I sent this letter to my neighborhood weekly newspaper, and it was published August 9, 2018 by the Bulletin Newspaper (a Boston weekly) on page 14 here, titled "Big Money Is the Enemy."
Dear Editor,
There is an important fact about illegal immigration from Mexico and Central America that many people do not know. The reason for the massive illegal immigration is primarily because American Big Money, for decades, has been using our government to do things that have forced millions of people to have to illegally migrate into the United States to survive.
For example, Big Money got the federal government to subsidize agribusiness so it could dump very cheap corn into Mexico to force small Mexican farmers out of business and force them to survive by seeking employment the only place they can find it--in the United States. The U.S. government even made it a condition of the NAFTA agreement that Mexico eliminate the section of its constitution that gave Mexican peasants rights to the land that would have enabled them to stay in Mexico despite the dumping of cheap U.S. corn.
Big Money wants millions of Mexicans to be forced to illegally immigrate for two reasons: 1) it makes them a source of super-cheap labor because their illegal status makes them easy to cow into submission and 2) it makes them a perfect scape goat to be the object of anger that we would otherwise justifiably direct at Big Money because of the very real hardships we citizens suffer due to Big Money.
Likewise, Big Money for decades has conspired with local elites in Central America to make life-threatening conditions for poor people the norm there, which is why so many of those people are seeking some safety inside the United States by illegally immigrating. The fact is that the immigration laws and procedures are designed to prevent the vast majority of these overwhelmingly good and decent people from Mexico and Central America from being able to legally immigrate, and they know it. For sources about all of this, please go to the articles at http://newdemocracyworld.org/culture/corn2.html and http://newdemocracyworld.org/culture/illegal.html.
Yes, Americans have a right to limit immigration into our nation. And yes, under normal circumstances people should only immigrate legally. And yes, the massive illegal immigration causes some very real problems for American citizens. But when Big Money--for its own very selfish reasons--forces millions of people to immigrate illegally, and then declares them to be criminals for doing so, the moral--and practical!--response is not to preach to the illegal immigrants about the importance of obeying the law, but to stop Big Money from forcing people to illegally immigrate.
And guess what? The people who want to stop Big Money from doing this the most are the illegal immigrants themselves! We should treat these people as friends with a common enemy--Big Money. We should not treat them like dirt by deporting them as if they were our enemy.
John Spritzler