By Shabbir Rizvi
Since the end of the infamous Title 42 Act earlier last year, hundreds of thousands of migrants have entered the United States from its southern border.
Federal, state, and local governments have struggled to provide adequate care, assistance, and integration for these incoming migrants, despite more than enough housing, resources, food, and of course, jobs available.
“Sanctuary cities”, such as Chicago and New York, have offered to take in thousands of asylum seekers, but the bureaucratic loopholes combined with dead-end political exercises have resulted in an acute crisis.
Shelters are packed, many migrants are living in tent cities outside police stations, and a few, including children, have even been killed due to lack of adequate care and resources.
The border has long been a polarizing topic within the US. Former US President Donald Trump vowed to build a wall to stop incoming migrants.
Democrat presidents such as Barack Obama and Joe Biden vowed more border security but with less racially charged language like Trump while delivering the same violent practices at the border and lack of care within the country. As we will see later, the language and the promises around the border are just for show.
Now, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has upped the ante. Abbott, joined by the support of 25 Republican-led states, has mobilized state national guards to be sent to the border to prevent the flow of migrant entry.
Abbott is going directly against the federal government, which has its border laws enforced by agents from the US Department of Homeland Security and the Customs and Border Patrol.
Earlier in January, Abbott deployed national guard troops to block off Shelby Park – not just to enforce Abbott’s rigid border control, but to block off federal agents from intervening in the process.
Shelby Park, a location within the town of Eagle Pass, has been a known migrant entry point for years. Whether encountering Texas Rangers and guards, or Federal agents, there is horrific violence and cruelty imposed on migrants crossing over.
In response to the mobilization of national guards and other state agencies, the US Department of Homeland Security has sent the Texas governor an ultimatum, demanding entry into the pass, citing a Supreme Court order vowing to slash razor wire and other blockades set up by the Texas national guard, now deemed unauthorized.
Within the US political realm, this is being boiled down to the classic “states versus federal” rights dilemma, where a state can claim that certain federal laws have too much overreach, and vice versa.
The border standoff, now known as the “Standoff at Eagles Pass,” highlights the deadlock of the American political landscape when it comes to effectively solving problems.
More importantly, it completely misses the point and the crux of the issue. The argument between “state and federal rights” is a false one. If one side wins over the other, it does not address the root of the migrant issue, which many have described as a “border crisis,” but even this falls short.
If you ask American pundits why there is a border crisis in the first place, knee-jerk reactions from a lifetime of nationalistic propaganda will always issue the same response: Migrants want American jobs, and the American way of life, and they hate their own country.
This arrogant mindset has completely blocked the issue of mass migration from being addressed.
One must accurately understand who these migrants are in order to understand why they want to come here in the first place. Most of the migrants are from Guatemala, Honduras, Cuba, El Salvador, Venezuela and Colombia.
These countries are all subject to cruel US foreign policy: sanctions and coups that cause instability, economic strangulation, corruption bred by US agencies, threats of mercenary plots, and gang violence fueled by drug trade that is conducted via the American spy agency CIA.
The crippling sanctions on Venezuela, in particular, which is a member of OPEC and an oil-rich country, have resulted in hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans fleeing not only economic strangulation but threats of coups and US warfare.
US politicians quickly denounce the “failure of socialism” – however, this is cheap run-of-the-mill US imperialist rhetoric. Venezuela is oil-rich and has plenty of room for growth. It is actively industrializing and building itself, despite sanctions.
This part is important, as we will see.
In order to understand the border crisis, one must understand the primary political contradiction in the region – imperialism – and arrive at the crisis from that very contradiction.
The US imperialist foreign policy has two benefits for US capitalists, whom the US government ultimately serves. First and foremost, of course, is the destabilization of independent countries that refuse to be US junior partners run by comprador regimes.
By aiming to topple countries like Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, and others, the US can sow chaos and install puppet leaders that would sell off their country’s resources for cheap. US capitalists would penetrate the market, reducing state-owned enterprises into private enterprises owned by US capitalists.
If countries refuse to submit, sanctions are put into place, making trade and the movement of commerce harder or downright impossible, as is the case with Cuba. Furthermore, predatory loans could be offered by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that could forfeit the state’s rights to its own labor practices and resources.
This makes the cost of living tremendously high, causing an acute migration crisis – and here comes benefit two for US imperialism.
Hundreds of thousands of desperate migrants are more likely to work for cheap, braving treacherous conditions in order to make it past the border.
US capitalists can make billions in profits from cheap labor, and even small-time business owners can cash in on cheap migrant labor.
Undocumented workers are also subject to state violence by an overbearing police and migrant force that can deport them at a moment’s notice.
Thus, the migrant workforce is forced to work for cheap, and while the US dollar may have more purchasing power in their home country, the amount sent back from remittances is not nearly enough to stabilize industrialization or provide mass education to a diminishing workforce.
At home, US privatization has either taken over or is attempting to, and money sent from the US will likely only help bring most families to subsistence-level living.
And here lies the problem: the Texas state government and the US federal government are fighting a battle that ultimately does not fix the issue.
It is a petty standoff over migration management, over whether the state or federal government gets to dictate migrant labor, and does not address the overlying causation of migration itself.
Biden has called for Congress to create a bill that would secure the border in a manner that gives the federal government more power. Again, this does nothing to sort out the issue, as mass migration is an intended feature of US foreign policy – not an unwanted symptom.
Even if the border is locked down, the capitalist class of the US, which funnels billions of dollars annually to politicians via PACs and lobbying, will have the final say.
“Illegal” labor is in fact a demanded feature of the imperialist system, and the capitalist class prefers it that way: labor without rights means unorganized labor, labor that cannot sue for malpractice, labor that cannot legally form unions, labor that by US racist political standards should not even be there and therefore can be deported and swapped out.
The border spat will likely end without a single shot fired. And even if one is fired, it will not cause any sort of “civil war” as pundits are sensationalizing.
The “border crisis,” as it is framed in US media, is a crisis of imperialism. It is a known fact of the imperialist system, one that opens new markets and creates a flow of cheap, exploitable labor for US capitalists.
As long as the system of imperialism stays, you can expect migration crises and foreign plots to stay as well.
Shabbir Rizvi is a Chicago-based political analyst with a focus on US internal security and foreign policy.
(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV)
