At this writing, we don’t know what the outcome of this election will be. It has been painful to endure as it centered on the vilification of immigrants and refugees.
It is not new.
Germans arriving in the 1700s were thought to be barbaric. Called “Huns,” they were considered suspicious if they practiced the traditions of their home country.
When Irish refugees arrived, forced from their homeland by famine and political upheaval, they were despised. They practiced what was then considered to be an alien religion. They were accused of bringing crime. They were called rapists.
For Italian immigrants, the national debate was whether they were white enough.
In the 1800s, Chinese immigrants were brought here as cheap labor to build the country’s railroad system and work in gold mines. Chinese Exclusion Acts followed, claiming they “endangered the good order.”
When Japanese immigrants came to the U.S. to escape instability, agricultural decline and social upheaval, they found hostile neighbors, harsh working conditions and legislative attacks. During World War II, about 120,000 Japanese people, mostly U.S. citizens, were forcibly put in “relocation camps.” Their homes, businesses and property were taken from them. No process was set up to return what they’d lost upon their release.
Mexican immigrants were the primary source of agricultural labor for the U.S. beginning in the 1920s. During WWII, Mexico provided laborers instead of military support to the U.S. But in the ’50s, the U.S. used military-style tactics to remove them, including those who were naturalized U.S. citizens. They have been trapped for decades in the racist paradox of being desired as cheap labor and vilified for being Mexican.
Political upheaval (that often followed U.S. foreign intervention) and socioeconomic collapse, violence and natural disasters have led Central Americans and people from other parts of the global South to try to escape to the U.S. They are people of color. Their race or ethnicity has contributed to the derision they have had to endure, including being called vermin.
Why does someone leave home? British Somali poet Warsan Shire tells us.
Why do we as Americans respond as we do, in particular to those who look or pray differently than the small group of founders? That’s a question that we, this nation formed by immigrants, needs to answer.
Home, by Warsan Shire
no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark.
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city
running as well.
your neighbours running faster
than you, the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind
the old tin factory is
holding a gun bigger than his body,
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.
no one would leave home unless home
chased you, fire under feet,
hot blood in your belly.
it’s not something you ever thought about
doing, and so when you did –
you carried the anthem under your breath,
waiting until the airport toilet
to tear up the passport and swallow,
each mouthful of paper making it clear that
you would not be going back.
you have to understand,
no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land.
who would choose to spend days
and nights in the stomach of a truck
unless the miles travelled
meant something more than journey.
no one would choose to crawl under fences,
be beaten until your shadow leaves you,
raped, then drowned, forced to the bottom of
the boat because you are darker, be sold,
starved, shot at the border like a sick animal,
be pitied, lose your name, lose your family,
make a refugee camp a home for a year or two or ten,
stripped and searched, find prison everywhere
and if you survive and you are greeted on the other side
with go home blacks, refugees
dirty immigrants, asylum seekers
sucking our country dry of milk,
dark, with their hands out
smell strange, savage –
look what they’ve done to their own countries,
what will they do to ours?
the dirty looks in the street
softer than a limb torn off,
the indignity of everyday life
more tender than fourteen men who
look like your father, between
your legs, insults easier to swallow
than rubble, than your child’s body
in pieces – for now, forget about pride
your survival is more important.
i want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home tells you to
leave what you could not behind,
even if it was human.
no one leaves home until home
is a damp voice in your ear saying
leave, run now, i don’t know what
I’ve become
Beth Langen is a Springfield Immigrant Advocacy Network co-chair.
This article appears in Best Of Springfield 2024.
