I'm an immigrant of extraordinary ability. No, hang on, we all are

Everyone is going bonkers because the World Cup winning French team is made up largely of immigrants or children of immigrants. Of the 23 players on the team, 16 come from families that recently immigrated to France from places like Angola, Algeria, Cameroon, Congo, Morocco and Zaire. A CNN headline read: “France’s World Cup win is a victory for immigrants everywhere.” A clutch of tweets and memes went viral, claiming a win for immigration and calling out the hypocrisy of the anti-immigrant fever currently gripping many of the countries competing for the World Cup. I get it. I was thrilled to see them win, but by highlighting these men as a case for immigration, we’re unwittingly helping white nationalists to build a bigger, more deadly case for some lives being worth more than others.

Let me tell you first, because it’s how I begin all my conversations on the subway, I am an alien of extraordinary ability. I have an O1 visa and that’s why I’m allowed to live here. Add to that, last month I won an award for being a good immigrant, the Alexander Hamilton Award, a beautiful engraved trophy, for my “outstanding contribution to Lower Manhattan and New York State”. As the best little immigrant in town (fine, I’ll admit I shared the award with three others) I’m asking, in my ruined brogue, can we please stop dividing immigrants into good and bad?

Hamilton himself was an immigrant who merely had to help win the War of Independence, set up a banking system and actually found the country to be recognized as “good”. Oh, and become the subject of a record breaking sung- and rapped-through Broadway show. As someone who can never remember her online banking password (actually I just remembered, it’s ‘Hamilton’) and only ever dares to whisper rap, I can confirm it’s very difficult to live up to him. He was exceptional. The immigrants on the French team are exceptional too, they are elite athletes who achieved something magnificent through a combination of luck and skill and incredibly hard work. I’m glad for their success and happy to celebrate just how dynamic multiculturalism can be, but I’m freaked out by the timing. So far, as of June of this year, more than 1,000 people have drowned in the Mediterranean trying to get from Africa to Europe.

This tragedy happened while we watched the beautiful game, this tragedy happened while Donald Trump flew to Europe on Air Force One and whistled loud enough for a stone deaf Jack Russell to hear, saying “Allowing the immigration to take place in Europe is a shame” and “I think you are losing your culture”. Unless I’ve misunderstood everything that has come out of the man’s mouth thus far, he was not talking about white Irish immigrants moving to the UK and opening pubs. He was talking about black and brown people, and his administration’s immigration policies are racist too. He longs for more Norwegians and denies asylum to Guatemalan domestic violence victims, he celebrates St Patrick’s Day and bans Syrian refugees. He remains silent long after a white nationalist kills two men for defending a black woman and her Muslim friend on a Portland train, and he strips away protections like Daca and TPS from people who are mainly, you guessed it, black and brown.

The thing is, immigrants are already “good” – good for the economy, less likely to commit crime than born citizens, proven to enrich the existing community in a myriad of ways. Yet this administration fundamentally plans to reduce all immigration. Trump ostensibly supports the “Raise” act – which would do away with the diversity visa lottery, restrict family reunification visas, and introduce a merit based system, with points. A foreign master’s degree in Stem fields earns seven points while a US master’s earns eight points. Priority is given to prime working ages, which could be deadly for many would-be immigrants. Minors under the age of 18 and those over the age of 50 receive exactly no points.

Any measure of an immigrants’ worth is dangerous. Take this measure, for example: $4bn. That’s how much the countries largest private prison contractors, CoreCivic and GEO Group who run immigration detention centers, collectively earned in the 2017 financial year. Having donated heavily to the Trump presidential campaign, they have been rewarded, and have now ramped up their campaign contributions, no doubt hoping to fill their warehouses with ever more immigrants and increasing profits.

Dividing people up by what they are worth is not just unethical, it’s unscientific, because you never know who could turn out to be successful. The most I contribute to the US is too much money spent on cold brew and a few opportunities for citizens to see a comedian “working something out on stage”. You see, I’m secretly lazy but I got in. In Dan-el Padilla Peralta’s wonderful memoir Undocumented, he points out that seeing him as a toddler, a little black Dominican boy with no papers, nobody would guess he’d go on to become a Princeton Classics professor, but he did. I tell anyone who will listen that Steve Job’s dad was Syrian. Wait, is this plaintive insistence that one never knows also the sound of me falling into the “good immigrant” trap?

Constantly having to prove yourself worthy of basic human dignity is exhausting and unfair, but we can stop. I understand the impulse to point out how well we’re doing in the hope we’ll be allowed to stay. I know it’s hard not to stand up for yourself when you’re being attacked, but the best defense is to stick together. Repeat after me: “I’m not a good immigrant or a bad one, I’m just a person.” Not as catchy as Lin Manuel Miranda number, but I told you I can’t rap. People should not be considered valuable just because they do something of value to you, like pick your fruit or develop your app or win your soccer game. When you dehumanize another, you dehumanize yourself. We all need to hold this close; people are valuable because they are people, the moment we forget that, terrible things happen.

Maeve Higgins is the author of the forthcoming book Maeve in America. Her podcast Maeve in America features immigration stories told by the people who have lived them