I am for open borders
The president turned his jaundiced eye southward yet again, spewing his xenophobic litany of attacks against people of color.
“If Mexico doesn’t immediately stop ALL illegal immigration coming into the United States through our Southern Border, I will be CLOSING … the Border, or large sections of the Border, next week,” President Twit tweeted on his Twitter account.
Later, during a stop in Florida, he told reporters: “(There is) a very good likelihood I’ll be closing the border next week and that’s fine with me.”
Never mind that this is a sin against humanity, a backhand to dignity, a rejection of an entire race of good, kind, hard-working people.
Never mind that this is antithetical to the spirit and intent of the United States, a nation of immigrants.
Never mind the bottom line, which, according to a study by the Department of Health and Human Services that was leaked to The New York Times, the net fiscal impact of refugees to the United States over the period spanning 2005 and 2014 was positive with the U.S. coming out $63 billion ahead.
The report was put together at the request of the president, who asked for the fiscal numbers related to the United States Refugee Admissions Program. According to a September 2017 story in The New York Times, Stephen Miller, who advises the president on immigration policy, “personally intervened” to ensure that only the costs of admitting refugees were included in the report and that the benefits were redacted.
And never mind that a full closure of the border would result in a heavy negative impact on the tourism and commerce economies of both countries, which ran to $612 billion last year.
“We’d be looking at losses worth billions of dollars,” said Kurt Honold, president of the Business Coordinating Council, a business group located in Tijuana.
While Mexico’s new president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has bent to a new level of cooperation on immigration issues his foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, took a much harsher tone.
“Mexico does not act on the basis of threats,” Ebrard said. “We are a great neighbor. “(Ask) the million and a half Americans who chose our country as their home, the largest community of (Americans) outside the US. For them we are also the best neighbor they could have.”
Mexico is the United States’ third-largest trading partner. There are an estimated 1.2 million American jobs based on that trade alliance.
Make no mistake. The effect of any shutdown, however minimal, is immediate.
When the San Ysidro Port of Entry in San Diego was closed for five hours last November because of a refugee-based march on the Mexican side, it cost U.S. businesses approximately $5.3 million.
While on the campaign stump in Iowa, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said the president’s threats are “not in line with our values as a country.”
Our history, however, says otherwise, that hatred and bigotry are at our core.
In another era, Americans slaughtered the Native Americans, stole their land, and tried to strangle their culture.
They were nearly destroyed by slavery and the Civil War.
They suffered division and exclusion in the form of fears about Catholicism taking hold here and the nation bowing to Papal authority, creating bigotry against a whole group of people, particularly the Italian, Irish, and German Catholics.
They basically enslaved the Chinese to work our mines and build the transcontinental railroad.
They stripped the Japanese of their land and money and herded them into internment camps during World War II.
They struggled through the violence and turmoil during the 1960s as we strove for civil rights.
They have yet to accord women with the rights, dignity, and respect they have been forever denied.
And God help you if you are a Muslim in the United States in the post-9/11 world.
That business we were taught in school about the United States being this great, big melting pot of the world?
Hardly.
The United States is a bologna sandwich served with mayonnaise on white bread. Anything more exotic, anything with a different flavor or texture, anything outside that boring norm is eyed suspiciously.
What galls me is that the liberals or progressives or whatever you want to call them are constantly given that evil eye as the conservative clucks shove them into a corner and condemn them as being for open borders. The gutless left refuses to defend its ideals.
So here you go, guys. I’ll lead you into this battle.
I am for open borders. People should be able to come and go as they please.
Tax them if they work in the United States. Oh, yeah, we already do.
Tax them if they buy property in the United States. Oh, yeah, we already do.
Only give them social benefits if they become citizens and pay into the system. Oh, yeah, we already do.
But the administration’s Orwellian-speak and lies beg you ignore the facts.
The philosopher, writer, social activist, and social scientist Noam Chomsky puts it out in plain talk.
“The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all of the people,” he said.
Take a look around you.
Take a look at the hate-filled rhetoric of an administration out of control, the propaganda of a power-hungry oligarch, the poison of a regime drenched in bigotry.
Then refuse to be just another brick in the wall.
You’ll be much better for it. We’ll be much better for it. The world will be much better for it.
Peace.
The viewpoints expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Independent.
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Let’s be reductionist. Let’s have S.American and Central American Countries release all their prisoners and send them to the US border. Let’s have China start exporting unwanted subcultures by their Central Govt to Mexico to cross the S. border. How about Africa? I could go on. Without secure working borders there is no sovereignty. So Ed, go live in Nicaragua for a few years. Then comeback and write this article again. Bozo logic.
Ed, do note I have spent time in Central America and South America – also China as well -even worked in Mexico. The truth is America will be destroyed unless there is rule of law. If you are willing to sacrifice your current standard of living then fine. Prove it, move to Guatemala. Walk the walk. Talk is cheap.
I don’t know if this qualifies as ‘walking the walk,’ but I am sitting on my patio on the fun side of the wall, looking out over the Sea of Cortes (Guatemala is too warm!) The standard of living up north? Not very good in comparison.