Posted on 07/30/2002 4:05:02 PM PDT by sarcasm
The U.S. Border Patrol recently recovered four bodies outside the town of Ocotillo in the scorched desert of California's southern border region. On the same day, the Imperial County coroner removed a corpse from an irrigation canal near Calexico to the east. And over the previous weekend, U.S. authorities found five more bodies in western Arizona. All of the deceased were from Mexico, part of an ever-growing death toll among migrants crossing the U.S. boundary without authorization.
These fatalities helped the United States reach an ignominious milestone during July: 2,000 dead migrants along the southern divide since 1995, soon after Washington began to significantly enhance boundary policing. That's roughly one corpse per border mile, or one per 1.4 days. Just as the deaths of would-be migrants trying to overcome the Berlin Wall led to outrage and calls for the militarized line of control to come down, moral and political consistency requires a similar response to the ever-deadly U.S.-Mexico boundary.
When Washington, D.C., began its "territorial denial" strategy in the mid-1990s, officials predicted that it would discourage many migrants from crossing by pushing them away from border cities and towns into harsh mountain and desert areas where they would rationally decide to forgo the risks and return home. These predictions soon proved false, as the number of fatalities -- largely from exposure to the elements and drowning -- rose dramatically.
Denying any responsibility for the deaths, U.S. officials' typical response has been one of hand wringing, or outrage directed at the "coyotes" -- smugglers whose services are made more necessary by the very boundary build-up championed by these same officials. More proactively, officials promised increased search and rescue efforts.
Yet, June was the deadliest month on record, with 70 migrants perishing, including two girls, 11 and 12. And over the last year, the death toll in proportion to the number of migrant apprehensions -- a rough indicator of the actual migrant flow -- has actually risen.
Such numbers and the human suffering they embody demonstrate there is nothing surprising about the fatalities. They are the predictable outcome of a lethal, predictable charade, one in which Washington provides ever-increasing amounts of boundary enforcement resources in full knowledge that they will do little to diminish unauthorized immigration, but will instead have increasingly deadly consequences.
A report last August from the General Accounting Office found "no clear indication" that unauthorized crossings along the Southwest boundary have declined since 1994. An in-depth study released recently by the Public Policy Institute of California confirms this, while attributing the rise in migrant deaths to enhanced boundary enforcement.
Growing socioeconomic ties and widening inequality between the United States and Mexico (and increasingly beyond) -- combined with the will of migrants to escape poverty and to pursue their basic human right to work, maintain their families and have an adequate standard of living -- make unauthorized migration inevitable.
The Bush administration's proposed increase of $1.2 billion for immigration enforcement will do nothing to change this. To pretend and behave otherwise is to effectively sentence hundreds of migrants to death each year.
For such reasons, America's border policy must change. This does not mean the end of the U.S.-Mexico boundary, but the nature of it. Only by recognizing the inevitability of immigration and welcoming -- rather trying to repel --immigrants can we stop the deaths. At the same time, putting an end to U.S. policies abroad that contribute to political-economic instability and injustice would prove to be far more effective, in addition to more humane in diminishing immigration that is unwanted -- at least officially.
American capital has long had a voracious appetite for highly exploitable labor, thus attracting "illegal" immigrants, whose presence is widely accepted at the highest levels of society. Moreover, Washington has aggressively pushed the liberalization of foreign economies such as Mexico's, a process that has predictably intensified migratory pressures among those displaced in the name of economic efficiency.
U.S. officials are not deliberately killing migrants. But they have helped to drive migrants here, and created and maintained an enforcement apparatus that inevitably results in their deaths -- in numbers far greater than occurred in East Germany. Its time to tear down America's Berlin Wall.
PNS contributor Joseph Nevins (josephnevins@hotmail.com) is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of "Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the 'Illegal Alien' and the Making of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary" (Routledge).
Huh? Liberalizing foreign economies should bring them more jobs, not less. The fact that Mexico, and much of the of Latin America, does not a free economy is what causes the conditions that make their people want to come here. That and rampant corruption, which tends to go along with a non market economy, or one controlled by a very few. Conditions which are becoming all to familiar in our own country, come to think of it.
I think I just had an aneurysm.
No doubt about it. We are surrounded by complete and totally idiots.
So, if measures to keep illegals out on the macro level are bad and are what's responsible for these deaths, does the same apply at the micro level? If I lock all my doors, and a burgler tries to get in through a second story window, but instead falls and breaks his neck, am I responsible for the death because I locked my doors making it difficult for him to enter my home illegally...
WFTR
Bill
Thirty-seven years ago a six year-old walked up into the middle of a group of GIs in Vietnam, pulled up her shirt, pulled the pin on a grenade and killed herself and four GIs. I was there. That was war. This is war. We are being invaded by hostiles. Hostiles that care not iota about this country. Not the laws, not the culture, not the heritage. If they choose to ignore our immigration laws, they are criminals when they cross the border. I have no compassion for criminals, whether they be eleven or fifty. They are threatening me, my children, my grandchildren, and my counrtys future by their criminal activity. To answer your question, not if there were an adult target available.
Boonie Rat
MACV SOCOM, PhuBai/Hue '65-66
I'm beginning to think that's the only hope for these people. The elitist President Fox will get on his soapbox and wring his hands for the world to see him crying out against the US abusing his poor citizens and meanwhile the Mexican government does nothing to improve living conditions there ----which are absurd considering the wealth in that country.
NAFTA was a giant sham in many ways. It allowed the Mexican government to divert irrigation waters from the farms to the cities and maquilas worsening conditions for the farmers, now the maquilas in Mexico are closing and heading for China so we'll end up having to take care of millions of unemployed Mexican former maquila workers.
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