Vijay Prashad
On
16 February 2000, the American Federation of Labor-Coalition of Industrial
Organizations (AFL-CIO) which represents 13 million US workers dropped a
bombshell. Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson said that ‘the current system of
immigration enforcement in the US is broken. If we are to have an immigration
system that works, it must be orderly, responsible, and fair.’ The AFL-CIO
called upon the state to restructure its immigration policy mainly to protect
the rights of all workers and to hold employers accountable for the exploitation
of immigrants. ‘Employers often knowingly hire workers who are undocumented,’
Chavez-Thompson noted, ‘and then when workers seek to improve working conditions
employers use the law to fire or intimidate workers.’ Certainly, the net result
of this policy is that the immigration law is used to discipline the workforce.
‘The law should criminalize employer behavior,’ the AFL-CIO noted, ‘not punish
workers.’
The
AFL-CIO’s position did not come from no-where. Over the past few decades the
presence of immigrant workers in the service sector has increased in the US.
Each year about a million migrants enter the US, with about 40% from Mexico and
Latin America, many of whom work in the service trades. Of these only about
300,000 are undocumented migrants, even though most migrants from the Third
World report being treated as undocumented even if they have legal papers. When
the AFL-CIO took a more radical turn in 1995, it was pushed forward by the
unions of the service workers (the current president of the AFL-CIO is John
Sweeney, who was previously the president of the Service Employees International
Union). Brave immigrant workers across the country have been at the forefront of
several organizing campaigns. For that reason, Warren Mar a senior AFL-CIO
organizer said that ‘basically we feel immigration laws should be broken. We
should protect undocumented workers, we should harbor them, we should not
cooperate with the INS.’ These are strong words.
Two
months later, on the US-Mexico border, a group of right-wing farmers responded
to this union thrust with firepower. In Douglas, Arizona, home to 20,000 people,
two brothers Roger and Don Barnett became the focus of attention. Roger owns a
22,000-acre cattle ranch that abuts a part of the 2100-mile US-Mexico border.
Recently the Barnett Boys (as they are called) have led a vigilante posse
against those who cross the border for myriad reasons. The Boys, some on
horseback, but always heavily armed, have stopped vans and trucks on the public
highway to illegally search for migrants. When they have found people, they
‘arrest’ them, tie them up and radio the Immigration and Naturalization Service
(INS) to send them back to Mexico. Why are they doing this? Don Barnett said
that ‘when my brother bought his ranch five years ago, it was pristine. Now it’s
a garbage pit. There’s plastic, tin cans and shit everywhere you look. Old
blankets, cut hoses, cut fences. You name it, illegals’ll do it.’ A member of
the Arizona posse posted a note on the Internet in mid-May, which said ‘Let’s
keep out this refuse from the Narco-State next door.’
But
the illegal interdiction of human beings is not all that has alarmed the
governments of the US and Mexico. Since January 1994, 32 incidents of violent
vigilante action have been reported, 27 in Arizona alone. In Cochise County,
Arizona, in the last year private citizens detained immigrants at gunpoint in at
least 25 occasions. On 14 May, a 74-year-old man in Bracketville, Texas shot
Eusebio de Haro. Mr. de Haro stopped at Mr. Samuel Blackwood’s home and asked
for water. Mr. Blackwood and his wife refused, and then Mr. Blackwood chased Mr.
de Haro and shot him in the leg. The Mexican migrant bled to death. Two days
later, ranchers in the Douglas area chased and shot at a group of 30 immigrants,
and one man was shot in the back. By late May, vigilante squads have shot at
least four migrants. This is no accident, since the ranchers have circulated
flyers that ask others to join them in ‘hunting the Mexicans for sport.’
The
Mayor of Douglas, Arizona, Ray Borane was incensed by this attitude. ‘It is
demeaning to treat this as recreation,’ he told the media. ‘We don’t want to be
filling up with militia types.’ However, the border region is already being
flooded by the right wing. For example, the Ku Klux Klan, the leading force of
white supremacy, made its appearance at a rally in Douglas in mid-May. ‘What do
you expect me to do,’ asked Roger Barnett at that rally. ‘Give my ranch to
Mexico? No way!’ Barnett’s position was bolstered by support from Reform Party
Presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan who noted that the vigilante actions
‘will focus attention on a bleeding and hemorrhaging border. This is nothing
less than an invasion going on down there.’ To characterize the migration as an
invasion is a long-standing trope of the US right wing. Some people are upset by
the entry of the right into this region. Alexis Clarie of Bisbee, Arizona, noted
that the right wing is ‘inviting more and more people to come here and get
armed. Imagine, instead of sitting on your porch watching the sunset, sitting
there with a gun watching for trespassers. There’s a lot of racism that’s
growing by leaps and bounds.’ Isabel Garcia, a member of Coalicion de Derechos
Humanos (Coalition of Human Rights) told the media that the right wing has
invited ‘crazies to come in and hunt Mexicans. It’s at a real danger level.’
On
19 May, the Mexican Foreign Minister Rosario Green announced that ‘the
government of Mexico will use all the political and legal resources at its
disposal to guarantee that any violation of the rights and dignity of Mexicans
is investigated and, if applicable, penalized.’ The attacks, she said, are
‘intolerant, racist, xenophobic actions against Mexican citizens.’ Mexico sought
legal advice from Zuckerman and Associates, a US law firm, as well as turned to
the United Nations for recourse. In response to Minister Green, US Secretary of
State Madeline Albright said that the Clinton administration is ‘very concerned
about what has been happening in Arizona and we agreed that such behavior was
inadvisable and that violence against migrants was unacceptable. I think it’s
very important that it be totally clear that vigilante justice is unacceptable.’
She blamed the ‘intolerant expressions of some American ranchers’ for the
attacks, but said that the US remains committed to legal migration and to the
humane and orderly management of our borders.’ The issue then remains about the
maintenance of border security, and not about labour.
Roger
Barnett, also mainly interested in security, complains that he had to become a
vigilante because the US government is not doing its job effectively. ‘So far,
the government has not dealt with the problem. It lacks any formula,’ he noted.
‘They’ve put more US Border Patrol troops in the area, but as far as stopping
the problem, stopping the aliens coming across my property, they haven’t done
that.’ Since 1994, the INS and the Border Patrol have spent almost $2 billion on
making the US-Mexico border a militarized zone. With over 8000 border patrol
agents, the INS claims that it cannot do its work without at least 20,000 of
them, and an increase of the annual budget of $864 million. The US General
Accounting Office, which monitors the effective use of governmental resources,
concluded that ‘despite the investment of billions of dollars’ the INS ‘did not
know whether the investment was producing the intended results.’ Since 1994 the
number of agents have doubled, and yet the flow of migrants across the border
seems unchecked. In 1999, the INS apprehended 1.5 million people, just a bit
under the 1986 record of 1.6 million. As news of the Arizona vigilantes reached
Washington, DC, the US Congress rushed through an amendment that allowed the US
military to enter the border area. Politicians from the border area opposed the
measure, but they were overruled. ‘Most of the people along the border — not
all — feel they don’t want their border turned into a military zone,’ said
Representative Jim Kolbe of Arizona. But it already has.
Intensified
INS actions at certain points have driven migrants, according to Minister Green,
to ‘increasingly harsher areas and this has led to the loss of life.’ Immigrants
reacted to the blockades on well-worn paths not by going back home, but by going
around the INS posts. These areas include southeast Arizona, where the recent
fracas is ongoing. Since 1994, the US National Commission on Human Rights
acknowledges that at least 450 migrants have died on the border mainly due to
hypothermia and sunstroke. Due to the harshness of the routes, the migrants have
sought out better guides (called coyotes) who charge anywhere from $1000-1500
per person (it was $700 before 1994), and they perforce seek assistance from
people along the way. Mild forms of help were often given in the past. ‘The
average rancher has learned from his daddy and his granddaddy that the best
thing to do is ignore the immigrants,’ said L. K. ‘Buddy’ Burgess (Sheriff of
Kinney County, Arizona). New residents ‘are scared’ of the immigrants and ‘think
that they have to apprehend them.’ Richard Flores, a longtime ranch worker said
that ‘the new landowners are doctors of lawyers from Houston, Texas,’ the big
city in the orbit of the southwest US. ‘They’re not used to being approached by
immigrants, and some of them are prejudiced.’ Carlos Antonio Menjibar of Pueblo,
Mexico, was one of 153 migrants caught at the border recently. ‘We don’t bother
anybody,’ he said. ‘We are peaceful. All we want is work.’
Indeed,
the central question here is work, as put forth by the AFL-CIO. Jorge A.
Bustamante, president of El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (Tijuana, Mexico) notes
that most migrants are between the ages of 20 and 30, ‘their most productive
years economically.’ The US government, he notes, ‘never wavers from defining
undocumented migration as a crime problem requiring law enforcement solutions’
and has refused to consider labour migration in negotiations of the North
American Free Trade Agreement of 1994 (NAFTA). Amitava Kumar’s recent book
<Passport Photos> (University of California, 2000) reveals that about
300,000 Mexican farm workers lost their jobs due to NAFTA, a crisis situation
that leads many to seek employment in the US. Besides, since it takes about
$45,000 to raise a child in Mexico, the Mexican workers seem to be offering a
subsidy to the US workforce. For these reasons the flood of migrants cannot be
checked by a fence and by gun power.
For
many years now Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes has been saying much the same
thing about many of the 9 million Mexicans who live in the US. ‘Without the
contribution of Mexican labor, food scarcity and higher prices would hit the
United States and many services would go unattended.’ In addition, undocumented
workers pay about $29 billion in annual taxes, more than they get as social
benefits. The cultural presence of Mexicans makes them ‘perfect scapegoats’ for
the US State and society that prefer to target them than unemployment and
inadequate education. Fuentes does not let Mexico off the hook. The workers send
about $3 billion a year in remittances, a weighty sum for a country with fiscal
problems. The US, however, comes in for the sharpest attack. Because of a lack
of formal agreement, the US admits ‘workers in boom times, harasses them in
crises and manipulates them in the name of sacred borders, even if the price to
be paid is a dangerous one: racism and xenophobia. When will it be recognized
that this is not a police problem, but a question of bilateral flux in the labor
market, demanding responsibilities from both Washington and Mexico City?’
Fuentes argues that Mexico should invest in the regions that send migrants, a
tall order without the repeal of some of the harsher NAFTA provisions. The US,
he notes, ‘should abide by the international agreements on protection of migrant
workers and admit, without hypocrisy, the benefits of migration to the U.S.
economy.’ This is along the grain of the resolution of the AFL-CIO, which asks
for a marked change in US policy. The bodies of the dead Mexicans are a
testimony to the importance of these changes.