Solving a Problem that Was Solving Itself

Though the extremes of post-WWI German persecution of Jews (“judenverfolgung”) clearly do not reflect parallel extremes in modern America in reactions to undocumented Latinos, there is a fascinating and terrifying aspect of human nature that can be found in each instance. The commonality is economic pain, a threat to and dilution of incumbent power and values, and a diabolical need to attribute blame for this change to a clearly identifiable minority. Persecuting that minority, in the slogans of the autocrats who have risen to power on that mantra of blame, is/was the “solution” to the cultural and economic disruption.

Circling the wagons to fend off “others” is nothing new. It is a human survival trait. We’ve decimated Native Americans since white settlers invaded North America and incarcerated ethnic Japanese as potential spies during WWII. We didn’t round up masses of white ethnic Germans or Italians. President Eisenhower even used a military-style round-up to deport undocumented Mexicans in 1954 as well. There has always been a racial marker in these efforts; white Americans, regardless of ethnicity, were always given a pass. People-as-animals are more conscious of “differences” in their fellow human beings than they are of commonality.

In Europe, the markers weren’t so much racial, since until very recently, most Europeans were Caucasian. Thus, the discrimination markers went against religious groups, generally non-Christians, particularly Jews. WWI devastated Europe, but angry Allies extracted an inordinate pound of flesh against the vanquished Germans, imposing restrictions, confiscation and massive reparations the Germany could never pay. Life in Germany was living hell, inflation rendered the local currency valueless, and the ugly reality allowed an evil “I’m the only one who can fix this problem” dictator to rise power.

While incarcerated for a failed political insurrection, Adolph Hitler began writing his politically-charged autobiography, Mein Kampf, ultimately published in two volumes, in 1925 and 1926, respectively. Although his anti-Semitism came later in his life, by the time his book was published, Hitler seized on a growing anti-Jewish trend in Europe to attacks Jews, to rally Christian Germans around his National Socialist (Nazi) message (circling the wagons), and to blame Jews for the war that destroyed Germany.

“During the second half of the 19th century, as the Jews’ emancipation throughout most of Europe led to their increasing integration into society and into the modern economy, it elicited a backlash. Anti-Semitism, some of it murderous, rose across the continent, including in Germany. When the Jews were kept apart in the ghetto, and limited to certain professions, it was possible to accuse them of clannishness, and resent the interest they charged on loans. But when they emerged from the ghetto, and became captains of industry and finance, and socially and intellectually prominent, there was a whole new set of reasons to hate them. The success of the emancipated Jews was perhaps even more galling than the poverty and degradation of disenfranchised Jews – and it gave rise to racial theories that posited an essential biological difference in them.

“When imperial Germany went down to defeat in 1918, and Kaiser Wilhelm, the German emperor, was forced to abdicate, a popular theory that Germany had been ‘stabbed in the back’ by the Jews took hold. Jews’ role, on the one hand, in the socialist and Communist movements that led revolutions in both Germany and Russia, and their prominence in international finance, on the other, led to dark theories about Jews’ lack of national loyalty, their treachery, and their degeneracy.

“In Hitler’s mind, all the groups that he saw as foiling Germany – Bolsheviks, socialists, social democrats – became identified with Jews, because indeed, Jews were so prominently represented among each of them. His political theories blended with increasingly technical racial theories that imagined the Jews, along with other groups like Slavs and Gypsies, as biologically inferior to Aryans, the white northern European race that pure Germans were presumed to belong to.” Haaretz.com, 4/11/16.  Hitler had found his rallying cry. That’s where the parallels with contemporary America glimmer into a current ugly Trumpian reality.

Between 1990 and the beginning of the 21^st century, corporate America discovered and implemented cost-price-driven outsourcing of basic manufacturing and, as the Internet become more vigorous, data entry, processing and analysis. China was the big winner in manufacturing outsourcing just as India’s call centers and software processing centers won in the service sector. By the end of the first decade of the 21^st century, automation had displaced outsourcing as the big job-destroyer, but Americans in the rust belt or in mineral, fossil-fuel extraction who had lost their livelihoods earlier, still blamed globalization.

The influx of undocumented aliens, primarily from south of our border, accelerated since the 1970s. They replaced the infamous “Okies,” taking agricultural jobs that American citizens would no longer take and moved towards the lowest-level jobs in other sectors as well. Slaughterhouses, hard labor construction, domestic servants, kitchen workers, unskilled manufacturing (to the extent remaining in the United States), etc. They were “brown” skinned, spoke Spanish and brought their culture, food and local shops to cater to their needs.

The rise of these undocumented workers from south of the border roughly paralleled the demise of unskilled, semi-skilled and even very-skilled blue-collar American workers. And while these Latino income-immigrants took jobs that American-born workers would not take, noting that the real high-value blue collar jobs were in fact moving overseas, their obvious brown skin, Spanish language and cultural differences (often leading them to their own, clearly defined neighborhoods) made them particularly easy “blame targets.” What’s more, they were here, easily identifiable and thus easy to persecute.

But automation was now displacing even these undocumented Latino workers. The big recession pushed some such workers back to their native lands, but the opportunities here were dissipating fast. Well before Donald Trump seized on this immigration issue, the “Mexican problem” was already fading away.

“The number of immigrants in the U.S. illegally dropped to the lowest in more than a decade in 2016, according to a new report… Tuesday’s report [11/27] from the Pew Research Center analyzed census and immigration data to estimate that in 2016 there were 10.7 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally… The number is 1.5 million less than its peak in 2007.

“Pew arrived at its figure by subtracting the number of foreign-born people living in the country legally from the total foreign-born population and adjusting with estimated numbers for the many immigrants in the country illegally who do not respond to government surveys. It included more than 1 million immigrants who are temporarily in the country legally under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Temporary Protected Status programs because the future of such protections is unclear under the Trump administration.

“The decline comes from a sharp drop in the number of Mexicans residing in the U.S. illegally, even as the population of Central Americans illegally crossing the border or overstaying visas has grown… The number of Mexicans in the U.S. illegally dropped 1.5 million from 2007 to 2016, the report said, leaving Mexican nationals to make up about half of the immigrants in the U.S. without permission. In the same time period, the number of Central American immigrants in the U.S. illegally increased by 375,000. Pew found there were 1.85 million Central Americans residing in the country illegally, with a significant number from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

“The decline in the share of Mexicans among the people in the U.S. illegally is due to ‘dramatically different living conditions’ in Mexico compared with its southern neighbors, said Randy Capps, research director for U.S. programs at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, who wasn’t involved in the study.

“Over the long term, Mexico’s economy has improved and its birth rate has declined, leaving fewer people interested in job opportunities in the north, especially after the U.S. recession a decade ago. Capps said migration from Mexico was historically dominated by young men coming to the U.S. alone, while Central American immigrants today tend to come as families. Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, he added, have in recent years experienced ‘higher rates of violence, much more poverty and much lower per capita income’ than Mexico, leading people to flee north… Pew researchers said they expected the trend of decreases in the number of Mexicans in the U.S. to continue even as the Central American numbers increased…

“During his campaign, the president vowed to deport all immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, suggesting he could do so through military-style roundups... President Trump, who has faced criticism for demonizing immigrants in the U.S. illegally by broadly painting them as rapists and killers who ‘infest’ the country, has also continued to demand the construction of an expanded border wall…

“Overall, the number of immigrants in the country illegally dropped by 13% between 2007 and 2016… Pew found ‘statistically significant’ declines in immigration from Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Korea and Peru. But in addition to those from Central American countries, the number of immigrants from India and Venezuela in the U.S. illegally also grew during that period.” Los Angeles Times, November 28^th.

You’d think we could have a more effective result by helping those Central American nations with aid to combat both poverty and the rise of drug cartels as a political force, thus taking away the biggest reasons why desperate people need to leave their homelands for hope and safe future here. But no; we punish those states, take away aid, and threaten great sanctions, creating a self-fulfilling vicious spiral of immigration horribles. And Trump is even trying to cut Medicaid’s funding to treat drug addiction, making the problem that much worse.

Why? The answer is obvious. Immigration has become Donald Trump’s signature rallying cry, enhancing his political power with his base and with displaced blue-collar workers generally. He needs an issue that will require “implementing a solution” that would cover two full four-year terms as president. How long would it take to build that wall, you know, the one that experts say will not solve the immigration or drug movement problem? Oh… yeah… if it ever gets going, at least well into Trump’s desired second term as president.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and I believe my cynicism is exceptionally well-placed, but the cost to this nation – in dollars and in the very survivability of our democracy – remains incalculable.