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Politicians Must Offer a Solution to the Immigration Crisis, Not
Just a Fix
By Peter Dale Scott, New America Media
NAM Editor's Note: As long as current U.S. policies facilitate the
movement of wealth from Latin America into New York banks, the
writer says, Latin America's poor will soon follow. Peter Dale Scott
is author of "Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan,
Colombia, and Indochina" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). He is
completing a book on "The Road to 9/11." Visit his Web site at
http://www.peterdalescott.net.
BERKELEY, Calif. – Politicians of both parties, in the current
political debate over illegal immigration, are talking only about a
short-term fix and ignoring the road to a longer-term solution.
Right now Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress agree, as
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said on the PBS Newshour
recently, that, "We must strengthen the border security. That's an
absolute must." In addition, most Democrats, echoing the 2004
Democratic platform, argue that qualified immigrants, even if
undocumented, "should have a path to earn full participation in
America."
But neither of these fixes is a solution, as is obvious from a half
century of failed efforts to stop the flow of drugs into this
country. Any solution must address the root cause of poverty in the
Third World, and particularly Latin America. Current U.S. policies
facilitate the movement of wealth from these countries into New York
banks. As long as this continues we must expect that the poor to
follow as well.
It is no accident that, as columnist Jason Vick wrote last month in
the Collegiate Times, "The income gap between Mexico and the United
States is the largest between any two border states in the world,
and most of the neighboring Central American states are far poorer
than Mexico."
More than any other part of the world, Latin America has always been
marked by extreme disparity of wealth. In 1978 only 2.9 percent of
total income in Latin America was received by the poorest fifth of
the population, compared with 5 percent for southern Europe, 6.2
percent for East Asia, 5.3 percent for the Middle East and North
Africa, and 6.2 percent for sub-Saharan Africa.
The United States was not the original cause of this poverty in the
former Spanish colonies. But current U.S. policies are aggravating
it. Not just in Mexico, but around the world, the market
fundamentalism of the so-called "Washington consensus" on economics
enforces programs that result in capital outflows from the world's
poorer countries. Chief among these policies are fiscal
conservatism, trade liberalization, privatization and free capital
movements.
The influx of flight capital -- the flow of wealth escaping from the
insecurity of the Third World into America -- is estimated at over
$100 billion a year. This has helped sustain the dollar since the
oil shocks of the 1970s. But the impact of these policies on Third
World poverty can be seen in the statistics. Between 1960 and 1980,
per capita income grew 73 percent in Latin America. Between 1980 and
2000, income there grew less than 6 percent.
In Mexico, most of the increase went to the rich. The share of the
poorest Mexican 50 percent has been declining, from 20.7 percent of
national income in 1980 to 16 percent in 1996, according to Mexican
economist Jorge Castañeda (who later served as Mexico's foreign
minister), writing in 1996 for the New York Times. Meanwhile the
country in 1994 with the fourth-largest number of Forbes
billionaires (after the United States, Germany, and Japan) was
Mexico, with twenty-four. According to Castañeda, "Their declared
fortunes combined would represent nearly 10 percent of Mexico's
annual gross national product."
In 1994 these same billionaires, half of them cronies of the
departing President Salinas, took advantage of the market
liberalizations of NAFTA (adopted in January 1994) to shift much of
their wealth to New York Banks. In the ensuing crisis of the next 15
months, the number of people living in extreme poverty increased by
5 million to 22 million.
Just as corporations profit from cheap immigrant labor, so banks
profit from capital flight. However, the arguments for the
Washington consensus, which the banks favor, have been increasingly
discredited by economists, notably by Nobel Prize winner Joseph
Stiglitz. Stiglitz has faulted American economic policy (as
implemented through the International Monetary Fund) as having
trusted too much in the market's self-regulatory efficiency, rather
than getting the right balance between the market and government.
But it is hard to find his call for regulating capital movements
endorsed by politicians of either party. In fact, Stiglitz was fired
from the World Bank for his criticisms, reportedly at the insistence
of Democratic Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.
One cannot imagine that America can import the wealth of countries
like Mexico without provoking a tide of immigrants along with it.
For this reason, Democratic Party leader Howard Dean in February
attacked the new federal budget for its almost 30 percent cut in
development aid to Latin America and the Caribbean.
It is true that direct government assaults on the problem of
poverty, such as development aid, are often inefficient at best. But
government deregulation of capital movements that benefit the
wealthy must be recognized as a significant cause of illegal
immigration into this country.
America should stop imposing the current IMF loan conditions of
unlimited market deregulation and fiscal austerity. The country of
Malaysia has shown the world that an economy can thrive when its
government defies the IMF and imposes its own economic controls.
To reduce illegal immigration, our politicians must raise their eyes
beyond barriers and border patrols, and begin to regulate the root
problems of wealth and poverty in the world.
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