Why Immigration reform eludes us
"So let’s just focus on Haiti. The most blatant act of control was our invasion in 1915, the start of a military occupation that lasted until 1934."
Herb Rothschild
We reap what we sow.
Herb Rothschild has done guest posts here, describing the United States' legacy of suffering and death in Afghanistan and Latin America. Schoolchildren are taught that the United States has been a great benefactor to the world, bringing better health, prosperity, and democracy to grateful faraway places. The full history is more complicated and troubling. We have toppled democratic governments, installed dictators, tortured and killed people struggling for self government.
Educated at Yale and Harvard, Herb Rothschild returned to his home state of Louisiana to join the English Department at LSU and get into the Civil Rights Movement. He promoted civil rights and civil liberties in Louisiana. He worked in the Peace Movement in both Louisiana and Texas. After moving to Southern Oregon in 2009, he ran Peace House in Ashland. He has been a political activist on behalf of the environment, justice, economic fairness and opportunity, and peace.
Guest Post by Herb Rothschild
Why immigration reform eludes us
Because the news media confines its reporting to what’s happening now, when a flood of refugees from Haiti washed up at Del Rio, Texas in September, they gave us the sketchiest understanding of why that happened. The incoherence of the Biden Administration’s response suggests that it, too, can’t form a coherent understanding despite having access to personnel with knowledge more extensive than the recent earthquake and the assassination of Haiti’s president (the only events even the best mainstream news programs cited as causes).
Donald Trump handled the challenge of immigration across our southern border appallingly but with consummate political skill. Unless a president is willing to imitate Trump, which Democratic presidents can’t afford to do politically even if they have the stomach for it, they cannot successfully handle the challenge. Not unless, that is, they acknowledge, and curb, the behavior that drives people to seek refuge in the very nation that is the primary cause of their misery.
I developed this argument in regard to Mexico. I pointed to the subsidized U.S. corn that poured into Mexico when NAFTA created the Canada-U.S.- Mexico free trade zone, which turned Mexico’s small farmers into landless laborers. I also mentioned our insatiable demand for recreational drugs and our refusal to repudiate the policies that have created a narco-nation across our border, with its pervasive violence and corruption.
Historically, however, the U.S. has rarely been able to control directly Mexico’s economy and government. Not so Central American nations like El Salvador and Honduras, or Caribbean nations like Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Our military interventions and occupations as well as our covert operations—all aimed at securing their resources for U.S. corporations and banks—have been so frequent that I cannot enumerate them here. I urge you to check out the list posted at https://yachana.org/teaching/resources/interventions.htmlSo let’s just focus on Haiti. The most blatant act of control was our invasion in 1915, the start of a military occupation that lasted until 1934. We instituted a Marine-run regime operating under martial law. Resistance was suppressed with executions and torture. Hundreds of thousands who were forced into near slavery died working on large infrastructure projects. At least 260,000 acres were stolen by North American corporations. Most Haitians lived in dire poverty while the U.S. allowed a small minority, French-cultured mulatto Haitians, a share of power and wealth.
The invasion and occupation were carried out largely at the behest of National City Bank, which had acquired investor control of Banque Nationale de la République d'Haiti, Haiti’s only commercial bank; it served as the national treasury. Shortly after the invasion, Marines seized Haiti’s gold reserves and sent them to National City Bank’s New York headquarters. As if that weren’t enough economic control, U.S. government representatives took control of Haiti's customs houses and administrative institutions. Forty percent of Haiti's national income was designated to repay debts to American and French banks.
When FDR, the only president to repudiate U.S. imperialism in Latin America, ended the occupation, the U.S. left a modernized Haitian army to do its dirty work for the next several decades. We supported dictators like “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his son “Baby Doc,” but not leaders who wanted Haiti’s resources to serve its people. In 2004, we again invaded to remove Bertrand Aristide, the democratically elected president.
Our forcible domination of Haiti and our blatant theft of its wealth constitute the worst injustices we’ve perpetrated in Latin America and the Caribbean, but the differences are of degree, not of kind. The only constructive proposal put forward to stem the tide of migration to our southern border is to help their home countries develop economically. This help is spoken of as aid, which panders to our unshakeable conviction that we are a blessing to the world. If people knew the history I’ve just recounted, however, such help would be understood as reparations.
No U.S. administration is going to own up to that history, to the immense harm we’ve done in the past, because we want to keep doing it in the present. Demanding an end to cruel treatment of people who arrive at the border will count for little until we demand an end to our cruel treatment of the general populations of the countries they’ve fled. Comprehensive immigration reform will never be comprehensive if we don’t reform our conduct in the hemisphere.