Recently, in the middle of a difficult conversation, someone asked me:
“What is the difference between an immigrant and an invader?”
I find this question to be offensive on its face, and upon some shallow inspection, vaguely racist. It implies that similarities actually exist between immigrants and invaders that go beyond the simple fact that both involve crossing a boundary.
However, there is some value here: there are some worthwhile things to learn from exploring the explanations that arise from answering this question.
Firstly, what is an immigrant? Dictionary says… “a person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country.” And invader? “a person or group that invades a country, region, or place.” Peachy. And what does invade mean? There are two definitions that could apply. One is about armed forces: “enter a country or region so as to subjugate or occupy it.” E.g., the French Army invaded Russia.”
The other is about groups in general, and with less dire intent: “enter in large numbers, especially with intrusive effect.” E.g., tourists invaded the beach.
Either way, the similarities that the party asking the initial question wishes to draw are exposed: in the first definition, there are no meaningful similarities. Immigrants aren’t immigrating with the intent to subjugate. They are immigrating with the intent to find a new home. Any perception of subjugation in that situation reveals more about the fears of the perceiver than anything going on in reality. Fears that “eventual subjugation” will result if enough immigration is allowed stem from a confusion of the concepts of intentional subjugation (what invaders do to others) and natural cultural mixing (what immigrants do with others).
As for the second definition: well, this is kind of toothless. Who really cares if immigrants “invade” the beach?
Immigrants: Those coming with their primary intent being to make a home, assimilate, join society, and develop a give-take-relationship with their new community. It’s worth pointing out here, once again, that every U.S. citizen that freely came to the U.S. is an immigrant, and every U.S. citizen that had an ancestor freely come to the U.S. is descended from an immigrant.
Invaders: Those coming with their primary intent being to impose their ideals/beliefs (think: the random handful of terrorists currently in the U.S. and actively planning an attack), thieve (think: Vikings), or take over (think: Russians in Ukraine).
Some would argue that immigrants do impose their ideals or thieve. To which the answer is twofold, but simple nonetheless. Part one: the immigrants that do this are a small percentage of the immigrants coming into the country, and more importantly, there are fewer immigrants doing this (percentage-wise) than there are local citizens doing this, so overall, the influx creates a net improvement. Part two: for the few immigrants that do this, it still makes no sense to call them invaders, because that’s not why they’re coming. In other words, they are coming to make a new home, they are just also misbehaving while doing so.
If they were coming specifically to impose ideals or thieve (they’re not), then it would be appropriate to call them invaders. It would also be appropriate to call them profoundly stupid, because accomplishing these things is far harder in the U.S. than elsewhere; no one comes to the U.S. to proselytize or thieve; too much competition, and we’ll throw folks in jail for next to nothing…
Labeling immigrants as invaders is a reach. It requires an inconsistent definition of “invader,” or it requires applying false motives to immigrants, motives that make no sense for them to have. This is more about strategic labelling; about making it easier to mistreat immigrants. I.e., it’s far more acceptable to treat “invaders” badly, so of course immigration opponents want to call them that.
Thankfully, this makes no sense. Sadly, it takes some effort to show why this makes no sense.
There are a few related issues that immigration opponents typically address when making the argument for why immigrants should be deported (or punished and then deported). Illegal border crossing is one—“They broke the law when they crossed the border illegally, thus they’re criminals, thus they’re bad, thus we don’t want them here.” Property rights is another—“This land is ours, not theirs; they can’t come here unless we say they can, we don’t want them (for whatever reason), so we didn’t say they could come, so if they’re here then they’re violating property rights, thus they’re criminals, thus they’re bad, thus we don’t want them here.”
Both of these arguments support the concept of painting immigrants as invaders—as long as invaders means “unwanted people” and not the legitimate definitions described earlier. But these arguments are circular. If they’re unwanted people to begin with, then we’re just looking for reasons to oust them, and so making the border-crossing act illegal is one way to accomplish this. We criminalize entry, so we have a legal way to toss them out again.
As for the property rights argument… this is stark nonsense. Strong private property rights are very important, and the U.S. has—on balance—a fairly decent set of rights here (emminent domain and asset forfeiture notwithstanding). However, these rights quite clearly do not apply to the commons, nor to national territory. The rights we have are privateproperty rights. To apply these rights in any kind of way similar to what immigration opponents think would result in it being illegal to go from Baltimore to Detroit without “papers.” Just to hammer it home, I will point out the distinction with two examples:
“An undocumented immigrant (who crossed the border illegally yesterday) walks through town on Main Street.”
There is absolutely nothing illegal about this walking-through-town act. This is because neither the town, nor the state, nor the country privately owns Main Street. It’s for everyone to use, whether male, female, tall, short, local, foreign, black, brown, green, paid up on their taxes, or two years old. Sure, if he shouted out that he illegally crossed the border yesterday, then he could be arrested for that… but not for walking through town.
“An undocumented immigrant (who crossed the border illegally yesterday) walks through Joe’s back yard.”
This immigrant is trespassing on private property. Simply illegal; Joe gets to choose who’s legally allowed to walk through his yard, because he privately owns it.
Let’s swing back around to the “criminalizing entry” issue, though, because that one is more interesting. It is, at least, not nonsense. I could spend some time describing how it shouldn’t be illegal in the first place. I could do the work to find and cite sources showing compelling data on how open borders are a net gain for society in every way that matters, and in direct contradiction to the claims of immigration opponents. I could show how the data that immigration opponents use to back up their claims is anecdotal at best and mendacious at worst. But many have done this, and their efforts have changed the minds of few.
Immigration opponents start off with “those people are unwanted” and move forward from there. Convincing them of the opposite isn’t going to be as easy as showing them the how and the why of the benefits immigration brings.
They can say it’s about “they broke the law when they crossed.” We can point out that the law the immigrants broke rightly has the teeth of j-walking statutes, but they’ll view it as a felony regardless (it’s not). They can say it’s about trespassing, and we can show them that it’s not, but they’ll still feel violated.
It’s time to start asking why… no, really, WHY do they not want these people? Because all the reasons they cite are B.S.
If I had to hazard a guess? They’re blaming others for their own unmet expectations. And when we act on that kind of unrecognized self-loathing, we usually behave in ways that are weak, fearful, irresponsible, uncompassionate, lazy, and above all, selfish.