Xenophobia is the Point

 Xenophobia is the Point

A dictionary definition interprets the word, “xenophobia” as extreme “dislike against people from other countries.” While accurate, this characterization fails to capture the intensity of fear and loathing that provokes outright verbal and physical violence when injected directly into the body politic.  Its close cousin, “demonization,” defined as “the portrayal of something as wicked and threatening,” when enacted in and through our political discourse, often signifies something lethally poisonous, as exemplified in the mind and heart of the 2019 El Paso mass shooter. 

To be clear, the shooter, alone was responsible for the carnage rained down on Mexican nationals and US citizens of Mexican descent in the horrific mass killing in El Paso last August.  That said, one cannot simply overlook Trump’s despicable racist rhetoric and his targeting of El Paso as one of the epicenters of “the invasion” at the southern border of dangerous “illegals” who dare to enter the land of the free and the brave, bringing their filth, crime, and economic dependency with them (See Frontline, “Targeting El Paso,” 01-07-2020).  The reality is that Trump has the power to spread these pathologies throughout the body politic due to his position and the amplification of his demagoguery through the considerable influence of right- wing media sources.  Why else would the shooter have driven for ten hours from Dallas to El Paso to enact his horror, if not at least influenced by Trump’s rhetoric against that border city.  Why else, indeed!

While not a uniquely American phenomenon, and far from the only narrative about the US story, xenophobic demonization has been a major force in this nation’s history from its colonial foundation to the current period.  Consider the collective impact of 400 years of Native American land misappropriation and the several century genocide campaign that wiped out great numbers of people from the various Indian nations that populated the vast land-spaces of what became the US.  Ponder the enduring consequences of the enslavement and segregation of African Americans, reinforced, at times by the utmost violence as well as subtler forms of discrimination.  Consider, too, the conquests of great tracks of Mexican territory in the late 1840s as a result of an illegal war, propelled by the ethos of “manifest destiny.” This vision of a singular nation called by God to be enjoined from the Atlantic to the Pacific, was empowered by the peculiar myth that America was called to be a light onto the world, a beacon of liberty, like no other land—a myth that masks the subjugation of the Hated Other in its various historical and contemporary manifestations.

Much of this nation’s immigration history has been accompanied by a similar bigotry.   Let us celebrate how the US has been built on the energies of countless immigrants who, over the centuries, have come to this land throughout the world.  Let us also note how ethnic and racial group after group has been subjected to the most derisive intolerance and outright violence—whether against the Irish, Chinese, Italians, Jews, Japanese, Mexicans, and now refugees, especially from Central America.  While a bright line shone in our refugee policy in opening up our shores to Southeast Asians in the 1970s and 1980s, our current refugee program is characterized by an ugly oppressiveness that results in much cruelty, which critics identify as the point of an immigration policy cooked up by its chief perpetrator, Senior Trump Advisor, Stephen Miller.

While our entire immigration policy needs a radical overhaul, the refugee policy set by this administration is especially egregious. From the Reagan to the Obama administrations, the US allowed up to 100,000 refugees to enter the country in a given year.  These numbers have been decimated by the Trump administration, which dropped the rate to 30,000 in 2019, and is set at a paltry 18,000 for this year.  Instead of basing policy on an instinctive drive to keep brown people out, this nation could be at the forefront of a regional partnership, especially in the Americas, in seeking comprehensive approaches to mitigate  the underlying complex sets of problems that compel people to emigrate to the US in the massive numbers that they do.

Rather than grapple with these issues, the Trump administration is creating the conditions that make it increasingly difficult for refugees by preventing them from even seeking asylum in the US if they have not sought asylum from the countries that they passed through to get to the US border.  Instead of working comprehensively to seek region-wide solutions to this obviously extremely difficult problem, the Trump administration has incarcerated thousands of those seeking asylum, including children.  It has also left in question the Temporary Protective Status of thousands of Hondurans, Salvadorians, and Haitians, many of whom have lived in this country for well over a decade.

For a nation of over 325 million people in a land distribution of over 3.5 million square miles, the US could well take in up to 250,000 refugees on an annual basis. To be sure, such a transformation from the current reality would need to be part of a broad-based refugee and immigration policy that addresses the underlying issues that drive the problems related to mass migrations of large numbers of people.  Among much else, this would require an overarching collaborative regional strategy.  However idealistic such a prospect may, if we truly aspire toward greatness as a nation, we might actually try to solve the problems we face and help create a more humane and richer society in the process.  Fortress America is not a viable policy.

2020