This post would probably fit the pdd better than the COR, but as I had promised here it is:
Society and migration
"My house is your house, and your house is mine" - The Break Boys
It starts with the obvious. Imagine your life as a paraplegic: if you were hungry, you wouldn't be able to simply walk and get your food. If a threat appeared in front of you, you wouln't be able to run. In other words, it would suck. Mobility has, for this reason, had a great impact in human history, and is an important part of our lives (regardless of whether you do walk or not). We're extremely dependent on external factors in order to live, and being able to relocate has been a key factor in our survival. The pursuit of a better life was always behind the discovery and colonisation of new territories.
The whole problem with immigration has got nothing to do with immigration itself: the fact that a person left their country (either voluntarily, or because their survival depended on it) and chose somewhere else to stay is not a problem at all. The problem starts with the birth of society itself.
After a while, all these lands people emigrated to were already inhabitated. More often than not, these lands were already inhabitated by people with completely different backgrounds: in fact, this blending was the beginning of many empires, such as Greece, India and, with some controversy, Japan. However, like I had mentioned before, society might be a problem.
William Graham Sumner coined the term "ethnocentrism", regarding the feeling of a group to see themselves as the centre of the(ir) world. Ironically enough, this is believed to be a common trait among all societies. This is not the real problem, though, but just one factor. Immanuel Kant pointed out the fact that human beings are not capable of direct, unmediated knowledge of the world. Instead, they have to rely on their minds, and its sensibilities of time and space. Mix these two factors together, and a person's way of thinking begins to shape their concept of the world. A practical example are colours: Once you learn the words "orange" and "brown", for example, you tend to see them as different colours; this is not what happens when you learn "light blue" and "dark blue", as you tend to see these as different shades of the same colour, rather than separate colours (unless you speak Russian, for example, which does make this distinction).
Naturally, we're not talking about colours here.
Back to ethnocentrism, let's talk about Imagined Communities. Ever heard of Benedict Anderson? He states that a nation is socially constructed and ultimately imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group. We've got to admit that this is feeling is so strong (albeit fallacious), that little people would question this. In order to focus on this properly, let's talk about Slylee's home: Florida
Damn Cubans and
their hot daughters!
|
Florida
Several Native Americans were already living there before Juan Ponce de Leon arrived in 1513. Spanish conquistadores often believed that Native Americans weren't real humans, so they didn't consider the land as "theirs", as they just couldn't have "properties". He named the land "La Pascua Florida" and, under European belief, that became the name of the land. Soon, there was a settlement there as well (San Agustin), and that is the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in any U.S. state. The first settlers there did, therefore, speak Spanish. Two hundred years later, the land would be sold to the British, and, if you don't mind me fast forwarding to the current situation, it became an organised American territory in 1822. By then, Florida had seen Spanish settlers, French fighters, Native American tribes and, yeah, people who spoke English.
The most interesting thing about ideal concepts is that they hardly portrait the real world.
The United States does not have an official language, although English speakers (i.e. those whose mother language is English) are 82% of the population. That means almost a fifth of the whole population has another language as their mother language, and often that's the language they feel easier to communicate with. But, why?
¿Speakas Ingles?
"The evil that men do lives after them" - William Shakespeare
Back to Sumner and Kant.
As people grow older, it becomes more difficult for them to learn a new language. The grammar, phonology and vocabulary shape more and more their world (I'm not talking about the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, by the way), and that's why I had given the example of the colours.
Language itself serves one common goal: communication. I'm now typing in English, since that's the language understood by the people I want to reach. If most of you spoke Portuguese, eu ia escrever em português sem problemas :D In Miami, more than half of the population is "Latino" (God, how I hate these loose terms), so there's no reason why they wouldn't speak Spanish there: It should be, according to the demographics, a language understood by a considerable amount of people who live there.
Once again, some might complain: "if they can't adapt to our ways, then why do they have to come here?" - "We can't support them!". Well, we all live in the same planet, and whatever happens here, stays here.
Most of these immigrants come from countries where the US did play a significant role (see Manifest Destiny, Monroe Doctrine), so it would only be natural that they turned to the US when in need. The same goes, although not in a direct way, with the Chinese who migrate to North America in search of a better life. Had the Opium Wars not existed, the situation would probably be different nowadays. This might be one of the reasons why immigrants might bear anti-American feelings even though they live in the territory perceived as American territory.
The children of the immigrants tend to speak English though, so it shouldn't be a problem in the long run.
Japan
"No soy coreano, ni soy japones, yo soy desarraigado" - Kazuki Kaneshiro
Since Slylee mentioned Japan, I thought it would be worth mentioning.
Japan is not freed of this sort of tention. The Zainichi, for instance, are Japanese-born Koreans, who seem to face discrimination. The Ainu are discriminated even though they were in Japan before the "Japanese" (they're the Native Japanese, if you will).
This all happens thanks to the policy of claiming Japan is a monocultural country (which is not), and having a "us-them" sort of division. Not unlike the US, many of these groups have a quasi-caste status, and many of them got there because of the Japanese Government (such as the Zainichi who were taken to Japan during the annexation of Korea) or because they were already there (as the Ainu or Ryukyuans). The discrimination of these groups often lead to a rise in criminality, which only makes things worse.
A somewhat similar pattern happens in Brazil when it comes to the Japanese themselves. Although ethnic division here is a bit blurred (due to the country being close to the concept of a melting pot kind of country), the Japanese are often seen as a different group, although the difference might weaken as time goes on, as the offspring of the first Japanese immigrants begin not to see themselves as Japanese anymore.
But they're illegal!
Oh, yeah, we almost forgot that, they're illegal immigrants. "They shouldn't be there in the first place". Well, this doesn't make sense in a democratic state that values freedom (even if just theorically).
The same way a person doesn't need a visa in order to go from San Francisco to New York, it shouldn't be required to have documents in order to simply cross the Rio Grande. The only division is an imaginary one. Taxes shouldn't be a problem either: if the immigrants weren't illegal, it should be easier for them to behave according to the law.
