Discussions of immigration in the news media, in the halls of Congress, or in the streets tend to see immigration as an individual, rather than a structural and historical, issue. They start from the assumption that people in other countries come here to take advantage of the wealth and opportunity that abound in this country. Since waves of immigration are composed of many individual decisions, the argument goes, we need to take steps to stop those individuals once they’ve made their decisions, otherwise they’ll use up all of the wealth and opportunity that by rights should belong first to citizens.
If we look at numbers and trends, however, we can see that migrant flows are in fact highly structured. They’re structured by colonial relationships. In fact the current migration streams around the world are one contemporary expression of long-standing, and continuing, social and economic relationships created by colonialism.
There are really two parts of the issue that we need to understand. First, we need to understand why the United States and other immigrant-receiving countries, like the European countries, are so wealthy. It is not just chance: it has much to do with the colonial world system that emerged after 1492, which drained resources out of Africa, Latin America, and Asia and into the United States and Europe. Given this background, it is little wonder that inhabitants of these former regions want some of the wealth that was created out of their resources and their labor—but that they’re denied access to in their homelands.
Second, we need to look at the continuing relationships and ties that make immigration a possibility and a reality. Disparities in resources don’t, on their own, lead to immigration. It’s the economic ties created by colonial and neocolonial economies, economic demand in the receiving country, and even, in many cases, direct recruitment that set the stage for immigration.