“Get your facts first, and then you can distort ’em as much as you please.” —Mark Twain
“You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are,” said US President Trump of some undocumented migrants last year. “These aren’t people. These are animals”.1
When the most powerful head of state in the world tells us that people—any people— are not people, we’re being invited to an Orwellian world. In it, anything goes—well, almost—provided the victims are powerless enough, as the undocumented certainly are.
What Trump said is an obvious untruth and crystal-clear propaganda dehumanizing migrants. Inasmuch as propaganda precedes crime, we better sit up and take notice. Besides, these are not mere words. The Trump administration is actively persecuting migrants—including children—seeking asylum and the American undocumented. And it all comes within a general context of painting some people as “Them,” including Latin Americans, Muslims, African Americans and socialists. In a diverse and multicultural but powerful and inequitable society that the United States is, this is an immoral and dangerously divisive strategy. Anybody who cares about the country should feel concerned.
Here, we address some of this propaganda against migrants in particular and “Them” in general: What are some of the excuses being offered? How do we tell what is baloney? Why are we hearing it? Why now? And what is the overall operating principle?
Demeaning terms used for undocumented migrants often have a legal veneer. These include “illegal migrants,” “illegal aliens,” and “illegals.” They are used not only by advocates against migration but, sadly, often also by mainstream media. In using these terms, name-callers imply they care about legality. But do they?
We can test this by honestly addressing a simple question: What happens when some of the highest laws are broken by us—indeed, when we ourselves are illegal migrants, and much worse?
As we see below, the US- and UK-led war on Iraq in 2003 was about as illegal as it gets. Our illegal migration into Iraq was a key element in it. And yet, it elicits little commentary from apparent advocates against migration.
Illegality and “Illegal Migration”: The 2003 War on Iraq
According to the Nuremberg Tribunal, which tried Nazi leaders for war crimes after World War II, “planning and waging” a war of aggression (i.e., “a war in violation of international treaties”) was a charge “of the utmost gravity” because:
“War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
This “accumulated evil” included the murder of civilians, rapes, torture, and other war crimes that are now relevant to the war on Iraq. Crucially, those ultimately responsible for this evil were the leaders who had initiated the war.
With that as a basis, one of the major aims of the Charter of the United Nations (UN) was “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”3 To this end, the Charter illegalized war itself, with only two exceptions. First, if the war was sanctioned by the UN Security Council. The war on Iraq was not. As Michael Mandel, late professor of international law at Canada’s York University, pointed out in his excellent study of the topic, the Iraq war was “virtually certified as illegal by an [unspinnable] defeat at the United Nations Security Council.”4
Second, war is allowed as part of a state’s “inherent right of self-defence,” which requires an ongoing or provably imminent “armed attack” such that the Security Council has had no time to intervene, and only until such a time. Mandel explained how, on March 17, 2003—just before going to war—President George W. Bush did not even claim to have a case for US self-defence. On the contrary, he pointed out—correctly—that the US did not have a valid claim to self-defence. But he said the US would go to war anyways. That is, illegally.
The American linguist Noam Chomsky correctly identified this as the Bush doctrine of “preventive war” (couched in “pre-emptive” terms by the US officially, for propaganda reasons).5 Imagine arbitrary states waging wars against arbitrary countries for arbitrary reasons that they claim “could” prevent “the choice of the moment of deadly conflict” by that country at some arbitrary time in the future, just trust the word of those holding the reins of power. It’s a recipe for disaster. Which is why it’s illegal. The US would never allow other countries such a ‘right’ against itself, and for good reason. For precisely the same reason, however, the US has no such right either. Might makes right is not a principle of international law; universality is one.
The “accumulated evil of the whole” in this case included 1 million people getting killed directly or indirectly due to the war on Iraq over 12 years, according to a 2015 study by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. A further 220,000 people were killed in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan as part of the larger so-called “war on terror” over the same period. The number of people killed in these three wars thus totaled 1.3 million. And this is a conservative estimate; the number could be as high as 2 million.6
Even though powerful western countries had initiated the illegal Iraq war, develop- ing countries took care of most of the refugees. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), about 4 million Iraqis were displaced in 2007; only 5% of these were refugees outside the Middle East.7
In 2015, developing countries hosted 86% of refugees worldwide, half of whom were children.8 In comparison with Lebanon, which had 18 refugees per 100 inhabitants, the figures for Sweden and Malta—the largest hosts relative to population size in Europe— were an order of magnitude lower (1.7 refugees per 100 inhabitants); and those for the UK and US were about two orders of magnitude lower (approximately 0.2 and 0.09 refugees per 100 inhabitants, respectively). And yet, Europe claimed it was facing a “refugee crisis” in 2015. And now the US administration—quite apart from its huge power footprint on the planet—is putting up pretence to the same effect.
Leaders who initiated the illegal Iraq war got neither charged, nor apprehended, much less brought to trial, to talk nothing of getting convicted and put behind bars—all for the “supreme” crime on the books. Nor do they even get called “supreme illegals.”
Thus, the operating principle is not a legal principle at all, but a power principle. When we hold a stick and migrate to them, it’s all good; when they try to avoid a stick and migrate to us, it’s all bad by default, with rare exceptions. If anything, we call migrants and asylum-seekers “illegals” in our stead. It’s cheap farce at best, with emphasis on cheap. The elephant in the room is hardly ever noticed.
The 1946 Nuremberg Tribunal is also relevant in another respect. One of the top Nazis to be tried for war crimes by the Tribunal was Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, Hitler’s chosen successor head of state. A charge laid out against him was for waging unrestricted submarine warfare. The prosecution’s case went awry, however, after the defence presented honest testimony by American Admiral Chester Nimitz that the US had done the same from day one of its entry in the war. Similarly, the British Admiralty had also given order in 1940 to sink “all vessels” in the strait between Norway, Sweden and Denmark “at sight.” The only trouble for the defence was that the crimes of the Allied victors could not be called by their real name. In response, Doenitz’s defence attorney Otto Kranzbuehler drew a logical conclusion: Since the good guys commited no crimes, the crimes under discussion were not crimes. Doenitz was exonerated on this count.
The definition of crime was changed for both sides when war criminals were on trial, including some of the greatest murderers and tormenters of refugees and asylum-seekers. This is a defective standard of justice but a standard nonetheless. It’s then a modest proposal indeed that we extend the standard also to refugees themselves: Since crossing state borders illegaly was in practice not punishable for the US and UK even when they were engaged in the “supreme international crime,” how could it be so for refugees fleeing war, violence and misery? It’s a humbling thought indeed what elephants in the room we have to studiously ignore for the benefit of those in power.
And here’s the crux: Even if we refuse to extend this minimal standard to them, crossing borders without authorization is not punishable for refugees because the law expressly forbids it to be so. You see, we did learn something from history.
“The Supreme Law of the Land” on the Rights of Refugees
In response to the postwar refugee crisis in Europe, we have a treaty from 1951 called the Refugee Convention. Its Artcle 31 states:
“The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who […] enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence.”
Why so? Because crossing a border without authorization is a minor immigration infraction—protecting refugees takes precedence.
The US Constitution puts it quite nicely that international treaties (like the Conven- tion and the UN Charter) are “the supreme Law of the Land” (Article VI).10 All that the US government needs to do then is to uphold its own Constitution.
Importantly, the Convention also stipulates that states provide refugees “due pro- cess.” The intense propaganda against refugees in many parts of the world is obviously undermining this legal requirement. As Marjorie Cohn, professor of law at Thomas Jef- ferson School of Law points out, the Trump administration is pushing through a variety of executive measures that blatantly violate the law in a bid to criminalize asylum-seekers.11
Extraordinary propaganda and persecution oblige humanity to provide extraordinary protection to asylum-seekers and refugees. An obvious way to do that would be for countries to “not impose penalties on account of their illegal entry or presence” until we can guarantee them the due process we owe them. In providing such sanctuary, many churches, cities and states in the US are taking the law and its moral basis seriously even as the federal government is openly flouting it.
Note also that the Convention sets some minimum standards for the protection of refugees; it sets no limits on our humanity. Following its invasion and occupation by Russia in 1956, 200,000 people fled Hungary, mostly to Austria. They were considered “prima facie refugees” and promptly resettled in 37 countries. Fortunately for them, they were “worthy victims”—to borrow a Herman-and-Chomsky phrase12—since they were persecuted by an official enemy. In contrast, present-day asylum-seekers from Honduras and El Salvador are “unworthy victims.” Indeed, to the powerful, all victims are unworthy by default, unless they can somehow prove their worth to the masters. Incidentally, Article 3 of the Refugee Convention forbids discrimination based on “country of origin.” But that’s merely the supreme law of the land. Power trumps that.
This raises an important question: If they’re protected under the law, why are asylum-seekers—including children—being criminalized by the US and other countries? What is the definition of crime this time?
“Them” and “Us”
The paradox is resolved if we go by the definition of crime from an authoritarian perspective: Crime is what they do, subject to my arbitrary determination. Thus, not only can the powerful do no wrong, but the powerless can potentially do nothing right. They can be wrong even if all they’re doing is fleeing for their lives. In essence, their crime is that they are who they are; that they are “Them.” What they do or don’t is irrelevant, as is also the letter, spirit and the moral basis of the law.
Asylum-seekers are powerless. And so it just follows that it’s a crime that, in walking a thousand miles—children in arms—to our borders and seeking our help, they displayed the audacity of agency. They have simply not understood that in the theater of “Our” world, they have a role to play. And that is to suffer excesses in silence: Away from us and our metropolitan borders, ideally as if in outer space.
State callousness in refugee policy has an ugly history. Much of the world turned a blind eye to the plight of Jewish and other refugees before and during World War II. The US refused refuge to Anne Frank and her family, for instance.13 Had she and others been able to come to the US undocumented, it would not have changed who they were. America and other countries would have been the richer thanks to their presence. People missing documents and getting mistreated by us as a result is a commentary on us rather than them; it tells us who we are.
Criminalizing “Them” for being who they are is nothing new. It’s reminiscent of how black life itself was criminalized following the formal abolition of slavery in the US.14 Freed African Americans found themselves being made slaves again in a nominally free society— the best of both worlds to those holding the whip over them. Similarly, aboriginal children were often forcibly separated from their parents and kept in “residential schools” in horrible conditions in the US and Canada.15 In “Our” world, that’s simply where “They” belonged.
Neoliberal economic policies have been making the rich richer and the poor poorer at home and abroad for decades. In times like these, masters especially fear the general population’s capacity to reason. Hence the strong incentive to flooding it with fear- and hate-mongering targeting scapegoats amongst itself: the fellow-dispossessed having a convenient superficial difference or other. Incidentally, the invitation to irrationality comes as humanity faces a grave risk of catastrophic climate change with or without a global nuclear Holocaust. But there we are, being told what matters instead is our skin color.
And so US President Trump has started his re-election bid for the 2020 elections with divisive rhetoric and action targeting some of the most vulnerable in the Americas on both sides of the US border. Included here are Americans who are missing a document that the state could provide them with easily, if it cared. The Reagan administration regularized the status of over 2 million Americans as part of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. It can be done again. And, indeed, it should. Rather, the problem lies elsewhere. In the words of Chomsky: “There will have to be a new dragon to slay, because if the Administration lets domestic issues prevail, it is in deep trouble.” The dragon at home and abroad is now being combined into a single “Them.” But the dragon might yet realize it’s larger still. Whether a US President likes it or not, our species originated in Africa—and so, we are all Africans at heart, cousins to Haitians, and descendants of migrants.
It’s been feared that the establishment of a state “negates the humanity” of those excluded from it. In the exercise of this negation, however, we negate ours as well.
The choice, as always, is ours. There’s our shared humanity to save. Or to lose.
Notes
- [1] Julie Hirschfeld Davis. ‘Trump Calls Some Unauthorized Immigrants ‘Animals’ in Rant.’ New York Times on the Web, May 16, 2018 <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/16/us/politics/trump- undocumented-immigrants-animals.html>.
- [2] Nuremberg Tribunal Judgment, 1946. Avalon Project, Yale Law School <https://avalon.law.yale. edu/imt/judnazi.asp> (emphasis added).
- [3] Charter of the United Nations <https://www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/un-charter-full- text/>.
- [4] Michael Mandel. How America Gets Away With Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes Against Humanity. London and Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2004. pp. 19-21.
- [5] Noam Chomsky and V.K. Ramachandran. ‘Iraq as Trial Run.’ Frontline India 20 (7), March 29– April 11, 2003 <https://frontline.thehindu.com/static/html/fl2007/stories/20030411005701000. htm>.
- [6] Body Count: Casualty Figures after 10 Years of the “War on Terror”. Iraq Afghanistan Pakistan. International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War; Physicians for Social Responsibility; Physicians for Global Survival. Washington DC, Berlin, Ottawa, March 2015 <https://www.ippnw.de/commonFiles/pdfs/Frieden/Body Count first international edition 2015 final.pdf>.
- [7] Statistics on Displaced Iraqis around the World. Global overview. United Nations High Commis- sioner for Refugees, 2007 <https://www.unhcr.org/461f7cb92.pdf>.
- [8] Global Trends: Forced displacement in 2015. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2015 <https://www.unhcr.org/statistics/unhcrstats/576408cd7/unhcr-global-trends- 2015.html>.
- [9] Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. United Nations High Commis- sioner for Refugees, Geneva, Switzerland <https://www.unhcr.org/protection/basic/3b66c2aa10/ convention-protocol-relating-status-refugees.html> (emphasis added).
- [10] U.S. Constitution. Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute <https://www.law.cornell.edu/ constitution> (emphasis added).
- [11] Marjorie Cohn. ‘Left Unchecked, Trump Will Obliterate Right to Asylum.’ Consortium News, July 23, 2019 <https://consortiumnews.com/2019/07/23/left-unchecked-trump-will-obliterate- right-to-asylum/>.
- [12] Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. Worthy and Unworthy Victims (Chapter 2). In Manu- facturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon, 2002, pp. 37–86.
- [13] Robert Fisk. ‘America once turned its back on Anne Frank, just as Donald Trump rejects Muslim refugees today.’ London Independent, November 24, 2016 <https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/ donald-trump-refugees-anne-frank-turned-its-back-a7436241.html>.
- [14] Douglas A. Blackmon. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. New York: Anchor Books, 2008 <http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/>.
- [15] Ward Churchill. Kill the Indian, Save the Man: The Genocidal Impact of American Indian Residential Schools. San Francisco, CA: City Lights, 2005.
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