Imagine that

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

                 Imagine - John Lennon, 1971

 

It was brought to my attention last week that perhaps the tragedy of Renee Good's murder in Minneapolis, MN, by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent could have been avoided if only there hadn't been that thoughtless open borders policy under the Biden Administration.

I don't know. Open borders may or may not have been the case. Or at least a contributing factor.

Me in 1973 - a long-haired hippie.

 What I do know is that the issue of immigration has been problematic for every presidential administration dating back to Eisenhower – and probably longer. Eisenhower had his own deportation initiative horrendously stamped "Operation Wetback." About 250,000 people were "returned" to Mexico under the program.

Which got me to thinking. Back in my college days – back in the early 1970s – I pretty much embraced the idealism propelling the hippie movement of love and peace. Most of my thinking at the time was generated by the war in Vietnam, which was consuming the lives of America's youth at a prodigious cost.

I think it was around this time when I began thinking that if we lived in a truly righteous world there would be no countries. If there were no countries, perhaps there would be no wars. 

Like I said, idealistic. That was never going to happen. War, I think, is forever in our DNA.

Then "Star Trek" came out in the mid 1960s as a by-product of the hippie movement, showing us that Earthlings had solved their petty prejudices by the 23rd century. When former Beatle John Lennon imagined no countries in 1971, I thought I had found a fellow traveler.

No countries. It's still an intriguing concept. Why can't people move across the planet without restriction? Who's bright idea was borders anyway? If you're a believer, do you think borders is what God had in mind for us?

But as humans, we are separated by differences in languages, in cultures, in politics. I suppose those barriers are in our DNA, too.

But the war against immigration fluctuates over time. In some eras, it's almost invisible. In other eras, it's a political flash point. Most countries (countries!) have problems with immigration, but in the United States, over the course of the past 250 years, our white Anglo-Saxon forebears have shown discrimination against the Irish, Germans, Italians, Chinese (or Asians in general), Catholics, Jews and people with brown or black skin. Prove me wrong. Our history as a nation of immigrants is littered with this travesty.

In recent years, the demographics of this country are palpably shifting. There will be more brown-skinned people within our borders (borders!) than Whites. Right now, it's the policy of the current administration to remove (deport) non-Whites, both documented and undocumented.

It's a horrible policy that's hurting the country.

There's a bitter irony here. Undocumented immigrants legally pay billions of dollars in taxes (an estimated $96.7 billion in 2022, including $34 billion in social security), yet are ineligible for social security or Medicare benefits themselves. Don't forget to say thank you.

Deporting undocumented immigrants seems self-defeating to the economy to which they contribute as a whole.

And guess what? Undocumented immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born citizens. This flies in the face of the Trump administration, which preys on white fear that immigrants are rapists and criminals (the president himself is a convicted felon). Trump's promoting of immigrants as undesirables is more of a way to control the general population than it is to control the flow of immigration.

It's stupid policy.

Instead of funding ICE with a budget greater than most of the world's armies ($37 billion), perhaps we should be finding ways to better assist those seeking entry into the U.S., including those seeking asylum from their own oppressive governments.

Imagine that.