Subjects Archives: Immigration

The same American myths that drove frontier expansion now support closing the borders.

Before the Berlin Wall was torn down we all made sarcastic jokes about its official designation by East German (GDR) party leaders as “anti-fascist protective barrier”. But hearing racist ranting by AfD leaders now hoping for victories and seeing gangs of marching thugs with barely–paraphrased Nazi slogans we must wonder if perhaps that scorned terminology also contained just a bit of truth.

A PRINCIPAL GOAL of the Trump administration’s policy at the U.S.-Mexico border —and in Central America, considered of late only in relation to that border-has been to get other governments to handle the increase in migrants seeking to enter the United States.

Statement by Ken Kimmell, President, Union of Concerned Scientists

The U.S. government is detaining thousands of migrants, in what can only be described as a system of 21st century concentration camps. Justin Akers Chacón—professor of U.S. History and Chicano Studies in San Diego and author, with Mike Davis, of No One is Illegal—examines the background to this horrific story, suggesting that Trump’s detention centres are just the latest in a long line of racist systems of incarceration in the U.S.

The practice of citing conservative agitators is often characterized as “bothsidesism,” but here the news outlets only presented one side—the one on the far right—without even a hint that the claims might not have a factual basis.

MintPress News reports from the migrant caravan in Mexico City and met with members of the International Migrants Alliance, who gathered under the slogan: “Migrants, refugees and peoples of the world unite and fight capitalist exploitation, plunder and war!”

Sitting in his office, Donald Trump meets with the head of his economic advisors Gary Cohn. Cohn jokes with Trump. He says, make a speech and say that the wall on the U.S.-Mexico border is ready to be built: the materials are on hand, labour is eager. The only thing that engineers are worrying about is how to spell–over the 2000-kilometre border–the word TRUMP.

The migrant caravan, which has been met with threats from Donald Trump, is the result of poverty, growing crime and repression in Honduras. The U.S. has played a key role in propping up the government of Juan Orlando Hernández, who was reelected in November through blatant electoral fraud.

Two of the immigrant rights movement’s historic demands provide a basis for actually closing the agency, and beyond that for building a movement to demand more fundamental changes.

Sivamohan Valluvan and Eleanor Penny unpack neoliberal attitudes to migration and ‘low-value’ humans.

In this episode, we speak with Emma Caterine (@emmacaterineDSA), a law graduate and writer with more than a decade of experience working within economic justice, feminist, LGBTQ, and racial justice movements. We talk Democratic Socialists of America, MMT, the advantages of a federal jobs guarantee over a universal basic income, the place for sex work in a jobs guarantee program.

If any specter is most clearly haunting the wealthiest states of the world today, it is the specter of nativism. It has become a tired cliché to recount the number and nature of political forces that have risen on the strength of fear of the migrant other, real or imagined.

In this episode, we speak with Fadhel Kaboub (@fadhelkaboub), associate professor of economics at Denison University and President of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. Fadhel outlines a new critical approach to postcolonial political economy, arguing that re-gaining financial sovereignty is a crucial next step for postcolonial nations hoping to achieve social, economic, and environmental justice.

Why are thousands of Central Americans fleeing violence and economic devastation and flocking to the United States? Because of the American dream? Because the streets are paved in gold?

What is the structural basis for Trump’s anti-immigrant dystopia? How are anti-immigrant policies rooted in US imperialist relations with Mexico?

Inhumane forms of immigrant mass incarceration weren’t rolled out by Trump alone, but we should still recognize the danger of the Homeland Security State’s rapid expansion and growing cruelty.

Trump’s “Make America Great” policies have resulted in misery for thousands of poor migrants, but the rise in human suffering has resulted in jackpot prizes for players at the New York Stock Exchange.

The constant threat of detention and deportation discourages the undocumented employee from demanding or organizing for more pay and better working conditions—and this status is preferred by big corporations and the superrich, who profit handsomely as a result.

For every industrial robot introduced into the workforce, six jobs are eliminated. – Since a few days, Amazon has started Amazon Go. The idea is simple: a shop where you go in, take whatever you want from the shelves, and the cost goes automatically to a magnetic card that you carry.