and parties has been embraced by significant numbers of constituents. This stand rests on claims that immigrants contribute to criminality and unemployment, no matter how badly these claims fail to meet the test of good-faith scrutiny. What, however, sounds more visceral are the cries of fear that immigrants are a threat to Western lifestyles and culture and worse to the purity of its blood and ethnic make-up. It is here that we need to summon the knowledge of the past and judge ourselves in the historical context.
In the fifteenth century, the Western European countries embarked on a sustained and expansive exploration and conquest of the world that changed it radically and irrevocably. The native civilizations of Central and South America were vanquished, their populations were decimated by disease and their demographic composition was altered by the infusion of slaves from Africa and whites from Europe. Eventually these vast regions emerged into the modern world as Christian, westernized, and White dominated countries. The same conquests and transformations took place in North America. They were soon followed by wholesale cultural, religious, and societal changes as well as colonial rule in Africa and Asia.
These radical transformations were accomplished by the force of guns, coercion, and economic subordination. Of course, at the time these acts were rationalized as being committed in the name of human progress. The pervasive and underlying conviction held by the conquerors was that the Western culture, religion, statecraft, and economic model would help pull the conquered people out of primitive and degrading lifestyles and beliefs into the modern world.
We now know that whatever the aims of those transformations were, they left behind half of the planet, the so-called Global South, in a state of under-development and political dysfunction. Many of these countries struggle with poor economies, political instability and corruption, crime, and a bleak future. For all these reasons, they are the sources of immigration toward Europe and America. These immigrants are so determined to avoid destitute and violence in their home countries they are willing to risk their lives as they cross the Mediterranean Sea on unsafe and overcrowded boats operated by cruel human smugglers. They are so desperate for a better life that they choose to cross the perilous and deadly jungle of the Darien Gap from Columbia to Panama on their way to America.
These foreign people come to our borders and shores not on gunboats, not aiming to conquer us, or dominate us in any way. Instead, they throw themselves at our mercy and that of our laws and make themselves available for any type of work no matter how onerous or demeaning it might be. It is ironic that whereas neither their intentions or situation pose a real threat to us, we present them as potential transgressors of crimes that our own ancestors did commit against their own.
I do understand that many of us feel untouched by the events of history and feel unwilling or unable to make them relatable to us. Immigration though is not a problem that will easily go away no matter how restrictive our laws become or how high our borders rise. The population projections are not in favor of the developed countries. All the population growth will be in Africa and countries like Pakistan, whereas that of Europe and China will be negative. The U.S. will escape a population shrinkage only because of new immigrants and the higher birth rate of its Latino population. This imbalance of population growth rates will create severe shortages of labor and young people in the developed world and a big population surplus in poor countries.
For the hundreds of millions added to the population of poor regions fast economic growth is the only way to keep them at home. But for economic growth to materialize considerable progress must be made in law and order as well as in political and social institutions. And this is not all. Climate change already forces people to migrate. Absent significant progress in containing climatic disasters and lifting people out of poverty these regions will continue to generate waves of immigrants. Therefore, we need to ask: “Do we have any strategies to better their conditions so they stay home? Are we willing to spend treasure and effort to this end? Can we humanize and rationalize our immigration attitudes, laws, and policies so we can develop win-win solutions? Shouldn’t our troubling past record against the rest of the world compel us to be compassionate toward the immigrants of the world? That’s the real debate we ought to have if we are honest about the immigration problem.
I will close this post with a story of how Westerners have affected other peoples’ lives. In the mid-sixties Great Brittain was preparing to end its colonial rule of Mauritius, an archipelago in the east coast of Africa. However, that being the period of the Cold War, the U.S. needed a naval base in the Indian Ocean. Then Great Britain exploited an international law which allows a country to lay claim on a territory empty of people. The British authorities chose to apply this law to a cluster of islands that formed the Chagos archipelago which was part of Mauritius. However, there was a problem. The islands were inhabited. This did not stop Great Britain to establish the British Indian Ocean Territory after expelling the local population. Thus, Great Britain could rule this dot of land as it pleased. That’s how the U.S. base of Diego Garcia was built. A recent article in the NYT (October 4, 2024) announced that following a decision by the World Court and a UN vote, the British government has finally decided to cede control of Chagos to Mauritius conditional on agreeing to a 99-year lease to the U.S. to operate Diego Garcia. (A detailed article on the plight of Chagossians and the British machinations was published in The Atlantic in its 2022 July/August issue.)
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