BY RODOLFO POE

Immigration & Hardship

Ricardo and I sat in the room of his concrete block house. The room felt empty as we sat on the only piece of furniture he had in the room. Ricardo sat gazing at the floor cracking his knuckles nervously. We were just waiting for his brother before starting the interview. In the distance we heard the motor of small car worming its way through the rocky roads in disrepair leading to his house. After a couple short moments the motor was cut, and his brother entered. I was to find out later that his brother, too, had left for the U.S.
The conversation started immediately, his fidgeting was the sign of him wanting to share something big. He told me everything about his trip to the United States. Three years ago like most twenty year olds in his communities, he began to worry about his future. He wanted children, he wanted a family, and he wanted a good job. Also like most teens walking into adulthood in his community, he was faced with the fact that he could not make this life for himself and stay in his community. He repeated to me often, “The work in the fields is hard and barely pays.” He would follow with, “In Mexico there are no jobs.” After making contact with his other brother who already moved away from the community, he too decided to leave to the United States.
As his memory began replay the hardships and events of the trip his voice began to retreat. His story came out. Three years ago he decided to use the help of a coyote (a human-trafficker). The coyote led him along with dozens of other migrants through the desert by night on the southern rim of Arizona that borders Mexico. He paused and gazed at the floor. Halfway through the trip, a helicopter soared over the caravan forcing the group to scatter (each man to his own). Ricardo began to run too. He jumped over spiny desert brush, weaved between the fields of Palo Verde until finally he escaped the encroaching Border Patrol force. In the dark, he found himself completely alone with little food and water … and without a coyote led caravan. He was lost.
He continued forward determined to find the group. The sun rose early and he enjoyed momentarily the warmth and freshness that would transform the cold desert night into an inferno. Under the oppressive sun, he had to find shade. Under the meager shade of a Mesquite, Ricardo found a little bit of protection. He unzipped his Jansport bag to take a look at what food remained: a loaf of bread and some small snacks with a two-thirds filled 1.5 liter bottle of water. He took a small bite of his bread and a sip of his water unaware that his supplies would have to last him an 5 days in the desert. Three days after that first morsel, he left behind an empty Bimbo plastic bag. The rest of the time he traveled without food. His eyes lit up as he recounted that after feeling that he was going to die in the desert he managed to find another group of travelers – he thanked God..
He arrived in Tucson with the new group led by a coyote. A brick house near Tucson provided the travelers with a temporary place to stay. He rested and began to feel sleep and exhaustion settle on every one of his limbs. He untied his shoelaces and his shoes, dusty and aged, plopped on the floor like two ancient relics. Shortly, again pausing and gazing at the cold concrete floor, he he told what he overheard as the coyote spoke on the phone across the hallway. Bits and pieces of the conversation managed to cascade into his room as he pressed his ear against the wall. What made its way in the room were the words sell and immigrants. Surprised, he pressed his ears harder against the wood door as to squeeze every sound bit retained within the dry wood. More words began to fill the room but this time they spoke prices and people. Confirming that the coyote was going to sell him off, he retreated from the doorway. He looked desperately around the room for some sort of solution. The door across the hall slammed and heavy footsteps made there way towards his room. He threw a look at the open window across from the door and without hesitation leaped out running towards the city. He did not have time to put his shoes on. His eyes veered away and then paused to gaze at the floor for a moment. For the next six days he walked the scalding streets of Tucson without shoes desperately looking for help.
Eventually, he found help that would eventually lead him to his brother on the other side of the United States where a job waited for him in a chicken processing factory. He would spend the next three years in the factory often working double shifts mounting to more than twelve hours a day without overtime. He worked like this until both of his knees blew out from the repetitive tasks he was given. From kneeling so much, the cartilage in his knees eventually completely deteriorated leaving Ricardo with bones grinding against one another. Despite the unbearable pain and his inability to continue working, the corporation denied him help for medical attention (which is the case for most employees).
Ricardo grabs hold of his left knee and begins to massage the top portion treating it like an old wound that still lingers with him. He looks at me and says, “that’s why I returned home after three years, I needed to find a doctor who would help me.” I left the interview with more questions than when I came.

The History of the Social Conditions and Decisions Made Today

Despite the fact that immigration to the U.S. has spiked since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), it is an old phenomenon that has lived through a century of drastic economic, political, and social changes. The first was the liberal revolution (1876 to 1910), the next the Mexican Revolution, and – the one that we are currently in – the neoliberal revolution instigated in the 1980s. In the early 20th century Mexican immigration to the United States was practically zero. In fact, U.S. employers experiencing labor shortages in various sectors of the economy actually had to come to Mexico to recruit Mexican labor. During this time, the administratively drawn border dividing Mexico from the U.S. did not have a significant meaning.
With the U.S. undergoing a recession and growing citizen fears stemming from an “out-of-control border,” the border became a significant social construction when the government created the Border Patrol. This signifies the first moment where the border was not only administratively enforced but physically, as well. In this period marked by the Great Depression in the U.S., the INS began mass-deportations of immigrants.
With the U.S. being thrown into World War II – ending the great depression – the U.S. experienced a labor shortage. What came out of this labor shortage was perhaps one of the most important historical junctures in Mexico-U.S. immigration. Undergoing a series of land redistribution reforms under the administration of Lazaro Cardenas, millions of campesinos (Mexican farmers) gained ownership and access to millions of hectares of arable land (which was historically owned by a smaller class of hacienda owners). However, the Mexican banking system was ill prepared to front the capital and credit necessary to make land productive. Thus, the Bracero program – initiated by the U.S. to fill in certain gaps in the U.S. war economy – became a vital program for campesinos to finance their land in Mexico. Hundreds of thousands of migrants began to make their way to the U.S. to work in agriculture – further increasing the social networks between Mexico and the U.S.
The main consequence of the Bracero era was that agricultural work essentially became socially foreign to natives in the U.S. creating a structural demand for immigrant agricultural workers. In the 22 year history of the Bracero program (1942 - 1964) 5 million of Mexican laborers were imported to the U.S. creating a huge social network between labor markets in the U.S. and communities in Mexico. Instigated by agricultural growers in the U.S., undocumented immigration began to rise during the Bracero era. Still experiencing labor shortages, many growers resorted to promoting undocumented migration which led to increasing nativist fears of border crossing. The U.S. government responded by expanding the Border Patrol regime to create the perception of a border under control. Literally, this simply meant apprehending undocumented workers in the fields, bringing them to the border, processing them, and then transporting them back to the field. To highlight the importance of U.S. policy, border militarization was a tool used to create an image of security to appease nativist fears, nevertheless with immigrants playing a vital role in the U.S. economy the government had no incentive to stop migration, only to satisfy public opinion and meet growing demand for agricultural workers.
Thus if the Bracero era marks the creation of structural demand for migration, the time after signifies how the U.S. dealt with balancing structural demand with the mounting concerns of citizens. Most important to note is the fact U.S. policy began to limit immigration by putting quotas on the amount of Mexican immigrants allowed to enter the U.S. In 1976 amendments were made to the Immigration and Nationality Act that put a 20,000 person per country limit on immigration signifying a large contradiction between labor demand, Mexico’s role in filling that demand, and the number of migrants heading towards the U.S. Additionally, in 1982 the Mexican peso crashed and with the imposition of Salinas de Gortari regime in 1988, Mexico entered the neoliberal revolution, which privatized the market and implemented “competitive” agri-business, displacing millions of campesinos.
Stemming from citizens insecurity in the midst of economic and political crisis in the ‘80s, 1986 marks the next pivotal point that affects immigration policy today when IRCA was signed and implemented. With a large displaced rural campesino class, past connections to the U.S. through the Bracero program, and the structural demand for immigrant labor in the U.S., immigration became a graver structural issue between the U.S. and Mexican economies. IRCA simply imposed limits and mechanisms that would change the face of immigration. The act increased the size of the INS implying the growth of Border Patrol, put sanctions on employers hiring undocumented labor, and increased the size of the labor department to manage work-site inspection. It also offered amnesty to long-term undocumented migrants offering a path to legalization. IRCA, in stripping immigrants of rights, changed the social conditions of migration creating more incentives for migrants to legalize, stay, and seek citizenship in the U.S. (historically immigration has been circular movements of labor having a small permanent community in the U.S. where migrants prefer to return to their homes). It additionally created a burgeoning underground market for labor and a black market for false documents and human trafficking.
In addition to IRCA, there are a series of acts that worked to strip legal and illegal immigrants of rights and access. The Immigration Act of 1990 put additional caps on immigration and naturalization processes by putting a limit on family migration. Due to the growth of size and number of permanent communities of Mexican settlers pushing for legalization and naturalization, more persons from Mexico became eligible for sponsorship through family members. However, this act limited eligibility by placing restrictions on who a legal immigrant could sponsor for immigration. The border “crisis” created the deployment of more agents, more stringent employer sanctions, streamlined criminal and deportation procedures, and increased penalties for immigration violations (Massey, et al., 2000). The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 bars illegal immigrants from receiving social security, gives state the authority to limit public assistance to immigrants and increases income requirement to sponsor immigration of family member. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 also worked to bar immigrants from social security and means tested programs, as well as access to federal, state, and local public benefits. Encroaching limitations on immigrant rights resulted in the rise of citizenship applicants and was, and still is, a main factor increasing the size of permanent Mexican communities.
Immigration policy has been obsessed with limiting the flow of Mexican labor and migration to the U.S., which seems peculiar given that under the neoliberal regime both governments are obsessed with integrating the North American economies. After the implementation of NAFTA (a neoliberal project) the necessity of immigration to the U.S. became a reality for millions of mostly poor, rural Mexican farmers. In favor of export-oriented industry, the new structure of the Mexican economy essentially reformatted the rural economy pushing the people off the land. It further integrated U.S. and Canadian economies with Mexico by strengthening tourism, professional, business and social ties. However, NAFTA did not integrate the labor market, which in light of restructuring was perhaps the hardest hit sector of the Mexican economy and society. For many Mexicans the primary option remaining for economic security was, and continues to be, immigration to the U.S.
The U.S. has played a significant role in the implementation and imposition of neoliberalism. Beginning in 1982, in the wake of Mexico’s economic crisis, the Reagan and Bush administration applauded the entrance of neoliberal reform, which included knocking down trade barriers, eliminating controls on ownership and investment, reducing tariffs, dismantling subsidies, deregulating markets, and privatizing the economy in general. Restructuring the economy essentially meant creating a more elaborate and efficient communication network, transportation infrastructure and strengthening social ties between Mexico and the U.S. These reforms essentially created the conditions for structural immigration – whereas previously routes from Mexico to the U.S. could have been hand counted, reform meant a more elaborate and intertwined infrastructure.
The Mexican government was the other side of the neoliberal process and the main implementation mechanism of neoliberal policy that would drastically change the Mexican economy. Sponsoring capitalism as the module for economic development, the government championed an elite force of foreign and national capitalists to control and dictate most of the means of production in Mexico, including privatizing of land. As the most important policy steps, NAFTA would act as the vehicle to concretize neoliberal reform by interlocking the North American economies. Under a new regime of interwoven economies alterations by future presidents and transformations by people’s movements would become extremely difficult. Thus, not only was land being privatized and placed into the hands of the capital rich, but now Mexicans also had to bear with the consequences of the flood of subsidized agriculture from the U.S. that displaced the rural communities of “uncompetitive” Mexican agriculture. NAFTA however spoke nothing of integrating the labor markets unrealistically arguing that restructurization would provide new jobs.
For communities and individuals, neoliberalism essentially meant, “As farmers, your way of life and the way your parents and your parents-parents lived no longer fit in the new society.” Following its U.S. sponsored “development” plan, the Mexican government worked to dismantle the rural economy by replacing it with export-oriented trade (tied to increasing presence of maquiladoras) meaning they were attempting to re-socialize the campesino class to fill the work halls of the thousands of exploitative, low-paying and unsafe maquilas. However, the transition has fallen starkly short of providing safety nets and jobs for the thousands of displaced rural communities causing not only an export-oriented goods market but an unrecognized export-oriented labor market, as well. From this was born the new structural immigration paradigm that we see today where thousands seek work outside of Mexico.
Today, immigration policy and neoliberalism are intrinsically contradictory where the latter creates a stronger necessity to migrate for economic reasons – and subsequently to unite with family already in the U.S. – and the former, in an attempt to stop migration, only impose criminal penalties on the people who make up these flows. Under these conditions, many people have argued that the true function of restrictionist policies is to depress wage levels, by creating a “gray market” in undocumented (“illegal”) workers who cannot risk demanding higher wages — or protesting abusive or illegal working conditions.
With this short history, we can understand that immigration policy partially stems from nativist fears (economic, social, cultural and today under the Bush regime: terrorism) paying very little attention to the system and structure in which it takes place. The Bracero era restructured the U.S. economy subsequently necessitating migrant labor. Neoliberal reform promoted by the U.S., imposed a new type of rural economy displacing millions, who are now seeking work through international migration. The main contradiction in policy is the unilateral decisions made by the U.S. to “deal” with the immigration “crisis,” intending to thuggishly confront structural issues derived from economic integration. Policy has principally dealt with the situation by building walls and taking away human rights of a labor force that has since the early 20th century contributed significantly to the U.S. economy.

Tying Together History, Economic Systems, and Personal Experience

Inevitably personal experience is interwoven with larger political and economic systems, and immigration is no exception. Thus, we can take a look at Ricardo’s experience to see how his experience is connected to U.S. immigration policy and the economic system implemented and promoted by the Mexican and U.S. governments.
Going back to Ricardo’s experience we can take out key moments to see how it fits into how the immigration system is assembled. After NAFTA the prospects for a campesino working in the fields dimmed. The neoliberal revolution in Mexico is responsible for exacerbating structural and economic immigration and has forced the collapse of the rural economy. Ricardo made his decision to go to the U.S. within this context, who in searching for a way to create a life in his community and raise a family, saw migration as the best solution. He never intends ever moving to the U.S. rather he sees the U.S. as a means to build a house and raise a family.
This decision was also taken with the help of his brother who had previously found his way into the U.S. The Bracero program helped immigrants to create communities and contacts in the U.S. that helped make the decision to migrate to the U.S. easier for future migrants. In Ricardo’s community, this social network is rather comprehensive and nearly every family has some family member in the U.S., whether it is an uncle, a parent, or a cousin. According to the American Friends Service Community, immigrants migrate for a combination of three main factors: to flee violence, or political persecution; to seek economic security or survival; and/or to join with family members. Thus, Ricardo used the help of this social network to help him make his decision.
This next section is important because it relates directly to how immigration policy and Ricardo’s personal experience intertwine. Ricardo used a coyote, who is merely an underground businessman who traffics humans across the border. The coyote is part of the market for human trafficking that continues to flourish because, in spite of legal and physical deterrents, the reality of economic inequality persists, forcing many Mexicans to choose legal or illegal migration as an option. Legal and physical barriers to migration simply create the conditions that legitimize underground human trafficking. The result has been traumatic. Migrants crossing the border acquiesce to play in the game of cat and mouse with the U.S. border patrol, taking their chances alone in the desert, or hiring a coyote. For Ricardo, this game nearly caused his death.
When he finally managed to find his way to Tucson, he overheard the coyote speaking on the phone about selling off the migrants – this reality of exploitation for migrants in the U.S. is one of virtual slavery. Immigration policy criminalizes the hiring of undocumented labor and as a result employers have found coercive ways of exploiting immigrant labor. Under this same policy, undocumented labor is part of an informal economy that employers use to threaten migrants with deportation – this directly led to depressing wages and the deterioration of work and safety conditions. Ricardo found work with exactly these very conditions. Rejected by natives, he found work socially owned by migrant labor. Despite contributing to the U.S. economy, without having any formal rights he could not find medical attention for when he hurt himself on the job. (Remember, these rights were “officially” stripped by a series of policies in the 80s and 90s.)
Immigration policy has only served to create social conditions devoid of human rights, and yet structural necessity has forced immigrants to seek work in these conditions that jeopardize their health and lives. U.S. immigration policy somehow does not recognize the structural tie between Mexico and the U.S. where historically the U.S. has demanded immigrant labor. Neither does it recognize the implications of agreements such as NAFTA and movements like neoliberalism that favor the capital rich. By closing off administrative and physical borders, U.S. immigration policy takes no responsibility for the economic plan it is promoting. Neither has the Mexican government strongly pushed for immigration policy reform. Under the mentality of neoliberal politics, the capital rich, such as transnational corporations, are ultimately responsible for economic “development.” This is the best solution that the governments of the U.S. and Mexico can offer.
The Effect of Bad Policy
This short history has many implications for the immigration debate happening both between and within Mexico and the U.S. Whether they originate from militancy in times of war or the economic structure, land conflicts/disputes directly affect Mexicans’ coping strategies to poverty or economic turmoil and cause immigration. In the history of immigration we have reviewed three main transitions directly concerning land distribution that Mexico has gone through: liberal revolution, the Mexican revolution, and the neoliberal revolution. In the liberal revolution migration to the U.S. was a circular movement of non-settler laborers in search of relief in the midst of a struggling Mexican economy. In the midst of a large redistribution of land to peasants, migration in the Bracero era (within the context of the Mexican Revolution) was again a non-permanent movement of laborers to find a substitute to the capital and credit that the Mexican banking system was ill prepared to service. The neoliberal phase is marked by mass land redistribution, hidden under the guise of privatization that favors capital over those who have less capital.
The difference between the liberal revolution and the neoliberal revolution is that in the former immigration was a circular flow of labor where as the latter is marked with the growing number of permanent settlers. As the legal pathways to the U.S. were closed off the incentive to return to Mexico lessened. Similarly, since U.S. policy siphoned off public benefits away from both legal and illegal migrants, they began to push for naturalization and citizenship. One of the main effects meant the growth of a stronger social network between U.S. immigrant communities and Mexico. Not only did Mexicans migrate for economic reasons but the growth of permanent migrants seeking citizenship people began to migrate to reunite with family members.
As mentioned earlier, U.S. natives often argue that migrants simply take advantage of public benefits without contributing in return. Despite being a controversial debate, immigrants do contribute a significant amount to the U.S. economy – participating in U.S. meatpacking, poultry, seafood canning, construction and agribusiness – while taking advantage of a relatively small portion of social services because most are barred off. For example, there are around 12 million undocumented migrants that informally participate in the formal economy. Informal means most workers are offered low wages and no benefits. The U.S. agricultural industry exploits mostly undocumented Mexican labor. Ironically, this is the same industry flooding Mexican markets with corn causing campesinos to migrate in the first place!

What Does Border Militarization Mean?

With the growing immigrant rights movement in the U.S., the immigration debate has tumbled into further polemic. Most of the arguments stem from nativist fears often stating that immigrants are taking advantage of the welfare system or taking U.S. jobs from natives. In reaction, the U.S. government has proposed a “solution” to the immigrant “problem” by offering to continue building more walls, using more sophisticated technology, and hiring more armed thugs.
Historically, border militarization has served to create the image of a secure border without having any real implications for structural immigration (which is not surprising since border militarization is incapable of solving structural issues). If anything, using anti-terrorism and anti-drug rhetoric is what U.S. immigration policy is based on. The use of these two anti-campaigns has no clear intention of really solving or understanding immigration.
Whether intentionally or not, border militarization perpetuates and exacerbates the same paradigm of exploitation. Most migrants in the U.S. have little to no rights and must embark on dangerous journeys to reach the U.S. Creating the social conditions black and informal economies, border militarization perpetuates an exploitation regime that was born due to the closing of legal routes of entry for Mexicans (post-Bracero program) and immigration policies made in the 80s and 90s barring immigrants from most services and rights. Many employers have used “illegal” status as a way to coerce immigrant labor into accepting low wages, unsafe working conditions, and no benefits. Giving immigrants less of an incentive to return home, militarization coupled with having few rights leads to a nationwide diaspora of immigrants who are increasingly opting for permanent settlement to obtain more rights as a laborer in the U.S. The militarization of the border also means the increased growth and necessity of coyote and pollero human traffickers (who are sometimes dangerous allies to profiteers in the slave trade) simply forcing them to up the ante and take more dangerous routes.
Since immigration in Mexico is a structural problem, the flow has little chance of being deterred by simply apprehending people or building walls that can be hopped. Immigration is rooted in economic systems created by the governments of the U.S. and Mexico. More specifically, economic instability, lack of access and ownership to land, and no protection of local grown product are some of the main roots of structural immigration. Within this system, border militarization and immigration policy translate to more armed thugs intended to create a public image of safety, without having a real effect on the roots of the problem. Rather than understanding the gravity of structural migration where people migrate out of necessity (which makes walls and the border patrol a less significant deterrent), border militarization along with U.S. border policy in general is a waste of resources and a violation to human life. We must ask ourselves about the implications of what human rights violations are committed when policy continues to strip rights from the labor force or throw immigrants into increasingly more dangerous situations.

Grassroots Organizing and Finding Answers to Immigration Issues

One of the largest grassroots movements taking place in Mexico today was initiated by the zapatistas in 1983 when a group of indigenous and non-indigenous began to organize in the Selva Lacandona. In 1994, the organization had gained enough support to initiate an indigenous revolution protesting the conditions of poverty and oppression that were respectively created and imposed by a neoliberal capitalist state. In this context, immigration was a reaction to the system that was exacerbating poverty in indigenous communities, and literally forced the assimilation of not only indigenous but all poor into the confines of a neoliberal society. For the indigenous, and for campesinos, this was genocide. In 2005, after a multitude of failures to negotiate with the state, the Zapatistas released the 6th Declaration of the Selva Lacandona outlining the foundations of an anti-capitalist movement. The 6th Declaration diagnosed the systemic and structural nature of immigration rejecting it because it was, and still is, a form of genocide. Thus, in order to resist the system and build an anti-capitalist movement, the zapatistas had to take a stance that emphasized the rights of a community to their culture and to their way of life.
The release of the 6th Declaration also launched la Otra Campaña, a two part campaign to create a national anti-capitalist movement based on grassroots and self-organizing. In Zapatista communities there are community rules that strongly discourage immigration from the community. For instance, if a pollero (another name for coyote) is found trafficking migrants within Zapatista territory, they are to be apprehended and relieved of their money, as well as forced to release the central Americans they are trafficking. The Zapatistas recognize these migrants as brothers and sisters that have experienced the same conditions that they find themselves. Since international immigration breaks apart communities and families, the Zapatista struggle aims specifically to preserve a community’s right to be a community. The Zapatistas refer not only to the practice political autonomy but economic, as well.
Most would argue that poverty and subsequently the need to immigrate have increased in Mexico since the adoption of neoliberal reforms. The evidence shows that poverty is increasing because of the economic system imposed and managed by capitalist elites. These elites are composed of business owners and state officials. They are also the main organizers of the Mexican economy, politics, and society. Thus from one perspective, Zapatismo within the community is the platform of resistance against the state-led organization and mismanagement of society and the economy. Zapatismo aims to stop economic migration by reclaiming forms of social and economic organization in the name of communities. No longer do the zapatistas accept the state’s plan for how a society should organize (I refer specifically to neoliberalism). No longer will the zapatistas accept a system of exploitation, a system of competition that displaces millions of campesinos.
The state attempts to force the indigenous to hop on to the “progress” wagon, but the Zapatistas and increasingly more indigenous, adherents to the la Otra Campaña, and even popular movements not associated with the Zapatistas, such as Oaxaca, are questioning the system. In learning to question the system, many are beginning to recognize the roots of poverty and immigration and they are trying to change that system rather than embrace it. For the Zapatistas, and increasingly seen from La Otra Campaña, refusal means that people must organize themselves to create alternatives to the inherently exploitative and oppressive neoliberal economic and political system.

Back to Ricardo

I am not sure if Ricardo has shaped a discourse about the roots of the system as clear as the Zapatistas have, but I believe that his experience has helped him feel those roots on a level that neither academics nor politicians can truly understand. As an individual, he told me that he migrated out of necessity. But, I wonder. The Zapatistas as a community said that we can migrate out of necessity, but what will that mean for us? In asking this question, we get at the very core of the immigration debate where finding a solution to the “immigration” problem has pitted culture and community against the dominant discourse of economics and politics. The solution is journey that will require the participation of everyone. It will require a level of consciousness that empowers communities and individuals to actively see the interactions of their community with overarching system. It will then require us to ask ourselves some important questions: Is this what we want for ourselves, for our community, for my children? Is this how we want to organize ourselves? And, do the rules and confines of this system fit how we want to live?