American Immigration – A Paradox

“When the sun sets on the American empire, as it will, as it must, Noam Chomsky’s work will survive. It will point a cool incriminating finger at a merciless Machiavellian empire as cruel, self-righteous and hypocritical as the ones it has replaced. (The only difference is that it is armed with technology that can visit the kind of devastation on the world that history has never known and the human race cannot begin to imagine.)”, said Arundhati Roy. 

The year was 1492 and a vast land mass had just been trodden upon by a man and his crew. The people of the land were confused but decided to welcome these men, little did they know they were going to bring upon mass suffering upon themselves. Christopher Columbus, the man who discovered the “New World” was not a symbol for freedom but rather quite the opposite. Him and his crew mistreated and abused the Native people to an inhuman extent with thousands forced to mind gold, kidnapped and taken to Spain, native women raped, food and land stolen. These are not just allegations but came from accounts by the first Roman Catholic Priest to be ordained in the New World, Bartolomé de las Casas who wrote about the horror of the Spanish efforts to exploit the resources and people of America and advocated against it. 

Christopher’s belief that he had found a route to the East led to the Native Americans being referred to as the “Indians”. Soon the European powers like the English, Spanish, Portuguese started colonizing America. Throughout this time, millions of Native Americans died either killed or due to European diseases like smallpox. Estimates say that 80-95%of Natives died within the first 100-150 years of European colonization.  In 1900 their population went down to 300,000. The United States declared its independence in 1776. Over the years multiple conflicts took place and thousands of Native Americans died; there was the Gnaedhutten Massacre, Battle of Tippencanoe, Creek War, and the Indian Removal Bill of 1830 where 60,000 Native Americans were removed. The Mankato Executions, Sand Creek Massacre and Custer’s Campaign took place post 1862 including president Lincoln’s involvement. 

Fast forward to today, a country that was built on the bloodshed of natives caused by immigrants is claiming to make the country great again by cleansing the nation of immigrants. To understand the point I’m making we must look at this logically, all Americans that are not Native are immigrants including the whites who are an ethnic amalgamation of multiple European powers. The government of the USA is pushing a seemingly false narrative of “illegal immigration” while arresting and deporting American citizens, children, war veterans and allowing the law to be used to make unjustifiable decisions. President Donald Trump believes in a false notion of the true American citizen and continues to practice and preach inhumane beliefs around the idea of ethnicity. 

Earlier this week Donald Trump made a statement regarding deportations from third world countries. “I’ve also announced a permanent pause on Third World migration, including from hellholes like Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia and many other countries,” he said. Then, reflecting on his 2018 meeting with senators during which he referred to certain nations as “shithole countries,” said Trump. “Remember I said that to the senators? Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden? Just a few. Do you mind sending us a few people? Send us some nice people… But we always take people from Somalia. Places that are a disaster, right? Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime.”, quoted by the President himself.

The Trump administration has deported over 2.5 million people who they refer to as “criminal illegal aliens”, seems quite ironic now doesn’t it. The term “criminal alien” is not defined anywhere in the federal Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Not only are they being deported there are 50,000+ migrants in detention. Being an undocumented immigrant is not in violation of a federal criminal law which means that being undocumented does not entitle someone to face charges such as deportation without due process that is protected by the 5th & 14th Amendments of the constitution. Data suggests that 75,000 people were arrested by ICE with no criminal charges which contradict the statement made by President Trump about arresting criminals. ICE continues to arrest American citizens and have wrongfully detained Native Americans as well. It is simply impossible logic to attempt to run a nation without immigrants when realistically those who are attempting to do so are immigrants themselves.

“The sun is setting on the American empire”, an empire once known for its global superiority to be the ‘land of the free and home of the brave’; it sure as now seems to be taking a final bow.