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05.09 Gloria Feldt: The War on Women [video]

05.02 Common Pesticide “Disturbs” the Brains of Children

05.02 Humans Still Evolving as Our Brains Shrink

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05.11 How the Corporate Right Hijacked America's Courts to Enrich the Top 1 Percent

05.03 Supreme Court Favorability Reaches New Low

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05.01 Laissez-faire with strip-searches: America's two-faced liberalism

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05.16 5 Ways Conservatives are Destroying the Institution of Marriage

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05.16 The Economic Case for Same-Sex Marriage

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05.16 “What Scares Me Isn’t $2 Billion Loss JP Morgan Made, What Scares Me is the Record $19 Billion in Profits” [video]

05.16 Accidentally Released - and Incredibly Embarrassing - Documents Show How Goldman et al Engaged in 'Naked Short Selling'

05.16 Republican Party suckles at the breast of Big Business

05.16 Weisbrot and Krugman are Wrong: Greece cannot pull off an Argentina

05.15 Greek deadlock heightens fears of full European economic crisis

05.14 Why We Regulate

05.11 Indentured Servitude for Seniors: Social Security Garnished for Student Debts

05.11 Breaking Up Four Big Banks

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05.11 How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform

05.11 Michael Hudson: From the Democratic Party to European "Socialists", they manage crisis in the interests of finance [video]

05.10 Real Estate 4 Ransom -- locking up the Great American Dream

05.10 Quelle Surprise! Fed Defends Incompetent Bank Management Against Investors

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05.10 Michael Hastings & Glenn Greenwald on how media hype about ‘melodramatic’ terrorist plots helps sustain the [profitable] U.S. ‘War on Terror’ [video]

05.09 Ryan Shrugs: Overlooked GOP Budget Provision Would Fuel Offshoring With New Tax Incentives

05.09 Top 1% Fills Gov. Scott Walker’s Recall War Chest With $25 Million

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05.03 Paul Krugman on How to Fix the Economy - and Why It's Easier Than You Think

05.02 There is an alternative to austerity

05.01 Under Catholic pressure Paul Ryan backs away from Rand, Objectivism

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05.01 Tea Party Congressmen Accept Cash From Bailed-Out Bankers

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05.01 No alternative to austerity

International

05.15 IDF closes Palestinian school to make way for West Bank training zone

05.14 Noam Chomsky on:
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Occupy Wall Street "Has Created Something That Didn’t Really Exist" in U.S. — Solidarity [video]
Palestinian Hunger Strike a Protest Against "Violations of Elementary Human Rights" [video]

05.14 INFOGRAPHIC: Gas Spending Around The World

05.14 Graphic: Products of Slavery

05.14 Israel warned of volatile situation as Palestinian hunger strikers near death

05.14 How Right-Wing Extremists and Islamists Are the Same

05.14 Guatemala's land grab and massacre

05.11 U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam

05.11 Thousands of British police join anti-austerity protest

05.10 China Investment Corp. Stops Buying Europe Government Debt on Crisis Concern

05.09 Inside Syria's crackdown: 'I found my boys burning in the street'

05.03 “We Did Not Choose This War” and Other Hypocrisies

05.03 Jobless Rate Reaches New High in Euro Zone

05.02 Ken Vogel and Joel Rubin consider implications of Obama’s Afghanistan pact in terms of 2012 race [video]

05.02 Collapsing Afghanistan & Pakistan Refuse to Cooperate with Obama Photo Op

05.02 Free the torture report

05.01 What Did You Do In The War, Daddy?

05.01 Quebec students ignite the popular imagination

05.01 Occupy Wall Street Plans Global Protests in Resurgence

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  Unintentional Immigrants

COMMENTARY:

Unintentional Immigrants

by Parrish W. Jones
Many migrants who planned to come and work for a time and return home have become unintentional immigrants; they dare not return home because they know the perils of crossing the border today.
Immigration reform is on the debate logs of congress and nearly every pundit these days. Few distinguish an immigrant from a migrant, a distinction that is quite necessary for understanding the issues. An immigrant is one who goes from one country to another with the desire to remain semi-permanently if not permanently and, in most cases, to seek citizenship. A migrant can be either an internal or external migrant. A migrant is one who moves about, often across national boundaries, for various reasons, in most cases to find work.

Present debates completely obscure the distinction and ignore the fact that a large majority of undocumented Latino persons in the U.S. never intended to stay here. Most would like to simply come and go to find work for a time so they may provide a better living for their families and villages back home. Present law makes such migration impossible.

In order to migrate into the U.S. from the south persons must cross the U.S. Mexico border. In the last 10 to 12 years such a crossing has become more dangerous and more expensive. In the 2004-05 fiscal year, 279 persons have died coming to "America" according to official records; this figure does not account for all deaths. Many migrants who planned to come and work for a time and return home have become unintentional immigrants; they dare not return home because they know the perils of crossing the border today.

The reason the risks have increased is that the Immigration and Naturalization Service and its successor, the Department of Homeland Security, through the Border Patrol, have built miles of fences, installed listening and video monitoring devices along the border and deployed aircraft, horsemen, cyclists, and armed vehicles to discover and apprehend migrants. The fences and monitoring equipment have forced the migrants to go farther and farther into the deserts to begin their journey. The result has been escalating deaths of men, women and children from scorching heat and freezing cold, injury, snake and insect bites, and animal attacks. The trek across the desert takes three to seven days, a journey that requires carrying enough food and water for the trip, an impossible task as adequate water for the trip often weighs more than the person.

Once a person has made that journey, he or she is reluctant to ever make it again because of the danger. Economics also plays a role. Increased surveillance creates greater risk for those who aid the migrants in their journey. A practice that was once made up of families with deep connections to villages is increasingly becoming the enterprise of organized, well-funded criminal elements who do not depend on their reputations for business. Unlike the families who were assisting friends and relatives, the organizations are in it purely for the money. So the migrant feels a greater threat on two fronts: the imposing U.S. militarization and the growing criminal crossing system.

Few of us who work on immigration issues believe in throwing the borders open. That is no more practical than the attempt to completely close them off. Nor is it likely that most U.S. citizens would find closing the borders suitable. We simply depend too extensively on migrant labor to support our more and more ravenous lifestyles.

Reform we need, but, if we are serious about immigration reform, we will recognize the distinction between migrant and immigrant. Once the distinction is made, we can reform the law to make migration possible while still protecting our borders from terrorists. Senators Kennedy and McCain have introduced legislation that goes a long way toward writing the distinction into law. Under their legislation, migrants already in the U.S. would be able to acquire a worker visa by paying a fine for crossing illegally (that is not amnesty). Through that law we would have a means to know who is in the country, where they are and for whom they have worked. Today, we know none of that about the 12 or so million who are here undocumented. Knowing who they are would leave resources to track those who do not want to be found out because they wish us harm.

Second, the law provides for new work visas for persons who wish to migrate, thus assuring that our appetite for their labor will be met as others return home for a while. With the new work visas, there will be less pressure on the border a fact that will free up more money to spend on real security threats like hurricanes.

Let's be reasonable and do the right thing for us and for the migrant laborer who wants to come here to work for us and support his family.


Dr. Parrish W. Jones is a Minister of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in Washington, DC. He has served as a volunteer in mission with Presbyterian Border Ministry, led numerous mission/study groups to the Mexican border, and volunteered with the Border Working Group, a coalition of faith-based organizations, to advocate for more humane border policy. He may be reached at parrish.jones@starpower.net.



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This story was published on December 16, 2005.

 


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