Illegal Immigration Led To The Fall Of The Roman Empire
September 13, 2008 | 22 Comments
German immigrants drove the government of the Late Western Roman Empire into penury and extinction. Are Mexican and other immigrants from the third world likely to send the government of the American Republic to a similar fate? And is the United States of America the only western nation facing such a demise? The answers are maybe and no, respectively.
Let us admit a salient fact from the beginning; and that is the Late Western Roman Empire disappeared a very long time ago for reasons neither entirely understood, nor agreed upon to this day by historians. Yet despite this caveat, the demise of the Roman government in the West demonstrates the veracity of the adage that all empires fail for the same reason; in the end, it costs more to maintain an empire than the empire can afford to pay. But is this adage shopworn and of no use in the modern world? And is the disappearance of the Late Western Roman Empire simply an obscure event from a long ago and irrelevant past? Let us travel back to that far and distant land and see.
A tourist traveling throughout the Western Empire in 405 AD would have found it modestly prosperous and relatively peaceful. True, millions would have been living in abject poverty in an economy based on subsistence agriculture. The middle class would have been small and embattled with most of the wealth concentrated at the top of the social and economic pyramid, about 2%-3% of the population. All in all it was not as wealthy as the Eastern Empire, but it was not poverty stricken either. Literate and numerate people were uncommon but not rare, and there were enough of them to carry on day to day affairs. Dialects of Latin and Greek were widely spoken, so that a tourist would have been able to converse with people throughout his travels.
A tourist would have found that the most prominent and successful institution was the army, a disciplined, well trained, and altogether formidable fighting force. Right behind the army in prestige would have been the Church, and it too was disciplined, well trained, and formidable. There was an emperor in Milan, the capital, governors and military commanders in the provinces, all served by a minimally competent, albeit corrupt bureaucracy. The Church, headed by the pope in Rome, maintained a parallel structure, but, unlike the Eastern Empire, kept something of an arms length relationship with the civil and military authorities. Fifty years later all this was gone. Why? It had been destroyed by illegal German immigrants, equal to perhaps 10% of the native population.
Not that Germans were rare and unusual. They had been seeping in for almost two hundred years. What changed after 405 AD were the numbers. They started crossing the Rhine by the tens of thousands and kept coming. They may have been fleeing starvation due to crop failure brought on by the onset of a little ice age. But no one knows for sure. Historians, however, are sure the army was unable to stop them, and the native population didn’t seem to mind. There are even indications that they may have welcomed the Germans. And here we come to the reason for the empire’s disappearance, and why it matters a great deal today. You see the native population didn’t care because they got a better deal under the Germans.
The empire taxed primarily by taking food and requiring labor, while the Germans did not. They didn’t seem interested in taxing at all. And since most of the land was owned by a few fabulously wealthy owners why should the natives care if the Germans took it from them? And since the empire was sparsely populated it appears there was plenty of land to go around. The Germans squatted on the great estates, and the native population squatted next to them. And soon the native population was refusing to pay taxes just like the Germans. Without the tax base, the emperor couldn’t pay the soldiers who melted away, many becoming brigands. When the emperor and his governors couldn’t supply the cities with food they were abandoned. The tipping point was reached within a decade, and forty years after that the emperors had little authority beyond the new capital located at Ravenna on the Adriatic Sea.
So where does this leave the governments of the United States and other western nations regarding illegal immigrants from Mexico and other parts of the third world? With a bit of a sticky wicket, I fear. Now, compared to modern nations and governments, the Late Western Empire was a poorly coordinated and sprawling affair based on unproductive farming, and so had a low break even point. That is to say, it didn’t take much to upset the apple cart. Transportation and communications were slow, costly and not always reliable. Hence the cost of maintaining the government was quite expensive compared to its economic output; and so, was vulnerable to manifold disruptions such as rebellions by disloyal generals, riots, depopulation due to plagues, and in the end illegal immigrants who looted, plundered, and settled down wherever and whenever they pleased.
As I suggested, modern western nations are stunningly wealthier, and far more flexible than the brittle Late Western Roman Empire. And yet, even here there are limits. During the past half century the costs of maintaining these nations has risen dramatically, while the core of their productive economies, manufacturing, has been transferred to the third world where labor costs are far less. In a sense, the United States and other western nations have been exporting their wealth to the third world and importing third world poverty. This can’t go on forever. Manufacturing, the core wealth producing part of an economy can be rebuilt over time, in theory. But can national cohesion, wrecked by the importation of alien and often hostile people without any genuine attempt to assimilate them, be restored? Probably not.
Will the native populations of western nations, especially in the United States, watching their standard of living decline, while any new wealth, generated by this system, is entirely concentrated at the top of the social and economic pyramid, be counted on to support their governments? Why should they? Will they remain loyal to governments who renege on long standing promises, which were financed by taxes they paid, in order to pay benefits to immigrants who have paid virtually nothing? It’s doubtful. Does this mean that the end of the western nations, especially the United States, is in sight? As I said at the beginning of this article, maybe.
A very interesting post. I’m glad someone put this out there. I’ve heard this argument before but nobody has ever been able to clearly explain it to me. I wish I knew the answer myself. I suppose only time will tell.
maybe it wasn’t the German immigration maybe just maybe it was… hmm let me think… oh yes !! maybe it was a mass of violent barbarians destroying every thing in their path you know Attila the Hun maybe it was those pesky immigrants or maybe it was the invading armies hmm tough choice
Again, I’m not the author of the article, but weren’t the Germans at the time among the list of barbarians?
yes but it wasnt the german immigrants (except the ones that rebeled because the romans cheated them of things they had been promised) that killed and slaughtered romans and burned and pillaged their villages, towns and cities.
actually time wont tell the more time that passes the less we’ll know about it; the barbarians didnt keep very good records and the romans wouldnt have kept very detailed accounts of their defeats. Unless some ancient Roman statistics texts on illegal immigration (which is wrong because rome had free travel; no borders) then we’ll probably never find out
someone who hates you… you wouldnt happen to be one of those illegal aliens by any chance would you? You know the ones I am talking about. The millions that are living off the backs of honest tax payers and not giving anything back. The ones that are too lazy to become legal citizens of this great country like my grandfather did and his father before them.
@george
Even worse. He’s Canadian.
James:
You are correct on one point. In writing about ancient history one must be careful not to build a structure the evidence cannot support. What I summarized was a well known thesis about the failure of the Roman Empire; namely, it was too costly. The locals got a better deal as they went independent from the “safety and security” the emperors and the central administration could provide. But again, you are correct that modesty in building an historical thesis about the ancient world is a sound idea.
Author
George:
You raise a good point. Has immigration from the third world reached the “law of diminishing returns”? I suspect it did a long time ago , especially in California. The state is no longer capable of generating the wealth necessary to run the state, due mostly to the waves of third world immigrants who have arrived in the past forty years. We’re done for. There are no universal solutions to the problems. There are only individual ones, ie, move to “the bubble”.
Author
Author,
Your explanation is a good one, but I find your conclusions a bit too speculative. There are elements of a rejuvenation of human culture and economy amongst us. How much the United States or the European Union suffers from illegal immigration and general economic decline will be determined by the swiftness of their people. Agriculture, I feel, was a tremendous factor, and coupled with transportation you have elements of an extraordinary explanation of why the Western Empire fell, and why the East remained standing for years to follow. You make a point of both agriculture and transportation, however, in drawing your analogy to the modern day you omit key considerations. The “illegal immigrants,” and I use this term extremely loosely in reference to the Germanic invaders, originated from a fundamentally different political structure, culture, and economy than the Roman Empire. For the most part they were village or herd bound, had yet to develop cities, and organized themselves around tribal distinctions. They did have a key element of parity with the empire, their weaponry. There was virtually no technological disparity in the weaponry utilized by the Germanic Invaders and the Roman Legionnaries. Roman strength was largely based on their strategic and tactical superiority, and their ability to blend different types of warriors from throughout the Empire. As the Empire’s stability became compromised over the course of the 3rd century this fed a vicious cycle of raising the costs of the Empire, as you pointed out, and also cheapening or “barbarizing” the Roman military.
But back to my point in relation to the present day circumstances of the United States and the European Union. Today’s illegal immigration is primarily economic in origin. It is not necessarily for survival, military gain, or the establishment of one’s entire ethnic group. Mexican and South American immigrants did not depart en masse for the United States, as representatives of a clearly defined tribe or nation. The same is true for Eastern European, Turkish, Arabic, and North African illegal immigrants to the European Union. These immigrants came to establish themselves within the defined societies of the United States or the European Union to succeed by their rules or return home wealthier and thus advance their home communities. Also, today’s illegal immigrants arrive from areas with similar political structures, if not, at least exposure to the democracies of the two “Unions.” They brought changes with them, and will continue to do so, however, the values of the democracies can easily incorporate them as constituent groups. The demise of the established democracies that most people foresee is linked to notions of nativism, which are as vicious now as they were when the Irish immigrated during the 1840’s. The concept of the corruption of our values and culture is more popular hype than fact. In fact, as I will soon demonstrate, our society could use hungry individuals with a thirst for change and innovation. We will soon be at a manufacturing impasse, where the human race will have to decide, for the first time, how it will mass produce material wealth without relying on slave/cheap labor (basically expecting a disproportionate majority of the world’s population to forego advancement and live at the level of survival in order for a minority to achieve comparative luxury on their surplus labor.) You allude to this in your comment on manufacturing. I foresee the green revolution accompanying a vast outbreak in labor saving devices the world over. Such devices will be necessitated by the growing expense of labor. It will be necessary for education to experience a revolution as well in order to distribute the benefits of what is an increasingly service-driven world economy. I will disagree with you that manufacturing is at the core of wealth production. I would say that even at present, and probably for our extended future, we will be dependent upon surplus agriculture as the lynchpin to sustain our society and its advancement, an overlooked fact as fewer and fewer people are involved in the vocation of farming.
Any catastrophe contributed to by illegal immigration will most certainly be economic in nature, and will require yet another expansion, as Manifest Destiny was, to release the creative and destructive energies of humans.
Chris
Without illegal immigrants America wouldnt have people to pick fruit for them for 0.50cents an hour and America would probably be screwed. Also the economic stress is from banks (the rich guys; the 2% who own over 90% of the worlds wealth) over lending to people who cant pay it back. Also those immigrants lots of them do not know they are illegal having been duped by con men and if they tried to get citizenship and revealed they were in the country they would be sent back to Mexico. America is the land of the free and opportunity if by that you mean the land where you can be taken advantage of by big banks and tricked by bright flashy sighns because most of the populance are to stupid to realize then yeh America the land of the poor, downtrodden and paranoid
@Chris - I agree alot with what you have to say. Its about time we Americans get off our butts and start making something again.
@A Person - I hate this loose slippery slope argument about who is going to pick fruit. How many times do I have to hear this before people figure out that it is a ridiculous statement. So basically you are also in favor of taking advantage of the illegals by making them pick fruits for .50 cents because you don’t want to do it either? Here is how the free market works, if nobody is willing to pick fruit for .50 cents, then the price goes up to .60 cents, and so on until someone is willing to do it. If it were illegal to hire illegals (or better yet, enforced) then we’d have to pay people minimum wage to do the work.
You can’t blame these guys for doing the work cheap. If you’ve walked a mile in their shoes you’d think .50cents is a good deal too. You should blame the employers for hiring them. They are taking away jobs from citizens, shipping money out of the country, driving down prices in the grocery store to a such a ridiculously low rate then when this problem really catches up to us we won’t be able to understand why it costs $5 to buy an apple.
What you say, $5 for an apple? Of course! If the fruit picking employer hires legally, then he has to pay X in insurance, X in workemns comp, X in proper wages, he has to do his affirmative action hires (for the greater good of course), and after all that and some more, you’d be surprised how much money it costs to get an apple off the tree and still make a small profit.
But what, now I’m not blaming the employer either? The employer may be greedy, but that is only a sin, its not illegal. Well then whose fault is it? I blame the liberals for making it so darn expensive to pick an apple legally. Sure it would be great if we all had unemployment, welfare, workemns comp, free health insurance and so on, but here is the thing: if we are going to have all this great stuff, Apples, and all this other great stuff we love to consume, are going to end up costing alot more!! So don’t complain when you can’t afford an Apple, besides when you lose your job because people could no longer afford to consume the product your job produces you can collect unemployment! Well you will lose your job, but your company will just start producing the product in another country where they can still afford to produce the product and make a buck.
Oh yea, and about these wealthy lenders who leant all this money to people who couldn’t afford to pay it back. I definitely don’t think it was right they leant them the money, but nobody forced them to take the money either. Lets be accountable here folks. Its not my fault that some people are too stupid to realize that they have borrowed more money than it takes them 100 years to make. Anyone that actually believed their property would go up in value exponentially and forever simply wasn’t exactly the “fittest”, and unfortunately it cost the rest of us alot of money to protect these weak ones, and unfortunately there is a limit to everything.
Want to fix the economic crisis? Prices are going to have to go up, and the cost of producing goods in America is going to have to go down. How do you expect people to make any money to pay for their loans if they all work for a company that makes loans. Somewhere along the lines somebody is going to have to make something you can touch and sell it to someone that has cash. If we do this enough times, then we’ll have some jobs again, and some money to make payments with. Like Chris said in his comment above:
“”"We will soon be at a manufacturing impasse, where the human race will have to decide, for the first time, how it will mass produce material wealth without relying on slave/cheap labor (basically expecting a disproportionate majority of the world’s population to forego advancement and live at the level of survival in order for a minority to achieve comparative luxury on their surplus labor.) “”"”
Good news though folks there is silver lining. Eventually, if the free market holds, this will all work itself out over time and we will flourish again. Unfortunately we will have to endure this in the interim. For how long, only 1 way to find out. Better we get started now though. This may get ugly people.
How are illegal emigrants living off the back of tax payers? notice the illegal part it means they DONT get social benefits from the government (not that America has many) the illegal immigrants steal low paying part time unreliable jobs that most people wont want to work at anyway.
This is off the topic but it has to do with social benefits. Americans are so whiny; you pay some of the lowest taxes in any of the developed and developing countries its ridiculous i mean who would want to evade 14% taxes. All across europe the tax rates lowest is like 30% and the highest is like 60%. Canada has similar and Australia and New Zealand have taxes depending on salary between 40%-55% and china has around 30% taxes. So America, quite whining
sorry skipping back a bit
This is of course a tremendously ironic perspective considering first world (and notably American) exploitation of the third world has historically been the driving force in creating the abject poverty these “illegal immigrants” are trying to escape in the first place.
Also, didn’t America come into existence by settlers plundering and destroying native civilizations? It would be a kind of justice if it were to be undone by these insidious consequences of Empire.
@Ry
Well put. I couldn’t agree more.
This article is correct about German immigrants LEADING to the fall of Rome. Please read history. And there are a lot of aspects between the two events that are extremely similar. Now please read the modern news. Bottom line: Why can’t these immigrants come in legally and assimilate like every other immigrant has done is the past? Past immigrants were also impoverished, and many immigrated for more dire reaons like freedom from persecution. (That last sentence was to avoid people who refuse to educate themselves before debating, so that I don’t hear the same empty arguement about how today’s immigrants are too poor.)
But they are poor thats the thing those people in mexico see american tv and the bs about it being free and where any man can make a fortune but you cant immigrate if you dont have enough money and these people obviously don’t.
And also this artical is wrong about german immigration causing the fall of the roman empire. (i do read histor, lots of it i know alot about history) for a start there were no germans there were germanic tribes not germans and also as ive said before the invasion of an empire or country is not the same as immigration. finally, rome had free borders it meant you could pass through the roman empire unmolested. its a bit hard to immigrate when there is nothing migrate from or migrate to.
The issue is not that immigration, in and of itself, is a problem. Both sides agree that immigration is what built this country and that it is a positive thing to have new points of view, cultural perspectives, etc. The issue is infrastructure. Immigration must be a regulated process. Our schools are over crowded, our jails are over crowded, our freeways are over crowded, the list goes on and on. This country absolutely allows immigration, and for those who are willing to follow the proper channels, it is quite possible to come to America and become a citizen. But how is it fair to all those immigrants who did do everything legally, to now have to pay the taxes for those who took the short cut? America is a great nation where so many see hope primarily because it is a place where the poor can succeed with hard work. So if we allow everyone on in, without any plan for how to feed, house, educate and employ them, then the dream is killed for everyone. Those who think they can just come here and benefit from the blood, sweat, and tears of people who came before them, in my opinion, have no right to be here. If you want citizenship, you have to work, wait, and pay your fair share. Americans are willing to die for their country, and these people can’t even fill out a form and be patient??? Nothing worth having is free (sorry socialists, but some one always has to pay the check in every system!)
Thank you S.P. I’m glad to see an educated response for once. I completely agree with you.
wait why did you say sorry socialists? people in socialist countries pay taxes and buy goods, make a living, the only difference is that socialists governments actually help people.
democratic governments help people as well it just seems to be the USA that doesn’t