Sometimes we just forget the bigger picture

This is an article that a friend wrote, you can find the translation as well. I find several points very relevant to the causes and consequences of migration.
I am always hearing different opinions from all sides of the map. Some are very hurtful when they refer to human mobilization. At the end of the day it is impossible to not feel when you hear Lou Dobbs and every angle of the media, co-workers, all these sides are attacking you and your family.

I just want everybody out there to stop, just stop for a minute and think:

"What would i do if my family, my children are living in substandard conditions?, What am i going to do?, My childen cant go to school past middle school, i dont know if next week we will have a meal...etc."

After thinking about this then think about all the anti-immigrant rhethoric and actions going on. What would you feel? What would you do? Most importantly though, think of why this is happening.

I can't get tired of telling people: "NO HUMAN BEING IS ILLEGAL"

Immigration: A Common Cause with the Opposition
By Nick Cooper,
Posted on Wed Jan 23rd, 2008 at 08:50:07 PM EST

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 have to react, spending vital energy attempting to undo the injustices that necessarily come with enforcement policies. Meanwhile, little is done by either 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.
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.

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 of us. As long as people are working for us, on either side of any border, we must reject policies and nationalist conceptions that deny them at least the minimal protections given to American workers.

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.

For full link to the article click on the the title of this post.

Caught in the Middle of the Nasty Business of Politics

How much worse can the 2008 presidential campaign be after Huckabee proposes that the 12 million undocumented immigrants leave the United States within 120 days? Yet, Marcela Sanchez of the Washington Post is saying it could get even nastier:

the worst may be yet to come. Political analysts predict the tone will turn even nastier if immigration becomes the spearhead Republican issue against the Democratic nominee during the general election campaign.
----

Solution? Sanchez suggests: "Mexico taking some responsibility in encouraging Mexicans, including those affected by free trade, to stay in their own country."

This would be ideal, but the reality is that if people stay they starve. It's not just the ones being deported from the U.S. - its the millions of Mexican families that are living on the equivalent of $20 (dollars) per week. Yes, I meant 20 DOLLARS. Mexico is doing somewhat better now that it is offering some assistance to those already deported, but this also may be posturing... it would take a major political upheaval for Mexico to take significant steps towards providing for its own. It's not in the mindset of the country to take serious social responsibilities.

An indication of this appears in an op-ed piece published January 3, 2008 in La Jornada (Mexico City) titled "Qué hacemos con los campesinos del mundo?" (What can be done with the agrarian peasants of the world?) by Gustavo Duch Guillo. http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2008/01/03/index.php?section=mundo&article=020a1mun&partner=rss

Whatever Duch Guillo says is contradicted by the title he has given the piece- the whole idea of "what can be done with" intimates that the author is not dealing with people he respects.... perhaps he is getting the campesinos confused with his patients (he is a veternarian)

Asking would-be migrants to stay in Mexico and starve is another way of ignoring their humanity.

Echoes of Blame Against Mexico in U.S. Elections
By Marcela Sanchez
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, January 4, 2008; 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON -- The United States and Mexico reached a historic milestone this week in their ongoing journey toward trade integration. As established 15 years ago by NAFTA negotiators, this New Year's Day was the deadline to eliminate the final export-import barriers between the two nations -- specifically those that protected the most contentious products such as corn and sugar.

But you can't be blamed if you missed this momentous occasion, especially if you live in the United States. This week also marked the long-awaited start of the presidential caucuses and primaries -- do-or-die time for U.S. presidential hopefuls.

But distraction doesn't explain why full trade integration was not part of many New Year's celebrations. If you believe everything the candidates are saying, the United States has seen little or no benefits from deepening relations with its southern neighbor.

On one hand, the idea that free trade has cost U.S. jobs is nearly a given in the campaign. Democrats such as John Edwards decry more than a million jobs lost due to the North American Free Trade Agreement. Even Hillary Clinton, whose husband signed the agreement that he said would "harness the energy (of globalization) to our benefit" and lead to a "new era," now calls for a "trade timeout" and promises to review all U.S. trade deals. Even some Republican candidates can't resist linking current economic anxiety to expanded trade.

On the other hand, immigration -- particularly from the south -- is blamed for just about everything bad happening in this country. Republican contender Mike Huckabee tried to connect the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan with concerns over security at the southern border. Most Democratic candidates dare not oppose building a bigger wall to separate the United States and Mexico.

The tone has turned so anti-Mexico that Mexican President Felipe Calderon called last month on his diplomatic representatives in the United States to "neutralize this strategy of confrontation." When he arrives for his first presidential visit to the U.S. later this winter, Calderon is expected to combat the "worst mistake" he believes Mexico or the United States can make -- that is, to have citizens in either country "feel that the other nation's people are the enemy."

While the presidential candidates' rhetoric might be excused as the excess of political posturing, it is an indication of how little comfort U.S. voters find in closer relations with their southern neighbor. Or as Armand Peschard-Sverdrup, U.S.-Mexico relations expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, put it, the candidates' rhetoric reveals "more than anything how much work there is still to be done to deepen people's knowledge on the issues."

Take Iowa, for instance, the first state to vote. As the main corn producer in the United States, the lifting of all restrictions on corn exports to Mexico should certainly be more a cause for celebration than anxiety. Yet it was in Dubuque, Iowa, where Edwards last week promised "no more NAFTAs."

Also, as a state that ranks fourth in the country for its percentage of people over 65, immigration inflow should be a welcome rather than a threatening development. Yet it is in Iowa where Republican candidates have been flooding mailboxes with images of "a Mexican flag fluttering above the Stars and Stripes, (or) the Statue of Liberty presiding over a 'Welcome Illegal Aliens' doormat," as The Washington Post reported this week.

And the worst may be yet to come. Political analysts predict the tone will turn even nastier if immigration becomes the spearhead Republican issue against the Democratic nominee during the general election campaign. How Mexicans react will help determine how much or how little lasting damage the political rhetoric will have on bilateral relations.

My hope is that Mexicans won't take the bombast seriously. Or better yet, that they will follow the advice of former Mexican diplomat Ricardo Pascoe Pierce, who wrote in Mexico's El Universal some weeks ago, "we must face this juncture with a modern and objective approach, and avoid giving free rein to our own basic nationalistic passions."

More to the point, a constructive response would be one that shows Mexico taking some responsibility in encouraging Mexicans, including those affected by free trade, to stay in their own country. Calderon's announcement of a new program, supported by Mexican businesses, to provide temporary jobs and shelter as well as food and medical treatment to the increased number of Mexicans being deported by U.S. authorities, is a start.

Whoever becomes U.S. president should come around by next year and find in Mexico a partner doing much more than demanding the "whole enchilada," the phrase that became both symbol and millstone of Calderon's predecessor's desire for a closer relationship.

Marcela Sanchez's e-mail address is desdewash@washpost.com.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/03/AR2008010302506.html?hpid=news-col-blog