Connecting the Dots

WITH AMERICA"S IMMMIGRATION crisis and chaos dominating the national conversation in recent years, it is not surprising that a veritable flurry of books are appearing dealing with the issue, some by credible journalists, historians, and sociologists, some by fanatic ideologues and intellectual frauds. The trick is to tell the difference. Perhaps the single most valuable - factually, intellectually, analytically - immigration monograph to emerge amid the flurry is "Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis", by well respected journalist Jonathan Blitzer, who has won numerous accolades and awards for his work, and writes for "The New Yorker" magazine. Amid all the hand wringing, noise, bickering and yelling about immigration and American border security (of lack thereof) coming from all sides and sources, a salient fact seems all too often to get lost; that there is a direct, demonstrable irrefutable, causal connection between decades and even centuries of American foreign policy towards and treatment of Latin America, and the current immigration chaos. The United States of America is esentially a European type country; a western democracy with advanced economy and technology, industrial production, and military might. And, like most powerful European countries, the U.S. has traditionally, historically been an imperialist country, always growing and expanding, agressively pushing is influence around the world, especially in Latin America, for its own political, economic, and military gain. As early as 1823, the United Staes declared its intention to treat Latin America as it chose to, like its personal possession (The "Monroe Doctrine"), and to prohibit all other nations, i.e. European colonial powers, from becoming involved in the region. This overreaching declaration of national policy was from the beginning unenforcable, and unenforced. But it did not preclude massive, sustained American economic and military intervention in Latin America, particularly after 1898. It is accepted as historical and econoimc fact that European colonialism in Africa and Asia had the effect of delaying economic (industrial) development and growth in those countries. India, for example, had built a thriving industrial economy in the mid eighteenth century, which was devastated by design after Great Britian took control of the sub continent from 1763 to 1947. It was simply unacceptable to their British overlords for India to emerge as serious economic competition for Great Britian. Much the same is true of Latin America, under the influence of American foreign and economic policy. Throughout the twentieth century, the trend was for duly, democratically elected socialist governments in Latin America to be overthrown with U.S. encouragement and assistance, and replaced with right wing, pro corporate, pro capitalst dictators amenable to American corporate colonialism, as long as they got their fair share of the pie. When corpoate profits made in Latin America with Latin American labor and resources end up in Manhattan sky scrapers rather than the pockets of Hispanic workers, farmers, and peasants, the seeds have been sown for societal instability, political upheavals, gang violence, mass poverty, and mass migration legal or otherwise, to the place where it all started, these United States of Avarice. This is exactly what is happening. The chickens, so to speak, are coming home to roost, and many more are on their way. We Americans are, in real spaceandtime, reaping that which we have sown.