Faith & Reflection: Voices from the Black Church and Beyond
- Anti-immigration politics rise in the US and Europe, driven by far-right parties using fear, misinformation, and coded racist messaging.
- Policies restrict legal immigration and asylum despite labor shortages and aging populations needing immigrant workers.
- Immigrants fill undesirable jobs locals avoid, exposing hypocrisy in claims that immigrants "take jobs."
- Colonial exploitation of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean created conditions driving migration; historical responsibility is ignored.
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(ThyBlackMan.com) The US is not the only country in which the issue of immigration has become a hot button political concern. It is a major concern for many European countries.
Various attempts to halt what is called illegal immigration, that is the act of entering a country outside of a nation’s established legal framework for entering a country, are being sought.
In addition, similar to the efforts of the current regime in Washington DC, various European nations are proposing restrictions and/or halting legal immigration. To that end, several European countries are even going as far as to seek to restrict and/or eliminate asylum admission.
Nearly a dozen European countries have instituted some form of border restrictions in an attempt to deter immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers.
As in the US, political rhetoric against immigrants in Europe has increased primarily from far-right political parties espousing anti-immigration policies. Such parties have made significant gains at the polls. They have also eschewed the racist, xenophobic rhetoric the current regime in Washington DC uses to describe immigrants
What is somewhat bizarre about the efforts of various European nations to halt immigration is that Europe has an aging population and declining birth rates. It also has labor shortages forcing businesses to have to rely on immigrant workers to boost economic growth and sustain pensions. Halting immigration it would seem would be akin to cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.
The anti-immigration measures in Europe for the most part are being sought to address a decade of large-scale influx of people fleeing wars or seeking better economic opportunities from primarily the Middle East and Africa.
In the US, those fleeing wars, tyranny, famine and poverty have come from the Middle East, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America and Asia.
Despite the longstanding pledge to the world from America “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,” the current US regime and a sizable number of its citizens feel otherwise. Immigrants are not welcomed, especially those of color.
On the other hand, the current regime in Washington DC is only too happy to extend the welcome mat to white South Africans who have been the beneficiaries of the illegal, immoral and inhumane former Apartheid system.
Political parties in particular right wing and extreme right political parties in Europe have come to power championing anti-immigration platforms.
The current regime in Washington DC has used the slogan “Make America Great Again,” which is code for Make America White Again. Right wing and extreme right politicians and parties in Europe have used their own code words and phrases to appeal to the fears and prejudices of their European constituencies. Racism is alive and well in the US and Europe.
Similarly, as in the US, the European right wing and extreme right politicians and parties have used misinformation, disinformation and lies to arouse fears and prejudices concerning the immigration population inside the country.
“Immigrants are responsible for the crime that is occurring in our nation.” Another favorite is “The immigrants are coming into our country taking all our jobs.” That is true, immigrants in the US and also Europe are only too pleased to work the jobs that Americans in the US and Europeans in European nations refuse to do. Which is one reason the tariff issue in the US is nothing more than a false and phony issue.
The idea that tariffs will drive manufacturing jobs back to the US is delusional. Americans are not interested, have no desire to work in a factory doing unskilled labor. Americans want to hit the lottery, be reality television stars, instant celebrities or influencers. Working in a factory, “You must be crazy. Hell to the no! I aint working in no factory.”
Europeans and Americans are some of the laziest people on the planet. Why do you think they used enslaved Africans to work the land?
The only people who believe in the American Dream are the immigrants who are willing to work two, three or more jobs if necessary, so that their children and their children’s children can have a better day.
The refusal by Americans to work in factories underscores how ridiculous the notion of increasing tariffs on other countries is to force manufacturing jobs back to the US.
One of the many and many is an understatement, lies fostered on the public by Make America Great Again mountebanks is that other nations have stolen American manufacturing jobs.
What they refuse to say is that American companies after taking the blood, sweat and tears of American workers relocated their manufacturing plants to greener pastures to increase their profit line. It was not foreign countries that stole American jobs. It was American companies along with their shareholders which relocated plants and jobs. It was clearly not about patriotism but profit. It was about greed.
The Make America Great Again cheerleaders know manufacturing jobs are not coming back to the US. If somehow those manufacturing plants did come back they would need the individuals currently working in those foreign plants to also come to work those jobs.
Why would they need them? Because again, Americans are not interested in working in factories like the people in other countries seem happy to do.
An important element deliberately not raised in the public debate regarding immigration is regarding the conditions of many of the countries immigrants are fleeing. Most if not all of the countries in Latin America, the Middle East, Caribbean, Asia and Africa were exploited by European nations during the colonial era.
The Europeans went into those lands. They robbed and raped the inhabitants of those land. They engaged in the most inhumane and degrading activities. They stole the wealth and riches from the land.
They left the native people in poverty. They left them in strife, chaos, confusion, destruction and disruption.
The descendants of the colonized lands have been forced to go to the land of the European colonists seeking a better day.
Sir Issac Newton would call it “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Malcolm X would call it “The chickens coming home to roost.” The Bible refers to it as “He will punish children for the sins of their fathers for three and four generations.”
Staff Writer; Al Alatunji
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