Immigrant Song

So now you better stop and rebuild all your lands

“Olé… é…é! Olé….é…é!” (Stolen from Phisto Sobaani)

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In our latest Eurabiamania podcast, we discussed mass deportations and why they are unlikely to happen. This has spawned some intelligent exchanges in the comments section, which is a rare thing indeed. Because I am indolent by nature, it also gave me an excuse to pump out an article rather than replying to each individual.

Our first comment came from William Hunter Duncan:

Allright, you guys are part of the 0.01% of Americans talking about ethnic cleansing. Maybe less. Hispanic/Latino culture is endemic to the United States, literally almost no one, maybe 0.001% support ethnic cleansing. There are probably more black people who want to get rid of all white people, than white people who want to get rid of all brown immigrants and adjacent - which is to say hardly anyone wants any of that.

Also, the last four years, people from 170 countries crossed the border illegally. There are cartel and sleeper terrorist cells, sex traffickers, not to mention a lot of Africans, Pakistanis, Chinese etc who have no intention of picking romaine. You all are acting like it is only central and south Americans. 70% of Americans are all about targeting most of the military aged males that crossed the border the last four years, regardless where they are from.

WHD makes a very important point when he talks about sex traffickers and cartels. Unfortunately, when Americans hear “Not All X are Like That” on the Internet, they more often than not come to the conclusion that either “No X are Like That” or “All X are Like That.” Undocumented immigrants are either terrorists with face tattoos or saintly brown people who are being cruelly abused by racist fascist Trumptards. And anybody who seeks the middle ground more often than not just piss off both sides.

But unfortunately in this case the middle ground is where the truth lies. There are certainly some bad hombres among our undocumented immigrants and refugees. There are also many honest, hard-working people who came here looking for a better life. Some are fleeing persecution and violence, while others are fleeing grinding poverty. Any serious plan for dealing with this issue must take both groups into account.

Most Americans, certainly most MAGA supporters, would be horrified at the idea of mass graves and concentration camps. They want the undocumented immigrants to go back home, sure. But outside a few dark corners of the Internet, nobody is talking about killing innocent brown folks. And of those who are talking about it, most are no more sincere than the angry dangerhairs screaming “trans women are women.” As I noted in my last article, the Internet favors loud, performative shrieking over rational debate about complex issues.

That being said, there are at present around 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country. We also welcome approximately 100,000 refugees each year, for an estimated total of 3.5 million rehomed since 1975. Kicking out all the military-age males would result in a lot of family separations and a fair bit of violence. So while most of the “send ‘em back” camp don’t want bloodshed, they are supporting a course of action that will inevitably lead to armed conflict.

If you start uprooting people from their homes and sending them back to a place which they left despite considerable expense and risk, you’re going to get some pushback. If you intend to do that to millions of people, you will inevitably wind up with a lot of casualties on both sides. And as the International Committee of the Red Cross describes it:

Ethnic cleansing is a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.

As my cohost Ahnaf Ibn-Qais noted in his reply:

A case can be made for criminals and whatnot to be deported. But what we were touching upon was not just that aspect, but rather the larger aspect of many people going ‘tens of millions of people need to be forcibly moved.’

The emphasis I made was about perception

The perception of such a policy would mean that it would be viewed as an ethnic cleansing operation. And that’s where the society would rapidly unravel to ethnic conflict & civil strife.

Something doesn’t have to be true or false for it to rapidly change the kinetic situation on the ground… the perception simply has to be intense enough for enough people.

WHD notes in his rejoinder that:

No doubt the media will characterize it as such. As will many Dem governors and mayors, who will virtue signal while protecting [cartels.]

This is another excellent point. Many wealthy people are making large sums of money on the immigrant crisis. Farm and factory owners relying on cheap immigrant labor; politicians and police on cartel payrolls; NGOs who rely on grants and government contracts — we have many piggies who have grown fat at the immigration trough. You can expect them to fight back hard and dirty every step of the way.

With the Republicans currently on the ascendant, we can expect Democratic politicians to throw sand in their gears at every opportunity, including their deportation measures. And since many of the people who own the mainstream media also benefit from immigrant labor, we can expect to see lots of huffy articles and tear-jerking images.

Putting aside the moral questions, there are also serious logistical issues. The largest mass deportation in American history, 1954’s “Operation Wetback” sent somewhere between 300,000 and 1.3 million Mexican immigrants over the Rio Grande. The Eisenhower administration could rely on nativist xenophobia and on a cooperative Mexican government faced with a labor shortage.

While a few loud voices may make you think think otherwise, Hispanics are much less distrusted and despised today. And while Claudia Sheinbaum may be willing to cooperate with Trump on fentanyl imports and Central Americans traveling to the US through her southern border, she is unlikely to tolerate the forced repatriation of millions to or through Mexico.

Vice President-Elect JD Vance has proposed a more gradual approach. As he put it:

You start with the most hardened criminals, about 425,000 violent illegal-alien criminals, and we know where most of them are, because they’ve committed crimes. You do law enforcement. You go and get those people. You send them back where they came from. And that’s where you start…

You’ve got to deport illegal aliens. If you’re not willing to deport the people who came here illegally, especially those who came here over the last few years, then you’re not going to have a border, And it’s just basic law enforcement.

We will certainly see a spike in deportations, especially of criminal aliens. We may even see an end to mass refugee placement in small towns and communities. Those policies, and the ham-handed way they were implemented, stoked a great deal of the anti-immigrant sentiment that is currently sweeping America and Europe.

The Democrats have a vested interest in stopping Trump. But they are also aware that Democratic immigration policies played a major role in Trump’s victory. So while there may be some chest-thumping and pearl-clutching, they’re likely to cede ground when it comes to their most unpopular policies.

It’s worth noting that neither Trump, Vance, nor anybody in their circle has proposed penalizing businesses that hire undocumented immigrants. One of the best ways to discourage immigration is making it unprofitable. Hitting businesses hard in the wallet would quickly chill demand for immigrant labor.

In 2008 a massive immigration raid on a kosher meatpacking plant owned by the Rubashkin family rounded up 389 undocumented immigrants, some as young as 13. Despite reports of horrific working conditions, chief executive Sholom Rubashkin received his 27-year prison term not for human trafficking but for financial fraud. In 2017 then-President Trump commuted Rubashkin’s sentence.

Trump and Vance may talk a good game, and they might even throw their base some red meat by tightening quotas and making a few highly publicized sweeps. But if you’re expecting any substantive changes in dealing with undocumented immigrants, you’re almost certainly going to be disappointed.

Simply put, there’s too much money to be made in the exploitation of undocumented immigrants. And while it’s easy to play on nativist sentiment for or against those exploited people, it’s much more challenging to attack wealthy and powerful interests that benefit from a steady supply of cheap labor.

So what does that mean for America’s future?

Before Ahnaf and I recorded our latest episode, Aspen was our guest for a show on Aridoamerica. the land between northern and central Mexico and the southwestern United States.

Water tends to be in short supply throughout this region. Paul Kirchoff, the German anthropologist who first described the region, called it “Arid America.” The indigenous tribes that lived in this area relied on drought-tolerant plants like nopal cactus and tepary beans along with squash and maize. They also traded with tribes in green Mesoamerica (southern Mexico and Central America).

Today Americans have diverted water from the Rockies and Pacific Northwest to create sprawling cities like Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Phoenix in northern Aridoamerica. Those cities also depend on abundant cheap energy to keep buildings climate-controlled and to shuffle their residents along on great freeways. But we are running short on both energy and water.

As those resources grow increasingly scarce, we can expect those cities to fade like post-industrial Detroit. The factory farms that have bloomed in the desert will be abandoned in favor of smaller farms and communities that rely on local creeks and supplies shipped in from Mesoamerica and from local oases.

This change will begin in earnest when America has its Adrianople moment and the Global American Empire enters hospice care. As we lose the petrodollar and the wealth pumps get redirected to the winners, we will see a decline comparable to the Soviet Union’s collapse.

The fall will happen over generations. The Western Roman Empire hung on for nearly a century before Odoacer finally took Rome. There will be many after Trump who will promise to Make America Great Again, and many who will insist that there is no collapse and America has never been stronger. And while the great men pontificate, the small folk will toil and struggle and laugh and love and build communities. (Or, as

Uncouth Barbarian

likes to call them, polities).

The European people arose out of the wreckage of Rome. New languages grew out of the bastardized Latin that had served as the region’s lingua franca — a modern term inspired by one of those languages. The new cultures drew both from Roman and indigenous customs and from Christian and pre-Christian traditions. We will see new ethnicities arise from that wreckage.

The Roman Empire had Galatia, an Anatolian region settled by Celts centuries earlier. The Haitian communities in Brooklyn, Montreal, and Florida are likely to survive as endemic cultures. And in Aridoamerica, as Aspen predicts, there will be a culture that draws from Anglo, Mestizo, and Indio roots. They will speak languages influenced in equal parts by Spanish and English.

I expect that Canada will remain more European— or, if you will, more White — than the United States. Canada never had an Ellis Island era and many of its South Asian immigrants will leave as its economy and job market continues to soften. As with the rest of the Western world, Canada began importing immigrants in a desperate attempt to deal with a demographic crisis and prop up its faltering finances.

As the demographic crisis continues unabated, and as Canada’s economy takes the hit from the American Empire’s fall, there will be no incentive to to welcome immigrants and little incentive to migrate to Canada. The Canadians have abundant natural resources and enough arable farmland to feed a diminished population, so I also expect Canada to recover from the collapse faster than the US. And ultimately, I think many European-Americans who wish to preserve their ethnic heritage will wind up refugees in the Great White North.

Will there still be White folks in America? Sure, though our descendants may call them Blancos. For most post-Americans, having pure European ancestry will be about as important as having pure Aryan steppe invader genes today. When you settle a colonia you create a new culture rooted in yet distinct from the old one.

There will be people of majority European descent, and people who would be called “White” in our culture. Once upon a time Italians and Irish weren’t White but today they are. Instead of the White-Nonwhite divide we inherited from our miscegenation-fearing English founders, we’ll see the world through the Criollo-Castizo-Mestizo-Indio-Negro-Chino lens imported by randy Spaniards.

Will America still have undocumented immigrants? Documents only matter so long as you have borders and a means of enforcing them. If American demographic trends continue, we will see abandoned homes and neighborhoods across the country. This means we will see less migrant laborers coming in search of jobs. But it means we will see more migrants settling in empty areas and building new lives. And as the old borders crumble we will see new borders drawn.