WHY are there immigration problems on our southern border?

Why are migrants, mostly from Mexico, entering our southern borders illegally, annually by the thousands, in contrast to foreigners crossing into the USA from Canada? Our governments, national and local, have generally responded with regard to the symptoms and not to the causes for these concerns. Several kinds of actions have generally been taken.

By expanding personnel, endeavors have been increased to identify illegal arrivals. Then the “illegals” are usually retained, perhaps jailed for a limited time, with minimal care, and then “shipped back” to Mexico, a growing expense.

Under the presidency of George W. Bush, Congress authorized the construction of a wall/barrier for about 700 miles of our southern border. The wall was begun and seemingly will not be completed. [Whether it’s the “wall of China” or the “Berlin Wall” desperate people will find ways around, under, or over barricades.]
Another attempt at control, with additional personnel and equipment, is to apprehend “smugglers of persons,” individuals with families, across less monitored routes, often by “truck/van-loads.” Sometimes the “victims” who have paid considerable money for the presumed aid, are abandoned. A tragic number have died of heat and exhaustion without food and water in the desert areas.

All of these USA endeavors have been insufficient for solving the problems, for they do not deal with the reasons for the migrants’ risky endeavors. [Some religious groups have aided such refugees – mainly in the 1980s during the Central American civil wars, providing “overground passages.” Legal results came when government then turned “every man, woman and child who is in the country without authorization into a criminal, and turn people who give even humanitarian aid to unauthorized foreigners into felons.(1)”]

In a Yes! magazine article from 2006, authors Oscar Chacon, Amy Shannon, and Sarah Anderson offered five policies that may ameliorate the problem:

a) Create policies for USA and others that will raise the Mexican living standards.

b) Give attention to the future of their countryside, which is now being taken over by multinational agribusiness and other entities.

c) Reduce the economic insecurities that tend to arouse opposition from US citizens.

d) Cancel the major international debts these impoverished nations have had put upon them.

e) Arrange ways to have our citizens understand and appreciate the contribution that such immigrants provide us.

Former President Bill Clinton and some Congresspersons are having “second thoughts” about NAFTA (Canada, USA, Mexico) and CAFTA (Central America).(2, 3) The recent Arizona legislation placing further restrictions on illegal immigrants has brought surprising opposition from a diversity of groups nationally. In a recent Minneapolis Star Tribune article, Joseph Moriarity said:

Why are so many willing to risk everything, including their very lives, to live a desperate and clandestine existence in Arizona and other US states? The answer is simple: because they see no alternatives.(3)

Moriarity then also wrote:

We, the United States, brought this calamitous situation on Mexicans and on ourselves when Congress passed the NAFTA treaty in 1993. NAFTA was sold as a major formula that could improve the American economy while at the same time reducing poverty in Mexico … In practice, NAFTA accomplished exactly the opposite.(3 )

Corn (maize) is the basic food staple of the traditional Mexican diet. The US highly subsidizes our corn for shipment to Mexico (and other Latin nations). As a result of NAFTA more than two million Mexican campesinos and their families could no longer subsist on their land. Those who remained became even poorer moving to the metropolitan masses. [I’ve observed such changes occurring in Zumpango, Tlaxcala, where we have worked with the campesinos six times in a 20-year period.] Further, big US chain stores entered the scene and the small, local community stores could not compete in the “race to the bottom” prices. Our USA corporations thus provided large numbers of “cheap workers without a job, voting rights, or organizing power.”

Most such immigrants would rather remain at home where they know the language, have their religious affiliations, accustomed diet, extended families, and maintain their culture. Our immigration laws (e.g. Arizona) anger the Mexicans. Mexican President Calderon recently stated that “the criminalization of the migrant phenomenon…represents an obstacle for the solution of common problems in the border region.” He intends to work with the Mexicans abroad to protect their human rights, whatever their immigration situation.

These Mexicans are good workers (planting trees, they each dug three holes for my one!). If their compensations were paid by checks, with a record, they would have Social Security payments, adding to the US sums (though many of them would not remain to receive payments at later ages.) They are often young men (or with family) who collectively send millions of dollars home to relatives each year.
Further, the corporate profits do not remain for the benefit of Mexican banks or families, but may “add” to the Mexican GNP “without aiding” the Mexican citizenry.

Historically, Mexicans (and Guatemalans, et al) have raised their own corn, storing seeds for the next season. The introduction of genetically-altered corn erases that traditional and economic practice and replaces it with the need to buy seeds each year, with accompanying pesticides, herbicides, and machinery. Likewise, “clear-cutting” of jungle timber for cattle, etc. provides our hamburgers, but wipes out the carbon benefits of those jungles (“lungs for the world”) that aid our breathing and climate.

Thus, to enhance the living levels of most Mexicans, the NAFTA (and CAFTA) treaties need to be repealed. The campesinos need to be able to survive on their remaining lands. The Mexican workers and those workers here in the “trades” need to be able to form unions to enhance their own livelihoods, as Cesar Chavez did with the Farmers Union. Enable all who qualify to become citizens. Do not break up families. We need to join in building more satisfying lives for all.

[The implications of climate change should lead us in the “industrial world” to decentralize our food production, reducing the expense of shipping food and other perishable products for great distances. We need to be focusing on “transitional communities,” better able to adjust to the changes surely to come. As Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer has contended, “this decade may be viewed as the most important one in human history.” Where do we discern a general “sense of urgency”?]


Addendum

Significant impacts during and after World War II were the refugees who fled their countries, fearing imprisonment, torture, or assassination under dictators that our American leadership supported or tolerated. Among these were Hugo Banzer (Bolivia), D’Aubusson and Fernando Martinez (El Salvador), Jean-Claude Duvalier (Haiti), Fulgencio Batista (Cuba), Manuel Noriega (Panama), the Somozas (Nicaragua), various Generals (Guatemala), and Pinochet (Chile) among others. These refugees also provided the USA with diversity beyond our mainly European-related population. And our involvement in wars in Vietnam and Cambodia, in Iraq and Somalia more recently, have added many Hmong, Somalia, Iraqi, and Vietnamese to further diversify our population.


Resources:
1. Oscar Chacón, Amy Shannon, Sarah Anderson, “Alternatives to a Wall,” YES Summer 2006, pp. 48-50.
2. Ian Fletcher, “Thinking the Unthinkable: Could America Repeal NAFTA?” Truth Out, April 20, 2010
3. Joseph Moriarity, “See ‘Immigration Problems’? Blame NAFTA,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 1, 2010

See Also:
Jose Luis Rocha, “A Look at the Gringo Wall,” Envio, April 2010, pp. 44-53
Aarti Shahani, “A Stronger Movement for Immigration Rights,” Resist March-April 2010, pp. 5-10 (the central crisis is one of human rights)