The Immigrant Problem and Other American Inventions
In the ongoing narrative of American politics, the far-right has long mastered the art of manufacturing enemies. Whether it was the "Red Scare" of the 1950s, the "terrorist threat" post-9/11, or today’s so-called “immigrant crisis,” the formula remains unchanged: identify a scapegoat, stoke fear, and mobilize a base into acting against its own material self-interest. Each iteration is sold as a new existential threat. In reality, these enemies are carefully chosen distractions, tools of political manipulation rather than reflections of actual danger.
The "Communist problem" of the Cold War era serves as an early blueprint. Fueled by McCarthyism, Americans were urged to report neighbors and blacklist colleagues. The state weaponized paranoia not to protect citizens from Soviet infiltration, but to crush labor movements, suppress civil rights activism, and entrench a culture of conformity and suspicion. The real casualties were not agents of foreign powers but American teachers, union leaders, and artists whose lives were destroyed in the name of “freedom.” According to Ellen Schrecker in Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (1998), over 12,000 individuals lost their jobs or were denied employment due to political persecution. McCarthy's reign created a climate in which dissent itself became suspect.
Later came the "Russian problem," revived during the Reagan administration in the 1980s. The Soviet Union, already in decline, was portrayed as an imminent threat to American freedom and security. This narrative justified ballooning military budgets and covert interventions in Latin America, most infamously the Iran-Contra affair. As historian Greg Grandin notes in Empire's Workshop (2006), these interventions were not about defending democracy but about enforcing neoliberalism and U.S. economic dominance abroad. At home, defense contractors profited while inequality widened. The supposed Russian menace served a dual purpose: enriching the military-industrial complex and redirecting domestic anxieties outward.
After September 11, 2001, the enemy was rebranded once again. This time it was the “terrorist,” a figure defined more by religion and ethnicity than ideology. The Bush administration's War on Terror led to two protracted conflicts, the erosion of civil liberties under the Patriot Act, and a surveillance regime whose reach extended into every American's private life. According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University, the post-9/11 wars have killed over 900,000 people and cost the United States more than eight trillion dollars. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security grew into a sprawling bureaucracy, and local police forces began acquiring military-grade equipment. The threat of terrorism, while real in isolated incidents, was exaggerated and exploited to create a permanent state of fear and emergency.
Today, the chosen scapegoat is the immigrant. In this latest cycle of xenophobic theater, immigrants are blamed for economic instability, crime, and cultural decay. Yet, empirical evidence flatly contradicts these claims. Research from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS, 2020) shows that in Texas, native-born Americans are more than twice as likely to be arrested for violent crimes and over four times more likely to be arrested for property crimes than undocumented immigrants. A comprehensive study from Northwestern University (2024) found that immigrants have consistently lower incarceration rates than native-born citizens, with naturalized citizens being 60 percent less likely to be incarcerated since 1960. These statistics dismantle the notion of a migrant crime wave. The "immigrant problem" is not a problem at all. It is a political mirage.
So why persist with the lie?
Because the lie is useful.
By casting immigrants as dangerous invaders, the far-right garners support for draconian border policies, bloated immigration enforcement budgets, and increasingly authoritarian rhetoric. More importantly, it keeps their political base distracted. Instead of asking why wages are stagnant, why healthcare is unaffordable, or why public schools are crumbling, voters are encouraged to blame “the other.” It is a sleight of hand. As long as people are afraid of imaginary threats, they will not see the real ones: corporate greed, environmental collapse, and the erosion of democracy itself.
The far-right thrives in fear. It needs scapegoats the way a fire needs oxygen. And America, with its deep historical well of racism, nationalism, and exceptionalism, provides fertile ground. The targets may change; Communists, Russians, Muslims, immigrants…. but the strategy stays the same. Invent an enemy, manufacture consent, and use that consent to deepen inequality under the guise of protection.
To confront this, we must recognize the pattern. The true crisis is not immigration, nor terrorism, nor any phantom foreign ideology. The true crisis is a political machine that survives by feeding people false enemies. It turns neighbor against neighbor while the architects of fear grow richer and more powerful.
We have been here before. We are here again.