- Occupation, Empire, Free Trade and Immigration

by Noel Andersen

The more I become involved in activism I realize how important it is to apply theory to praxis with deep analysis of the socio-political history and context in the process of raising our awareness and consciousness to see the inter-connected nature of global hegemonic systems, to which this essay attempts to draw on the relationship between the Occupation and Immigration.

Perhaps the most talked about social issue, next to the failure of Bush’s Iraq Occupation, is the subject of immigration and it is a current contentious and divisive nature within the US.

Throughout history colonization is always connected to emigration..The nature of colonization is based in crossing borders and using military or economic force to subdue the local people, use their natural resources and set up economic production that will profit the colonizer. This is historically done with the Christian justification of converting a “heathen” people or the enlightenment view of “civilizing” the “barbarian,” a rhetoric tied to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, genocide of Native Americans and today is at the roots of global racism as seen in the US government’s discourse on “liberating” Iraq.

The Monroe Doctrine of the 1820s made it very clear that Europe was to not interfere with Latin America because it was the US’s “own back yard” as Theodore Roosevelt put at the turn of the Century. There is an amazing track record of US backed military support and coups of right wing dictatorships that support free trade and US investment, so many that’s its impossible to go through all. To list just a few, massive death squad to kill Indigenous in Guatemala and El Salvador, the coup supporting the Pinochet tyranny, financial support of the Contras in Honduras fighting against the legally elected Sandinistas of Nicaraga and the list goes on. All of this and many more unjust interventions have been responsible for the innocent deaths of thousands (http://www.zompist.com/latam.html).

Most recently the neo-liberal economic influences in Mexico and Central America through NAFTA and CAFTA serve the imposition of trans-national coporations that bring industrialization and urbanization to traditionally agrarian societies. This leads to further emigration as poverty increases from suffering of local traditional economy’s inability to compete on a global-corporate level. Therefore US capital and economic interest is encouraged to cross borders, but people and labor are not allowed as they meet a militarized border and an “illegal” citizenship status upon entry.

Perhaps the only thing that saves Latin America from further military interventions, especially as South American governments move left, is how tied up the US is in the Iraqi Occupation. Without surprise, the history of US military and economic interest in the Middle East is not without similarities to that of Latin America

In 1919, Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations sent down a mandate to create colonial borders in the Middle East, creating political strife that continues to be seen is the region. The Cold War era brought competition for super-power control over the oil supply. In Iran, the US supported a Shah coup against Mossadeq who was intending to nationalize the oil supply and then provided funding for the Shah’s army build up. From 1980-88 the US backed Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in their war against Iran after the post-revolutionary Islamist government took power there was fear of their control in the region.

“The primary interest, and that’s true throughout the Middle East, even in Saudi Arabia, the major energy producer, has always been control, not access, and not profit…. a stupendous source of strategic power which made the Middle East the most strategically important area of the world. They also added that its one of the greatest material prizes in world history…. Exxon-Mobile posted its profits for 2006 which are the highest of any corporation in US history” (Noam Chomsky www.zmag.org).

Throughout history, war , colonization and occupation have been ways not only to control investment and resources for power. Many large corporations make profit from US arms trade, and “ reconstruction” or “development” projects as they expand into countries who subscribe to a “free market.” Halliburton’s prime contracts with the Pentagod jumped from $483 million in 2002 to $3.9 billion in 2003. Lockhead Martin’s contract at 21.9 billion is greater than the entire federal government’s largest single welfare program (TANF) (http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?). The Bechtel Corporation whose known for its failed privatization projects creating famine in Bolivia was also given oil pipeline projects in the Middle East during the Reagan Administration. In 2003 the multi-billionaire Riley Bechtel was sworn in Bush’s Export Council to advise how to create markets for American companies overseas (http://www.corpwatch.org/).

Colonization, occupation and war profiteering are inter-twined with the same neo-liberal corporate expansion and military intervention that is at the root of emigration and greater inequity in the Global South. The same governments that support war and hegemony also work to create policies that increasingly discriminate against immigrants. Structures of power invade other countries, but freedom of people’s movement to the US is regulated, to the point that the Bush Administration and much of Congress wants to institute a modern day “Bracero”or “guest-worker” program to supply a cheap labor source without citizenship options.

As communities of faith, we need to historicize and bring consciousness to our interactions with immigrant communities and think strategically about how to actively advocate for human rights and justice for resident immigrants.