Immigration

Trump’s proposal for mass deportation of immigrants is a moral abomination (10/23/2024)

Why the Far Right Lies About Immigrants (9/11/2024)

Neo-Nazi and far right groups seize on Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric (9/8/2024)

The Truth about Immigration: Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers (8/29/2024)

Trump’s Massive Deportation Plan Echoes Concentration Camp History (7/23/2024)

Republicans have a ghoulish tactic to distract from Trump’s criminality (6/25/2024)

Biden set to open citizenship pathway for spouses and children of US citizens (6/18/2024)

“The presumption of innocence is not just a legal concept. In common place terms it rests on that generosity of spirit which assumes the best, not the worst, of the stranger.” Kingman Brewster, Jr.

Any discussion of the movement of human beings in pursuit of opportunities in faraway lands is fundamentally a conversation about inequality. ... mass immigration is - and will increasingly be -- a fact of life in modern Western societies. Yet there are a variety of ways to respond to it. What can seem like a collective defeat in one context can be a triumph in another. Thomas Chatterton Williams in Harper's magazine April 2020

With every degree of temperature increase, roughly a billion people will be pushed outside the zone in which humans have lived for thousands of years. We are running out of time to manage the coming upheaval before it becomes overwhelming and deadly. Migration is not the problem; it is the solution. Nomad Century, How Climate Migration will Reshape Our World by Gaia Vince

Immigration demagogy is at the “heart” of the Trump show — and the Trump show is at the heart of our tragic decline as a civil and humane society. From a review of BORDER WARS, Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration By Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear

Beyond the direct financial cost of mass deportation, we also estimated the impact on the U.S. economy. Due to the loss of workers across U.S. industries, we found that mass deportation would reduce the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) by 4.2 to 6.8 percent. It would also result in significant reduction in tax revenues for the U.S. government. In 2022 alone, undocumented immigrant households paid $46.8 billion in federal taxes and $29.3 billion in state and local taxes. Undocumented immigrants also contributed $22.6 billion to Social Security and $5.7 billion to Medicare. Mass Deportation, Devastating Costs to America, Its Budget and Economy (10/2/2024)

For more than 70 years, the world has enshrined, in national laws and global agreements, a promise that was presented as vitally important: Anyone who cannot live safely in their home country may seek refuge in another. The World’s Broken Promise of Asylum (4/17/2022) NYT

... if the history of hyperpowers has shown anything, it is the danger of xenophobic backlash. Time and again, past world-dominant powers have fallen precisely when their core groups turned intolerant, reasserting their "true" or "pure" identity and adopting exclusionary policies toward "unassimilable" groups. From this point of view, attempts to demonize immigrants or to attribute America's success to "Anglo-Protestant" virtues is not only misleading (neither the atomic bomb or Silicon Valley was particularly "Anglo-Protestant" in origin) but dangerous." Amy Chua "Day of Empire"

Ugly lies smearing immigrants are today's theme at the Republican Convention. Here's the truth about immigration. pic.twitter.com/6BIcUpkmvc

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) July 16, 2024

For the second time this year, I voted to improve border security, hire more border patrol officers, add immigration judges, increase lawful pathways to citizenship, and reform the broken asylum system. And for the second time this year, Republicans tanked it.

— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) May 23, 2024

The connection between climate change-induced migration from poor, predominantly black and brown countries in the Global South and ascendant white nationalism in Europe and the European settler colonies foretells a future of climate catastrophe, democratic collapse, and globalized race war. Trump’s rhetoric once appeared intended to convince working people that he would fight for their economic interests, but no longer: ever since he turned over his policy agenda to Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and an army of lobbyists, he has revealed himself to be motivated by only two things. First of all, his own personal enrichment and celebrity. And second, a fulminating white grievance politics, anchored in ideas about what Leith Mullings has labeled “white replacement,” which shades easily into open white supremacism. Reclaiming Populism, We Need a Multiracial, Working-Class Alignment

... due to the hard calculus of global warming. This is a crisis overwhelmingly created by the wealthiest strata of society: Almost 50 percent of global emissions are produced by the richest 10 percent of the world’s population; the wealthiest 20 percent are responsible for 70 percent. But the impacts of those emissions are hurting the poorest first and worst, forcing growing numbers of people to move, with many more on the way. A 2018 World Bank study estimates that by 2050, more than 140 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America will be displaced because of climate stresses, an estimate many consider conservative. Most will stay in their own countries, crowding into already overstressed cities and slums; many will try for a better life elsewhere. Naomi Klein, the Intercept

Brexit voters… are horrified at the impact of the very thing they voted for. A depreciating pound means holidays are more expensive, imports are costlier, and inflation higher…one-third of British companies were planning to relocate… But Brexit was only supposed to hurt the other people, the immigrants that were allegedly swarming in.
We Need New Stories, the Myths That Subvert Freedom by Nesrine Malik

I went to the Senate floor this afternoon to explain why we are voting again tomorrow on the bipartisan border security bill.

Short story: Democrats want to fix the border; Republicans want to demonize immigrants and turn Americans against each other. pic.twitter.com/mizdd3LXaQ

— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) May 23, 2024

Why We Should Open U.S. Borders (2/28/2024)

The 5 biggest Trump-Republican lies about illegal immigration (1/9/2024)

FLOATERS: OUR REFLECTION IN THE RIO GRANDE (9/2/2023)

What I saw at the Texas border shocked me (9/15/2023)

Republicans aren't fixing the migrant border plight. In fact they're making it worse (5/16/2023)

The Rich World Has a Shockingly High Tolerance for Cruelty (4/3/2023) NYT

UN Requires Governments to Help Migrants Amid the Pandemic (6/3/2020)

As Climate becomes hotter and more violent, many species need to move to higher elevations or latitudes to adapt. Humans too.

Mass migration is apparent world-wide, incites racism, reliably propels right-wing politics like the GOP.

Climate collapse, war, flooding lowlands, rising heat, drought, and devastating storms make increasingly large areas uninhabitable, so migration is inevitable. Wars in Syria and Middle East moved many fragmenting the EU, driving political movements to the right. Russia benefited and funded the right, with help from oligarch US funders, and we got Trump.

Ukrainians migrated and were mostly welcomed.

Building border walls is a cruel way to keep miserable people in impossible conditions, but exploit racism.

Actually, immigrants would benefit the economy. If the billions spent on border walls had instead been used to welcome poor immigrants, how much better off would we be ? A book called Nomad Century by Gaia Vince finds immigration is good for everyone.

Russia seems to be driving the movement to the right for its own reasons. Brexit and the Trump election have Russian fingerprints, so does the war in Israel. Democracy is in retreat world-wide, but that is also driven by accelerating wealth inequality and insecurity.

Puerto Rico's hurricane devastation caused masses of people to move to the US mainland. They are after all, US citizens and there is a wasteland left behind. South American caravans can help Republicans win elections.

The wall was a terrible idea, which is why the Congress would not approve it. Further, allowing the President to over-rule the Congress by declaring a faux emergency, will result in a broken Constitution, further eroding democracy. Republicans do not like democracy, and it is at risk in the US either from violent overthrow or election rigging..

Illegal immigration is yet another Republican wedge issue, a disguised appeal to racism, and a shameless distraction from more pressing problems. It allows Republicans to distance themselves from the failures of the Bush administration and, at the same time, to attack Democrats. It is a continuation of the Republican war on the poor (R's are always ready to go to war, whether it be with drugs, terrorism, Islam, Iraq, China, Korea, illegal immigrants, women, or even the US population.) It is a not too subtle appeal to racism, a mechanism for voter suppression, and it is a very important source of business for the prison-industrial complex. (Boeing's share of the wall along the Mexican border is said to be around $2 billion.)

It's not only environmental damage. War can also be the cause of mass movement. Possibly the War in Syria and Middle East wars moved many to the EU, thus weakening NATO, fragmenting the EU, and driving a political movement to the right.

In the extreme, the right-wing is racist and tends to Fascism. It seems WWII is not settled. Right wing government is never good.

Human rights should trump national sovereignty. Republicans don’t agree because they think their wealth is threatened.

Great Replacement conspiracy theory in the United States

No immigrant has taken your job. You were laid off by a capitalist who required cheap labor and took advantage of that immigrant to increase his profits, and nothing makes him happier than to hear you blame the immigrant and not him.

— Mohamad Safa (@mhdksafa) September 29, 2022

Borders are death. Their lines are not just where an alleged country stops, but the cliff off of which human rights drop. They are the wall into which human dignity crashes. The edge of the world, where civilizations go to die. #AbolishBorders

— Steven Sacco (@steventsacco) January 21, 2020

"First they came for the Haitians, then for the Salvadorans, and next the dreamers. When will they come for me ? When will they come for you ?" Bernice Krantz

Attorneys for ‘duped’ migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard call for criminal investigation (9/18/2022)

G.O.P. Memo Shows Road Map for Attacking Democrats on Immigration (4/21/2022) NYT
A document prepared by Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio

The River of Refugees becomes a Flood as 84 Million flee War, Violence and Tyranny Nick Turse (03/04/2022)

Trump’s Overhaul of Immigration Is Worse Than You Think (10/10/2020)

How Many People Will Migrate Due to Rising Sea Levels? Our Best Guesses Aren’t Good Enough – Phys Org (9/25/2020)

No, Mr. President, Your Immigration Powers Are Not Unlimited (4/22/2020)

The worst immigration policy you've never heard of (1/8/2020)

🛑THIS IS NOT A DRILL! THIS IS NOT A DRILL! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!

This is the answer to why 100s of millions were spent on "urban warfare" training for ICE.
Holy Sh*T.

Border Patrol Will Deploy Elite Tactical Agents to Sanctuary Cities https://t.co/VmIuB3NHyH

— Charlotte#Time2Panic (@OdoyleCharlotte) February 14, 2020

% who say the U.S. has a responsibility to accept refugees:
Religiously unaffiliated 65%
Black Protestant 63%
Catholic 50%
White mainline Protestant 43%
White evangelicals 25%https://t.co/pkyUkikUMM pic.twitter.com/yEFg2OPGvr

— Pew Research Religion (@PewReligion) July 7, 2019

Bernie Sanders: A Welcoming and Safe America for All (11/7/2019)

Guess Which Government Creates the Most Refugees in the World? (7/15/2019)

Trump’s ‘Concentration Camps’, The cruelty of immigrant family separations must not be tolerated. (6/23/2019)

She Stopped to Help Migrants on a Texas Highway. Moments Later, She Was Arrested. (5/10/2019) Tell this to the Republican 'pro-lifers', then kick them out of office.

In Opinion

In a video Op-Ed, children read testimonies given by young migrants detained in U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities https://t.co/tp8BUsL9ht pic.twitter.com/LwlYVDnM4U

— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 18, 2019

Number of People Fleeing Conflict Is Highest Since World War II, U.N. Says (6/19/2019)

Bodies in the Borderlands (5/4/2019)

Peter Thiel’s Palantir Was Used To Bust Relatives of Migrant Children, New Documents Show (5/2/2019)

Our Disgrace at the Border (4/11/2019)

Trump is booting out anyone who tells him his immigration ideas are illegal. Experts are worried about what will happen next.(4/10/2019)

‘Someone Is Always Trying to Kill You’ (4/5/2019)

Progressives Should Support Open Borders — With No Apology (2/21/2019)

How Not to Build a “Great, Great Wall”, A Timeline of Border Fortification (1/13/2019)

The US Responsibility in Visible and Nonvisible Migration (12/05/2018)

The Case for Getting Rid of Borders—Completely

Families Are Still Being Separated at the Border, Months After “Zero Tolerance” Was Reversed (11/27/2018)

The US Responsibility in Visible and Nonvisible Migration (11/14/2018)

Fact check: Does a video show people being paid to storm the US border?

Border walls don’t make the country safer — they make it more dangerous (9/13/2018)

16 Reasons Why Opening Our Borders Makes More Sense Than Militarizing Them (9/2/2014)

"...flu and lice outbreaks were going untreated, and children were filthy, sleeping on cold floors, and taking care of each other because of the lack of attention from guards."

Americans cannot accept this. Officials must be held accountable.https://t.co/auWZn1HyGE

— Kamala Harris (@SenKamalaHarris) June 23, 2019

U.N. Agrees on Migration Pact, but U.S. Is Conspicuously Absent (7/13/2018)

Can Trump’s slow-motion ethnic cleansing keep whites in U.S. majority? (7/12/2018)

How Anti-Immigration Passion Was Inflamed From the Fringe (6/19/2018)

143 Million People Could Soon Be Displaced Because of Climate Change, World Bank Says (3/20/2018)

ICE Is a Renegade National Police Force Operating Beyond the Law (4/19/2018)

A timeline of DACA offers Trump has rejected (3/23/2018)

Trump Withdraws U.S. From UN Migrant And Refugee Compact (12/3/2017)

Trump aide reportedly suppressed study proving refugees contributed $63 billion more than they cost (9/19/2017)

Trump Administration Rejects Study Showing Positive Impact of Refugees (9/18/2017)

Trump Likely to End DACA Immigrant Program (8/25/2017)

Society will buckle under 2 billion climate-refugees by 2100 as rising oceans displace whole cities (6/27/2017)

Former Director of Anti-Immigration Group Set to Be Named Ombudsman at U.S. Immigration Agency (4/28/2017)

Trump’s Pick for Refugee Czar Never Resettled Refugees (4/10/2017)

Palantir Provides the Engine for Donald Trump’s Deportation Machine (3/2/2017)

Sanctuary in the Trump Era (2/3/2017)

Trump's immigration, refugee orders defy American values (1/30/2017)

Helping Refugees Also Means Stopping the Wars Which Make Them (1/26/2017)

The fabric of our country is changing at an alarming pace, although in the chaos, related news is garnering little media coverage or attention. Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is becoming increasingly active and emboldened, using Gestapo-type tactics to target immigrants living lawfully in our country, as Trump and his regime continue to openly target and disparage marginalized communities. Week 63

I find it somewhat ironic that many conservatives in the United States are adamant about securing the border against immigrants who will likely take jobs that few Americans want, while at the same time expressing little concern that the virtual border is left completely open to higher-skill workers who take jobs that Americans definitely do want." Rise of the Robots, Martin Ford pg 117

There are huge problems all over the country. That’s why the United States is building a wall along its border with Mexico, to contain the problems they anticipate getting worse... The wall is an atrocity. If you take a look at the Mexican border, it was once pretty open, porous in both directions. Then Clinton militarized the border for the first time with Operation Gatekeeper in 1994. Now the militarization is getting more intense. Why 1994? That was the year when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was passed. And presumably the United States expected that the effect of NAFTA would be that Mexican agriculture could not compete with highly subsidized U.S. agribusiness exports, so people would flock to the cities. Domestic Mexican businesses would not be able to compete with U.S. multinationals, which receive special treatment in Mexico under mislabeled trade laws that have little to do with trade but are about ensuring investor rights. The result would be a flood of people north into the United States, joined by a flood of people leaving the ruins of Central America after Reagan’s terrorist wars. So, you build a wall." Noam Chomsky: What we say Goes

These are wild times to be a border cop. They have big salaries, new toys, and all kinds of powers to roam the country racially profiling people, and detaining those without proof that they crossed the border legally. An increasing number of agents are returned combat vets who fought in Afghanistan or Iraq, who bring warlike attitudes to their work in the U.S. But this (mostly) boy’s club is not without its drawbacks: it is also a place permeated by a culture of militaristic racism where having a different opinion can get you blacklisted. Todd Miller. Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security

Republicans in the Senate and House have rejected every legislative opportunity on immigration, including measures to strengthen border security. That’s because they prefer partisan confrontation – and that is what they will get. The consequences for their party promise to be politically devastating – and still worse if they are foolish enough to believe their own rhetoric about impeachment. National Memo (11/14/2014)

Since 9/11, immigrant communities around the United States have experienced increased and intensified oppression from repressive local, state and federal legislation, law enforcement, and racist right-wing vigilantes. Following swift passage of the infamous "Sensenbrenner bill" - HR4437 - by the House of Representatives, millions of immigrants and their supporters took to the streets in unprecedented mobilizations across the country in the Spring of 2006 and again in 2007 to denounce the growing repression and to reclaim the rights of immigrant communities. Immigration policy deeply impacts civil liberties, human rights, and workers' rights, affecting families, education, health care, and labor, wages, and working conditions for all working people, both immigrant and U.S.-born, in the U.S. These historic mobilizations have demonstrated the resurgence of a grassroots immigrant rights movement. It is vital, as we move forward, to recapture what are the principles that unite us, how to overcome the ones that divide us, what strategies are needed to really push for policies and legislation that recognize and protect immigrant rights; and how immigrant communities can play a role alongside other communities and working people in the larger social and economic justice movement in the U.S. (from US Social Forum)

"With so many real crises facing us, why has so much national attention been focused instead on the issue of immigration? Perhaps the pundits and politicians who are spending so much energy whipping up this immigration scare are trying to distract us from some other, more pressing, national—and global—issues." Avi Chomsky They Take Our Jobs and 20 other myths about immigration. Beacon Press

If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." Thomas Pynchon quoted by Al Gore in 'Assault on Reason'.

"...capital is welcome almost everywhere, while foreign workers are not. All kinds of tricks and schemes are employed worldwide to attract investments, but most countries fear migrating workers and often slam the immigration door in their faces. Some even bring in the military to defend their homeland against the perceived threat of migratory workers. Governments worldwide are determined to stop, or at least limit, the global migration of workers." Gabor Steingart in his book the War for Wealth

"...if history proves nothing else, it is this: Walls don't work. The Great Wall of China didn't work. The Berlin Wall didn't work. The West Bank Barrier won't work. Walls never work. Walls are a medieval solution to a twenty-first-century problem. Mongols invade them. Escapees tunnel under them. Television beams over them. Today, as National Guard troops patrol the rivers from Arizona to Iraq, the United States isn't building a wall. It is building a prison." Vicente Fox, Revolution of Hope.

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to be free" Emma Lazarus inscription on the Statue of Liberty.

A Trump Era Poem for the Statue of Liberty

Slamming Shut America’s Door (6/21/2016)

A Newspaper's Crisis Reveals Unreported Worlds (2/4/2016)

The climate-change refugee crisis is only just beginning (2/3/2016)

How For-Profit Companies Are Driving Immigration Detention Policies (12/18/2015)

Cheers as Sanders Unveils 'Most Progressive' Immigration Plan (11/25/2015)

Paul Ryan Won't Work With Obama on Immigration Reform (11/1/2015)

Europeans distraught, divided as migrant crisis worsens (9/5/2015)

How Climate Change is Spurring a Global Refugee Crisis to Rapidly Worsen (9/4/2015)

The GOP’s xenophobia primary: Why the Republican candidates are rejecting immigration — and their best shot at the White House (5/22/2015)

CPAC, Congress and 2016: How Immigration Continues to Pull the Republican Party Down (3/2/2015)

GOP on Wrong Side of History on Immigration (11/25/2014)

How the Border Patrol Became Our Most Stunningly Corrupt Law Enforcement Agency (11/13/2014)

America's Dumbest Congressman: 'Our continued existence is at risk' from refugee children (7/16/2014)

The Xenophobe Party (4/23/2013)

The Biggest Opponents of Immigration Reform are Those Receiving Prison Industry Cash (2/23/2013)

Deportation nation (8/30/2012)

The Price Of Intolerance (11/27/2011)

Countries Must Plan For Climate Refugees (10/28/2011)

The Right-Wing Hardliner Immigration Approach Would Create a Police State -- Is That What Those Supposed Freedom Lovers Want? (8/11/2010)

More than 300,000 immigrants languish in detention centers around the country. Why are they there - and who is profiting from their imprisonment? (8/1/2010)

The Pentagon's Push for the DREAM Act Heats Up (2007)

When Republicans yell about illegal immigration, tell them: Don't put death squads in Central American countries like Honduras. Close the School of the Americas

There is some evidence that Republicans current initiative on immigration is really a block for consideration of mitigation of climate change.

The Flow Towards Europe

Close the School of the Americas

How the Dream Act Helps the Economy

Six Myths About Immigration (5/20/2010)

Beyond Reasonable Suspicion (5/12/2010)

Desertion in the Desert (4/20/2010)

About Immigration to the United States

A message to Lou Dobbs

Indentured Servants, Circa 2009 (3/18/2009)

About Health Care for Immigrants (3/17/2009)

Handling Immigrants the Republican way: like cattle (5/14/2008)

Iowa

U.S. Violates International Law by Failing to Enforce Laws Protecting Rights of Mexican Workers

Political Economy of International Migration

Immigrant Prison Deaths (5/6/2008)

Immigrants Deported by US Hospitals (8/3/2008)

Fear and Loathing in Prime Time: Immigration Myths and Cable News

Careless Detention (Washington Post Series)

Video of Avi Chomsky.

Noam Chomsky on immigration. (video)

War on Newcomer Aliens in the US.

Immigrant Crackdowns are building the national security state

Why expanding NAFTA is wrong

Vicente Fox: Walls don't work.

View from Yale

A Foolish Immigration Purge

Republicans cheered their hero Reagan when he yelled 'Tear down this Wall' in Berlin, but have no problem building one across the entire Mexican border. In violation of 20 federal laws the wall is being built. Lou Dobbs and other right wingers are cheerleading for it. See Bush family values.

Compare with Senator Bernie Sanders Family Values.

O'reilly v Rivera

• Oppose any immigration bill that contains provisions that undermine civil liberties.
• Immigration reform legislation must address the reasons why people come to the U.S. illegally.
• Compelling local police officers to enforce federal immigration laws adds to their already heavy burdens and prevents immigrants from reporting crimes out of fear of deportation.
• Racial profiling will increase under the Specter immigration bill, and will force people who look or sound like they might be immigrants to carry proof of citizenship at all times.
• The bill undermines the fundamental right of due process and gives low-level immigration officers the power to make life or death decisions regarding the fate of asylum seekers and others.

New Haven should be congratulated for offering a little shelter from harsh, hateful Republican policy.

Immigrant Roundups

Lawsuit: ICE forcibly injecting detainees with psychotropic drugs 12 Oct 2007 Former prisoners of Immigration and Customs Enforcement accuse the agency in a lawsuit of forcibly injecting them with psychotropic drugs while trying to shuttle them out of the country during their deportation. One of the drugs in question is the potent anti-psychotic drug Haldol, which is often used to treat schizophrenia or other mental illnesses. ACLU attorney Ahilan Arulanantham said, "It would be torture to give a powerful anti-psychotic drug to somebody who isn't even mentally ill. ... But here, it's happening on U.S.  

*# 13 Immigrant Roundups to Gain Cheap Labor for US Corporate Giants*
Sources:
/Truthout/, January 27, 2007
Title: Which Side Are You On?
Author: David Bacon
https://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012907L.shtml

/The Nation/, February 6, 2007
Title: Workers, Not Guests
Author: David Bacon
https://www.truthout.org/issues_06/020607LB.shtml

/Foreign Policy in Focus/, February 26, 2007
Title: Migrants: Globalization s Junk Mail?
Author: Laura Carlsen
https://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4022

Student Researcher: Fernanda Borras
Faculty Evaluator: Diana Grant, Ph.D.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) flooded Mexico with cheap subsidized US agricultural products that displaced millions of Mexican farmers. Between 2000 and 2005, Mexico lost 900,000 rural jobs and 700,000 industrial jobs, resulting in deep unemployment throughout the country. Desperate poverty has forced millions of Mexican workers north in order to feed their families.

The National Campesino Front estimates that two million farmers have been displaced by NAFTA, in many cases related to the increase in US imports. In 1994, the first year of the agreement, the United States exported $4.59 billion of agricultural products to Mexico, according to the Department of Agriculture. By 2006 the figure had risen to $9.85 billion "an increase of 114 percent. US exports of corn, Mexico s staple crop and largest source of rural employment, alone doubled to over $2.5 billion in 2006.

This combination of unemployment in Mexico, the huge gap between salaries in the United States and Mexico, and US demand for cheap labor to compete on global markets has created the current situation. The demand for undocumented labor in the US economy is structural. It is not just a few companies seeking to cut corners. These are not just jobs that US workers won t take. Migrants work in nearly all low-paying occupations and have become essential to the US economy in the age of global competition.

The meatpacking industry provides a good example. The US meat industry as it went global shows a fast slide in working conditions over the past decades as a result of de-unionization, erosion of wages and benefits, and increasing safety and health hazards. Part and parcel of that slide has been the replacement of unionized US workers with migrants. Aside from traditional employment in agriculture, another major use of migrant labor has been through the advent of subcontracting. This practice, well in place since the early 1980s, has contributed to the de-unionization of the workforce. It conveniently releases employees from direct responsibility for the legal status and treatment of workers in their employment.

In the wake of 9/11, Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) has conducted workplace and home invasions across the country in an attempt to round up illegal immigrants. ICE justifies these raids under the rubric of keeping our homeland safe and preventing terrorism. However the real goal of these actions is to disrupt the immigrant work force in the US and replace it with a tightly regulated non-union guest-worker program. This policy is endorsed by companies seeking permanent low-wage workers through a lobby group called Essential Worker Immigrations Coalition (EWIC). EWIC s fifty-two members include the US Chamber of Commerce, Wal-Mart, Marriott, Tyson Foods, American Meat Institute, California Landscape Contractors Association, and the Association of Builders and Contractors.

ICE now has Operation Return to Sender, a program, supposedly designed to target fugitive aliens. The program has resulted in the indiscriminate roundup of over 13,000 undocumented immigrants in cities throughout the United States.

Immigrant rights organizations have noted that the crackdown has led to serious human rights violations. Families are separated. Hearings are slow, and often families do not know for long periods of time where their loved ones are being held. A January 16 report from the Homeland Security Department s Inspector General of conditions at five detention centers identified frequent violation of federal standards, overcrowding, and health and safety violations.

The firings and raids highlight the vulnerability of immigrant workers under current US law. In 1986 Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, making it a federal crime for an employer to hire a worker without valid immigration documents. While few employers have ever faced penalties, in reality the law made it a crime for undocumented workers to hold a job. No current law requires employers to fire workers whose Social Security numbers don t jibe. But President Bush proposed a new administrative rule, which would tell employers to fire anyone with a no-match. The regulation has never been officially issued, but many companies claim they re already complying with it.

Both the enforcement and the agenda behind this crackdown are alarming many unions. In 1999 the AFL-CIO called for the repeal of employer sanctions, as well as for a generous legalization program, greater chances for family reunification, and enforcement of workplace rights. The federation was already on record opposing new guest worker programs. The Service Employees, and the two garment unions were among the first to push for this position. We still call for the repeal of employer sanctions, as we have from the time it was passed, says Bruce Raynor, UNITE HERE president. There are 12 million undocumented people living here, who are important to the economy, he fumes. They have a right to seek employment, and employers have a right to hire them. The only way to deal with this is to give workers rights and a path to citizenship.

UPDATE BY DAVID BACON
Which Side are you On? and Workers, not Guests expose the way US immigration law is being transformed into a mechanism for supplying labor to some of the country s largest corporations. Immigration law is creating a two-tier society, in which millions of people are denied fundamental rights and social benefits, because they are recruited to come to the US by those corporations on visas that condemn them to a second-class status. Those guest workers face increased poverty and exploitation, and their status is being used to put pressure on wages, benefits and workplace rights for all workers.

Workers, not Guests describes the way that the Bush administration uses immigration raids to attack union organizing campaigns and efforts by immigrant workers to enforce basic workplace rights and protections. Further, the administration uses the raids to pressure Congress into adopting new, vastly expanded guest worker programs.

Both articles describe the way some groups have abandoned their historic opposition to contract labor programs. Instead, the National Council of La Raza, the National Immigration Forum, and other labor and religious organizations have developed a political alliance with some of the country s largest corporations, with the objective of passing new guest worker legislation. This legislation also includes provisions that will make future immigration raids much harsher and more widespread. Since publication, the Bush administration and both Democratic and Republican senators have announced new proposals that go even further. They would end the ability of immigrant families to reunite in the US, and instead institute a corporate-driven point system intended to supply skilled labor to big companies. Raids and enforcement would become even harsher, with huge detention centers built on the border. The proposals would allow corporations to recruit as many as 600,000 contract guest workers a year.

The use of immigration policy to funnel labor to corporate employers is growing at the same time that Congress is debating new corporate trade legislation, including the renewal of fast track negotiating authority for the administration, and four new trade agreements "with South Korea, Peru, Panama, and Colombia. These bills would all increase the displacement of workers and farmers in other countries, sending many of them into the migrant stream to the US. This displacement is being coordinated with Congress s immigration proposals, which would then channel displaced workers into industries where their labor can be used profitably, and ensure that they can only remain in the US in a status vulnerable to exploitation.

The mainstream press has carried many articles about the proposals and raids. There has been very little coverage of the corporate backing for the immigration bills in Congress, however. Many reporters refer to the guest worker bills as pro-immigrant and left. This has not only been inaccurate reporting, but has actually covered up the corporate domination of the immigration agenda in Congress. There has been virtually no coverage of the connection between US trade policy and immigration policy.

For more accurate information, readers can contact the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, www.nnirr.org. Global Exchange organized a national speaking tour on trade and immigration policy by David Bacon and Juan Manuel Sandoval, a leading Mexican critic of NAFTA and US immigration policy. The presentations made during that tour are available on the Global Exchange website, www.globalexchange.org. * *
--
Project Censored - Sonoma State University
1801 East Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park, CA 94928
censored@sonoma.edu
(707) 664-2500

Video/Film

Harvest of Empire

The Senator's Bargain an HBO documentary.

Up Against a Wall
As the Bush administration barrels ahead with construction of the controversial U.S./Mexico border wall, the Sierra Club presents a new video, "Wild vs. Wall," which documents the ecosystems threatened by the project and details the unique and diverse natural areas along the southern borders of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. The video also highlights the administration's disregard for longstanding environmental and cultural laws.

For more info, visit arizona.sierraclub.org/border. See the film

Bibliography

The Walls have Eyes, Surviving Migration in the age of Artificial Intelligence by Petra Molnar

Nomad Century, How Climate Migration will Reshape Our World by Gaia Vince

The Case for Open Borders by John Washington

Rivermouth, a chronicle of language, faith and migration by ALEJANDRA OLIVA

Humanizing Immigration: How to Transform Our Racist and Unjust System: by Bill Ong Hing · 2023

BORDER WARS, Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration By Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear

THE EDGE OF THE PLAIN: How Borders Make and Break Our World, by James Crawford

One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger by Matthew Yglesias

Of Fear and Strangers: A History of Xenophobia by George Makari

Let’s Talk About Your Wall, Mexican Writers Respond to the Immigration Crisis Edited by: Carmen Boullosa Alberto Quintero

14 MILES, Building the Border Wall By DW Gibson

America is Better Than This: Jeff Merkley

Can We Solve the Migration Crisis? Jacqueline Bhabha

Rising Tides: Climate Refugees in the Twenty-First Century, John R. Wennersten and Denise Robbins

Detained and Deported: Stories of Immigrant Families Under Fire: Margaret Regan (Cspan Booktv video about an 1:30:00)

Impossible Subject: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America by Mac Ngai

Value-Added Immigration: Dr Ray Marshall

Imaginary Lines, Border Enforcement and the Origins of Undocumented Immigration: Patrick Ettinger

UN Population Division: International Migration 2020 Highlights

Border Patrol Nation: Todd Miller

Aftermath: Deportation Law and the New American Diaspora: Daniel Kanstroom

Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration And Criminalizes Immigrants: David Bacon, 2008. (ICE is effective in busting unions also.)

Harvest of Empire: Juan Gonzalez

Coyotes: A Journey through the Secret World of America's Illegal Aliens; Ted Conover (1987)

The Untied States of America Juan Enriquez

Revolution of Hope: Vicente Fox

Global Migration And the World Economy, Two Centuries of Policy and Performance: Timothy J. Hatton and Jeffrey G. Williamson