FAYETTEVILLE -- Understanding immigration and dealing humanely with a huge number of people on the move around the world requires a different, wider perspective, several University of Arkansas panelists said Tuesday.
Several professors and a graduate student, along with an audience of more than 100 others, took on the immigration issue during an evening forum at Old Main. The discussion was essentially a big dose of context of how immigration intertwines with history, foreign policy, economics and other forces, context the group said is often missing in the debate over newcomers of all kinds.
Immigrants contribute to economies here and in their home countries alike, some of the experts said. Migrants around the world are often trying to escape problems the United States helped cause. Trying to shut them out or ignore the causes of their movement can make the problem worse everywhere, but facing those root causes can help.
"It's not just a North American issue, it's not just a European issue," said Uche Ofodile, a law professor who specializes in international law and originally hails from Nigeria in western Africa. "It's important that states come together to deal with it in a comprehensive way."
A staggering number of people are migrating for one reason or another. Ofodile said more than 250 million people last year were living in countries they weren't born in. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees counts more than 20 million refugees fleeing war and persecution in Syria, Afghanistan, Myanmar and elsewhere. That doesn't include people escaping other problems, such as gang violence or environmental damage.
The U.S. government, its corporations and its people in general often have a hand in those issues, said Mohja Kahf, a professor of comparative literature and member of an activist group called the Syrian Nonviolence Movement. She pointed to Iraq, where violence from groups such as the Islamic State continues 15 years after the U.S. invaded.
"American and European imperialism changed the world, and the changes are coming to roost," Kahf said. She mocked the reluctance to accept refugees from the Middle East after meddling there, saying, "That's rich."
U.S. corporations such as oil companies can also cause similar trouble in some places, including Nigeria, Ofodile said. Leaders in such countries have made mistakes or hurt their people on their own as well, she added.
Immigration remains a political flash point in this country, playing a major role in the successful campaign of President Donald Trump. Trump, a Republican, has cast immigrants from Latin America as often criminal, ramped up arrests of those present without authorization and sharply reduced refugee admissions citing safety concerns.
Juan Jose Bustamante, an assistant professor of sociology and Latino studies, told the forum the push for arrests at the local level can warp law enforcement in a racialized way, where Hispanic people are presumed criminal and live in fear. He's studied the problem in Northwest Arkansas and in Alabama.
The Republican Party in general has called for tighter border security but has been split on the topic of what to do with people who were brought into the country illegally as children with their families. Attempts in Congress to continue or change the federal program that provides temporary work permits for many of those immigrants haven't been successful.
"We are in a limbo right now," said panelist Alix Montoya-Beltran, a graduate student in biology.
U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Dardanelle, last year proposed cutting yearly legal immigration roughly in half. He argues immigrants hurt less-educated citizens by filling jobs they might otherwise take, though many economists disagree.
Ofodile said immigrants spend hundreds of billions of dollars here and around the world, including a large chunk of money they send back to their home countries. The amount sent back is several times as much as all countries spend on development aid, and without it, there would only be more migrants looking for better lives, she said.
The U.S. and the rest of the world should instead work together, Ofodile and other panelists said. They could make sure international companies don't leave ecological devastation in their wake, for instance, or make international trade more fair so poorer countries can build up their own economies instead of being exploited. Kahf urged the audience to see humanity globally rather than by citizenship.
"What if instead we all thought in terms of planet-ship?" Kahf said.
NW News on 03/28/2018