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Tuesday March 19, 2024

Blaming immigrants

By Abdul Sattar
March 19, 2019

The recent terrorist incident in New Zealand has once again brought the debate of immigration into the spotlight with Far-Right forces heaping eulogies on the xenophobic attacker.

The heart-wrenching scenes of the carnage shook millions of people across the world. While the conscientious citizens of New Zealand took to social media to express their anger over the tragic incident, anti-immigrants psychopaths all over the advanced capitalist world remained adamant in defending the man who perpetrated the heinous crime.

Fascists have been legitimising the brutal attack on the pretext that immigrants are responsible for the immiseration of white working classes and impoverishment of their countries. They claim that the arrival of immigrants has led to an exponential rise in unemployment. They assert that non-white workers have also contributed to the housing crisis, and for the rising criminal and anti-social behavior. This narrative seems to suggest that Europe, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and other white-dominated states were a heaven prior to the arrival of migrants and that this flux of barbaric races polluted this heaven.

But history flies in the face of such claims. Europe was an over-crowded and impoverished continent until its ruling elites started plundering other races, nations and continents. Ironically at least four modern nations – the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – were founded after wiping out the indigenous population on that land. Some historians believe that European settlers are responsible for the extermination of over 56 million indigenous people in South, Central and North America alone.

So, if one follows the logic of non-locals and immigrants then the population of these four advanced capitalist countries is alien to these lands. They are foreigners and white immigrants, coming from various parts of Europe, wiping out native populations and settling there on the basis of force, intimidation and coercion. If the lands of native people have to be vacated and returned, then the logic will say that the Europeans should hand over these lands to the remaining indigenous people and go back to the countries of their origin but for white supremacists this logic is fallacious because for them the white population had a right to wipe out these ‘barbaric tribes’, taking over their lands and settling there. If other people start following the same logic, then the world will be gripped by chaos and anarchy. With everyone trying to assert their claim of superiority, there will be death and destruction everywhere. So, coexistence is the way forward.

The phenomenon of migration from the Global South to the Global North may be new but its causes are old. Imagine if the European powers and other capitalist countries had not colonised states, plundered their wealth, enslaved their men, women and children and forced their people to abandon their fertile lands – would the people from the Global South still have been as impoverished as they are today? Would they still have wanted to leave their homelands and loved ones to settle in strange lands where they face attacks from xenophobes, taunts from nationalists and possible extermination from violent fascists? European ruling elites and greedy capitalists of advanced democracies are responsible for many ills of the Global South today, which in part lead to the migration of people as well.

Undoing past sins could be one of the ways to end immigration. Far-Right forces in Europe and the advanced capitalist world believe that immigrants or foreigners should not come to their countries. Their logic also needs to account for the Europeans who went to the Global South as immigrants or foreigners, plundering their wealth and resources. Immigrants in European and advanced Western capitalist countries would gladly return to their states of origin if the European colonisers and plunderers return what they took away from there.

For instance, it is estimated that the British Empire stole $45 trillion from India alone. The reparation for slavery in Africa is said to be around $5 trillion; this money – $50 trillion – on its own could usher in an era of wealth and prosperity in the Global South. According to some international development institutions’ reports, around $700 billion is required to achieve the Millennium Developments Goals. Some other estimates suggest that only $50 billion is enough to provide basic healthcare, primary education and sanitation in the developing world. Once citizens of the developing world have these reparations, they will have enough prosperity at home that they would not have to go anywhere at all.

Another way to end migration from the Global South to the Global North lies in eliminating wars and conflicts, which are partly triggered by the West in developing countries. For instance, it is the West that dislodged a stable government in Libya, handing over the country to a bunch of gangsters who are now transporting thousands of immigrants every month. The sane is the case with the civil conflict in Syria that led to the displacement of over 11 million people, forcing many of them to migrate to Europe and other states. The flux of Syrian refugees into Europe not only created resentment in Germany but across the continent. The Western capitalist elite supplied arms to more than 15 belligerent African states that fought each other in the last three decades. These wars added tens of thousands people to the ever-rising number of displaced people, many moving towards Europe. Politicians in Europe and the US seem to be threatening to fragment Iran, which could trigger even more immigration.

One may ask that if the West concentrates all wealth by destroying the Global South, how can it not expect a massive migration towards its borders then? Finally immigration is one of the many issues the world faces – and not the only issue. For instance, with an estimated population of 127.11 million in 2015, the resident foreign population in Japan amounts to approximately 1.75 percent of the total population. The unemployment in the third largest economy is 2.5 percent. So, even if all immigrants are kicked out, unemployment will still be there. The percentage of foreign populations in Greece is as high as 7.1 percent in proportion to the total population of the country but the rate of joblessness is 18.5. So, even if all immigrants are expelled, the country would still be facing unemployment of more than 11 percent.

In reality the problem does not lie in immigration but in the capitalist system that we live in – the system that wants cheap labour, longer working hours and a certain rate of unemployment in a bid to keep wages down. The expulsion of immigrants will not help this situation, the elimination of capitalist plundering would and so is the way forward.

The writer is a freelance journalist.

Email: egalitarianism444@ gmail.com