Evolution of Vote Bank Politics

Article authored by jain and govil - astute political observers

This is the second part of this multipart series. I do appreciate your comments and read them, so please provide your comments.
Click the URL below to read the first part of the article.

https://steemit.com/politics/@ajain/politics-of-immigration-part-1

The grass is greener on the other side? It is more a question than a statement. So has been taught to all of us in our schools. But what you learn in your childhood often becomes faint memory by the time you reach adulthood, and, is often challenged and discredited as you grow further. Little wonder that 750 million people worldwide, as per recent Gallup poll, are infested with a desire to migrate, if only they could. And that my friends, is no small number. It is about 15% of the world adult population or about 10% of the total world population.
Immigration, Emigration or Migration – people at large often use these words interchangeably. Never mind how the purist of language feel about it. The world at large understands what this phenomenon is and what is at stake. No mistaking the facts. Today there is emotional unrest across the globe which is a catalyst towards the desire to migrate. How else can you explain that while there are almost 158 million people across the globe who want to migrate to the US? Paradoxically there are also some 14% of adults in the US (approximately 45 million) who would want to migrate out of the USA. What is more important is the fact that the number in the US has gone up 40% in just under a decade or so (from 10% in 2010 to 14% in 2018). This goes to show that unrest is a phenomenon across the globe including the US.
Emotional unrest, desire to migrate, the resistance of natives in receiving nations, international travel – all perfect ingredients to make the scenario complicated, vested with conflict of interest, riddled with uncertainties, and so on. This is what makes the situation a happy hunting ground for politicians across the globe. And to this add ethnicity, religion, origin or ancestors. The recipe is complete for vote bank politics. The result, issues tend to get obfuscated leading to all kinds of misery and distress. Let’s see how.

Immigration Evolution

It is important to understand a bit on how immigration has evolved over the years. In early times it was more of colonization. The uninhabited land was colonized by some power (mostly Western European states). They would send a large number of settlers to the land who in turn would dominate or drive away the local inhabitants and over a period of time become the recognized inhabitants of the place. In due course they would form their own independent state and position in the world. History is replete with such examples. USA, New Zealand, Australia, and many more such nations as we know them today, have come into being through this means only. As the nations evolved, they felt the need to build a viable and balanced society. There was a need to attract immigrants into society to reach threshold numbers for viability as well as people with requisite skills to service the manpower needs of the society in particular areas. In very many ways this requirement continues even today. Many of the nations across the globe have well-defined programmes for immigration which try to attract immigrants of requisite skills and cultural profiles to meet the needs of the society and businesses. In addition, the nations attracting immigrants and the nations who are affluent nations realized that they are expected to be responsible citizens and hence need to take immigrants from disturbed areas, people displaced due to strife and violence, wars, natural calamities etc. Over time all this lead to society having a mix of people who clustered together on the basis of their origins, ethnicity, religion, color, race etc. And a race started to max gains for their group in the day to day life by influencing the governments of the day through the instrument of their votes. And lo and behold – the politicians fell for it hook line and sinker.
Today this whole phenomenon has been turned on its head and no one is sure who is manipulating whom or getting the better of whom. Politician or immigrant? But the phenomenon of ‘Vote Bank Politics’ has come to stay in every democratic set up across the globe without any exceptions. Today it has reached such proportions that if one were to say that ‘Vote Bank Politics’ is a cancerous element for democracy and works to the detriment of the society as well as the immigrant, one would not be very wrong.

Evolution of Vote Bank Politics

So when immigration is allowed without proper vetting and due diligence, a large number of immigrants become a burden to society rather than a contributing factor. Many at times, a significant portion of the money is handed out to these illegal immigrants at the cost of the taxpayer with the intention of allowing them to be supportive of the government. This is "Vote Bank Politics". What you must understand is that in doing so, politicians gain an edge at the cost of your future security If the politicians were truly concerned about your wellbeing then they would be first taking care of their citizens and using the tax dollars for constructive activities such as infrastructure development. But they don't and have the intention of creating conflict in society and forcing you to accept an unacceptable situation in the name of security.

Few Examples to help understand “Vote Bank Politics” in real life

Given this sorry state of affairs, and the gaping lacunae in the political system, the internal and external groups are exploiting the same with finesse. How else would you explain ‘Pregnancy Tourism’ from China and some of the other Asian and Latin American countries? The fact that any child born on the US or Canadian soil automatically becomes a citizen is a lacuna exploited by many and continues to be so.
The pathetic and distressful picture of a woman in an advanced stage of her pregnancy trying to scale the wall on US southern border just so that she delivers her child on US soil making the child automatically eligible for citizenship is too graphic to be forgotten.
This could never have been the intention of the forefathers of the constitution. There is no doubt the provision was made in the constitution but the intention in all probability was to ensure that immigrants who have come into the country find that their progeny gets the citizenship as well. And it was in the interest of the society also to do so. These immigrants have gone through the vetting out process and have assimilated themselves into society as well. There was thus no need to vet out their progeny once again. But see where we are on this issue due to ‘Vote Bank Politics’ today. The issue has today become completely obfuscated, the instrument of ‘Vote’ being used by the influential group to their advantage and the politicians from both sides of the spectrum dancing to their tunes in order to get the coveted position of being a messiah for the group and in turn the votes of the group.

Moving on lets us take a case in point of Germany. This country has been at the forefront of liberal immigration for people from the middle east. There was a definite tilt towards pro-immigration policies by Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor. Germany saw a spate of crimes being committed on their land in various cities. The open border for immigration continued. The German chancellor sparred with other member countries in EU as well as the newly elected President of United States – Donald Trump. What was the bottom line impact? Oct 2018. The coalition of Angela Merkel suffered the worst possible defeat in almost half a century in regional elections in Hesse and Bavaria. Merkel's position kind of became untenable and was sort of forced to announce that she would relinquish party leader position in upcoming party elections in Dec 2018 (she has done that. On 7th Dec. Ms. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has been elected leader of CDU – Christian Democratic Union, Merkel’s party) and will not be standing for future elections once she completes her term in 2021. And who gained in the bargain - Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) - Germany’s anti-immigrant far-right party. Exactly how the issue tends to get sacrificed at the Altar of ‘Vote Bank Politics’.

Going forward there are already signs of the actual issue getting obfuscated in the mire of Vote Bank Politics, not just in Germany but in many other countries of EU and probably beyond. This is very clearly evident from the number of countries pulling off from signing the U.N.'s Global Compact on Migration (The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration). In the year 2016, all 193 members of UN adopted a declaration towards orderly migration. Yet days before the actual signing one after another country from all over the world are pulling out. Many others are wanting to attach supplementary terms. Why is all this happening? It is happening because the ruling setups are finding stiff resistance or downright hostility internally from rival political groups on immigration policies. And that my dear friends, is ‘Vote Bank Politics’ in real life.
In the next few articles, we will see in more details some of the immigration situations across the globe. In the next article, we would examine the immigration on the US Southern border. And then we swing across the globe to check on and analyze the immigration of Rohingyas in the Asian continent. Stay tuned.

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