Yes, this is exactly what the Right has been talking about. Another poor Latino sneaking into our blessed country to leech off the system, exploit our freedoms, make trouble, and steal jobs from deserving Americans. When faced with such an enemy, I'm so glad people like Lou Dobbs and Tom Tancredo are out there to keep us safe.
Deportee Back Home After Near-Death Trip to U.S.
by Jennifer Ludden
Morning Edition, April 7, 2008 · As the U.S. intensified its illegal immigration crackdown in recent years, deportations to El Salvador increased dramatically. Last year, according to El Salvador's immigration ministry, 20,000 Salvadorans were sent back home from the U.S., compared to 3,500 who were deported in 2004.
On a recent blazing hot afternoon, security guards escorted 33 men and nine women from the tarmac at Cuscatlan International Airport in San Salvador into a cramped processing room. Some deportees look defiant. Others look destroyed and lost. But they all seem to brighten as they file into rows of plastic chairs and find on each one a warm pupusa — the thick tortilla that is El Salvador's national dish. Officials try to bolster the group with speeches welcoming them home.
"Thank God you are here and in much better shape than many others," a police officer tells them. "Some return wounded or dead. But you are very much alive, ready to set off on your next trip if you choose!"
Quiet laughter fills the room as the deportees nod and cheer. Some say they do plan to go back to the U.S. as soon as possible. With few prospects in El Salvador and family still in America, they say they have nothing to lose. But not Julio Cuellar. In a small room, 45-year-old Cuellar gives a migration official his personal details. Cuellar tells a government official that three months earlier, he abandoned his job as a state policeman to go to the U.S. When the woman asks what he is going to do now that he's back in El Salvador, Cuellar pauses before responding. "Well, I need to go to my house and talk with my family," Cuellar says. "More than anything, I need to explain the experience I've lived through."
Julio's Story
The El Salvador native has diabetes and nearly died in the Arizona desert. When Cuellar ran out of insulin and became sick, the smuggler who he paid to help him cross into the U.S. abandoned him. He spent two days without food or shelter before the U.S. border patrol rescued him. What would make someone do this — especially a middle-aged man with a full-time job? Cuellar's daughter, Guadalupe, blames herself. She was pregnant when he left and had just been diagnosed with cancer. There was no money for treatment. "My father had so many debts already," she says. "He wanted to pay those and make life easier for us, so I could quit my job and stay home with the children."
Guadalupe's parents long ago divorced, and her father raised her. For the past few years her mom has been working — illegally — in Texas. She says her dad's coyote — or smuggler — assured him it would be an easy trip. But for three months, she didn't hear anything, and she wondered if something went wrong or if he had died. Then a call came from the U.S. government that Cuellar was being deported three days later.
'Never Get Ahead'
Cuellar's family — his daughter, grandson, great-nephew and sister — meet him in the airport parking lot. They've waited for hours in the hot sun, and as he emerges, they're in for a shock. In his short time away, Cuellar has lost 40 pounds and aged visibly. As they share long, tight hugs, the entire family breaks into loud sobs. Cuellar then cradles the 2-month-old granddaughter he is meeting for the first time.
Three hours later, the sun is almost setting in the lower-working class suburb where Cuellar and his daughter live. When they get off a bus, Guadalupe says her father is too ashamed for the neighbors to see him, so they use a dirt path behind the row of houses, then casually arrive at the front door. The family squeezes into a living space the size of many an American walk-in closet, and Cuellar tries to explain his predicament. For years, he says, he has gotten by on loans. In this country, Cuellar says, a paycheck alone doesn't even provide three meals a day. Then, a few years back, he co-signed a loan for a friend. The friend disappeared, and the lender came after Cuellar. After Guadalupe's cancer diagnosis, Cuellar says, he felt trapped and desperate, with no other option than seeking work in the U.S. "You can kill yourself here working and never get ahead," Cuellar says.
But now that this gamble has failed, Cuellar is in worse straits. To pay his smuggler, Cuellar gave the man the deed to his house. When Cuellar left the country, he lost his police job. And his near-death experience in the desert has left him with a host of ongoing health problems. Cuellar swears he'll never try crossing to the U.S. again. But he still has no idea how to fix the problems that pushed him to go in the first place.
This story was produced for broadcast by Marisa Penaloza.
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Well, some folks on the right advocate against immigration, though folks on the left advocate a fair bit of economic protectionism which helps keep Mr Cuellar's home country poor. There's an interesting recent academic paper (http://www.cepr.org/pubs/new-dps/dplist.asp?dpno=6760.asp) quantifying the notion that much of the economic costs of protectionism are borne by the poorest of the world, and to some extent by the environment. The paper's authors also note the bitter irony that many of the same politicians who put forward attempts to fight poverty and improve the environment simultaneously pursue protectionist economic policies whose costs fall hardest on the poor and the environment.
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Sure, I agree that protectionism hurts the Third World and offers meager, if any, benefits to rich nations. But that was not the subject of the article. I think a more relevant point I was trying to suggest is that the motives of illegal immigrants are grossly mischaracterized by some politicians/media figures who sensationalize an already emotional issue. Some people are in such dire situations that they almost have no choice but to wager their entire savings, part with their loved ones, and risk their lives to cross the border, with no guarantee of success.
If you were Mr. Cuellar, what would you do? Does he deserve to be labeled "felon" as some conservatives desire? I know the Border Patrol probably saved his life, and could have left him in the desert to perish, so they deserve recognition for their compassion. But actually there have been several accounts of jailed immigrants dying in Border Patrol custody because they were denied vital health care (even AIDS patients), and plenty of other immigrants died in altercations with, or in an attempt to evade, the BP.
Some countries are poor. They have been for centuries and will be for decades to come (or possibly forever, but I hope not). It's probably not all the fault of rich nations (despite the after-effects of colonialism, the manipulation of global markets by insiders/cartels, and the exploitation that unfortunately accompanies some international commerce), and it's not really our job to fix it. But at the minimum, we could approach the sad situation fairly and humanely, instead of demonizing and humiliating the people who are already the lowest and most destitute in our society - a society where the rich-poor gulf is quite extreme versus other industrialized nations.
Yes, some Dems might claim to want to repeal NAFTA and protect the few remaining US manufacturing jobs, but come on - this is campaign season. Really, even with huge executive powers, they have no practical means of carrying it out (isn't it quite hard to get trade deals through Congress, much less a divided one?). Obama said that globalization is necessary, a reality, and can reduce poverty - with the appropriate controls in place. Most economists would agree. Whether loose treaties like NAFTA provide sufficient controls is another discussion. I would hope that any leader would seek to punish abuses by anyone who engages in "economic terrorism", even giants like Bechtel and Dow.
NAFTA was implemented under a Democratic administration, and plenty of Democrats are not "anti-free-trade". But I would like to think that some politicians still care about human rights and dignity more than prosperity (maybe I'm dreaming, and maybe those factors are all related). The yearly Farm Bills are clear examples of federal waste, protectionism, and economic injustice against developing, agrarian economies, and it's sad that Pelosi types are pushing for it while Bush has tried unsuccessfully to tone it down. People like John Edwards, who are caring leaders but economics lightweights pandering for union votes, do not speak for all Dems, just as Tom Tancredo and Rick Santorum don't speak for all Republicans.
And the IMF recently published a study finding that global wealth inequality (as measured by the Gini coefficient and other metrics) has increased in the last 25 years, and correlates with globalization. Globalized trade appears to reduce inequality, but globalized finance (foreign direct investment, a.k.a. colonialism lite) actually increases it. That is another important distinction we need to remember when diving into the broad "globalization issue".
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Trade issues are never very clear cut; from what I gather after watching the Jim Leher News Hour today the trade pact with Columbia which is currently pending would actually zero an import tariff imposed on American goods and have no effect on imported Columbian goods (they are already imported "freely"). While I can appreciate the position of the Democrats (we tried to zero it before, we won't do it *now* unless we get what we *really* want) I hesitate to dismiss J's point as not being central to the discussion: free trade (like free flow of labor) has everything to do with economics, which is at the heart of the story. I agree that there is much to fear with respect to any discussion involving immigration (e.g. in-state tuition eligibility for undocumented peoples) since the right tends to provide platitudes and truisms in place of substantive discussion, though I also have faith that the "rightness" of capital (i.e. the nature of capital and its predisposition to flow across artificial borders and boundaries) will overcome much of the hackneyed xenophobic nonsense (e.g. a fence between Mexico and the USA which won't keep *anyone* out, let alone ever get built properly).
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I guess the only way to curb the flow of immigration is to lift other nations out of poverty. Otherwise they will keep coming and coming no matter what barriers we erect, as you said. BTW - funny side note: DC paid Boeing over $20M (a no-bid contract I'm sure) to design and build the high-tech "virtual fence" on our southern border. But the GAO has complained that the system sucks. It gives false alarms from small animals and tumbling sagebrush. And Boeing optimized the system for use with their computers, not the government's! Typical.
I was not intending to dismiss J's legitimate points on global trade. But protectionism (as endorsed by Dems or whomever) is not really a direct cause of Mr. Cuellar's situation or people like him. As a case study, El Salvador has plenty of resources, basic economic infrastructure, and cheap, semi-skilled labor. I guess they just lack outside business partners? Their government leaves a lot to be desired (well, if we cared, we could offer assistance with reforms, instead of dumping it off on the distrusted and limited World Bank), but it's not like an environment totally non-conducive to commerce. I guess the "numbers" don't look good and larger profits can be had elsewhere? Western companies haven't been setting up shop enough, for these reasons or another, so instead the labor came to us!
El Salvador had a typical sad post-colonial history, though not as tragic as Haiti or Nicaragua. Their cash crop was coffee. But after independence from the Spanish, of course a class-based, decades-long civil war erupted during the late Cold War. "Left-leaning" peasant revolutionaries, tired of exploitation and ostensibly backed by Cuba, against a right-wing US-backed military dictatorship hoarding wealth and power (that incurred international condemnation after government-linked death squads slaughtered foreign missionaries). The country went to pot and over 50,000 died. There was war as recently as 1991 ("elections" were held in the aftermath, so Reagan and Bush took credit for a democracy success story). A decade later, we expect the Salvadorans to just magically rebuild and benefit from the global economy without any outside help?
Like the idea war to turn people away from religious extremism, we have to give the Cuellars of the world a viable choice, instead of risking it all to cross over and maybe cause more pain for everyone. You mentioned the interesting example of Colombia. Of course long before Plan Colombia, the US has tried to discourage rural Colombians from participating in coca production by offering farming alternatives such as corn or coffee. But due to Western manipulation of commodity markets, Third World farmers still can't make ends meet. So we really didn't offer the Colombians an alternative at all, especially when competing with heavily subsidized Western farmers (J's point).
Free trade *might* help nations like El Salvador in some ways, but it also opens the door for abuse and corruption, as we've seen elsewhere. That's not to say that it isn't worth trying to expand trade, but how about we work to achieve fair trade? I think as Hen said in a previous discussion, as long as rich nations depend on a constant flow of artificially cheap resources to sustain growth/over-consumption, we'll never achieve fair trade and balanced immigration.
