The debate surrounding immigration is terribly depressing. Conservatives are laden with bigotry and the liberal “opposition” is really bad at actually opposing the right.
The right scapegoats immigrants with such slogans as “protect our jobs” while refusing to place blame where it belongs. Corporate America — with the help of the IMF and NAFTA — is to blame for the creation of a large, landless and poor class of Latinos who see work in the United States as their families’ only escape from hopeless poverty. Likewise, those in Congress who favor the criminalization of such immigration prefer to target the poor immigrants. Hypocritically, they rarely go after the big bosses that take advantage of such immigrants’ willingness to work so hard for so little. These employers should be held to the few labor laws that still exist in this country, such as the right of workers to organize a union and receive a minimum wage.
The position advocated by mainstream liberal groups is strategically bankrupt. By accepting the “protect our borders” terms of the debate (which had been shaped by the right before the Sept. 11 attacks, but has escalated since) is to miss the point. By even conceding that immigration is a problem is to misunderstand the issue. Immigration is not the problem: scapegoating immigrants and the refusal to protect their human rights is the problem. Border control isn’t bad because it’s weak; it’s bad because it exists at all. Politicians deflect blame off of their total incapacity to represent poor Americans onto poor immigrants. One set of victims is pit against another.
The Central American Free Trade Agreement is being taken for a test run in congress this week. The Bush Administration looks to be feeling out the opposition in congressional committees. Don’t expect substantial opposition from the Democrats.
While many Democrats aren’t as actively anti-immigrant as Republicans, both parties accept the same framework. They put immigrant rights and the rights of third-world nations to shape their own laws free from outside pressure on the backburner while enshrining free trade (a.k.a., the right of American businesses to dictate other nations’ labor and environmental laws).
Thus Bill Clinton led the charge of neo-liberalism that continues to impoverish Latin America today. Those who give the most lip service to immigrant rights have an opportunity to call out the business interests that cause such poverty in the global South. Thus, opposing CAFTA means protecting the sovereignty of third-world nations as well as the human rights of those who suffer its consequences — including immigrants to the United States.
Unemployment doesn’t exist because of immigrants “taking our jobs.” Unemployment exists because capitalism needs it to threaten the job security of those with jobs. The immigrant underclass in this country plays a similar role to the unemployed in that their willingness to work cheaply helps employers bargain against their workers. The same people who have an interest in maintaining the presence of undocumented workers to work in low-wage jobs have an interest in vilifying those workers. Though the resources and needs exist to give jobs to everyone, such planning would undermine the profit motive. Instead, immigrants are forced play the scapegoat.
Yet, to play such a role, immigrants must continue to cross the border. This is the contradiction that fuels the far-right border patrollers who are currently policing the Mexico border in Arizona. They call themselves Minutemen, and their support from white supremacists shouldn’t be seen as a peripheral. The bigotry of these vigilantes is the logical conclusion of the scapegoat campaign against immigrants that has been a staple of U.S. history. A little background, interestingly, sheds some light on these border patrollers’ racist legacy.
The mainstream press attributes the Minutemen’s namesake to the soldiers who resisted the British in the Revolutionary War. In reality, today’s Minutemen are the 21st-century continuation of the Minute Companies, Texas Rangers and other colonizers of the 19th-century annexation of more than half of Mexico (what is now California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Nevada once was part of Mexico). The Minute Companies were volunteer militias who, with the backing of Congress, drove Mexican peasants off what is now western Texas and New Mexico by land confiscation, murder and torture. After gaining widespread infamy for their use of such tactics, Congress withdrew its support from the companies and the responsibilities of border patrol were passed on to the Rangers, an equally condemnable yet more disciplined representative of American expansion interests.
The United States doesn’t have the same needs that it had during the colonization of Mexico, so today’s Minutemen are met with disfavor in the White House. But don’t expect anyone to act against these militias until workers (legally documented and otherwise) mount a campaign in defense of immigrant rights. Today’s Minutemen come out of the tradition of America’s illegal and violent land grab.
Millions of Mexicans are descendents of those driven off that land. This, of course, puts the right in a difficult position. If they want to criminalize the encroachment of political borders, than they will have to start with the reparations due to Mexican-Americans for over a century of human rights offenses and deportations of the original inhabitants of today’s Southwest region. The opposite of scapegoating is solidarity. We must show solidarity with immigrants, because they are the victims of American policy, and only cowards blame the victim.
Chris Dols ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in civil engineering and is a member of the International Socialist Organization.
