THE disturbing scenes emerging from Los Angeles, one of America’s richest cities, resemble the chaotic events often witnessed in the world’s trouble spots, or ‘Third World countries’ as President Donald Trump calls them. The unrest over immigration raids in the California metropolis has pitched the Republican-led federal government against the Democrat-controlled state administration. In fact, it reflects the culture wars that have been rocking America for the last few years. Liberal Americans feel that immigrants should be dealt with humanely, while Mr Trump’s MAGA support base sees illegal foreigners as the source of all evil in the US. The trouble began on Friday when federal immigration officers raided several neighbourhoods in LA in search of ‘illegal migrants and gang members’. In the days since, protesters have clashed with law enforcers, and the Trump administration has called out thousands of troops — National Guard members and the Marines — to quell the protests. Demonstrators feel the city’s Hispanic community is being unfairly targeted. While Mr Trump has termed the protesters “insurrectionists”, California Governor Gavin Newsom has accused the president of manufacturing a crisis, calling him a “dictator”.

Cracking down on illegal immigration was one of Mr Trump’s key campaign promises, so we may see more of what has been transpiring in LA in different parts of the US. The reality is that in many wealthy societies — particularly North America and Europe — the far right has been tapping into anti-immigrant sentiment to make political capital. The extreme right exploits economic uncertainty — that immigrants are taking ‘our’ jobs — while in other instances, anti-immigrant rhetoric is only thinly disguised racism. This is despite the fact that in many of these societies, citizens refuse to do the low-paid, menial work immigrants gladly take up. While every state has the right to control illegal immigration, the fact is that people have been traversing the globe in search of greener pastures since time immemorial. As long as people are not breaking the law, there is no justification for scapegoating immigrants for all of society’s ills. But for states like Pakistan, which see thousands of people go abroad annually in search of better lives, these warning signs should be heeded. Many foreign societies are slamming their doors on immigrants, and we must be prepared for the consequences.

Published in Dawn, June 11th, 2025