Yearning to Breathe Free

I’ve never understood anti-immigrant sentiment.  Why do so many people fear and hate immigrants? I really don’t get it.

I was reading an article that talked about ICE and it described a group of people that immigrated here from Mauritania in the 90’s. These people were expelled from their homes and sought refuge here. Someone took advantage of that which led to their paperwork being less than ideal. Naturally, this warranted some further investigation. That makes sense.

What doesn’t make sense is why decide to deport these people after 20+ years? The paperwork was fishy, sure. But they’ve been living here, as law-abiding, tax-paying residents for two decades.

I understand the need for border security and immigration rules. While an idealistic part of me thinks everyone should be able to go and live anywhere without restrictions, I understand that can be problematic in the present world. But there’s a big difference between that and what’s currently happening.

The goal of border security is to prevent “bad” people and things from getting in. But, aside from this asinine wall, most everything is focused on dealing with the people, such as the Mauritanians, who are already here. Why would you ever even consider deporting people who have been living here without issue? What is the point of that? Because they came here illegally? So what? They haven’t hurt anyone since getting here. They clearly aren’t the type of people you’d want to try and keep out.

It’s not like they are a drain on society. We don’t have universal healthcare or basic income.  It costs $0 tax-payer dollars for them to live here. In fact, it’s a net gain when they aren’t fearing deportation because then they’re working and paying taxes. Spending time harassing them, imprisoning them and deporting them, however, is costing lots of tax-payer money. So it’s not about money.

The American cultural identity is a country of immigrants. Majority of people here can trace their family history to someplace else. This is true for all of humanity really but for (most) Americans, it’s within the relatively recent history of the last 400 years, as opposed to some places where families have lived for thousands.

Do people fear immigrants so much because of this past cultural identity? We were all immigrants who came here and treated the people already living here pretty poorly. Is that what we fear? That our ancestors were assholes and therefore everyone else must be too?

Or is it just tribalism? Fear of the “other”?