A 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant heading to the U.S. Credit: Wilfredo Díaz/IPS

By Peter Costantini
SEATTLE, Washington, Jul 29 2013 (IPS)

Puzzled by the immigration debate in the United States? Remember the Maginot Line.

That formidable French system of fortifications was built in the 1930s by André Maginot, the French minister of war, to guard against invasion from the east. Unfortunately, the Nazi blitzkrieg did an end run around it and overran France in six weeks.

Poor Maginot has become shorthand for “fighting the last war”. But at least he was trying to confront an existential and imminent threat.

The dreaded invasion of “illegal aliens”, against which our own Maginots have built hundreds of miles of border walls, called out the National Guard and scrambled the drones, actually peaked in 2000 and has long since been over.

Since the onset of the Great Recession, slightly more Mexicans have gone home to Mexico than have come here, and currently net migration appears to be near zero. The total population of undocumented immigrants is down about eight percent from its 2007 peak.

And ultimately, rather than devastation, the influx has brought modest but widespread benefits to our economy and society.

This exodus began in the mid-1990s, driven by powerful push and pull forces. In Mexico, the North American Free Trade Agreement drove many poor farmers off their lands, and the Peso Crisis of 1994 slashed real wages by some 20 percent. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy’s technology-fuelled upswing raised wages even for low-income workers.

Such an economic convergence is unlikely to occur again. The ups and downs of the Mexican economy are now more tightly coupled with ours. And declining birth rates In Mexico along with increasing education and job opportunities suggest that factors pushing emigrants towards El Norte may continue to shrink in the medium to long term.

But our Maginots are still hunkered in their bunkers, demanding measures that were never cost-effective and often counter-productive against a phantom enemy.

The U.S.-Mexico border runs nearly 2,000 miles, much of it across the Sonora Desert, between a very rich country and a moderately poor one. It can never be completely secured against migration no matter how much it’s militarised. We long ago reached the point of diminishing returns for throwing money, technology and manpower at it.

Maginot-isation has made crossing more grueling and dangerous, but nearly all those willing to keep trying get across eventually. Meanwhile, an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the undocumented simply entered legally and overstayed their visas. The only things that effectively deter determined immigrants are tight job markets here or improved ones back home.

The border enforcement surge has also had some nasty unintended consequences. The resulting tripling of the cost of a coyote (guide) has provided an effective subsidy to the drug cartels that control key areas of the border and prey on migrants. Heavy enforcement in populated areas has driven more crossings out into the desert wilderness, where outrageous numbers of people continue to perish.

The fortified border has also discouraged circular migration. Since the beginning, the dominant pattern has been to travel back and forth every year or two and eventually build a better life back home. Now growing costs and dangers have led more immigrants to stay longer in the U.S. or to settle here permanently and bring their families.

After over a century of rising and falling with the economic tides of both countries, unauthorised immigration is deeply embedded in both cultures and economies. It’s illegal in the same way that speeding or parking overtime is.

You can also look at it as a kind of international trespassing, and if you trespass for a benign purpose over a long enough time, U.S. common law allows you to acquire title through “adverse possession”.

As to economic effects, most labour economists have found overall benefits to U.S.-born workers, the broader economy and fiscal balances. Even for the six percent of native workers without a high-school diploma, most research shows close to a wash between negative and positive effects.

Most tellingly, organisations that actually represent low-wage workers, from labour unions to community groups, heavily favour bringing migrants out of the shadows into legality and working in solidarity with them, which would help raise the floor of the labour market.

So let’s see: if undocumented immigrants didn’t do anything wrong and they’re contributing to U.S. society, why is a pathway to citizenship an “amnesty”, as restrictionists often call it?

Rather than debating how many more miles of Maginot Line to build, we should be focusing on how best to integrate unauthorised immigrants into our economy while raising living standards for all low-income families.

Instead of lavishing corporate welfare on Boeing, Raytheon and Corrections Corporation of America to militarise the border and jail non-criminal immigrants, we would get far more bang for the buck by sending a small fraction of that money to immigrant-sending regions in Mexico and Central America for jobs, housing, education and health care. And if we wanted to be over-the-top sensible, we could spend the rest of it on the same things here at home.

Unauthorised immigration to the U.S. is very unlikely to reach the levels of 10 to 15 years ago again. But if it picks up once more in a genuine economic recovery, immigration reform must grant enough visas to unskilled workers to meet the demands of the economy for their labour without squeezing low-wage workers already here.

That will require continuous negotiation and adjustment. A good way to enable this would be to create a public commission of immigration stakeholders from labour, business, communities and academia, such as we already have in communications, trade, banking and other areas.

To deal with the real security issues at the border, we could do worse than to listen to former Arizona State Attorney General Terry Goddard. The detailed plan he has laid out would hit transnational criminal cartels where it hurts by attacking their ability to launder money, and to move it and product across the line.

As satirist Stephen Colbert said of the “border surge” proposed by anti-immigrant politicians, “It worked in Iraq. You hardly see any Mexicans sneaking into Baghdad.”

Peter Costantini covered migration issues from 2006 through 2009 for IPS. He has also written for many publications about Mexico, Haiti, Nicaragua and international economics.

By Apostolis Fotiadis
ATHENS, Mar 17 2013 (IPS)

As fighting rages on throughout Syria, civilian families desperate to escape are fleeing west to Greece.

What they find here, however, is anything but a warm welcome, as massive operations to seal the borders and round up so-called “illegal immigrants” unfolds in the form of arbitrary arrests, poor conditions in detentions centres, and heavy racial profiling.

“Operation Aspis” on the northeastern Evros border region and the countrywide “Operation Xenios Zeus” involve hundreds of newly deployed forces.

Border guards spot incoming migrants and deter them from crossing into Greece. They are assisted in their duty by high tech border control equipment acquired with financial support from the European Commission (EC).

Meanwhile urban police scan the region, rounding up undocumented migrants, including refugees, and sending them to improvised detention camps around the country.

Allegations from immigrant rights groups and other international organisations regarding maltreatment of detainees as well as substandard detention conditions have circulated since the operations commenced last August.

In mid-January, during a visit to Greece, the Parliamentary Committee of the Council of Europe (PACE) urged EU members to stand in solidarity with Greece as it tackles this “migration crisis”.

PACE deplored the detaining of Syrian refugees, which is tantamount to preventing them from applying for asylum because of the lack of legal assistance, interpretation and information available to them in detention centres.

Additionally the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention undertook its first official fact-finding mission to Greece from Jan. 21-31 to assess the extent of deprivation of liberty in the country.

“The imprisonment of a migrant or an asylum seeker for up to 18 months, in conditions that are sometimes found to be even worse than in the regular prisons, could be considered a punishment imposed on a person who has not committed any crime,” Vladimir Tochilovsky, a member of the group, said at a press conference in Athens. He later told IPS that the group met with Syrians in multiple detention centres.

While some blame lies with the Greek migration authorities, other evidence suggests that complicity on the part of European officials and funding from the European Commission are the biggest culprits in this wave of rights abuses.

IPS has recently gained access to technical documents regarding the EC’s funding of these operations, which prove that the Commission considers the harsh policing of Greek borders and territory “imperative” to protecting human rights. Last December the EC made it clear that it was a priority “to continue, through the External Borders and Return Fund, financial and operational assistance to Greece in its building of an effective return and border management system” adding that the money the EC gives to Greece is “aimed at improving standards and ensuring respect of EC Law and fundamental rights”.

A revised version of the Annual Funding Programme of the European Return Fund submitted by Greek police to the European Commission outlines a nine-million-euro action to renovate or build new detention facilities that can house up to 7,200 migrants.

The project aims to “decrease allegations of human rights violations in the area of returns”.

The EC has recently restructured the Return Fund – to which member states allocated 676 million euros for the period 2008-2013 — in order to accommodate the new needs that have arise from Operation Xenios Dias.

“The amendment of the implementing rules for the Return Fund was adopted in September 2012 introducing several changes extending the possibility to finance infrastructure projects such as renovation and refurbishment or, in case of specific needs, construction of detention facilities,” Michele Cercone, EC spokesperson for home affairs, told IPS.

“In addition…new guidelines were provided to Member States in July 2012 that extend funding to running costs of detention camps in order to help Member States… improve the reception conditions in detention facilities,” he added.

Until recently, the Fund did not cover running costs, but the amendment has now made it “possible for member countries to operate these detention centres”.

Another 1.9 million euros will go towards the continuation of Operation Aspis, which will be extended until June or July 2013.

Additionally the EC has planned to increase its co-financing rate of all similar actions up to 95 percent, thus taking over practically the entire cost of operations.

A proposal is already being examined by the European Parliament and the Council of Europe and will become official legislation before the end of the month.

Annette Groth, a German parliamentarian with Die Linke a and member of the PACE delegation told IPS that Europe ought to consider its responsibility for continuing to fund operations while leaving Greece to deal with what is practically a humanitarian crisis.

“Whoever makes these decisions in Brussels knows exactly what they are doing. The situation in Greece resembles nothing like the human rights we talk about in Europe, this policy of mass detention in deplorable conditions of all incoming migrants and refugees. For the latter it is equivalent to denying them the right to asylum any longer,” said Groth.

“It makes no sense blaming only Greece. We have to recognise that the European Commission is indirectly responsible for these human rights violations,” she added.

Evidence of appalling conditions for migrants is unlikely to spur a rapid change in EC policy.

According to Cercone, “Only after the completion of the whole process”, within a time frame of three years, “will it be possible to assess in detail the effective use of funds”.

But a source in a major international organisation and with interlocutor status to the EC has told IPS that the Commission not only knows but is also very concerned about the situation in Greece.

Furthermore, he said, assistance from the Return Fund is only to be dispensed for expenses relating to detention centres holding returnees, not asylum seekers. “Since Greece is detaining indiscriminately…funding might be withheld,” he told IPS.

*The full EU response to IPS’ questions can be read here.

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