Anti-immigration activists use fear to dehumanize immigrants and migrants to the U.S.A.
“Listen, if you’re 14, 15, 16, 17 years old, and you’re coming from a country that’s gang-infested — particularly with MS-13 types, that is the most aggressive of all the street gangs — when you have those types coming across the border, they’re not children at that point. These kids have been brought up in a culture of thievery, a culture of murder, of rape. And now we are going to infuse them into the American culture. It’s just ludicrous.”
Florida Republican Representative Rich Nugent
Rich Nugent does not stand alone in his dire warnings of the dangers children and other migrants will impose on the citizens of the United States if allowed to enter and remain. Phil Gingrey, Georgia Republican Representative, warns of grave public health threats as well. In a July 7, 2014, letter Gingrey wrote to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:
“As a physician for over 30 years, I am well aware of the dangers infectious diseases pose. In fact, infectious diseases remain in the top 10 causes of death in the United States. …Reports of illegal migrants carrying deadly diseases such as swine flu, dengue fever, Ebola virus and tuberculosis are particularly concerning.”
Well, “as a physician for over 30 years,” he should know that Ebola is not only extraordinarily difficult to spread, but that it also does not occur in Central America. According to the World Health Organization, Ebola has only been discovered in humans living in sub-Saharan Africa.
Unfortunately, the absence of facts has never seemed to get in the way of anti-immigration activists. Nugent and Gingrey join a long list in their rhetoric of horror, hysteria, hyperbole, and hypocrisy throughout the immigration battles of the United States.
Narratives of Hate
In 1790, the newly constituted United States Congress passed the Naturalization Act, which excluded all nonwhites from citizenship, including Asians, enslaved Africans, and Native Americans, the later whom they defined in oxymoronic terms as “domestic foreigners,” even though they had inhabited this land for an estimated 35,000 years. The Congress did not grant Native Americans rights of citizenship until 1924 with the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act, though Asians continued to be denied naturalized citizenship status.
Within the United States in the nineteenth century, the public directed negative sentiments against a number of ethnic groups, including the Irish. For example, according to a young Theodore Roosevelt in the 1880,
“The average Catholic Irishman of the first generation, as represented in the [New York State] Assembly [is a] low, venal, corrupt, and unintelligent brute.”
And in Harper’s Weekly a few years earlier:
“Irishmen…have so behaved themselves that nearly seventy-five per cent of our criminals and paupers are Irish; that fully seventy-five per cent of the crimes of violence committed among us are the work of Irishmen; that the system of universal suffrage in large cities has fallen into discredit through the incapacity of the Irish for self-government.”
The U.S. Congress passed its first law specifically restricting or excluding immigrants on the basis of “race” and nationality in 1882. In their attempts to eliminate entry of Chinese (and other Asian) workers who often competed for jobs with U.S. citizens, especially in the western United States, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act to restrict their entry into the U.S. for a 10 year period, while denying citizenship to Chinese people already on these shores. The Act also made it illegal for Chinese people to marry white or black U.S.-Americans. The Immigration Act of 1917 further prohibited immigration from Asian countries, in the terms of the law, the “barred zone,” including parts of China, India, Siam, Burma, Asiatic Russia, the Polynesian Islands, and parts of Afghanistan.
A Butte, Montana editorial in 1870 represents the exclusionist sentiments toward Chinese people held by many U.S. citizens:
“The Chinaman’s life is not our life, his religion is not our religion. His habits, superstitions, and modes of life are disgusting. He is a parasite, floating across the Pacific and thence penetrating into the interior towns and cities, there to settle down for a brief space and absorb the substance of those with whom he comes into competition. His one object is to make all the money and return again to his native land dead or alive….Let him go hence. He belongs not in Butte.”
And in 1893, also in Butte, Montana,
“The Chinaman is no more a citizen than a coyote is a citizen, and never can be.”
The so-called “Gentleman’s Agreement” between the U.S. and the Emperor of Japan of 1907, in an attempt to reduce tensions between the two countries, passed expressly to decrease immigration of Japanese workers into the U.S.
Between 1880 and 1920, in the range of 30-40 million immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe migrated to the United States, more than doubling the population. Fearing a continued influx of immigrants, legislators in the U.S. Congress in 1924 enacted the Johnson-Reed [anti-] Immigration Act (a.k.a. Origins Quota Act, or National Origins Act) setting restrictive quotas of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe (groups viewed as representing Europe’s lower “races”), including Jews (the later referred to as members of the so-called “Hebrew race”). The law, however, permitted large allocations of immigrants from Great Britain and Germany. In addition, the law included a clause prohibiting entry of “aliens ineligible to citizenship,” which was veiled language referring to Japanese and other Asians dating back to the Naturalization Act of 1790 restricting citizenship to only “white” people and affirmed by a 1922 United States Supreme Court ruling (Takao Ozawa v United States) in which Takao Ozawa, a Japanese immigrant, was denied the right to become a naturalized citizen because he “clearly” was “not Caucasian.”
This law, in addition to previous statutes (1882 against the Chinese, 1907 against the Japanese) halted further immigration from Asia, and excluded blacks of African descent from entering the United States.
It is important to note that during this time, Jewish ethno-racial assignment was constructed as “Asian.” According to Sander Gilman: “Jews were called Asiatic and Mongoloid, as well as primitive, tribal, Oriental.” Immigration laws were changed in 1924 in response to the influx of these undesirable “Asiatic elements.”
In 1939, the United States Congress refused to pass the Wagner-Rogers Bill, which if enacted would have permitted entry to the United States of 20,000 children from Eastern Europe, many of whom were Jewish, over existing quotas.Laura Delano Houghteling, cousin of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and wife of the U.S. Commissioner of Immigration sternly warned: “20,000 charming children would all too soon, grow into 20,000 ugly adults.”
[Not a] Conclusion
Rather than characterizing immigration and migration issues as humanitarian concerns, the anti-immigration activists connect the narratives representing immigrants and migrants to our borders to the language of disease, crime, drugs, alien and lower forms of culture and life, of invading hoards, of barbarians at the gates who if allowed to enter will destroy the glorious civilization we have established among the lesser nations of the Earth. On a more basic and personal level, the rhetoric of invasion of our boarders taps into psychological fears, or more accurately, of terrors of losing control of our spaces: our country, our workplaces, and more basically, our private places in which “aliens” forcefully penetrate our personal space around our bodies, into our orifices, and down to the smallest cellular level.
Look at the few examples I presented among the seemingly bottomless pool from which I could have drawn. We see how the anti-immigration activists represent the assumed invaders as “those types,” “domestic foreigners,” “low, venal, corrupt, unintelligent brutes,” “criminals,” “paupers,” “incapable of self-government,” who are “not of our life or religion,” who bring with them “habits, superstitions, and disgusting modes of life,” who are “ugly adults,” and who are “no more than a coyote.”
The dialectic of invasion, of violation of personal space, comes through with these “parasites,” who are “penetrating into the interior towns and cities,” and who “absorb the substance of those with whom [they] come.” They are “gang-infested,” bringing “thievery,” “murder,” “rape,” who “infuse infectious diseases,” “deadly viruses,” “swine flu,” “dengue fever,” “Ebola,” “tuberculosis.” Essentially, they are represented as vectors of contamination of the body politic and the material body.
Since the anti-immigration movement represents immigrants and migrants as subhuman creatures, it could take as its battle cry the catchy slogan from the Terminex Pest Exterminator TV commercial:
Photo: Ross D. Franklin/AP Photo“Not Here! Not Now! Not in my house!”
And I will now acknowledge that my first response was in fact published, and was not removed to this point. I appreciate that.
My comment was in moderation. Then removed. Because I did not agree with this left view. I did not use bad language, I did not personalize the author to any degree that would be offensive. My point was made to someone. Thank you.
I need to clarify. I believe my previous comment that was in moderation but then removed, was removed because I do not agree with the leftist view. Not that it was, but that I believe that is why. I am open to ASN explanation as to why it was removed if I am incorrect. In any event, I would be open to the merits of each viewpoint should anyone care to do so. Thank you.
Crickets indeed Tom from the original author who, apparently like the rest of the left, toss thoughts out there and then run away from the conversation. I believe not one of us is anti legal and controlled normative immigration. This is a political motive and agenda, simply and pure. The left will not ever fairly debate an issue without resorting to throwing rocks as if it were still 1968. There is no compromise with individual moral superiority belief, on the right or the left. They are really the same hateful people.
Allow me to paraphrase and update that Butte, Montana 1870 editorial for the present day: ““The Central American Hispanic’s life is not our life, his religion is not our religion. His habits, superstitions, and modes of life are disgusting. He is a parasite, sneaking across our southern border and thence penetrating into the interior towns and cities, there to settle down and absorb the substance of those with whom he comes into competition. His one object is to take all our money and take advantage of our free education, healthcare and welfare programs, and return again to his native land… Read more »
Warren, is that crickets I hear?
‘Since the anti-immigration movement represents immigrants and migrants as subhuman creatures, it could take as its battle cry the catchy slogan from the Terminex Pest Exterminator TV commercial:” Are you serious?
So what’s your solution? You willing to move these people into your neighborhood? Willing to put them in your schools that are already over burdened? Willing to have your local taxes increased to accommodate them in your community?
All you do is finger point … Then do something. As an individual, you can do plenty. Pu your money where your mouth is. Who is paying for all of this?
This is how France does things …. “Those in France illegally or who have committed public-order offenses will be sent “almost immediately” back to their countries of origin without the possibility of returning, he added.” “Digital fingerprinting technology would be employed to ensure that the deported persons did not enter France once again.”
” Saudi Arabia has stepped up the deportation of in excess of 1,000 Somalis every month.” “Meanwhile, the UN refugee agency has reported that the Saudi Arabian government has stepped up its deportation of Somali “asylum seekers” to 1,000 per month.”
If you want to make a case for open borders then just make it. If you need help in making it I’ll put you in contact with my brothers. They’re big open border guys. The first question I’d like to have answered is how are these people just wandering through Mexico. That’s a country that doesn’t believe in open borders (http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/26/us/mexico-marine-lawyer-interview/index.html). So who’s paying them off to look the other way?
“Public apprehensions about illegal immigration in France have also centered on the status of an estimated 20,000 noncitizen Roma from Romania and Bulgaria.” “In Britain, Nigel Farage, leader of the right-wing United Kingdom Independence Party, conjured visions of Romanian organized crime gangs infiltrating his country. “I haven’t got a problem with Romanians,” he told CNBC after the election. “I have a massive problem with Romania.” “At the time, the government predicted that 5,000 to 13,000 migrants would arrive annually until 2010. The 2011 census showed 521,000 Polish-born people listed as residents of Britain, although that number has since fallen. But… Read more »
The author fails to acknowledge that these are not merely migrants or immigrants but illegal being the operative word immigrants. Let’s not kid ourselves. When the social services to our own citizens get stretched to reduction you will be scared to death of what violence you will see as that is human nature.
you are soooo right Mark
“Americans who believe that immigration has to serve the interests of its own citizens. It cannot be turned into a social assistance / job-finding program for people from other countries. It should never be a social engineering experiment that is conducted America’s mainstream population in order to make it a minority. ** But immigration has become those 2 things. “The answer is that all of America’s major political party has adopted the arrogant and contemptuous attitude that they know what is best for Americans and that Americans do not have to be consulted when major policy decisions are made. These… Read more »
Sorry for the deception … put “Canada” in where “America” is referenced …That’s where I got the information from.
Come to think of it, why not open the border to Canada as an extension of what Mexico did and just let them continue their journey to Canada. Ya think Canada would be willing? How about talking to our European friends and start moving some of these kids out. What’s the difference if they have to learn English or German? Neither are their native language. But we can’t do that, can we? Because they are here illegally …. what a quagmire.
Warren, how many of these kids are you going to volunteer to take in? I recently heard a soundtrack of a guy who was asking people to sign a petition favoring letting these kids in. Once they agreed in favor, they were then asked to give name address and phone so that they could be contacted to house one of these kids. Every one of them declined. Not because they didn’t want to give the information but they wouldn’t house any of them. So why not go in the direction that we’re giving these kids asylum? Isn’t it that what… Read more »
As Thomas Sowell said, cultures vary and differences have consequences. Thus, Nugent’s point that infusing a different culture into the US will have effects–which we cannot anticipate–stands. His views of violence may seem over the top, but only if we presume those who’ve arrived–not speaking about MS13 guys or “non-Hispanics” with their Urdu phrasebooks–eschew the culture from which they’ve come. And we’re all about non-assimilation to the vile, vicious, misogynist, homophobic, greedy, capitalist US culture. So, by definition, we want them to retain their culture. Whatever it is. Hell, we might even make the immigrants get ID before voting dem!… Read more »