New York, 1980. An Irish American boy yells at writer Suketu Mehta and his Indian friend, "Fucking Ayatollahs!" When Mehta corrects the boy (they were Indians not Iranians), the boy retorts, "Fucking Gandhis!"
Suketu Mehta's book, This Land is Our Land: An Immigrant's Manifesto, is a political treatise on the issue of migration that makes powerful use of personal narratives. Forty years after Mehta's exchange in school, hate speech and crime still abound in the United States. By capitalising on a fear of the 'other' and appealing to majoritarian groups – leaders like Donald Trump, Viktor Orban and Narendra Modi have consolidated power. Since contemporary politics often revolves around the subject of migration, framing the immigrant 'other' as a potent threat to the country's prosperity, growth and development is a profitable electoral strategy.
Indeed, Trump was elected by stoking fear of migrants, and later, "the press, nonwhites, women, Democrats and the NFL [National Football League]." Suketu Mehta's new book – a product of "sorrow and rage – as well as hope" – documents the increase in cruel anti-immigrant policies under the Trump presidency, including the institutionalising of separation, where tens of thousands of children were shipped across the country to 'shelters' with little or no access to their parents. "It was a policy," writes Mehta, "specifically intended to deter families fleeing violence and instability in their home countries."
It is this spectre of chaos and lawlessness that a refugee family is perceived to bring with them that evokes fear in the world's most militarily and economically powerful government. Mehta points out the irony: rich countries that created colonies are often responsible for the economic and political disorder in the home country of the refugee, which the latter finds "wrecked by banditry or desertification."