Problems at the border

By Jim Baird

Western Europe and the United States both loom large and stand shoulder to shoulder as they cast together the centuries-long shadow of the colonial period. That period saw an organized extraction of natural and cultural resources that continues to this day.

William Faulkner famously said that past is not dead and buried, it isn’t even past.

European and American rulers invaded and occupied vast territories, often cruelly, mostly in the globe’s southern hemisphere. Those invaders regarded all the peoples that occupied those lands, along with their cultures, as “savage”.

Many of those southern hemisphere lands only shook off their foreign invaders’ shackles as late as the mid-20th century.

When, after long struggles against ruthless occupation, those colonies finally gained self-rule, the former occupiers left in a big hurry, leaving little help in technical or political support for native peoples.

The sudden departure of colonial authority left most of the extractive business interests in place, however, and those entities still dominate the political and economic structure of what was labeled “the third world.”

That world has mostly been ruled, since those colonial times, by autocratic regimes that enjoyed the support of European and American authorities. Those post-colonial regimes made daily life intolerable for large numbers of their citizens.

Many of them became willing to take crazy chances and pay inflated prices in efforts to escape home and gain entry into territories of the nations that had for so long drained their homeland resources.

Those daring ones board big overloaded boats to cross wide open seas. They ride in overcrowded truck trailers over long miles of rugged terrain. They trek unguided across miles of desert lands. They strive for something better than their homelands have to offer. Their efforts show them to be much like the rest of us, pursuing life, liberty, and happiness.

Many politicians today label those burgeoning immigrant numbers as an invasion, but some people see them as “chickens coming to roost.”

Jim Baird is a resident of Comer in Madison County