THE MIGRATORY DEBATE REVISITED: OPEN BORDERS AND ALTERNATIVES FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

http://humane-rights-agenda.blogspot.com/2006/06/migratory-debate-revisited-open.html

Comment: This is one of the best analysis I have read so far, especially in terms of looking at the causes for migration and thinking outside the box ~in our case~ outside the borders of the continental United States. Between here and death we should boldly advocate and activate the toppling of the Amerikan Corporate Empire altogether!

How many immigrants regret coming out of the shadows only to be left in the spotlight without a strong Latino-Chicano Liberation Movement to keep the momentum going?

This whole immigration reform approach was weak, half-ass and liberal from the start and resulted in more fascist repression against undocumented immigrants.

Venceremos!
Peta de Aztlan
Sacra, Califas
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

From: "Marianna Rivera" riveram@ecs.csus.edu
To: "'Arnoldo Garcia'" agarcia@nnirr.org , hr4437@zsc.org
Subject: [HR4437] FW: [Ciepac-i] English Chiapas al Dia 505 I HE MIGRATORY DEBATE REVISITED: OPEN BORDERS AND ALTERNATIVES FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 10:58:09 -0700
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: ciepac-i-bounces@listas.laneta.apc.org [mailto:ciepac-i-bounces@listas.laneta.apc.org] On Behalf Of CIEPAC
Sent: Friday, June 23, 2006 9:03 AM
To: ciepac@laneta.apc.org
Subject: [Ciepac-i] English Chiapas al Dia 505

“Chiapas Today” Bulletin No. 505
CIEPAC; CHIAPAS, MÉXICO
May 12th, 2006

THE MIGRATORY DEBATE REVISITED: OPEN BORDERS AND ALTERNATIVES FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

From the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, June 2005

We shall continue to struggle for the indigenous peoples of Mexico, but no longer solely for them nor solely with them, but for all the exploited and dispossessed of Mexico, with all of them, throughout the country. And when we say all the exploited of Mexico we are also speaking of our brothers and sisters who have had to go to the United States to seek work in order to survive.

From Vicente Fox, May 11, 2006, on an official state visit to Austria, before an audience at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna:
The best option for a Mexican is to migrate to the United States.[i]

SUMMARY: The recent marches and demonstrations of Latinos in the US announced the birth of a new movement in favor of migrants’ human and labor rights. Yet the demands articulated so far by the main pro-immigrants’ rights groups are limited in scope. They don’t address the push factors behind the emigration of thousands of migrants, e.g., the dysfunctional neoliberal economic policies promoted by the US, and supported by supine local governments. Given that the US is one of the principal backers of these policies, a growing Latino movement could and should redirect attention towards the root structural causes of migration.

Introduction:
In recent weeks millions of people demonstrated in numerous cities in the United States to repudiate the growing anti-migrant hysteria sweeping the country and the repressive migratory bills pending in the US congress. The response of Mexicans, Chicanos, Latin Americans, US citizens and migrants from diverse corners of the world broke records for the size of demonstrations in several cities.[ii] These past few weeks were a milestone for the US Latino population in particular. Their numbers, strength, presence, economic and boycott power, their rage and pride, finally became visible to the average “Anglo” American. Latinos are no longer the “secret” labor force that Time magazine portrayed on its cover on February 16, 2006, barely a month before the first signs of discontent appeared on the streets.

The record-breaking demonstrations were the response to measures proposed, and approved in some states, that repress and oppress the most recent wave of immigrants, of the many that the United States has received throughout its 230-year history. Now it’s the Latinos’ turn, particularly the Mexicans, to face growing xenophobic sentiments in the US. Demonstrations began on March 25, 2006, grew throughout April, and culminated with a successful “Day without Migrants” on May 1st when millions of people again took to the streets. Now, both documented and undocumented migrants are planning to establish a national coordinating body to press for legal reforms that guarantee respect for migrants’ human and labor rights.[iii]

Latinos in resistance:
The unity of millions of voices sent a message to Washington legislators: witch-hunts against migrants will provoke resistance and rebellion rather than subjugation. Repercussions were soon felt, since several repressive aspects of HR4437 (the Sensenbrenner bill) approved in the lower house were removed in the Senate version of the migratory reform bill. Yet compromise legislation between the lower and upper houses is pending and doubts exist whether an agreement will be reached before the present legislative session adjourns in the run up to the November 7 elections.

The main pro-migrant organizations in the US have pushed for reforms that will grant full rights to migrants. Migrants work in the US, contribute to the country’s economy, pay taxes and keep entire industries afloat that would otherwise flounder or disappear. Likewise, pro-migrants organizations are striving to insure that undocumented migrants are granted the opportunity to legalize their stay, bring close relatives from their country of origin and become US citizens if they so choose.

Still, the laws presently being debated in Congress are an unacceptable response to the migratory phenomenon. What is never debated in any country is the right to NOT have to migrate, e.g., the right to a decent life in one’s own country, entailing mainly a job at a decent wage. Without having to migrate under inhumane conditions in order to survive.

Some facts and figures help to understand that unless efforts are made to address the problem of why millions of people lack the right to NOT migrate, solutions will forever elude us. For example, some bills pending in the US congress contain provisions for the expansion of “guest worker” programs. The Martínez-Hagel amendment calls for the granting of 450,000 work visas every year.[iv] Hardly an adequate response. The amount might be satisfactory given the labor needs of US companies. Or it might be a politically convenient number given the anti-migrante sentiment prevailing in the US. But it has nothing to do with reality.

There is no way to know exactly how many people enter the US without documents. Migration-affairs analysts give widely varying figures that run from 800,000 to 2 million per year.[v] It is clear that an increase of 450,000 new work visas per year will not legalize more than a fraction of the migrants entering the US. So there will continue to be a significant migratory-worker population lacking full rights.

Even with these laws, migrants unable to obtain a visa will continue to face repression. In other words, no matter what sort of compromise legislation is hammered out in the US congress, qualitatively nothing will have changed. More work visas will mean that there will be less people who risk their lives crossing border deserts, rivers and mountains, but the migratory flow itself will continue unabated. It will not be stopped through more walls, more border patrol agents, or even the National Guard. The overwhelming majority of migrants have no choice. They will continue to try to cross until they are successful. Or die in the attempt.

An aspect missing in the pro-migratory debate in the US:
Doubtlessly the new Latino militancy in the US is a positive sign. But the limited nature of its discourse is, from our vantage point in Mexico, indeed perplexing. In a world of globalized economic relations, it is remarkable that US activists’ demands and alternatives are so shortsighted that they go no further than the US border.

The newly strengthened Latino movement in the US and the pro-migrants activists in general must incorporate a more global viewpoint, given its strategic location in the “belly of the empire”. For a quarter century the US has been the most aggressive promoter of economic policies that have failed to promote prosperity (except for large corporations), so it behooves the Latino movement to incorporate the causes, and not just the effects, in its proposals regarding emigration from Mexico and Central America.

The mass exodus has to do with neo-liberal economic policies that have tied the hands of countries in the global South, with the perverse agreement of its servile governments. In the name of “free trade”, these policies strictly forbid establishing or maintaining protections for the neediest sectors of the population, who are suddenly thrown into competition with foreign goods. This lack of protection has led to the ruin of family agriculture and has bankrupted companies of all sizes. NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) has left millions of Mexicans without work, and the same provisions were reproduced in the recently approved CAFTA.[vi]

These treaties aggravate unemployment and thus stimulate emigration, but their negotiated clauses say nothing about human displacement, apart from insisting that all countries have the right to defender borders as they see fit. In other words, there is absolute freedom for capital, goods and services to migrate, but absolute repression for labor migration.

These and other absurdities have led to attempts to renegotiate NAFTA. In Mexico a campesino (small landholder) movement “The Countryside Can’t Take Any More” was successful in questioning NAFTA, when 100,000 campesinos marched on Mexico City in December 2003 and January 2004. One called for the removal of the entire agricultural sector from NAFTA’s purview. Both the American and Canadian governments refused to even entertain the possibility. Unfortunately, conflicts within the movement led later to the weakening of the movement’s demands and to members disbanding.

In the US, there are few efforts within the pro-migrants’ rights discourse to link the migratory phenomenon to its economic roots and to propose alternatives. Demands made by the activist organizations, migrants and their allies who demonstrated a few weeks ago are of a political (not economic) nature, all framed within US legislation.

The demands made in the US are stopgaps ­in the best of cases­ for the effects of migration, carefully eschewing all discussion of the causes. We believe that policies that respond solely to the “pull” factors and not “push” ones are bound to fail. Further, this myopic viewpoint has an implicit interpretation: it’s as if the causes (current economic policies) were immutable, a “given”, that doesn’t merit attention. As if only the effects were worth bothering about.

In the mid to long-term, the Latino movement must incorporate a demand for changes in the economic policies that expel millions of people and prevent the exercise of a basic right of not having to migrate to survive. This more complete perspective would be an important step towards a “solution” to the enormous social costs of present economic and migratory policies.

Are we heading towards open borders?:
In today’s world, run by the rules of corporate globalization, we are witnessing the repetition of events that occurred centuries ago, when internal markets were created within countries by eliminating domestic tariffs on trade. Over time, the opening of national markets included the free movements of human beings, in order to match labor deficits in certain areas of the country with labor surpluses in other areas.

This same phenomenon is occurring today worldwide due to the globalization of capital. The free movement of capital, goods and services has enabled some markets to become totally integrated, but with repressive restrictions on the movement of labor. There are examples of integrated markets, such as the European Union, with free movement of human beings, as long as they are citizens of a country within the Union, but repression continues for those who enter without permission from outside.

Academics and specialists in migratory affairs review the tendencies of capitalism over the past 200 years and claim to see the future. They say that there will be free movement of human beings throughout the world within 50 years, again, in order to solve labor bottlenecks.[vii] Others even say that the free movement of people could exist now. But the “identities” created by nation-states, our sense of belonging to a “nationality”, as well as some current institutions will first need to be transformed. Still, these specialists argue that the needs of capitalism will take care of these details.[viii]

Specialists who favor open borders claim that some common fears are unsubstantiated. For example, open borders will not lead to the feared “invasions” of foreigners. Academics point to historic tendencies to back their views.

First, in general people do not want to migrate. They prefer to remain close to home, family, familiar customs and to the friends and social networks they have known since childhood. Open borders are not in themselves the main motive in deciding to migrate. Second, open borders would allow migrantes to return home. In general migrants choose not to move permanently, even when forced to do so given the lack of opportunities at home.[ix] They tend to leave for relatively brief periods to better their income or education, but with a goal of returning home. Open borders would permit this circulatory migration pattern. This tendency holds in Mexico’s case. When fewer restrictions existed to cross into the US, Mexican migrants spent less time there. Currently, harsher measures at the border have increasing the “cost” of crossing (both out-of-pocket expenses and the risk of losing one’s life) and brought results opposite to those sought by US authorities. Studies confirm that Mexicans and Central Americans are in effect opting to stay longer.[x]

Other common migration myths are similarly groundless: that migrants abuse social services of the receiving country, that salaries in the receiving country tend to drop due to the presence of large numbers of migrants with lower educational or training skills.

Alternatives:
Alternatives to the current migratory conundrum would have to be framed in one of two ways. Within the prevailing system. Or outside of it. The two options lead to different possibilities, different strategies. If we accept the capitalist system and its historic tendencies as an inexorable “given”, then current corporative globalization is its next “logical” step. The hypothesis that capitalism will pry borders open in order to build one global marketplace ­including a single labor market­ seems likely. In other words the free movement of labor is a question of time. This then calls into question the billions of dollars that the US is throwing at the border to try to impede, oppress and repress the movement of human beings that, in the light of capitalism’s historic tendencies, is as “natural” as it is inevitable.

Remaining within this framework, US corporations are clamoring for the labor that migrants offer. So, in this sense, the “crime” is not so much that Mexicans and Central Americans are crossing the border into the US, but that huge and costly efforts are being made to stop them, with deadly results. The death of thousands of migrants along the border (at a rate of one or two per day) are thus the more tragic and unnecessary, given the fundamental contradiction between freedom for capital movement and repression for labor movement. But, fortunately, we believe the system is not immutable. Nor do we have to put up with its contradictions.

This leads us to the second option ­thinking outside of the prevailing capitalist model. Thinking of a future where governments first attend to the needs of the people, where resources flow first towards satisfying human needs, instead of facilitating corporations’ main objective of maximizing profits. A future where, yes, borders cease to exist, with unrestricted freedom for human mobility and creativity, but in an environment with adequate employment, health, education and housing conditions, where human beings will have the unrestricted liberty of NOT having to migrate in order to survive.

Alternatives exist. In fact, they abound. We include in an appendix herein one such alternative, which, if implemented, would strengthen the right to not migrate. It is the People’s Trade Treaty, originally proposed by Bolivia’s new president Evo Morales.

The Latino movement in the US and the “other world” movement in general must move beyond its reformist discourse and limited demands regarding the migratory phenomenon. To break out of this narrow framework, we believe there can be no more fruitful and stimulating meetings than the ones scheduled for the near future among activists and organizations in the US and the Zapatistas’ “Other Campaign” from Mexico, followed by the Intergalactic Forum (to be announced in the coming weeks).

Appendix 1
Ten principles of the People’s Trade Treaty (PTT)
More information is available at http://www.boliviasoberana.org/blog/English/_archives/2006/4/13/1896922.html

1. The People’s Trade Treaty (PTT) – proposed by President Evo Morales – is a response to the failed neo-liberal model, based as it is on deregulation, privatization and the indiscriminate opening of markets.

2. PTT understands trade and investment not as ends in themselves, but rather means towards development. Therefore its aim is not total market liberalization and the shrinking of the State but rather seeking benefits for all peoples.

3. PTT promotes a model of trade integration between people that limits and regulates the rights of foreign investors and multinationals so that they serve the purpose of national productive development.

4. PTT does not prohibit the use of mechanisms to promote industrialization nor does it prevent protection of areas of the internal market which are necessary to preserve the most vulnerable sectors of society.

5. PTT recognizes the right of peoples to define their own agriculture and food policies and to protect and regulate national agricultural production in order to prevent domestic markets being inundated with excess products of other countries.

6. PTT considers that vital services must depend on public companies as exclusive providers, regulated by the State. The negotiation of any trade agreement must hold as a central principle that the majority of basic services are public goods that cannot be handed over to the market.

7. PTT proposes complementarity instead of competition; co-existence with nature against irrational exploitation of resources; defense of social property against extreme privatization.

8. PTT urges participating countries involved in a process of integration based on solidarity to give priority to national companies as exclusive providers to public entities.

9. With the proposal for a People’s Trade Treaty, Bolivia is proposing a true integration that transcends economic and trade considerations – whose philosophy is based on achieving an endogenous just and sustainable development based on community principles that takes into account national differences.

10. PTT proposes a different logic of relationship between human beings, in other words a distinct model of co-existence that isn’t based on competition and the urge to accumulate which takes advantage of and exploits to the maximum human labor and natural resources.

Miguel Pickard
CIEPAC, A.C.

Notes

[i] Cited in Martinelli, Luca, “Messico: Fox vende all’Europa un Paese che non esiste”, Liberazione, May 12, 2006, section “Mondo”, available at http://www.liberazione.it/giornale/060512/archdef.asp .
[ii] The Mexican weekly Proceso indicated that on April 10, 2006 that there were “massive Hispanic demonstrations” in more than 130 cities in the US. See Esquivel, J. Jesús, “La incertidumbre”, Proceso, Mexico, No. 1537, April 16, 2006, pp. 46-49. James Petras indicates that “between March 25 and May 1, 2006, some 5 million migratory workers and their sympathizers demonstrated in some 100 cities in the United States.” See “Mesoamérica llega a EU”, La Jornada, April 30, 2006.
[iii] More information available at http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2006/05/11/030n1mig.php .
[iv] This amendment was later rejected, and the number of guest-worker visas in the approved Senate version was set at 200,000.
[v] For example the 800,000 figure comes from “Growing Global Migration and Its Implications for the United States”, National Foreign intelligence Board, NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) 2001-02D, p.13. The 2 million figure is from John Judis, “Immigration Confusion: Illegal Substance”, The New Republic Online, April 6, 2006, available at:
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=18223&prog=zgp&proj=zusr
[vi] The Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. states that “the mere existence of CAFTA, as in the case of NAFTA, will not reverse established migratory patterns”. See Cohen, Salomon, “CAFTA: what could it mean for migration”, April 1, 2006, available at www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/print.cfm?ID=388 .
[vii] Harris, Nigel, “Open borders: a future for Europe, migrants, and world economy”, Open Democracy, www.opendemocracy.net .
[viii] Morgan, Peter, “Capitalism Without Frontiers?”, International Socialism, No. 74, March, 1997.
[ix] Throughout the world migrants (people outside their country of birth) number around 150-200 million, a relatively low figure in terms of world population, less than 3%. What is surprising is not this figure but rather the 97% of the population that has not moved outside its home country. See Harris, Nigel, “Migration without Borders. The economic perspective”, UNESCO publications, March 31, 2004, available at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001391/139151E.pdf .
[x] Nigel Harris, in a radio interview available at http://www.kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=13650 .
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