With every degree of temperature increase, roughly a billion people
will be pushed outside the zone in which humans have lived for thousands of years.
We are running out of time to manage the coming upheaval before it becomes overwhelming and deadly.
Migration is not the problem; it is the solution.
Nomad Century, How Climate Migration will Reshape Our World by Gaia Vince
Immigration demagogy is at the “heart” of the Trump show — and the Trump show is at the heart of our tragic decline as a civil and humane society.
From a review of BORDER WARS, Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration
By Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear
“The presumption of innocence is not just a legal concept. In common place terms it rests on that generosity of spirit which assumes the best, not the worst, of the stranger.”
Kingman Brewster, Jr.
Any discussion of the movement of human beings in pursuit of opportunities in faraway lands
is fundamentally a conversation about inequality.
... mass immigration is - and will increasingly be -- a fact of life in modern Western societies.
Yet there are a variety of ways to respond to it. What can seem like a collective defeat in one context
can be a triumph in another.
Thomas Chatterton Williams in Harper's magazine April 2020
For more than 70 years, the world has enshrined, in national laws and global agreements, a promise that was presented as vitally important: Anyone who cannot live safely in their home country may seek refuge in another.
The World’s Broken Promise of Asylum (4/17/2022) NYT
...
if the history of hyperpowers has shown anything,
it is the danger of xenophobic backlash. Time and again, past
world-dominant powers have fallen precisely when their core groups
turned intolerant, reasserting their "true" or "pure" identity and
adopting exclusionary policies toward "unassimilable" groups. From this
point of view, attempts to demonize immigrants or to attribute
America's success to "Anglo-Protestant" virtues is not only misleading
(neither the atomic bomb or Silicon Valley was particularly
"Anglo-Protestant" in origin) but dangerous." Amy Chua "Day of
Empire"
The connection between climate change-induced migration from poor, predominantly black and brown countries in the Global South and ascendant white nationalism in Europe and the European settler colonies
foretells a future of climate catastrophe, democratic collapse, and globalized race war.
Trump’s rhetoric once appeared intended to convince working people that he would fight for their economic interests,
but no longer: ever since he turned over his policy agenda to Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and an army of lobbyists, he has revealed himself to be motivated by only two things.
First of all, his own personal enrichment and celebrity.
And second, a fulminating white grievance politics, anchored in ideas about what Leith Mullings has labeled “white replacement,” which shades easily into open white supremacism.
Reclaiming Populism, We Need a Multiracial, Working-Class Alignment
... due to the hard calculus of global warming. This is a crisis overwhelmingly created by the wealthiest strata of society:
Almost 50 percent of global emissions are produced by the richest 10 percent of the world’s population;
the wealthiest 20 percent are responsible for 70 percent.
But the impacts of those emissions are hurting the poorest first and worst, forcing growing numbers of people to move, with many more on the way.
A 2018 World Bank study estimates that by 2050, more than 140 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America will be displaced because of climate stresses,
an estimate many consider conservative. Most will stay in their own countries, crowding into already overstressed cities and slums;
many will try for a better life elsewhere.
Naomi Klein, the Intercept
Brexit voters… are horrified at the impact of the very thing they voted for.
A depreciating pound means holidays are more expensive, imports are costlier, and inflation
higher…one-third of British companies were planning to relocate…
But Brexit was only supposed to hurt the other people,
the immigrants that were allegedly swarming in. We Need New Stories, the Myths That Subvert Freedom by Nesrine Malik
As Climate becomes hotter and more violent, many species need to move to higher elevations or latitudes to adapt. Humans too.
Mass migration is apparent world-wide, incites racism, reliably propels right-wing politics like the GOP.
Climate collapse, war, flooding lowlands,
rising heat, drought, and devastating storms make increasingly large areas uninhabitable,
so migration is inevitable. Wars in Syria and Middle East moved many fragmenting the EU,
driving political movements to the right.
Russia benefited and funded the right,
with help from oligarch US funders, and we got Trump.
Ukrainians migrated and were mostly welcomed.
Building border walls is a cruel way to keep miserable people in impossible conditions, but exploit racism.
Actually, immigrants would benefit the economy.
If the billions spent on border walls had instead been used to welcome poor immigrants,
how much better off would we be ? A book called Nomad Century by Gaia Vince finds immigration is good for everyone.
Russia seems to be driving the movement to the right for its own reasons.
Brexit and the Trump election have Russian fingerprints, so does the war in Israel.
Democracy is in retreat world-wide, but that is also driven by accelerating
wealth inequality and insecurity.
Puerto Rico's hurricane devastation caused masses of people to move to the US mainland. They are
after all, US citizens and there is a wasteland left behind.
South American caravans can help Republicans win elections.
The wall was a terrible idea, which is why the Congress would not approve it.
Further, allowing the President to over-rule the Congress by declaring a faux emergency,
will result in a broken Constitution, further eroding democracy.
Republicans do not like democracy,
and it is at risk in the US either from violent overthrow or election rigging..
Illegal immigration is yet another
Republican wedge issue, a disguised appeal to racism,
and a shameless distraction from more pressing problems. It allows Republicans to distance themselves from the
failures of the Bush administration and, at the
same time, to attack Democrats. It is a continuation of the Republican
war on the poor (R's are always ready to go to war, whether it be with
drugs, terrorism, Islam, Iraq, China, Korea,
illegal immigrants, women, or even the US
population.) It is a not too subtle appeal to racism,
a mechanism for voter suppression, and it is a very important source of business for the
prison-industrial
complex. (Boeing's share of the wall
along the Mexican border is said to be around $2 billion.)
It's not only environmental damage. War can also be the cause of
mass movement. Possibly the War in Syria and Middle East wars moved many to the EU, thus
weakening NATO, fragmenting the EU, and driving a political movement
to the right.
No immigrant has taken your job. You were laid off by a capitalist who required cheap labor and took advantage of that immigrant to increase his profits, and nothing makes him happier than to hear you blame the immigrant and not him.
Borders are death. Their lines are not just where an alleged country stops, but the cliff off of which human rights drop. They are the wall into which human dignity crashes. The edge of the world, where civilizations go to die. #AbolishBorders
"First they came for the Haitians, then for the Salvadorans, and next the dreamers. When will they come for me ?
When will they come for you ?" Bernice Krantz
% who say the U.S. has a responsibility to accept refugees: Religiously unaffiliated 65% Black Protestant 63% Catholic 50% White mainline Protestant 43% White evangelicals 25%https://t.co/pkyUkikUMMpic.twitter.com/yEFg2OPGvr
— Pew Research Religion (@PewReligion) July 7, 2019
"...flu and lice outbreaks were going untreated, and children were filthy, sleeping on cold floors, and taking care of each other because of the lack of attention from guards."
The fabric of our country is changing at an alarming pace, although in the chaos,
related news is garnering little media coverage or attention. Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
is becoming increasingly active and emboldened, using Gestapo-type tactics to target immigrants living lawfully
in our country, as Trump and his regime continue to openly target and disparage marginalized communities.
Week 63
I find it somewhat ironic that many conservatives in
the United States are adamant about securing the border against
immigrants who will likely take jobs that few Americans want, while at
the same time expressing little concern that the virtual border is left completely
open to higher-skill workers who take jobs that Americans definitely do want." Rise of the
Robots, Martin Ford pg 117
There are huge problems all over the country. That’s
why the United States is building a wall along its border with Mexico,
to contain the problems they anticipate getting worse... The wall is an
atrocity. If you take a look at the Mexican border, it was once pretty
open, porous in both directions. Then Clinton militarized the border
for the first time with Operation Gatekeeper in 1994. Now the
militarization is getting more intense. Why 1994? That was the year
when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was passed. And
presumably the United States expected that the effect of NAFTA would be
that Mexican agriculture could not compete with highly subsidized U.S.
agribusiness exports, so people would flock to the cities. Domestic
Mexican businesses would not be able to compete with U.S.
multinationals, which receive special treatment in Mexico under
mislabeled trade laws that have little to do with trade but are about
ensuring investor rights. The result would be a flood of people north
into the United States, joined by a flood of people leaving the ruins
of Central America after Reagan’s terrorist wars. So, you build a
wall." Noam Chomsky: What
we say Goes
These are wild times to be a border cop. They have
big salaries, new
toys, and all kinds of powers to roam the country racially profiling
people, and detaining those without proof that they crossed the border
legally. An increasing number of agents are returned combat vets who
fought in Afghanistan or Iraq, who bring warlike attitudes to their
work in the U.S. But this (mostly) boy’s club is not without its
drawbacks: it is also a place permeated by a culture of militaristic
racism where having a different opinion can get you blacklisted. Todd
Miller. Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of
Homeland Security
Republicans in the Senate and House have rejected
every legislative opportunity on immigration, including measures to
strengthen border security. That’s because they prefer partisan
confrontation – and that is what they will get. The consequences for
their party promise to be politically devastating – and still worse if
they are foolish enough to believe their own rhetoric about
impeachment. National
Memo (11/14/2014)
Since 9/11, immigrant communities around the United
States have experienced increased and intensified oppression from
repressive local, state and federal legislation, law enforcement, and
racist right-wing vigilantes. Following swift passage of the infamous
"Sensenbrenner bill" - HR4437 - by the House of Representatives,
millions of immigrants and their supporters took to the streets in
unprecedented mobilizations across the country in the Spring of 2006
and again in 2007 to denounce the growing repression and to reclaim the
rights of immigrant communities. Immigration policy deeply impacts
civil liberties, human rights, and workers' rights, affecting families,
education, health care, and labor, wages, and working conditions for
all working people, both immigrant and U.S.-born, in the U.S. These
historic mobilizations have demonstrated the resurgence of a grassroots
immigrant rights movement. It is vital, as we move forward, to
recapture what are the principles that unite us, how to overcome the
ones that divide us, what strategies are needed to really push for
policies and legislation that recognize and protect immigrant rights;
and how immigrant communities can play a role alongside other
communities and working people in the larger social and economic
justice movement in the U.S. (from US Social Forum)
"With so many real crises facing us, why has so much
national attention been focused instead on the issue of immigration?
Perhaps the pundits and politicians who are spending so much energy
whipping up this immigration scare are trying to distract us from some
other, more pressing, national—and global—issues." Avi Chomsky They Take
Our Jobs and 20 other myths about immigration. Beacon Press
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they
don't have to worry about the answers." Thomas Pynchon quoted by Al
Gore in 'Assault on Reason'.
"...capital is welcome almost everywhere, while
foreign workers are not. All kinds of tricks and schemes are employed
worldwide to attract investments, but most countries fear migrating
workers and often slam the immigration door in their faces. Some even
bring in the military to defend their homeland against the perceived
threat of migratory workers. Governments worldwide are determined to
stop, or at least limit, the global migration of workers." Gabor
Steingart in his book the War for Wealth
"...if history proves nothing else, it is this: Walls
don't work. The
Great Wall of China didn't work. The Berlin Wall didn't work. The West
Bank Barrier won't work. Walls never work. Walls are a medieval
solution to a twenty-first-century problem. Mongols invade them.
Escapees tunnel under them. Television beams over them. Today, as
National Guard troops patrol the rivers from Arizona to Iraq, the
United States isn't building a wall. It is building a prison." Vicente
Fox, Revolution
of Hope.
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,
yearning to be free" Emma Lazarus inscription on the Statue of Liberty.
Note: the following paraphrased from Stieg Larsson's "The Expo
Files";
All extreme right groups preach that immigration
is a threat to culture. What is meant by 'culture' is never defined, but there is an underlying
presumption that our culture is better than their culture. They also
claim that immigration costs the country fantastic amounts.
They engage in hate speech to stir up racist
attitudes that already exist.
There's nothing new about the Tea Party, it stands
in the tradition of other right-wing movements like the John Birch Society, the KKK, the
Goldwater movement, or the McCarthy scare. All are white-supremicist, religious fundamentalist, paranoid, 'conservatives'
who are unable to tolerate any change or differences from their own ideology. It
is part of the Republican party.
There is some evidence that Republicans current initiative on
immigration is really a block for consideration of mitigation of climate change.
LAWRENCE DOWNES Two Rallies
A few hundred Tea Party-types clustered on the south
end of the Capitol on Sunday, trying to kill health care reform, fouling the crisp spring
air with shouts of violence and loathing. At the other end of the
National Mall, many tens of thousands of immigrants and allies were
pressing for immigration reform. If anyone has reason to fear
government, it is immigrants like those at the rally, which Mr. Obama
addressed via a jumbo TV screen. The government has violently invaded
their lives, broken into homes, torn parents from children and sent
them away to distant prisons. They have law-scoffing sheriffs and
brutal employers and unjust laws aiming just at them. This is a fear
the Kill-the-Billers will never know. No matter how darkly they loathe
Medicare, unemployment insurance or Social Security, the safety net is
theirs for life.
(3/27/2008) The New York
Times's editors write: "Leave it to the Bush
administration to throw thousands of law-abiding American workers and
companies off a cliff in perilous economic times. That would be the
effect of its decision to press ahead with a bad idea: to force
businesses to fire employees whose names don't match the Social
Security database. The purge is part of a campaign - along with
scattershot workplace raids and the partial border fence - to make a
show of tackling the broken immigration system."