Migrations

In epochal terms, the history of our planet is marked by migrations. From whales and butterflies to humans. Out of Africa to the Eurasian land mass, Mongol tribes emigrated to Europe and Europeans colonized the Americas, displacing the tens of millions of indigenous people who had made their way here from Asia.  

We, Caucasians of European ancestry, are illegal immigrants. We were not invited by the American Indians. We are the men and women who came to dinner, killed our hosts and never left. Now we declare ourselves landlords, lording over this land called the United States.

This land was made for you and me and us and them; the ribbons of highways and amber waves of grain. Through slave labor, European squabbles, war crimes, famines, pogroms and opportunity we forged a nation of immigrants and now we desecrate Emma Lazarus’ poem on the Statue in New York harbor and slam the door shut on the huddled masses yearning.

The soul of this country aches with blues and celebrates in jazz. Its mythos was seeded by Hollywood and its Jewish moguls and the American Songbook was composed by first generation immigrants from Eastern Europe. The Chinese built our railroads and Irish forged our labor unions. Every poetic leap, financial risk, strive and stumble is attributable to children of immigrants.

One might wonder why Central America has always been our impoverished neighbors. President Monroe declared it our protectorate 202 years ago. The years since have been marked by U.S. rapacious corporations, maldistribution of land with puppet governments propped up by U.S. agencies. And now their people flee. No surprise.

I believe our resistance to migrants is a last gasp against mass migrations in decades to come. I won’t be here to witness millions from equatorial regions moving toward the poles as the planet heats up. Large areas will become inarable and uninhabitable. Perhaps Greenland will become green.

Through heedless exploitation, avarice, neglect and denial, world powers are rendering our orb unsustainable for human habitation. Maybe, just maybe, one day we will see ourselves as brothers and sisters, guardians and gardeners of the planet. And maybe one day my pixie dust will be on the wing of some migratory bird looking down on land without borders. Or maybe not.