U.S. Immigration Problems Are the Fault of "Free Trade," Not Individuals

The debate on Mexican-American immigration has been raging in the United States for years. President Bush has discussed the issue as recently as last week after meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, pledging to push reforms on U.S. immigration policies. Bush has been in a tough position on this issue because most members of his party are fuming over the hordes of Mexican workers that have been flooding our nation every day in recent years, and Bush isn't exactly on their side.

Most conservatives want Israel-esque walls built and they want the illegal immigrants driven out the of the country (whom they often incorrectly label "criminals," as entering the country illegally is a civil infraction, not a crime). Bush, on the other hand, seems to understand how unreasonable this notion is. To quote liberal columnist Robert Scheer in an article written almost a year ago, "What Bush got right about serious immigration reform is the need to join two apparently irreconcilable but inevitably co-dependent goals: control of the border and amnesty for most of them already here illegally."

How can we just kick out the millions of Mexicans that are here? Not only is it impractical and uncompassionate, but let's not forget that the entire American Southwest, from California to Utah to Texas, was brutally stolen from Mexico by the United States, justified in the same manner as the genocide of the Native Americans: "manifest destiny," the widespread American notion at the time that God intended the white race to occupy all of North America. Indeed, by 1848, we had seized over half of Mexico's territory. There's a reason most of the cities down there have Spanish names.

Anyway, while I think Bush's position on this issue isn't unreasonable, I am convinced that he and almost everyone else with a significant voice, including the mainstream media and the Democrats, have consistently failed to frame this issue in a way that gets to the root of the problem, which is to emphasize the effects of the paradigm of unrestricted global capitalism or so-called "free trade."