The Statue of Liberty has a plaque with the inscription: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me!” Recent laws and regulations certainly do not convey this welcoming message to migrants. What has changed?
In the United States and Western Hemisphere, we are seeing a global movement of people leaving their homes behind to find life-threatening hardships on their journeys, sometimes crossing up to 14 countries and their borders to get to the U.S.-Mexico border. Many are losing their lives or those of relatives and loved ones. We should not believe the political reasons that the Democrats and Republicans are throwing out to blame each other in order to win the 2024 Elections – everyone is looking for a solution, but we don’t need fascist ones.
MIGRATION MASKS GREATER HEMISPHERIC CONTROL
As we near the 2024 Elections, more political forces will be pushing this hot-button issue. Conservative media are heavily injecting their drugs/trafficking/gang and “invasion” fear propaganda, building pressure to “close the border” and blame Biden for “open borders.” And, in a major policy reversal from when Biden was elected, he recently agreed to continue building the Trump border wall and has even waived 26 different laws and regulations to build a section of it.
In protest, immigration advocates are condemning Biden’s actions. Borderland communities are organizing and denouncing the expansion of harsh enforcement and policing. “The ‘invasion’ is coming from the north” said América García of the Eagle Pass Coalition in a recent Zoom, referring to the overwhelming presence of National Guard personnel from different states, the Border Patrol and local law enforcement in the militarized border zone where the deaths of asylees continue.
U.S. policies are changing in violation of the United Nations’ recognized human rights for those requesting asylum. Caging and separating children from their loved ones is a fascist policy. After the Biden administration offered Temporary Protected Status to 40,000 migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Haïti and Nicaragua, it then announced the deportation of Venezuelans arriving after July 31, 2023. Officials are meeting in México and in the United States to discuss agreements on slowing down the so-called migrant caravans and other people arriving at the border.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Southern border has been “moved” further south, a fascist expansion of the Monroe Doctrine ideology (this 1823 doctrine claimed that the Western Hemisphere would be economically and militarily closed to European powers in the interests of the United States). Already, agreements with Colombia and Panamá have increased the militarization of their borders, using drugs like fentanyl and gangs as excuses. Regional centers are to be set up in other countries to streamline the U.S. immigration process, though Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has so far rejected a U.S. request to set up sites in México.
Technology is being used for surveillance, detention and asylum applications, so corporations are making big profits. But it adds burdens to migrants with fewer resources than others, who travel only with what they can carry. The technology is being used to cause destruction and delays rather than help people. Surveillance towers could help save those on the brink of death, rather than just to arrest and detain them, or locate unidentified bodies to send to the morgue.
CAPITALIST CHAOS OR A BETTER WORLD
We are at a crossroads in America as well as the world and must understand the reasons why so many people are being pushed to leave their homelands. Capitalism and its technological revolution has penetrated every corner of the world, uprooting and displacing masses of people as a consequence of war, unemployment, violence and climate-induced disasters. These changes are political, economic, social, environmental/climate and technological. There is an abundance of frustration, anger and anxiety for governments and for people who are trying to survive and find someplace to raise their families.
We must listen to the migrants, whose situation shows us that all kinds of people need assistance to survive. More and more people are calling for change that supports migrating human beings, not just control them through incarceration or detention. As one example, a 12-foot tall puppet called Little Amal is being taken over 6,000 miles to towns and cities across the country to promote human rights – especially for refugees. People are also mobilizing through mutual aid groups, helping not only migrant asylees but many people who live in communities experiencing hardship in housing, food and high costs for utilities and gasoline.
These activists are aware of the dangerous politics pitting low-income workers against migrants over who receives their basic needs and over who is given work to help them survive. For instance, when Chicago received 15,000 recent arrivals there were proposals to help them by diverting taxpayer funds from other programs for needy people. New York’s Mayor Eric Adams is loudly discouraging asylum seekers from going to New York by claiming there’s “no more room at the inn.” The political perspective benefitting the ruling class is that migrants are invading the United States, violating laws, bringing in drugs and gangs to do harm to our young people and destroy our way of life. A working class perspective is that they are escaping the violence, corruption and climate change that have destroyed their livelihoods.
There is no civilized order, only chaos. We are seeing that the ideas behind the January 6 insurrection have not gone away, that hatred and greed are still brewing. Those ideas facilitated our borders becoming militarized war zones for the benefit of fascist corporations that have profited from government contracts. The same ideas allow the U.S. government to support building a war machine that profits around the world. Ukraine is at war, China is becoming more of a target and now the Israel-Palestine conflict has escalated into war. More death and destruction that are too profitable to stop.
We must put people before profits. We must envision a new world that is organized to solve the challenges to people and the planet. On the one hand, we have the wherewithal to save the planet and give every human being and creature in the world a bountiful and satisfying life. Or we can allow the creation of a world that benefits only the rich and the corporations—a fascist solution. That is what’s at stake in the 2024 elections. Thomas Paine was an English immigrant who strongly influenced the American Revolution with writings like “The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”
The future is up to us!
Published on October 25, 2023
This article originated in Rally!
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