CommentsACCORDING TO LIZ - Do we want to build a wall across the northern border to keep America isolated?
Is it pure chance that Bernie and three of the four members of the Squad are from states on the Canadian border?
Washington, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Vermont, New York – what do these states all have in common? They’ve been infected by some virus from north of the 49th parallel.
If you look at literacy, the top four states are all along the northern border – New Hampshire, Minnesota, North Dakota and Vermont.
South Dakota comes in fifth while California, Texas and Florida are all in the bottom five of fifty.
What can be done to fend off this plague? Keep Canadian thought from infecting Americans.
Building a bigger and better wall across the northern tier of states will generate a host of problems starting with the fact that most Americans in those states like their Canadian neighbors and benefit from the proximity.
And it may be difficult to generate the same racist outrage among Tea Party Trumpisstas that was directed by the ex-prez against people with darker skins who don’t speak English.
Or find the cheap labor that the lack of a wall allows along the southern border.
For many years, until after 9/11, it was possible to cross the border with just a driver’s license. Canadians were our friends.
But now?
Let’s look at the target of the Trump wall.
The southern border has been in the crosshairs of American politicians for much of the country’s existence. The southeastern states were bought from France (Louisiana) or Spain (Florida), or relinquished by Spain following territorial disputes (Alabama, Mississippi).
Texas was annexed nine years after it had declared independence from Mexico in 1836 and was more a result of political gamesmanship between then-president Tyler, future president Polk, the southern Democrats and Manifest Destiny proponents.
The Spanish province of Alta California was claimed by Mexico in the wake of its successful War of Independence in 1822, and was ceded to the United States in 1848 after the Mexican-American War failed to return Texas to them.
Then split into what became the three states of California, New Mexico, and Arizona.
The south has enjoyed waves of immigration from Mexico, Central America, the Philippines, China and Vietnam, replacing jobs once filled by the descendants of slaves who headed to the north and big cities in the Southern Diaspora searching for their American Dream.
What do these states have in common? A majority of their populations are not white. A significant number speak a language other than English as their primary tongue.
They are the by-blows of slavers, they are wetbacks, Cajuns, boatpeople, they are the remnants of the original indigenous peoples from across the continent and down into South America.
They are significantly poorer and less educated than their northern counterparts and their states, especially California, suffer from a noteworthy and rapidly growing wealth disparity.
These are the states along whose borders Trump wanted to build his wall of exceptionalism. To keep out the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse from south of the border.
Throughout much of its history, the United States has meddled in the politics of its neighbors – Cuba, Panama, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Panama, Granada, Columbia, Nicaragua, Honduras – generally on behalf of corporate interests.
Much of Central America became known as banana republics due to American intervention on behalf of the United Fruit Company to oppose democratic advances for the workers.
First it was the army and then the U.S. labor demand – farmworkers for the fields and orchards of California and Florida, gardeners, cleaning ladies, restaurant staff, factory and piecework – often paid under the table and overlooked in case it might drive business south of the border.
The poor and destitute of Mexico and Central America come looking for work to feed their kids, or simply fleeing violence at the hands of dictators and their henchmen, too often installed or propped up by the American government.
Many if not most work hard under poor conditions yet manage to save a little money to help those left behind or pay coyotes to bring family members across the border.
They would not be here if American politicians had not colluded with American businessmen to look the other way on the hiring of illegal aliens to labor on farms and in factories, in jobs eschewed by many legal workers, and too often for corporate employers who break laws and abuse their indentured labor.
Yes, some recent immigrants are the bad apples every society throws up, and some have found their way to monetize into the American dream by smuggling – people, guns, drugs – often tied to gangs on both sides of the border.
But even those who remain in Mexico have become part of the American economy, supplying cheap labor in the maquiladoras whereby U.S. companies profit from the wage differential. Mexicans suffer as slave labor and their American counterparts lose well-paying union jobs only to suffer the indignity of slipping off the unemployment rolls to become Walmart greeters on food stamps.
And the banana republic oligarchies continue to feed into the production and supply chain that delivers products to U.S. consumers.
The suppression of their own people has created violence that provides products for the American corporations cheap, keeps true reform at bay, enables their own inequality and is a driver of northbound emigration.
Lack of education and abject poverty, domestic violence and targeted murders, gangs (often run by criminals deported from the United States) and out-of-control corruption in Central America now means that one in three adults see the United States as their only opportunity to escape ongoing oppression, too often initiated by American interference.
The U.S. claims it wants to help but its trade policies in recent decades have not only impoverished the majority of the people but created untenable environmental conditions through mono-cropping and other short-sighted practices that while profitable in the short term are destructive of both land and people in the long run.
Solutions? Let’s build bridges.
Why not welcome in some of the ideas from beyond our northern border and focus on remediation of the problems to the south?
Caring for workers and families and ecologies. Setting parameters to encourage real democracy and oust the tyrants and their henchmen in the banana republics. Ensuring that the people massing along the Rio Grande, crossing by boat to Florida, trudging through southwestern deserts all have real options.
Including viable options to stay in their own country instead of having to flee to the United States.
And give our working poor, including the multitudes who supported Trump because for far too long they were cut out of the American dream in their own country by corporate greed, the chance to train for and establish meaningful careers with wages sufficient to support their families, to finally reach the brass ring they were promised at birth and which has forever dangled out of their reach.
(Liz Amsden is a contributor to CityWatch and an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives. She has written extensively on the City's budget and services as well as her many other interests and passions. In her real life she works on budgets for film and television where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today's world.)
