Immigration: America's unclean hands

Trump: “Why are we having all these people from shit-hole countries come here?”

Trump image: Caravans. 

Good question.

The debate in the US over immigration policy focuses on its effect on us. We act as if the story starts at the southern border.  

It doesn't.

This blog received an interesting exchange between technology investor and philanthropist John Coster and attorney Thad Guyer. Guyer wrote that illegal immigration persisted unfixed because it actually served the interests of the two sides--Republicans and Democrats--who had the power to fix it.  

Thad Guyer wrote that it is all about money and power. Twelve million illegal immigrants translate into fifteen extra congressional seats for likely Democratic voters, spread out within immigrant-receiving states. Meanwhile, Republican business interests have a cheap labor source holding down wages.  

Win-win.

He concludes: 

     "Because Democrats are rewarded by illegal immigration with quantifiable direct political power, and the GOP is rewarded with cheap underground labor (and the resulting indirect political power), there is no genuine resolve in Congress to pursue mythical "immigration reform". Except for the unpleasant humanitarian toll that periodically flares up on the border, illegal immigration is only about politics and money. It's going to stay that way."

Democratic image: Kids in cages

Guyer's view is cynical, but one does not go far wrong attributing cynical motives to political actors in matters that fester unresolved.

My own addition to Guyer's observation is that the unsolved problem serves the messaging interests of Trump, giving him a winning issue for solidifying his political base. Caravan! Fox News Alert! White girl raped and killed by Mexican drug dealer! It fits a narrative of erosion of status and security of native born people by outsiders. 

Meanwhile, Democrats think they have a successful counter argument: Racist Trump. Charlotesville! Family separation! Worthless wall boondoggle! Rainbow tapestry.

Again, win-win.

So the issue remains frozen, at least until the election, and then another form of freeze: legislative gridlock.

John Coster moved the focus from the border to the set of American policies that involve the places in the world that create the "problem" immigration, Latin America, Africa, and Asia.  

Every wonder why those countries are "shit-holes"?

John Coster

Coster wrote:

"The forces that drive refugee immigration are still not addressed. In my experience, most people who live in poor but peaceful countries actually prefer to stay there unless forced by war, famine or real threats to their lives. In most traditional societies family and community are more valued than material prosperity. This is just my observation from living among them.

Since the Marshall Plan, the US has used foreign aid to keep unstable places stable because it serves our interests. Here’s a good article to describe it:  Click: Council on Foreign Relations, backgrounder   ["National security concerns have continued to drive U.S. assistance policy, aiming to provide stability in conflicted regions, bolster allies, promote democracy, or contribute to counterterrorism and law enforcement efforts abroad."]   

Here’s an interesting anecdote that may illustrate the complex interrelationship between our economy, security and immigration. I was involved in rural development in El Salvador after the end of the 10-year civil war. The wealth of the country was concentrated in a 14-family oligarchy. Most of the country was made up of poor subsistence farmers on rented land. My group purchased land and extended a loan to a group of farmers who could repay based on their crop yields. They were now proud land-owners who through hard work and skill, grow and sell their corn, rice, beans and other cash crops. Except none of them could compete with the low market price of imported grains from the US that came in the form of US aid, that was actually paid to US farmers. 

I saw this in Niger, West Africa too. Over time, their ability to sustain themselves diminishes and they become perpetually dependent on the US. And there are no margins. When the smallest shift starts to destabilize an area, power gets concentrated in gangs or despotic leadership and the general population becomes the victim. They endure until they can’t and then they flee or die. 

US Africa Command

Now I’m not saying that USAID and our policies are the culprit. But it is a substantial lever. So when an administration wants to simply cut foreign aid to ‘shit-hole’ nations, we have some culpability in creating the current situation."

Coster went on to note that political trouble grows out of economic and social dislocations, things that are observable. 

"Shit-hole countries" don't just spring up randomly. They are created. 

"You start to see patterns. Ten years ago I worked with a start-up out of Portland that was funded by Inq-Q-Tel [https://www.iqt.org/] an arm of the CIA. Their software married geo-spatial data with demographics, weather, crops, religious movements, etc. Using advanced AI [Artificial Intelligence] provided intelligence data on potential areas of unrest and threats to the US."

The United States is going through an uncomfortable re-assessment of its place in the world. 

We are not the all-powerful sole remaining superpower, and we learned that in the modern era of asymmetric warfare of terror attacks, cyber warfare, and nuclear proliferation that the United States is, once again, merely one of many. A million dollar missile can destroy a five billion dollar aircraft carrier, and a twenty year old at a keyboard in Kiev can create an urban riot in Newark. In the economic sphere, China, not the US, is the growing economic center of gravity. We try not to think about the fact that drugs are grown elsewhere because they are consumed here, so we blame the grower and shipper. 

Perhaps most worrisome, American voters are discovering that others--state actors and non state actors--can do to us what Americans have felt free to do to others for a century: meddle in their elections and choose their leaders and create division and misery.

Another uncomfortable thought: maybe we are not the clear-cut good guys of the world. Maybe people are escaping to the US from misery we had a hand in creating. Dealing with that reality is too big a problem for our political system to confront. After all, we cannot even deal with the problem late in the cycle, when it shows up at our borders.

But Trump's complaint was in fact a question Americans can ask themselves: why are we having so many people from shit-hole countries coming here?