All over the world, the war on immigration is raging. From South Africa to the United States, and across Europe, a merciless hunt is being waged against immigration. The most sacrificed in this war, once again, is the human person. Families, men, women, and children are subjected to cruel violence for the simple reason that they are undocumented. They are people whom the system does not recognize. They are lives that the system has not certified. These are one too many people.

In fact, behind this war on immigration lies the problem of an entire existence reduced to the necessity of certification. It is the reality of an existence that hangs by a single piece of paper. An uncertified existence is nonexistent.

To exist today, one must have the right to do so. A right held exclusively by an administration, an authority, a system. I exist because a stamp certifies it. I exist because a signature attests to it. I exist because the administrative machine recognizes it.    

We are truly very far from the Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am.” From birth certificates to residency permits, existence must be recognized and attested to in order to have meaning. The meaning of existence is no longer ontological; it has simply become mechanical, functional. We are truly a far cry from Heidegger’s “man is the shepherd of being.”

That is why the war over immigration is not so much a war of man against man, but a war of the administrative machine against man. It is a war of ethics against technology. Man is no longer that face that speaks to me, calls out to me, humanizes me, and makes me responsible in the Levinasian sense of the term.

A person is simply defined by traits, biometric characteristics, that must be matched with a system, that must be retrievable from a database. Not being there is simply not existing.

Donald ZAGORE