The weekly newsletter of the México Solidarity Project

October 6, 2021/ This week's issue/ Meizhu Lui, for the editorial team

The Laws of Migration, Natural and Unnatural

Our earth’s creatures have been on the move since time immemorial, ever seeking food and safer living spaces. In tough times, they haven’t had much of a choice. Either move or die. And they’ve moved far and wide to find places where they and their offspring could survive and thrive. Look at the Monarch butterfly. Every year, the Monarchs migrate to and from the US Rockies to central México. Migration has always been nature’s core law of survival.

In our interview this week, Avi Chomsky tracks the pathways of human migration. Mexicans, not that long ago, could walk back and forth between the part of the continent called México and the part called the United States. But that freedom of movement, Chomsky explains, would be curtailed — and even made illegal. Powerful people, violating the natural law of survival, have restricted movement for those whose lives depend on finding a place where they could protect their young and begin anew.

What faces no restriction on movement? Money can move anywhere, chasing the unnatural law of maximizing profit at any cost. Money flows freely across borders. Workers cannot. They find themselves trapped like butterflies beating their wings on the glass of a jar.

México, like the US, is dealing with a huge influx of migrants on its southern border. But México did not disrupt Central American economies to create that wave of migrants. México is dealing with a problem “made in the USA,” and México’s approach to migrants contrasts starkly with the US approach at the México-US border. México, unlike the US, has decriminalized undocumented migrants, guaranteed both the undocumented and natural citizens the same health and other benefits, and refused to allow family separation. 

Freedom of movement remains a most basic of rights. Let’s set our human butterflies free. 

Avi Chomsky: There’s no such thing as an illegal person. A person can commit an illegal act, but we don’t call people who have stolen money or beaten up their wives “illegals.” It’s a term invented to criminalize those who have done nothing more than cross a geographical line.

The correct description: undocumented or unauthorized. And status can be in flux for each individual. Half the undocumented population has entered the United States legally, but then, in the most typical case, overstayed a visa. Others entered the country without inspection. Conversely, someone undocumented can gain status, for example, by being granted asylum.

The US population today consists largely of the descendants of people who came from somewhere else. Who had the freedom to come?

The US was conceived — and born and grew — as a white settler state and always controlled and curtailed the movement of people of color. Native peoples already here were forcibly moved and removed to make room for Europeans. And Africans were moved across the world against their will.

Citizenship rules reflect this design. The first Naturalization Act of 1790 specified that only “free White persons …of good character” could become citizens through naturalization. In fact, the US government actively recruited immigrants from Europe, offering them jobs as incentives.

In 1870, after the Civil War, lawmakers amended the Naturalization Act to include people of African descent newly emancipated from slavery, and the 14th Amendment gave citizenship to all those born in the US.

With that amendment, people of African descent had citizenship and its rights, at least by the letter of the law. What about other non-white immigrants already in the US?

Remember that Africans were not “immigrants” since they were transported to the US to be sold as commodities. The Nationality Act, after the 1870 amendment, still excluded Mexicans and Chinese, the other two largest non-white groups in the United States.

What about those not yet in the US, but wanting to come?

In 1882, the Exclusion Acts simply forbid the Chinese to enter, the first time that immigration into the US by any nationality became illegal. Mexicans were not excluded. But without the right to become citizens, they were categorized as temporary seasonal workers, free to enter, but not to stay, and always deportable.

Another step toward making immigration illegal came with the quota system introduced in 1924.

This Immigration Act completely excluded most of the world and even restricted Europeans. But people in the Western hemisphere — meaning mostly Mexican migrants — still could move freely back and forth, though still considered seasonal workers, not potential citizens.

In 1965, another reform allegedly meant to be more fair to non-Europeans gave every country a quota of 20,000 migrants. This still privileged whites because European countries have always been smaller in size than large nations like Brazil and India with significant non-white populations. That 20,000 amounted to a ridiculously low number for México, since about 400,000 Mexican migrants had been coming into the US every year, some through the Bracero program eliminated at the end of 1964 and some on their own.

The 1980s and 1990s saw the invention of the “Latino threat” narrative. California has repeatedly been the launching pad for anti-immigrant sentiment and policy. In in the late ’70s, the passage of the California Proposition 13 tax limit left the state budget busted and services cut. Californians got angry. Immigrants, mostly from México, were blamed for the worsened situation for whites. That’s the myth we’re still stuck on today.

Do you see a path toward a just immigration system?

A just system would give everyone freedom of movement, just as capital and corporations have freedom of movement. Let workers go to where they can find jobs. Make them good jobs. Raise wages. A pathway? That’s going to take a lot more organizing to make happen.

Exhausted Officials, Bitterly Disappointed Migrants

Writer and translator Sarah DeVries, a US native, has made México her adopted home, a reminder that migration doesn’t just go in one direction. In her latest México News Daily commentary, the Veracruz-based DeVries explores how the massive number of arrivals today are sorely testing México’s immigrant policies. An excerpt below.

Ever since President Trump essentially bullied México into becoming the wall, this country has taken on an outsized role in trying to control the flow of would-be immigrants to the southern U.S. border. It hasn’t been easy.

México, my adopted home, is trying to make progress. After flowery talk about what a great country Mexico would be as a final stop for those on their way to the US, the sheer number of people trying to make their way across seems to have overwhelmed and exhausted the government’s goodwill. The same is true for the communities suddenly seeing thousands of desperate people showing up who don’t plan to hang around and eventually contribute to those communities.

It’s now become a perfect storm: the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance, the immigration branch responsible for processing them, has seen its budget cut as the influx of migrants has increased to numbers never before seen in this country’s modern era.

The migrants themselves are losing patience as well, stranded in places like Tapachula, Chiapas without the ability to work or to keep pressing ahead as their immigration applications take a year to be processed even though they’re required to be processed within three months.

I do think México — and the US, for that matter — are trying their best to find solutions. But the sheer number of people has put immediate deportation of immigrants back on the table. México has said it will start deporting Haitians as well, and I fear that exhausted officials and bitterly disappointed and despairing people will wind up being an explosive combination.

Recent news reports and commentaries, from progressive and mainstream media,
on life and struggles on both sides of the US-México border

Elías Camhaji, La bóveda secreta de los multimillonarios mexicanos, El País. Los “Papeles de Pandora” revelan cómo algunos de los empresarios más ricos recurren a sociedades financieras opacas para comprar yates, aviones privados y propiedades de lujo.

Kevin Sieff, The child migrant smugglers of Northern México, Washington Post. A seldom seen side of U.S. immigration policy’s human cost.

Luis Manuel Arce Isaac, Biden y la amarga experiencia de haitianos en la frontera con México, América Latina en movimiento. Una vez más, este país echa sobre sus hombros lo que le corresponde cargar a Estados Unidos, contradictoriamente un país sin nacionalidad formado por la migración como las sábanas de retazos, pero muy pocos de negros a quienes siguen tratando como en la época de las tres K.

Amy Stillman, Maya Averbuch, and Max De Haldevang, AMLO Seeks More Market for Mexico’s Utility with New Reform, Bloomberg. Lopez Obrador is moving to give the state utility more power and cancel most permits awarded to private companies for electricity generation.

John Ackerman, ¿Qué está pasando en Morena?  Una conversación con Julio Astillero sobre un proceso de burocratización en el partido que ya antes denuncié.

Amid killings and Covid, Mexico’s Yaqui people get pledges, Independent. The AMLO administration’s new Plan for Justice aims to reverse long-standing abuses against the Yaqui people. One example: Most of the water from the river that bears the Yaqui name now gets siphoned off to supply urban areas in Sonora.

Timothy Rich, Ian Milden, Madelynn Einhorn, and Olivia Blackmon, Gauging the Mexican view of US-China rivalry, East Asia Forum. Mexico must tread carefully on greater economic engagement with China since the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement lets the US exit the deal if México establishes a similar pact with China.

Senadores de EEUU critican a AMLO por no haber hecho esto con Nicolás Maduro, AP. Dos senadores republicanos de Florida criticaron al presidente mexicano por considerar que no cumplió un tratado internacional de cooperación contra la delincuencia por el que debería haber extraditado a Estados Unidos al mandatario venezolano Nicolás Maduro cuando estuvo en México recientemente.

‘Non-binary’ lawmaker asks media to be referred to with inclusive language, México News Daily. An incoming Morena party state lawmaker in Veracruz has asked reporters to be referred to by the neologism diputade rather than the masculine diputado or feminine diputada.

The Mexico Solidarity Project brings together activists from various socialist and left organizations and individuals committed to worker and global justice who see the 2018 election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as president of México as a watershed moment. AMLO and his progressive Morena party aim to end generations of corruption, impoverishment, and subservience to US interests. Our Project supports not just Morena, but all Mexicans struggling for basic rights, and opposes US efforts to undermine organizing and México’s national sovereignty. 

Editorial committee: Meizhu Lui, Bruce Hobson, Bill Gallegos, Sam Pizzigati. We welcome your suggestions and feedback. Interested in getting involved? Drop us an email!

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