Why are so many #migrants here in the first place? - Waging Nonviolence
▻http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/power-asking-simple-question-many-migrants-first-place
The stories we tell must expose the #neoliberal policies and practices that made our parents, grandparents and cousins leave their countries in the first place. We must debunk the U.S.-centered fairy tale that this county is the perfect model of democracy and the place where all dreams come true, and that those are reasons why so many millions of people have risked their lives to live here.
It’s a fairy tale that is commonly held among migrants moving to other imperial countries as well, such as when my family left Algeria for France. Harsha Walia (an organizer with No One is Illegal in Canada) defines this common global phenomenon as border imperialism. As she explains, seeing it through the lens of imperialism, “It take us away from an analysis that blames and punishes migrants, or one that forces migrants to assimilate and establish their individual worth. Instead, it orients the gaze squarely on the processes of displacement and migration within the global political economy of capitalism and colonialism.”
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Today, nearly one quarter of El Salvador’s population lives and works in the United States. The economy, which once relied on its coffee exports, now depends on the remittances of its workers abroad who send money back to their family. This exchange is expedited by the fact that since 2001, their official currency is the dollar. In other words, every deportation of a Salvadorean worker in the United States has a direct negative impact on the economy of this small Central American nation.
To understand this situation, it’s helpful to start with El Salvador’s 12-year civil war, which was to become the most costly U.S. intervention in Latin America.
The United States spent $1 million a day funding death squads and a far-right military government in efforts to ward off the spread of communism and “another Nicaragua.” As a result, the country was traumatized by massive human rights violations and the death of 75,000 people. But perhaps what really tipped the scales was the formation of U.S.-funded private development organizations like FUSADES, which furthered neoliberal programs inside the country. The United States has also meddled in elections and set preconditions for U.S. aid that incentivizes — one might say bribes — politicians to open up the country to foreign multinationals. The recent enactment of the public-private partnership law, for example, grants “the government the right to sell off natural resources, infrastructure and services to foreign multinationals.”
#Etats-Unis #escadrons_de_la_mort #multinationales #néolibéralisme
