To all of this, of course, one must add the economic domination of the region by the U.S. This, most notably, includes NAFTA which destroyed Mexican agriculture and resulted in a mass migration of Mexicans to the USA.
In order to address immigration, we must come to terms with the role of the United States in Latin American and the Caribbean. We cannot continue to act as if there is no correlation. We cannot continue to act as if the USA can avoid responsibility for the depth of the crises in these regions and simply say no to migration.
Yet, this is what most of the Republican Party and many Democrats seem to want to do. None of this is to suggest that the immigration crisis lends itself to easy solutions. What it is to suggest, however, is that people would rather stay in their own countries as opposed to migrating. That means that the U.S. can and should provide the necessary support to countries that are attempting to stabilize and grow. It should not be promoting or endorsing coups, as it did as recently as 2009 in the case of Honduras, or as it implies in its relationship to the Venezuelan opposition. It needs to be cooperating with the governments of Latin American and the Caribbean on the basis of mutual respect rather than imposing what it sees as solutions, a factor that has contributed to the near civil war situation involving criminal gangs in Mexico.
While the U.S. political elite, and much of our population, would rather forget history and ignore the role of the USA in the crimes against the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean, if we want solutions, we need to bite the bullet, so to speak, and come to terms with our own role.
There actually is no alternative.
(Bill Fletcher Jr. is a racial justice, labor and global justice writer and activist. He is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies. Follow him on Facebook and at www.billfletcherjr.com.)
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