The Nation-State and Borders

Nation-states have to possess immigration policies or they cease to exist. I mean any number of things by “cease to exist,” including falling apart organizationally and economically, to the point of being unable to provide a minimum degree of order, of predictability. (This last sentence might rub pure libertarians the wrong way. I am willing and eager to engage them on the topic of nation-states, societies, and social order.) This failure to function can be the result of an influx of large numbers of immigrants unable to provide for themselves, obviously. I am not suggesting that this is the only possible cause. It’s one cause and it’s staring us in the eyes as I write (April 2021, three and half months into the Biden presidency).

More prosaically, but also a little mysteriously, “cease to exist” may simply refers to the nation-state becoming something else, subjectively less desirable than what it was. The insulting word “nativism” does not do justice to the complex and subtle issues involved here.

Right now, for example, many French people believe that the large presence in their midst of un-assimilated Muslim immigrants endangers the fundamental building blocks of their society’s ethics and laws. These would include, for example, the separation of church and state (of religion and government) and the equality of men and women. Many French people who are not “white supremacists,” (or, more pertinently perhaps, not Christian supremacists) are calling for an end to all Muslim immigration. (Note that I have said nothing about whether I believe their fears are justified.)*

Guarded national borders have been the conventional way to protect the nation-state since the mid-19th century. They don’t have to be but other available methods are even less palatable to those who love freedom. If, for example, every resident of the US carried a personally identified GPS that it is illegal to turn off, it would be easy to monitor the totality of the population. Those moving about without an authorized GPS would stand out. Legal immigrants might be given a GPS with a different signal. Legal visitors who are not immigrants would get yet another with a signal set to come off on or just before their visa expiration. Illegal immigrants would carry no authorized GPS. This absence would designate them the attention of immigration authorities. (Of course, fake GPS would soon be for sale but they would be more difficult to create than are current SS card and other such paper or plastic documents.) And, thinking about it, a microchip painlessly implanted under each person’s skin might work even better! See what I mean about guarded borders not being so repugnant after all?

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*The French left-wing media do not offer substantive arguments to calm the widespread alarm raised by the center, by the right, by many others. Instead, they try to make the alarmed feel guilty of “Islamophobia,” supposedly a close cousin of racism. This accusation quickly losses forces because many people realize that Islam is a set of beliefs and of values that Muslims are free to abandon, unlike race. At least, they may abandon it in the French legal context. (In several Muslim countries, such “apostasy” is theoretically punished by death.) By the way, a month before this writing, I talked on a Santa Cruz beach with a pleasant young French Muslim, a pure product of French public schools born in France. He told me calmly that he believed French law should forbid blasphemy.

With all the agitation and all the negative emotions, people with Muslim names appear well represented at all levels and in all sectors of French society. (Firm numbers are hard to come by because the French government does not allow its various branches to collect information on religious affiliation nor on ethnicity.) And, by the way, I just love what Arabic influence has done to French popular music and songs.

[Editor’s note: this is Part 4 of an 11-part essay. You can read Part 3 here, or read the essay in its entirety here.]