The Mexican immigration argument is the latest round of the recurring American fight about who we are. We may be a nation of immigrants, but Mexican immigration is different than the surges that have happened before.
Why it’s different
Earlier instances of American immigration found people crossing an ocean, settling, and creating enclaves. The creation of enclaves ensured that people have two identities, their incoming cultural identity and their new-found national identity. After a few generations, integration occurs and they’re just another American, albeit of one or another flavor.
Our geographic proximity to Mexico alters this calculus. Many Mexicans settled in the U.S. have a kind of dual-citizenship. This is possible because so much cross-border trade and travel occurs. This is not some malign plot: it happens any place where two countries meet. The forces of economics, politics, and demographics can complicate even the most amicable relationships.
A recent article by George Friedman does a lot to explain the complexities of our current argument.
The Mexican-American War established the political boundary between the two countries. Economic forces on both sides of the border have encouraged both legal and illegal immigration north into the borderland — the area occupied by the United States. The cultural character of the borderland is shifting as the economic and demographic process accelerates. The political border stays where it is while the cultural border moves northward.
The underlying fear of those opposing this process is not economic (although it is frequently expressed that way), but much deeper: It is the fear that the massive population movement will ultimately reverse the military outcome of the 1830s and 1840s, returning the region to Mexico culturally or even politically. Such borderland conflicts rage throughout the world. The fear is that it will rage here. (Friedman)
The average American hasn’t thought about the Mexican-American war since they were a distracted teenager in a high school history class. It goes something like this:
Why should that dumb war matter? I’m too busy looking up the blouse of the hot girl.
If we could have taken our focus off all those distractions, we’d have learned that everything that happening in the here-and-now can be traced to a time before. So, without further delay, here are some remedial geographical concepts you may have missed.
Three important terms
- Political Borders
When you look at a world map, these are the lines. Many of them are settled, but plenty more are contested. The temptation is to imagine political borders as concrete markers when they are, in fact, quite changeable. The borders of the United States have changed a lot in the past two hundred years. They will change again. - Cultural Borders
There are no lines on our maps for this. Any place where two countries meet at a border and there are (a) cultural ties on the other side and/or (b) reasons for economic activity and trade, the political border can be imaged as overlapping with this cultural border. - Borderlands
The result is the borderlands; it extends in both directions. This area is where the strict national descriptors fall down because the region shares qualities of both nations.
This area is recognized as the borderlands between the U.S. and Mexico (image from the Border Governor's Conference)
Centuries ago, Scots moved to Northern Ireland after the English conquered it. The question of Northern Ireland, a borderland, was never quite settled. Similarly, Albanians moved to now-independent Kosovo, where tensions remain high. The world is filled with borderlands where political and cultural borders don’t coincide and where one group wants to change the political border that another group sees as sacred.
Migration to the United States is a normal process. Migration into the borderlands from Mexico is not. The land was seized from Mexico by force, territory now experiencing a massive national movement — legal and illegal — changing the cultural character of the region. It should come as no surprise that this is destabilizing the region, as instability naturally flows from such forces. (Friedman)
We may have thought that this kind of thing happened to other countries, but not so. We’ve been fortunate not to experience much of this during the past hundred years. That fortune has led to collective ignorance about a natural socio-cultural process.
This isn’t meant to justify some partisan political opinion regarding Mexican immigration. Both the U.S. and Mexico gain a great deal from formal (and informal) immigration. The U.S. acquires cheap labor and Mexico gains much-needed remittances. Those are just two reasons.
This is relevant because we interpret this as a domestic issue when it probably isn’t. In a bit of undisguised opinion, George Friedman concludes the article with this:
The problem as I see it is that the immigration issue is being treated as an internal debate among Americans when it is really about reaching an understanding with Mexico. Immigration has been treated as a subnational issue involving individuals. It is in fact a geopolitical issue between two nation-states. Over the past decades, Washington has tried to avoid turning immigration into an international matter, portraying it rather as an American law enforcement issue. In my view, it cannot be contained in that box any longer. (Friedman, emphasis mine)
This is worth noting because we’re falling over ourselves to portray this with the usual cliché, argumentative methods. We Americans inject our political baises into everything we discuss. But bumper-sticker wisdom isn’t going to help us here any more than it does anywhere else.
Portions of the report entitled “Arizona, Borderlands and U.S.-Mexican Relations” is republished with permission of StratFor.
