I’ve always loved Saint Patrick’s Day. For me, it’s not just about the wearin’ o’ the green and consuming mass quantities of alcohol. I’ve attended Irish cultural events for most of my life due to Irish heritage on my mother’s side. The atmosphere, music and history lessons have always appealed to me. As my political views evolved, I also began to see the day as a celebration of immigration and anti-imperialism. Admittedly, such high-minded notions are often drowned in streams of Guinness and neglected by tipsy revelers.
The Great Famine (1845-1852) reduced Ireland’s population by about 25 percent due to starvation and emigration. The biological cause of the famine was potato blight, but the roles of British government policy and wealthy (often absentee) landlords cannot be ignored. Driven from their country by hunger, colonialism and a degrading feudal economic system, many Irish boarded shoddy craft which came to be known as “coffin ships.” Mortality was high on the ships due to disease and poor conditions. Survivors entering US ports were not greeted with open arms by the predominantly Anglo-Saxon Protestant population. But one inconvenience these immigrants did not have to contend with was a slew of federal immigration laws.
Since passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), the US government has responded to nativist hysteria (directed primarily at non-Europeans) by creating a bloated immigration apparatus. Throughout US history, Mexicans have been welcomed for their labor or reviled, depending on which way political winds were blowing. But Mexicans did not encounter a regular contingent of US border patrol agents until 1924. So, Mexican people have not always hired “coyotes” as guides or risked dying in the desert in order to come north.
Today, Mexicans are the preferred scapegoats of modern Know-Nothings. Among the most prominent scolds of “illegals” is swaggering Arizona lawman Joe Arpaio. Sheriff Arpaio, a shameless publicity whore and J. Edgar Hoover-wannabe, never forfeits an opportunity to screw with Mexicans.
But there is an ironic twist to the Arpaio story. One could be excused for picturing Sheriff Joe as the retrograde spawn of Woodrow Wilson and John Wayne. But, as his surname suggests, Arpaio was born to Italian immigrants. In A Renegade History of The United States (2010), Thaddeus Russell points out that Italians were often viewed as inferior by Anglo-Saxons. Russell cites a 1919 study by Harvard economics professor Robert F. Foerster which states, “In many things, the Italian has the mind of a child.” Foerster also complains that the Italian’s “universal vice was his dirtiness; he was dirtier than the Negro” (p.185). By viewing newer immigrants with similar disdain, Arpaio and his supporters ensure that history repeats itself.
Arpaio may be extreme, but many Americans share aspects of his paranoia. Think of people who grow visibly agitated around those who do not speak English. Or those who blather on about immigrants taking “our” jobs. Most ridiculous are the Pat Buchanan types who liken Mexican immigration to an invasion of the US. Now that is a classic example of projection!
People who demand immigration restrictions in the name of security or protectionism are, to put it bluntly, dupes. Securing the border is not about repelling an invasion or empowering US workers. Instead, these policies empower the two greatest predators in our society: The state and the corporations it creates. As Aviva Chomsky writes:
When U.S. citizens rail about “illegals” or ask “what part of ‘illegal’ don’t you understand?” they are subscribing to a set of beliefs that justify cruel and inhumane treatment. What they themselves fail to understand is that “illegality” is not a scientific fact, but a social construction. If a society creates a legal structure that deems some of its members unworthy or “illegal,” then illegality comes to be naturalized as an attribute of those who have been accorded that status.
Advocates of freedom and human rights should reject this cynical game and support open borders for people, not just product. This Saint Patrick’s Day, please take a moment to remember those who have suffered due to inhumane immigration laws, imperialism and corporatism. Then, raise your pint and offer your fellow immigrants a festive slainte or a hearty salud, dinero y amor!
There are literally billions of people who are poorer than the vast majority of Americans. Do you think there's room for all of them? If tension arises from not enough room, do you think that the immigrants will be passive victims or aggressive factions striving for power?
Sigh.
As I’ve pointed out before, to no great effect, such times and places as nineteenth century Ireland didn’t have a degrading feudal economic system. In Ireland, there was a degrading post-feudal economic system, still with vestiges of the Penal Laws. Not only were those laws post-feudal themselves, they also deliberately incorporated adaptations and distortions of older Celtic clan structures like the splitting of inherited parcels of land – and the nineteenth century stuff was even less feudal.
Now, if you had made similar remarks about Scotland at that period, say covering the last of the Highland Clearances, there would have been some (but only some) justice to them – but not for Ireland. The Desmonds and the Boyles were not what they once were, and the other feudal magnates had been subsumed even more within the Ascendancy generally, so nothing particularly feudal was going on any more.
… which sort of raises the question on why so many people, specifically those from Latin American nation-states are so desperate to enter the United States. If one is really dead set on preventing the "mass influx" of Latino immigrants, then the only real way would be for the political and social conditions of the nations of origin to change. Even a cursory glace at US interventionism in the region of the past century would be revealing.
In any case, excellent post Dave
Hidden Author:
Thank you for visiting C4SS.
No, I'm sure there is not room for "billions of people" to flock to the US but that is not what is happening. By using an inflated number it looks like you are appealing to fear. So let's talk statistics.
According to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) statistics from 2011, you'll find that a little over a million immigrants became legal permanent residents that year. That number has been pretty steady over the last few years. The immigrants are from many different countries, but over one-quarter of those permanent residents were from Mexico, China and India.
Of course that doesn't tell the whole story, since their are many undocumented people in the country. In January 2011, DHS estimated there were about 11.5 million unauthorized immigrants residing in the US. About Fifty-nine percent of those were immigrants from Mexico. Obviously not all of these folks stay permanently, so those numbers will really fluctuate.
Why is it that Mexicans are a little less "cooperative" than others? Maybe it has to do with desperation. Or poverty (becoming a legal resident and citizen can be pricy). Or maybe Mexicans know that immigration is more complicated for them than it ever was for Europeans and they are calling bullshit. Don't be fooled by that nonsense about everyone just "playing by the rules." It is a joke.
In summary, I don't think we'll see the kind of "tension" you describe anytime soon. The tension that does exist is generally promoted by the government in an attempt to make you feel like it is protecting you from criminals and terrorists. Employers also use the immigration situation to make workers feel insecure and to make undocumented workers compliant and fearful of deportation. And then there are the entitled white nationalists, but I don't really care about them enough to comment.
Adam Cicco:
Thanks Adam!
When you mention US interventionism I think you're on to something.
I quoted Aviva Chomsky in the article and I think she has some interesting things to say about the motivation for people from Latin America to come to the US. In her informative little book "They Take Our Jobs," Chomsky states, "The colonial relationship invariably drains resources from the colony to the metropolis. Colonial subjects see their homeland deteriorate and the colonial power expand its wealth and power. The lure is inescapable."
So I think this is a plausible explanation, as people see the US growing richer in the globalized world than their home countries. I mean, who really benefited from NAFTA? I don't think it was Mexican farmers.
My guess is that people think the US sucks a bit less than their home country so they take the risk to come here. I know that isn't a glowing review of the US, but most of the immigrants I know don't explain their decision to come here with "shining city on a hill" rhetoric. Now if the US would stop encouraging policies (like drug prohibition) that make our neighbors to the south suck more, maybe people would feel more comfortable at home.
Hidden Author: There are literally billions of people who are poorer than the vast majority of Americans. Do you think there's room for all of them?
If you're going to claim that the decision to move is being motivated strictly by economic calculations, then of course the answer is that "room" for people to live in is not a fixed quantity (you can't find out the answer to your question by dividing the spatial volume of the United States by the number of people who could be physically packed into it). It's a good which is subject to adjustable expectations and which is produced and sold on the market. If a lot of people all want some room to live in a given place, then either (a) they can all get it at the going rates (supply is already abundant), or (b) they can all get it because their demand will encourage increased production of places to live (demand will be met through entrepreneurship), or (c) some can get it but not all because the increased demand leads to increased housing costs (demand drops to meet available supply), or, I guess, (d) some can get it but not all because some use coercive means to lock others out., or (e) everybody scrambles for it and use coercive means to fight over who gets there first, or who gets to stay.
You seem to be fixated on option (d) or option (e) as the only available options. I'm not sure why, although I guess that it's probably connected to your decision to look at a question like, "Who might opt to move to the U.S. if they were somehow transported magically for free without any consideration of housing, work opportunities or transport costs? Then, once they were magically transported, where would they go to?" rather than actually looking at this as an economic question subject to ordinary economic considerations like the law of demand. Now there are of course many obstacles besides borders to the functioning of peaceful market dynamics in land and housing right now, but as anarchists we would destroy those obstacles as readily as we would destroy borders. And even with those obstacles in place, people make do as best they can. If constraints on housing markets remained in place but "literally billions of people" were all looking to move to places in the US at roughly the same time, then what would immediately happen is that housing markets would become extremely tight, until there were no longer billions of people who considered it a feasible plan anymore.
My recent post Anarchist Communications: Ask an Anarchist! comes to Oklahoma
No problem Dave.
And yeah, that's exactly what I was driving at, more or less. Sleep deprivation prevented further elaboration on my part, heh.
There is a net positive effect of the immigration of people from Mexico. Besides the fact they pay their mortgages more certainly than any other ethnic group, and pay into the social security system without receiving any funds from it.
Among the many benefits they bring is the revitalization of local community in the form of the small grocery store. These neighborhood corner stores have sold beer and donuts and candy for 40 years but they start selling fruits and vegetables as soon as a member of the hispanic community buys it and turns it back into the neighborhood grocery it used to be.
But more to the point, I like to ask: "Are there really any illegal people?"
Isn't the very idea of there being illegal people, counter to the state of being human?
Isn't this the ultimate bureaucratic failure, like Adolph Eichmann's mistake of "just doing his job", when in fact the right thing is to act in solidarity with all people rather than align oneself along the razor edge of the state and the structural violence necessary to believe ones 'whiteness' trumps an 'illegal aliens' equal right to be here?
Excellent point: "Advocates of freedom and human rights should reject this cynical game and support open borders for people, not just product."
Great article!
Hey badweatherr,
Thanks for your comments.
I have also noticed the trend of Latino immigrants improving neighborhood corner stores. My wife and I visit a couple of those stores here in my area. She is originally from Mexico and is particularly fond of the sweet bread made in one of our local shops. One really has the sense that they want to add to the neighborhood, not just make a quick buck.
I also agree with you that no one is illegal just for being born across an invisible line. Once we banish this and other superstitions from our mind, we will be well on our way to creating a better society.
I checked out your blog. There was some good stuff on there! Glad to see someone from my neck of the woods is checking out C4SS.
1) NAFTA caused corn prices to collapse, putting a lot of Central American farmers out on their asses. It was great Monsanto and Syngenta in the U.S.; Washington was subsidizing production and using unsustainable monocrop agriculture (just like the Irish Potato Famine), which in the *short-term* outproduces more sustainable methods.
2) Instead of decrying your fellow wage laborer for "taking your job," why not align against the capitalists that ensure scarcity of employment through the banking system? There's always work to be done — just not the finance capital to do it. The scarcity of money boosts the rate of return on credit.
3) State Welfare (placation): The reason that immigration is seen as problematic (ignoring whether immigrants are net contributors for now) is because of the welfare state. They are seen as parasites — but if you get rid of the inept, bureaucratic and bloated welfare agencies and replace them with cooperatives and mutual aid societies, the problem dissolves because those truly in need are vetted and part of the local community.
The Irish "coffin ships" are a fascinating topic, mostly (like much Irish-US history) sad bad news.
But do check out ALL STANDING, Kathryn Miles' history of the "Jenny Johnson" immigrant ship.
Katie Miles was my daughter Megan's Metamora High School classmate as well as her maid of honor on July 15, 2000.
As Irish-American history goes, it's much more encouraging than the tale of the San Patricios.