Hombre de paja

Andrew Christie lays it all out:

As immigration again becomes the hottest political topic in America, the debate has again focused on higher fences and driver's licenses, amnesties and guest worker programs. As always, a central fact has gone largely unstated: Corporate globalization and U.S. trade policies have more to do with how many people cross our borders illegally than U.S. immigration policy or any potential reform thereof.

The exploitation of less developed countries in the economic globalization framework known as free trade has resulted in their financial and environmental impoverishment - both major causes of global overpopulation and increased migration.

When the focus of the debate is U.S. immigration policy rather than the nature of immigration, this reality is invisible...

...While it's a given that overconsumption and waste is built in to the model of economic globalization, one seldom hears it acknowledged that forced migration is also a consequence of the increasing impoverishment of less developed nations, and therefore also directly attributable to the role of free-trade style globalization...

Regardless of what you believe about resource consumption, overpopulation or immigration in setting the bar for a sustainable society and healthy environment, the problem is the economic engine of inequity that is driving both wasteful consumption and forced migration. Tackling the problem at its source means focusing our energies on a common strategy with a common goal: Eliminating the growing chasm between the winning and losing ends of the "free trade" equation. That means turning free trade into fair trade.

"Restricting immigration to the United States won't solve the environmental problems that force people to move in the first place, and the increasing numbers of illegal immigrants indicate that restrictions are more thumb-in-the-dike than viable policy," says Stephen Mills, director of the Sierra Club's International Program. "The Sierra Club's international efforts go to the headwaters, promoting environmentally sustainable livelihoods that keep forests and families healthy, while making polluting multinational corporations accountable and trade agreements fair."

Or as environmental legend and past Sierra Club President David Brower succinctly put it as he cast his sharp eye on the fallout from the North American Free Trade Agreement: "Rather than complaining about immigration from Mexico, the U.S. could stop causing it."