Anchor Babies

I was going to wait until I had the patience to really sit down and discuss this, with quotes and everything, but I got angry after listening to NPR last night so here it is.

I am tired of hearing right wing pundits complain about the "anchor baby" problem when they discuss illegal immigration. As a woman of childbearing age, I am seriously offended by anyone who would go so far as to claim that any woman would choose to cross the border for their OWN benefit. This is an insult to the integrity and humanity of the women who choose to give birth in the United States, because it assumes that they put their own welfare ahead of their child's. I live in a town that is full of hispanic immigrants, legal and illegal, and the majority of them are deeply devoted to their children. They are glad to have their children born in the United States, even though it does NOTHING to help their own immigration status, because of the opportunities their children might have here. The idea that a woman would bear a child in the US for her own sake rather than her child's is grotesque and offensive, and does nothing to advance the real causes of illegal immigration.

The right also paints all immigrants as criminals, and yet studies show that the cities with higher immigrant populations are in fact SAFER and LESS prone to violent crimes than non-immigrant cities. ** So while the idea that border towns are more subject to drug-related crimes is somewhat true, it has little to do with the problem of the so-called "anchor babies." The South-American immigrants in my town are often more religious than US citizens, so the idea that somehow our nation is more moral because it is a Christian one is also a moot point.

The men and women who cross to the United States do so to escape the circumstances in their own country which are greatly impacted by free trade agreements and a let-them-deal-with-it approach to the rampant drug trade between South and Central American countries and the United States. Why, if the problem is such a threat to our security, do we spend as much money training the narco-enforcement officers of those countries as we do in Afghanistan and Iraq? Surely there is as great a need for stabilizing our closest neighbor as the countries we spend so much tax dollars on abroad - Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel. If we are under so great a threat from our Mexican neighbor's inability to confront the drug cartels, why not provide assistance as we did in Colombia and Nicaragua?

It seems that rather than address the real problems of border security, the right has a penchant for creating an issue to use in blasting the current administration, when they know their policies of free trade and tax credits for companies that move jobs to the poorest nations are to blame for the immigration problem. Companies that move their production to South and Central America do so because they can operate outside the realm of environmental and human rights regulations. This fuels the drug trade by preventing ordinary citizens from making a livable wage in an acceptable industry, making them susceptible to the influences of drug cartels using them as mules or distributors. The Mexicans caught in pot farms in our own national parks are usually not cartel members, but duped into working for the cartels in exchange for smuggling them over the border. One CNN report stated, "Most pot farms are cultivated by low-level cartel workers, many who are working to pay off smugglers who helped them cross the border, officials have said."**** California's efforts to legalize marijuana could be a huge loss for the Mexican drug cartels, and save a starving state economy, which makes one wonder why there is any opposition at all.

Free Trade agreements can also be used to foment immigration desires in poor nations, as it allows foreign companies to make profits by keeping the wages of their workers inhumanly low. It also exposes the locals to the damaging effects that result from poor environmental regulation in residential and indigenous areas. Recently a documentary, "Crude," exposed the Texaco/Chevron pollution of Amazon villages in Ecuador, where the indigenous people had no say in the governments 1960's and 70's decision to allow the company to drill in the area. With thousands contracting cancers that they had little or no financial means of battling, the indigenous people hired lawyers to fight for a means to survive. They are not interested in punishing the company, but rather hope to create funds for the people who daily bring their children to clinics with no hope of curing their ailments.

In Colombia, the Coca Cola Company has engaged in the systematic and violent repression of labor unions in order to lower wages for employees. When labor contracts were up, the union leaders were mysteriously murdered, and employees were forced to retract ties with unions before being rehired at reduced pay.*** How can we say that these companies are helping the foreign countries by bringing them jobs, if the jobs are subsequently enslaving the population of that country with no hope of alternative employment? It is important that companies be successful and continue to provide growth in an economically unstable world, but by taking these jobs out of the United States it hurts both our employment AND the prospect of economic improvement for people who share our hemisphere.

Border crossing is an extremely dangerous proposition, which can potentially lead to death at the hands of the coyotes or incarceration if captured by US officials. When faced with this kind of systematic oppression, a byproduct of irresponsible globalization, the people of the poorest areas of the world look to the United States as a safe haven. This is why they are willing to take jobs none of us could imagine volunteering for, such as the laborers who work in our western fields to provide us with low-cost produce, and the factory workers who were just caught on identity theft charges in Nebraska while working at a meat-packing plant. I am disgusted by the outrage at the identity thefts that brought light these poor workers. Nebraskans complain that these men took jobs that they otherwise would've had, but they were getting paid meager wages to do a job most wouldn't want. They didn't steal identities to buy houses, or pay for luxury items with credit cards they didn't own, they got JOBS. Since when is the right-wing mantra against hard-working people who do their best to make their living without taking anything from the state? (Which they can't do by the way without being caught by welfare-fraud investigators.)

Why not make immigration less expensive, and provide a path for these citizens to become meaningful, taxpaying, contributors to society?

** http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/05/28/immigration-makes-cities-safer-reports/
***http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/fellows/colombia0106/
****http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/09/03/us.marijuana.cartels/index.html