Friday, August 28, 2020

What Do Societies With Just Immigration Polices Look Like? Thoughts After Reading Suketu Mehta's "This Land is Our Land"

If you are a thoughtful, decent human being at this time, you should be bobbing between waves of anger and panic, on the verge of drowning in a sea of insanity. Now, imagine sitting down to write a book. Likely, by the second or third page, your prose would resemble that of the author character, played by Jack Nicholson, in the 1980 horror movie The Shining. Suketu Mehta, through writing skill and knowledge, transformed these righteous emotions into This Land is Our Land: An Immigrant's Manifesto.

This book is being written in sorrow and rage -- as well as hope. I am angry: about the staggering global hypocrisy of the rich nations, having robbed the poor ones of their future, now arguing against a reverse movement of peoples -- not to invade and conquer and steal, but to work. Angry at the ecological devastation that has been visited upon the planet by the West, and which now demands that the poor nations stop emitting carbon dioxide. Angry at the depiction of people like my family and the other families that have continued in my family's path, because the had no other choice, as freeloaders, drug dealers, and rapists. I'm tired of apologizing for moving. These walls, these borders, between the peoples of the earth: they are of recent vintage, and they are flimsy. [pp. 8-9]

In an extremely succinct & engaging manner, Suketu Mehta reviews many issues around human migration in our time. For people who haven't read a lot on the subject, this is a wonderful way for them to catch up.

I've been reading many books about immigration in preparation for Welcoming Week America and our local actions in my city. Nevertheless, two issues stood out for me after reading this book.

The first is the necessity of conveying a message of what societies with just immigration policies could look like. The second is the centrality of graveyards.

Any time discussing immigration with nativists & xenophobes reveals that histories of exploitation & facts about immigrants' economic and cultural contributions to society are ineffective in changing their minds. Suketu Mehta spends some time towards the end of the book telling stories about how people of different backgrounds interacted and produced vibrant life. Perhaps such mental imagery will be more effective in opening people's minds.

The extensive index at the end of the book doesn't include an entry for "burials" or "cemeteries" or "graveyards." Nor could I find a passage which explicitly discusses these rituals when I skimmed the book again in preparation for writing this. Nevertheless, I can't stop thinking about how graveyards, for communities which practice burial, are central to the processes of thriving immigrant life Suketu Mehta describes. Further, I understand more clearly why hate groups target graveyards.

When a family buries its deceased in a plot of earth, its ties to that place strengthen beyond those created by educational and professional achievements. Before that commitment of burial, it seems like an immigrant may still be hedging their bet on their new home. After burial, chips are all in, and there is no longer a Plan B.

Hate groups & settler colonialists (and here) may target graveyards because they are relatively soft targets and the penalties are less than assault, but their impact is to promote uprooting people and/or erasing the memory of previous instances of uprooting.

I recently turned an interview with my mother into a video by adding in family pictures. This was the first time I realized that my family has four generations with ties to Augusta, Georgia.

Finally, we don't have to sing Francis Scott Key's Star Spangled Banner. Woody Guthrie's This Land is Your Land is far better.

As an addendum, I've added a few passages from the book I found particularly impactful.

 The immigrant armada that is coming to your shores is actually a rescue fleet. [p. 197]

When you have your extended family around you, you are more likely to prosper. When your son is flunking out of high school, your brother will speak to him, understand him as you cannot, and keep him off the streets. When you need to go to work and can’t afford day care, your mother will look after your child and feed her and tell her stories. When your daughter is looking for a job, your sister will tell her about an opening in the hospital she works in. E pluribus unum. We new immigrants need it, need our extended family. We don't have the luxury of a legacy network, three or four generations deep in the country, that will get our daughter into a good college or loan us money when insurance doesn't cover the cost of hospitalization. [p. 236]

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