Originally published in the Autumn 2024 edition of the Virginia Defender, issue 75, printed November 6. Reproduced here for accessibility and archival purposes. To find other stories in the Autumn 2024 issue or to download the full PDF, see this post. For other issues dating back to 2012, see the Full Issues page.

By Phil Wilayto

Editor’s note: This essay is based on an interview the author did in January with the Washington regional office of the Sputnik news agency.

As we go to press, the final votes are being cast in the election that will determine who will be the next president. Whether it’s Harris or Trump, the government will still be deporting undocumented workers.

We offer these thoughts as a way to try to explain to workers, especially white workers, the reasons why so many people want to come to the U.S., and why we all should view them as sisters and brothers and potential allies in the overall struggle against the bosses, the landlords and the oligarchs who make life so difficult for the vast majority of us, wherever we come from and however we got here.

Despite the great risks to life and limb and the fierce repression promoted by both major political parties, millions of people are still trying to enter the United States, in search of a better life for themselves and their families.

Mexicans make up the largest number of migrants – 30% of the total, but many also are coming from other Latin American and Caribbean countries, as well as from Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe.

Former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party he now controls accuse the Biden/Harris administration of promoting “open borders,” with no restraints on immigration, while President Biden and Vice President Harris blame Trump for scuttling a bipartisan Congressional deal they say would have addressed the issue.

What both sides ignore are the reasons why so many people are crossing the border in the first place: poverty, violence, wars and climate change, all of which can largely be traced back to policies of succeeding U.S. administrations.

For example: In 1993, Washington rammed through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed by the U.S., Mexico and Canada. In the following years, millions of rural Mexicans fell deeper into poverty as the corn and other crops they grow couldn’t compete with the subsidized products pouring in from their northern neighbor.

By 2014, there were about 20.5 million more Mexicans living below the poverty line than in 1994, while the rest of Latin America saw a decrease in poverty.

The result was a big surge in migration north. The sharp increase in poverty also forced more people into the drug trade, which has its roots in the U.S. drug addiction crisis. This led to an increase in gang violence, which in turn spurred more migration.

And then there’s the central fact that the area now called Texas was once part of Mexico, along with California, Nevada, Utah, most of Arizona and parts of New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming – all of which were stolen from Mexico in the U.S.-provoked war of 1848.

As many Mexican migrants put it, “We didn’t cross the border – the border crossed us.”

In a similar way, the U.S.-backed wars in Central America in the 1970s and 1980s disrupted the local economies, leading to the growth of criminal drug gangs.

El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala are now among the most violent countries in the world. (Nicaragua, under a more progressive government, was able to contain the resulting chaos, and thus has a lower rate of migration to the U.S. than the other three countries.)

Another major source of migrants is Venezuela, which has been the target of devastating U.S. economic sanctions and coup attempts.

Many Haitains also have tried to enter the U.S., fleeing extreme poverty and political violence that is the result of many decades of U.S. intervention and occupation.

And there is an increasing number of migrants coming from countries in Africa and Asia, which also experience poverty and political violence with their roots in Western imperialism.

‘Open Border’?

There is no “Open Border” policy in the U.S. The Biden/Harris administration has arrested record numbers of people crossing the Southern border. And the immigration deal the Democrats worked on with the Republicans would have given Biden the authority to completely close the border with Mexico, which he said he would do, thus condemning many thousands of migrants to inadequate camps on the Mexican side of the border.

‘States Rights’ emerging again as a political battleground

In the United States, immigration policy and enforcement is the responsibility of the federal government, not the states. And yet, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law allowing the state’s law enforcement agencies to arrest migrants, something only federal law enforcement is constitutionally authorized to do.

Abott has said he will build his own border wall along the Texas-Mexico border. He has ordered deadly barriers complete with chainsaws to be installed in the Rio Grande, a major crossing river for migrants. He has forbidden U.S. Border Patrol agents from accessing certain areas where migrants gather along a section of the Texas-Mexico border in Eagle Pass, a town with about 29,000 residents, almost all of whom are Latino.

In addition to being especially cruel, all this is unconstitutional and a direct challenge to federal authority.

Last Feb. 4, about a dozen Republican governors joined Abbot in Eagle Pass to express their support for his resistance to Washington. Several have offered to send state National Guard troops to support his efforts. And on Feb. 16, Abbott announced that construction is underway for a “base camp” to house hundreds of Texas National Guard members serving as part of the state’s border security initiative.

Abbott is doing all this to increase his personal political prestige among the right-wing Republican base, perhaps laying the groundwork for a bid for higher office. In every aspect, it’s a cruel and repressive policy and is leading to a further fracturing of the country along political lines.

Where is all this going?

Unless the economic and political situations improve in Central and South America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe, migration to the U.S. will continue to grow. A starving person goes to where there’s food, no matter how difficult the journey or how unwelcome they may be once they get there.

The Biden/Harris administration was putting pressure on Mexico to slow the flow of migrants through its territory to the U.S., but the desperation of the migrants is stronger than the determination of the Mexican or U.S. governments. The rate of migration to the U.S. will increase, and the rightwing here will continue to use the issue to spread fear and xenophobia, further moving a large part of the public to the right.

The solution has to be a recognition that fleeing poverty and violence is a human right, that the descendants of the people who stole North America from the Indigenous people have no right to deny others the right to come here, and that addressing the deep problems caused by many decades of U.S. foreign policy is the only way to “solve the crisis at the border.”

And that will take a mass movement – as all great social changes do.