If you have been paying any attention to American politics, you will have heard a bit about “securing the southern border.” Both major candidates during the last election cycle touted it in their nomination speeches, and it has been a staple of the Trump campaign since President Trump’s entrance into the 2016 election, blaming Mexico for sending “not the right people.” According to a Gallup poll, over half of Americans support deporting all so-called “illegal” immigrants and just under half of Republican voters advocate for allowing those here illegally to attain citizenship. According to AP-NORC, MAGA conservatives often cite abuse of welfare programs, illegal voting and general crime increase as reasons why undocumented immigrants should be deported and the barriers of entry into the country should be fortified. Despite PNAS research finding that undocumented immigrants do not commit more crime than either native-born Americans or legal immigrants. Where, then, does this anxiety and hate come from? Most Americans likely do not read studies and statistics about the reality of immigration but it is clear that there is a disposition among many conservatives that immigrants crossing the border are not as human as Americans.
I am not implying that MAGA supporters believe in some sort of conspiracy theory that immigrants are actually aliens or lizards or anything like that. I am pointing to an anti-foreigner chauvinism in American political culture. Chauvinism is a sort of catch-all belief for notions of supremacy of one group over another. It does not just have simple biases, it has a stance that groups of people have inherent characteristics that place them somewhere on a hierarchy of human value. This sentiment allows the United States to continue its imperialist projects. Instead of the MAGA-minded, including the President, attempting to understand why immigrants flee from their homes, they label people as “bad hombres” who come here to commit violent crime. They ignore that many of the people they ridicule flee due to the threat of gang violence and economic instability due to the United States’ sanctions on countries, such as Venezuela. One may pin this sentiment on cognitive dissonance and some on right-wing media brainwashing, but I think that this xenophobic chauvinism is a symptom of fundamental ignorance.
Firstly, illegal entry is a misdemeanor. It is not a felony, and perpetrators can only face up to six months in prison. Many undocumented immigrants enter legally but overstay their tourist visas, but doing so is also not a federal crime. Elon Musk, a prominent ally to Trump’s Administration, was one of such visa overstayers in the ’90s. On top of all that, as stated before, immigrant populations commit less crime and do not increase the crime rate. Personally, I do not see a clear line of reasoning for why illegal immigration is a morally bad action in of itself, especially an action that would require one to be shipped to a detention center and then be deported. Clearly, the federal government somewhat agrees with me on this stance; if it did not, the ramifications for illegal entry would be much more severe. So now that the largest fears of the MAGA hive-mind have been debunked, what is left? A distaste for immigrants. The chauvinism outlined may stem from misinformation campaigns or a lack of knowledge of the facts around immigration, but I think it stems from the way we view our country as the pinnacle of humanity. The perceived hierarchy mirrors the actual wealth distribution of nations, where the United States is standing at the top while developing countries crawl at the bottom. The Trump Administration enforces this supremacist framework through its treatment of USAID (United States Agency for International Development), with Trump insulting many African countries and peoples during his speech in early March.
We overlook others based on their nationalities, races, religions and languages, and it is not out of a recognition of cultural differences across borders. Mexicans are the literal neighbors of many MAGA-minded people, yet that proximity does not matter in affecting their xenophobia. What many Americans—most of whom are the descendants of immigrants—ironically do not understand is that all people around the world are just like us. They have aspirations and aversions and like to eat their favorite foods and enjoy some movies over others. They have families they take care of and gods that they worship. They have music they put on repeat and are fanatical about sports. There is no hierarchy of humanity because we are as equal as we are diverse. If you compare the life of a Wall Street stockbroker and a Bedouin pastoralist, the details of their experiences will be wildly different. They do, however, have the same intrinsic marks of humanity that exist throughout the world and its histories. Why would we, as a nation, not want to celebrate that anymore? We should be welcoming the diverse huddled masses and let them partake in the wealth that we have stolen from them. It may be one of the most disgusting disrespects for our country to destabilize, invade and ransack societies on almost every continent—Mexico, Iraq and Venezuela, to name a few—and then turn around and not allow those we have systematically harmed to be welcomed into our imperial core.
My central message here: Foreigners are people too and we need to change our outlook on that matter. A marine veteran named Mac McKinney from Muncie, Indiana, once planned to bomb an Islamic Center from his misunderstanding and hatred towards Muslims. He decided to walk in the center and ask a man to teach him about the Quran, and he became the president of said Islamic Center for two years and is now a motivational speaker against hate. There is an amazing documentary about his story on YouTube. Transformation must happen to rid ourselves of the ignorance that plagues our hearts and minds, and this radical transformation is possible. We are not condemned to view others as lesser, but we are held down by those views.