Are the media over-hyping the “caravan,” the more than 7,000 Central Americans currently walking through Mexico and heading for the U.S. border? Yes, say a slew of media critics: Arguing that the matter is hardly urgent, Oliver Darcy of CNN notes that the caravan is still “1,000 miles away” from the U.S-Mexican border. Angelo Carusone of MediaMatters elaborates on the argument: It’s still “20-30” days before they reach the border, he points out. It’s therefore only an “impending” issue, he says.
This is an odd argument. (Also—coincidentally!—it is precisely the argument that the Democratic party is making as well.) The midterm elections are 13 days away. Should the media stop covering it because it’s an issue on the horizon and not directly in front of us? Also: Do you think the media should cover climate change? That’s an even longer term threat—the latest IPCC report predicts serious danger in the year 2040. If you think covering climate change is fair game (and I do!), it’s hard to see how you can object to covering the caravan on the grounds of immediate relevance.
A stronger argument (though one I haven’t seen) would be that that 7,000 Central Americans doesn’t amount to a hill of beans against the huge numbers of migrants who enter the country each year. More than 300,000 would-be border crossers were apprehended at the southern border last year—and that was a down year. (This year has seen an uptick.)
Still, I would argue, the caravan does matter. It’s a useful synecdoche for the biggest issue in politics—not just in America but across multiple continents. The issue is migration.
President Donald Trump, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, Japanese prime minster Shinzo Abe, Italian deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, South Korean president Moon Jae-in, Australian prime minister Scott Morrison, and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu differ on many, many issues. They wouldn’t all be classified as conservatives. But they all adhere to one fundamental principle: That the nation state and its citizens determine who enters it—not the would-be migrants themselves. And this position seems to be, across very different societies, ascendant.
The migrant caravan provides a dramatic example illustrating this fundamental conflict. South of the U.S. border is an expanding column of people, marching onward. Eventually they will reach the place where Mexico and the United States meet, and this philosophical conflict will crystallize. Those on one side of the debate will argue that these migrants have a right to enter the United States, irrespective of the laws, customs, or wishes of America. Those on the other side—including the president—will argue the opposite.
The reason that so many people in the media—and Democrats—want the caravan to go away is because this is an issue on which they would rather not reveal which side they’re on.
