A Modern, Modest Proposal: Why Don’t We Cannibalize Immigrant Children?

Editorial

(Gabriela Libre/StoryBytes)

Apr. 19, 2026

Trigger Warning: Anti-immigrant rhetoric, violence, cannibalism, and graphic depictions of poverty

MIAMI – “I have a modest proposal too!” I scream to the United States. “Why don’t we also cannibalize immigrant children?” Everyone gasps, and after processing the words, the audience begins to boo. I hear some small cheers in the back. It has been almost three centuries since Jonathan Swift launched his similar very modest proposal. In it, with adept use of verbal irony and hyperbolic language, he suggests fattening up one year old babies that come from impoverished families and selling them to the rich. Swift’s words may belong to another century, but the hunger and disillusionment he condemned remain in modern-day Miami.

There are immigrants in Miami perhaps living in a nice condo, showing off to their friends on TikTok, Instagram, and WhatsApp stories the crate of the American dream. No, the electricity does not go out as it did before. Yes, there is medicine now to find in the pharmacies. Yes, there are indeed lots of hot dogs and burgers. “I made it out!” are the words every human repeats to themselves the first year after escaping the struggles lived in their home country. 

Now, maybe in their late 40s or 50s, their living room smells like sweat and empty promises, trying to get the cement dust off the bottom of their fingernails from working long hours under the scorching sun, constructing houses they are not able to afford. Was this their American dream? They might have been renowned journalists in their home country – famous, even – but the degrees they worked for are non-transferable, so they are forced into blue-collar jobs. Should dignity be the only aspiration for these people? Should we tell them to be grateful as they pay credit card debt with more debt and can barely afford dinner for their children?

(Planet Volumes/Unsplash)

Swift knew that while people acknowledged the universal truth of socioeconomic inequalities, it was just an acknowledgement, a nod to reality before resuming the rest of their day. It was not empathy. He had to get their attention, so his approach was simple, really. He just published a very subservient pamphlet: 

“A young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricasee, or a ragoust.”

Don’t worry, dear customer, the rags are included. The carcass of the children? Their skin? You could make a great pair of boots or gloves with that for winter. Swift here employs verbal irony as he did not mean what he wrote. He noticed the economic exploitation that surrounded him in 1720s Ireland from British rule and the overwhelming famine that plagued its streets, often with scrawny mothers “followed by three, four, or six children.” Thus, through a series of contradictions, he engaged the reader further into his message against poverty. His use of graphic imagery – depicting what they would do with the corpses of the children – is meant to induce disgust of such a future, which brings the reader to the question he implies all along: Why is this idea disturbing?

He describes the Irish living in extreme poverty rotting everyday by “cold, famine, filth and vermin.” Why is it that now when dying tragic deaths such as cannibalism, is it worth attention and empathy? Is it less graphic because it is standardized? Is it any less tragic?

The media should not be more inclined everyday to scream such graphic statements in hopes this wakes up America to today’s reality. Is the fact that the current president called immigrants animals any less graphic simply because his inhumane statements became normalized? Would it be any different if he had suggested to kidnap immigrants and put them in a farm with other animals, children separated from their mothers crying in hay, instead of the cold floor of detention centers? 

Did the title of this article spark greater interest in its contents? Did the trigger warnings increase curiosity? Why?

The truth is, the title catches attention because it is compelling, the same way Swift’s pamphlet was in the 1720s. Let the crowd roar in disgust and throw rotten tomatoes at me from their seats for wanting to commodify immigrant children and have them as a nice side dish for dinner. They are already dehumanized. Let the crowd be furious at the grotesque. They are already treated in grotesque ways. Perhaps it might be that the most modest proposal of all is not to eat immigrant children, but to stop consuming them in every other way. Until then, the feast will continue while America calls it freedom.