Illegal immigration: it toppled the Roman empire

The Roman Baths of Caracalla had been in use for more than a century when Barbarians overwhelmed the empire in 406-407. (Wikimedia Commons photo)

The Germanic barbarians who caused Rome's fall are better described as migrants, rather than invaders. (Wikimedia Commons picture)

For centuries, illegal immigration has been a weapon to topple empires. Its most famous use triggered the fall of the Roman Empire. 

The winter of 406–407 A.D. was bitterly cold. When the Rhine froze solid on the night of December 31, hundreds of thousands of barbarians came running across to what they thought would be a better life in Roman territory.

Roman legions were stationed at all the crossing points on the Rhine. They felt secure, guarding the empire. But, when the river froze solid, they were bypassed and totally overwhelmed.

“To the Romans, the German tribes were riffraff; to the Germans, the Roman side of the river was the place to be. The nearest we can come to understanding this divide may be the southern border of the United States. There the spit-and-polish troops are immigration police; the hordes, the Mexicans, Haitians, and other dispossessed people seeking illegal entry. The barbarian migration was not perceived as a threat by Romans, simply because it was a migration — a year-in, year-out, gaggle-tangle migration — and not an organized, armed assault.” 
— Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization

It would be inaccurate to assume that the fall of Rome was due to a sudden invasion by barbarian troops who had marched upon city, stormed it, and caused it to fall.

Rather, many barbarians had actually worked within the empire. Some had served in certain Roman legions. Some had been slaves who had escaped and gone back home. But most of them knew that Rome was much more prosperous than their homes north of the Rhine.

So essentially, illegal immigration caused Rome to fall.

We have seen illegal immigration used many more times in history. In 1803, Thomas Jefferson advocated the settling of American citizens in the French territory west of the Mississippi river. 

“Population is power,“ Jefferson said, numerous times, knowing that the majority of settlers spoke English, and had some sentiments favoring the American government, rather than the French, he knew that this would help convince Napoleon Bonaparte to approve the Louisiana Purchase and sell that territory to the Americans. Or, in case of a conflict, Napoleon would realize he would have a much rougher time of maintaining French possessions in North America.

Legal migration, too, has been used as a diplomatic and military weapon.  Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act in 1862, in the early days of the Civil War. This law gave a parcel of 160 acres of free western land to any family that would build a house on it, and live there for five years. Lincoln’s hope was to attract the many poor farmers of the South to settle on the free farmland of the non-slave states and territories of the West. 

It was a great tactic, that worked pretty well. The Homestead Act kept many of those same farmers out of the Confederate army, and away from resisting U.S. troops needed to maintain a united country. It made sense. A lot of farmers preferred to have their own place, all paid off, instead of living on mortgaged or sharecropped land in an area quickly becoming a war zone. 

And, we see the U.S. southern border opened, with different forces using that same “population is power,” tactic, used intentionally by Jefferson, and opportunistically by the barbarians from north of the Rhine.

The only question to ask about this is,

“If population is power, who gains power by the current migration?”

Read up, it’s up to you to answer this question.

---