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Why Some Fear “Replacement”

photograph of cracked brick wall with several different colors of peeling paint

On Saturday, May 14th, yet another mass shooting occurred in the United States. Ten people were killed, and three more injured. This was not a random act of violence. The shooter drove about three hours to reach a grocery store in Buffalo, NY rather than a location closer to his home in Conklin, NY. He claims he chose this area as it had the highest percentage Black population of potential target locations. Why target a Black neighborhood? The shooter apparently believes white Americans are being “replaced” by other racial and ethnic groups.

The once fringe idea of “replacement” has become mainstream.

This is the conspiracy theory that some group is working to ensure the decline of the white population in the U.S. and Western Europe, in order to “replace” them with people of other races and ethnicities. Originally presented as an anti-Semitic conspiracy, “replacement” has entered into American politics in a different form; some Republican politicians and media pundits claim that Democrats want increased immigration for the purpose of “replacing” white, conservative-leaning voters with those more likely to vote blue.

It is very easy to dismiss the idea of “replacement.” Indeed, much recent reporting immediately labels it racist without much explanation (never mind that the account is factually mistaken). But given the trend of claiming that left-leaning individuals call any idea they do not like “racist,” it’s worth spelling out exactly why fearing “replacement” relies on racist assumptions.

First, it is worth noting that “replacement” for political gain would be a poor plan. Immigrants are not a monolith. For instance, Donald Trump actually gained support among Hispanic voters between 2016 and 2020. In general, the relationship between demography and political outcomes is not so clean cut. Further, the plan would take a long time to develop – you must be a legal resident for five years before qualifying for citizenship, not including time it takes to apply for and receive a green card, provided one even qualifies. Of course, this may dovetail with other conspiracies.

Second, there is something antidemocratic about feeling threatened by “replacement.” It is impossible for an electorate to remain static. Between each election, some children reach voting age, some voters die, events happen which change our views and which motivate us to get out the vote or simply stay home. Just as Heraclitus suggested we can never step in the same river twice, we can never have the same election twice. Provided that elections are fair, open, and secure, objecting to a changing electorate because you perceive that your favored political goals will be threatened is to deny the starting premise of democracy – that every citizen’s political preference counts equally.

To fear changing demographics out of concern for the impact on elections is to value your preferred outcomes over the equality of your fellow citizens.

So perhaps some find the idea of “replacement” frightening because they fear its impacts on culture. They might view it as a kind of cultural genocide; the decreasing portion of the white population threatens to destroy white, American culture and replace it with something else.

In 1753, Benjamin Franklin expressed anxieties about German immigration into the colonies. He claimed that, although some Germans are virtuous, the majority of the new immigrants were the “most ignorant or stupid sort of their nation.” He bemoaned that they do not bother to learn English, instead creating German language newspapers and street signs in both English and German. He feared that, unless German immigration was limited, “they will soon so outnumber us, that … [we will not] be able to preserve our language, and even our Government will become precarious.”

In 2022, Americans eat bratwurst and frankfurters with sauerkraut. We send our children to Kindergarten. The most popular American beers originated from Adolph Coors, Adolphus Busch and Frederick Miller. Franklin’s concerns about German immigration echo those we hear today about immigrants from different places. But Germans did not replace Americans or topple the government.

Instead, these immigrants altered our culture. Like our electorates, our culture is never static. It is constantly changing, in response to global events and in response to new knowledge and traditions that immigrants bring. As our culture changes, who we label as outsiders changes; two hundred years ago, it was non-Anglos and non-Protestants.

If Franklin was wrong to fear German influence on American culture, it’s hard to see any relevant difference with fearing the effects of contemporary immigration.

Some fear “replacement” for a different reason, claiming that changing demographics will result in new majorities exacting revenge. The idea being that, after white citizens become a political minority, the new political majority will engage in retributive measures for past injustices.

This view of the dangers of “replacement” indicates that a majority can use our political institutions in ways that unjustly harm minorities. In fact, it seems to even acknowledge that this has occurred. So, why leave that system intact? The far better response would be to reform or maybe even replace current systems that allow a majority to perpetuate injustices against a minority.

And we now see clearly why fear of “replacement” stems from racism. Being afraid of changing demographics requires denying that all citizens of a nation deserve an equal say in how it is run. It means conceiving of a particular culture as superior to another. And, ultimately, it involves thinking our institutions ought to be designed in ways that allow a majority to commit injustices against a minority. In these ways, the person who fears “replacement” endorses a hierarchical worldview where some deserve to count for more, are superior to, and deserve power over, others. It is only through this lens that a change in racial and ethnic demographics can be worrisome.

But given all this, why would anyone find the idea of “replacement” a compelling one? Finding an answer to this question is crucial if we are to counteract it. The U.S. is still very segregated. This is due to the interaction of numerous historical, political, and economic factors, at both the local and national levels. I grew up in a suburb of Buffalo, called Hamburg. According to 2021 data, the population of Hamburg is 96.1% white. 2021 census estimates that 95.7% of the population of Conklin is white. These figures are remarkable given that the U.S. as a whole is 57.6% white.

To live in a place like Hamburg or Conklin is to live in a white world. You can complete an entire day in town – a trip to the grocery store, a doctor’s appointment and a deposit at the bank – and only encounter white people.

It is no wonder why some may feel threatened by the idea of “replacement”; a world where people of color are increasingly visible is not their world. They have little exposure to a world that is not (nearly) entirely white, thus the prospect of it triggers the fear of the unknown. Hence why “replacement” is frightening – it threatens to “destroy” their world.

So, responding to terrorist acts like those in Buffalo requires a lot more than athletes telling us to choose love or teaching President Biden about “Buffalove.” It requires significant institutional change. To truly eliminate the grip that ideas like “replacement” have on some, we must work to counteract the injustices that leave many of us living in separate worlds. Given the increasing frequency of racially-motivated terrorist acts in the U.S., this task is only becoming more pressing.

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On Climate Refugees and Captain America

image of faded Captain America shield

WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for all six episodes of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier on Disney+.

After the release of Avengers: Infinity War, the 2018 entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that ended with the villainous Thanos snapping his fingers to magically erase half of all life in the universe, the internet lit up to debate the (im)morality of his actions. According to the movie, the character’s motivations were, arguably, altruistic (because after seeing his own planet succumb to resource depletion and overpopulation, the “Mad Titan” reportedly wanted to prevent similar sufferings elsewhere). In this way, Thanos joined Black Panther’s Eric Killmonger, Spider-Man: Homecoming’s Adrian “The Vulture” Toomes, and Captain America: Civil War’s Baron Zemo in the ranks of “MCU Bad Guys who might be making some Good Points.” Of course, however defensible or understandable their philosophies might be, the murderous brutality exhibited by each antagonist has consistently kept the MCU’s moral dichotomy more-or-less clear; just as superhero comics have been called “moral pornography” for their oversimplified and exaggerated depictions of good and evil, superhero movies are rarely different.

Although it isn’t, strictly speaking, a movie, the latest MCU story — The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, a limited-series on the Disney+ streaming service — follows basically this same vein, featuring an enemy whose message is far more sympathetic than her methods. In brief, the six-episode miniseries focuses on Avengers characters Sam “Falcon” Wilson and Bucky “Winter Soldier” Barnes as they work to smooth out the geopolitical chaos provoked by their team’s defeat of Thanos in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame. Although the Avengers were able to undo Thanos’ Snap and bring the people killed in Infinity War back to life, it took them five years to do so and, in the meantime, the world soldiered on. During the period between movies (now referred to in-universe as the “Blip”), humanity had done its best to rally together in the anarchy that followed half the globe’s sudden disappearance; the equally sudden return of all those missing people a half-decade later, although joyful in many ways, once again upset the fragile balances built during the Blip. As the series opens, the international Global Repatriation Council has taken charge of the situation and is in the process of essentially “resetting” Earth back to the way it was before the Snap; against this, Karli Morgenthau leads a team of insurgents called the Flag Smashers in an attempt to salvage the more unified way of life they had created in the Blip.

A key thread in the series is the upcoming GRC vote to deport refugees displaced by Thanos’ Snap back to wherever they lived before the Blip. From the perspective of the Council, this would solve many problems: as one character insists in a later episode, imagine a situation where someone was killed by the Snap, returns to life five years later, and discovers that someone else has moved into their house in the interim — who is the house’s rightful owner? In order to simplify these kinds of murky questions, the series sees the GRC poised to forcibly displace thousands of people, many of whom had managed to forge better lives for themselves after the Snap. As Sam explains at one point: “For five years, people have been welcomed into countries that had kept them out using barbed wire. There were houses and jobs. Folks were happy to have people around to help them rebuild. It wasn’t just one community coming together, it was the entire world coming together.” In short, although Karli and the Flag Smashers are initially described as just wanting a “world that’s unified without borders,” their actual goals are more focused on the often-ignored needs of the world’s refugees — particularly those who would be demonstrably harmed by simply “going back to the way things were” before the Blip.

Granted, the Flag Smashers are also revealed to have acquired Captain-America-esque strength and stamina (after double-crossing a Madripoorian crime boss) and they use their newfound superpowers to kill more than a few GRC agents in their crusade to stop the vote — no matter how sympathetic the cause, comic book logic (not to mention corporate incentives and, at times, outright propaganda) demands that Karli and her friends ultimately play a “Bad Guy” role for the MCU (even as one of their own is savagely executed in broad daylight by John Walker, an enraged American agent). Still, the show ends with Sam — as the new Captain America — chastising the rescued GRC leadership for effectively ignoring the refugees, giving at least some credence to the (at that point, mostly dead) Flag Smashers and their message.

Indeed, it’s hard not to sympathize with a group of people who, through no fault of their own (and as an explicit consequence of others’ recklessness) are displaced from their homes and forced into poverty. In a similar way, real-world philosopher Rebecca Buxton has argued that we should attend more carefully to the needs of real-world refugees forced to flee their homes as a result of climate change. Although rising global temperatures make for much less exciting action sequences than a purple-skinned alien fighting the Hulk, their threat is significant and their result is roughly the same: recent years have seen as many as 20 million people become climate refugees for one reason or another. Buxton points out, though, that these displaced citizens are predominantly not from those nations most responsible for the carbon emissions and other pollutants contributing to climate change; for example, the nation of Tuvalu was projected to become the first carbon-neutral state, but is now facing submersion as sea levels rise. Consequently, although debates about climate refugees tend to focus on compensation for certain, specific harms, Buxton instead contends that refugees are owed reparations (which can only be paid by those who actually bear responsibility for the damages). Although this burden of proof is more difficult to satisfy, Buxton argues convincingly that it is possible, at least in principle, to identify specifically who owes who what before leaving it to policymakers to work out the applications for specific cases.

So, if you enjoyed The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and found yourself agreeing with the new Captain America that Karli and her friends should not simply be written off as “terrorists,” it might be prudent to consider some of the real-world counterparts of the refugees that the Flag Smashers were trying to help.

(It might also be wise to consider how Buxton’s defense of reparations might relate to the story of Isaiah Bradley and the other ways that the miniseries engages with race and racism in America, though I’ll leave that topic for a different article.)

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Let Hongkongers In

photograph of peaceful protest in Sheung Shui district arms raised

In 1997, Hong Kong, a former British colony, was returned to Chinese possession under the guidelines set forth in the Sino-British Joint Declaration. The Declaration established rules whereby Hong Kong — which would eventually become part of China once more — would retain their legal and administrative systems distinct from those in mainland China known as ‘one country, two systems’ for the next 50 years (from the signing of the treaty).

The one country, two system policy came to a premature and unfortunate end, however, with the recent passage of a new security law in the Chinese legislature that curtails political and civil freedoms — banning secession, subverting state power, terrorism, foreign intervention, and allowing mainland China’s security agencies to operate in the city — the case continues to grow stronger for letting Hongkongers migrate to the United States. This policy would be an economic boon for the United States, help the people of Hong Kong, and stick it to mainland China. Much as we would have a moral obligation to save a small child drowning in a shallow pond — given that we could intervene with little or no risk to ourselves — we have an obligation to offer Hong Kong a hand, contrary to what naysayers may claim. Allow me to make the case.

Many believe there are compelling reasons to favor low levels of immigration because, say, higher immigration would harm workers. But the reverse is true: economists estimate that if rich nations, like the United States and Canada, opened their borders to peaceful, law-abiding immigrants, the world would be trillions of dollars richer. The economic gains of open borders would be so substantial that many costs of such a policy would be minor compared to the gains, as economist Bryan Caplan cleverly argues in his graphic non-fiction book, Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration. Allowing immigrants, even those from poor nations with lackluster institutions, to emigrate to rich nations with robust institutions would magnify their productivity, and benefit host nations — e.g., just as the same worker would be more productive with a computer than a mere typewriter.

Many critics object that open borders will result in immigrants taking jobs from natives, or that they lack similar political values that would undercut essential institutions like democracy or the market, or even that they would bankrupt social welfare programs. But every objection, unconvincing as it is under ordinary conditions given the vast wealth liberalizing immigration would create, is even more underwhelming when applied to immigration from Hong Kong. We should review these objections to increased immigration generally, and with respect to Hongkongers specifically.

Many critics of relaxed immigration worry it harms workers, especially low-skilled workers — by, in part, increasing the supply of cheap labor. However, the empirical evidence shows that this isn’t true: according to recent U.S. Census Bureau (2011) data, most Americans aren’t low-skilled — many are at least high school graduates — and greater levels of immigration hurt low-skilled workers, but only slightly in the short term, and benefit everyone else. (Most Americans are customers of new immigrants, not competitors). Other critics worry immigrants will take advantage of social welfare programs, thereby straining their limited resources. As it happens though, the evidence doesn’t bear this out either: good evidence of widespread abuse is lacking, and even on the most pessimistic figures, higher immigration would cost American families but a few dollars a month in taxes to fund the welfare state. This number leaves off the sizeable economic gains from liberalized immigration we discussed earlier.

Finally, with respect to immigrants from Hong Kong, some may worry letting Hongkongers in would undercut our political institutions — they may, for instance, hold values that are antithetical to the liberalism undergirding our society. However, based on the available evidence, Hongkongers tend to be pro-democracy. And this trend has been increasing in recent years — presumably in part because of greater pressure Beijing has exerted over the region. In addition, many Hongkongers speak English, and they tend to be well-educated with a high college graduation rate. And finally, their legal system is based on English common law, and local laws codified in the Laws of Hong Kong — both the United States and Hong Kong have similar legal systems as former British colonies. Together, these factors cast doubt on the claim that Hong Kong immigration would be a bad idea, and instead put the onus on critics to explain why letting Hongkongers in would be sufficiently bad to justify keeping them out.

The conflict between the Chinese government and free nations isn’t merely about trade policy or shipping routes in the South China Sea. It includes how other nations, as onlookers, are influenced by China and the US in crafting their internal policies, supporting international law, and securing civil liberties – things like peaceful assembly, freedom of religion, and the right to criticize the government. We often take these things for granted, but events in Hong Kong are a stark reminder that we shouldn’t. Freedom isn’t free, but we can lend it a helping hand, by responding to China’s aggression with a positive-sum approach that would benefit both Hongkongers and the US.

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ICE Ruling and Universities’ Autonomy

photograph of Princeton University's campus

Educational groups across the country are releasing statements that denounce the ICE policy requiring international students to leave the US if their classes are fully online. These statements focus on the cruelty of it, the complexity and lack of clarity, and even the economic devastation.

Harvard and MIT are suing to block the rule claiming that it violates the Administrative Procedures Act which requires administrative agencies like ICE to offer a reasonable basis justifying the policy and give public notice to provide opportunity to comment on it.

But beyond these complaints there is another deeply pernicious aspect to this ruling. ICE’s policy represents a significant encroachment on universities’ autonomy to determine how best to educate their students. The federal government has made two false assumptions about education that no college likely accepts:

  1. Education at colleges only happens in the classroom
  2. When courses happen online, the students can be anywhere in the world and still get an education that is as effective.

Both of these are false. There is all sorts of learning that happens on a college campus outside of class time that might still happen face-to-face even when instruction takes place online. For example, professors might meet one-on-one outdoors with students and they might even prioritize meeting with international students who could face cultural or linguistic barriers. I, for instance, tend to hold extra office hours for students who might need extra assistance or guidance with respect to their coursework, and my international students are often the students who take me up on that.

Even if a student takes their classes online, there will likely be a wide-range of face-to-face activities that provide opportunity to meet an institution’s educational goals. Co-curricular activities could happen in socially-distanced settings. Students might be organized into smaller bubbles that could meet face-to-face for the purposes of study or group projects. Students might also join student clubs and organizations where genuine learning happens in safe, manageable settings.

Another part of the educational experience that ICE ignores is the value of studying in another country/cultural setting. Most liberal arts colleges boast on how big their study abroad programs are. Last year, DePauw ranked 4th among four-year baccalaureate institutions for affording its students the opportunity to study abroad. Why is this boastworthy? Because it is widely agreed that there is significant educational value in academic experiences in other environments (and that this value goes beyond what you learn in the classroom). That’s what international students come here for. A 21st-century liberal arts education basically requires that students learn about other countries and cultures, and international students see significant value in learning more about America and participating in that culture. Even without face-to-face instruction, students can still realize many of their educational goals by residing in America when they take their classes online.

The ICE decision is an affront to the autonomy and rights of educational institutions to determine what their learning goals are and what the best methods are at their disposal to deliver on their promise to help students achieve them. We should be appalled by the cruelty and harm of this ruling for international students. We should also be appalled at this assault on the freedom of institutions of higher education. ICE has no business deciding what constitutes genuine learning. That is a decision that should be left up to the institutions of learning.

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Race, Authorship, and ‘American Dirt’: Who Owns Migration Narratives?

photograph of border wall stretching into the distance

This article has a set of discussion questions tailored for classroom use. Click here to download them. To see a full list of articles with discussion questions and other resources, visit our “Educational Resources” page.

Fiction allows both readers and writers to inhabit perspectives wildly different from their own, which is perhaps one of its greatest attractions. However, this sense of fluidity has limitations, which are constantly being redrawn and contested within the literary community. For example, it’s hotly debated whether it’s possible, or even valuable, for a white author to inhabit the perspective of a person of color, or for an American to authentically reproduce the perspective of a Mexican migrant. What agendas do such appropriated narratives serve, and what do they tell us about what it means to be an author?

These questions can be explored through Jeanine Cummins’s novel American Dirt, and more broadly, through the storm of controversy surrounding the novel. American Dirt, published in January 2020 by Flatiron Books, tells the story of Lydia, a middle-class bookseller who flees Mexico with her young son after being targeted by the drug cartel that murdered her husband. Jeanine Cummins, the half-Irish half-Puerto Rican author, researched the novel for seven years, taking frequent trips to Mexico and conducting interviews with undocumented migrants to give her story a veneer of authenticity.

Almost immediately after the book was released, it inspired outrage in both professional critics and general readers alike. The most galvanizing of these reactions was Myriam Gurba’s review of the novel, in which she accuses Cummins of

“1. Appropriating genius works by people of color

2. Slapping a coat of mayonesa on them to make palatable […] and

3. Repackaging them for mass racially ‘colorblind’ consumption.”

Like many critics, Gurba takes issue with American Dirt’s reliance on racist cliches, labeling it thinly-veiled trauma porn geared at middle-class white readers rather than an authentic depiction of displacement and oppression. Many also took issue with the claim on the jacket of the book that Cummins’s husband immigrated to America illegally, a vague statement that purposefully lends more authority to her writing. However, the jacket fails to mention that her husband is a white man who immigrated to the States from Ireland, not Mexico.

Outraged with the commercial success the novel, 124 writers signed a letter urging Oprah Winfrey to remove American Dirt from her book club list. In the letter, the writers explain that,

“Many of us are also fiction writers, and we believe in the right to write outside of our own experiences: writing fiction is essentially impossible to do without imagining people who are not ourselves. However, when writing about experiences that are not our own, especially when writing about the experiences of marginalized people, still more especially when these lived experiences are heavily politicized, oppressed, threatened, and disbelieved—when this is the case, the writer’s duty to imagine well, responsibly, and with complexity becomes even more critical.”

Cummins writes in the novel’s defensive afterword that “the conversation [surrounding immigration] always seemed to turn around policy issues, to the absolute exclusion of moral or humanitarian concerns,” and that she only “wished someone slightly browner than me would write it.” Her stated aim is to encourage readers to sympathize with migrants through Lydia, a character whose “respectable” middle-class values will remind them of their own. Some of the books defenders have cited that approach as a necessary evil. On an episode of NPR’s “Latino USA” podcast, Sandra Cisneros, one of the novel’s few vocal advocates, argued that American Dirt is

“going to be [for an audience] who maybe is undecided about issues at the border. It’s going to be [for] someone who wants to be entertained, and the story is going to enter like a Trojan horse and change minds. And it’s going to change the minds that, perhaps, I can’t change.”

In other words, Cisneros is arguing that white authors can reach audiences that non-white authors won’t have access to, and that it’s a worthwhile task to move these audiences emotionally, even if harmful tropes are employed to do so.

Bob Miller, the president of Flatiron Books, issued a statement to address the controversy surrounding Cummins’s novel. He claims that Flatiron

“made serious mistakes in the way we rolled out this book. We should never have claimed that it was a novel that defined the migrant experience; we should not have said that Jeanine’s husband was an undocumented immigrant while not specifying that he was from Ireland […] We can now see how insensitive those and other decisions were, and we regret them.”

Miller acknowledges the validity of Cummins’s critics and the myopia of the publishing industry, stating that,

“the fact that we were surprised [by the controversy] is indicative of a problem, which is that in positioning this novel, we failed to acknowledge our own limits. The discussion around this book has exposed deep inadequacies in how we at Flatiron Books address issues of representation, both in the books we publish and in the teams that work on them.”

At the same time, he laments that “a work of fiction that was well-intentioned has led to such vitriolic rancor. While there are valid criticisms around our promotion of this book that is no excuse for the fact that in some cases there have been threats of physical violence [against Cummins].” In lieu of the planned book tour, the author will attend a series of “townhall meetings, where [Cummins] will be joined by some of the groups who have raised objections to the book.” Miller claims that this alternative “provides an opportunity to come together and unearth difficult truths to help us move forward as a community.”

The controversy surrounding American Dirt ties into a perennial debate on the relationship between identity and writing. In an article on the ethics of authorship for The New Yorker, Louis Menand explores two competing models of how identity impacts authorship. In the late 20th-century, the “hybrid” author was championed by white literary theorists. In that model, the author is a nebulous being with no fixed racial or gender identity, as such things were considered extraneous to the meaning of the text. The author can and should inhabit any role, regardless of who they are. But because of our growing consciousness of racial and gender politics, according to Menand,

“hybridity is out; intersectionality is in. People are imagined as the sum of their race, gender, sexuality, ableness, and other identities. Individuals not only bear the entire history of these identities; they ‘own’ them. A person who is not defined by them cannot tell the world what it is like to be a person who is. If you were not born it, you should not perform it.”

Menand’s description of intersectional authorship (and “intersectional” may not be the most accurate word to describe this model) feels almost petulant. Those who criticize insensitive portrayals of race or gender are cast by Menand as greedy gatekeepers, and those who are forced to write in such a climate are fettered by their identity. In actuality, the hybrid model allows harmful stereotypes to be reproduced by even well-meaning authors under the guise of imaginative fluidity. Furthermore, the intersectional model does not exclude the hybrid one as completely as Menand assumes, as authors can both inhabit different perspectives and remain sensitive to issues of race.

This point is evident in the critical reaction to American Dirt. Parul Sehgal, reviewing American Dirt for the New York Times, writes,

“I’m of the persuasion that fiction necessarily, even rather beautifully, requires imagining an ‘other’ of some kind. As the novelist Hari Kunzru has argued, imagining ourselves into other lives and other subjectives is an act of ethical urgency. The caveat is to do this work of representation responsibly, and well. […] Cummins has put in the research, as she describes in her afterword […] Still, the book feels conspicuously like the work of an outsider.”

The issue that Sehgal, and many other critics, have with the novel is not that Cummins made an attempt at inhabiting another perspective, but that the attempt was made without sensitivity to the political implications of the act. The letter addressed to Oprah further speaks to this criticism; the coalition of writers explicitly acknowledge that fiction is a place to explore identity, but explain that Cummins’s novel fails to give her subject the weight it deserves as a political issue. As Sehgal says,

“[American Dirt] is determinedly apolitical. The deep roots of these forced migrations are never interrogated; the American reader can read without fear of uncomfortable self-reproach. It asks only for us to accept that ‘these people are people,’ while giving us the saintly to root for and the barbarous to deplore—and then congratulating us for caring.”

In other words, such subject matter will always be political, and it is Cummins’s inability to acknowledge that which ultimately dooms her novel.

The publishing industry’s whiteness, as Miller acknowledges, plays a large role in what kind of stories considered worth telling, and writers should be allowed to take on different perspectives to broaden the horizons of the literary world. Writers are even morally obligated to acknowledge issues like immigration, to foster the growth of sympathy and connection between disparate groups. As British literary critic Frank Kermode said, “fictions are for finding things out, and they change as the needs of sense-making change. Myths are agents of stability, fiction the agents of change.” But ultimately, we cannot pretend that an American author appropriating the experience of an undocumented migrant is somehow not fraught with political meaning, just because it’s happening in the pages of a book.

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No Country for Indigenous Men?

close-up photograph of Australia on globe

What does it take to be a natural citizen of a country? Does a person only have to be born within the borders; do they need only to have some sort of ancestral connection to it; or is there some other criterion that a person must satisfy? The High Court of Australia is poised to decide the answer to these questions as far as it pertains to Australian citizenship. The relevant cases both involve people who were born outside of the country to an Aboriginal parent, and who relocated to Australia as children. However as neither man ever obtained Australian citizenship, and are in the country on visas, Australian immigration authorities want to subject them to deportation. Both men have been convicted of crimes for which Australian law allows the government to revoke immigration visas. Those defending the two men, Daniel Love and Brendon Thoms, argue that it is absurd to claim that any Aboriginal person could count as an immigrant who needs a visa in the first place.

The defense of the Aboriginal men depends on the idea that they have some sort of automatic—or nearly automatic—citizenship or at least resident status. (For brevity, we’ll just use ‘citizenship’ to refer to both statuses.) Automatic citizenship is often referred to as birthright citizenship. To have birthright citizenship is to count as a citizen of a country simply by being born. But there are two ways to think of when someone has such a birthright. The first is jus soli (literally, “law of the soil”), which confers citizenship on any person born within the territorial borders of a country. This is the idea of birthright citizenship at issue in immigration debates in the United States, and which President Donald Trump infamously said that he could revoke. However given that neither Love nor Thoms were born in Australia, this can’t be the sense of birthright citizenship at issue.

The second conception of birthright citizenship is jus sanguinis (literally, “law of blood”), which confers citizenship on any person born to one or more parents who were themselves citizens. Jus sanguinis is not commonly referred to as birthright citizenship, but it is helpful and appropriate to think of it as such because it is a mechanism of conferring citizenship status to someone automatically at birth. Moreover this is the mechanism by which it is possible to claim that Love and Thoms have birthright citizenship. Both of them have one parent who is an Australian Aboriginal.

However, Australian law no longer has any birthright citizenship mechanisms. Australian law does not contain a simple jus soli provision anymore, as of the 1986 Australian Citizenship Amendment Act. Children automatically receive citizenship when born within Australian territorial borders only if born to at least one parent who themselves had Australian citizenship or resident status at the time of the child’s birth. Neither does Australian law provide for automatic citizenship by a jus sanguinis mechanism. Instead it is allowed for the parents of a child born outside of Australian borders to apply for the child’s citizenship, provided that the parents are themselves Australian citizens at the time of the child’s birth. Neither Love nor Thoms, nor their respective parents, ever applied for citizenship.

In lieu of a mechanism of birthright citizenship, Love’s and Thom’s representatives are appealing to the idea that as Aboriginal people the two men have a significant connection to the Australian land that confers on them some sort of significant legal standing. This defense invokes an alternative to birthright citizenship called jus nexi (literally, “law of linkage”), which confers citizenship on any person who has an immediate stake in the laws and operations of a country. Jus nexi does not function automatically but confers citizenship on the basis on the contingent fact of a person’s being a “stakeholder” in a country. In the case of Love and Thoms it is specifically their Aboriginal heritage that is taken to make them stakeholders. (This makes the issue a bit confusing, but in general jus nexi is not an automatic mechanism: it does not confer citizenship on the basis of being born to certain parents, or in a certain place.)

Immigration is an increasingly complex problem for governments as refugees and those seeking new opportunities move from one country to another. The social tension and financial pressure that attends such migration has drawn anti-migration reactions not only from people, but from the governments themselves. (The permanent furor over immigration in the United States attests to that.) The invention of jus nexi is one way in which theorists have tried to update the conceptions of the mechanics of citizenship in response to increased migration, and to avoid travesties like the one Australia’s government aims to perpetrate.

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Pia Klemp and The Ethics of Migrant Taxiing

photograph of seawatch3

Pia Klemp made waves over the summer for rejecting the Grand Vermeil Medal. Paris had intended to award the German boat captain for her bravery, having rescued thousands of migrants in the Mediterranean, but Klemp refused to accept the award stating that, “We do not need authorities deciding about who is a ‘hero’ and who is ‘illegal’.” (Klemp is currently awaiting trial in Italy and could face up to 20 years in prison for aiding the illegal immigration of African migrants across the Mediterranean to Italy.)

The case of Pia Klemp is the culmination of several geopolitical factors. The European migrant crisis began in 2015 when refugees fleeing political instability and violence in the Middle East and Northern African countries began arriving on European soil. In particular, many migrants hailing from sub-Saharan Africa have recently undertaken journeys to the coast of Libya in an attempt to board a raft and cross the Mediterranean in search of safety and the promise of a better life in Europe.

Over the past few years, Pia Klemp has allegedly aided over 6,000 migrants in their crossing of the turbulent Mediterranean Sea by locating their ill-equipped and overcrowded rafts off the coast of Libya, helping them aboard one of the various search-and-rescue ships she has captained, and taxiing them to the shores of southern Italy.

Klemp and her supporters contend that the migrants are legitimate asylum-seekers who are willing to risk their lives in attempting to cross the Mediterranean on what are often inflatable pontoon boats. Some migrants have been quoted as saying that they would rather die than go back. Klemp argues that the migrants have compelling reasons to flee their home countries, but that they are being forced to come to Europe via the Mediterranean because European countries have closed their borders and there is no other legal way of getting there.

Another relevant concern stems from the principle of non-refoulement, a cornerstone of international law that states that no one should be returned to a country where they face persecution or danger. The Libyan Coastguard is currently under orders to return migrant-carrying vessels to Libya for processing. Recent investigations have shown that in some cases, the Libyan Coastguard has brought rescued migrants back to the Tripoli Detention Center where they experienced a lack of food and water, and beatings by armed guards with pipes and ropes. It was also reported that while some people were released to their country of origin, others were sold to a captor who tortured them and attempted to extract ransom from their families.

Klemp claims that the Italian government is wrongfully putting on a “show trial” and that “the worst has already come to pass […] Sea rescue missions have been criminalized.” However, there is another side to the story. Detractors of Klemp’s actions argue that engaging in migrant taxiing is wrong for two main reasons.

First, migrant taxiing does nothing to solve the root cause of the problem – political instability in sub-Saharan African countries. In fact, it may even contribute to increased rates of flight from these countries. Additionally, increased emigration could, in turn, lead to harsher penalties imposed on citizens who are caught attempting to leave their home nation.

Second, detractors of Klemp argue that although her actions may be driven by altruism, they have resulted in dire consequences in reality. The United Nations Refugee Agency estimates that the death rate of refugees attempting to cross the Mediterranean has risen sharply from 0.3% in 2015 to 1.95% in 2018. Some contend that this rising death rate is a byproduct of the increased presence of rescue vessels, such as Klemp’s Iuventa, present in the Mediterranean. The argument operates on the assumption that the greater the number of rescue vessels present (or believed to be present), the greater the chance migrants believe they have of being rescued at sea, and therefore, the greater the number of migrants willing to risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean. It also may be true that the presence of NGO rescue boats can encourage migrants to board vessels that are incapable of crossing the Mediterranean on their own and if they are not spotted, will be doomed to drown.

Evidently, several ethical concerns loom large in the case of Pia Klemp and migrant taxiing. Klemp and her supporters are firmly rooted in their belief that they have a moral obligation to rescue migrants at sea, while critics contend that migrant taxiing fails to address the root cause of the problem and may be a contributing factor in the higher rates of deaths of migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean.

While Klemp’s heart may be in the right place, her actions in taxiing refugees across the Mediterranean could actually have adverse consequences of increasing the number of migrants and their deaths at sea. Perhaps a better, albeit more challenging, long-term solution would be to redirect and increase aid to the troubled regions of Africa from which refugees are fleeing. Such an approach would address the root cause of the problem by aiming to stabilize their political systems and reduce the number of desperate migrants seeking to make the dangerous voyage across the Mediterranean.

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Racism, Refugees, and the Ripple Effect

photograph of barbed wire fence with camp in the distance

Trump has been embroiled in discussions about walking back or defending his latest racist behavior this past week. After saying that four congresswomen should “go back” to their countries of origin and presiding over chants of “send her back!” at a campaign rally, he tweeted Sunday that the congresswomen were “not capable of loving our Country.” 

As part of his “go back” rhetoric, Trump articulated his view that if the congresswomen didn’t like living in the US, they should leave and attempt to improve conditions in their supposedly broken countries. (Multiple late-night hosts noted the irony involved in Trump’s statements, as the congresswomen’s country is the US, which at the moment can feel broken and in need of fixing, and which, as members of congress, seems to be what these women are attempting to do.)

At the same time as he encouraged some Americans to leave, Trump rolled out new policy making it more difficult for others to leave their own dangerous countries. His administration has implemented a policy that requires refugees who have traveled through another country to have applied for asylum in that country as well. The ACLU quickly announced their intention to challenge the policy in court, and the administration instructed the southern border agents to implement it as quickly as possible before it may be blocked.

The so-called third-country asylum rule is incredibly restrictive, especially against asylum seekers at the US’s southern border. Such restrictive policies towards people seeking safety brings obvious ethical questions to the fore. There is, perhaps, a tension between a purported sovereign right to autonomy for nations to determine who will reside or travel within their borders and the rights of humans to be free from violence and persecution. These human rights can be seen to ground the right to freedom of movement between nation-states. Though international law recognizes that immigration and citizenship policies are, and should be, left up to each state, the UN has exceptions for refugees, whose basic human rights are in dire need of protection and overrule states’ right to make such policies.

Importantly, the freedom to make immigration and citizenship policies does not mean that all such policies are created equal, from a moral point of view. From a moral perspective, immigration policies that are transparent and ensure migrants have access to basic human goods are preferable to an opaque and unpredictable set of policies that makes navigating the systems that provide basic goods difficult, though both are legally acceptable.

But, beyond the legal space to determine immigration and citizenship policies is the commitment to accept refugees. This commitment is based in the idea that humans should not be condemned to suffer, when there is a place they could live without being persecuted. Many nations, including the US, have agreed to policies that commit them to accepting asylum-seekers: countries cannot force migrants who have entered their territory to return to places where their safety is under threat. This is the “non-refoulement” principle from the United Nations 1951 Convention of Refugees, and even countries that are not participants in the convention have endorsed the spirit of the principle.

Trump’s policy builds off of a crucial exception to this principle, which concerns migrants who have come through a country considered to be “safe.” Countries are deemed “safe” according to the Immigration and Nationality Act, which governs asylum law, pursuant to a bilateral or multilateral agreement. Currently the US only has such an agreement with Canada. Trump attempted to sign such an accord with Guatemala, but the president cancelled the trip to sign the third country agreement in order to see what Guatemalan courts ruled regarding the treaty.

In the US, asylum rates have been declining over the past six years, and this trend is on track to continue. Six years ago the denial rate was just 42.0 percent, but last fiscal year saw 70 percent of applications denied. In 2018, a particularly high spike in denials was the result of a policy shift made by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions banned asylum requests on the basis of domestic violence and gang violence, though this ban was later struck down in the courts. The new third-country policy would “effectively end” asylum on the southern border.

The decline in granting asylum and other relief to refugees does not just affect the groups at our border, however. This trend in US policy has been reflected in the policies of other large and wealthy nations. For instance, the EU currently attempts to prevent asylum-seekers from reaching their shores – supporting border agents in countries like Libya that catch migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea and detain them in Africa in deplorable conditions in detention centers.

This is leading to worldwide declines in aid to those seeking relief: “It’s called a ripple effect,” says Jeff Crisp, a research associate at the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford University. “When the largest and wealthiest nations get away with breaking international human-rights laws, then other countries wonder, why can’t we?”

India, a country with a long history of hosting asylum-seekers, currently has 40,000 refugees from Myanmar, and now is treating them as illegal migrants. It has begun sending Rohingya refugees back to Myanmar, the site of a 2017 genocide sponsored by the current government.

Similarly, Trinidad and Tobago sent 80 Venezuelans back to their devastated homeland last year, while Peru returned 40 Venezuelans for “allegedly being part of criminal gangs or for not having legal papers.”

Refugee policies are just one part of a racist and exclusionary nationalist landscape. The rhetoric that the US has engaged in bolsters other countries with similar constituencies. Hungary has explicitly praised the US’ nationalist tendencies and cited the “America First” anti-immigration policies as providing them with the support they need to enact similar attitudes within their own country. (Hungary closed its borders during the height of the Syrian refugee crisis and has rejected humanitarian pleas to take part in the effort.)

The import of human rights is being subjugated in national dialectic to the sovereign rights of a nation-state that endorses a racist identity. That isn’t the priority of international law or humane moral systems.

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Crisis in Sweden: A Struggle with Mass Migration

Photograph of buildings in Stockholm, Sweden

In 2015, the year of the Syrian refugee crisis, Sweden accepted over 160,000 refugees, more refugees per capita than any other European nation. The sparsely-populated country prides itself on its generosity towards newcomers, and Sweden’s foreign minister even declared the country to be a “humanitarian superpower.” Years later, Sweden continues to be one of two European nations (the other being Germany) to have opened its borders to such a drastic extent, having accepted approximately three out of every four asylum seekers in 2015. Continue reading “Crisis in Sweden: A Struggle with Mass Migration”

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Some Normative Perspectives on Borders and Asylum Seekers

In recent weeks, President Trump’s administration has shocked both Americans and the international community by separating families of migrants and asylum seekers at the southern border. Two-thirds of Americans objected to these practices, many noting the likeness of forced separations and internment camps to the Third Reich. On June 20th, Trump reversed the policy with an executive order. The administration was subsequently mandated by federal judge Dana Sabraw to reunite families it separated within 30 days. However, reunification efforts will be a complex process.

The detainment and separation of young children from their families struck a chord. Many people recognized egregious moral violations in this practice. Among the protests and national outcry, a movement to abolish ICE has gained traction with support from such public figures as Samantha Bee and recent Senate candidate Chelsea Manning. Manning’s platform went so far as to propose an open border policy. While her Senate bid failed, Manning’s proposal is not so radical as it may appear. Philosophers like Michael Sandel are leading public debates on open borders.

The most common justification for selective borders come from political realism and arguments for state sovereignty. As political realism is less concerned with ethics than political theory, I will focus on other more recent normative — or how one should act — justifications for national borders (and the national interests they presumably protect).

The first normative perspective is communitarianism. Communitarian philosophy arose in critique of liberalism’s abstract individualism. Communitarians emphasize the role of particular societies in which individuals live. They argue, with some plausibility, the Hegelian insight that communities accord individuals meaning, identity, relationships and spheres of action. This philosophical perspective has a political cousin in local patriotism, grassroots movements, community organizing, and can also provide justifications for multicultural theory and policy. Collectivities, including nations, can shape and guarantee spheres of freedom for its inhabitants.

At the same time, there exist debased versions of communitarian discourses which communitarian philosophers would not endorse. The most notorious example of such was the Nazi ”Volksgemeinschaft” or ideal of a unified German national community united by race. Part of Trump’s base appears to have adopted a Nazi-lite version of Völkisch theory, articulated by alt-right spokesperson Richard Spencer’s ”white nationalism”. Trump’s well-documented racialization and criminalization of “illegal aliens” resonated strongly Spencer’s white nationalist following.

Charles Mills argued that, in fact, much of modern Western political philosophy is built on a contract for the creation and maintenance of whiteness. He identified in writers such as Kant evidence of a “racial contract”, designed to shape notions of citizenship and statehood exclusively for white access and in defense of white interests, while constructing the domain of the non-white (slaves, First Nations, and other colonized groups). Here in particular we can note the shaky foundations of colonial states’ claims to border sovereignty.

A second explicitly ethical tradition that can be used in defense of selective borders is utilitarianism: promoting the greatest happiness for the greatest number. A utilitarian could argue that a privileged nation should welcome as many refugees or asylum seekers as could be sustained with the quality of life maintained by the privileged state. Or, alternatively, a utilitarian could argue that the previous suffering or risk of the refugee is so extreme as to be necessarily improved by taking up residence in the new country. In either case, there would generally be an upper limit for the amount of happiness that the utilitarian is able to distribute in a welfare state.

An illustration of the challenge of limited resources appears in the ”Lifeboat Ethics” of ecologist Garrett Hardin. Hardin provides a simplified but cogent model of resource-conscious moral reasoning. Picture a lifeboat with capacity for sixty persons. A nautical disaster has occurred, leaving fifty people on board. One hundred more hapless souls struggle nearby to stay afloat on the ocean’s surface. Should (some of) these hapless souls be taken aboard? If so, why and under what conditions? How do we decide? Do the ones in the boat have a prior claim to the ones outside of the boat? Hardin’s example is illustrates a particular “hard choice” version of ethics in a world that is becoming an ecological catastrophe– not everyone can be saved. This approach was questioned in a later work by Diane Brzozowski (2003) which illustrated with real case studies that, on some occasions at least, it is possible to save many or all concerned.

Thus far, these defenses might arguably be used to limit immigration to some extent. But are they sufficient to limit havens for refugees and asylum seekers? What about when “Lifeboat Ethics” becomes more than a metaphor, and people’s lives or fundamental freedoms are at stake?

From some major ethical traditions, turning away people who face harm or risk in their home countries are never defensible. In the wake of World War II, the principle of non-refoulement (international law against the repatriation of refugees and asylum seekers) was established (though not strictly observed by Western states). Non-refoulement derives from the UN Declaration on human rights, enjoining state parties to commit to the dignity of individual lives and fundamental freedoms. ”Human rights’ discourses are examples of pure deontological ethics, i.e. universalizable laws that cannot be chipped away by expedience. Another example of an entitlements theory (though one more based in measurement of human welfare rather than in a legal notion of “right”) is the capabilities approach. Initially formulated by Amartya Sen, the capabilities approach was adapted by Martha Nussbaum specifically in response to limitations of Rawlsian liberal theory which limited states’ responsibilities within their own borders.

Other ethical perspectives which mandate taking responsibility for refugees and asylum seekers are humanitarian grounds. These include the cosmopolitan approach, named from an early Stoic conception of human beings as ”citizens of the world” rather than of individual states. Arguably, thinkers like Peter Singer (who discounts geopolitical difference as a ethically relevant factor in deciding whom to help) represent contemporary cosmopolitan ethics. Cosmopolitanism dictates that our obligations to others in need are not restricted to narrow local circles of concern. Another ethical tradition that is likely to include needy others outside one’s borders is “care ethics”. Carol Gilligan, the founder of care ethics, observed that that women exhibit a unique approach to responsibilities for others and selves in a relational model, an alternative to both deontological and consequentialist ethics narrowly conceived.

One of the most parsimonious ethical theories lies in one simple principle: the harm limitation. While best known under John Stuart Mill’s articulation that one’s range of freedoms is limited by ensuring a like freedoms for others, it also appears in thinkers such as Pufendorf. A more stringent version of the harm principle is seen in the “negative duty” argument taken up by some ethical philosophers. We have an obligation not to harm others by our actions or our negligence. Thus, for example, Thomas Pogge would argue that we have a negative duty to not cause global poverty by our participation in an unjust international economic order. Taken in this broad perspective, there can be many circumstances in which Western countries are directly or indirectly responsible for the harms that refugees and asylum seekers face, as Matthew Gibney points out in his book, “The Ethics and Politics of Asylum” (Cambridge 2004). Thus, if a country has an outsized portion of responsibility for global warming by causing the most carbon emissions, they are responsible for the consequences that are borne by more geographically vulnerable states and the consequent surge of refugees. Similarly, if one nation covertly installed a dictator or encouraged armed conflict, there is a direct causal relationship of harm in those who seek refuge from conflict or persecution. Gibney also argues that partial responsibility can occur (Pogge’s example of participating in an unjust economic order that creates victims and winners could be one example).

But let us imagine us a case in which the privileged destination state is assumed to be wholly uninvolved in the miseries faced by the refugee or asylum seeker. Are they responsible for the ensuing harm if they dismiss the harassed individual or family at the border? By definition, a refugee and an asylum seeker have little options. It appears that President Trump’s administration’s confessed policy of family separation as deterrence is explicitly intended harm: deter asylum seekers by making their arrival in the US as horrific as the situation they left behind. In this case, they are obviously introducing more harm into the lives of these individuals and families seeking refuge, and have justly raised international outcry. But what are genuinely ethical ways to respond to refugees and asylum seekers, supposing there to be a limited lifeboat? Is it time to abandon both the narrowly nationalist and lifeboat perspectives to realize that we are all in this together?

This question will only become more serious as Western states contend with the rapidly changing global climate and the effects of the international economic order, with all the political and ecological ramifications of a vastly unequal neoliberal globalism. It’s clear that we need forward-thinking, ethical leadership. Instead of turning the clock back to 1939, we need to confront the challenges of the 21st century critically and openly.

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Moral Responsibility at the U.S.-Mexico Border

Photo of a monument memorializing deaths of migrants who tried to cross the U.S.-Mexico border

On May 15, 2018, CNN reported that the U.S. Border Patrol, which is “tasked with tracking and trying to prevent border-crossing deaths,” has been undercounting the number of deaths of people who perished trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in contravention of U.S. Immigration laws. CNN reportedly identified more than 500 deaths over and above the Border Patrol’s official tally over the last 16 fiscal years. As CNN reports, undercounting deaths “minimizes the magnitude of the humanitarian crisis associated with illegal crossings” and “makes it harder for the United States to assess the full impact of a border policy, in place since the mid-1990s, that uses barriers and other enforcement tools to push migrants to more remote, deadlier crossing points.”

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Police Officers or Immigration Officers? The Dilemma of Responding to ICE Warrants

Photograph of a police officer leaning against a police car

This article has a set of discussion questions tailored for classroom use. Click here to download them. To see a full list of our discussion questions, check out the Educational Resources page.

On February 22, Wilson Rodriguez Macarreno called 911 because he thought that someone was breaking into his car in the  Seattle suburb of Tukwila. After the police apprehended the suspect breaking into his car, Macarreno was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He was handcuffed and driven to an ICE field office without being told the reasons for his detainment. According to the Tukwila, Washington police officers, there was a warrant for Macarreno from immigration authorities. According to his lawyer, Macarreno came to the United States illegally from Honduras around 15 years ago to escape a life of gang violence. Close family members and friends of his had died as a result of the violence, so he made his escape to the United States. Macarreno has lived in the United States since and has three children that are legal citizens. Continue reading “Police Officers or Immigration Officers? The Dilemma of Responding to ICE Warrants”

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Opinion: “Dreamers” Have Been Taken Hostage in the Battle for Trump’s Wall

An image of a DACA protest in Columbus Circle

At the beginning of January, it became clear what it will take for Donald Trump to allow DACA immigrants (“Dreamers”) to remain in the country. These are about 780,000 people brought to this country illegally, as children. Now adults, they have known no other country as their own and often understand no other language but English. They have jobs or are going to college, they have families, homes—in short, a life, here in the US. In 2012, President Obama made an executive decision allowing them to remain in this country under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, but Trump rescinded the program in September 2017, effective in March 2018.

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Are Undocumented Immigrants Obligated to Obey US Immigration Law?

A black-and-white image of the U.S.-Mexico border wall fence.

In September 2017, the current presidential administration stopped accepting new applicants for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. DACA is an administrative program that provides temporary protection from deportation for undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States, enabling them to attend university, get jobs, apply for driver’s licenses, etc. Nearly 800,000 people received this DACA protection. The administration has signaled that they may be open to a legislative fix reinstating these or similar protections for undocumented immigrants who arrived as children, and negotiations over the future of DACA have been ongoing. (For a helpful explainer on the recent political history of DACA, read this article.)

Continue reading “Are Undocumented Immigrants Obligated to Obey US Immigration Law?”

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What Can be Done about Human Trafficking?

On July 23, 10 people were found dead in the bed of a swelteringly hot tractor-trailer found in a WalMart parking lot in San Antonio, Texas. Authorities found 39 people in the vehicle, but had reason to believe that there had at one time been as many as 100 in the small space.  All of the individuals appeared to be suffering from heatstroke, and many will likely have related injuries and other health problems from which they will suffer for the rest of their lives.  It appears that the individuals involved were undocumented immigrants, seeking to gain access into the country illegally.

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The Illegality of Immigration: An Irony

In California, farm owners took a big gamble without knowing it: they voted for Donald Trump. Now, in lieu of receiving a cutback in taxes and regulations, they are at risk of losing their labor force. Thus, their profits might take a hit too, if there are not enough hands to gather the harvest. The danger President Trump poses to California farmers is that, contrary to farm owners’ predictions, he appears to be following through on his campaign promise to curb illegal immigration – and the amount of illegal immigrants in the United States – through mass deportations. The reason why California farmers’ labor force might end up in Trump’s crosshairs is because an estimated 70% of California farmworkers are residing and working in the country illegally. However, it is not just farm owners who would be affected by deportations, but also the local, state, and national economies, which have come to rely on the workers’ spending and manpower.

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DACA and the Dangers of College Campuses

In the face of President Donald Trump’s threats for an immigration overhaul, as well as increased U.S. immigration enforcement across the country, undocumented individuals will undoubtedly face greater threats of deportation, raids, and discrimination in the coming months. Despite the fact that, yes, the Obama administration set a record high for deportation of immigrants and therefore a precedent for future Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity, President Trump’s usage of executive orders has particularly targeted legislation designed to protect immigrants.

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Free Speech and Passport Fraud: On CNN’s Ban from Venezuela

Progressives in the United States are decidedly against the policies and ideology of Donald Trump. And, predictably, when President Trump has displayed aggressiveness towards CNN and other media outlets, these progressives uphold the values of free speech. Yet, last month, CNN was expelled from Venezuela, a country whose socialist regime has been lauded by the likes of Noam Chomsky, Oliver Stone, Sean Penn, and other visible figures of the left. There has been little (if any) uproar over this. This is at best inconsistent, and at worst hypocritical.

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A Shooting in Seattle: Hate Crimes under Trump

On Friday, March 3, a man was shot in a suburb outside of Seattle after being berated and told to go back where he came from. He wore a turban, and the shooter presumably interpreted him to be of Middle Eastern origin. The man was a Sikh, a population that is enduring harassment and worse alongside Muslims in the United States’ most recent rise of Islamophobia due to the widespread ignorance of the religion.

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Should Scholars Engage with the Alt-Right?

This week, a debate between Jorge Ramos and Jared Taylor went viral in Spanish language social networks. The debate was originally an interview for Hate Rising, a documentary that aired last October. Ramos is one of Univision’s anchors, and he was infamously expelled by then-candidate Donald Trump from a press conference. Taylor is the editor of American Renaissance, a white nationalist organization that became one of the most visible representatives of the alt-right; he also enthusiastically supports President Trump.

Continue reading “Should Scholars Engage with the Alt-Right?”