In Francesco Vacchiano’s piece, On Frequent Flyers and Boat People, Vacchiano addresses the narrative that there are too many bodies crossing borders, and how this is related to the development of associations between migrants and things like  “invasion, predation, and contamination” . What results from this narrative is a cognizance of a “crises” that doesn’t actually exist.  Vacchiano suggests that if, at the very least, we look at the numbers, this narrative not only serves as no accurate reflection of reality , but that “human excess is itself a construction”.

This idea of this construction really aligned with many of the themes of a panel I attended last week called Becoming American: New Scholarship on Immigration. One panelists Dr. Alberto Dávila described the power of false imagery in the whole discussion of migration. He recounted hearing from various forms of media about an unchanging image of the Mexico-US border. The image reported what sounded like hundreds of migrants contantly infiltrating the border to take all of America’s limited resources. Dávila observed these reports while simultaneously living right on the border and seeing no such thing. He explained that the idea of a “crisis” is very much a myth, a construction, and in no way a true representation of real life.

Another panelists, Dr. Sophia Wallace, asserted that when it comes to creating these narrative about migrants , perception is almost as important as truth . So when depicting the activity at borders around the world, from Lampedusa to the Mexico-US border, if people hear that migrants are being invasive and taking from our already “scarce” resources, people will believe it. And that is the mist important part of all of this. Not that the false accounts are being fed to people, but rather that they are being fed to people who will undoubtably take these accounts as truths. These fallacies in turn become the foundation of discrimination and hate towards immigrants.