On the Biggest Problem of our Time and Migrant Workers

By Greg Moses

Dallas Blog

No doubt there is a growing problem with organized criminal activity along the border with Mexico, and innocent people are being murdered. No doubt there is a problem also with terrorist organizations who lash out in deadly ways. But today there is a bigger problem than these. The bigger problem lies with well-organized political machines who could be actually doing something about violent crime or terrorism but who instead simply exploit public fear to prey upon innocent victims, one more time.
Take for instance the recent immigration raid on the French Bread Bakery in Austin. What did that use of force have to do with fighting violent crime at the border or interdicting terrorist plots? I mean seriously. What ethic of state power did that little stunt display, rounding up bakery workers and tossing them out of the country because allegedly they may have used fake I.D.’s to find work?

Now I understand that fake I.D.’s can be used by gangsters and terrorists, and I understand that walking across the Texas border is sometimes against the law. But I also understand that fake I.D.’s can be used as pretexts by politicians running for re-election.

If it’s stopping violent crime and terrorism that needs doing, then do it. And brag about it if you want to. Show us the pictures. But stop picking on the migrant workers. Meanwhile, the people have some stopping to do, that is, stopping the rising tide of storm-trooper politics, which has come up to neck deep, and which never fails to name violent crime and terrorism as what must be stopped.

In the opening paragraph of the Texas Republican Party platform on Border Security, passed out of committee Thursday night, we were assured that “illegal aliens, organized crime, and potential terrorists” must be stopped from flowing across the border. Next day the Republican-led authorities of Texas made good on their promise by militarizing the border and deporting a few so-called “illegal aliens” who were working at a bakery. But what about “organized crime” or “potential terrorists”? What did the Party do about either of these? Fighting terrorism and organized crime are not what troops do best.

Are we going to fall for this shell game of power and rhetoric? I say not. And that means we have to see this phrase — “illegal aliens, organized crime, and potential terrorists” — for the setup that it is. If a Party wants to address organized crime and terrorism, they may speak and write about it in one sentence, maybe even supported down the page by a paragraph of precise techniques. Then, they may deal with that problem actually where it is to be found, in ways that are effective, with photo ops and headlines.

Then if the Party wants to address the issue of migrant workers who are “working their asses off” everywhere we look, it is time to begin a new paragraph and a new issue. In that paragraph the Party might want to discuss its historical connection to the state processes that are moving people where they don’t really prefer to go and how the Party intends to address those state processes.

For example, the Party might talk about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the way it pulled the rug from under Mexican peasant farmers. Talk about right-to-work laws in Texas and how growing labor pools can erode wage structures where workers have no rights to begin with. The paragraph on migrant workers could get quite long, but it’s a different issue than “organized crime” and “potential terrorism”, and so it should be treated under a different head, because “working your ass off” in Texas is another kind of crime altogether, and we will not be fooled into thinking that because you deport workers or import troops you are making the world either safer or more prosperous.

When the Texas Republican Party promises to bring “order to the border”; when its Party platform packs migrant workers into short phrases about terrorism and deadly crime; when Party officials the next day crack down on a lil-ole bakery in the nearest Democratic precinct they can find; and oh yes when that Party’s leader plays a well-oiled part in a world-historic militarization of the border between the USA and Mexico; when we follow a Party like that — you know what I’m saying? Soon enough at the bakery, we’ll all be sitting with our backs to the wall.