After reading this post at No to Borders and Binaries I had to include a link for others to read. People tend to forget that this country has a long history of involving itself in the affairs of many of the countries whose people end up crossing our borders. Immigration does not occur in a vacuum. There is cause and effect at play here, and often United States foreign policy can be a (direct or indirect) cause for the migration of people.
I also wanted to quote one excerpt from the post. With the amount of comments that seem to be focused on the word “illegal” I’ve seen recently, I find it incredibly appropriate:
…be it resolved, that no human being can be illegal–it is not a permanent immutable characteristic. Lets stop criminalizing the natural and age-old phenomenon of human migration.
Check out the full post, here. I think its some good food for thought…
Thank you for referencing. I wrote it at 2am half-asleep. I might write a full-length researched article later. The crucial fact underlying immigration debate and really marginalized from the mainstream media is how we have caused the development of underdevelopment in so many poor and struggling countries and continue to destroy their economies through the great WTO/IMF/World Bank–why should we not shoulder the responsibility for our crimes?
The empirical evidence would need to show that countries most affected by neo-liberal policies, especially when people are rendered landless, have the most number of people fleeing. Careful consideration would need to be given to factors such as political coups (in my own country, Fiji) that have led to mass migrations as well.
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