Over the summer I interned at a law firm that handing immigration law. The firm was pro-bono, so we did not see any of the business executives or highly educated immigrant’s visas. A considerable amount of our cases were with uneducated people who had been poor in their home country and are now poor in our country. Many times they were completely undocumented and had scheduled consultations to see if there was any provision in the law that could get them ‘papers.’
I am semi-fluent in Spanish so I spent a lot of time translating first-time client consultations. It was through this experience that I truly saw the way the bureaucracy we were discussing in class today affects immigrants coming from developing “southern” countries. There were many times we had clients who did not understand the concept of what a court was. We had clients who had thrown away the paperwork given to them by ICE officers with their trial date because they did not think they were that important. Many of them had come from poor rural areas of central or South America and had a level of inexperience with bureaucracy that I think as modern-day Americans we struggle to comprehend. There was even a consultation I translated for in which a client thought our office was the immigration court.
Even in Lenon’s utopia, there would need to be at least some sort of government bureaucracy to keep track of what was going on, and even that would be an impediment to migrants with extreme inexperience with bureaucracy. My summer experience gives credence to the idea that the “trillion-dollar bills” on the sidewalk can not just be picked up for free. The costs to not only get low educated migrants from the south through our bureaucracy and then integrate them to work within our domestic bureaucracy would be astronomical, regardless of whether the government or private citizens spearheaded the effort.
2 replies on “Insight into Lenon’s Utopia”
I strongly agree with you statement that even in Lennon’s utopia you would need a constant government bureaucracy. There would need to be some sort of regulations because it could cause confusion among the people if there weren’t ground rules enforced. Also there is the fact that there would be so many cultures and languages coming together. If there was no national language it would be very hard for people to communicate with each other and many would get frustrated and create problems. If there wasn’t a ground level bureaucracy then society may not function productively. There has not be a human society for hundred of years that hasn’t had a sort of ruling class, and this part of our human culture exists because those were the successful communities. The communities that just ran around doing what ever they wanted caused disturbances and did not thrive like those who had a structured society.
You bring up a lot of great points here, and tell a story that is very relevant to the readings. I definitely agree that Lennon’s utopia would need some sort of government bureaucracy in order to keep track of what was going on. You make a great point regarding how much it would cost to achieve something like this. In addition to these costs, an open border allowing anyone to enter would lead to such a large influx of immigrants. It seems that it would be impossible to house and employ such a large influx of people, especially if the influx was all at once.