Political
Immigration
Articles/Op-eds/Essays
No Freedom to Move, Marina Warner.
“…It is clear … that the current politics of immigration have turned and twisted human nature against itself and our own kind and are fostering unimaginable maltreatment of those who wish only to survive and live a better life. As Warsan Shire, whose family left Somalia and then managed to relocate to Britain, writes in one of her most unforgettable poems, “no one leaves home unless/home is the mouth of a shark.” War, famine, religious and ethnic strife, and natural catastrophes will continue to drive thousands to leave, despite the extreme danger.
Forthright as they are, neither book addresses the question, “What would happen if the borders were opened?” But both strongly convey the urgency of fundamentally rethinking immigration policy, especially in the context of accelerating global warming. What if, instead of transferring millions of dollars and euros to unstable countries and dictatorships to keep out border crossers and sanctuary seekers, these vast resources were used to set up legal avenues for migrants, welcome centers, education and training, and to rethink the restrictions on their rights (to work, to move on, to marry)? Before World War II, from 1922 to 1938, there were Nansen passports for undocumented refugees (not entirely satisfactory, as Hannah Arendt reported, but far better than current attitudes to statelessness).
The apparatus of enforcement crushes its targets; even when asylum seekers finally succeed (and many thousands do because they have legal grounds for their claim), they have been damaged physically by the horrors of their treatment, and exhausted psychologically. It is also worth considering the damage to the enforcers, not because I want to defend them but because state support for their actions does harm to the entire social body. Frantz Fanon, when working as a psychiatric doctor in Algeria, found himself treating the survivors of torture and their torturers; both were haunted, hobbled, incapacitated by what they had been through, what they had done.
It is already late to act, but that is a poor reason for inaction. Many fine minds are exploring the possibilities of changing direction: Lyndsey Stonebridge in Placeless People: Writing, Rights, and Refugees (2018), Mary Jacobus in On Belonging and Not Belonging (2022), David Herd in Writing Against Expulsion in the Post-War World: Making Space for the Human (2023), John Washington in his new book, The Case for Open Borders. “As we deny, cast out, and crack down, we have turned our thresholds into barricades,” Washington writes. “We lose our own home by denying it to others.”
Are open borders so unthinkable? When German chancellor Angela Merkel accepted a million Syrians in 2015–2016, and more recently when even the United Kingdom established a sponsorship scheme for Ukrainian refugees, as had happened for Jews fleeing the Nazi regime before and during World War II, they demonstrated that a different course can be adopted. The prime minister and members of recent and current Conservative governments of the UK are the children of immigrants, not all of whom were wealthy or particularly educated (and therefore would not qualify for admission to the country today). It is one of the bitterest ironies of the present political uses of xenophobia in Britain that children of Black and brown immigrants, whose right to enter inspired generations like mine to march in protest against exclusionary government policies, are now eagerly consolidating “the hostile environment,” blocking legal routes of immigration, and stoking the frenzy against “small boats.”
Economists Love Immigration. Why Do So Many Americans Hate It?
“In “Immigration and Democracy” (Oxford), Sarah Song, a professor of law and political science at Berkeley, offers an alternative to this depressing dialectic.... she arrives at a middle road: “What is required is not closed borders or open borders but controlled borders and open doors.”... What Song ends up constructing is an ethical basis for an immigration system that, with some reforms, America could plausibly achieve.”
Help Resettle Afghans,” Peace News.
The remarkable generosity of activists around the world has enabled 40 young Afghans, some with families, to find safe refuge in countries including Portugal, Germany, Brazil, Canada, and the Netherlands. (read more)
The ‘Third Rail of American Politics’ Is Still Electrifying, Thomas B. Edsall.
“Americans, she points out, 'are more open to immigration than either the left or the right assumes. But as soon as the issue is framed around race, it can become more polarized... A coming paper ... reveals an additional hurdle facing pro-immigration Democrats. The authors conducted a survey in which they explicitly provided information rebutting negative stereotypes of immigrants’ impact on crime, tax burdens and employment. They found that respondents in many cases shifted their views of immigrants from more negative to more positive assessments. But ... the effects of the stereotype-challenging information 'on beliefs about immigration are more durable than the effects on immigration policy preferences, which themselves decay rapidly.'“ (read more)
The Unnecessary Cruelty of America’s Immigration System, Lauren Markham.
Immigration judges and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers get to decide these [asylum] cases without having to offer much in the way of specifics; each year, they confine tens of thousands of people without so much as a parking ticket to their names, or any proof that they would vanish into the country if released... There are many alternatives to detention we could be using that have proved successful around the world, and even here at home. We can protect human rights and human life, lower the costs for taxpayers and ensure that people show up to their immigration proceedings." (read more)
How America Got to ‘Zero Tolerance’ on Immigration: The Inside Story, Jason Zengerle
The Revival of Church Sanctuary, Rafil Kroll-Zaidi.
How a long-abandoned practice became a way for undocumented immigrants to seek protection.
Scorn and the American Story, David Brooks. (Behind NY Times Paywall).