Rachel's Random Musings on Life
Rachel shares her thoughts on activism, journalism, food, social justice, environmental issues, gender, sexuality and a few other things.
7.22.2012
Moving the blog.
So as you may have noticed, I have decided to move my blog over to Wordpress. I took my customized domain with me, so rachelwalexander.com is now my Wordpress site, with all my posts from here copied over. This blog and theme will remain here on weremushcat.blogspot.com, but I will no longer be updating. Hope to see all of you over at the new blog (it's a lot prettier, I promise).
6.20.2012
House of Representatives to environment: F*** you, secure the borders.
The House of Representatives just passed HR 2578, an omnibus piece of legislation including HR 1505, the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act. The final vote was 232-188, with most Democrats opposed and most Republicans in favor. The roll call vote tally is here.
This sneakily named bill gives the Secretary of Homeland Security authority to manage federal lands within 100 miles of both the U.S.-Canada border and the U.S.-Mexico border. This power is an expansion of Section 102 of the Real ID Act, passed in 2005, which gives the DHS Secretary authority to waive any federal laws during the construction of border enforcement structures, including the border wall. Because of that act, all major pieces of environmental legislation, including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act (which mandates review of all environmental projects) and the Endangered Species Act have been waived during border wall construction and other border enforcement activities. Perhaps most insidiously, the law explicitly states that DHS waivers cannot be subjected to judicial review.
HR 2578 would extend essentially the same powers to all federal lands within 100 miles of either U.S. land border. It prohibits the Secretary of the Interior (responsible for National Parks and Bureau of Land Management Land) and the Secretary of Agriculture (National Forests) from interfering with Customs and Border Protection activities within this 100-mile area.
Let me say that again, really clearly. This law gives the Secretary of Homeland Security the authority to waive all environmental legislation within 100 miles of U.S. land borders.
Apparently, it's not good enough that our border enforcement is killing hundreds of people every year. We also have to make sure that things like preserving wilderness areas don't interfere with catching and deporting people trying to make it to the U.S. And lest you think this is about border security--the Department of Homeland Security and the Border Patrol have stated that this law is unnecessary for border security. The current system of interagency land management is working just fine for them.
The Senate still has to vote on this (it's S.803, introduced by Arizona Senators Jon Kyl and John McCain). You can read up on the bill here, get the Sky Island Alliance's talking points here (PDF), and go here to take action and contact your Representatives and Senators.
This sneakily named bill gives the Secretary of Homeland Security authority to manage federal lands within 100 miles of both the U.S.-Canada border and the U.S.-Mexico border. This power is an expansion of Section 102 of the Real ID Act, passed in 2005, which gives the DHS Secretary authority to waive any federal laws during the construction of border enforcement structures, including the border wall. Because of that act, all major pieces of environmental legislation, including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act (which mandates review of all environmental projects) and the Endangered Species Act have been waived during border wall construction and other border enforcement activities. Perhaps most insidiously, the law explicitly states that DHS waivers cannot be subjected to judicial review.
HR 2578 would extend essentially the same powers to all federal lands within 100 miles of either U.S. land border. It prohibits the Secretary of the Interior (responsible for National Parks and Bureau of Land Management Land) and the Secretary of Agriculture (National Forests) from interfering with Customs and Border Protection activities within this 100-mile area.
Let me say that again, really clearly. This law gives the Secretary of Homeland Security the authority to waive all environmental legislation within 100 miles of U.S. land borders.
Apparently, it's not good enough that our border enforcement is killing hundreds of people every year. We also have to make sure that things like preserving wilderness areas don't interfere with catching and deporting people trying to make it to the U.S. And lest you think this is about border security--the Department of Homeland Security and the Border Patrol have stated that this law is unnecessary for border security. The current system of interagency land management is working just fine for them.
The Senate still has to vote on this (it's S.803, introduced by Arizona Senators Jon Kyl and John McCain). You can read up on the bill here, get the Sky Island Alliance's talking points here (PDF), and go here to take action and contact your Representatives and Senators.
6.17.2012
Immigration reform and invisible costs
Friday’s immigration announcement by President Obama was a great moment
in a lot of ways. Seeing the reactions to his announcement that the Department
of Homeland Security is stopping the deportation of DREAM Act eligible students
was a good reminder of the spectrum of opinions that the U.S. population holds
on immigration issues. Many people were celebrating, knowing that they might
have an opportunity to work or continue their studies. Others were decrying the
fact that this was done via executive action rather than Congressional
legislation, claiming that this was nothing more than a political decision to
appeal to Latin@ voters.
All of this has put me in a reflective mood about border and
immigration policy, especially in the context of the massive wall that I cross
at least twice a day now. One of the
rallying points behind No More Deaths is that these issues shouldn’t be
political—they’re human rights issues. I firmly believe that thousands of
bodies piling up in southern Arizona’s deserts are a human rights issue. And in
March, when I was here doing work in the desert, it was easy to see immigration
in only those terms. The people I interacted with on a daily basis weren’t
policymakers or strategists. They were people like me, except that they needed
work and had the misfortune to be born on the wrong side of the line.
Perhaps the clearest part of being out in the desert was how visibly
wrong and ineffective our border enforcement was. It seemed clear that people
weren’t being deterred by the militarization or the wall itself. Crossing
numbers are certainly down in recent years, but there’s no real way to tell if
this is because of the U.S.’s poor economy, increased border enforcement, or
both. What is clear is that plenty are still choosing to cross—it’s just that
more of them were dying in the process. A week out there convinced me that our
currently policies couldn’t continue for much longer, because they were
inherently unsustainable. I figured that they would collapse under the weight
of their own inhumanity, that reform could happen if enough people knew what
was going on and called for change.
Now, I’m in an urban area, talking to tons of different people on a
daily basis and hearing dozens of stories from migrants. A lot of them have
left desperately poor town in central and southern Mexico, where a good wage is
$30 a week. Some of them are my age, except instead of attending a liberal arts
college and blogging about politics, they have a three-year old child at home
who they need to support. Most of them aren’t coming to the U.S. to pursue
higher education. Many of them don’t want to live there permanently or
assimilate into U.S. culture. The majority are simply looking for work, having
run out of options at home.
I was speaking to a group of women in the Migrant Resource Center where
I’ve spent the past week working. They were discussing the poor wages in their
home states that had led them to try to cross the border, while I chimed in
occasionally with questions.
One of them turned to me and asked, “If you were in my position, if you
couldn’t find any work at home and had four children to support, would you try
to cross into the U.S.?”
I looked at her and froze for a moment, unable to answer because the
circumstances of my life had never forced me to consider something like this.
Eventually, I said, “I don’t know. But maybe. Probably.”
She nodded, looking satisfied. “Until you’ve been in this position, you
don’t know what you would do,” she said.
In the desert, I heard stories like this and wished people safe
passage. On the Mexican side of the line, though, these stories carry an
entirely different meaning. The people who tell me these things have just been
deported, and, with very few exceptions, most of them are headed back to the
towns they came from in Mexico’s interior. Having seen the reality of the
desert or the brutality of the Border Patrol (nobody I’ve spoken to who was in
custody overnight was fed more than one meal, and most of them were housed in
detention facilities where sitting down was impossible because of crowding),
most of them are giving up and heading home.
From a political perspective, this is a win. Comprehensive immigration
reform has been discussed for a long time in U.S. politics. All of the
strategies I’ve heard rely on essentially three actions—providing a path to
citizenship for the undocumented immigrants already here, changing our visa
system to grant temporary work visas and possibly increase quotas for nations
like Mexico with high demand, and increasing enforcement on the border to
prevent unauthorized crossings. No matter how people feel about Mexicans or
what to do with the undocumented folks once they get here, everybody seems to
agree that preventing migrants from crossing illegally is a good thing. Policy,
as much as it could aim to provide better jobs for Mexico or legalize those
who’ve already made it here, is going to favor border militarization.
Out in the desert, it seemed like this couldn’t go on forever. The
degree of suffering was so great, the injustices so stark, that I knew a better
world couldn’t be too far off. From the city, though, abuse becomes mundane.
The people I talk to everyday who come in dehydrated, forced into the back of
vehicles which look like they’re designed to carry animals, crying because they
can’t find work at home and don’t know what to do—all of them fade together,
human casualties in a policy system which doesn’t care about their suffering.
Which isn’t going to care about their suffering.
In the midst of all this, it’s good to know that the undocumented
migrants who have already made it to el
norte, who have lived there for years and built lives there, might be able
to stay. But immigration reform which only tweaks our visa system isn’t going
to solve the issue. Reagan’s 1986 comprehensive immigration reform—the last
large-scale legalization we’ve had in the U.S.—was supposed to provide enough
border enforcement to make sure people stopped crossing. And we all know how
that worked out.
As long as there are people who are desperate to find work, I have to
believe our border wall won’t make a difference. If we build a twelve foot
wall, they’ll find a thirteen foot ladder, or so the saying goes. But being
here makes me afraid that our awful policies are working in some twisted way,
that the suffering I’ve seen this week is simply supposed to be another form of
collateral damage.
The physical border is a space often forgotten in political
discussions. We talk about who ICE chooses to deport in the U.S. and what it’s
like to live life undocumented, always afraid that one misstep could get you
sent back to a country you don’t remember leaving. We don’t talk about the
border militarization in real terms, what it means for the people who live on
either side of the line, who conduct their day-to-day lives perpetually in the
shadow of that fence. We say we’re adding enforcement and agents, and people
see it as a good or accept it as a necessary compromise to push for reforms in
the system. We’re sold a specter of drug cartels and devious migrants sneaking
across our borders, and we don’t often pause to consider what that added
enforcement will mean or how many more bodies will pile up in the Arizona desert
because of it.
I want comprehensive immigration reform, and I’m so happy to learn that
many of the people I know won’t have to live with the specter of deportation
hanging over their heads, at least for the next two years. I hope, though, that
we can bring these spaces into our national dialogue too, that in our push for
legalization of those already here, we don’t forget about those who would still
come. I want us to see the human rights side even as we acknowledge its
political dimensions. I don’t want the suffering in the desert, the costs on the
Mexican side of the line, to forever remain invisible.
6.15.2012
In which I respond to the people commenting on the NYT article about Obama's executive order on immigration
So
this morning, President
Obama announced that
undocumented students who would be covered under the DREAM Act will no longer
be deported. This policy applies to people who are under 30, arrived in the
U.S. before they turned 16, have been here for at least five years and have no
criminal record. They also must be currently in school, have a high school
diploma or served in the military.
Obama is essentially shifting policy through executive action, and while it's similar to the DREAM Act, it doesn't provide a
path to legal citizenship for undocumented students. Instead, it grants a
two-year "deferred action" during which an individual is essentially safe
from deportation. People who are granted this deferral may then apply for work
permits.
While this isn't citizenship and
doesn't solve the immigration problem in the long term, it's an important
short-term step towards a more humane immigration policy. I was really excited
reading the New York Times' article about it, and then I decided to look at the
comments. Where, naturally, I lost most of my faith in humanity.
Every time immigration comes up,
people respond with all kinds of xenophobic, racist and just plain factually
inaccurate stuff to justify their opposition to treating people like human
beings. And I'm getting pretty sick of it. So, I'm going to pick a few choice
comments from the NYT's article and respond to them here. (Trigger warning:
racism)
1) These people are illegals and by
definition, criminals. Therefore they should all be deported as soon as
possible.
Okay, first of all,
"illegal" is an adjective, not a noun. So a person can't be an
"illegal." But I digress.
U.S. immigration laws
are civil, and violating them has historically been a civil offense, not a
criminal one. Until very recently, it has been federal policy to apply
prosecutorial discretion when criminally prosecuting people for violating
immigration laws. This means that, except in rare cases where an undocumented
immigrant committed a more serious crime, people are generally deported with
only a civil infraction (the equivalent of a parking ticket) rather than a
criminal conviction. Most people here illegally have never been convicted of
any crime, in violation of immigration laws or otherwise.
This is now changing,
as federal initiatives like Operation Streamline seek to criminalize
unauthorized immigration to dissuade people from trying to come to the U.S.,
which brings me to my second point. Pointing out that someone has broken a law
has no bearing on whether or not the law itself is just. Nobody is disputing
that people who came to the U.S. in violation of its immigration laws have
broken those laws. People are arguing that those laws are unfairly applied and
have many, many unintended consequences which are bad both for the individuals
affected and the nation as a whole. These consequences include familial
separation, as well as large numbers of bright, ambitious students who are
unable to attend college and contribute to the U.S. because they can't afford
tuition and aren't eligible for financial aid because of their immigration
status.
Which brings me to the they should all be deported line.
As for that, I offer only this
article. Next?
2) I am naturalized citizen who patiently and
painstaking waited on line and went through the whole legal process. This
is going to encourage more illegal immigrants crossing the border with children
in tow and more anchor babies. This makes me sick to my stomach!
So,
you waited in line and got legal residency. Good for you. (Seriously, good for
you.)
Here's
the thing, though. U.S. immigration works on a quota system, where each country
in the world has the same cap on the number of people who can get immigrant
visas each year. In
order to apply, you need to have a close relative, generally a sibling,
parent or child, who is already a U.S. citizen (this is called an F4
application). If you're from a country with very few applicants, like Iceland,
awesome--you can get a visa pretty quickly. If you're from a country like
Mexico or the Philippines, you'll be waiting a while. The wait for Mexico is
currently somewhere between 15 and 20 years if you already have a close
relative in the U.S. Waiting in line simply isn't an option for many people,
least of all those who were brought to the U.S. by their parents and have been
living and going to school year for years.
In order to be
eligible for Obama's "deferred action," someone must have already
been living in the U.S. for five years. Trust me, this isn't going to encourage
anyone to cross the border who wasn't already going to cross. And if you're
really concerned about more people crossing, your best bet would be to advocate
for job creation programs in Mexico.
Finally, I'm not sure
how some undocumented immigrants gaining legal rights in any way hurts or
affects your status as a legal permanent resident.
3) Why don't we just give them
everything ELSE we've worked so hard for!
I was adopted from Italy years ago. And my parents had to spend time and money making me something I could be proud of.
And " American Citizen." It use to be an Honor to be an American Citizen. You use to have want it so bad you could tastes it.
Nowerdays Just dump the kid on the white houses door step say "I no speaka the english." And wham! you an American Citizen. No questions asked..
But now They don't have to work for it.
I was adopted from Italy years ago. And my parents had to spend time and money making me something I could be proud of.
And " American Citizen." It use to be an Honor to be an American Citizen. You use to have want it so bad you could tastes it.
Nowerdays Just dump the kid on the white houses door step say "I no speaka the english." And wham! you an American Citizen. No questions asked..
But now They don't have to work for it.
Nothing in this
decision will make anybody an American Citizen. First of all. And many
people who come to the U.S. without documents don't want to be U.S.
citizens--they simply want to come and work.
Second of all, there
is nobody who came to this country without
documents who didn't work for it. Nobody. I've spent the past week in the
Migrant Resource Center in Agua Prieta, Sonora. We help people who have just
been deported get back home and provide food, water, clothing and basic medical
care. I've heard dozens of individuals stories, each distinct, but with many
common elements. People generally pay thousands of dollars to hire a pollero to bring them to
the U.S.--this in a country where making less than $30 a week is common in many
central and southern states. People walk for a week or more through the brutal
heat of the Arizona desert to come to the U.S., and thousands of them have died
in the attempt over the past decade. So don't tell me people don't work
for this.
I'm going to ignore
the racism in the comment about people not speaking English, except to point
out that the U.S. doesn't have an official language. But it is currently the
exact opposite of easy to become a U.S. citizen, or to even get legal
permanent residency.
Finally, and again,
I'm not sure how some people getting more legal rights in any way diminishes or
cheapens your citizenship.
4) So Obama is giving 800,000 illegal immigrants work
permits. All US citizens who are out of work or have to work part time should
figuratively spit in Obama's face, since he is spitting in yours.
Ah, the jobs argument.
First of all, undocumented students who apply for deferred action still have to
apply to get a work permit, and I highly doubt all 800,000 of them will qualify.
With regard to the
larger jobs issue: this is a pervasive anti-immigration argument, but I think
it's fundamentally flawed. First of all, a work permit isn't a guarantee of
work, so all this would do is give some undocumented students the same chance that
U.S. citizens have to apply for the few jobs that are out there. I personally
don't believe that U.S. citizenship should magically confer a person with any
more of a right to work than a non-citizen resident would have.
Even if you disagree,
though, I would again point to this
article. Often, the consequence of undocumented workers being removed is
that produce is left to rot in the fields. Many other standard complaints, like
that immigrants don't pay taxes, are patently absurd as well. Immigrants pay
sales tax, and those who work under fake social security numbers pay into both
Social Security and Medicare, without being able to benefit from either of
those programs (effectively subsidizing the rest of us).
There's been a
longstanding argument that immigrants do jobs U.S. citizens aren't
willing to do, and I think that's often true. But the counterargument to
that--that if we enforced immigration laws and cracked down, wages in
agricultural labor would rise--seems compelling as well. So what do we do?
I'm not an economist
and I don't have an answer to that. My support of immigration reform and more
visas is rooted in human rights, not economic arguments. I believe people have
a right to migrate where they want to and to be treated like human beings while
doing so. That said, I think it's worth pointing out what is made visible and
what is made invisible when we talk about immigrants "stealing American
jobs." The rise in immigration over the past few decades, specifically to
the U.S. from Mexico and other Latin American countries, is largely due to
trade liberalization agreements. Agreements like NAFTA and organizations like
the WTO have lifted many international barriers to trade in the name of
efficiency. One effect of this has been the collapse of the rural Mexican
economy for many small farmers, pushing them to migrate north. Another has been
the shipping of U.S. jobs overseas, largely to Asia, where labor is cheaper.
Regardless of how you
feel about trade liberalization, I think the anti-immigration argument
overlooks the structural nature of free trade. It's telling that those who
decry the effect immigrants are supposedly having on the U.S. economy, notably
Republican (and many Democratic) policymakers, are much more silent on the free
trade agreements which encourage U.S. jobs to be shipped overseas, as well as
the factors which push migrants to the U.S. These are all complicated economic
questions with room for debate, but a knee-jerk, "They're taking our
jobs!" is not going to lead to sensible policy on this issue.
5) The president does not have the constitutional
authority to do this. Congress makes the laws.
There's
a legitimate conversation to be had here about the limits of executive power,
and there's certainly a problematic history of presidents using executive actions and policy shifts to do what they want. However, while Congress does make the laws, it's the executive branch's job to enforce them. Part of that means prioritizing
certain methods of enforcement over others, which to my mind, is
exactly what this is doing. The President has decided that applying U.S.
immigration laws to students who have been in the country for years is not the
best use of the government's resources. Given the impossibility of deporting
all 12 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S., I'd have
to say I agree. (There's another conversation to be had about the construction
of "good" vs. "bad" immigrants as it relates to the DREAM
Act, but I'll save that for later.) In the fact of a Congress which has thus
far failed to pass any immigration reform laws, I think this action was both
warranted and necessary.
6) What
Mr. Obama did is pure politics. What kind of leadership is that?
and
Have we elected
President Romney today?
We might have. Everybody is focused on the every growing population of Hispanics and as an article in the Times mentioned this week, they are forgetting that it is 2012 and not 2050.There are still many more non-Hispanic voters than Hispanic voters. A lower percentage of Hispanic people vote than do whites and blacks.
First of all,
non-citizens can't vote in elections. Which means nobody who is directly
affected by this policy can vote. As far as the larger Hispanic community goes,
of course this is a political act. Because everything
the president ever does is a political act. Because he's a politician.
It's entirely possible that President Obama realized that same-sex couples
should be able to get married of his own accord, and that's awesome. But the
decision to announce that at the time he did was a political act. Pulling U.S.
troops out of Iraq was a political act, just as George's Bush's decision to
invade was a political act.
Just because something
is a political act doesn't mean it's wrong, or corrupt, or immoral, or shallow.
Politicians are always going to consider the potential effects on voters when
taking stands on issues. I would argue that they probably should consider that,
since they're elected to serve voters. That doesn't mean that Obama's action
was only about getting votes, and it doesn't make his action
any more or less valid.
Finally, I would like
to point out that Hispanic and Latin@ people are not and should not be the only
people who care about this issue. There are plenty of people who are concerned
about undocumented immigrants who support this action wholeheartedly. As much
as I'm critical of Obama, and the entire U.S. political system, I'm happy that
we were able to make this small step forward, and I trust that many of my
fellow non-Hispanic/Latin@ and white Americans are as well.
There you have it. I
think I touched on all the major arguments I saw in the comments, though if I
missed any, somebody should let me know. Immigrant rights are human rights, and
while stopping the deportation of students isn't enough to solve the problem,
it's certainly a step in the right direction.
6.12.2012
Douglas in photos
I tend to mostly to text-based stuff on here (print journalist, people), but one of my goals for this trip is to get more photos up to accompany the text. With that in mind, I took a walk this morning, with the intention of documenting a bit of what life is like in Douglas and showing you all where I'm actually spending these two weeks. This isn't really accomplishing my goal, since I'm just doing photos and not text, but I'll get there eventually.
My bed in the trailer where I live. Hard to see here, but it's essentially three mattresses stacked on top of each other, and consequently very wobbly. |
Our trailer from the outside. It's owned by Fronteras de Cristo, which runs the migrant center, hence the giant cross on the screen door. |
My daily commute along the Panamerican Highway. It's about a mile from our trailer park to the Mexican border--we can bike or walk. |
A lot of the fast food places have peso exchange rates on the sign, and the Mexican food places I've been to in Agua Prieta are all happy to take dollars as well. |
Douglas used to have a Safeway, but it closed down. So here are the ruins of Safeway. |
Landscape outside of town looking south. You can just see the border wall in the distance. |
An old no trespassing sign. The small print on the bottom says it's from Phelps Dodge Co., which was the big mining company in Douglas back when it was a copper smelting town. |
The official surveyed boundary of the United States, as seen through the border wall. |
Douglas' wastewater treatment plant, out in the desert to the west of town, just a few hundred feet from the border fence. |
6.11.2012
Migration from the Mexican side
I like to think I’m pretty good at seeing the complications of issues,
of looking at things from a variety of angles. I’ve realized, though, after my
first day working in the Migrant Resource Center here in Agua Prieta, Sonora,
that my thinking on migration has been missing a huge chunk of the picture. I’ve
spent time thinking about the border wall, U.S. immigration policy, drug wars,
deportation proceedings and racism. What I’ve really forgotten to think about
is what happens to migrants once they’re repatriated to Mexico.
The intricacies of U.S. immigration law are really complicated, and I
still don’t fully understand them. Some people who enter the U.S. without
papers are legally deported, meaning they’re barred from re-entering the
country for a certain number of years (5, 20, life) and will face criminal
charges if they disobey. Some people are charged criminally for unauthorized
entry to the U.S. and serve jail time before being deported. Some people simply
sign a voluntary departure form. Regardless of the method by which they return
to Mexico, though, the process is pretty much the same. People spend time in a
detention facility, usually run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),
and then they’re bussed to the border and dropped off, often without their stuff.
This means that Mexican border towns—Nogales, Naco, Agua Prieta, Ciudad
Juarez—have had to come up with an entire infrastructure to deal with the
busloads of Mexican nationals who come through them. Most Mexican migrants to
the U.S. are from central and southern Mexico, and taking care of everyone and
getting them home is a huge logistical challenge. There’s a Mexican federal
agency, Grupo Beta, which provides assistance to migrants. One of the big
things they do is help people pay for bus tickets home. They’ll cover 50% of
your bus fare home, and can also provide transportation around the border towns
if people need to get to shelters or the hospital. They also run a public
service campaign telling people not to try to cross into the U.S. through the
desert (No vaya usted—no hay suficiente
agua). The Mexican consulate can also buy you a bus ticket home, but this
only works once per person in your entire life.
The Migrant Resource Center here tries to provide people with the
things they’re most likely to need once they’re repatriated. There’s free food
(bean burritos) and drinks, basic medical care, clothes and shoes, free phone
calls to both the U.S. and Mexico, assistance locating belongings and family
members, and assistance with bus tickets. Phil, the guy who runs the center,
said that traffic really varies. From May 2010-December 2011, the center didn’t
serve any migrants, because ICE had stopped deporting people through Agua
Prieta for whatever reason. Then, in January 2012, they had a trickle which
picked up to thousands of people per month by March. It’s started to slow again
now, and we might go this week without serving more than a dozen or so people. But
the plan is for me and Jeff to work 8 hours a day at the center this entire
week, then take Saturday off. (I’m thinking about just taking my camera and a
ton of water and walking along the border wall until I get bored.)
I’m looking forward to talking with the center’s regular volunteers,
almost all of whom are Mexican. I had a long conversation with Sergio
yesterday, a man who volunteers every Sunday. Besides being nice Spanish
practice (those parts of my brain are slowly waking up again), it was a great
way to learn about Agua Prieta and Mexico. I always have to remember to take
conversations like that with a grain of salt, to remember that no one person is
speaking gospel truth and that anyone I’m talking to in that context is usually
going to be middle or upper middle class.
One thing I’d like to learn more about, though, is why Agua Prieta is a
relatively safe town when so many other border towns have become increasingly
violent. Not that the media narrative of border violence isn’t overblown, but
Agua Prieta in particular is, by all accounts I’ve heard, perfectly safe. Sergio
told me that if you want to get into trouble, you can do that, but if you stay
out of bad activities, you’ll be fine. Phil and Tommy, another church guy, have
dismissed most of my safety questions by telling me it’s fine. Yes, I can walk
around Agua Prieta at night by myself. The worst problem they’ve had with
female volunteers solo is getting catcalled, and that’s something which is
hardly unique to here. I did end up walking through town by myself last night,
because we went to a minor league baseball game and I didn’t want to wait in
the hour-long car line to cross the border in Tommy’s car, so I just walked about
a mile and a half back home (mostly on the U.S. side). And nothing felt
sketchy. I know my anecdotal perceptions don’t mean much, but everyone I’ve
talked to has consistently told me that violence in Agua Prieta is way, way
lower than in Nogales, much less Ciudad Juarez. Anyway, if I do figure that one
out, I’ll be sure to write about it.
6.10.2012
Seeing through the wall
When Terry Tempest Williams came out with her book Finding Beauty in a
Broken World a few years ago, I was pretty sure she’d made it just for me. For
as long as I can remember, that title has more or less been my life philosophy.
I was raised hiking and backpacking in a loving family that showed me how many
amazing things the world has to offer, and I’ve been fortunate to have friends
throughout my life who have been supportive. But much of my life has also been
spent looking for problems in the world, reading about war and starvation and
violence and systematic inequalities.
It was with this in mind that I went to a concert on the border wall
yesterday afternoon. Some churches in Douglas and Agua Prieta had organized a
binational chorus to perform on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border wall, just
outside of town. Wearing orange shirts with the trickster god Kokopelli on
them, a group of singers stood on each side of the wall. They traded verses
back and forth, sometimes in English and sometimes in Spanish. People gathered
on both sides to listen and watch. There were white people and Latin@s on both
sides of the wall, Mexicans and Americans, and people of all races and
nationalities speaking English, Spanish, and everything in between.
Chorus on the U.S. side of the wall. |
My initial reaction upon seeing the border wall has always been a
combination of rage and sadness. It’s monumental, terrifying in its scale,
awesome in its cruelty. It’s a scar on the landscape, bisecting habitat,
casting some as “other,” reminding the world of American military might. The
scale of the wall compared to the assembled singers had its usual effect on me.
I saw people sticking hands through the wall to take pictures, friends shaking
hands through the fence posts. I reflected on the fact that, while I could
freely move between the two sides, at least half of the people present didn’t
have that privilege.
Looking down the border wall in Douglas, AZ. |
In spite of the way injustice is written on the dusty ground, the
people singing did so in celebration. The songs were sometimes somber, but the
atmosphere was happy, almost celebratory. Friends smiled at each other. Every
time the chorus on the U.S. side stopped singing, a man on the Mexican side
would spin a giant homemade noisemaker, the crackle carrying far beyond our
party. Border Patrol vans circled in the distance, but left us alone.
A woman on the U.S. side of the border. |
Chorus on the Mexican side, as seen through the wall. |
Realizing this, I thought back to my last time traveling through the
deserts of the American West, almost two years ago. I recalled how no matter
where we were, almost every night I could watch the sun set through a barbed
wire fence Contemplating that scene, my mind would freeze the frame and see the
aesthetic beauty, cattle grazing, beavers driven to extinction, disappearing
sage grouse, American tradition, a struggling family and climate change
captured together in a single image. And in spite of the imperfections writ
large on the landscape, I always found beauty in the complications of that
scene. I always found a way to appreciate the place while seeing its scars.
For as long as I’ve been seriously thinking about it, I’ve seen our
border and immigration policies as evil, and the wall as the clearest
manifestation of that. I still feel this way—there’s no amount of beautiful
singing in the world that could make me feel differently. But yesterday’s
concert was a good reminder that we can be happy in the midst of evil,
celebrate even in the fact of injustice.
Now, my mind freezes the frame on the assembled orange t-shirts, the
people singing their hearts out in the U.S. and Mexico. Looking at them, it’s
clear they represent a single community. There’s resiliency in their insistence
on ignoring the wall to the best of their ability, in their efforts to continue
with life as normal in spite of the monstrous demonstration of military might
standing in their way.
But more than that, their celebration is a parody. In choosing to be
happy in spite of the fence, in choosing to play music no matter how
impractical it may be, they’re showing the fence for what it really is. The
electronic keyboards and bongo drums and prayer flags hung on the metal stakes
make the wall look absurdly, ridiculously out of place. In the act of bringing
something beautiful to this broken place, they’ve made the wound that much more
visible. And they’ve reminded me that we can fight for things we care about
without forgetting to smile, that we can hold love and rage in our hearts
simultaneously. Because all over the world, in places where violence has taken
hold, places the state sees strategically while everyone else forgets to look,
there are people who will keep fighting and keep playing music, never
forgetting that walls, turned on their side, are bridges.*
*This was a piece of graffiti on
the border wall near Nogales, though it’s since been painted over. Written in
Spanish, it said las paredes vueltas de lado son puentes.
6.09.2012
Humanitarian aid as an atheist
Out here on the border, social change and spirituality seem to be
closely linked. Almost all of the migrant aid centers on both sides of the line
are organized by churches, and while the group I’m with, No More Deaths, is
secular, it has its roots in Tucson’s Unitarian Church and Catholic liberation
theology. This is nothing odd—there’s a long history of religion inspiring
social work and activism. Jesus was pretty clear about that whole “the first
shall be last and the last shall be first” thing, and there have been no
shortage of church-organized homeless shelters, Catholic orphanages and some
pretty radical priests talking shit about capitalism since then. Worldwide,
it’s not all Christians, either, and if I were better informed about other
religion, I’m sure I could come up with dozens of other examples from all over.
The desire to help the less fortunate in the world is often seen as a key part
of a deep spiritual calling.
My companions for these two weeks are all Christian. I’m with one other
No More Deaths volunteer—a Unitarian minister from Georgia named Jeff—and the
shelter we’re working with is run by a guy named Phil who lives here in Agua
Prieta and is Episcopalian. I asked Phil yesterday about the preponderance of
faith-based aid out here, and told me that in his experience, people who don’t
come from a faith tradition tend to burn out doing this work faster.
“Why?” I asked him.
“I think it’s hard to deal with the suffering out here without some way
to make sense of it,” he said.
He’s not wrong. Last time I was on the border, I was out in the desert
putting out water and food for migrants crossing. I went out there expecting to
find tragedy, a misguided series of policies which united in a particularly
deadly way in the Altar Valley of southern Arizona. What I found instead was
deliberate cruelty, overt racism and a series of policies which were explicitly
designed to funnel people into the desert, knowing they would die there. Many
No More Deaths facilitators describe the Arizona borderlands as a low-intensity
war zone, and that’s how I felt during the brief time I was there.
When I went home, it was hard to process all of this. I withdrew from
my friends and spent a lot of time drinking while trying to write about what
I’d seen. I had days where I couldn’t fathom the thought of being happy,
because it seemed so wrong, knowing what I’d seen, knowing that what I had seen
was such a small chunk of the whole picture. And I absolutely had nights where,
lying in bed with tears running down my face, I thought, “I really wish I
believed in God right now. I wish I had some way to convince myself that this
would all be okay.”
That’s the thing about being an atheist. Because I don’t believe in
God, I also don’t believe in absolute justice. I believe all kinds of evil
people die and get away with the evil things they did. I don’t think Ted Bundy
and Adolf Hitler are spending eternity in hell being punished for the lives
they took—they’re just dead. I don’t think those who have been made to suffer
in this life have any greater reward waiting for them, and I don’t think the
scales balance in the end. The suffering I see on the border isn’t part of
God’s plan or the result of our sin. It’s just awfully, cruelly wrong.
For me, knowing there’s nothing after death makes fighting for this
world all the more important. Religion was used in the Middle Ages (and still
is by some people today) to justify poverty, to keep the poor from rebelling by
telling them that if they just stayed quiet and accepted their fate, they’d be
rewarded beyond their wildest dreams once they got to heaven. I would argue
that religion still fulfills that function in many parts of the world, at least
for some people. For me, this world is all we have, so we’d better make damn
sure it’s a good one for everyone. We’re not going to get a second chance.
There’s no heaven waiting for us, nothing perfect after we die, so it’s that
much more important to keep working towards a better earth.
It’s this thought that keeps me going, and it’s that thought that’s
going to make these weeks a challenge. I think partially because of their
belief in the afterlife, a lot of Christian work is centered around aid and
charity. Feed the poor. House the homeless. Minimize suffering. Run a shelter.
Here in Agua Prieta, I’m going to be working in a shelter which provides
services to migrants who have just been deported. It’s important work, and I’m
grateful that people are doing it. Putting water in the desert is important,
life-saving work, too. But none of it gets at the structural, the systems that
make these things necessary in the first place. Food banks are awesome, but
anyone who thinks they’re solving hunger or poverty is naive at best.
This is the challenge of activism in the world today, and it’s all the
more stark for those of us who think that death is just death. We need to make
sure people have food today and migrants have a place to get medical care
today. But if that’s all we do, we’re not making any progress. We have to find
some way to make life better, measurably, systematically. I don’t know what
that looks like yet, and I don’t know if the next two weeks will give me many
ideas. What I do know is that as long as this wall is here, as long as we build
our nation on racism, exclusion and the backs of poor people the world over, what
we’re doing is absolutely, unequivocally wrong. It’s because of, not in spite
of, my atheism that I feel called to work for as long as I need to to change
that.
6.08.2012
The U.S.-Mexico border: a brief history
I’m going to be writing a lot about the border in the next month as I
work with No More Deaths and delve into my thesis research. I want to make this
blog as accessible as possible for people, so this post is an attempt to
explain the situation on the U.S.-Mexico border as I understand it and the
issues I have with our immigration and drug policies. If you have no idea what I'm ranting about, start here. This post assumes you're not already horrendously racist and/or categorically opposed to migration. If you are, you should probably stop failing at life.
(A vastly oversimplified) history
The Southwestern United States was part of Mexico until it was ceded in
the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in 1848 at the end of the
Mexican-American War (which was basically a war where the U.S. invaded Mexico
to steal land as part of Manifest Destiny). An addition chunk of land, mostly
in Southern Arizona, was purchased by the U.S. in 1853 (the Gadsen Purchase) to
allow for the completion of the intercontinental railroad. The effect of these
two land grabs was that many Mexican nationals became part of U.S. territory
overnight. There’s also an entire history of indigenous people in this area
that I still don’t know a ton about and won’t get into here. But if you want a
bit more detailed history, my good friend Madelyn did a wonderful summary on
her blog while she was working with No More Deaths.
Migration patterns
Migration between the United States and Mexico has been happening for a
very long time, with a lot of overlap between people, racial groups, etc. along
the border. (For a solid history, check out this book.) Mexican nationals migrated to the U.S. in large numbers pre-1930s,
often to work in agriculture. The Great Depression and the lack of work led to
racism and a call for Mexicans to go back to Mexico (sounds familiar), which
led to a huge exodus of workers.
Once World War II started, the U.S. began the Bracero Program to combat
the labor shortage caused by so many men being off at war. Many Mexicans came
to the U.S. on a contract basis to work in agricultural labor, and many were
able to become naturalized during this period. The Bracero Program was popular
and continued to be renewed until 1964. Many people were crossing without
documents during this time as well. The border itself was relatively permeable,
and many people, especially men, would come work in the U.S. for a few years, save money to bring home,
and then return to Mexico.
In part because of the horrendous labor conditions revealed on many
farms using Bracero workers, and in part because of general racism and
xenophobia, U.S. restrictions on immigration have tightened since then. It’s
virtually impossible currently for a Mexican national to get a visa without
family already in the U.S., unless they have a job skill set we’re looking for
(we’re talking M.D., Ph.D. and the like). The current wait to get a visa for a
Mexican national with a close relative living in the U.S. is about twenty
years.
NAFTA and economic policies
The restrictions on legal immigration haven’t slowed migration to the
U.S. by very much. A lot of people have blamed the tide of people crossing on
the North American Free Trade Agreement. Signed in 1994, NAFTA lowered all
kinds of tariffs and trade barriers between Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. One
result of this was the flooding of Mexican markets with cheap, subsidized corn
from the U.S., which put many rural Mexican farmers out of work, forcing them
to migrate to find work.
NAFTA also pushed forward existing Mexican efforts to industrialize the
border. Mexico began a border industrialization program in 1964, when the Bracero
Program ended, as a way of dealing with all the unemployed young men who were
coming back to Mexico. The program aimed to build factories called maquiladoras on the border. Many U.S.
companies saw the maquilas as a good
investment opportunity, and mostly foreign corporations built a bunch of
factories in Northern Mexico right along the border.
NAFTA’s lack of labor and environmental protections continued to make
investment in Mexican factories a good economic calculation for U.S.
corporations. The growth of maquilas
has led to an internal migration within Mexico, as people from central and
southern states head north in search of work. The dismal working conditions and
low pay, plus the fact that many factories prefer to hire women (they’re
thought to be more pliable/compliant, and can be paid less), ends up pushing
people into the U.S. as well.
There have been a lot of arguments between people who know much more
about this than me about the real effects of NAFTA. Based on the research I’ve
done, it seems reasonable to say that blaming NAFTA for our current wave of
migration is a bit ahistorical, since migration has been such a key part of
U.S.-Mexico relations for hundreds of years. However, it did push a lot of
people into poverty, and accelerated existing migration patterns.
Border enforcement
Starting in 1994, the U.S. government began building sections of a
border fence in Texas, with the goal of stopping unauthorized migration in
urban areas. Various sections of the fence were expanded in the mid-90s,
through Operation Gatekeeper, Operation Hold the Line and Operation Safeguard.
While the stated intention of these policies was to reduce migration,
the actual effect was to push migration away from urban areas and into the
deserts. Initially, government officials and the Border Patrol said no one
would be stupid enough to try to cross through the Arizona desert. Then, they
said that they accepted human deaths in the desert as a consequence of border
enforcement. Policy became to funnel migrants into a few dangerous areas of
desert, including the Altar Valley of Southern Arizona, where No More Deaths
works. No More Deaths estimated that there are 300-800 yearly migrant deaths in
the Arizona desert alone, largely from dehydration.
Since September 11, the border has been increasingly militarized in the
name of national security. Border Patrol has more boots on the ground than at
any time in U.S. history, and more and more fence is being built. There are now
Border Patrol checkpoints throughout the Southwest—places where officers look
into passing cars, make sure nobody’s brown, and ask for papers if you “look”
undocumented. The language of the Border Patrol is very military and focused on
gaining “operational control” of the border. Most of the people I’ve spoken to
who live in and around Tucson and the border towns near it feel as if they’re
in a war zone, and that was the impression I got during my last trip down here. Migrants are systematically abused while in Border Patrol custody, and many have died in immigration detention facilities.
Cynics have referred to the militarization of the border as a “Marshall
Plan for Mexico.” The Marshall Plan was an economic aid package to post-war
Europe that helped get the manufacturing sector back on its feet and is
credited with helping to avert the worst of economic catastrophe. Ironically,
the U.S. has spent approximately the same amount as the original Marshall Plan
on border enforcement with Mexico.
Border enforcement has also has a number of negative environmental
impacts. The desert Southwest is a key ecosystem, and serves as an ecological
bridge between temperate and tropical zones. It’s also very fragile—wagon wheel
tracks from the 1800s are still visible in sections of the Sonoran. Virtually all U.S. environmental laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act, which mandates environmental reviews for projects, as well as the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act, have been exempted within a certain number of miles of the border. Currently, there is legislation pending in Congress to extend these exemptions.
The
road-building and off-road patrolling of the Border Patrol have disrupted
hydrology and shrunk habitat for many endangered species in the area. The
border wall itself also fragments habitat, disrupting the migration of many
keystone wildlife species. As climate change worsens, animal migration will
become ever more necessary, and the impacts of the wall ever-more-severe.
Undocumented immigrants in the
U.S.
The stepped up border enforcement has been matched by an environment
which is increasingly racist and overtly hostile to migrants once they arrive
in the U.S. There have been expanded efforts to establish partnerships between
local law enforcement agencies and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),
the agency which handles deportations for people in the U.S. Most notably, the Secure Communities program aims to make sure that every person arrested for any
crime in the U.S. also has their immigration status checked. The stated goal is
to prioritize the deportation of violent felons, but many, many more people are
deported for things like petty theft and minor traffic violations.
Laws like Arizona’s SB 1070, which essentially criminalized being brown
in public, have left many immigrants who have documents afraid to go out in
public or drive cars. These policies end up deporting many people who have been
in the U.S. for years and have children who are U.S. citizens. They also create
hardships for mixed-status families.
Drugs, guns and cartels
A lot has been made of the violence along the border and the drug wars
going on in Mexico. This is an area of policy I’m less familiar with. My
understanding basically boils down to the following points:
- The increased number of people, especially young men, involved in drug cartels is a direct consequence of the lack of other economic opportunities available in many parts of Mexico
- Drug-related violence is often fueled by guns and other arms which enter Mexico from the U.S.-something our policymakers really don’t want to talk about
- Drug cartels now have a virtual monopoly on human smuggling as well. It’s almost impossible to cross the border without paying a guide (a pollero or coyote) from a cartel thousands of dollars. Migrants are often forced to carry drugs as well.
- Drug-related violence on the border, while a very real problem for many people, has been sensationalized and in some case overstated in the U.S. media to make a case for increased border enforcement.
By every
reasonable metric—logic, fiscal efficiency, compassion, respect for human life,
sustainability—our border policy is a miserable failure. People continue to die
in the desert. Drugs continue to cross the line. Habitat continues to be fragmented.
And outside of the military industrial complex, which profits from building and
monitoring the fence, and the prison industrial complex, which profits from
throwing more and more brown bodies behind bars, no one benefits from this
system.
In summary, the
U.S. strategy for dealing the border is profoundly flawed. It utterly fails to
consider the roots of migration and drug trafficking, and refuses to examine
the U.S. government’s complicity in fueling these trends. It doesn’t consider
the intersections between economic policy, border industrialization, history,
migration trends, and drugs. It is ahistorical and fails to consider the
humanity of the people it impacts. It is fuelled by and perpetuates a racist
society.
I’m going to be
writing about these issues a lot more, but I hope this is helpful as a jumping
off point. If you want to learn more, check out some of the links and books I’ve
referenced in here.
6.07.2012
My latest paper: The Rhetorical Construction of Ecoterrorism
One of the classes I took this semester was Environmental Communication, a rhetoric class focusing on environmental issues. Our final assignment, which we worked on for about half of the semester, was to write a final paper focusing on a specific topic. Because of my interest in radical activism, I chose to write about "ecoterrorism," looking at how that word had evolved to refer to acts of environmentally-motivated property destruction and sabotage.
A lot of my research involved reading court documents, the Congressional Record, FBI reports and laws like the USA PATRIOT Act. Over the course of this research, I realized just how repressive, insidious and relatively unknown a lot of these policies are. And it's with that in mind that I'd like to share my paper with more people.
Regardless of your opinion on the legitimacy of environmentally-motivated sabotage as a tactic, or your thoughts on the ethics of taking illegal action, the ways in which the U.S. government has responded to these actions is profoundly repressive and should concern anyone with a vested interest in activism, protest and true democracy.
You can read and download the paper here (pdf).
A lot of my research involved reading court documents, the Congressional Record, FBI reports and laws like the USA PATRIOT Act. Over the course of this research, I realized just how repressive, insidious and relatively unknown a lot of these policies are. And it's with that in mind that I'd like to share my paper with more people.
Regardless of your opinion on the legitimacy of environmentally-motivated sabotage as a tactic, or your thoughts on the ethics of taking illegal action, the ways in which the U.S. government has responded to these actions is profoundly repressive and should concern anyone with a vested interest in activism, protest and true democracy.
You can read and download the paper here (pdf).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)