Empire Immigrants

There's an interesting phenomenon in this country. We continually absorb large waves of immigrants from countries where we've intervened. Like many of the Cuban terrorists in Florida, these people have directly benefitted from U.S. foreign policies abroad and thus seem to make the argument that we are indeed soft imperialists. We're only there to help.

Unfortunately, this myth begins to crumble when we realize that the majority of these immigrants from places like Cuba, Nicragua, Haiti, are from the upper class. It's an interesting phenomenon. I was recently viewing the film "Panama Deception" and it shows some of the mainstream media coverage of the crime. The Panamanian people were joyful that Noriega was gone and were glad the U.S. troops were there. But these weren't the poor people, the working people of Panama that were being interviewed. These weren't the people who had their families destroyed and houses ruined by the U.S. attack. These weren't the labor leaders who were arrested and detained because they were trying to help Panamanian workers. The people being interviewed were lighter skinned and upper-middle class who directly benefited from the ousting of Noriega.

Another example is a fellow blogger named Mark. His wife and family fled the Nicaraguan revolution. Mark is openly hostile regarding Sandinos and the Sandinistas, while embracing the U.S. efforts to undermine the revolution. After a few exchanges, I asked him if his wife was from the upper class. Sure as rain he admitted she was; she had grown up with servants, maids, etc.

I could tell similar stories regarding other places we've intervened. But it seems clear to me that we don't invade a country like Panama and rescue the poor people. The Iraqi exiles who were feeding us lies about WMDs were not working-class people; they were the former elite who stood to gain a lot by us intervening in Iraq again.

I don't know if this has been studied to any degree, but it certainly strikes me as interesting. Recently there has been a lot of discussion about the Israeli lobby and its influence on American foreign policy. Nobody denies that they have influence, the argument is just how much influence do they have? Ultimately, how much influence do Empire immigrants have here?

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