Immigrants and Anti-Immigrants

All of Europe is frightened by the arrival of 20,000 Tunisians and Libyans to Italy, and anti-immigrant activists from Sicily to Finland predict that if we do not put an end to the free movement of individuals, Europe will be invaded by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Africans. In the United States, it seems that a similar sense of hostility to migrants is growing, as shown by the support for laws in states such as Arizona or Georgia, as well as by legal and illegal activities by armed militia groups along the Mexican border. The new laws, partially suspended by a judge, make illegal immigration a crime at the state level and oblige the police to prosecute it.

It has been some time since a left-wing French Prime Minister — really left-wing — said that “France cannot take in all the world’s misery,” and since the Iron Lady, the patently right-wing Margaret Thatcher, invoked the fear of being “swamped by an alien culture,” alien being a word that, thanks to the movies, all Spanish speakers know.

In short, we are all “aliens.” Since men and women have existed, emerging from their African cradle over 100 million years ago, they have not stopped moving, simply because to live is to move. In our fast-paced era, after the invention of trains and steamships, movement has accelerated and spread, but essentially there is nothing new under the sun, including our hostility towards migrants.

Indeed, in the developed countries, in the U.S. as well as Europe, there is an ecological movement which has been carrying on a crusade against migrants for quite some time — but against another type of migrant, animals and plants. These people do not belong to Sarah Palin’s tea party, the Minutemen or the Texas Rangers, but their ideology is not very different. They do not want anything to change, and they believe that the universe should not move. These defenders of the environment are conservationists, which makes them radically conservative. They dream of insurmountable barriers, expulsion and extermination, forgetting that nature, be it European, American, African or Asian, has always evolved with the influence of successive waves of migrants: plants, insects and animals that swim, fly, crawl or float on the winds and currents. This is the story of the conquest of Mexico and America, not only by Cortes, Almagro and Pizarro, but also by sheep, horses, pigs, wheat and domesticated bees. There were no bees in the New World, and today I do not believe anyone complains about their generous and indispensable activities. Similarly, the New World sent many unknown species to the Old World and today not even the fiercest enemy of immigration from France’s National Front or Italy’s Lombardy League could imagine their countries without the potato or tomato.

But fear of the “alien” may lead to bad decisions and dreams of eradication. In the U.S. and Mexico a few years ago, there was a call for a crusade against the eucalyptus, a humble tree of Australian origin, suddenly blamed for all the world’s sins. On the campus of UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico), there was a program to cut down all of the eucalyptus trees. Today a new theory has emerged which advocates restoring this tree, which is said to be one of the few sources of nectar for bees in winter, as well as a vital tree for monarch butterflies during their migration.

The monarch butterfly is ours! Beautiful symbol of long migrations, it knows no borders, is permanently illegal, and even if it does not get wet when it crosses the Rio Grande, is no different from the “criminal” Mexican and Latin American “wetback.” It should be a symbol for all the migrants of the world, legal as well as illegal.

All efforts by ecologists to “restore” the ecosystem to a supposed original state have failed, are failing, and will fail. All efforts by rich countries to impede the arrival of legal and illegal immigrants, rich and poor, have failed, are failing, and will fail. The U.S. and Europe over the last 160 years have periodically closed their borders, persecuted and deported immigrants, and given birth to racist “nativist” movements against aliens. But today’s alien is tomorrow’s citizen, and today he does the work that no one else wants to do.

Some say that Latino immigrants take jobs away from U.S. citizens. Last year the main union for agricultural workers in the U.S. posted job offers. Three million people visited their website, takeourjobs.com. Only 8,600 people showed any interest in this type of work, and a grand total of seven — only seven — actually went out to work in the fields. Ninety percent of those who work the harvest are undocumented Latinos.