Migrants deserve a level playing field

Shelley Walia
Emeritus Professor, Dept of English and Cultural Studies, Panjab University

Nations have, at different times in the course of their history, been guilty of a gross overreaction expressed through the act of demonising the migrants moving across national borders. The fence, or the infamous Wall along the southern border in the US, has become a global symbol of keeping the economically underprivileged from reaching for a more promising future. Over these fences come hurling the voices of freedom and redemption, of the right to a better world, penetrating the spaces of power with the message of resistance to a life oppressed by a global economy, and a volatile political situation. 

Resistance to the free movement of people across borders is explained by Barbara Kingsolver, who writes in her book Small Wonder, “Borders crumble; they won’t hold tighter on their own; we have to shore them up constantly. They are fortified and patrolled by armed guards, these fences that divide a party of elegant diners on the one side from the children on the other whose thin legs curve like wishbones, whose large eyes peer through the barbed wire at so much food.” Fences are indeed made to be broken and torn down. 

It is time that white nativists like Donald Trump begin to recapitulate the history of Columbus who crossed into the Americas without a passport or a visa. The erstwhile colonial powers must bear this foremost in their minds while engaging in the criminalisation of the migrants. History speaks for itself.

Trump is adamant on the Wall project even at the price of the undemocratic declaration of an emergency on the southern border, in order to force billions out of the state exchequer to fund an obsession of a foolhardy pet project that was an unrealistic campaign promise. Those who are adversely impacted have a story to tell, a story that speaks of the anger at the lies of consumer capitalism, of sham democracy that keeps millions in poverty or locks them in detention centres.

If for a moment we were to glance at the brief history of Mexican immigrants and their detention, it becomes clear from the research of Ana Raquel Minian, author of Undocumented Lives: The Untold Story of Mexican Migration, where she argues that it is the ‘bracero programme’ that permitted workers to come across the border for brief spells and work legally.  After a few years, they would return to their families. These undocumented workers interestingly continued pouring in after the programme was closed in 1964. Immigration rose till 2008, but statistics show that it is now on the decline, with more leaving the country than entering the US. 

Arguably, the recession of 2008 compelled many to return. Besides, the fertility rate in Mexico has declined in recent years, leading to lesser immigrants arriving in the years of state-sanctioned free movement across the border. However, the political rhetoric against immigration has been growing louder with false accusations of migrants termed rapists and criminals.  It is not realised that the country needed them as labour in the past and needs them now for a better economy.  Banning them or sending them to detention centres is indeed socially and economically unreasonable, especially when the US has the history of permitting asylum seekers and migrant labourers for over two centuries.

It would be prudent for the US to take initiatives to encourage the agricultural sector that suffered under the NAFTA programme, forcing the poor to seek migration rather than stay on in conditions of deprivation. Moreover, the supply of weapons to Mexico must be stopped to end the ever-increasing internal violence. Understandably, the existence of drug cartels further exacerbates the law and order situation. 

To reduce the escalation of undocumented migrants, the US Home Office can liberalise the issuing of visas principally on the grounds of economic expediency. For instance, the entire agricultural sector in California depends on Mexican labour. A policy of work visas can be instituted wherein labour is free to come in seasonally, and leave when the current job is done. The flow of migrants is underpinned by the demand from the wealthier countries. The migrant is able and eager to do the work that the local population is not so willing to do. 

A fake national emergency is blatantly based on lies and is anti-constitutional to the core, provoking a national outcry, with 16 states collectively filing a suit. But Trump will not budge. The limited funding by the Congress has not placated him the least. The much-loved Wall is not needed, nor are the emergency powers to draw over $2.5 billion from the military’s drug prohibition programme, $3.6 billion from its construction financial plan and $600 million from the Treasury Department’s drug forfeiture fund, a step that will throw to the wind the constitutional propriety of the principle of balance of constitutional power as well as the nationwide voice of the people. 

Though there is a strong reaction from the Border Network of Human Rights, Trump remains obstinate and holds on to his guns with the confidence of finally obtaining an approval from the Supreme Court, a largely conservative body. The presidential encroachment on the powers of the Congress has the possibility of provoking the Republicans to reject the Bill which would be the final humiliation of an already humiliated President struggling to do some face-saving. A two-thirds majority in both Houses is unlikely, but the exercise will interestingly put those Republicans in an awkward position who vote in favour, thus admitting to the nation that the President stands above the Congress. The responsibility of all members, indeed, lies in seeking to protect the constitutional prerogatives of the Congress from any infringement. An emergency on a subject that is clearly not of any vital significance, if ratified, will set a wrong precedent unheard of in American history and an abrogation of the vision of the founding fathers. 

Setting up walls and borders is a complex issue and calls for a comprehensive, sensible immigration policy. Let’s give the migrants a speedier legal way forward, within a reasonable framework, keeping in view that they are not demons, rapists and drug peddlers, any more or less than the local population. Ultimately, we are all aspiring to improve our lives, and the evolutionary bias towards that ideal is so overwhelming that the migrant will risk his/ her life to obtain a minuscule piece of the economic pie, walls notwithstanding. Walls may deter, but will never squash the determination of the migrant.