American Immigration Polcy

T H E F A L L O F A N C I E N TR O M E A N D M O D E R N U . S .I M M I G R A T I O N : H I S T O R I C A L

M O D E L O R PO L I T I C A LFO O T B A L L ?

F R A N K A R G O T E - F R E Y R E A N DC H R I S T O P H E R M . B E L L I T T O

On 20 July 2006, a Republican from Texas, Ted Poe, at the time a freshmanrepresentative running for reelection, took the floor of the US House of Repre-sentatives to deliver a cautionary history lesson related to the current immigrationdebate in the United States:

Let me take you back 1,642 years, Mr. Speaker, and lets talk about a littlebit of history. Caesar Valens controlled the Roman Empire. . . . And whilehe is Caesar, the barbarian nation of the Goths to his northeast startedcoming toward the Roman Empire. . . . They were led by a person that wassupposedly a friend of Rome, his name was Fritigern, King of the Goths, andhe asked permission to come into Rome with some [of] the Goths. Normallythe Roman Government would not allow this, to have a state within a state;but, you see, Valens needed more people to be in his army and he neededmore workers in the Empire of Rome. So he granted permission for some ofthe Goths to come in legally. But when the crossing started, the Roman

Frank Argote-Freyre is an assistant professor of Latin American history at Kean University.Argote-Freyre received his PhD from Rutgers University in 2004. His first book, FulgencioBatista: From Revolutionary to Strongman, was published in 2006. His second book, A BriefHistory of the Caribbean, coauthored with Danilo Figueredo, was published in 2008. He wasassistant editor of the Encyclopedia of Cuba (2003).Christopher M. Bellitto is chair and associate professor of ancient and medieval history at KeanUniversity. Bellitto received his PhD from Fordham University in 1997. He is the author of ninebooks, including 101 Questions and Answers on Popes and the Papacy (Paulist Press, 2008), andthe co-editor of six collections of essays, most recently Reassessing Reform: A Historical Inves-tigation into Church Renewal (Catholic University of America Press, 2012). His scholarly articleshave appeared in the Catholic Historical Review, Church History, Cristianesimo nella storia,Revue dhistoire ecclsiastique, Cistercian Studies Quarterly, Studies in Medieval and RenaissanceTeaching, and other journals.

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Government didnt have enough border guards to control entry, and somassive waves of Goths came into the Roman Empire.

What started out as a controlled entry mushroomed into a massive influx.Several hundreds of thousands came across [to] the Roman Empire.

But the Goths did not take the oath to support the emperor. They did notassimilate. They did not become Roman. And a few years later, this statewithin a state revolted and internal war started. . . .

History speaks for itself, Mr. Speaker. Failure to control illegal entry into acountry causes some problems, and we are not talking about legal entry. Weare talking about illegal entry. And it encourages a state within a state. Andwhen people come illegally to a nation and refuse to take allegiance to thatcountry, start sending money to another nation and they dont even learn thelanguage, is America asking for trouble? Is America becoming just anotherRome?

Mr. Speaker, there are many reasons for the fall of Rome, but one of thosereasons is simply the failure to control who came into their nation. I thinkthe analogy is obvious.1

Is it? Congressman Poe is certainly not the first to make the rhetorical linkbetween the fall of Rome and the current position of the United States. Scholars,pundits and politicians across the ideological spectrum use the Roman Empire asvillain or hero to indict or praise the American position in the global communitytoday. They assure us that the United States and its people could gain importantlessons from studying the fall of Rome. Some look at US military and economicpower or cultural influence as a sure sign that modern America merits comparisonwith imperial Rome, a comparison that has long been a part of American politicaldiscourse. Likewise, there are efforts to predict the decline, imminent or long-term, of the United States by looking to the ancient past. Immigration is often akey component in any debate about the future fall of the United States. In thefollowing we examine if this comparison is a useful, substantive, and accurate

1. Congressional Record Online via GPO Access (wais.access.gpo.gov), 20 July 2006. For adetailed presentation and multivalent analysis of this event in Roman history in context, seeNoel Lenski, Failure of Empire: Valens and the Roman State in the Fourth Century A.D.,Berkeley, CA: U. of California P., 2002; Michael Kulikowski, Romes Gothic Wars: From theThird Century to Alaric, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007, 12343; and, in a popular style,Alessandro Barbero, The Day of the Barbarians: The Battle That Led to the Fall of the RomanEmpire, trans. John Cullen, New York: Walker and Company, 2007.

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application of the past to the present, especially keeping in mind its potentialutility for the classroom.

Our goal is not, however, to debate why Rome fell and if America might follow.Rather, we wish to take a case-study approach and focus on one aspect of the story,that of immigration and borders, to askwhether the linkage between themigrationsof so-called barbarians in the third to fifth centuries CE can properly be applied towhat is being called the immigration crisis in the United States today.2 We entertainno Nostradamus-like insights into the future of the United States, but instead seekto explore the contemporary use of the terms language, borders, and citizenshipwithin the context of ancient Rome and to explore how these terms have beenlinked to modern America. This essay is also about the use and abuse of history bythose involved in current debates. Those claiming that history is on their side oftenseek to win todays political debates, so we seek to review just how the Romecomparison has been utilized in the polarizing struggle over immigration.

A bit of background may be in order in justifying our self-confidence in takingon such a formidable task. We conceived of this article as history professors in adiverse campus setting (at Kean University, a public institution) located in amulti-ethnic region (northern New Jersey, just a short train ride from New YorkCity). One of us teaches ancient and medieval history, while the other teachesLatin-American history and works as an activist on immigrant issues in the areawhere we both live. This article germinated in a series of conversations we hadwith each other, beginning with the Latin Americanist wondering aloud if Romanstalked about the barbarians (itself a loaded word) as immigrants and whether allthis talk about barbarian hordes was being used accurately in current discussionsconcerning immigration. We have jointly presented this discussion in severalsettings already: our own classes in ancient and Latin American history, acontinuing-education program for senior citizens in a nearby community college,and at a conference on immigration sponsored by our universitys Human RightsInstitute that drew a spirited response, particularly from the middle- and high-school students and teachers who participated.3

2. For another version of this exercise, though less focused on the applicability to politicaldiscourse and the classroom, see Norman Etherington, Barbarians Ancient and Modern,American Historical Review 116, 2011, 3157. Etherington examines how ancient Rome wasrelated to pre-colonial southern Africa in the nineteenth century.

3. We are grateful to many colleagues and students for feedback in these settings and to TheHistorians anonymous reviewers for constructive comments. Particularly good advice on anearlier version of this article was offered by Dennis R. Hidalgo of Virginia Tech.

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Immigration is a historical process central to the human experience. Its use in acomparative context across culture and time enriches coursework on Roman,Latin-American, and US history, but the entire immigration issue is also fertileground for political extremes. The comparison between ancient Rome in its finalyears and the present-day United States is a subject of frequent debate on pro- andanti-immigrant websites alike.4 The focus of the negative attention is most oftenon the influx of immigrants across the southern US border with Mexico. From theopposite perspective, some favor the recolonization (reconquista) of the southwestUnited States and the establishment of an indigenous homeland to avenge the lossof those lands taken in the US-Mexican War of 18461848. Demographic take-over, rather than warfare, is their plan of attack.

There are nuances to interpretations, of course, but it is fair to say that theimmigration linkage between Rome and the United States falls broadly into twocamps. For some, Rome and America are linked by decadence and immorality,secularism and materialism, greed and bribery, conspiracy and arroganceinsum, by the hubris that caused Greco-Roman gods to bring down individuals andcommunities that had grown too big for their togas. From this stance, the currentdebate over immigration is another barometer of the decline of US institutions andculture, often paired with lamentations about the dangers of multiculturalism.5

For those in another camp, America remains, like Rome, a shining city on a hilldestined to last a mythic thousand years in order to spread its culture, wealth,

4. In addition to a broad range of anti-immigration articles and posts blaming immigrants formany of the nations problems, Vdare.com has a number of specific entries on the US-Romecomparison. For some examples see Steve Smith, U.S. Chamber Urging Country on RomesPath to Disaster, available at: http://www.vdare.com/articles/us-chamber-urging-country-on-romes-path-to-disaster, accessed 24 January 2012; Sam Francis, New World America Or Fallof Rome Revisited, available at: http://www.vdare.com/articles/new-world-america-or-fall-of-rome-revisited, accessed 24 January 2012; and Patrick J. Buchanan, Will America Survive to2050?, available at: http://www.vdare.com/articles/will-america-survive-to-2050, accessed 24January 2012. While Smith, Samuels, and Buchanan are particularly hostile to immigration,others take a broader approach to the comparison between a declining Rome and the modernUnited States; for an analysis of Arizona legislation aimed at curbing illegal immigration,see for example http://mediumhistorica.com/2010/05/06/arizona-senate-bill-1070-unlawful-immigration-and-the-fall-of-rome/, accessed 24 January 2012. The same may be said ofhttp://americaandthefalloftheromanempire.blogspot.com/, accessed on 24 January 2012, ablog dedicated to the subject of American decline.

5. Samuel Huntington was one of the strongest proponents of this argument, as in The HispanicChallenge, Foreign Policy MarchApril 2004, 3045. Huntington followed this up with amonograph, Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to Americas NationalIdentity, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004.


power, and dominance to those without access and opportunity to Americanresources, expertise, entrepreneurship, and grandeur. What is the use of powerand prestige if it cannot be shared with the rest of the world, whether othercountries like it or not? At the same time, some of Americas critics at home andabroad find the very idea of empire distasteful and outdated.6

This essay is not the place for a definitive pronouncement on the classic andcurrent theories of the fall of the Roman Empire. Any number of anthologiescontaining selections of Roman primary sources and modern historiographicaltreatments already exist.7 Truth be told, there was no one particular reason whyRome fell. Some scholars see an awful mistake in allowing the military to incor-porate locals into the frontier garrisons, others blame lead in the Roman pipes orclimate changes, while bread and circuses are paraded for the Rome rottedwithin decadence argument. The rotting Rome paradigm, whether because ofcircuses or excess in accommodating outsiders, is specifically grasped by thosewho argue that the United States is becoming a collage of ethnic enclaves. Today,some charge, it is primarily Hispanic-Latino immigrants who are unwilling toassimilate to American culture. For this discussion an example might be Cuban-dominated Miami or the Mexican-influenced southwest. These populations areforming a state within a state, to use Congressman Poes metaphor, and threat-ening the unity of the United States. Yet the use of the word state is misleadingin the ancient context, where Romans signed treaties not with discrete countriesbut with tribes or peoples (foederati). Before Early Modernity, the concept of aUN-style state with a flag and clear borders is an anachronism.

Perhaps the best and most scholarly presentation of this argument belongsto Samuel Huntington, who wrote: Continuation of this large immigration(without improved assimilation) could divide the United States into a country oftwo languages and two cultures.8 The concern, Huntington argued, is that we arein essence creating a separatist Quebec in the US southwest. This situation isviewed as even more dangerous from the perspective of the United States, because

6. Amy Chua provides an overview of the literature on the United States and its emergence as anempire, particularly of those supporting the idea (Amy Chua, Day of Empire: How Hyper-powers Rise to Global Dominanceand Why They Fall, New York: Doubleday, 2007).Advocates of the United States taking up the imperial mantle are Deepak Lal, In Praise ofEmpires: Globalization and Order, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004; and Niall Fergu-son, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, New York: Penguin Group, 2004.

7. Bryan Ward-Perkins, for instance, helpfully surveys the changing historiography in BryanWard-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005, 110and 16983. Every volume treating the topic, however, recites this standard litany.

8. Huntington, Hispanic Challenge, 445.


the Mexican immigrants coming to the region have a historical claim to it datingback to the sixteenth century, along with easy geographic access. We should note,however, that such ahistorical grumbling today ignores the urban ghettoizationand subsequent mainstreaming of nearly every ethnic group in American historysince the nineteenth century. Many cities have a Little Italy or a Chinatown, butthese are fast shrinking in size and becoming more like nostalgic destination sitesfor meals and festivals than exclusive neighborhoodsyet another testament tothe path toward the goal of integration that each immigrant group follows in turn.

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In our teaching experience, language is central to our discussion on two levels:first, we mean the common language that all within a culture use to communicate,and second, we mean the language or labels used to describe outsiders seeking tobecome part of the society they enter. This latter sense of the word language takesus into the categories of just who a barbarian is, and who gets to say so.

We begin by taking up the issue of a common language, which can be definedas a written and spoken tongue that all know and can use to communicate.Huntington argued in his essay The Hispanic Challenge:

A persuasive case can be made that, in a shrinking world, all Americansshould know at least one important foreign languageChinese, Japanese,Hindi, Russian, Arabic, Urdu, French, German, or Spanishso as to under-stand a foreign culture and communicate with its people. It is quite differentto argue that Americans should know a non-English language in order tocommunicate with their fellow citizens.9

This argument resonates among some concerned about immigration, legal orillegal, even though most studies suggest that immigrants, including those fromSpanish-speaking countries, lose command of the language of their forebears bythe third generation.10

9. Huntington, Hispanic Challenge, 38.

10. Gregory Rodriguez offers several studies to back up this assertion, see Gregory Rodriguez,Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds: Mexican Immigration and the Future of Racein America, New York: Pantheon Books, 2007, 22934. Some of the best work on thissubject, and on immigrants in general, has been done by Alejandro Portes and Rubn G.Rumbaut; see specifically Alejandro Portes and Rubn G. Rumbaut, Immigrant America: APortrait, Berkeley, CA: U. of California P., 1996, 20722. The language pattern is commonto immigrant groups, but for a unique look at Mexican-Americans, see David E. Lopez andRicardo D. Stanton-Salazar, Mexican Americans: A Second Generation at Risk, Rubn


Still, the emergence of Spanish in the United States as the second most spokenlanguage raises questions about the emergence of a new national consciousness nolonger expressed solely in English. Every time we call a business and they urge usto Press 1 for English or Press 2 for Spanish (in some regions there are morelinguistic choices), we are reminded of how the United States is evolving from amonolingual society to one conducting business in many different languages.

The very argument about the historical primacy of English in the United Statesis an assumption worth exploring for any student of American history. Thedominant language in Florida was Spanish for 300 years until 1819, when theUnited States acquired it from Spain. The same can be said of the US southwest:the present states of Texas, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Cali-fornia were all part of Mexico until the 1830s and 1840s when a series ofconfrontations led to their annexation by the United States. Language diversitywas further enriched by the many indigenous languages in both regions. Onceagain, historical context could inform caricatures. It is instructive and ironic tonote that Mexicans express similar concerns about the corruption of Spanish byEnglish phrases such as biznes, kofi-breik, and quik lonches.11

Moving to the second sense of the word language, we come to the labelsapplied to immigrants. One of the most well-known and controversial politicalvoices in the United States in the modern anti-immigrant debate is former Repub-lican Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado, who based his short-lived 2008presidential primary campaign on immigration reform (a topic that unexpectedlydisappeared in the 2008 general election cycle).12 Tancredo makes the comparisonbetween the United States and Rome in his book In Mortal Danger, publishedin 2006.13 In this polemical work, Tancredo compares recent undocumented

G. Rumbaut and Alejandro Portes, eds, Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America,Berkeley, CA: U. of California P., 2001, 5790.

11. See Michael C. Meyer, William L. Sherman, and Susan M. Deeds, The Course of MexicanHistory, ninth edition, New York: Oxford UP, 2010, 55356.

12. Tancredo left the Republican Party in 2010 to unsuccessfully run for the governorship ofColorado on the American Constitution Party ticket.

13. Tom Tancredo, In Mortal Danger: The Battle for Americas Border and Security, Nashville,TN: WND Books, 2006, 501. This work is part of a recent outpouring of popular booksdealing with the impending demise of the United States as a result of immigration, multi-culturalism, a loss of ethical values, and a variety of other ills. Another strident attack againstmulticulturalism is Victor Davis Hansons Mexifornia: A State of Becoming, San Francisco,CA: Encounter Books, 2003. Both Mark Steyn and David Goldman discuss the fall of Romein some detail, see Mark Steyn, After America: Get Ready for Armageddon, Washington,D.C.: Regnery, 2011, and David P. Goldman, How Civilizations Die (And Why Islam isDying Too), Washington, DC: Regnery, 2011. Other works in this genre include Patrick J.Buchanan, The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions


immigrants to barbarians who, urged on by the advocates of multiculturalism, arethreatening the very existence of the United States. Tancredo writes,

We are committing cultural suicide. Worse, by the time many of us recognizeit, our country may itself be so weakened by these destructive influences thatthe barbarians at the gate will only need to give a slight push, and theemaciated body of Western civilization will collapse in a heap.14

One persons barbarian invader is another persons hard-working immi-grant. Who makes the determination as to who may aspire to be a member of asociety and who must forever be destined to outsider status? This is wherelanguage plays a key role. Diversity and multiculturalism are at the core of the USimmigration-fall of Rome debate precisely because self-identification influenceshistorical interpretation. The ethnic and racial diversity of the United Stateschallenges us to reinterpret history from different perspectives and presents teach-ers with rich opportunities. Issues that were once interpreted from a primarilyEurocentric perspective now take on different meanings when viewed by thosewho were on the other side of the conquistadors sword. The European conquestof the Americas, once taught as the divinely ordained dispersion of Westernprogress and civilization, is now complicated by issues such as the possibleEuropean genocide of the indigenous populations of the Americas. Thanksgiving,the quintessential American holiday, must now be considered in the context ofwhat happened after the ceremonial first gathering of Pilgrims and PokanoketIndians in the fall of 1621. Movements to suspend or reconsider purely-celebratory Columbus Day ceremonies and parades have emerged in various partsof the country.15

Indeed, one of the most striking features for those who study Mexico and theUS southwest is precisely how a wide variety of culturesindigenous, Mexican,and North Americanhave blended to create a unique culture and history thatgoes beyond a black-and-white lens of barbarians and natives. The political

Imperil Our Country and Civilization, New York: St. Martins Press, 2002, and Patrick J.Buchanan, Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?, New York: St. MartinsPress, 2011. See also Tony Blankley, The Wests Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash ofCivilizations?, Washington, DC: Regnery, 2005.

14. Tancredo, In Mortal Danger, 501.

15. An intriguing revisionist work on the Pilgrims, Thanksgiving, and the aftermath is NathanielPhilbrick,Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War, New York: Penguin Group,2006. With disapproval, Tancredo describes a movement in Denver inspired by AmericanIndian organizations to rethink Columbus Day as another example of the all-out war onWestern civilization; see Tancredo, In Mortal Danger, 25.


boundaries of the southwest are no barrier to the cultural, social, and economicexchanges that have occurred in the US-Mexico border region for centuries.Gregory Rodriguez, for instance, argues that the persistent immigration of Mexi-cans and other Latin Americans to the United States is contributing to thebreakdown of the traditional black and white racial dichotomy, forcing us to lookat race in a many-hued way: Just as the emergence of the mestizos underminedthe Spanish racial system in colonial Mexico, Mexican Americans, who havealways confounded the Anglo American racial system, will ultimately destroy it,too.16

This topic of diversity is rich for exploration in the classroom because studentsin the United States realize that globalization influences their culture, while itlikewise influences other cultures. One of the fundamental questions asked bythose who look to Rome as a comparison is, Will these changes bring about thefall of the United States or transform it into a society more adaptable to thechanging global community? So again, we must look more closely at Rome asthe historical touchstone in this application of the past to the present, as Rep. Poewas trying to do in his Congressional speech.

In the last generation of scholarship, interpretations of the fall of Rome evolvedfrom the idea that the Empire was destroyed by a sudden series of dramatic eventsto a conception of a Rome that was gradually transformed over several centuriesthrough its encounters with other cultures. Starting in the 1970s, one of the primemovers of the new historiography regarding Rome was Peter Brown, who arguedthat Classical Rome did not fall through barbarian invasions, but was insteadorganically replaced, during a long Late Antique period from the third century CEthrough the end of Charlemagnes reign in the early ninth century.17 After all,Charlemagne considered his capital of Aachen as a new Rome and himself aswearing Constantines mantle. In this argument, terms such as catastrophe, chaos,and decay were downplayed. Instead this school of thought focused on suchconcepts as transition, change, transformation, and integration. What this histo-riography emphasizes is continuity, evolution, and intellectual vibrancy. Ratherthan a narrative of violent invasion and conquest, this picture of Late Antiquity isone of encounter, accommodation, and intermarriage that bound cultures together

16. Rodriguez argues that the whole history of the region is steeped in the evolution of multipleheritages, see Rodriguez, Mongrels, ixxvii.

17. Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity, AD 150750, New York: Harcourt BraceJovanovich, 1971.


in a manner that defies the clear and absolute distinction between Romans andbarbarians.18

Let us look even more closely at a few recent discussions of the barbarianinvasions and see if they can enlighten our exploration. We should acknowledgefirst that the word barbarian has often been used by any one group to meananother group not a part of theirsit is a most basic statement of that fundamentaldistinction between us and them. While the word barbarian is rarely if ever used indiscussions of immigrants (legal or otherwise) to the United States, the sense ofotherness is inherent in the immigration debate, especially in a post-September 11world. The words used to create the sense of otherness in the modern United Statesdebate are illegal aliens. Pro-immigrant and anti-immigrant groups divide alongthe use of these words to describe those coming into the United States withoutproper documents or papers. The quickest way to discern where a person stands onthe issue of immigration is to see how he or she addresses the people in question.Those favorable to immigrants in general refer to them as undocumented immi-grants, noting that human beings cannot be illegal but only actions can be illegal.Humans are not aliens; only extra-terrestrials deserve such a designation. Termslike barbarian or illegal alien are intended to end debate, not encourage it. Ifsomeone is a barbarian or illegal alien, then any discussion about them must byforce of language be focused on their strangeness rather than on the economic andsocial engines driving their immigration and movement.

We also note that immigration is a modern term: the people that the Romanscalled barbarians were moving into more fertile, desirable, and potentially pros-perous areas from their own. Using the word immigration in the late ancientworld fails to fit the evidence and does not appear in ancient sources. Thats notto say, however, that some modern historians (especially those writing mostrecently) havent made the connection. Peter Heather, in his Fall of the RomanEmpire, refers to the barbarian-immigrant issue.19 He comfortably uses the

18. For instructive analyses that could easily be assigned to inform classroom discussion, seeEdward James, Europes Barbarians AD 200600, Hanlow, England: Pearson, 2009, 10228, 16173, and 193214.

19. Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians,Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006, 43159. Heather put migration on a far larger chronologicalcanvasand discussed the topic in the context of modern conceptions of European identityfueled by todays EU debatesin Peter Heather, Empires and Barbarians: Migration, Devel-opment and the Birth of Europe, London: Pan, 2010. On these Late Antique centuries, seeibid., 7293 and 122206. In those segments, Heather emphasizes intended interaction as thekey to positive transformation of Romans and non-Romans alike. For an intriguing discus-sion of Roman identity on the periphery, see Louise Revell, Roman Imperialism and LocalIdentities, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009, 1913.


words immigrants, licensed immigration, and asylum seekers. For Heather, theinvasions of 376380 and 405408 were successful as far as the barbarians wereconcerned: their first wave engendered confidence to launch a second wave. Still,Heather believes that it was not so much the frontiers that fell as Romes verycenter. Romanitas, that culturally synthetic Roman-ness that the empire wasspreading, lived on in the provinces where it mixed with local customs, laws, waysof life, and sensitivities. So, too, civil unrest undermined the empire: because taxesrose, the need for defense rose as well, but those paying the taxes felt that theywere paying for greater security while getting less of it. Indeed, local Romans andRoman-leaning locals on the frontiers paid invaders to go around their lands andto provide protection from invaders farther afield. This system replaced thedwindling central support from Rome, leading allegiance and identity to shiftfrom center to periphery.

From a comparative standpoint, this would seem an area of significant differ-ence between the late Roman empire and the United States in the first decades ofthe twenty-first century. There is no organized military threat along the southernborder, prompting some to maintain that the real issue underlying the immigrationdebate is race, not security.20 In the modern context, there is no need to pay offinvaders; rather, we see the employment of those crossing the US-Mexico borderin a wide variety of less desirable jobs from crop harvesting to landscaping tostrenuous manual labor. Even when harvesting jobs are made available to US-bornworkers, few apply for them and even fewer finish the harvesting season.21 Thosein pro-immigration circles argue that immigrants are doing the jobs most NorthAmericans will not do, while some in the anti-immigrant camp contend that

20. There is, however, the on-going drug war in Mexico that occasionally spills into the UnitedStates or claims the lives of US citizens. The lurid headlines and details of massgraves, decapitations, and murder of innocent civilians further inflame the immigra-tion debate (see Jos de Crdoba, Mexican Drug War Yields a Grisly Toll, WallStreet Journal, 13 May 2012, available at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303505504577402052157957594.html, accessed 31 May 2012).There were 111 US citizens murdered in Mexico in 2010 alone; see Daniel Hernandez, HowMany Have Died in Mexicos Drug War?, Los Angeles Times, 7 June 2011, availableat http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laplaza/2011/06/mexico-war-dead-update-figures-40000.html, accessed 31 May 2012.

21. Alejandro Portes, The Fence to Nowhere, The American Prospect, 23 September 2007,available at http://prospect.org/article/fence-nowhere, accessed 25 January 2012. Portesincludes the following example to illustrate the point: In North Carolina, the annual harvestrequires about 150,000 agricultural workers. In a recent year, 6,000 openings were reservedfor U.S. workers at $9.02 per hour. A total of 120 applied, 25 showed up to work on the firstday, and none finished the harvest (ibid.).


foreign workers depress wages to a point that US workers cannot support them-selves doing manual labor.

Is there an American lesson to be drawn here from the supposed end of theRoman Empire? As with the current immigration debate in the US, the answerdepends upon whom you ask. It is interesting to note that Oxford University Presscovered its bases by publishing Heathers monograph a year after Bryan Ward-Perkins The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization. Ward-Perkins returns to anearlier historiographical argument which says that there was indeed a fall and thatit was violent, a nearly total transformation, and not at all gradual. Ward-Perkinsengages the newer orthodoxy when treating the work of Walter Goffart, whocontends that barbarians were invited to cross the borders and settle, to share inthe burden and benefits of taxation, and to enjoy Romanitas; they did not comearmed and streaming across the borders to attack, destroy, and continue into theheart of the empire.22 What the Romans permitted was an intentional buffer zone,but once the barbarians moved in, they soon took over as Romes control eroded.In addition, as with the United States, there was a long-standing tension betweenRoman imperial rhetoric and reality with regards to barbarians/immigrants.Goffart notes that

Instinctive Greco-Roman hostility to barbarians coexisted with a long andproud Roman tradition of openness to outsiders. . . .

Hostility to barbarians was built into the language; almost by definition,barbarians stood for what imperial citizens shunned. But literature does notdirectly mirror everyday reality. Sheer aversion was not a practical attitudein an age of rapid social and cultural change.23

Similar contradictions exist with US immigration policy and public attitudestoward immigrants. Undocumented immigration has been a civil offense fordecades and yet for many years, since the signing of the North American FreeTrade Agreement in 1994, there was little federal enforcement of worker sanctionsand no efforts to address and regulate a labor market that thirsts for this laborforce. As a result of this broken immigration system, there are today an estimated

22. For Walter Goffarts argument (even if it is not directly engaged by Ward-Perkins because itwas published a year later), see Walter Goffart, Barbarian Tides: The Migration Age and theLater Roman Empire, Philadelphia, PA: U. of Pennsylvania P., 2006. Ward-Perkins doesaccurately portray Goffarts earlier fundamental thesis, updated in this 2006 study. Thecontinuing relevance of this changing historiography was noted explicitly in the first line ofa review of Goffarts study: The Roman Empire is being assassinated by barbarians oncemore: Brian Croke, Catholic Historical Review 94, January 2008, 13132.

23. Goffart, Barbarian Tides, 191, 192.


10 to 15 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. Enforcement anddeportations have climbed dramatically during the Obama Presidency, much tothe chagrin and surprise of immigrant activists.24 In the midst of an election year,President Obama via executive order ordered a halt to the deportation of upwardsof one million individuals brought over as children without proper documenta-tion, a move described as a cynical political ploy by his critics.

In addition to the uneven enforcement of immigration laws, there is also thenational narrative, most frequently proclaimed on July 4, that the United States isa country of immigrants, with a long history of acceptance and tolerance. Thisdeclaration stands alongside an equally impressive history of immigrant scape-goating and oppression. Recent examples of this struggle can be found in theharsh, but popular anti-immigrant laws recently passed in a number of states,most famously Arizona, but also including Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina,and Utah. Some of the harshest aspects of the Arizona law, known as S.B. 1070,were struck down by the US Supreme Court in the summer of 2012, although aprovision allowing state and local police officers to ask for immigration docu-ments in cases where individuals were suspected of committing a crime wasallowed to remain intact. The court, however, did leave it open for interestedparties to challenge that provision if racial or ethnic profiling resulted in itsimplementation. The high courts ruling left pro- and anti-immigration advocatesgearing up for the next phase of litigious warfare; states with similar laws are nowgrappling with how to amend them to come into compliance with the court ruling.

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Whether they were barbarians or immigrants, then or now, people moving fromone place to another must cross from one territory to the next one over. This leadsour discussion to borders and walls as another category used to compare ancientRome with modern America.

With regards to Rome, both older and recent work on Roman frontiers paintless of a picture of a stubborn and absolute brick wall than a doorway that was

24. Some of the best research on Latino issues in the United States is conducted by the PewHispanic Center and in a December 2011 study they found that deportations have increasedby about 30% since Obama took office (see Mark Hugo Lopez, Ana Gonzalez-Barrera, andSethMotel, As Deportations Rise to Record Levels, Most Latinos Oppose Obamas Policy,Pew Hispanic Center, 28 December 2011, available at http://www.pewhispanic.org/2011/12/28/as-deportations-rise-to-record-levels-most-latinos-oppose-obamas-policy/, accessed 31May 2012). The vast majority of the 400,000 deported are Latinos and yet the presidentmaintains a high popularity among potential Latino voters.


meant to be used on a regular basis and one that was sometimes opened wider inextraordinary circumstances. In their often-cited study of the erection of Hadri-ans Wall in second-century Britain, David J. Breeze and Brian Dobson note, Thepurpose of the barrier was to control movement, not to prevent it, as the liberalprovision of gateways [about a half-mile apart from each other] demonstrates.25

Here we have a fluid, not fixed, boundary. Those entering paid a fee, like a customor toll, probably had to enter and exit unarmed, and may have passed throughwith some frequency. Looking at northern Germania, Susan P. Mattern found asimilar situation:

The distinction between foreign relations and domestic affairs must havebeen blurred, especially if one could not easily look at a map to determinewhether the Frisii, for example, lived on one side of the Rhine or the other.Indeed, in spite of general talk of the empires boundaries, the frontier itselfhas a nebulous quality; it is often difficult to tell whether we should considera certain tribe or area in or out.26

Perhaps the classic story of Roman attempts to control a flood of refugeeswith unintended consequences for bothoccurred in the years leading up to 376CE, when the Huns pushed the Goths ahead of them, which caused the Goths towant to settle in Roman Thrace for protection (Congressman Poe was telling thisstory in his 2006 speech). These refugees sought and received permission to crossthe Danube from the emperor Valens, who needed farmers, soldiers, and taxrevenue.27 The Romans initially ferried them over, provided food and temporaryshelter, and tried to record all of their names. But the flood of refugees grew fasterand larger than expected. Once the Romans escorted the documented refugeesaway from the river, other Goths crossed without Roman oversight. The Romanssoon lost control of the Goths, in large part because the Romans exploited theGoth refugees, failed to provide adequate food and shelter, and subjected them tomistreatment. The Goths turned on them violently and won skirmishes becausethey outnumbered the Romans, with the Battle of Adrianople in 378 representinga devastating victory over Roman forces.

Recent work on Roman borders takes up the issue of ordinary migration andissues related to the modern notion of immigration more explicitly. C. R. Whit-

25. David J. Breeze and Brian Dobson, Hadrians Wall, London: Allen Lane, 1970, 378.

26. Susan P. Mattern, Rome and the Enemy: Imperial Strategy in the Principate, Berkeley, CA:U. of California P., 1999, 11718.

27. Lenski, Failure of Empire, 32067; Barbero, The Day of the Barbarians, 3349.


taker sees frontier collapse as a result of a slow creep instead of a violent and largeinvasion; there is much evidence of intended interaction.28 The German frontiers,like Hadrians Wall, were probably never designed to be impenetrable or exclu-sively defensive. For centuries, non-Romans could cross borders and settle withinRoman territories peacefully and as a welcome addition. Non-Roman elites in thefoederati made their way into the upper levels of the Roman administration andmilitary, while ordinary folk manned the army as foot soldiers. There was, heconcludes, all the ingredients of frontier dynamics: surplus population, culturalhomogeneity, and a long period of symbiotic exchange.29

This brief historiographical discussion of the Roman Empires frontiersshould add nuance to the current debate over the construction of a supposedlyRoman-style wall across the southern border between the United States andMexico. Clearly the intent of many of those espousing it is to create a rigidborder to keep Mexicans and other Latin-Americans out (some would add ter-rorists to this list), but the word wall is misleading in the modern US context.In the last decade, Congressional debate has focused on the construction of a700-mile fence along parts of the border between Mexico and the United Statesat an estimated cost of $6 billion. The debate culminated with passage by Con-gress of the Secure Fence Act of 2006. The Mexico-US border is about 2000miles, so the double-layered fence was intended to cover only about a third ofthe border region.

Construction of the fence, which will utilize a network of security cameras, iscurrently bogged down in disputes over the environmental and economic impacton United States border communities. As a result, the actual cost has ballooned toas much as $21 million per mile of fence. This cost is for a single fence, not thedouble-fence anticipated by the supporters of the legislation. US Customs andBorder Protection estimates it would cost another $22.4 billion to extend a singlefence across the remaining 1,400 miles of borderlands. The fence has wreakedhavoc in communities like Brownsville, Texas, where some residents have foundtheir homes on the south side of the fence in a virtual no-mans land between the

28. C. R. Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire: A Social and Economic Study, Baltimore,MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1994, 20242, and C. R. Whittaker, Rome and Its Frontiers: TheDynamics of Empire, London: Routledge, 2004, 20413. For similar conclusions, see Ben-jamin Isaac, The Limits of Empire: The Roman Army in the East, rev. ed., Oxford: Claren-don Press, 1992, 372418. For a discussion of the historiographical issues at work, seeKulikowski, Romes Gothic Past, 3470.

29. Whittaker, Frontiers, 219.


two countries.30 Finally, there is no proof that it will work. As of yet, there are fewscholarly studies attempting to measure its effectiveness, although anecdotesabound of immigrants climbing over the fence, burrowing underneath it, orcrossing through gaps in it.

The subject presents rich possibilities for analysis and debate as seen in the2012 Republican presidential primary debates where one candidate proposed anelectrified fence across the border and another suggested a virtual militarization ofthe border. A teacher or student might ask: Has there ever been a wall or fenceerected that was successful in keeping people out without addressing social andeconomic issues on both sides of the barrier? This question might be asked aboutwalls and fences separating Israeli and Palestinian territories or about the GreatWall of China, the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, or theBerlin Wall, as well as virtual barriers represented by spam filters, password-protected websites, and the denial of Internet access by certain regimes such asCuba and China. In any case, in contrast to Rome, the proposed fence is not seenas a doorway but as a barrier to access by those supporting it in Congress andamong the general US public. This makes the Roman analogy moot once weacknowledge the deliberately-porous nature of Roman borders.

***

The meaning of citizenship is another central topic in the fall of Rome-USimmigration debate and historical analogy. In the case of Rome, as with modernAmerica, the concept of citizenship was subject to tensions. Roman citizenshipwas extended, every now and again, to residents within imperial limits, includingfreed slaves. This was often done to increase tax revenue and to promote bureau-cratic and military service. Citizenship was linked to political duty, legal privilege,and economic burden in a way familiar to many cultures, including our own.Then, as now, there were opponents, as there were in the late Republic whencitizenship was extended to non-Italian provincials and even to former enemies.

30. For some examples of the impact of the border fence, see Oscar Casares, Border FenceUpends a Valley Farmers Life, The New York Times, 26 November 2011, availableat: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/us/border-fence-upends-a-rio-grande-valley-farmers-life.html, accessed 25 January 2012; Julia Preston, Some Cheer Border Fence as OthersPonder the Cost, The New York Times, 19 October 2011, available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/us/politics/border-fence-raises-cost-questions.html, accessed25 January 2012; and Liz Goodwin, The Texans who live on the Mexican side of theborder fence: Technically, were in the United States, The Lookout, 21 December 2011,available at http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/texas-americans-live-wrong-side-border-fence-christmas-183312787.html, accessed 25 January 2012.


The most famous and emblematic for our purposes occurred when the emperorCaracalla, in 212 CE, in a wholesale move, granted citizenship to anyone who wasalready a free person living within Romes borders. This was largely done becauseof a desperate need for soldiers and tax money. Similarly, US military officials havedebated whether to recruit more heavily from the immigrant community amongboth documented and undocumented people. During Congressional debates overimmigration in 2007 (a year after Rep. Poes speech), a proposal was floated toallow undocumented immigrants to serve in the military in return for instant legalstatus and a path to full citizenship, a measure supported by the Defense Depart-ment. At the present time, undocumented immigrants are not allowed to serve inthe military but legal permanent residents are permitted to do so. Well over 100immigrants (so-called green card soldiers) have died in combat in Iraq andAfghanistan since 2001. Some of them have received citizenship posthumously.

In the modern US context, some argue that undocumented immigrants areabusing US citizenship laws. Supposedly, women cross the border and give birthin the United States to ensure citizenship for their children, if not for themselves,thereby diluting the meaning and importance of citizenship. This argument sug-gests that, since anyone born within the political boundaries of the United Statesis automatically a citizen, an incentive is created for people from poorer nationsto come here and have what is referred to as anchor babies. As a result, therehas been an effort by some to eliminate birth-right citizenship. The most recentattempt is the Birthright Citizenship Act of 2011 introduced in the US House ofRepresentatives by Iowa Congressman Steve King. Similar measures have beenintroduced during every congressional session since 2005, but the bill has lan-guished for lack of sufficient support. Those championing the legislation make thecase that the courts have misread the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment that,when ratified in 1868, was aimed at providing citizenship rights to recently freedslaves. Critics argue that the Fourteenth Amendment should not be applied to thechildren of undocumented immigrants in the current context. Tancredo againrefers to Rome and the value of Roman citizenship as an incentive for the UnitedStates to cautiously guard entry into the ranks of citizenship, arguing that [c]iti-zenship should be as important to Americans as it was to the Ancient Romans.31

What this statement misses, however, is the fact that the Romans had a fairlyelastic notion of citizenship. While guarding the status in the main, Romanauthorities held citizenship out as a goal to be achieved to spread Romanitas from

31. Tancredo, In Mortal Danger, 194.


the empires center to its periphery. Roman citizenship was controlled andrestricted, to be sure, but also shared and not withheld entirely.

Most of the arguments on the pro-immigration side attempt to paint thebirth-right citizenship proposal as outside the political mainstream and aimed atgarnering votes for and from political conservatives. But those who oppose effortsto retain birth-right citizenship have been less systematic in creating philosophicalarguments against the proposed legislation, perhaps because they do not see agreat likelihood that it will pass. There has been little discussion on the pro-immigrant side of the use of restrictive citizenship measures as a potential threatto other stigmatized groups. Were the precedent established, would the UnitedStates government use similar measures against former nationals of a country withwhich we are at war? One only need recall the treatment of Japanese-heritage UScitizens during the Second World War and their systematic placement in intern-ment camps to recognize the potential for ominous measures restricting andrestructuring citizenship.

Some legal scholars have argued that the restriction of citizenship rights wouldundermine the principle of equality which is at the core of our system of juris-prudence.32 A 1994 article in the Harvard Law Review made the followingobservation about a birth-right citizenship proposal circulating at the time:

. . . Congress and the states should reject the proposed citizenship amend-ment because it conflicts with one of the foundations upon which Americansociety is builtthe principle of equality before the law. One facet of thisconstitutionally based principle, as illustrated by the Supreme Courts juris-prudence relating to illegitimate children, demands that certain children notbe treated differently from other children solely on account of the actions orstatus of their parents. Because the equality principle encompasses the caseof American-born children of undocumented aliens, the citizenship amend-ment would thus conflict with this ideal.33

Legal historian Mae M. Ngai argues that at times in our history a sort of aliencitizenship has emerged in practice.34 This is when racialized identity, she

32. Two excellent legal analyses are [an.], The Birthright Citizenship Amendment: A Threat toEquality, Harvard Law Review 107, March 1994, 102643; and Joseph H. Carens,Review: Who Belongs? Theoretical and Legal Questions about Birthright Citizenship in theUnited States, The University of Toronto Law Journal 37, Autumn 1987, 41343.

33. Birthright Citizenship Amendment, 1028.

34. MaeM. Ngai, Birthright Citizenship and the Alien Citizen, Fordham Law Review 5, 2007,252130 at 2521.


writes, is used to deny citizenship rights to non-European immigrants even whenthey legally qualify as citizens because of their birth within the boundaries of theUnited States.35

***

Finally, it is worthwhile to consider two books for audiences beyond academiccircles and secondary-school classrooms that take up several topics raised in thisessay. Cullen Murphys Are We Rome? considers the linkage between the Romanand American empires.36 Murphy is a journalist trying to reach a broad audience,who did his history homework well. Here we have a fairly well-informed,thought-provoking popular treatment of Roman and American walls and bordersthat channel and control the movement of goods and people rather than blockthem entirely. Murphy accepts the portrait of border fluidity and identifies twohistoriographical camps when it comes to borders: those who see them as limitsand those who see borders as loose boundaries. Murphy, too, uses the wordimmigrants to describe barbarians, observing that Rome let some in and gavethem a measure of permanent status and autonomy, which was the initial goal inthe 376 CE tale that Rep. Poe was telling. He finds in ancient Rome and modernAmerica a similar process of assimilation that cannot be stopped and identifies thisfact as a good thing for all involved.

Murphy makes two specifically important and accurate points concerningRome. First, the barbarians wanted to get into the Roman Empire because it wasdoing well, not because it was failing. In words that describe the late RomanEmpire but seem to come out of American talk radio and cable TV, Murphywrites, First in the borderlands of empire and then farther inside, they were givenjobs that Romans didnt want or couldnt fill, in the fields and the mines and theforts, including jobs as seasonal laborers.37 Second, the Roman Empire wantedimmigrants in part because assimilation had long been a hallmark of imperial ruleand successful administration of a vast and diverse empire. This fundamentalnotion embodied in imperial Romecreating unity out of diversityhas been agrail of geopolitics ever since.38

35. Ibid., 2521.

36. Cullen Murphy, Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America, Boston, MA:Houghton Mifflin, 2007.

37. Ibid., 167.

38. Ibid., 184.


Amy Chua, approaching the issue from a broader perspective, agrees withMurphys central tenets in herDay of Empire.39 Chua looked at a number of priorworld empires, among them Rome, arguing that they rose because they were,relative to their times, tolerant, diverse, and able to incorporate and assimilatepeople from a wide range of ethnic and racial groups. In a paradoxical thesis, sheclaims that tolerance led to intolerance, internal conflict, decline, and disintegra-tion. She repeats this premise when applying the model to the U.S. today: Fromthe beginning, immigration has been the fuel of American wealth and innovation,providing the United States with a continuing human-capital edge that has provenequally decisive in the industrial, atomic, and computer ages.40 In fact, Chuaargues that intolerance and xenophobia are among the greatest threats to UnitedStates power and influence in the world, noting that dominant powers havefallen precisely when their core groups turned intolerant.41

Therein lies precisely the type of cautionary tale a historian might seek as weassess, in the end, just how Rome has been used in the American immigrationdebate. With historically grounded objective evidence, the Rome-immigrationdebate can serve as a wonderful analytical tool for the classroom and beyond,especially because the debate is too often based on caricatures. Seldom are Romeand the United States used in public debate by those with an intimate knowledgeof Roman history, of the history of the United States southwest and Mexico, or ofrecent studies of worldwide immigration trends. Instead, uncontextualized sliversof historical fact are used to create grand models and schemes often predictingapocalyptic catastrophe for the United States if policy corrections are not enactedin the near future. This is where our teachable moments come in.

Looking more closely at some of the terms we have discussed, we determine inparticular that the use of Roman borders as a metaphor for walls that should goup in the southwest United States is a political football that needs to be punted.Roman walls were porous tolls, not impenetrable barriers. Trying to employ aRoman metaphor for this aspect of the American immigration story today is aterrible model that is applied incorrectly. On the question of citizenship, however,we have a more subtle situation to consider. Romans wanted to extend citizenshipfor the same reasons that Americans do: to expand influence but also to increasea sense of civic duty that will include taxes for all and military service for some.

39. Chua, Day of Empire, 2958.

40. Ibid., 325.

41. Ibid., 337.


Americans want new citizens to earn their place fairly and legally. So did theRomans, but the Romans did not so jealousy guard their citizenship to the extentthat they kept it entirely aloof or tried to redefine it so narrowly as to make itnearly unattainable. Rather, they offered several levels of belonging designed toprotect present citizens but also to provide a path for others to become citizens.Those who want to use a notion of Roman citizenship as entirely exclusionaryemploy a model that is faulty and not grounded in historical reality. Those whowant to offer these genuine Roman pathways as a model that might be appliedprofitably to the United States today, meanwhile, may have a more convincingcase. As a lesson in moving forward and expanding the American ideal, it works;as a talking point to keep people out, it fails.

Another nuanced issue is one of accommodation, which is related to ourquestions of language and identity. Can someone who starts as one of them (anancient barbarian or modern illegal alien) become one of us (an ancient Roman ormodern American)? Here, a Roman model can cut both ways based on where acommentator stands. Is accommodation a good thing or a bad thing? Do we wantour culture to expand and enculturate others? Do we want other cultures toinfluence ours? An ancient example of loathing of newcomers might help, if for noother reason than to remind us that fear of outsiders is nothing new. We find inJuvenal, the sharp-tongued Roman satirist of the early second century CE, alamentation that might ring true for some today:

Now, let me say something about a people ourrich men love but whom I try my best to avoid.Im not ashamed to say it:I cant stand a Rome full of Greeks!Of course, our citys scum is made of more than Greeks.For years the Syrian Orontes has been pouringinto the Tiber, dumping its lingo and its manners, . . .Look at that fellow over there!His profession is being whatever you want him to be:grammarian, orator, geometrician, painter, trainer,soothsayer, rope-dancer, doctor, magiciana hungry Greek will do anything. . . .Why should I be forced outof my own hometown by these purple-robed dandies?Is some easterner blown here by the same oriental windthat brings us our prunes and figs going to sign


his name before mine and lie upon a softer couch?Does it count for nothing that I was here first . . . ?42

We hasten to add that at the same time the Romans were complaining, theycould not get enough of Greek culture, leading to the instructive and accuratemaxim, Rome conquered Greece, but Greece conquered Rome. But perhapsthis is precisely the point: accommodation and assimilation may be seen by someas a goal, but by others as a capitulation. Some proponents of multiculturalismmight cheer an American cognate to Romes relative globalization, which indeedhelped it create an empire that shared Romanitas while drawing on the strengthsof others, but at the same time others would turn to the phrase, Rome conqueredGreece, but Greece conquered Rome not with joy but with mourningandquote Juvenal as their bard. Both sides, in other words, might interpret the verysame historical paradigm in support of opposing positions. Exploring these com-peting interpretations would be a particularly good lesson for students as theyassess the use of history in political debates.

We also suggest that teachers, scholars, and writers should consider how thedebate has been framed and whether it needs to be tilted on its axis. For example,rarely do scholars, activists, or pundits ask about the implications for the Gauls orthe Germanic tribes subjugated by Roman armies several hundred years before theRoman empire faded. What about the impact on those societies of the settlementof their lands by Roman citizens protected by the military? Why do we just focuson how immigration-invasion affected the mighty Roman Empire and fail to turnthe question around to look at it from the perspective of the conquered? Why notconsider the viewpoint of the so-called barbarian? Are those omissions rooted ina sort of historiographical imperialism or determinism that suggests not all immi-grants or societies are created equal? These sorts of questions would force us tolook at immigration from the viewpoint of the vanquished. If the question were tobe pursued further, we might look at the Mexican immigration debate verydifferently. Such an analysis would focus on the struggles for Texas independencein the 1830s and the later Mexican-American War of 18461848 that led theUnited States to annex nearly one-half of Mexican territory, and then encourageand defend the settlement of it by predominantly Anglophones. Ironically, the lossof Texas by Mexico in the 1830s, one could argue, is rooted in their efforts toencourage North American immigration to their underpopulated northern region.

42. Juvenal, Satire 3, as rendered in Bradley P. Nystrom and Stylianos V. Spyridakis, eds, AncientRome: Documentary Perspectives, second ed., Dubuque, IA: Kendall-Hunt PublishingCompany, 1995, 1701.


The unwillingness of North American settlers to accept the authority of theMexican government, to speak Spanish, and to convert to Roman Catholicismhave been frequently cited as causes for the split from Mexico. This sort ofcomparison would add complexity and irony to the current debate about Mexicanimmigration to the United States southwest.

We have raised these questions in this manner because, as historians andteachers, we should interpret the past based on new questions suggested by themodern world, by new perspectives, and by expanding evidence and interpretivemodels even as we reconsider traditional questions and answers. So is the UnitedStates on the verge of collapse and is immigration a major component in thatunraveling? From our perspective at a diverse and multicultural universitycampus, where dozens of languages can be heard around campus, the answer is aresounding no. But, historically speaking, in this debate like so many others, theanswer is often dependent on the set of questions being posed and the historian,amateur or professional, asking them. This political football provides an oppor-tunity for students and the public-at-large to see how history is used, abused,stretched, and folded to further modern policy debates. Such debate sheds light onthe past as well as the present because so much of what we see and say about thepast says a great deal about ourselves, toowhich is yet another important lessonfor us all.


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