Tag Archives: Central American immigration to US

No human being is illegal: open the damn borders!

Guatemalan immigrants August 16 2014

While manicured officials in the Obama regime utter pious sentiments about the “humanitarian crisis” on the US-Mexico border, they adjudicate the quickest way to deport tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants, including small children. They wouldn’t know humanitarian if it came up & hit them in their ugly mugs.

These two Guatemalan men sleeping on the train track in Arriaga, Chiapas (the first Mexican state on their journey north) show us the squalor & humiliation, not to mention terror, millions of people around the globe endure simply to find work.

These young guys have over a thousand miles yet to go riding on “La Bestia” or “the death train”, a freight train they ride north that doesn’t stop for them to board or dismount. Hundreds lose limbs in the process. Paramilitary & criminal gangs (if a distinction can be made) prey on immigrants, subjecting them to robbery, kidnapping, extortion, assault, rape, murder, disappearance.

Immigration is a central part of human history; it’s what makes humanity so beautiful & varied. If corporations can move their capital, sweatshops, & plundering operations wherever they want on this globe, working people have the right to go where they want. Immigration is a human right.

Open the damn borders! No human being is illegal! Solidarity & Godspeed to these young men.

(Photo by Jorge Dan Lopez/Reuters)

Child immigrants to U.S. warehoused like cattle

Chilld immigrants June 14 2014

The immigration of unaccompanied minors from Central America is now so massive on the southern US border that it is making international news & shaming the Obama regime. The estimates of child immigrants don’t add up: some media report 400 children a day (146,000 a year); others estimate 60,000 to 80,000 a year. Either figure is staggering. Only a few years ago, it was staggering at 10,000 a year.

What’s making news is the squalid conditions traumatized, malnourished, often sick children are placed in by homeland security. Thousands are incarcerated in overcrowded facilities often on abandoned army bases, forced to sleep on the floor with aluminum sheets for blankets. God knows what the hell they’re fed–or how often. Hundreds are being deported back to Central America & dumped.

There is of course no shame among US politicians; the right-wing blames lax immigration enforcement by the Obama gang & claim children are coming because of his promise of amnesty–a promise which has not materialized in the several years of his presidency. The Democrats (let’s not play folly with language by calling them left-wing) are using the squalor to rope in the Latino vote in upcoming elections. One local politician toured facilities & released some of the damning photos showing children & other immigrants being warehoused like animals. This situation has prevailed for a long time but the upcoming elections have poked whatever he has of a conscience into high dudgeon.

The truth of the matter is US capitalism is completely dependent on undocumented immigrants for maximal profits. And not just agribusiness but manufacturing & construction. Biden laid that out quite clearly when he recently blithered (that’s his rhetorical style) to a meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers. US capitalists & politicians have to jockey the unstable ground between the economic imperative for immigrant workers, the political expedience of scapegoating them, & the need to rake in the votes.

What’s that Bible phrase about a “child will lead them”? In this case, children forced into a perilous diaspora from their home countries as a result of neoliberal barbarism are exposing the whole shebang of them for the ruthless monsters they are. When hundreds of thousands of children are not just victims but pawns in this treachery, then it’s high time to take action & demand entry & amnesty to all.

Immigration is a human right. Open up the damn borders! Tear down the wall!

(Photo of undocumented children with border patrol at Laredo, TX from AP)