Etched on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty is Emma Lazarus’s 1883 poem “The New Colossus”:
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses
Yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse
Of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless,
Tempest-tossed to me; I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
It’s a beautiful sentiment, a message of welcome to the immigrants who sailed past the statue on their way to queue for entry at Ellis Island. But the placement of these lines at the metaphorical golden door to America also carried a crucial subtext: by the time you were standing on that threshold, you had definitely — to put it in less poetic terms — been through some shit. Not just whatever tragic circumstances caused you to flee your home country — oppression, catastrophe, poverty, war — but the journey itself. Your arrival on American soil was the culmination of weeks or months of arduous travel, including the storied transatlantic crossing; probably, you were catching your first glimpse of Lady Liberty from the steerage compartment of some filthy ship where you had spent the past week defecating into a bucket, sleeping six to a berth, and being gnawed on by lice, rats, and possibly your fellow passengers.
Indeed, the transformative promise of a life in this country was predicated on the inherent difficulty of getting here: you could make it in America, but first you had to make it to America.
Keeping in mind that the hero’s journey of the American immigrant was already the stuff of legend, we may be less than shocked by the recent news — first reported by the Daily Mail — that the US Department of Homeland Security is considering participating in a Survivor-style reality TV show centred on immigration, with contestants competing for coveted citizenship via “regionally specific ‘cultural’ contests”. The show is the brainchild of producer Rob Worsoff, best known for his work on Duck Dynasty, who has been pitching it to DHS since the Obama administration, but without success — or attention, for that matter. (I believe I speak for the majority of my countrymen when I say I had no idea that our national security apparatus was also in the business of doing reality shows.)
Initially, rumour had it that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was already backing the project — but a DHS spokesman clarified that the idea had not yet reached Noem and was merely under review, and Noem herself told a Senate committee earlier this week that she’d never heard of the project and had no plans to participate in it. Which perhaps makes the media imbroglio a bit premature, but honestly, can you blame them? An immigration reality show is so perfectly on-brand for Donald Trump that the most surprising thing is that he didn’t come up with the idea himself, somewhere in between the campaign-era fearmongering about Haitian migrants barbecuing pets in Ohio, and his administration’s mass deportation of thousands of people. (These people are illegal aliens and gang members, supposedly, except that it’s increasingly looking like that number includes a significant contingent of innocent people who were scooped up and sent to foreign prisons by mistake). A Hunger Games-style competition for citizenship would just be the cherry on top of the already-grotesque spectacle that is the Trump 2.0 immigration policy.
“An immigration reality show is so perfectly on-brand for Donald Trump that the most surprising thing is that he didn’t come up with the idea himself.”
Except, unlike the bulk of the current administration’s efforts to manage immigration, this might… actually be kind of a good idea?
To see why, one must first understand how the American immigration narrative has changed since the days when Ronald Reagan celebrated the US as a beacon of hope, the “shining city on a hill”, “open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here”. But the comparative ease of border-crossing in the age of the global economy, combined with the fact that today’s migrants are mostly coming from South and Central America rather than across the Atlantic, has badly undermined the romantic narrative that defined immigration in the Reagan era. The image of the immigrant as heroic traveller has been replaced by a Trumpian boogeyman: the scary, seedy bad hombre sauntering across the southern border with a gun in one hand and a bag of fentanyl in the other. These aren’t your huddled masses but your invading hordes, sneaking in to steal your job, your security, your hard-won American dream.
That narrative may not be accurate, but it is certainly politically effective. For a long time, the only response the Left could muster was the comparatively ineffective tactic of calling anyone who believed it a racist, resulting in zero progress or cooperation and a whole lot of ill will — a state of affairs which has not improved in the wake of Trump’s return to the White House. But this is why the idea of an immigration reality show is so intriguing: this is a chance to tell a different kind of story, one that is pro-immigrant without being anti-American. It’s a narrative that offers something to people of all political stripes: a wholesome story about people who believe in this country, and love what it stands for, all yearning to prove themselves worthy of the privilege of being your neighbour, your friend, your fellow American.
A bit exploitative and gauche? Maybe, but that’s show business, baby. And it’s also fully in keeping with the proud American tradition of disguising as a glittering spectacle what is, at base, a good and charitable cause. Much like beauty pageants promote community engagement and civic pride through the strategic use of tiaras and bikinis, a reality show featuring aspiring Americans dressed up as cowboy cosplayers trying to lasso their way to citizenship is a good way to make people care about the immigrant experience where they might have been otherwise indifferent.
Obviously, there are also ways in which this could all go terribly wrong, particularly given that the current administration seems to take a certain malicious delight in not just ejecting people from the country but making the process hurt. Although Worsoff says that being on the show would not harm the contestants’ immigration prospects in any way, one could still be forgiven for worrying that those eliminated from the competition might find themselves walking off the set into ICE custody, or worse.
But that is a potential flaw in the execution, not the concept. And as for the concept, it’s really nothing new — even in the realm of pop culture. The preciousness of citizenship is something storytellers have long pointed at, often through the lens of science fiction, imagining a future United States in which it has become a privilege of the ruling class rather than a right for all. The Hunger Games, The Running Man, The Handmaid’s Tale, Starship Troopers, Gattaca: each in their own way present a dystopian warning of what the future might hold. But they are also, quietly, a nod to the unfathomable value of what we have right here, right now — and to the sense that to be an American requires not just having a dream, but having the ferocity to chase it.
And if turning that experience into a televised competition seems a bit distasteful, perhaps that’s only because it makes too explicit, too real, the understanding that has always lurked beneath the surface of American culture: that to live in this country is a blessing. One most of us take for granted because we were born to it rather than having to earn it; one that grants us the kind of freedom and opportunity that other people would cross an ocean just to have a shot at.
This is an easy thing to forget in the era of the border crisis, with our vast, impersonal bureaucracy that renders individual immigrant stories invisible. Whatever the dangers of a show like this, it would at least replace the boogeyman of the invading horde with the names and faces and stories of individual human beings. People with dreams, people with families; people we’ll want to root for. Why? For the same reasons we’ve always celebrated the archetypal immigrant, who would sacrifice anything to get to America: because he is possessed of the same strength, the same hunger, the same pioneer spirit as the ones who built the country in the first place — through revolution, or Manifest Destiny, or simply reckless, relentless persistence in pursuit of a free and beautiful life. He believes in America. He belongs in America.
And if that journey once began with a welcome from Lady Liberty at the golden door, maybe today it could begin in primetime — in the flickering blue light of the television, in the privacy and comfort of our living rooms.
