A Perceived Crisis
In recent days the news media (both liberal and conservative) have been providing a lot of coverage to what they depict as a growing crisis on our border with Mexico where thousands of refugees from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala have been congregating. These refugees have been motivated to leave their homes by the ravages of nature caused by a warming planet, hunger, gang violence and a general breakdown in governmental services. Knowing that the United States has been reluctant to accept families, many have chosen to send their children alone to seek refuge in our country. This, in turn, has resulted in mounting problems in our children’s detention centers which are struggling to process hundreds of unaccompanied minor children who will eventually be turned over to the Department of Health and Human Services for permanent quartering. This has been a seasonal phenomenon for the past several years although the rate at which asylum seekers are now appearing at our border has increased.
In addition, Republican politicians have joined the media chorus decrying the plight of these refugees, blaming Biden for making the problem worse by displaying empathy for the asylum seekers. They even are faulting the Biden administration for its refusal to denominate the plight of the refugees as a crisis. Those politicians are not acting out of any genuine concern for the refugees. Had they any real feeling for the well-being of the refugees, they would have protested their treatment by the Trump administration who separated children from their parents and encouraged border patrol agents to use lethal force to repel them. Rather, they are echoing the media’s coverage out of a desire to distract from the nation’s more serious problems and to excite the anger of their political base. Moreover, the remedies employed by the Trump administration which they supported do not even address the root causes of the problem nor what is best for our nation.
Compared to other challenges faced by the Biden administration, this one seems small and its prominence in the media appears to be more a product of politics than of human suffering. It’s not my intention to belittle the plight of those seeking asylum in our country as their situations are dire and are worthy of concern. The problem is that those who are focusing on their suffering are ignoring far more pressing problems confronting our nation.
All nations of the earth are currently faced with three major disruptive forces: climate change, globalization and technological advancement. Each of these forces is causing enormous disruptions in the way people of all nations conduct their daily activities and are the issues that deserve our nation’s highest priorities. The problems caused by these forces are further aggravated by governmental mismanagement. What is transpiring on our southern border is simply a symptom of those issues.
There is no serious doubt that climate change is real and that its disruptive impact each year causes hundreds of billions of dollars in damages. The increase in the temperature of the earth is measurable and is causing ice shelves around to world to melt with a corresponding rise in sea levels which are slowly reclaiming land in some of the world’s most populous cities. In addition, rising sea temperatures are increasing the number and severity of tropical storms which inflict hundreds of billions of dollars of damage each year. Rising air temperatures are also having an impact around the world, turning once rich productive farmlands into dust bowls and forests into tinderboxes where wildfires rage out of control. This is a major problem affecting people all over the earth and yet it receives precious little coverage in the news media and its existence is denied by most Republicans.
Globalization is an almost equally disruptive force. Advances in transportation have enabled companies producing cars and other complex products to acquire component parts from all corners of the earth. Those advances have also facilitated the production of goods, allowing the production of items of all kinds to take place where they can be produced at the lowest costs. In many cases, this is in developing countries where labor costs are the lowest. In America, we now obtain most of the items we seek from other countries and the U.S. economy has become a predominantly service economy. Even high tech products invented in the U.S., like computers and medical equipment, are now regularly manufactured in China and other developing countries. Although demagogic politicians promise to bring back manufacturing jobs lost to overseas competitors, this is never going to happen. It would be easier to hold back the rising seas than to convince the American public that they should pay more for products that can be produced elsewhere at a lower cost. As a result of globalization America loses millions of jobs each year and, with each job loss, there is a diminution of our nation’s economy.
Technological advancements have been no less destructive of employment opportunities in this country. The coal mining jobs which Donald Trump promised to restore were not exported to China or some third-world country; they were lost to newer, less costly and cleaner forms of energy (such as natural gas, wind and solar energy). Equally importantly, new mining equipment and techniques allow a few dozen workers to extract as much coal as it previously took hundreds of miners to do so. This phenomenon has not been limited the coal industry. It has affected every industry where machines have replaced workers. There are fewer grocery store clerks as bar codes and credit card readers allow three or four check-out clerks do what previously required a dozen or more workers. Similarly, toll collectors have essentially vanished from our highways and bridges as electronic devices replaced them and speeded traffic in the process. Each year similar innovations eliminate millions of American jobs.
Globalization and technological advancements have left America with few options for maintaining full employment. We can innovate and create new products not otherwise available on the world market. The recent creation of the three new U.S. COVID vaccines is a good example of creating jobs for Americans through innovation. Jobs threatened by foreign competition can saved by creating new ways to manufacture products at a lower cost; however, even those measures may only have a temporary impact as other countries adopt those same improved manufacturing techniques. The United States can also invest in infrastructure projects which will not only put Americans to work but will also make it easier and cheaper to create new products and production techniques. Lastly, our nation can create jobs servicing the needs of other Americans which have become an increasingly large percentage of jobs in this country because they cannot be supplanted by those not living within our borders.
The coronavirus, which is on its way to claiming approximately 600,000 American lives, has an economic and emotional disruptive impact a thousand times greater than the plight of the current refugees on our southern border. Yet, it too pales in comparison to the impact of climate change, globalization and technological advancements. To address these disruptive forces, nations need an effective government that will focus their energies toward dealing with them.
Unfortunately, since 1980 the United States has been under the misapprehension propagated by Republicans that “government is not the solution to our problems, it is the problem.” As a result, over the last 40 years our federal government has not undertaken any meaningful action to improve our nation’s infrastructure. Much to the contrary, it has essentially abandoned the space program which was a major source of new technologies; and with the exception of its sponsorship of the vaccines to combat the coronavirus, it has done little to direct scientific invention in other fields. Instead, it has chosen to rely almost exclusively on private enterprise to direct the nation’s economic growth. However, the goal of private industry is not to maximize America’s productivity, but merely to maximize the profits for its shareholders. I addressed this problem earlier in my article entitled “America’s Descent From Greatness” in which I reported how our nation grew to become the world’s dominant economic power and why it will relinquish that position to China in the current decade.
Our failings have not escaped the attention of the Chinese government which has been hard at work building both national and international infrastructures for future commerce and investing in new technologies that will dominate commerce for the next generation. This changing dynamic was revealed in a recent exchange between U.S. and Chinese diplomats over human rights violations in China. In that conversation China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, informed the American representative that China no longer feels compelled to follow America’s dictates on human rights as America now relies more on China’s economic production than China relies on America’s technological advancements. He boasted that “China’s development and growing strength are unstoppable.”
You may now be wondering what has all this has to do with the refugee problem on our southern border. The answer, in short, is that most refugee problems are the product of economic disruptions and dislocations caused by climate change, globalization and technological advancements and the ways governments have mishandled them. A more important question is what the refugee problem on our southern border has to do with the future direction of our country. The refugee problem has dominated the news because it has an emotional appeal for TV viewers which cannot be matched by discussions of large issues, the diffuse impacts of which are more difficult for TV audiences to comprehend.
Republican politicians do not want to talk about what our nation needs to do to revitalize its economy and enable all of its citizens to be able to maximize their contributions to its growth and collective wealth. Instead, they focus on the hordes of asylum seekers whom they characterize as infection-bearing, murderers, rapists and drug dealers encouraged to come here by words of empathy emanating from our new President. This not only allows them to escape having to discuss the pressing problems facing our nation but also to excite the members of their political base whom they have been nourishing on a diet of hatred and fear.
Those seeking asylum in our country are not Mexicans; nor are they being sent here by Mexico which has made it clear that it has no intention of building a wall to prevent their entry. As a result of NAFTA, Mexico has greatly accelerated its economic growth and its citizens no longer come to the United States in search of a better life. In fact, in recent years, the number of illegal Mexican immigrants present in the U.S. has actually declined. Those who are currently seeking refuge in our country come from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala where their governments are unable to protect them from criminal elements. These are not people looking to prey upon innocent Americans; rather they are people whose desperation has driven them to abandon their homes and travel thousands of miles in search of a better life which they hope to achieve for themselves and their children through hard work and sacrifice. These are the very characteristics of the people who for the past 200 years have fled their homes in Europe and autocratic countries around the world to come to the United States and who have helped it become the planet’s dominant economy power
Yes, there are two differences between them and my grandfather who immigrated from Germany to the United States in the 1880s and who started his own business. First, my grandfather was better educated when he arrived and second, his skin was white. The former allowed him to achieve economic success in one generation and the latter paved the way by enabling him to avoid racial discrimination which might have otherwise stymied his progress. Still, his success was largely attributable to a consuming desire to achieve a better life for himself and his children, the same quality that has brought these refugees to our border and which enabled this country to surpass all others for over 150 years.
That being the case, what is it about these refugees that Republicans find so repulsive? Clearly, they weren’t the cause of jobs lost to globalization and technology, nor of the stagnation in the growth of earnings and wealth experienced by middle-class Americans over the last thirty years. Lacking education and job training, these refugees are also not likely to replace U.S. workers in their current jobs. If Republican politicians truly feared that the refugees’ arrival would suppress the wage growth of middle class Americans, they could have dealt with that issue by supporting an increase in the minimum wage, which they have displayed no intention of doing. Some may argue that the refugees will become a burden on the nation’s social safety net. While this argument might have some validity in the short-term, it would be far more persuasive if made by someone supportive of the nation’s many social welfare programs, rather than by those who seek to demonize those programs as “socialism.” The notion that the individuals seeking asylum in the U.S. bring with them crime and chaos is also unfounded as undocumented immigrants in this country have a far lower crime rate than native-born Americans. According to a recent study, native-born Americans are 2.0 times more likely to commit violent crimes, 2.5 times more likely to commit drug crimes and 4.0 times more likely to commit property crimes than undocumented immigrants.
No, what Republicans find objectionable is that the appeal of their party does not extend to most immigrants who tend to support Democratic candidates. In addition, they have built their popular base on the hatred and biases of disaffected individuals; and their opposition to immigrants has a significant appeal to their popular base. This was on view in 2013 when the Senate passed an immigration reform bill only to have the Republican dominated House of Representatives refuse to even consider it. More recently, it was displayed in the Trump administration’s handling of refugees, separating children from their parents and holding them in crowded cages, all in an effort to dissuade others from seeking asylum in the U.S. To make matters even worse, the Trump administration cut off economic aid to the countries from which the refugees were fleeing, actions which actually had a counter-productive impact on arresting the flow of immigrants. As recent experience with Mexico has demonstrated, taking measures to improve economic conditions in neighboring countries has a diminishing effect on the flight of refugees to our country.
Immigration ranks alongside of abortion and gun ownership as the principal wedge issues of Republican politicians as they excite their own political base while sowing division between moderate and progressive Democrats. As such, addressing the plight of those seeking refuge in our country is a no-win situation for President Biden, which explains why Republicans would like to keep this problem in the news. President Biden, however, has prudently side-stepped the issue by placing Vice President Harris in charge of addressing the problem.
While most Democrats want the asylum-seekers to be treated humanely, they, like Republicans, are not in favor of opening our borders to all comers. Still there are many Democrats who feel strongly that these refugees should be taken in and given a path to citizenship, a total non-starter for Republican legislators. This means that there is no easy solution if, indeed, any resolution can be achieved. That being the case, a disappointing result negotiated by a woman of color and child of immigrants is far more likely to be accepted by progressive Democrats than one negotiated by a white male whose family came to this country 150 years ago.
At the very least Vice President Harris should move quickly to have those children who have come to this country unaccompanied by an adult provided with humane treatment and physical necessities. Still, the trauma which they will have experienced will remain with them for the rest of their lives. For many it will be debilitating and for others it will provide an incentive to excel as experience has shown that those who have overcome obstacles to come to this country have generally proven to be among our most productive individuals. While they may someday be accorded U.S. citizenship, that is not likely to happen anytime soon.
Most of the family units that have arrived at our southern border will not be awarded asylum and will have to seek refuge elsewhere or seek to enter the country illegally. At best, Vice President Harris will only be able to have the asylum process expedited and possibly relaxed to permit the acceptance of compelling cases. She will not be able to significantly affect the number of people who will be taken in.
Perhaps her greatest point of leverage will be in working with the three countries that have produced the current wave of asylum seekers. Through a combination of foreign and military aid and technical assistance, the U.S. should try to help those countries reverse the conditions that forced the asylum-seeks to leave. If their native countries can be restored, they may gladly return to their old neighborhoods, friends and relatives. While this approach may offer the best possible solution to the problem of waves of asylum seekers approaching our southern border, it is not likely to be easily achieved. Yes, the forces of disruption alluded to above have prompted the asylum seekers to abandon their homes in search of a better life, but their own governments have also been significant contributing factors. Unless they can be reformed there is only a scant likelihood that the conditions giving rise to the problem can be reversed. Even economic sanctions are unlikely to bring about necessary reform, because economic sanction punish a nation’s populace and if their government doesn’t care about them, their suffering will provide no motivation for reform.
A more promising strategy might be to encourage those well-run Central American countries (like Mexico, Costa Rica and Panama) to accept and assimilate those seeking asylum in our country. This could be achieved through offers of economic and technical assistance. Just as we helped Mexico cease to be a source of illegal immigrants by fomenting its economic development through NAFTA, we could help Panama and Costa Rica achieve greater economic development in return for their willingness to help us address a current form of that same problem. This approach not only offers a significant chance of success, but is consistent with our tradition of helping ourselves by helping others.