This is what a global existential crisis looks like. Migrants
are fleeing war and environmental catastrophe, arriving at the borders of our
relatively rich and stable democracies. At the same time, the average citizen finds
the world more expensive, insecure, and unfulfilling than any time in living
memory. We are all questioning the fundamentals of the existing order, and one
way or another, our geopolitical reality urgently demands a moral response from
all of us. We must find a positive alternative or else face large-scale unrest,
even social collapse or annihilation.
The positive alternative must take a hard look at immigration. What happens when thousands a week float across the
Mediterranean arriving half-drowned at your country’s coastline? What happens
when another thin and hungry family is caught in the high beams of a border
patrol’s Suburban somewhere in the Sonoran desert? Do we take them in and
assure that they have the same rights and responsibilities as any other
resident of our countries? Do we send them home? Do we hand them over to the
hostile vagaries of the bureaucracy? These are questions that demand answers;
as individuals and as nations we will answer them differently, but we must have
an answer. Too much of the world seems to be ceding that response to our worst
instincts.
There is a point at which every society perceives threats
from outsiders. In Japan, it is next to impossible to become a full citizen if
you are not Japanese by blood. Relatively few immigrants are admitted, much
less refugees. In Hungary, a massively popular leader is deporting anyone who
does not have official standing with the authorities. The issue of migrants has
France and Germany at the precipice of reactionary rule, and here in America,
our own government has forcefully separated families and used that and other
threats to intimidate the helpless away from our shores. It is clear that many,
perhaps most highly industrialized countries have shown strong and perhaps
dangerous reactions to today’s circumstances.
War and famine over a broad stretch of Africa and the Middle
East has sent millions in search of refuge. Drugs and violence in Central
America have made life impossible for many there. Growing storms ravage islands
and coastlines. In looking at these catastrophes on people’s lives, we must
never absolve ourselves of responsibility, both historical and ethical. We must
come to understand and admit that our societies have played enormous, sometimes
central roles in these events. We must also accept that some portion of our
nations’ wealth should help to ameliorate these concerns. But first, we must
save our democracies from fascism, or else the whole world will go with us.
Immigration alone does not drive today's rage. There is a pervasive sense that our societies no longer offer many of us a good, just life. For all its problems, why does America offer a unique response to this dilemma of
mass migration and civic insecurity?
First, a far greater share of the American public is more
comfortable with immigration and immigrants than in many other liberal
democracies. After all, we are a nation of immigrants.
Second, we are unique in our cultural and social energy. Our
diversity has long demanded a strong legal and a cultural order, and our gains
in civil rights have always been hard-won, at great loss. We have a deep appreciation for the power of communities. For all our failures,
America has an unusual way of spontaneously organizing ourselves in responding
both to threat and opportunity. This is precisely what we are doing in response
the sorry state of our governance.
Last, while our current state of politics resonates strongly
with the European far right, unlike Europe, we have a popular alternative lying
in wait. Perhaps this is simply because we do not already have a robust social democracy that meets our people's needs, but look at France or Germany, where the incumbent leadership only ever
offers more warmed-over tropes about the status quo. What vision does UK Labour
offer anyone other than maintaining an unhappy order? For all our shortcomings, we do not take our nation's promise for granted.
The good news is that the American alternative is no longer fighting a rear
guard against the reactionary hordes. Months before our first chance to weigh
in on our government’s positions towards the world (and indeed its own people),
a new vision is coming into focus. At the risk of future ridicule, I believe it
will be this American vision that once again gives our cousins across the globe
an answer to the insular, atavistic, and downright dangerous world view that has
become endemic in all our nations.
For me, a first step is
that it must offer a clear and final answer to our problems with managing
immigration. Our nation will always be susceptible to demagogues, but much of
their power can be diminished by simply addressing the fears they exploit head-on.
The demagogue's border wall does nothing to someone who just chooses to stay
here after their visa expires. Forced deportation is never humane, but neither is our dependence on the expansive black market for undocumented labor. People deserve to be paid a just wage, and be offered all the protections of the law. All this means that we need to have a universal and mandatory system
for verifying individuals’ eligibility to work in our country, and it needs
vigorous enforcement. At
the same time, we must accept that most of the people who are here now are here
to stay, and we must come to terms with some just status for those
people. In the end, we can and must balance the concerns of our vast immigrant
communities and the public conscience with those who feel threatened by changes
to their way of life. The American consensus position on immigration is far closer
to these answers than anywhere else. We must be an example for how to manage and adapt to a globalizing world.
Second, if we are to take our role as a world leader
seriously, America must devote real resources to foreign aid and investment. We
should dedicate large sums to rebuilding the infrastructures, economies, and
societies to our south, in both hemispheres. Imagine the good will and positive
outcomes if we mandated that one percent of our present-day defense budget, or about
$6 billion should be allocated towards aid, loans, technical assistance, and
diplomacy.
Imagine what could happen at five percent, or $30 billion a
year. We could truly address our ethical and historical responsibilities
towards the world’s most helpless; an alternative to Islamist rhetoric or the
cartels. A better truth than Russian propagandists can concoct, and a fairer deal
than Chinese investors will offer.
Last, the American vision must look inwards. We need a full
reckoning of why so many of us feel that our institutions are failing us, that
opportunity is becoming ever-scarcer, and that modern life leaves so many of us
severely wanting. Sacred cows will go to slaughter. Unions and shareholders alike
will need to own their part in this.
It will take a wholesale rework of our education system to assure
that someone emerging from its conclusions has the basic skills to succeed. It requires
an overhaul of our health care and social services delivery systems to assure
that everyone receives the care they need, and that we can most certainly
afford. A new way of thinking about how labor and capital interact that assures
reward for honest work. A renewed push towards service, both civic and military
for our own cultural cohesion. A painful but compassionate look at our own
society’s uglier tendencies met by a pride at our national strength and accomplishments.
I leave the specifics of this American vision intentionally
vague. Visions are best interpreted and not simply revealed. They evolve to the
liking of their interpreters, and different regions both here and abroad will have different priorities. A vision's true value is in motivating people, both in the
streets and at the ballot box.
I also leave this largely free from partisan terminology because our present problems will not be resolved without some reasonable broad-based consensus. The greater point is that a new global paradigm is needed. I
believe that the present American will is closer to identifying one than anyone
else. I believe that our collective will can show the world a way out, if only
as an uncertain ideal. Come November, and come 2020, I just hope that our
democracy represents that will, if only for the sake of all of us.
