http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=6515by Randy Shaw‚ Jan. 22‚ 2009
Immigration policy remains a hot button issue in the United States. Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel has described comprehensive immigration legislation as the “third rail” of American politics, and CNN provides Lou Dobbs with a daily forum for bashing undocumented immigrants. While opponents of creating a path to legalization for such immigrants recognize that they leave Mexico due to a lack of opportunity, they avoid the underlying causes of this migration. Fortunately, David Bacon’s Illegal People provides the often ignored background. Bacon convincingly demonstrates that United States trade and economic policies have forced Mexicans to leave their country by eliminating viable economic options at home. This virtually forced migration has dramatically increased illegal immigration from Mexico into the United States, yet many of the corporate interests promoting globalization and free trade back politicians who then blame undocumented immigrants for America’s economic problems. Bacon’s clear, succinct, and highly readable book explains how globalization creates migration and criminalizes immigrants, pulling back the curtain to reveal facts that the Lou Dobbs’ of the world would prefer be kept out of the debate.
Few journalists are more deeply steeped in the lives of undocumented immigrants than the Bay Area’s own David Bacon. A former boycott organizer for the United Farmworkers of America, Bacon has produced landmark photo essays and a number of books on the plight of Mexican immigrants in the United States.
Bacon’s new book, Illegal People, explains how U.S. trade and economic policy caused the massive influx of Mexicans into the United States. For example, after NAFTA ended Mexican government corn subsidies, and allow the massive importation of cheaper U.S. corn, Mexican corn farmers could not earn enough to survive. Bacon details the plight of Oaxacan corn farmers, showing how they had little choice but to migrate to the United States, regardless of the great personal risks. Once here, they are demonized as “illegal,” often cheated out of wages and benefits, and potentially, as in recent years, subjected to ICE raids where they are often treated as terrorists.
Bacon reminds us of the incredible physical obstacles immigrants face in reaching the United States, and the brutality far too many experience once here. He also highlights the egregious hypocrisy of United States immigration policy: after our policies have forced people off their land, and given them no choice but to migrate, we then prosecute and deport them for violating our immigration laws.
If Bacon’s account were not backed with examples and facts, one could easily think he was writing a fictional horror story. Or an Orwellian, 1984-type tale in which a powerful nation allows major corporations to oppress and criminalize impoverished Mexican immigrants solely for profit.
FULL story at link.