CommentsVIEW FROM HERE--In his book, Atlas Of A Lost World, author Craig Childs points out that "The first arrivals keep getting older and older because we’re finding more evidence as time goes on.
Right now we can solidly say that people were across the Americas by 15,000 years ago. But that means people were probably already well in place by then, and there’s enough evidence to suggest humans were widespread 20,000 years ago. There’s some evidence of people as far back as 30,000 to 40,000 years ago, but the evidence gets thinner and thinner the further back you go. It appears there’s not a single arrival date. No doubt there was a first-person walking in, but when that happened is well before 20,000 years ago."
Whether readers are apt to endorse an early arrival (30, 000 or more years ago) or late arrival (8-15,000 years), there is a consensus in the field of anthropology that North America and South America were, at some point in the past, totally uninhabited by humans. Technically that makes all of us who claim America as our birthplace, actually immigrants.
And not only are all "native" Americans from other continents, but it also seems likely that consciousness itself may have arrived from a different planet or even galaxy. One of the leading theories about the origin of life on Planet Earth is known by cosmologists and astrobiologists as panspermia. Essentially this theory posits that the "seeds" of life were already present in the universe (for billions of years) and arrived here through transport methods such as meteorites, comets, and spacecraft. If this is an accurate description of how all microbes started out on Earth, it means that every human being is, in fact, an immigrant. We are all visitors from other worlds with the intention of residing in this one permanently.
Finally, if the spiritualists and religionists are right about the nature of reality and the creation of the world, then it stands to reason that no one has the right to claim they are from "anywhere" at all. The only "place" they can claim to be from is the mind (s) of God or gods. In the Christian creation story, God created Adam from the dust and Eve from Adam's rib cage. The Spirit of Divine Creation, however, has a mysterious origin. The maker is, at least in Christian mythology, omnipresent, all-knowing, and incorporeal.
Therefore, whether one refers to an anthropological, cosmological, or religious position, the conclusion is the same: All human beings originated from somewhere else. The use of the word immigrant does not have any real meaning apart from a person's desire to wield power over another. By calling someone an immigrant-and ignoring one's own status as such, the goal is to make the other person seem less accepted, normal, and ultimately equal. I think the time has come to eschew the word entirely. It serves no other social purpose but to disempower, disassociate, and disown people. It is based on an ignorant notion of self-preservation and cosmic worth.
In other words, the debate over immigration in America continues to swing between outright xenophobia and uncritical adulation. But what if there is no such thing as a good or bad immigrant? What if there is no such thing as an immigrant at all, at least not in the sense that most people in America use and abuse the term? Paradoxically, no one is an immigrant because we are all immigrants.
(George Cassidy Payne is an independent writer, social justice activist, and domestic violence counselor. He is a CityWatch contributor.)
-cw
