Since coming to the border, I've been stuck by all the contradictions of this place. Watching the sun set over the saguaro cactus and Tucson mountains is calm and beautiful. Seeing the rusted metal of the border wall and the huge fleets of border patrol vans shows me the ugly side of this place. I am increasingly realizing the role of militarization, and the interests behind it.
In learning about many different issues, economic motivations come to the fore again and again. Nearly all of the migrants we talked to in Altar, Sonora mentioned the need to find work as their primary motivation. They were coming from Central America and southern Mexico, making the perilous trek north, across the desert, because they needed jobs to feed their families.
While having food to eat and a dignified place to live should be basic human rights, many people have an interest in criminalizing and dehumanizing people who migrate to meet these needs. Businesses in the United States have much to gain from having a large pool of undocumented laborers that they can underpay and exploit, knowing that fear makes these workers unlikely to speak out against abuse. U.S. citizens benefit from the cheap labor of undocumented migrants who do jobs like pick lettuce, pack meat, wash dishes and mow lawns.
While some businesses profit from the labor of undocumented migrants living in the U.S., other companies profit from their criminalization. The Corrections Corporation of America is a private company that earns is money by managing prisons. They contract out a certain number of beds in the prisons to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which thanks to current laws has many opportunities to target and imprison the migrant population. Many people make their living from the institutions that “defend border security,” from Border Patrol agents to lawyers assigned to represent deportees in Operation Streamline en masse trials. While I recognize that people doing these sorts of jobs are also human and also need to make a living, it seems unfair that a lawyer should make $125/ hour participating in formulaic deportation trials, when they migrants they are defending left their homelands to work for below minimum wage.
We've learned about other border phenomena not directly a part of human migration, but also intimately linked to economic motivations. In one of our classes, we've been reading about the drug war, and how Mexican drug trafficking organizations, as well as the Mexican police and government have been responsible for over 47,000 deaths (according to the Mexican government). The so called “War on Drugs” has been perpetuated by the desire for black market profits, both of the Mexican drug traffickers and the private U.S. firms responsible for manufacturing arms and providing security services.
Along the U.S./ Mexico border, since the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), assembly factories called maquilas have sprung up. They employ most young women to work long shifts for low pay, assembling cables for electronics or other repetitive tasks that turn raw materials into goods for export. While some in the U.S. and Mexican governments laud the maquilas for providing employment opportunities, very little money from these operations actually bolster the Mexican economy. Instead, the finished products are exported duty-free from Mexico, to be sold at a profit to the multinational corporations. Even some of the wages paid to Mexican workers filter back into the United States, when Mexicans cross the border to shop in Walmart and such stores in the U.S., where goods are cheaper.
In connecting all these issues, I can see that we are facing something bigger than an “immigration problem.” Immigration is merely a symptom. We could point to capitalism, or imperialism as the cause, the these issues can't be fixed by simply building a taller wall or putting more guns on the border. In this way, what I've learned so far is both discouraging and illuminating. There are no easy solutions, and at times the problems seem so huge and systemically entrenched I feel powerless to make change. But then I think about all the people I've met and will meet, who are working daily, making small chips in this formidable edifice of oppression. I think about how education and awareness are the first steps toward change. I am thankful for this opportunity to spend time on the border, seeing difficult things, and thinking about what my role in all this is.
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