Society is constructed around expectations and norms, laws and beliefs that connect us and allow large numbers of humans to live and work side by side.
Having rules to live by is essential, but too often the underlying concepts that the rules serve are absurd or, worse, lies designed to benefit some people and oppress others.
Think of the attitudes that have been used across cultures to justify denial of women’s right to property, equal political participation and much more. Think of the lies about race that have been used to defend the ongoing oppression of people of African descent, from the institution of slavery through the Jim Crow laws, to the modern prison-industrial complex, systemic violence, and economic discrimination imposed on communities of color.
Or think of the aristocracies of Europe, the throwing off of which remains the source of so much American pride, despite all the contradictions of our nation’s birth, not to mention our own tightening class immobility. The stories many of us were raised on — about the founders of the nation, about Robin Hood and Zorro, or about Rosa Parks, Cesar Chavez, Gandhi, and the many other heroes who have fought for human rights —are all based on the idea that one’s place in the world should not be determined by some accident of birth.
It is easy to see the errors inherent in laws and attitudes of the past, yet often we struggle to see the ways current assumptions about what is right and necessary in society similarly serve to oppress some individuals and privilege others, for no good reason. That is certainly the case with laws about national borders, designed to preserve the benefits of residence and citizenship for some, while keeping others out.
It is good that a majority of Americans are appalled by the Trump administration’s separation of families, and that many object to the flaunting of national and international laws when people are turned back at the border without having a chance to prove their refugee status.
But the evils of the current administration must not blind us to the fact that our borders have been militarized for decades, and that past presidents have also arrested, imprisoned, and deported immigrants for simply seeking the same rights and opportunities we take as our birthright. We need to acknowledge that the crimes of the Trump administration are an extension and continuation of a deep social injustice that we all are party to.
The situation is explained succinctly by Kevin Young in a publication of the Pioneer Valley Workers’ Center, a Northampton-based organization that provides important leadership on these issues in western Massachusetts:
“The country in which we happen to be born is one of the most important determinants of our life chances — what law professor AyeletShachar calls the ‘birthright lottery.’ It helps determine what kind of job we have (if any), our wages, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the education and health care we receive, our level of physical safety, and many other things. Of course, there is tremendous inequality within countries, along lines of class, race, gender and other categories. But our place of birth is still widely viewed as a legitimate basis for discrimination, unquestioned even among some immigrant rights advocates.”
This willingness to see this form of discrimination as legitimate seems to derive from a mix of fear, ignorance and inability to imagine alternatives. For example, it is easy to believe that people who want to come here should just “follow the rules” for getting into the country, if one is blind to the fact that those rules have been biased and discriminatory for generations — for the entire history of this nation, really — and result in the permanent exclusion of many.
One also has to ignore how much of the wealth, and resulting opportunity, that attracts immigrants to nations like the United States or Europe, was extracted from the places they are leaving, and that the hardships they are escaping are too often a direct result of our military or corporate interventions.
Many who look at our closed borders from the inside believe they are necessary to prevent chaos, the overwhelming of “our” country by outsiders. But the potential for chaos and disruption of the social order was also used to justify preserving the power the aristocracy, the continuance of slavery, and opposition to women’s rights. Sometimes disruption is necessary.
As Young writes, “Rejecting the birthright lottery requires, at a minimum, that we recognize migration as an inalienable human right — not something that should be restricted to some arbitrarily defined group of ‘deserving’ immigrants.”
It is time to rethink assumptions and challenge laws that allow artificial lines to divide humanity into haves and have-nots.
Jim Oldham, a Town Meeting member from Precinct 5, directs Equity Trust, a nonprofit working nationally for land reform and economic justice. Thanks to an accident of birth, he has traveled, lived and worked unmolested in various countries, and currently lives securely in Amherst.
