No more Postvilles
The immigration movement has reached somewhat of a stand-still: Republicans will not barge on amnesty, and seem content with flooding our senses with increasingly Orwellian and dehumanizing terms like “illegals” and “anchor babies”; and Democrats, since 2006, have lacked the spine to take any sort of positive action to protect immigrants living within our borders. Furthermore, all discourse has been completely void of any mention of economic, social, political, and cultural conditions in home countries which breed the necessity of emigration.
Ever-worsening conditions
Two wonderful documentaries — Documigrante and Voice of a Mountain — were screened over the weekend in Madison, Wis., which show conditions in Guatemala, and follow immigrants to the United States. In 1954, democratically elected president Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown by a U.S.-led coup d’etat, at the behest of the powerful United Fruit Company, which had on its Board of Directors the U.S. Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, and his brother Allen, the head of the CIA. Following the coup, Guatemala was plagued with several decades of a brutal dictatorship and harsh repression against indigenous peasants, who make up the large majority of the country’s population.
Peasants and communities were stripped of land, which was given, or “sold,” to large multinationals like the United Fruit Company. U.S. foreign policy unanimously supported UFC’s agenda and the dictatorship, up until the mid-1980’s. A guerrilla army formed to counter the government, and Guatemala was hurled into civil war. Peace accords were signed in 1996, promising land ownership and additional economic security, but these were broken promises. During the Civil War, 450 indigenous rural communities were destroyed, and over 1 million Guatemalans were displaced, with many fleeing to southern Mexico and the United States. Truth Commission reports have found a deliberate governmental policy of genocide against the indigenous. Despite the return to free elections, peasants lack basic social services like health care and education, and they continue to lose land, their chance at subsistence.
Some communities, like Santa Anita (which is featured in both documentaries), have fared better than others. Santa Anita has formed a partnership with Madison-based Just Coffee, a fair trade coffee distributor. But it is also trapped in debt, and struggles to even pay off the interest of its loans. And it is impossible for the whole country to follow this path. Often, the only solution is to travel to the U.S. to look for work, either to provide for the family there, or send remittances back to relatives in Guatemala.
But Guatemala is not unique
Unfortunately, what has happened in Guatemala is the rule, rather than the exception, in Latin America. With the help of the CIA, but sometimes independently, most countries have spent much of the past 50 years in dictatorships. Even borders have not provided security, as operations have extended internationally to track down and jail or kill dissidents (most notably, Operation Condor, which even led to an assassination of a Chilean politician in Washington, D.C.). Economic policies coming from NAFTA and the IMF have only exacerbated the problems, by stripping land from peasants and small farmers, privatizing or eliminating access to social services (health care, social security, education… and even clean water), further militarizing police against protest and dissent, and further degrading working conditions in factories.
If unpermitted immigration is indeed a problem for the U.S., it is a problem exclusively of our own doing. With the barrier to legal entry so high, it should not be surprising that many find other ways into the country. Even a tourist visa is cost-prohibitive for many middle class Latin Americans, but entering on this type of visa (or on a student visa) is one of the most popular ways of entering without permission. It is often ignored that many from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean are undocumented — several of the detained Postville workers were from Israel and the Ukrain — and these groups cannot just walk across a border; instead, they come legally and stay longer than they are allowed to.
If we are to reduce unpermitted immigration (for it simply cannot be eliminated, nor would we want it to be), we need to take a diagnostic approach to the problem. Treating the symptom is not enough, we cannot seal the border or deport millions of immigrants and expect the problem to be solved; we need to look at the social virus that leads to emigration and immigration, and begin taking responsibility for unleashing it upon the world. The danger that many in Mexico and Central Americans go through to come here — days without food or water in the desert, train-hopping, dealing with coyotes — is clearly desirable compared to what they are fleeing.
Preventing another Postville
We should not expect any meaningful action on immigration reform before Obama or McCain are inaugurated in January, nor is there any reason to believe that things will be sufficiently different during the next presidential term.
Protests and rallies like the one in Postville this past Sunday show that many Americans do favor a more compassionate approach to immigration, but it really does little to free the nearly 400 workers still detained and those forced to wear ankle monitoring bracelets. Nor does it guarantee that another raid will happen in the near future. There was very little discussion about what steps should be taken in the future, and indeed this is a question which has received scant attention.
As in most civil rights and human rights struggles, it will probably take the arrest of many allies and supporters (since unpermitted immigrants cannot risk arrest) before things can change. We have reached a juncture where a nationally organized campaign of direct action and civil disobedience is absolutely imperative.
Such a strategy would be two-fold, with direct action and civil disobedience organized separately (as they fill separate roles), but strategically united, with neither condemning the other. A diversity of tactics and approaches is always necessary, but tactically it would follow two main paths. Currently, churches and religious institutions have played a critical role in the movement, and have established a consensus on the moral argument surrounding immigration.
Civil Disobedience. This is the more pacific or tame part of this strategy, but nonetheless necessary. Because of the moral argument built by the religious community, this is most effectively carried out by religious leaders, but is appropriate for labor leaders, immigrant leaders, students, or just about anyone else. Such a strategy can involve sit ins at government offices or outside detention centers, or locking oneself to the gates of jails where immigrants are being held. It is non-confrontational and non-violent in all interpretations; it is “going to jail for justice.”
Direct Action. This is a more radical approach, creating creative space for those who can risk more. It is beyond the symbolic strategy of civil disobedience: it physically confronts raids, detentions, and deportations, and the structural conditions which breed hatred for immigrants and minorities and their exploitation. It is also strictly non-violent, in that it refutes aggression, the injury of living things, and the destruction of personal and community property. But in its very nature, it is an ideology of self-defense, physically defending our relatives, friends, and neighbors from physical, social, and economic harm.
In simpler terms, what this means is real-time civil disobedience, targeted to prevent raids, detentions, and deportations from being carried out, even as these actions are initiated. This can mean human and material blockades of homes and businesses where large raids or smaller arrests are happening; blocking streets or surrounding ICE or local police vehicles to prevent officials from transporting arrested individuals to detention facilities. Activists engaging in direct action tactics may also choose to be detained alongside unpermitted immigrants; refusing to show identification, giving false immigration status, and speaking only Spanish or another language will force ICE and local law enforcement agencies to process U.S.-born and naturalized citizens as unpermitted immigrants, and will slow down and confuse ICE’s ability to process detained immigrants and carry out basic institutional tasks.
Next steps
Such a strategy will require coordination on several levels: nationally, among the various organizations already fighting for immigrant rights; regionally, so that activists can respond quickly and provide bodies for actions; and locally, among churches, NGOs, activists, and most importantly, immigrants. All Americans should fight on behalf of immigrants, since they are a part of our communities; but taking part in actions may place them in jeopardy of deportation — and since our main focus is to prevent the unnecessary fracturing of our families and communities, the rest of us with less to lose should take up more of the burden when we can. But throughout this process, because they do have so much to lose, both through action and inaction, we must be very cognizant of their best interest; thus it is critical that we be in constant contact with the immigrant community.
Developing ties of solidarity and communication with immigrants, especially unpermitted or undocumented immigrants, is necessary for rapid responses to raids and detentions. But it can also mitigate the culture of fear that is pervasive in immigrant enclaves. Often, crime and exploitation goes unreported because the victims are afraid of their status coming into question; this allows employers like Agriprocessors to exploit workers, short workers on overtime and normal wages, demand long hours, provide inadequate working conditions, and prevent unionization or informal hiring. We cannot hope to achieve total protection and always keep ICE out of our communities; but by standing up and defending our neighbors, friends, and family, we can hope to create safe space for those individuals to also stand up for themselves and demand justice where there currently is none.
That is one thing which the Postville rally did achieve. While news coverage highlighted that many of the attendees were from out of town, given the small population, the turnout gave people from Postville their own voice. By lending our solidarity and bodies in coordination with immigrants provides greater security so that they may clamor for justice and respect and demand an end to abuse and exploitation.
If you have any interest in helping coordinate such a project nationally or developing an additional call for direct action to stop the raids, email betinho@riseup.net.
From Behind the Orange Curtain 
Leave a comment