Context:
• The article critically examines global immigration politics by linking colonial history, racial domination, and modern exclusionary nationalism—especially in the U.S.—to highlight how migration debates continue to be shaped by past injustices.
Key Highlights:
- Colonial Roots of Migration and Exclusion
- Columbus’s arrival set off centuries of migration through conquest, which today stands inverted as nations turn to restrictive immigration policies.
- European expansion in the Americas and Africa, and apartheid in South Africa, show that migration historically occurred through displacement and domination.
- Modern Xenophobia & U.S. Immigration Politics
- The Trump administration represents an aggressive phase of exclusion with measures like the border wall, family separations, and the Muslim ban.
- These policies frame immigration as a pathological threat, reinforcing xenophobia.
- Need for a Historically Conscious Policy Approach
- Future immigration frameworks must confront legacies of empire, capitalism, and racial domination to safeguard the human aspiration for safety, dignity, and mobility.
Significance
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Historical amnesia is evident in the U.S.—for example, the military’s use of “Geronimo” as a code name for Osama bin Laden erases the deeper resistance history of the Apache leader, reducing complex struggles to stereotypes.
• The Columbus myth has served as an ideological tool, legitimizing colonial expansion, white supremacy, and racial capitalism, and continues to shape narratives that justify present-day exclusion.
• Exclusionary nationalism during the Trump era reflects a contradiction: the U.S. was built on migration and colonization, yet paints today’s migrants as security threats and economic burdens.
• Addressing immigration demands recognition of the historical interplay of race, power, and institutional violence, moving toward justice, accountability, and ethical policymaking.
• The notion of the “discovery” of America masks the genocide and cultural destruction that accompanied European colonization, urging a revisionist, truthful re-examination.
• Current hostility toward migrants in the Global North echoes historical conquest patterns, ignoring the role these nations played in creating global displacement through wars, extraction, and imperial interventions.