Deportations Are Intended To Create Chaos

Donald Trump, the U.S. president-elect, has said that he will use the military to the fullest extent of the law to support his decisions on mass deportations, to expel and repatriate an unprecedented number of immigrants over the four years of his term. It is worthwhile to ask, in the first place, why those people are undocumented and, in the second place, what is the real reason for the deportations.

As to why they are undocumented, there are several answers. But the most important is that the duress to which the people are subjected makes it necessary for them to leave their countries of origin, whether because of natural disasters, armed conflicts, deterioration of law and order, financial difficulties or one or all of them at once, which prevent them from achieving a life of dignity.

They are trying to reach those countries where, in the collective imagination, they can mitigate the deficiencies in their lives. One of those countries is the U.S., as are the EU and the Global South on the other side of the Atlantic.

Of course, being undocumented is an administrative offense because they are not in compliance with the requirements of the country’s jurisdiction. Remember that, with the signing of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the groundwork was laid for the concept of national sovereignty and for the system of modern states, which we certainly should be discussing in the 21st century. Separated by borders, it was said that “you have the right to leave, but not to enter, unless I, the state, permit it.”

And even though the countries have signed international agreements promising to grant refuge and asylum to those whose lives are in danger, the reality is that they do not do so. They maintain that the majority do not demonstrate eligibility because they are “economic immigrants,” and they close the door on them.

However, the developed countries, the destination of most immigrants for obvious reasons, need the immigrants’ contributions, above all because of the demographic problems in the destination countries. But it has become highly lucrative for them to keep the immigrants in an irregular situation and in a deplorable state of legal limbo, because it frees businesses from any obligation under the labor laws.

This is clear in moments of economic crisis, which are cyclical and necessary in the capitalist system, when businesses can simply dump their immigrant workers, who have been paying their taxes religiously and producing wealth for the destination country, no matter how many years they have worked for them. In this way, the immigrants balance the U.S. labor markets and sustain its benefits. And when the recovery comes, the flows resume, again with the same immigration of undocumented workers.

Is there any reason to deport millions of Mexican immigrants if, to their credit, they have no criminal record, they are working and they have children born in the U.S.? The authorities could turn things around, impose a fine on all the undocumented immigrants and issue them papers. By doing so, on the one hand they would punish the offense and at the same time recover the alleged administrative budget expenses, but they have not done this.

From my point of view, the real reason for the deportation order, proposed by the right and supported even more by the extreme right, is to create chaos in order to subjugate the Latin American countries, particularly Mexico. The intent is to force Mexico to backtrack in its implementation of an independent and sovereign policy which has been seeking a change of regime since the beginning of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s term in office.

This policy, paradoxically, has as one of its corollaries the reversal of forced undocumented immigration. It is important to note that the next U.S. ambassador to Mexico is Ronald Johnson, who served most of his career in the U.S. Southern Command. He retired from the Army in 1998 and is now in the CIA.

And just as we should not underestimate what is happening in the Middle East (where, as economist Jeffrey Sachs has noted, the U.S., at Israel’s behest, has left the region bankrupt and in ruins), it is very important to remember that Latin America is strategic for Washington, as much for geopolitical reasons as for economic, social, environmental and national security reasons, and above all for its strategic resources.

Because of this, we also should not forget that the U.S. will continue “to encourage regional fragmentation in order to impede any initiative for political coordination and cooperation that tends toward integration. Divide and Conquer is the other face of the Monroe Doctrine.” (Leandro Morgenfeld).