The menace that has triggered this show of force is an unarmed group of migrants—at least half of whom are women and children—several hundred miles away. Most are attempting to flee violence and escape poverty in Central America; a smaller subset are people who have been previously deported from the U.S., and want to return to their families in America. Such migrant caravans aren’t new: In the past, activists from Pueblo Sin Fronteras, a group that has been providing humanitarian aide and legal help to migrants for 15 years, have assembled these groups in order to ensure safer passage to the U.S. and draw attention to the conditions they face in their home countries.[...]
Historians trace the origins of today’s refugee crisis from Central America to the Cold War policies of President Ronald Reagan. The rhetoric has parallels too. In 1983, Reagan warned Americans that if they rejected his plan to send military and economic aid to Central America, “a tidal wave of refugees” would come crashing onto the borders. “This time they’ll be ‘feet people’ and not ‘boat people’ —swarming into our country,” he said at the time. More recently, Barack Obama and David Cameron have also used words like “waves” and “swarms” to suggest vast numbers of outsiders coming ashore, overwhelming American towns and cities. [...]
In an interview with Public Radio International, Professor Gregory Lee at the University of Lyon called this narrative of a nation being consumed by refugees the “inundation” metaphor. His own research explores its usage in the context of immigration restrictions on Asians in the late 19th and early 20th century. The passage of these laws required the portrayal of Asians as the unassimilable other—a group that would drain American society and pose existential threats to its culture. Hence, the racist, dehumanizing terms “yellow peril” and “Asiatic horde.” Fast forward to post-9/11 America, and the same tropes persist for Muslim and Arabs living in the U.S.[...]
When it comes to migration, Americans across the political isle share misconceptions. Simply correcting them will not be enough. “What those who seek to oppose Trump’s migration policies need is a compelling narrative of their own,” Greenhill writes in Foreign Affairs, “one that takes voter concerns seriously, defining problems responsibly and offering comprehensible and attainable solutions.“
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