(Photo by Ted Eytan via Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED)
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The anti-immigration sentiments being catered to by both Biden and Trump go hand in hand with the epidemic of loneliness running rampant in the U.S. Immigration is a currently prominent subject for discussion. As in 2016, Trump built his platform on campaigning for strict border policies and the criminalization of immigrants. President Biden’s policies have shifted during his presidency, moving away from his initially humane policies toward more restrictive ones in the past year. The Circumvention of Lawful Pathways rule, implemented in 2023, restricted how immigrants and refugees could cross the border and left many of them in a dangerous limbo at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Access to asylum has since become even more challenging to obtain, with the executive order unveiled on June 4th limiting border crossings during “busy periods” to 2,500 people a day, regardless of the validity of asylum claims. Both the Democratic and Republican Party are well aware of the perceived danger of immigrants among American voters, and both understand that winning the elections in November will largely come down to their immigration policies.
American voters are becoming less tolerant toward immigrants, and in recent years, this has crossed partisan lines. Since 2020, the percentage of Americans who believe that the number of immigrants coming into the U.S. should decrease has jumped from 28 percent to 55 percent. The same poll shows a 9 percent increase in the number of people who believe that all illegal immigrants should be deported. More than 75 percent of Americans polled considered the situation at the border either a ‘major problem’ or a ‘crisis.’
Historically, rural Republicans have been the most intolerant of immigration, but in the last year alone, the number of Democrats who would like immigration to decrease has increased by 10 percent. This issue no longer belongs to one specific demographic—it has spilled over to all groups. It is now considered the most important issue to American voters across the board.
Suppose we keep in mind that most people crossing the border have dreams and aspirations and that the majority would prefer to remain in their home countries and only decide to make the often treacherous trip to the U.S. out of necessity and fear. These then statistics raise the question: have we become less empathetic? Does it no longer bother us to hear about people dying as they wait for an appointment at the border, the kidnappings and robberies they’re threatened with, the families placed in detention as they wait to be processed?
Loneliness and Survival
I would like to believe that we have not become worse people. I do not think that this decrease in sympathy towards the immigrants’ plight is caused by an inability to care about others – I think it is the result of a systemic issue that has placed the entirety of the American population under threat: the epidemic of loneliness. According to an American Psychiatry Association poll from January, one in three American adults polled feel lonely every week, and half of the American adults polled experience “measurable loneliness.” Loneliness has detrimental effects on our physical health, with increased loneliness leading to a 29 percent increase in the risk of heart disease and a 50 percent increase in the likelihood of dementia.
According to U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murphy, “loneliness is like hunger or thirst, (…) it’s a natural signal our body sends us when we’re lacking something we need for survival – in this case, social connection”. Social connectedness, or “community belonging,” is paramount to our survival. As social beings, we cannot live without relationships with others, and it is not a matter of quantity. Human beings require deep relationships to survive, and the current social landscape of the U.S. has made it increasingly difficult to obtain and maintain these relationships.
American Individualism and the Erosion of Communities
U.S. society has become more individualistic and competitive, with human value often expressed in monetary terms. The “American Dream” promises that anyone who works hard enough can ‘make it big,’ but the flip side of this promise is that anyone who is not successful simply is not good enough. This mentality implicitly places all the responsibility on the individual and puts pressure on them to sacrifice anything not profitable in their pursuit of success.
In his 1931 book “Epic of America,” James Truslow Adams already pointed out the dangerous consequence of this mindset: Americans had started to treat “money as a value” and not “merely a means to produce or measure value.” His fears have only become more real in the 90 years since.
Because people see individual financial success as the ultimate goal, they put relationships on hold for jobs, and overworking has become the norm. Long hours leave workers exhausted and lacking the time and energy to socialize and invest in their communities.
COVID-19 only worsened this problem. For many people, remote work removed the only socialization they regularly had, and despite the pandemic being over, in-office work has not returned to past levels. Remote work and online connectivity have made being productive an expectation 24/7, giving us the impression that face-to-face interactions are largely redundant. As a result, people feel more isolated and lonely than ever before. When the skewed socio-economic landscape and lack of equal opportunities make it nearly impossible to realize the American Dream, they have no one to turn to.
In regions of the U.S. where deindustrialization has eroded communities and social bonds, so-called ‘diseases of despair,’ such as drug addiction, suicide, and other physical illnesses brought on by social isolation, have led to declining life expectancy. The development of addiction, a widespread issue that afflicts millions of Americans, has been linked to social isolation and loneliness, and remote workers have reported higher levels of alcohol and drug misuse than office workers. This disillusionment and lack of social safety net also contribute to the anti-immigrant sentiments we see today.
The Hostile Effects of Not “Belonging”
We are not made to deal with our problems alone, and when people lack a community, they forge one by finding a common enemy. The act often happens subconsciously when social psychological mechanisms like in-group/out-group bias are triggered. In-group/out-group bias is a process that developed through evolution to protect our hunter-gatherer societies from enemy groups. It made it easier for us to distinguish between “us” and “them” by “othering” the enemy group. Once we have “othered” a person or group, we no longer see them as equally human as us. We are more likely to associate negative characteristics with them and find it difficult to distinguish between members of the out-group.
Once we see our enemies as all the same and in a negative light, it becomes easier for us to dehumanize them and turn our empathy off, which is necessary during warfare. By creating a homogenous, hostile ‘them,’ we also automatically create an ‘us,’ fulfilling a basic human need for community and belonging. In the American context, the “us” is what many people are missing. This phenomenon explains what we are seeing today, with the increased – unfair – criminalization of immigrants and the use of derogatory and racist slurs to describe those crossing the border. Americans are grappling for stability in a sea of change.
Loneliness and Immigration
The U.S. has undergone drastic changes since the turn of the millennium. The industries sustaining rural areas have largely disappeared, altering many Americans’ projected way of life. This transition, along with demographic changes and a shift in gender perspectives, has changed how Americans see themselves and each other. I don’t think the problem lies in the changes but in the speed with which they took place and the lack of alternatives for those affected. For many Americans, this loss of a predictable future feels as if the American nation itself is crumbling – that it has lost the fabric that holds it together.
We are predisposed to address alienation with hatred; look at the Skinhead movement in the ‘70s and ‘80s or even the psychological profile of many school shooters. When our national community is under threat, the natural choice is to target the influx of people coming from a different background, who bring a different language and set of customs with them and, therefore, threaten to further change the American identity. Immigrants are easy to frame as the problem when, in reality, the root of the problem lies in the corrosion of the American community.
In an environment that has forgotten about group entity, people are grasping at straws to find a way to feel less alone. COVID-19 worsened an already pervasive problem, and although social media has made it easier to forge superficial friendships, it comes at the expense of depth. A lonelier population is a more divided population and a less welcoming population. In a country rife with plurality, ‘Make America Great Again’ is an attractive slogan because it promises lonely Americans a unified identity to take part in.
But part of this sense of belonging is built on the exclusion of others. Diversity requires tolerance, and tolerance can only come from a place of personal stability. The only hope, if we want the U.S. to become more welcoming in the future, is to tackle the causes of personal instability and loneliness among the population. By rebuilding American communities, we can rediscover the welcoming and care for others that now seems so alien.
Edited by Anthony Hablak
