Children in cages, chain-linked fences, warehouses full of people—this describes an infrastructure built by President Obama and used by President Trump. President Bush deported 1.7 million illegal immigrants. President Obama deported 3 million illegal immigrants; instituted the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) policy, saving 750,000 children and young adults from deportation; and shut down the “wet-foot/dry-foot” policy—stopping all Cubans fleeing the Cuban communist regime from entering America. There are no final numbers for President Trump but for the fiscal years 2017-2019 he deported 985,265 illegal immigrants. Projected over eight years, that number would be roughly 2.6 million, putting him between Bush and Obama.
For generations, activist groups have been concerned with immigrants’ human rights, while others have concentrated on numbers, statistics, and rhetoric surrounding immigration. The establishment—the ruling class on the Right and the Left—kicked the can of immigration reform down the street for decades. The talk was first centered on the who, why, and how many; both parties wanted restrictions, but they couldn’t agree, or they didn’t want to agree on which ones. As war, corruption, globalization, violence, and instability rose around the world—aided by American interference in some cases—the political Left shifted its concerns steadily toward human rights and lax immigration restrictions. The political Right acknowledged human rights problems, but seemed to reflect concerns that immigration from Central and Latin America was overwhelming the country. In the meantime, the increasingly global and powerful corporations wanted minimal restrictions, cheap labor, and higher profits. Under pressure from these corporations, both sides continued their quest for the magic policy that would satisfy both the American voters and the interest groups.
The deflection snowballed to the point where the immigration problem became so complex and overwhelming that those in power still don’t know how to solve it. Nor do they want to, because like other “political issues” it is one more loaded question the two parties can volley to keep themselves in power and the corporate lobbyists appeased.
That’s not to say that no one talks about it. Of course it’s talked about, but that’s all it is—talk. No one in the ruling class makes decisions; each party took an opposite pole. Immigration is now diminished to those irritable and still-to-be-determined questions of who, why, and how many. DACA is a good illustration of this. The Left and Right’s concept of justice was near enough to each other, that the debate could be, who in terms of people, and how many in terms of numbers. The parties have changed their message in order to stay relevant to their base. Now, the Left and Right’s concepts of justice have diverged and flattened, so that the Left speaks of justice owed to universal humanity, and the Right speaks of justice owed to Americans first. The corporate benefactors of both parties are served by keeping the issue unresolved.
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