The online exclusives below are freely accessible articles that are part of an ongoing special series associated with Tikkun’s Summer 2013 print issue, Away With All Borders: Embracing Immigration and Ending Deportation. Many of our most provocative articles on this topic appeared in that print issue, which is only accessible to subscribers. Subscribe now to read the subscriber-only print articles on the web (explore the table of contents to see what you’re missing!).
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Why Alabama’s Immigration Law Is an Assault on Religious Values
by Fred L Hammond
August 1, 2013
No Borders: Struggling for a Global Commons
by Bridget Anderson, Nandita Sharma, and Cynthia Wright
July 30, 2013
Migration and Institutional Innovation at the Edge of the State
by Robert Latham
July 30, 2013
Immigration Reform and Faith Values: The Agenda of the Lamb
by Samuel Rodriguez and Robert Gittelson
July 30, 2013
Border Insecurity: Immigration Reform on “The Line”
by Kate Morgan-Olsen and Catherine Gaffney
May 3, 2013
An Evangelical’s Call for Immigration Reform
by Carl A. Ruby
May 3, 2013
In the Name of God: Interfaith Activism, Immigration Reform, and the Dangers of Pragmatism
by Joseph Nevins
May 1, 2013
Everyone I know considers themselves to be progressive. Thankfully also none have a problem with giving amnesty to Latin Americans who risked their lives to get here. Many if not all of our forebearers did the same, escaping war and famine to arrive penniless at Ellis Island. But we do have a different problem with immigration “reform” and that is the abuse of H-1B visas.
H-1B visas are granted to well-off, educated, foreign professionals in order to offer them highly paid jobs. The companies that mostly use these visas, and which are lobbying to increase the quotas under the same banner of “immigration reform”, are those like Apple and Google, who also indulge in heavy tax avoidance schemes. They claim they need these foreign workers because no Americans have the required skill set. But if they paid their rightful taxes in order to fund education, and if they also contributed to the community by expanding training and intern programs, Americans *would* have the necessary skills.
Instead, they are eager to “extract” capable people from the home countries that invested in them, and which need their leadership, creating a brain drain in those locations, in order to make the maximum amount of profit quickly from ready-made workers. It is not unlike the extraction and misuse of natural resources, just these are human resources. Instead of putting in the extra effort to forest locally and sustainably, say, it’s easier, faster and more profitable to simply denude the Amazon forest. You also never have to deal with the damage you help create far away.
Americans have also been learning how the destruction of habeas corpus got “snuck” into a defense authorization bill, or how the “Protect Monsanto Act” got “snuck” into a spending bill. Meaning — there’s a very good chance that an increase in the H-1B quotas, which will allow further “denuding” of the brain trust of other countries, reward corporations for avoiding taxes and hiding money offshore, and do nothing to help either working Americans *or* poor immigrants, will also be “snuck” into any “immigration reform” package moving forward.
There are certainly several dozen highly paid lobbyists working to make sure this is exactly what happens. And some, if not most, of the arguments against Latin Americans are likely just a pretext, a stalling tactic until they can line up all their chips in the back room. As Deep Throat said, follow the money.
I would like to hear Tikkun address the issue of corporations trying to stiff American citizens, and steal brain wealth from abroad, through their attempts to increase the quota of H-1B visas. If progressives are ambivalent about “immigration reform” I can assure you, this is the reason.
Tikkun may wish to see a one world government but most people don’t want a giant, unaccountable, central world system. Citizenship also does mean something. It connects us in a relationship of mutual responsibility with a PLACE. And even using the most progressive places in Europe as a model, I can’t just move to Sweden, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands the UK or France just because I want to. Those countries also have quotas, standards and requirements, as they should, so that their social and economic systems can stay viable and healthy.
So please, if you would, address the elephant in the living room and expand the discussion to include the totality of the “reform” our leaders, and the lobbyists who bribe them, are cooking up. I fear, if you only talk about Latin Americans, that you will have allowed yourselves to be distracted away from the harmful machinations of the multinationals. And you may also remain frustrated, not understanding why people aren’t as fired up about “reform” as you are. It’s because we know there’s an entirely separate agenda behind the scenes.