Migration flow or politics?

A
conversation: Orestes Martí and Alberto Ampuero                  Read Spanish Version

Orestes
Martí: In a recent
interview for Progreso Weekly with María Puig Barrios, who is
now general coordinator of the Canadian United Left (IUC), I tried to
give a definition of the phenomenon called "migration" and
stressed: "The history of mankind is full of great movements —
cultural, economic, geographical and political — that created mass
displacements of people, sometimes spontaneously, sometimes
forcibly."

I also
said that migration "in its two forms — emigration and
immigration — constitutes an extremely complex demographic
phenomenon, because it responds to very diverse causes, both in
origin and destination, that are difficult to determine."

"Nevertheless,"
I said, "we can conclude that such causes can have a political,
cultural, socioeconomic or familial nature; they can be related to
wars and other armed conflicts, or to natural catastrophes."
Then I said that "the sine-qua-non
condition to halt the
current migrations is a reduction in the misery and alienation
experienced by the great masses in the underdeveloped countries of
Africa, Asia and Latin America."

I
consider international emigration to be a grave problem, because —
as we learn almost daily — serious social conflicts arise in the
"receptor" countries and there is a resurgence of racist
and fascist ideologies that had presumably been overcome. Also, the
"originator" countries suffer the permanent loss of
qualified manual labor.

However,
I believe that the worse consequences befall the human beings who
migrate, especially those considered to be "illegal emigrants,"
who risk — and in many instances lose — their lives. 

Despite
everything I have said so far, it’s indisputable to me that the act
of migration also represents an inalienable human right and that,
instead of prohibiting or restricting migration, what’s needed is to
accomplish an honorable and productive insertion of the migrants into
the receptor countries.

Also, to
take better advantage of the remittances these migrants send to their
"originator" countries, by devoting part of those
remittances to each country’s development. This would prevent the
loss of manual resources each country experiences. 

Every
year, thousands of people die, swimming across the Rio Grande or the
Strait of Gibraltar or paddling flimsy boats called cayucos
or pateras.
According to a UNAM study published in 2001 by BBC World, "the
illegal traffic of immigrants from Mexico to the United States is a
business that generates between $250 million and $300 million a
year."

However,
the treatment given by the press to the "migrants" is often
partial, biased and obviously full of "gaps" and news
"noise." Such is that case of the Cubans who decide to
leave their homeland and try their luck in other countries. For some
media, they leave the island not for economic reasons but fleeing
from "Castroism." 

In the
United States, the Cuban community is far from being the most
numerous foreign community. Yet, when the media provides
"information" about it, the political bias can clearly be
seen. The same happens with the coverage of the "routes"
that those people utilize to achieve their objectives, especially the
Mexican route. I refer specifically to the use of Cancún,
Carmen Beach and Mérida, where the lack of law enforcement and
an apparent conspiracy create the circumstances that permit mafias to
trade in human beings.

Those
reports never say that the Mexican route is used not only by the
Cubans but also by others. And that, unlike those other migrants, the
Cubans enjoy the protection of a U.S. law that gives them special
dispensation: the Cuban Adjustment Act.

Only a
few days ago, the Reuters news agency reported from Laredo that
Cubans are better treated on the U.S.-Mexico border than any other
migrants. The United States has tightened security on the border with
Mexico and has deported illegal immigrants, but one particular group
is welcomed at the border crossings — the Cubans "escaping the
communist island."

Unlike
migrants from other Latin American countries, who cross mountains and
deserts to enter the U.S., Cubans need only arrive at the border and
apply for political asylum. They are then welcomed in.

Now that
the U.S. Coast Guard is stopping the flow of Cubans to the Florida
Keys, Cubans in record numbers are heading for Mexico and then
traveling by land to the U.S. border, along the routes utilized by
hundreds of thousands of Hispanic immigrants every year.

About
11,500 Cubans arrived in the United States that way in the past 12
months, mainly through Texas. That figure is almost twice the number
for 2005, according to U.S. Governments statistics.

Most of
them are men, 30 to 45 years old, who pay smugglers as much as
$15,000 per person to board high-speed motorboats overcrowded with
people, for the 225-kilometer trip from Cuba to the Yucatán
peninsula in Mexico. From there, they are carried in trucks to the
border, where they identify themselves as Cubans to enter the U.S.

Havana
describes the Cuban Adjustment Act as a "murderous law."
Other critics of the Kafkian situation, such as immigration lawyer
José Pertierra, say that "if the United States wants to
lend a helping hand to the ordinary Cuban, it would hand out more
visas at its consulate in Havana."

That’s a
reference to the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, which has not
complied with its commitment to distribute visas (20,000 per year, if
I remember correctly) in order to prevent an irregular exodus to the
United States.

Because
I have had frequent access to the opinion articles on migration
written by Alberto Ampuero, a journalist who lives in Riverside,
Calif. (his latest article "Republicans
and immigration" was
very interesting), I’ve asked him to a conversation where he can
express his views on the subject.

Alberto
Ampuero: [Migration] is an
unstoppable phenomenon. Population movements are unstoppable and it
is evident that not even a wall between Mexico and the U.S., from the
Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean, will manage to halt it. 

The
latest census from the United Nations Population Division estimates
that more than 190 million people in the world are living outside
their country of birth.

The
migration flows in Latin America skyrocketed beginning in the 1950s.
Today, about 25 million Latin Americans, most of them Mexicans, have
left their homelands. The flows continue to increase and there are no
signs that they will ever stop.

I agree
with you when you say that "the history of mankind is full of
mass movements of people, sometimes spontaneously, sometimes
forcibly." I would like to talk about "forced"
migration.

Who
forces these people? Although it seems paradoxical, free trade does
it. It happened in Mexico, the country I know best. Beginning in the
1980s, Washington — through the International Monetary Fund and the
presidents of Mexico at its service — promoted a policy of "free
trade" that opened the gates to a flood of heavily subsidized
U.S. agricultural products. That flood hurt the businesses of midsize
and small local farmers and sent millions of small businessmen into
bankruptcy.

The
growth of industrial free-trade zones damaged labor and social
legislation. Foreign-debt payments, corrupt privatizations and the
growth in temporary jobs led to the free fall of wages.

Enormous
profits and interest payments flowed to U.S. consortiums and banks.
Rural and urban wage earners, displaced and pauperized, soon followed
the same route — they moved to the U.S. of A.

In sum,
free-market policies created a vast reserve of Mexican workers, with
or without jobs, at the same time that legal restrictions to
migration forced them to emigrate without documents.

This
huge flow was the result not only of the Mexicans’ and Central
Americans’ quest for higher wages but also of the adverse structural
conditions imposed by the Free Trade Agreement, which expelled people
from their workplaces.

In broad
terms, we can conclude that the causes [of migration] can be of a
political, cultural, socioeconomic, or familial nature. Migration can
be related to wars and other armed conflicts, as well as natural
catastrophes, as you rightly stated.

The
second structural feature that determined the mass migration of
Central Americans to the United States was the imperial U.S. wars of
the 1980s. Washington’s massive military intervention — through
armies that acted on U.S. behalf in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala
and Honduras — destroyed all possibilities of social and economic
reform throughout Central America.

So, if
at this point in our conversation, you were to ask me again whether
it’s "migration flow or politics?" I would unhesitatingly
respond: "Politics!"

For two
reasons. One, we cannot understand the mass labor migration without
examining the massive flow of U.S. capital toward Mexico or Latin
America and its destructive impact on socioeconomic relations.

Two, the
disproportionate growth of undocumented workers has to do with the
economic problems of Latin America, yes, but also with the
extraordinary interest of the U.S. businessmen themselves in this
kind of manual labor, which brings in huge profits at no risk.

Mexico’s
National Population Council recently said that, during the next 15
years, the current level of 500,000 Mexicans traveling to the United
States in search of jobs will be maintained. 

Journalist
Orestes Martí lives in the Canary Islands and writes for the
Hermes News Service. Journalist Alberto Ampuero lives in Florida.