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Misguided US Economic Policies Drive Many Mexicans to Cross Border
Most immigrants would prefer to stay at home with their families and live their own culture, eat their own food, and listen to their own music.
President Barack Obama did the right thing by supporting comprehensive immigration reform that would place millions of undocumented workers on the path to citizenship. Obama even went a step further, suing the state of Arizona for its unconstitutional and racially profiling immigration law. That law would punish and divide families, many of whose members have worked years for this country.
However, the U.S. immigration debate tends to ignore a fundamental question: Why do so many people migrate here from Mexico and other countries in Central America? The answer is that they need to look for jobs because there aren't enough jobs at home. Several years of the wrong economic policies have destroyed millions of jobs, both in the countryside and in cities. These economic policies tend to concentrate wealth. They're based on what's often called the "Washington consensus" because they're designed and dictated from institutions based in the U.S. capital like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
During the last 30 years, Mexico and other countries that have followed these policies have eliminated support mechanisms to local producers, while with trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) they have allowed big transnational companies to import cheaper products into their countries. That's meant, for example, the arrival of cheap corn and other basic food staples, which crowded out local production and ultimately forced millions of small farmers off their land. Another result of NAFTA is that tens of thousands of small and medium companies, which provide 90 percent of Mexico's jobs, have wound up bankrupt due to a lack of financial support.
Also in accordance with the "Washington consensus," Mexico has scrapped millions of government and state-owned company jobs. An example of this is the 2009 dismantling of a state-run power company in the Mexico City area, which axed 44,000 jobs. Although the Mexican government says it did this to remove an "inefficient company," the real reason was to get rid of a vibrant union that was hindering efforts to privatize it. Today, unionized electricity workers continue their struggle with an almost three-month-long hunger strike. Sadly, the mainstream U.S. media is ignoring this story. I bet there'd be plenty of reports on this hunger strike had it happened in Cuba, Venezuela or Bolivia instead.
Mexico's official unemployment rate of 5 percent is a joke. Only 14 million workers have a formal job with full benefits, while the other approximately 40 million in the country's economically active population are counted as "employed" even if they just sell chewing gum on street corners. There are around 7 million young people without access to higher education or a job. They see little option but to migrate.
Although some people in the United States might think that Mexican immigrants opt to come here because they're lured by the American way of life, mostly it's because they're desperate for a job to send money back and help their families. Most immigrants would prefer to stay at home with their families and live their own culture, eat their own food, and listen to their own music. The lack of opportunities to live a decent life and even feed their children sends them north.
Therefore, any serious discussion about immigration must address the reasons why people are obliged to emigrate. It's time, as Obama had pledged during his campaign, to rethink NAFTA and make trade and investment between our countries work for working families and help them stay at home.
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45 Comments so far
Show AllThe one thing I would add to this article is that there is in fact another sector for new jobs in Mexico; the drug trade. The lack of decent jobs in Mexico forces many to consider this potentially lucrative "career", and enables them to stay in country
While he praises Obama's "efforts" to deal with immigration, how does the author justify Obama's recent deployment of more US military to the Mexican Border ?
Comprehensive immigration reform means everyone who's breaking the law now will be fine. It does not mean that the border will be open for more illegal immigration.
Let's be realistic. This "comprehensive amnesty" is never gonna pass. And, besides, they have much bigger fish to fry right now, like jobs and the economy. Obama is gonna dangle this out from time to time to get people excited but that's about it.
It's incredible how many people are swallowing Obama's bait--hook, line and sinker. Have people learned anything from the
G. W. Bush years? I fear not.
I also might add that if the United States wants to alleviate the problem of illegal immigration, the US government has to release its death-grip on these third-world countries.
I have to object to the use of the terms "legal" and "illegal" and "law" in this context. Massive and pervasive law-breaking is going on by the authorities in regard to immigrants and people of color. Law-breaking is also going on by wealthy Capitalists in the countries south of the border. That law-breaking is infinitely more dangerous and destructive then the relatively minor paperwork infractions for which most immigrants are declared to be "illegal aliens."
Wealthy people (capital) travel freely across borders and do whatever they like and damn the consequences to local peoples and communities and the environment with impunity. Poor and desperate people (Labor) fleeing the conditions caused by the wealthy people have no such freedom. That has nothing to do with "law" or :legality" it has to do with who does and who does not have power. If we are going to say that what people with power do is "legal" and what people without power do is "illegal" we have so subverted and undermined the entire concept and framework of the law so as to render it meaningless.
Illegal wars, torture, rendition, mass round-ups of brown people, detention, the shredding of the Bill of Rights, surveillance and wiretapping, denial of habeas corpus, people treated as guilty until proven innocent, denial of due process under the law - all of this and more is being routinely done by the authorities on behalf of the wealthiest and most powerful few. Yet we are going to call poor brown workers "illegal?" Future observers will truly marvel at a society that has sunk to this level of depravity, cruelty and insanity.
If we are going to say that power equals legal and powerless equals illegal - and that is exactly the logic so many are using - let's dispense with any hypocritical and moralistic talk about law and legality. It is an obscenity.
This is not "misguided" in the strictest sense. This is BY design.
In the early 1900's industrialists in the USA met with Government officials to design policies that would break up the family farms and force US farmers off the land.
This would then free up a massive pool of labor to work the factories.
This very same process had happened in England years before where Landowners and the Government closed off "The Commons" with the same end result. Masses of people freed up to work the factories.
NAFTA, CAFTA and other such agreements, coupled with the Subsidization of the US Corporate farms were DESIGNED to free up a massive pool of labor which could be tapped by the Corporations.
These are NOT disjointed "misguided" policies. The end result of millions of Mexicans forced off the land thus seeking ANY job at ANY wage is EXACTLY what the Corporations want.
Important and accurate point that GwNorth makes here.
Despite all their dissembling, the architects of NAFTA knew very well that the maize-growing smallholders of Mexico's southern states would be smashed by the likes of ConAgra and ADM. After all, popular pressure forced them to accede to a (very weak and minimal) "phase-in" of the tariff reductions. Plus NAFTA ensconced into law the privatization of the ejidos. In any event, their conscious intentions don't matter much -- unless one has smoking gun-type documentation, it's hard to get into the minds of the ruling class. What's more important are the predictable outcomes of such a policy, bound up with the historical processes described by GwNorth. Liberals and progressives who don't take a deep structural perspective (or offer a deep structural critique) will always speak of "unforeseen errors".
Well said.
Basically, the enclosure system you're referring to has to be considered a central defining feature of neoliberalism. What's astonishing is how ignorant the cheerleaders of so-called "globalization" know about the genesis of the industrial revolution and how anti-worker, anti-family, and anti-community the very foundation of capitalism and the industrial revolution really is.
Glad to see someone talking about this. I have been posting about it for years.
Driving people from their farming and hunting and fishing grounds and herding them into slums creates a desperate labor force that is easily exploited, as well as removing any barriers to the exploitation of resources on rural land. This started in England, as you say, where people had previously been farming communally and living in cooperative communities, and goes on to this day around the world.
A small point - it is not so much corporate farms that are the problem, but rather corporations controlling all other aspects of food distribution.
On the cultural (women's choice) front, Mexico is one of only 6 countries in Latin American and the Caribbean where a woman can obtain a legal abortion. But many Mexican states are tightening their laws and imprisoning women for murder. Al Jazeera's Mariana Sanchez reports.
Produced: 18 hours ago
http://www.newslook.com/videos/230667-criminalising-abortions-in-mexico?autoplay=true
We're next.
After reading this article, and agreeing totally with the authors points, I have to ask: Are Americans stupid, ignorant or evil?
It has to be one of these.
I know many Americans are oblivious to the outside world. Many have traveled no further than the state line of their home town. American media doesn't report international news unless it directly affects America. Many Americans have developed their understanding of the world through American political institutions and American corporations.
Americans are also detached, disinterested in the plight of Mexican or Latino illegal immigrants. I'm not sure why this is so. Americans do have a history of having an underclass in their midst with the underclass at times treated rather brutally.
American economic policies that knowingly destroy or destabilize an other country's economy is an act of war or at least and act of terrorism.
America is the land of opportunity. As it should be for everyone who enters the country legally.
"After reading this article, and agreeing totally with the authors points, I have to ask: Are Americans stupid, ignorant or evil?"
I used to ask this same question about George Bush. Then I realized to my horror that he was stupid AND ignorant AND evil! And of course, he himself is only a reflection of the voters who put him into office who also are stupid AND ignorant AND, yes, evil in their complacent dismissal of the suffering they cause to the poor of the world.
I couldn't agree more with this writer. I lived in Mexico for a year and a half, working for an outstanding Mexican grassroots NGO. There mission was to help empower the marginalized, both in the city and in the country. We were the only gringos in the office and we felt privileged to work with these people.
While I can't claim to be an expert on these issues, I did learn enough in that time to be able to say this writer is right on the mark. I'm going to print this one out and help spread the word with whomever I meet. Thank you for an excellent article.
Abortion is only legalized in Mexico City, in the rest of the country is only legal because of rape or incest. However as you well point out, in 16 states women's rights are under assault by the right wingers and want to take their right to choose even under those circumstances.
Same-sex unions are also legal in Mexico City only
This article is a must read for everyone especially the immigrant bashers.
This IS an important article, but I have pointed out similar issues to low-pay coworkers who believe "illegals" are the cause of their misery and limited options. They simply don't care about such "complex" and "theoretical" issues and can't make the connection between the misery of Mexicans and their own situation. As the right-wingers say, let the Mexicans pressure their government towards policies that will directly help them (look at how effective Americans have been in this regard!). Once immiserated and desperate, helpless and hopeless, people can easily be manipulated into blaming those below rather than those above, who hold the real power over their lives.
Too true, unfortunately (or not?). It may work with some of the people some of the time, but in general it is very hard to get folks to shed "false consciousness" (itself a problematic construct) simply by means of patiently illustrating how their "objective interests" (another slippery notion) are in line with the "objective interests" of others in ways they formerly did not appreciate. By and large, solidarities are not forged through reasoned appeals to common interest -- especially when dealing with real or imagined cultural and ethno-national divides. The missionary approach to "educating the benighted masses" through top-down inculcation (an approach shared by many pwog-libs and Marxists alike) surely won't cut it.
If this insight is true, the implications are manifold. One of them (and ONLY one of them) might be that people are most reachable when the cliched "teachable moments" arise: when there gradually appears a gap between people's understanding of the world and the ability of that framework to make sense of their accumulated experiences, and despite themselves they suddenly want to rectify that gap. But the coming and going of these moments, and people's receptivity to them, has a complex and mysterious logic of its own. They definitely can't be cooked up in a laboratory.
Yes and no. Everything you say is true, but discussion of NAFTA might be a useful point of entry. Why? 1) Because it is already on many people's radar screen (if not necessarily in a well-informed way). 2) Because an intelligent discussion of NAFTA cannot help but link northward immigration patterns to regional (and US-dominated) political economy, which is far better than mindless alternatives such as "the craze for anchor babies" or "they just keep on coming." The key is to nudge folks (if possible) away from nationalist-populist critiques of NAFTA that focus mostly on the illusory "loss of US sovereignty" (a favorite of the paleo-libertarian conspiracy mongers) or revolve around reactionary fears of "cultural miscegenation" (a favorite of the Dobbsians and Buchananites), and instead focus mainly on how NAFTA damages the well-being of Mexican popular classes (peasants, laborers, urban poor) and the US working class alike. (Of course for reasons I give above, as well as many others, that's a tall order.)
But you are right, NAFTA in and of itself is just a small slice of a bigger picture. The Wall Street-Treasury-IMF "management" of Mexico's debt crisis in the early-mid 1980's, in collaboration with the shenanigans of neo-liberalizing Mexican elites, had already put into place many of the policies associated with NAFTA well before NAFTA's actual passage. Some analysts say that the passage of NAFTA was largely symbolic, a "gift" given to Carlos Salinas and his cohorts by the US capitalist ruling class, to validate neo-liberal reforms already undertaken and to ensure that the technocratic wing of the PRI would continue to be politically preeminent in Mexico.
Good points, gluelicker, but we may be able to create those "teachable moments" ourselves by giving voice to alternative perspectives to which most people are not usually exposed. Surely if a Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Lou Dobbs can "educate the masses" with their hateful scapegoating, itself a form of "top down inculcation", then I can be forgiven for trying to present an alternate view, and one that is is certainly more consonant with reality than the knee-jerk racist nonsense espoused by these people that just happens to coincide with the interests of those in power.
I don't disagree! More power to you...
@jp PS, I did not mean to suggest that you are a "missionary" engaged in "top-down inculcation." It's always good to talk to people to see what they're thinking, even if there is zero political pay-off -- something I don't do nearly enough, due to my own eggheaded and socially withdrawn tendencies. Just wanted to clear up any possible misreading...
Great thread. Everyone seems to get IT, and raise humane and valid points. Thanks, fellow posters.
I have appreciated your posts and have not had the opportunity to say so before. This seems like a good place. Thanks.
Amen to the author's last comment.
It should come as no surprise that US media's manipulation of US citizens causes them to blame the victims, the immigrants. This offloads the perpetrators, the elites, who control the media. It also divides the people, i.e. divides US citizens and the immigrants, for the elites' conquest of BOTH.
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US elites maintain the domination, oppression and enslavement of the people by portraying their own privileged positions as prizes for USans to struggle for, while portraying "foreigners", and "regular folks" as alien, degenerate, despoilers of the prize.
But imagine if USans embraced "foreigners" and "regular folk" in a worldwide solidarity movement. We would be happy to know that Mexicans are preserving their traditional food production - and if they need some help, we'll help them kick some elite ass.
Now let's get this into the New School Curriculum and have the children personally present it at the next school board meeting. When the board rejects the children, explain to them that the school board is evil. Imprint the truth. Free the people.
Excellent thesis. Should be extended to include over a century of American military depredations throughout Latin America.
It's good to get the tiger's subtleties, but let us not forget the teeth.
Even a cursory study of Mexico's history shows that the main culprit for the Mexican poor is the Mexican ruling caste derived from the Conquistadors.
Sorry, this is just one more permutation of the philosophy of a virus. For starters, what is needed from the Rio Grand to Tierra del Fuego is ZERO population growth. Period. I swear, intention ultimately to invade the United States seems to begin in utero.
And I repeat that the ignored =elephant in the living room= of illegal immigration is the religious identity, which fights family planning and birth control tooth and nail. Immigration to the USA from other points of the compass will be some mixture of religions.
And I repeat that if Mexico could be safely levitated, transported, and gently butted up against Bangladesh, the population would rush onto the Asian continent yelling the same viral justifications and expressing vitriol against citizens of Bangladesh who want Mexico moved somewhere else.
You could post this article all over the US and most of the readers wouldn't know what the author is talking about.....the dumbing down of the people and their incredible ignorance of their own country's foreign policies make it very easy for our major politicians and corporations to continue to mislead its citizens.
What goes around will eventually come around to all the citizens of the US....what we levy on foreigners and their countries (over the years) will be visited here...it's already started....back in 1980's.
Wake up or die with it.....
The right wingers talk on and on about the crime of being here illegally and how the immigrants are criminals. Yet these same people refuse to acknowledge the crimes of Bush and Cheney, the crimes of the banksters in destroying our economy, the crimes of British Petroleum where corporate bosses intentionally violated federal occupational health and safety regulations along with regulations set up to protect the environment. Now 11 oil workers are dead and the Gulf of Mexico along with the Louisiana wetlands are damaged forever!
Back in the 1930's Adolf Hitler used a similar plan during Germany's economic crisis. He blamed the communists, the socialists, the Jews and the trade unionists for his country's problems and persecuted these people. The question remains for us to determine are we going to allow for the korporate bosses and their toadies in government to do the same here in the U.S.A.? For all of our sakes, I pray that we unite and defeat this fascist, racist mindset that threatens all of us!
"Any serious discussion about immigration must address the reasons why people are obliged to emigrate."
Amen.