Opinion
Pet paranoia and anti-immigrant rants reveal economic myopia
Summary
- Trump has fanned the fake spectre of American cats and dogs becoming meals for immigrants. Such political talk should make us all uneasy. Openness to incomers aids prosperity, as America’s own emergence shows and we’re seeing within India too.
There are lies, damned lies and pet-eating immigrants. In the first and probably last debate between US presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, the former president repeatedly raised alarm over immigrants. In his view, they are swarming across the southern border in their millions, looking to harm Americans, steal their jobs, feast on state benefits, swamp cities and lay waste to America.
Also read: US news: Donald Trump campaign accuses Ohio immigrants of ‘abducting and eating pets’
Never mind that the US has rising wages and record low rates of joblessness. This has been the core theme of Trump’s campaign. And to drive home the cultural gulf between incomers and Great Againers, as his fan base may be called, Trump used the stage to air a canard, popular on right-wing social media, that immigrants were caught eating the pet dogs and cats of folks in Springfield, Ohio. The moderator, thankfully, called it out.
At one level, this is an example of Trump’s unique brand of “weird" claims. At another, it articulates and seeks to exploit collective anxieties that settled communities have about new groups that move in. And this is an angst that goes beyond divisive rants in US politics.
The recent gains that the anti-immigrant Alternative for Deutschland made in German provincial elections, the rise of the far-right National Rally in France in European Parliament polls and the growing appeal in Britain of Reform UK, a party that wants drawbridges drawn high, all point to migration rising as a potent political issue in many parts of the world.
Academics who study relocation say that the proportion of the global population that lives in a country other than that of their birth has barely budged from 3% of the total over the past century. They also hold that the extent of internal migration within countries is far greater.
Averages can mislead. In the US, the foreign-born population stood at 13.9% in 2022. That figure is 30% and 23% for more welcoming countries like Australia and Canada.
Also read: Donald Trump proposes ‘automatic Green Cards’ for Indian graduates amid US Election bid: ‘Give us ability to import…’
Europe was the destination for waves of refugees from West Asia and North Africa after the Arab Spring in the wake of America’s second invasion of Iraq, rise of the Islamic State and its offshoots, ouster of Libyan strongman Gaddafi and the eruption of civil wars in Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan.
While it is true that Europe’s stagnant or dwindling populations need immigrants to keep their economies humming, the resultant departure from cultural homogeneity—variously interpreted as Islamization, an assault on Christendom, a cause of crime and a threat to modern social values—and the insecurities it spawns often trump economic rationality. The diversity of minds that led the West’s own emergence, it seems, is mostly forgotten.
In India, 28% of people live away from their place of birth. Of them, 12% are inter-state migrants, according to Census data. The Economic Survey 2017-18 estimated a higher proportion of migrants. Urbanization drives up numbers. Hindi, Oriya and Bengali speakers move to southern and western states, whose natives find their ways and customs alien even when they share a religion.
Also read: US news: Donald Trump campaign accuses Ohio immigrants of ‘abducting and eating pets’
Migration also tends to push up the cost of housing. Proactive policy must zone states for new towns, step up town planning, open rental markets wider and provide public housing. The politics of tolerance and acceptance, rather than of othering and division, is vital for harmony. In time, migration will create prosperity, but we must not let scare-mongers mislead electorates and hobble our quest for human—and national—solidarity.
