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Why Bad Immigrant?
As an immigrant, no matter how good you are, you will always be bad.
In the parable of “The Useless Tree” by the ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi, a carpenter and his apprentice walk past an old oak tree that has grown to an incredible size. The apprentice asks his master why nobody will cut down this tree, to which his master replies, “That tree is useless. A boat made from it would sink, a coffin would soon rot, a tool would split, a door would ooze sap, and a beam would have termites. It's worthless timber and is of no use. That is why it has reached such a ripe old age.”
Later that night, the tree visits the carpenter in his dream and tells him, “What are you comparing me with? Are you comparing me with those useful trees? The cherry apple, the pear, the orange, the citron, the rest of those fructiferous trees and shrubs – as soon as their fruit is ripe, they are torn apart and subjected to abuse. Their big limbs are broken off, their little limbs are yanked around. Their utility makes life miserable for them, and so they don’t get to finish out the years Heaven gave them, but are cut off in mid-journey. They bring it on themselves – the pulling and tearing of the common mob. And it’s the same way with all other things.
“As for me, I’ve been trying a long time to be of no use, and though I almost died, I’ve finally got it. This is of great use to me. If I had been of some use, would I ever have grown this large? Moreover you and I are both of us things. What’s the point of this – things condemning things? You, a worthless man about to die – how do you know I’m a worthless tree?”
From the trees’ perspective, its uselessness is useful. If it were not for that, it may have been cut a long time ago. But what does a tree have do with good vs. bad immigrants?
Because as immigrants, we are often told we should be “good.”
Speaks English.
Assimilates.
High achiever.
Patriotic.
Contributes to the economy.
Unthreatening.
These are considered “good” traits. But good for who? For what?
This excerpt from an essay titled “The particular harms of the ‘good immigrant’ versus ‘bad immigrant’ construction on black immigrants in the United States” by Sophia DenUyl sheds some light on that:
The prototypical example of the “good immigrant” is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient: high-achieving, likely to contribute to the national economy, well-assimilated, patriotic, and unthreatening. Many politicians remark that Dreamers should not be punished for the decisions of their parents—the ones who dared come to this country “illegally.” However, the good/bad immigrant narrative creeps into the immigration debate in far more subtle ways than just documented versus undocumented. For example, while thousands poured into the streets to protest the Muslim ban, few are troubled by programs that surveil and spy on Muslim and other predominately immigrant communities.
Similarly, countless observers condemned Trump’s policy of separating children from their families at the southern border, but we see little to no outrage regarding policies that subject young adults to detention and deportation based on alleged gang involvement.
In essence, we are conditioned to stop caring about immigrants as soon as they pose any risk—small or large, proven or baseless, real or imagined—to our physical or fiscal security. The good/bad immigrant frame successfully reinforces a neoliberal consensus that is eager to receive new immigrants it considers “high value” and exclude those it considers “low value.” In the wake of Trump’s decision to rescind DACA, policymakers immediately sounded alarms over the loss in gross domestic product (GDP) that would result (apparently a loss of $460.3 billion from the GDP over 10 years and the loss of some 685,000 workers).
While likely true that a permanent end to DACA would mean significant damage to national economy, the sounding of these alarm bells reflected the neoliberal consensus that views immigrants as labor, rather than humans.
Similarly, scholars have illustrated the way in which neoliberal ideology serves as a “guiding strategy” for the DREAM Act, which would grant conditional permanent resident status to undocumented immigrant minors who agree to attend college or serve in the military. From a neoliberal perspective, the economic benefits of the DREAM Act can be seen as a means to “reduce potential social tensions” between U.S. citizens and undocumented minors, who would otherwise be seen as a liability (“bad immigrants”), by transforming them into an “economic engine” benefiting U.S. society (“good immigrants”). More broadly, neoliberal ideology is a substantial driver of migration to the United States and of policies seeking to regulate it. Grace Cheng offers a variation on the classic “push/pull” theory of immigration as one driven largely by neoliberalism. In the first place, the effects of neoliberal economic policies on impoverished and indebted nations effectively force people to migrate to the United States in order to survive. Once here, policies like welfare, immigration, and labor laws interlace with those neoliberal policies to “capture” migrants as cheap, highly exploitable labor. Thus, an overwhelming hidden, or at least not publicized, agenda shaping U.S. immigration policy is to create and maintain a labor force of highly exploitable workers, who are “captured” via denial of benefits and protections in order to “identify them as undeserving non-citizen criminals.” Here, the construction of the good versus the bad immigrant—the “good” immigrants being the “legal” guest workers and the “bad” immigrants being the undocumented ones—serves to drum up support for “otherwise untenable, inhumane public policy.” Moreover, by perpetuating this good/bad immigrant distinction, the United States can expand both the neoliberal economic policies that force migration and the guest worker policies that generate an exploitable workforce, while at the same time assuring the American people that it is securing the country from “criminal” immigrants and safeguarding jobs and benefits for American citizens.
But as Alina Das says in her book No Justice in the Shadows, “There is nothing inherently moral or even natural about criminalizing movement across borders. Migration is a natural phenomenon. Throughout history, the human race has survived and flourished because of migration. Restrictions on migration—forcing or barring movement—are merely human inventions, subject to human failings.”
That’s why we propose a new way forward. Where immigrants, especially those with the privilege of being “good” begin to question what that actually means. Where we speak up for those that are dehumanized, oppressed, and abused by a system that was created for this reason. Where we question the racist policies that got us here and we fight the economic systems that continue to treat us as disposable human capital.
Because being “bad” is good.
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