This Land is Our Land by Suketu Mehta

Migration. Climate Change. Colonialism. War. Mass hysteria.

They are peas of the same pod in the context of immigration.

Suketu Mehta, author of the Pulitzer-shortlisted Maximum City, writes this book out of anger and wishes he plants a seed of hope. He borrows the title from the folk song “This Land is Our Land” written by  an Okie named Woody Gurthie.

Mehta divides the book into three sections and eighteen tiny chapters that elucidate on Immigration. He touches upon: Why is immigration seen as a problem? Why are immigrants often feared? Why do people emigrate? And Why they should be welcomed?

Walking into the book, the first section is The Migrants are Coming followed by Why They’re Coming and and Why They’re Feared.

The book starts with the unabashed response of Mehta’s grandfather to an elderly suburban man who asks him why he is in London. Mehta’s grandfather says: “Because we are the creditors.[..] You took all our wealth, our diamonds. Now we have come to collect.” He further goes on to explain his experience with living in Queens and bullied for being brown. 

The biggest bully of the Queens is Donald Trump, who doesn’t understand race and grew among white supremacy. According to him, Haitians have AIDS, if Nigerians were allowed they never would go back to their huts. Immigrants have endured tough policies be it the immigration act or the cap on the visas or the hushed rules and regulations they ought to follow: travel in groups, avoid staying out late. Yet, they immigrate! It is because the big nations loot our wealth (be it in the intelligence or the man power) to create their nations and make it big and then discard the human, as if they were a banana peel.

People are not plants. Migration is a constant of the human history, Mehta says. And adds, it is not just the whites that fear immigrants. In South Africa, there is a fear of Zimbabweans; In India, it is a fear of the Bangladeshis. After the Great War, the year 2015 has seen the biggest migration (2.3 million), and refugees all over the world.

Mehta interviews tons of people. The harshest piece is at the Friendship Park where there is a wall that divides the Mexican residents and the American residents. It is worse than the terminal at the airport where family get to barely touch each other, leave alone embrace them, for the fear of passing on drugs. The cartels in Mexico have been known for using the Friendship Park smuggling drugs. To discourage immigration, United States began to separate family members—the children were sent to the detention center.

Friendship Park (image source: kbps.org)

Why do people migrate? For better lives? For better future for their children? To escape abuse from their home country? All of the above? Yes. An immigrant doesn’t move alone, his suitcases are burdened with responsibilities and he knows he is not there to enjoy the wide roads or the civic amenities but he is there to slog his ass off (pardon the language!). No wonder you see immigrants work extra shifts. They have the fear—of being deported, of crumbling their family’s hopes and dreams. The most touching chapter for me was the Ordinary Heroes. Mehta speaks of the migrants who do mundane jobs—a taxi driver, a cleaner, a factory worker..etc. If you’ve been to a foreign land, you would have seen immigrants doing all these jobs. They reveal their stories about leaving their families and hardening their core to work for them. An Indian babysitter bursts into tears on seeing the photo of her daughter she hasn’t met for years. The story of Favoui, an immigrant from Africa, in Spain will touch your heart. She runs a small shop and is supported by locals. She has crossed the strait and worked every day without a care for her health and it shows now.

Colonialism and Capitalism are the major reasons followed by War, Climate Change, Economic crisis. They looted us and now we’re here, is the most simplest answer for migrating. The French had enslaved labourers from Africa, Indochina to work during world war. And they remained there, creating their roots.  If there was no Assad or Capitalistic government in the middle east, thousands of Syrians and Libyans wouldn’t migrate to other countries. Mehta says, If there was no crisis of resources in India, south Indians wouldn’t flock to the United States (although this doesn’t seem the only reason they migrate). And, it is not just the west, in countries like Dubai and Saudi, immigrants live in such harsh conditions—passports are taken as soon as they land, wages are not provided as promised, the work conditions are terrible (timing, treatment..etc.)

The immigrants are feared for false narratives are created. Expats have fabricated stories about us in their books and diaries. The celebrated anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss writes on his book “Tristes Tropiques”

What we are ashamed of as if it were a disgrace, and regard as a kind of leprosy, is in India, the urban phenomenon reduced to its ultimate expression: the herding together in millions, whatever the condition of life maybe. Filth, chaos, promiscuity, congestion, huts, rains, dung, urine, pus, humours, secretion and running sores..

Stanford biologist, Paul Ehrlich and his wife, Annie, were leading advocates to restrict migration as all those people would be bad for the environment.

In the last section, Mehta argues, every immigrant brings his intelligence and the zeal to create a job and work for the country thus improving the country’s economy. The immigrants are not a threat to the locals work in cooperation with the other immigrants. They live in their space (Jackson Heights, Queens in New York..), pursue their careers and create jobs for others (Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella). 

They pursue jobs that others don’t do it eagerly and work for longer hours. As per the undocumented illegals is concerned, as per the study in Criminology, the increase in the undocumented immigrant population are associated with the significant decrease in the prevalence of violence.

Also, there is a growing trend of childless couple and people not taking the marriage route but most immigrants copulate and this retains the number of children and the scope for a future generation and thus, boom in economy. In fact, the emigrant countries must worry about the brain drain and the loss of resources. Under 2 percent of Japan’s population is foreign-born—in nearly all the other developed nations, that number varies from 10 to 15 percent. Japan should allow 50,000 migrants a year maintain its population balance. There are several villages in Japan where the average human age is sixty-five years.

While immigration, emigration, is a debated subject and it is most-often than not a forced choice, the wealthy nations must embrace immigrants. They do not bring violence and dirt as projected; the legally documented ones, go through so many rounds of scrutiny and interviews to enter the land that it’s only the cream that makes it. When a native enjoys the sour cream and hummus and pita bread and gravy, they must remember that it is the non-native who brought it to their plate.

I end the post with the verses from the song, this Land is our Land:

In the shadow of the steeple, I saw my people,

By the relief office I seen my people;

As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking

Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,

As I go walking that freedom highway;

Nobody living can ever make me turn back

This land was made for you and me