{"id":182582,"date":"2021-04-12T12:00:15","date_gmt":"2021-04-12T11:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=182582"},"modified":"2021-04-09T06:58:31","modified_gmt":"2021-04-09T05:58:31","slug":"trapped-at-the-border-their-fate-is-our-fate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/04\/trapped-at-the-border-their-fate-is-our-fate\/","title":{"rendered":"Trapped at the Border: Their Fate Is Our Fate"},"content":{"rendered":"

7 Apr 2021 – \"\"<\/a><\/em>You\u2019d think that the \u201cborder crisis\u201d begins and ends as a problem for the USA.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh, what to do, what to do? All these people showing up at our back door, trying to get in. They want to take our jobs, drink our water. . . . And think about the dangers they pose for the new president.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a relatively popular Biden administration,\u201d<\/em> the New York Times<\/a> pointed out the other day, \u201cthe recent surge of migrants at the southern border has emerged as a glaring vulnerability.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That is, if he\u2019s not as tough as Trump, he could be declared \u201csoft on immigration.\u201d Wow, what a stain on your record. Politics nowadays is 90 percent public relations. And this country\u2019s potent mixture of racism and money, also known as the Republican Party, has created a red line of public ignorance: If you\u2019re not American, you\u2019re not fully human. This is a line, largely (but not completely) maintained by the mainstream media, that no moderate politician would ever dare cross.<\/p>\n

The problems created by this ignorance have a global enormity. But as long as such ignorance remains politically viable, change is impossible and hell remains the basic condition of life for the planet\u2019s poorest and most vulnerable people \u2014 thanks, largely, to us, the ones who are doing everything we can to keep them out.<\/p>\n

Julian Borger, at The Guardian<\/a>, puts it as simply as possible:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe families in the migrant caravans trudging towards the US border are trying to escape a hell that the U.S. has helped to create.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The hell looks like this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my country, killing is ordinary \u2014 it is as easy as killing an insect with your shoe.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The words are those of an emigrant from Honduras, speaking to Doctors Without Borders. The organization has recently issued a report titled \u201cNo Way Out<\/a>,\u201d which addresses the fact that<\/p>\n

\u201cmigration policies imposed by the United States and Mexico are trapping many Central Americans in dangerous conditions, with severe consequences for their physical and mental health. . . .<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe medical evidence points to high levels of violence and ill treatment suffered by migrants and refugees in their home countries, along the migration route, and in the custody of U.S. and Mexican authorities. . . . Now they are trapped in dangerous places with no way to seek safety.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At the very least, the trapped nature of being a refugee, especially from such countries as Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala \u2014 the primary starting places of most asylum seekers at the U.S. border \u2014 should, ipso facto, be part of all media coverage of this crisis. Framing it as primarily an American political crisis strikes me as being criminally simplistic, virtually the same thing as being a Holocaust denier.<\/p>\n

But the deeper matter is the cause of this crisis. Why it happening? The racist explanation, which is generally given far too much media credibility, amounts to: They want our goodies. They want what we have. And if there\u2019s a softie in the White House, watch out, man! They\u2019ll show up in droves.<\/p>\n

The crisis has multiple causes \u2014 and multiple ironies. And it began five centuries ago. As The Guardian points out, the devastating poverty harks \u201cback to the age of Spanish conquest,\u201d when indigenous social structures were destroyed, and \u201csmall criminal elites have long prospered at the expense of the populations.\u201d The consequences of the age of colonization are still with us.<\/p>\n

Of course, these consequences \u2014 or rather, the money thus generated \u2014 began flowing north well before the refugees did. The U.S. had (and has) plenty of business interests in Latin America, which it protected militarily whenever necessary from, you know, \u201cpolitical uprisings,\u201d a.k.a, revolutions. In the Cold War era, U.S. military intervention became ideological as well, and in some countries \u2014 Nicaragua, for instance \u2014 expanded exponentially. U.S. interests allied with right-wing autocrats and their death squads, who were able to maintain, or gain, control of their countries with U.S. military aid. And so the rich stayed rich and the poor grew poorer. And then things got worse.<\/p>\n

Along came the war on drugs, which intensified the internal violence, political corruption and poverty for the many. Drug cartels flourished. So have street gangs. Let the irony begin.<\/p>\n

\u201cGangs have filled much of the space occupied by civil society in healthier societies,\u201d <\/em>Borger writes, \u201cbut they too are largely a U.S. import. The MS-13 gang, frequently referred to by Donald Trump in justification of his hardline immigration policies, was formed in Los Angeles, and introduced into El Salvador when its members were deported \u2014 often to a country they barely knew: another instance of unintended consequences which have rubbed salt in the Central America\u2019s wounds.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And then there\u2019s climate change, which has begun making itself felt, ironically, once again, in places like Central America, with hurricanes and drought forcing the rural poor off their land.<\/p>\n

Add to all this what may be the biggest irony of all, which Julia Young, writing at Time Magazine<\/a>, called a \u201cpull factor.\u201d Refugees aren\u2019t merely being pushed out of their countries of birth. They\u2019re also being pulled north by the big country that hates \u2014 but also seeks to exploit \u2014 them.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince the 1990s,\u201d<\/em> she writes, \u201centire sectors of the U.S. economy have become increasingly dependent on low-wage immigrant labor. Today, undocumented immigrants make up significant proportions of the labor force in certain industries, especially agriculture, the service industry (restaurants and housecleaning), and construction.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cDespite the demand for their labor, U.S. immigration policy makes it very difficult for would-be migrants from Latin America to come to the United States legally.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

She adds: \u201cGiven the complicated and deep-rooted reasons behind migration, lawmakers cannot control or \u2018solve\u2019 the ongoing crisis at the border by simply pouring money and resources into ever more militaristic border theater. It\u2019s no wonder that decades of such policies have done little to change the underlying dynamics.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s far too easy to envision the chaos of emigration getting worse, with the world\u2019s poorest (and most deserving) people trapped in ever-intensifying violence and desperation, increasingly walled off from hope by racist ignorance.<\/p>\n

Something else becomes possible when we begin to realize that unless we change the world, their fate is our fate.<\/p>\n

______________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Robert C. Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based peace journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book, <\/em>Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press) is still available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 commonwonders.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

7 Apr 2021 – You\u2019d think that the \u201cborder crisis\u201d begins and ends as a problem for the USA… Something else becomes possible when we begin to realize that unless we change the world, their fate is our fate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":77939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[867,688,70],"class_list":["post-182582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-anglo-america","tag-peace-journalism","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}