Immigration: A Common Cause with the Opposition

In the politics of immigration, what the pro-enforcement and pro-human rights groups have in common is huge: both are concerned with problems created by mass-migrations of people from Mexico and Central America.  If the two groups were able to join to take on the root causes of immigration, they could be a powerful force for change.  However, as long as pro-enforcement groups support militarization of the border and mass arrests of immigrants, human rights activists will react, spending vital energy attempting to undo the injustices that necessarily come with enforcement policies. Meanwhile, little is done by either side about the sources of the problems.
Mass immigrations over the southern border are driven by global trade policies, which also create sweatshops, out-source U.S. jobs, diminish environmental protections, and undermine democracy.  Immigrant rights groups and their adversaries like Borderwatch and the Minutemen could both achieve many of their goals by defeating NAFTA, CAFTA, the WTO, the IMF, Plan Puebla Panama, etc., and implementing fair trade policies that allow people to stay where they are instead of being evicted.  Since almost all politicians cave in to these “free trade” agreements and institutions, fighting them effectively would require both factions.

Human rights activists often skip the root causes of a problem and focus on symptoms.  Demands like “no more raids” and ”US out of Iraq,” are important, but they don’t go as deep as “stop bulldozing Latin America” or “end the corporate / military / covert-intelligence domination of our planet.”  Perhaps activists chose the symptoms because the root-level policies seem too much to take on.

Meanwhile, on the enforcement side, the solutions being advocated are proven failures.  If laws and enforcement were effective tools against powerful markets, there wouldn’t be drug addicts, prostitution, or international proliferation of nuclear weapons.  The war on immigration resembles the drug-war in that it comes up against massive market forces.  Since there is much money to be made from drugs, drug importers can evade any of the systems of enforcement to the point that they have no effect on drug availability.  Even the enforcement itself becomes a market. There is alot of money to be made by enforcement agencies and organized crime in the drug war, and the money ensures that the war continues despite clear proof that it isn't reducing drug use.  Trying to cut funding to failing drug enforcement programs would come up against a powerful market -- a partnership of drug sellers and enforcers making billions from drugs and the fight against them.  It is similar with investment in immigration enforcement.  If there is a market for cheap workers here, while decent employment dries up in the global south, passing laws and building fences will do nothing to stop people from arriving. By criminalizing immigration, all we ensure is that criminals end up in charge.  Immigrants and border agents are pulled into in a racket that includes sneaking people across, drugs, tax evasion, corruption, and sex slavery.

The potential unity between both sides of the immigration debate against the root level problem of free-trade could be a unique opportunity.  Unfortunately, the immigration debate also has its own complications, bringing up questions of how “Americans” self-identify.  Many on the pro-enforcement side have a sense of “us” connected with national and class identity that is similar to racism.  It allows them to think its ok to share one economy with foreign workers without demanding one high standard of rights for all.  To non-nationalists, things like country of origin, present location, and legal status don’t matter -- we like to see people treated equally and well, on both sides of any border.

Corporations can transport resources, products, and capital across borders with ease and impunity.  It seems that those who imagine that the borders could be completely sealed don’t realize how open the borders are to commerce and travel.  Each year over 300 million people, over 100 million vehicles, and over 15 million huge shipping containers cross our borders legally.  The movement of people is just one of many border issues, and focusing exclusively on it is not just a waste of human resources, it also creates a second set of punishments for migrants, many of whom have already endured eviction from their land or otherwise lost their livelihood.  Some families will end up being held for years with their kids in immigrant detention centers.  These victims don’t choose between keeping their way of life and immigrating; their ways of life are taken away from them.

Changing trade policy is not an answer to every concern of the pro-enforcement side.  They also have fears of terrorists disguised as Mexicans trying to sneak across borders. With borders open to so much movement, it is important to ask what level of enforcement is even possible.  Even if the border were much tougher to sneak across, some terrorists could still get in, especially with enough money.  At airports, where there is far more control over the movement of people and objects than even the most secure land border, the security personnel continually fail tests to catch what they are looking for.

Politicians often advocate punishing the relatively defenseless immigrants, or at least use such rhetoric to further political aims.  Groups like Borderwatch and the Minutemen dress up like soldiers, demonstrating that they prefer role-playing to taking on real challenges.  There is a subconscious appeal to the idea of enforcement.  It resonates with people’s sense of a father figure protecting from an attack on their civilization by barbarians.  For many people, the lack of a sealed border seems to become the single biggest threat to their lives, or ways of life.  What about the chemical and nuclear facilities that could leak near their homes, pollutants in the air, food and water, destruction of civil rights, mass extinctions, wars, climate change, and a system so dependent on fossil fuels that any serious change in supply could mean mass-starvation?  

Though the dangers associated with people sneaking over borders may not be the biggest or most probable, it’s tough to debate against the fears that are part of nationalism.  It’s also tough for us on the other side to drop our resentments and righteousness.  We have a consciousness that the situation in our country is at a dangerous pre-fascist stage, but our outrage about it can often further polarize and play into fascism.  This polarization is a powerful tool in the hands of corporations and markets.  Corporate spokespersons in the media and politics stir up these sentiments to effectively keep both factions distracted, in a familiar dance, while they profit on all sides.  We need to step back and observe the games of the trade organizations, corporations, politicians, human traffickers and mafias profiting off human suffering in order to figure out how they can be tarred, feathered, and run off.  That’s a battle for which I will join forces with Borderwatch and dress up like a soldier.  I’ll be the one in the Zapatista ski mask with the pom-pom on top.