What's Behind the Immigration "Crisis"?

Apparently, some folks don't know the back story on Mexico. Here it is: When Clinton pushed through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993, U.S. corporations were put in a position to gut the Mexican economy, which they have done. Those corporations (and even individual rich Americans) have bought up land in Mexico, displacing Mexicans who have been living on that land and growing the food for their families on it for thousands of years.

This forced poorer Mexicans to work for the corporations for pennies a day while we buy the products made by them for the same price we would be paying if they were made by U.S. workers (tens of thousands of which lost their jobs when NAFTA was signed -- see below). The corporations make out like bandits (literally) and the Mexicans starve.

The rampant poverty NAFTA produced in Mexico is what gave birth to the drug cartels (which were originally formed with the assistance of the CIA, by the way, as outlined in the movie "American Made"). And this is why Mexicans (and other Central Americans) come here like they do. Some leave their families behind. Some can't bear to do that. Besides it's dangerous. And so-called "legal" migration takes decades and costs a lot of money.

The real reason Trump is locking up immigrants is because millions of dollars (our money) is going into the pockets of those who created private prisons expressly for this purpose while U.S. farmers are going belly up because their crops are rotting on the ground and we're going to pay $5 a pound for imported food immigrants used to pick right here in our country.

Then, while we're all utterly focused on babies in cages, the present Administration is using Congress to push through legislation that will leave us without health care, without higher education, without workplace and environmental regulations necessary to the common good, and without protection from a run-amok criminal injustice system. Now you know.

Warsan Shire: "Home"

Home
by Warsan Shire

no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark.

you only run for the border
when you see the whole city
running as well.

your neighbours running faster
than you, the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind
the old tin factory is
holding a gun bigger than his body,
you only leave home
when home won't let you stay.

no one would leave home unless home
chased you, fire under feet,
hot blood in your belly.

it's not something you ever thought about
doing, and so when you did -
you carried the anthem under your breath,
waiting until the airport toilet
to tear up the passport and swallow,
each mouthful of paper making it clear that
you would not be going back.

you have to understand,
no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land.

who would choose to spend days
and nights in the stomach of a truck
unless the miles travelled
meant something more than journey.

no one would choose to crawl under fences,
be beaten until your shadow leaves you,
raped, then drowned, forced to the bottom of
the boat because you are darker, be sold,
starved, shot at the border like a sick animal,
be pitied, lose your name, lose your family,
make a refugee camp a home for a year or two or ten,
stripped and searched, find prison everywhere
and if you survive and you are greeted on the other side
with go home blacks, refugees
dirty immigrants, asylum seekers
sucking our country dry of milk,
dark, with their hands out
smell strange, savage -
look what they've done to their own countries,
what will they do to ours?

the dirty looks in the street
softer than a limb torn off,
the indignity of everyday life
more tender than fourteen men who
look like your father, between
your legs, insults easier to swallow
than rubble, than your child's body
in pieces - for now, forget about pride
your survival is more important.

i want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home tells you to
leave what you could not behind,
even if it was human.

no one leaves home until home
is a damp voice in your ear saying
leave, run now, i don't know what
i've become.

but i know that anywhere
is safer than here.
___________________________________________________________
NOTE: The graphic above is Holy Family Icon by Kelly Latimore.

DREAM Act Action Now

More than a year ago now, some of us were talking about the DREAM Act and its ultimate dismissal by the Bush administration et al. But the DREAM Act is not dead, nor are its proponents. I received the following communication yesterday and have decided that it's too well done to pretend that I could do it any better. So, with minor modifications, let me introduce Maria M.:

"Hi,

"My name is Maria and I am a DREAM Act beneficiary. I arrived in this country at the young age of 12, with my parents, from Peru. I am now 21 years old and undocumented. I have grown up in the United States and consider this country my only home. If sent back to Peru, I would be banned from the U.S. for 10 years and the chances of coming back are slim to none. I graduated from high school in 2004 and since then, it has been difficult for me to continue my education as a result of my status. The DREAM Act would help me, and students in my situation, realize our dreams of becoming active members of society by allowing us to attend school or join the military.

"Currently, there is an active project on Change.org, a website that will present the top 10 ideas it generates to the Obama administration upon its inauguration. DreamACTivist.org has presented the idea "Pass the DREAM Act Now" and it has gathered enough support to make it to the second round.

"Starting January 5th, the voting polls will re-open for the second round. We will have only 10 days to gather as many votes and as much support as possible in order to become one of the top 10 ideas that will be presented to the Obama administration. Please help us achieve our goal and consider voting for the other immigration ideas that made it to the second round, as well, since they also need your support. This project is of extreme importance and your prompt participation is greatly appreciated.

"In addition, DreamACTivist and the United We DREAM Coalition will be launching a website on January 21 that will become a 65,000-name petition drive for the DREAM Act, signifying the 65,000 undocumented students that would benefit from this act each year. Please visit this site for more information and consider joining our efforts to make the DREAM Act a reality in 2009.

"In solidarity,

Maria M.

Co-Founder of DreamACTivist.org"

Passin' It On and Seeing the Similarities

The more I read blogs from around the world, the more I see the connections and analogies between the way African-Americans are perceived and treated in the United States and the way issues having to do with other people of color play out, even in other geographical locations. For example, as Sokari at Black Looks describes the struggle of landless people in South Africa, I am caused to remember an Associated Press investigation that reported in 2001 a national pattern in the U.S. ever since emancipation and up to the present in which African-Americans were cheated out of their land or simply driven from it through intimidation, violence, and even murder. In some cases, local governmental officials approved the land-takings; in others, they actually took part. Over an eighteen-month period, the AP documented that property valued in the tens of millions of dollars was literally stolen from its original African-American owners without recourse since, naturally, the statute of limitations has run out on these cases by now.

Kyle de Beausset of Immigration Orange wrote a thought-provoking piece on the practice of importing and adopting children of color from poverty-stricken settings as if they were products on Ebay or something, while purporting arrogantly that it's an act of kindness. Similarly, U.S. slaveholders used to tell mothers and fathers of African-descent that the children snatched away from them and sold could be easily replaced by simply making another baby. And more recently, it's clear by the way African-American children are typically allowed to languish helpless and hungry in the poorest neighborhoods, pushed into the worst schools, and early routed into the criminal justice system that they are not as yet seen as fully human beings either.

At least partly because of this, young African-Americans are being increasingly actively recruited to "serve" in the military with offers they virtually cannot refuse, given the nature of their other opportunities. XicanoPwr at Para Justicia y Libertad! outlines how undocumented immigrants are also invited to "serve" (even though they're not citizens) with a green card hanging out in front of them for motivation. Assuming, of course, they don't die.

And despite the way Naomi Shihab Nye (a poet and novelist who is a U.S. citizen, but whose father was Palestinian) reminds us that one-on-one, most of us know how to get along, this YouTube video featuring a Palestinian rap group to which I was first introduced by Sokari at Black Looks challenges our perceptions concerning who, exactly, the terrorists are. If it's not immediately apparent to you how this relates to the situation of African-Americans, I suggest that you look back over the past five hundred years, then ponder the last two or three stories you heard about African-Americans dying at the hands of law enforcement officers or others enforcing the norms that still hold sway in this country, recalling this post and this one and the one on the Jena Six. And then ask yourself what terrorism is.
__________________________________________________________
NOTE: The poster above is by Ricardo Levins Morales and is available from the Northland Poster Collective.

I Am Descended From Immigrants, Too

I am posting this link* today in solidarity with all who come to this nation in search of a better way of life. May they come freely and find all they seek in safety. And may I be a good neighbor to them all.

Incidentally, I can't resist pointing out that the photo early on in the video showing a straight line of young women in Gibson Girl get-up, the middle one of which looks as if she's been pretty badly abused in some way, was taken in the Kentucky mountain county where I was born. See what I'm sayin'?

*The author of this video chose not to allow it to be embedded, so I'm posting the link. Enjoy!