Immigration: What if America is blaming the victim?
The immigration issue has been framed around the issue of legal versus illegal, about how many and whom, and about whether they are a benefit or a cost.
Maybe there is another way to look at this. Maybe the chickens are coming home to roost.
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| Pablo Escobar |
This blog has been asserting that American unease with immigration was a giant factor in Trump getting elected. Trump stokes fires, he lies about it, he demagogues about it, and so Democrats tend to consider it a phony issue, something hyped up. This blog has taken a different position, saying that the very fact that Trump could so successfully demagogue the issue is a signal that there is a real problem that needs to be addressed.
Trump did not flourish in a vacuum. Concern over immigration from Muslim countries stimulated demands for Brexit in the UK and the rise of far-right parties in Europe. We are at a period of high immigration by historical standards, almost at the level of the mass European immigration of the early 20th century, and the immigrants are from Asia and Latin America.
Trump did not flourish in a vacuum. Concern over immigration from Muslim countries stimulated demands for Brexit in the UK and the rise of far-right parties in Europe. We are at a period of high immigration by historical standards, almost at the level of the mass European immigration of the early 20th century, and the immigrants are from Asia and Latin America.
There are adjustments to be made--as has always been the case. Now it is "push one for English," it is east Asians topping the SAT scores and wanting their fair share of college admissions, south Asians winning the spelling bees, Latinos dominating labor markets in agriculture and construction.
I personally am pro-immigration, but this is an easy opinion for me to have. My work did not put me in competition with immigrants. Some people see immigrants as a "problem."
Democrats are trying to decide how to respond to Trump, with full-on opposition to anything Trump being the ascendant policy. Democrats know what they don't like, not what they like.
Herb Rothschild is a retired professor of English Literature at LSU, with a second career as a peace and justice activist. His Guest Post starts by looking at the traditional issues of immigrant volumes and benefits, and then looks one step deeper.
Why are they coming here? His response: because America has been a selfish, sometime predatory, neighbor.
Why are they coming here? His response: because America has been a selfish, sometime predatory, neighbor.
NAFTA created chaos for Mexican corn farmers. American policy in Central America served American corporations, not local people. We fomented political revolution. We undermined democracy. American drug policy creates drug cartels whose power and money corrupst Latin American police and government.
Trump speaks of "shithole countries," and complains that their citizens seek asylum here. Who or what made them shit holes? America did.
That is a profound thought to integrate into our policy thinking regarding immigration. Maybe we owe those people something. They are escaping from the results of our policies.
Guest Post by Herbert Rothschild
Herb Rothschild is a retired professor of English Literature from Louisiana State University, who then is living a long second career as a peace and justice activist. He lives in Talent, Oregon.
Thinking harder about immigration
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| Herbert Rothschild |
Herbert Rothschild: "Last Saturday there was a large and spirited rally in Medford, part of a national outpouring of revulsion over the Trump/Sessions treatment of families seeking asylum at our southern border. During the program, a statement by Sen. Jeff Merkley was read. In it, Merkley said that Trump has wrongly framed the issue as controlled versus open borders, with Democrats favoring the latter. Merkley is correct, but Trump’s framing has succeeded as a public relations ploy, and although jailing children apart from their families may have cost him some support, he has outmaneuvered Democrats on immigration.
Everything said at Vogel Plaza Saturday expressed the decency and compassion that should imbue our policy deliberations, but no one addressed policy itself. By implication, though, much of what was said validated Trump’s charge that Democrats are for open borders. Given the declining U.S. birth rate (our 2016 fertility rate of 62 births per 1,000 women age 15-44 was the lowest since record-keeping began in 1940),we could profit by open borders for a time. But the alarmed response in certain quarters to the recent Brookings Institution report that white deaths now exceed white births in more than half the states suggests that proposing open borders would be politically suicidal.
It’s not intellectually hard to specify good policies for our undocumented residents. I advocate citizenship for the Dreamers and amnesty for others who’ve been in the U.S. for at least three years without committing serious crimes—that latter policy is very like the Simpson-Mazzoli Act of 1986 (the “Reagan Amnesty”). But a policy toward future undocumented immigrants who don’t openly present themselves at the borders for sanctuary is harder to formulate. I won’t attempt to address that challenge directly, but indirectly by focusing on why so many Latinos are choosing to leave their homes and risk the dangerous journey north.
U.S. actions explain much of it, specifically, NAFTA’s economic impact on poor Mexicans, our support for political repression in Central America, and the widespread havoc our drug policy wreaks. Space allows me to say only a few words about these policies, which all enjoy bi-partisan support.
First NAFTA. Pushed through Congress by Bill Clinton, it greatly increased cross-border trade and U.S. investment in Mexico, but like all such trade pacts, its benefits weren’t widely shared. Between 1993 and 2013, Mexico’s economy grew at an average annual rate of just 1.3% and its per capita income by 1.2% while countries like Brazil and Chile underwentmajor expansions. Poverty remains at 1994 levels. Small maize farmers were hit hard by the flood of subsidized U.S. corn into Mexico; one study estimates that NAFTA ruined about two million farmers.
U.S. support of Central American governments that repress popular movements for economic justice is a long and shameful story. The most recent chapter was the Obama/H. Clinton support of the 2009 coup in Honduras. Honduras’ murder rate quickly skyrocketed to the highest in the world: in 2012, it registered 90.4 murders per 100,000 population, more than twice the rates in neighboring El Salvador and Guatemala.
Finally, our insatiable demand for mood-altering drugs, coupled with our refusal to admit our inability to halt their trafficking, has so empowered the drug cartels that they freely terrorize the populations of Mexico and several Central American nations.
Trump’s “zero tolerance” solution at our southern border has appalled us, but he didn’t create the problem.And if you can’t bring yourself to support de-criminalization of so-called hard drugs, you’re perpetuating it."
2 comments:
Moral foreign policy may be an oxymoron.
The countries to the South of US are going to be a problem for the foreseeable future. Yes, one answer could be a wall, but it would need machine gun towers every 100 yards. I am not a big fan of the Clintons but I don't think they came up with NAFTA on their own ; more like they went along with it opportunistically. NAFTA was a band aid solution to a bleeding out wound and at best wishful thinking and at worst cynical and corrupt. Maybe both.
American prosperity comes at a cost, all too often paid outside our borders. If we are to survive as a culture we must find a way to raise up those we are exploiting. I think Progressives understand this instinctively but we first have to overcome the Regressive impulse to subjugate.
Young Americans are squeezed by student loan debt, low wages, and high housing costs to the point where they cannot start families, so the DC Establishment insists we must welcome young immigrants with children to take their place.
Just can't imagine why voters rebelled against this DC Consensus.
If the Democratic leadership loved America and Americans, the falling birth rate would be an emergency, an indicator of urgent problems that MUST be solved. Nothing could possibly be more important than the health and well being of America's young families, the next generation of Americans.
I can remember listening to a conversation at least 20 years ago on KQED radio about immigration, and a wise woman said "We need to look at our foreign policy." It's not a new observation, not a new problem. We still need to act on it.
Glad the guest mentioned Honduras and Hillary Clinton -- it does point out that America had no good options in the general election of 2016. Hillary would have maintained the status quo of fomenting war and misery in Central and South America, leading to desperate immigrants coming to the US to be exploited as vulnerable, cheap labor by unscrupulous employers.
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