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Contents
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Three
Present Dangers to Border Areas Today
by Dr. Gonzalo Santos
Professor of Sociology -
California
State
University
Bakersfield
Most serious border region analysts have long been aware
of the *factual findings* in your article - long before the recent passage of
the infamous
Arizona
law SB1070. The statistics on violent deaths, kidnappings and other violent
crimes sadly and overwhelming fall on the shoulders of crossing immigrants,
while the rest of the population in those areas - even including the settled
Latino communities with undocumented immigrants - have pretty much been enjoying
average crime statistics that are much lower than in the US at large.
Nevertheless, the portrayal of the crossing undocumented immigrants as the cause
for an alleged wave of violent crime along the
US
border continues unabated. The anecdotal episodes of violent crime - mostly
drug & arms traffic related - are always immediately used to hype nativist
fear and paint the entire, immigrant flow - overwhelmingly decent, hard-working,
humble laborers and their relatives - as criminal and dangerous. Fearmongering
has always been integral to xenophobia and today is no exception.
But the essentially peaceful immigrant flows does not
imply there is nothing else to worry about along the border. There are actually
three very real and present dangers in the border areas today, dangers which
unfortunately today Congress, the Obama administration, and the anti-immigrant
forces at large are all in denial - or feign ignorance of their urgency for
their respective political reasons. These are:
(1) As Ms. Lydia-Craft's article pointed out, (a) the
increased violence associated with trafficking of illegal drugs which the US
continues to have a huge appetite for (how's that for "illegal is
illegal"!?) and urgently require serious attention and higher international
cooperation - not polarization; and (b), the equally devastating impact the huge
and related weapons trafficking from the US into Mexico is having all over
Mexico (over 22,000 deaths since 2006 and mounting) and increasingly in the US
border region, made possible by the lax gun laws on the US side and extreme
corruption on the Mexican side, both of which enable the drug mafias to easily
purchase and smuggle assault weapons of every kind.
In
Mexico
there is a huge clamor against corruption and impunity, and against the
spiraling "drug wars." It can get a whole lot worse, which could
unleash a much larger wave of refugees than at present. Where is the clamor in
the
US
to dramatically reduce both the massive drug consumption and the banning
of the sale of assault weapons in the
US
? You sure won't find it in the ranks of the strident nativist movement today,
nor among the tea party types, nor in either party, for that matter. Perhaps
those so concerned about the peaceful, though unauthorized immigrants entering
the US, and who frequently profess being alarmed at border crime and violence
can offer some helpful suggestions on how to address these real causes for
alarm? Shall we get ever more punitive and jail all drug users (we've already
got the world's largest absolute and per capita prison population, but we can't
seem to break the drug habit)? When are we going to discuss why so many
Americans want to drug themselves into stupor and escapism? Shall we infringe
the sacrosanct 2nd amendment right to prevent unscrupulous
US
gun dealers from selling assault weapons to unscrupulous
US
citizen intermediaries of the Mexican drug cartels?
(2) The actual danger posed by the flows of undocumented
immigrants crossing the border areas today is mostly to the desperate immigrants
themselves, funneled as they have been since 1995 into the most dangerous,
inhospitable areas of the US-Mexico border, especially the AZ-Sonora desert, and
also forced into extremely vulnerable situations that make them easy prey for
extortion and being held hostage for ransom by coyotes - not to mention a wide
variety of other, well-documented human right abuses they may have to endure if
detained by "the migra." This daily human tragedy, which has resulted
in over 5000 *recorded* deaths since it began in '95 (10,000 estimated total),
and caused untold suffering among those that survived the crossing, is by
design; it's the official
US
federal border enforcement policy and it has a name: "prevention by
deterrence." But it has not deterred or slowed down the flow of
undocumented immigrants - economic refugees, really - desperately seeking to
cross over; it has only raised the toll of otherwise preventable deaths and
human misery. This policy's assumptions of what will deter these sort of
displaced migrant populations, after 15 years of harsh enforcement, have been
proven to be woefully flawed. The shameful absence of political will in
Washington
to seriously reform or rectify this catastrophic situation, and adopt a better
policy based on more realistic, humane, and sound assumptions, makes our current
government and immigration regime immoral and callous. Clamoring for more walls
and more "prevention deterrence" is not the answer either, but
stubborn fanaticism in the face of policy failure. The answer lies, as I have
insisted, in an immigration "regime change" in the US that adequately
takes into account the central reality for the 21st century: the increasingly
integrated North American region - and that yes, will require the abandonment of
all US unilateralist, restrictionist, and punitive approaches; as well as it
will require substantial structural economic, political, and even cultural
changes in the sending countries of the region, too. Though the responsibilities
and vision must be shared, the challenges are distinct for each of the sending
or receiving countries of
North America
.
(3) The other very real and present danger to the
US
side of the border areas is the adoption, out of frustration and demagoguery,
of ever harsher enforcement-only, state-by-state local laws, such as
Arizona
's SB1070, that do not address the two previous dangers but will spill over into
targeting the entire Latino community and the civil liberties of US citizens.
Here, the danger is to local law enforcement itself in these
border states
, as ordinary Latinos and other people of color are targeted for ethnic
profiling in pursuit of undocumented immigrants, which will lead them, and
already is leading them in
Arizona
, to no longer cooperate with reporting or preventing serious crime. Below is an
article on precisely this third danger, which for all their talk of "law
enforcement," the habitual rightwing polemicists in the media and in this
list are strangely silent about or have led them, in their customary arrogance,
to scolding the Latino communities, in vain I must say, for not "getting it
right," not "reading the law," etc., etc. ,etc.; all the while
the local police forces are put in the untenable position of having to enforce
an inherently contradictory, unenforceable law and worse, one that leads them to
losing the ability to fulfill their core mission. This third danger constitutes
a fast deteriorating situation which the courts will hopefully soon intervene to
put a stop to it. But even when that happens, we'll still have the other two
unattended dangers gaining ground every day that passes in which we do nothing
to address them.
Dr. Gonzalo Santos, professor California State University Bakersfield
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