“Emigration offers some of the things the frustrated hope to find when they join a mass movement, namely, change and a chance for a new beginning.”
Eric Hoffer
THE TRUE BELIEVER
Is there total chaos at America’s southern border? That depends on who reports the news. But no doubt, the global diaspora is a serious problem, for everyone. Millions are being displaced worldwide due to a mathematical impasse: each of us must occupy some space, which is in shrinking short supply. Why else would so many, in so many different places, be leaving home, with nowhere to go? We number eight billions, all needing food, shelter, and dignity. We expect two billions more in the next thirty years. Earth’s overcrowding is exacerbated by politics (often inflamed by ethnic rivalries) and climate change. Whether or not people can constructively mitigate the crisis, obviously the matter will not resolve itself, without horrible consequences. And no one is safe.
Over the years, American governments have haphazardly tried two superficial solutions to the ongoing border conundrum. We help asylum seekers with food, shelter, and ultimately, jobs. Or, we try blocking them at the border. Both options have serious flaws. The first, of course, encourages more refugees to come here. Even America’s ample resources are finite. And why should we provide a safety valve for the world’s oligarchs? The second solution, carried to its logical conclusion, would require violence on a stupendous scale, turning America into one of those countries that people try to leave.
People emigrate, not for fun, but because they feel life where they live has become hopeless. They do not just go anywhere. Most migrants strive to get into democratic capitalist North America or Western Europe. Authoritarian capitalist countries like Russia and China are apparently not attractive destinations to huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Despite our problems, we seem to have something that people everywhere value so highly, they are willing to leave home if they cannot get it there.
What vital essence makes the Western world so attractive? For one, we honor (in law, and sometimes in practice) everyone’s rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. People everywhere are apparently drawn to these ideals. Power-hungry rulers will deny these rights to their underlings, while demanding them in gluttonous amounts for themselves. These rights are manifest for most people by an available living, the right to criticize leaders without fearing nighttime kidnappings from the Thought Police, and a generally stable life. While we tend to take them for granted, these rights are threatened even in our land of the free, land of plenty. Still, for whatever reasons, “they keep coming,” so we must do something about it.
If we give refugees help, support, and an opportunity to live in dignity, American society will benefit, as it has with previous immigrants. Immigration is usually a win-win, except for Americans whose ancestors migrated here twenty-thousand years ago, and those whose ancestors were abducted and brought here in chains to work for no pay. But regardless of their ethnic heritage, most Americans are loyal to their country, and given the opportunity, willing to work toward making it a better place. And being human, they tend to look down on those who come here later. But overall, America has benefited from immigration in many ways beyond exotic dining options.
America can absorb the current refugees, but clearly, we cannot take in the seven-plus billions beyond our borders, even with help from Western Europe. If dignity is so highly valued by everyone, what prevents our helping others to acquire it? Worldwide, people are struggling to attain dignity, which authoritarians deny them, forcing people to flee. Of course, many tyrants are glad to send their potential troublemakers elsewhere. Refugees strain the resources of democracies, in the short term, and generate fear and prejudice among people who already live there. Humans by nature welcome guests, but only for short stays. Xenophobia is fertile ground for potential dictators, because “strong” rulers love to blame foreigners for their countries’ problems, and can convince the impressionable that, regarding troublesome foreigners, they can get things done.
But what would a “strong” American government do? Separating families at the border has not kept out immigrants, any more than walls did. Would killing people as they cross the line deter them any more effectively? Some Americans no doubt feel it is worth the try. It would eliminate the immediate refuge seekers. However, like all “final solutions,” this one will adversely effect American citizens, starting with those who dare to protest mass killings, eventually including everyone who displeases the rulers. Autocrats only work from one playbook, and no matter who they come for first, sooner or later they will come for you. Giving up America’s positive qualities might dissuade millions from trying to get here, but if the United States becomes a dictatorship, where can we go? Can Americans preserve and strengthen what makes our country so attractive to desperate foreigners? Could we export these essentials to those foreigners, allowing them to remain comfortably at home?
Most Americans have fortunately learned, after years of trying, that we cannot export the “Blessings of Liberty” by war. Since people want what we have, can we find ways to peacefully send our way of life abroad? Continuing to take in all refugees is unsustainable, and mass killings at the border would ruin our democratic society. Can our mighty, productive, innovative nation find ways to export our proclaimed reverence for human dignity? I believe the answer lies in how we practice democratic capitalism. Democracy and capitalism are mutually hostile. Capitalism is by nature autocratic, while democracy requires respectful protection of everybody’s needs, rights, and aspirations. Capitalism rewards personal greed; democracy builds on mutual responsibility to defend and strengthen the dignity of all. Both inherent traits will probably always exist, always in conflict with each other.
Though our country has maintained a moderately workable compromise between democracy and capitalism, America has been overly friendly to capitalism lately, to the detriment of democracy, within and beyond our borders. Here we retain the infrastructure of political democracy, but without economic and social democracy, political exercises are hollow. Nations export what surpluses they produce. As we support and nourish absolute capitalism, we prop up foreign plutocracies. Our client dictators grow wealthy and powerful, stifle democracy, and let their dissidents flee to our lands. If we strengthen economic and social democracy here so we can honestly promote it abroad, plutocrats will be weakened, their dissidents will be encouraged, and people will at least have the chance of sharing resources to build comfortable lives at home.
Plutocrats benefit from overpopulation, because large families tend to make Mom and Pop desperate enough to keep their noses to the grindstone, with less energy to protest working conditions. Urbanization eventually reduces the size of families, stabilizing populations, but the population explosion could be more effectively curtailed by allowing women to choose when or whether to have babies, and how many. Children who are born because they are wanted have at least access to dignified lives. By supporting real democracy worldwide, we will allow women to make choices about childbirth. Yet in America, democracy is threatened by a powerful movement that seeks to deny half our population reproductive freedom of choice, even though voters continue to reject that movement’s initiatives. If humanity will not democratically reduce the world’s population, the job will be done by weather, war, disease, pollution, and poverty. What will be our choice?