Bernie and border policy

Immigration flows from Mexico, for example, have never been primarily shaped by border enforcement. Rather, these flows have been the product of political-economic realities in both countries, including migrant networks/pathways shaped in significant part by US capital.

Capital only favors “open borders” for capital, not for people. The history is clear: the advance of neoliberalism and its opening of borders for free movement of capital has coincided w a brutal and lethal hardening of borders for Third World workers. That's not a coincidence.

This serves capital twice: a) it foments a segmented labor market ripe for differential exploitation and b) it creates a useful scapegoat for the misery capital imposes. Bernie needn't call for open borders (though that, like worker control of means of production, is my goal).

The "open borders" question is often a misleading one because it presupposes that there are only two options: a) zero border controls or b) today's dystopian reality of border militarization. Bernie can demand a *more open* border without demanding "open borders" now.

When Bernie is asked about open borders, he needs to respond: "Wrong question. In the last three decades, we have nearly quintupled the size of our Border Patrol & built hundreds of miles of border wall—a measure that I voted against in 2006. In doing so we have militarized the border beyond recognition, which has caused thousands of migrant deaths in the desert and harmed millions in borderlands communities—people who have told me that they don't want to live in a police state and don't want to be cut off from their Mexican sister cities to which they have such deep, long-standing social and economic ties. We have Trump today in part because we have had decades of scapegoating undocumented immigrants for the harms caused by an economy and government controlled by the 1% for their exclusive benefit.

"It's no coincidence NAFTA was accompanied by a massive crackdown on "illegal immigration." Rahm Emnauel put it clearly to Clinton in a 1996 memo: the US, they believed, had to crack down on "illegal immigrants" to quiet opposition to free trade.



"And so we must demilitarize the border and ensure that it is open to asylum seekers fleeing economic devastation and violence—a situation created by our country's policies in Central America. And w/ regard to Mexico, they are our next-door neighbor, and US business has for more than a century relied on recruiting and exploiting Mexican migrant labor.

"It is immoral and hypocritical to suddenly say that Mexicans, our neighbors, are not welcome here. People say that Mexicans should come legally. Do you know how many years a Mexican relative of US citizen has to wait to do that? Mexicans need sufficient legal pathways to migrate so they can reunite with their families. If you are against unauthorized migration, you must provide Mexicans w a way to migrate legally."

We must push Bernie. BUT he is already easily the best Democratic primary candidate on immigration. He voted against 2006 Secure Fence Act, unlike Obama, Clinton and Biden. He voted against a 2007 "reform bill" that included draconian enforcement and a guestworker program. Voted against 1996 Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which greatly expanded power to detain & deport. He was one of just 87 members of House to vote "no" on catastrophic Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA).

Bernie stood in solidarity w Central American revolutionaries during the 1980s. It was the US-backed dirty wars—the murderous and even genocidal destruction of those revolutions—that is at the root of today's migration crisis. Bernie must do better on immigration. And he can.