The debate about immigration and the humanitarian crisis at the US-Mexico border has taken center stage in the 2024 elections. But the terms of that “debate” have been set by Donald Trump and the MAGA right, who are calling for “mass deportation” and continue to demonize and scapegoat immigrants as the root cause of America’s economic and political decline. With Democrats adopting much of the right’s framing of the “immigration debate” and the “border crisis,” how should the left respond? In the face of the MAGA right’s neofascist anti-immigrant campaign, what can working people do—during this election season and beyond—to build a truly multiracial resistance that defends the rights of all?

Juan González, co-host of ‪Democracy Now‬!, hosts a timely and critical panel for The Real News on immigration, democracy, and the 2024 elections. Panelists include: José Luis Granados Ceja of Venezuelanalysis and Mexico Solidarity Media; Nana Gyamfi, executive director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration; and Emily Lee, executive Director of Seed the Vote. This panel is cosponsored by Liberation Road.

Pre-Production: Bill Gallegos, Maximillian Alvarez, Kayla Rivara
Studio Production: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Adam Coley

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Transcript

Maximillian Alvarez:  Hey, this is Maximillian Alvarez, editor-in-chief of The Real News Network.

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Juan González:  Good afternoon everyone. I’m Juan González, the co-host of Democracy Now! and a senior fellow at the University of Illinois Chicago. I have been asked to moderate a forum on a very important topic these days: democracy, immigration, and the 2024 elections.

And obviously, with the end of the Republican National Convention, where immigration was a topic much discussed, perhaps more heat than light, but certainly, a major topic of discussion at that convention, as it will be at the Democratic Convention coming up soon. We have an excellent group of panelists who are going to give us their perspective on what is right and wrong about the debate, what is missing about the debate over immigration and the so-called immigration crisis in the United States.

And I would like to begin with our first panelist, José Luis Granados Ceja, from the Mexico Solidarity Project, is with us. And, José Luis, can you give us a perspective from the work that you have done in Mexico Solidarity, how the immigration debate is being framed in the United States and how it should be framed?

José Luis Granados Ceja:  Absolutely. It’s really good to be here with everybody on this program to talk about this topic. I think it’s one of the major issues that’s going to be talked about on the campaign trail. And often, it’s actually quite disappointing to see how little we talk about where Mexico fits in, in all of this. Much of what’s being discussed is going to have repercussions, not just for Mexico, but for all of Latin America.

And so I think when we talk about this, we have to have a regional perspective. And I don’t mean to replicate some of the rhetoric that we hear. Often, political leaders in the United States talk about having a regional response or about attending to the root causes, but actually involving Latin American countries, migrants themselves as part of this conversation.

And what they’ve insisted, I think, at least from what we’ve seen here in Mexico, is that they need to recognize the role that migrants play in the US economy, in the North American economy more broadly.

I think one of the things that we need to talk about more as well is the regional perspective, which is talking about the root causes in a serious way, not in the way that has been done historically by US politicians where they try to frame things in a way that’s, actually, ultimately, going to favor the interests of US capital and the owners of capital in the United States. These programs that talk about investing in Central America or in Latin America but, ultimately, are all about continuing the exploitation and the oppression of the peoples of Latin America. But actually figuring out what’s going on and talking about the root causes in that sense in terms of what’s driving people to migrate.

One of the things we often come across when you talk to any migrant that is crossing through Mexico is that they all say that we would rather stay home. They are fleeing their situations. It’s not that they’re choosing to migrate. It’s a very different kind of phenomenon.

And so if we talk about the root causes, well, what does that mean? And one of the things that I think is often missing as part of the debate is what is US foreign policy? What’s the role of US foreign policy in all of this? And when I mean that, one of the things that I think we should be highlighting, for example, is something that came out of the Palenque Summit.

It was a gathering of regional leaders: Nicolás Maduro, Díaz-Canel, López Obrador, the presidents of Mexico, Cuba, and Venezuela were present. And what did they say? Well, we need to see an end to US intervention in Latin America, an end to the brutal blockade of Cuba, an end to the sanctions against Venezuela, and also talking about a way that actually invests in these people’s communities so that they don’t have to feel like they have to flee.

And I think that’s something that we need to hear more in the discussion about this. There are deeply integrated issues, migration and US foreign policy, and often, that doesn’t come up, even though there are efforts to try to amplify this.

Like I said, how is it that we’re not talking about what was said at the Palenque Summit? We talk about the Los Angeles Declaration, but why not that one? And I think that’s one of the key things, I would say, needs to be part of this conversation. How do we get to a point where we’re pressuring US politicians, be they Republican or Democrat, to recognize the world that US foreign policy plays?

And I’ll close on this note. When we think about where do migrants come from, they tend to come from the countries that are facing US repression. Right now, one of the greatest communities that is seeing a movement towards the United States comes from Venezuela.

Venezuela, right now, is under a difficult economic situation as a result of US sanctions. US sanctions make it impossible for Venezuela to sell its oil, its number one export commodity, on the international market in a transparent, open way. They have to go through intermediaries, they sell things at a discount. It’s a very important resource to Venezuela’s economy. They can’t benefit from the way that they used to, even with prices being high.

And so that’s why we see the economic issues happening in Venezuela. We’ll try to blame the government and Nicolás Maduro, but I think much of the blame lies with US sanctions.

Same with the case of Cuba. In Haiti, right now, the destabilization as a result of historic interventions in that country. That’s why we see migrants coming from this. And I think the more we talk about US foreign policy as being one of the root causes of migration, the further we can get in terms of this conversation of actually tackling the issue and making it so that migrants leave only because they want to, not because they have to.

Juan González:  I’d like to bring in Nana Gyamfi, a long-time attorney with immigration issues and with the Black Alliance for Just Immigration.

Nana, what about this issue of US foreign policy? And also, the issue that much of the focus has been on Latin American migration, but the reality is, even as Donald Trump said in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, that people are coming not just from Latin America, but from Asia, from Africa, from the Middle East. And of course, he was talking about it as they were sending criminals and rapists and murderers and terrorists, all of these countries sending them to the United States.

Nana Gyamfi:  Yes, absolutely. Thank you. I’m very excited to be here. I’m having this conversation, such a critical conversation in such a critical time. There are migrants that are coming, believe it or not, from Black countries, Black people, that are coming here to the United States. Many more are coming through the border than were coming previously through the US-Mexico so-called border.

But there’s just generally been an increase in Black migrants, particularly from the continent, not surprisingly, as we go from the late ’80s into the early ’90s when you see the United States playing out its efforts to push back against leftist socialist governments that were coming to the fore on the continent at that time. And of course, the US intervention, it has always intervened with coups, with assassination attempts, et cetera, on the continent.

And in the Caribbean, you see, again, in the Caribbean, where they were talking about Grenada, Haiti, other places, as you have the US trying to fight to be able to keep its racial capitalist system rolling, the effect has been for people to flee.

And as we often talk about here at BAJI, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, what you see is Black people fleeing from majority Black countries — And also countries that are not majority Black — What Black people were fleeing from the United States, coming from the South to the North, to the Midwest, and to the West: economic terror, social terror, political terror.

And much of that terror has the face of the United States behind it, either directly or through the IMF, the World Bank, various UN entities that are, allegedly, used as diplomacy, as a weapon through their connections and contacts working directly with the European Union, working also with their own military.

AFRICOM is all over the continent. You have these US military bases all over these areas in Latin America and Central America and the Caribbean, and those places include places where Black people are living. And the result of that is Black people coming into this country in numbers that really haven’t been seen before, particularly over the last 30 years. And then as I said, with this border, the US-Mexico so-called border, really over the last five years.

It is an important conversation to include. As we know, this country is built upon the enslavement and continued exploitation of Black people, as well as the genocide of Indigenous people. And when we look at who is really being rejected at the border, we’re looking at Black folks, we’re looking at Indigenous folks coming particularly from Central America and Mexico. A lot of the issues that we face are the result of the same kind of racism, the same kind of discrimination, particularly anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, that we see in the United States.

When you look at other people that are coming in from other parts of the world, the ways in which they are being treated versus, say, Ukrainians, who were given everything: brand new socks and drawers, stopped deportations, gave people temporary protective status, gave people a parole program, gave people a refugee program, and the ability to, basically, apply for asylum within the country as long as you can get to the border somehow or get into an airport.

And we compare that to Sudan, which is also a country that is war-torn, where many folks who are Sudanese-Americans found it very difficult to get into the United States, let alone Sudanese who have family in this country, that have community in this country, who were not being offered the same things, and continue to not be offered the same opportunities that the Ukrainians did.

Even with students, all these universities, if you recall, Juan, opened up their doors to Ukrainian students. That has not happened with students that have come from Sudan, nor did it happen with those Black students from the Caribbean and the continent that were fleeing Ukraine with the European white Ukrainians during the time of the war.

It’s so clear and obvious what the differences are between what is being offered and what is being presented to Black migrants as they’re coming into this country. And it’s something that, again, requires our attention. We are able to deal with the issues that are raised when we’re talking about immigration policy in the ways that are most inclusive, in the ways that are most rooted in humanization, when we focus on the folks who are the most vulnerable.

So when we understand how trans, disabled, Black migrants are able to be included into this country, we’ll get somewhere in terms of having an inclusive immigration policy.

Juan González:  I would also like to bring in Emily Lee, executive director of Seed the Vote. She worked for 10 years with the Chinese Progressive Association in San Francisco, and also eight years with San Francisco Rising.

Emily, your perspective, especially in terms of the repeated claims of some of the leaders of the Republican Party that many countries are sending migrants here to participate in the 2024 election to rig the election.

Emily Lee:  Right. Thanks so much, Juan. I mean, I think, just to acknowledge what we’re living through right now in terms of the political turbulence we’re seeing for the last few weeks in the United States, obviously, the Republican National Convention just happened this week, where they called for the largest deportation operation in US history, saying they’re going to deport pro-Hamas radicals, to make our college campuses safe and patriotic again. I think these conditions that many of us are organizing in for this current election, the stakes are higher than ever.

And you can see the rhetoric is about… It is about the threat and the fear, fearmongering that the Republican Party is doing, in which Donald Trump has made his main rhetoric and his main charge, even his pick of his vice presidential candidate, J.D. Vance. He’s not trying to bring people of color, BIPOC voters in with him. He’s doubling down on a white nationalist, white supremacist platform.

So I think it’s really important for us to acknowledge that’s a political moment that we’re in. And the conditions are extremely heavy. They’re very difficult.

We have a escalating genocide in Gaza and a sitting president who continues to support it while we also have the threat of Trump who’s openly sharing plans to destroy progressive social movements in the United States and communities of color.

So these times are just very difficult, and we’re holding both the urgency of the crisis and this current election, as well as the long-term root causes we need to be addressing and the long-term strategy we have to build in order to end the violence that immigrant communities are facing in all these shifts.

So I think that what I would like to speak on a little bit is just the threat of MAGA and what is really the difference between a MAGA administration and a Democratic administration.

Obviously, we know that Democrats and Biden have not delivered on immigration. Everyone knows that. The last attempt to push forward in 2020 and 2021 was not successful, and that Biden has continued to not deliver around asylum, and the way that he’s continued to “close” the border has also been extremely anti-immigrant and led to a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment as well.

But I think we have to be clear that with the Trump administration, they are going to continue to… Stephen Miller will continue to be his senior advisor on this, who was the architect of the Anti-Immigrant Family Separation Program during the first Trump administration, that the defensive layers that we had previously in the courts and the appellate and Supreme Court, that’s not the same as the previous administration.

We had the previous Supreme Court who actually made the DACA decision. This Supreme Court will not do anything that’s going to be beneficial for immigrant communities. So overall, as we know, the environment is going to be more anti-immigrant and more favorable for Trump to exploit in that direction.

So I think I just want to be clear that the threat that we face, we do believe it is an existential threat, the drive towards more authoritarianism, towards fascism, and that that’s going to have some very serious consequences for immigrant communities.

And I think that Biden, for all his faults, he is trying to signal that he is trying to do some more proactive immigration. On June 18, he just announced his program for about half a million undocumented spouses who are married to US citizens would meet the requirements for parole in place. They’re trying to signal to Democratic voters that they will not be the same as a Trump administration.

And in terms of what you said earlier about the mythology of immigrant voters being trucked in, driven into the US so that they can influence the results of the 2024 election, obviously, those are factless and baseless, and the reality is that this is their number one issue. They will be using this rhetoric and this message to stoke fears among a white nationalist voting base, and it has been proven to be very effective.

And so I think what’s going to happen this November is going to be… It brings us in two different paths. There’s some very stark differences in the fork in the road depending on what kind of administration we have this year.

And obviously, there’s so many things we don’t know, especially given rumors that President Biden might drop out of the race. We’re less than four months out and still, this is the type of year we’re looking forward to.

So yes, it’s very tumultuous and a lot is unknown. And anybody who said that they can predict what’s going to happen and knows, that’s just not true. We don’t believe that. No poll can predict what’s going to happen. These margins are very close. And so I just also want to emphasize that this is not the time to despair, to give up. This is the time to take action and make an intervention.

Juan González:  I wanted to ask all of you, because the United States is not the only advanced, industrial country facing a migration crisis, and in fact, there are many other countries in the Global South that also are facing migration crises. There are millions of Venezuelans in Colombia and in other parts of South America as well, as there are Syrians and Turkey and in other countries.

The reality is the entire industrialized world is facing influxes of migrants from the Global South, usually, to the countries that were their former colonial masters. And this has fueled right-wing movements across the globe in France, in Italy, in Great Britain, in Germany. We’re seeing the rise of right-wing movements in the Netherlands as anti-immigrant movements against migrants from the Global South.

So what is it that attracts so many white Europeans and white Americans to this anti-immigrant movement to the point where they’re on the verge, in many countries, of actually assuming political power? In Italy, they already have. And I’m wondering, any one of you who wants to tackle that question.

José Luis Granados Ceja:  I suppose I’ll start with that. I think one of the things that’s really worrisome when watching, for example, the speech that Donald Trump gave at the Republican National Convention, which is, how effective, as Emily said, this linking between migration and crime has been in the mindset of the political base of the Republican Party, in particular, the MAGA Republican Party.

The way that he talked about how even a regional ally like Bukele in El Salvador is demonized, saying that he’s sending migrants up north, he’s sending all the criminals so that they can commit crime, where he talks about these anecdotes about where migrants are accused of being involved in heinous crimes. It’s incredibly effective, and it’s really quite disturbing at how well that works in terms of convincing people that the source of their problems isn’t the capitalists, it isn’t the bosses, but it’s actually migrants.

And it’s really disappointing to see how little pushback there is when it comes to that. Obviously, within our communities, we know that’s not true, but in the national conversation, that’s not happening.

I mentioned earlier the Palenque Declaration, and it says that the main structural causes of migration are political, economic, social, and the negative effects of climate change. We’re starting to see some of those in terms of what’s driving migration.

And so I think we need to have a more coordinated strategy that transcends borders in terms of pushing back against this, because I think the consequences are incredibly severe.

One thing is, like you said, seeing people being elected into office that are going to drive these xenophobic, racist policies, put them into as part of public policy. That part is very frightening, watching people at the convention chanting, “Send them back,” as they hold up signs that say, “Mass deportation” talk, promising the biggest campaign ever in the history of the United States. That’s very frightening. It has very serious consequences.

For example, here in Mexico, Mexico’s going to have to absorb those migrants that are going to be sent across and have to negotiate that in part as a bilateral relationship.

But I would go even further. One of the things that really worries me is the way that they’ve linked migration to the opioid crisis in the United States, to talk about this case, in particular.

I always mention this history of Donald Trump. How does he, actually, become the candidate? I think there were, obviously, a lot of factors, but one of the major factors was his attack on Mexicans, of sending that signal to that xenophobic part of the Republican base saying, I’m one of you. I’m going to talk bad the way that you talk about Mexicans around your kitchen table with your racist friends and neighbors. And I think that really helped him become the candidate and, subsequently, walk into the White House.

But that’s only effective to a point. It’s an imagined threat, all these rapists and murderers that are out there. But now, with this effort to link Mexico, Mexicans, and the drug cartels with the fentanyl crisis, with the opioid crisis, that makes it much more real because it’s such a severe problem in the United States, because there are so many people who are losing their friends and neighbors and family members to the opioid crisis, who’ve seen the way that it has negatively impacted.

And it’s easy for them to say, that’s the Mexicans’ fault. My uncle, my cousin, my co-worker who now is addicted to opioids or may have died as a result of their addiction are now… That’s [responsibility of] the Mexicans. So it brings it closer to home, and they really do feel like they’re being invaded.

And so that means that now with the Republican Party talking about things like unilateral military action, we’re talking about drone strikes or even boots on the ground without Mexico’s authorization, that’s really dangerous.

We’ve seen what happens when you bomb areas that have a heavily civilian population. That could happen right here on the US-Mexico border. That’s a terrible prospect but one that is really convincing because people will feel like, well, at least someone’s doing something about this. 

And I think that’s really something why we need to have a cross-border, a binational transcending these borders, movement that pushes back against this kind of language to say that we will not accept, on the one hand here in Mexico, an infringement of our sovereignty, but on the other hand, the application of terrible murderous violence upon our friends and neighbors to the south.

Juan González:  I’m wondering if others could comment on this issue as well, of the growing attraction of these right-wing movements, even among Latinos and African Americans here in the United States. In cities like Chicago, Denver, and New York, you’re seeing enormous reaction against government services being utilized to assist these migrants rather than meet the immediate needs of those communities.

And even among Mexicans who have, perhaps, undocumented but have been in this country for 20 or 30 years, they’re feeling unfairly treated by the recent attention to the migrant crisis, how that affects their political perspective and their political views.

Nana Gyamfi:  Let me jump in here quickly because these are issues that we are looking at, again, on a global level over at Black Alliance for Just Immigration.

So, when you talk about what is happening, for example, in these industrialized nations, for Black migrants, it is absolutely tied to Blackness, anti-Blackness, white supremacy. It is absolutely an issue that has to do with how Black people have been defined. Black people are criminalized in all of these places. There is the notion of the Black person as de facto a criminal.

And so, it’s not difficult to make that shift, then, from here African Americans being criminalized to then Black migrants being criminalized with a little crispier edge to that criminalization based on xenophobia.

And when you look at Europe, which again — And thank you for raising this, because we don’t talk about that that much in the United States. We’re kind of US-focused on neighbors to the north and the south — Obviously, the Black people there are the people from the former colonies who were criminalized and enslaved and all of the other atrocities that are dehumanizing.

And so, really what it comes down to is a narrative of dehumanization. And in the context of white supremacy, in the context of racial capitalism, dehumanization takes the form of criminalization. Those two things go hand in hand, so we all get to get it.

Even early Europeans that came in, Trump’s people, Biden’s people, they love to talk about themselves. They came with the Mayflower. They did not. They came afterwards. Trump is about as USian as I am, okay? Biden might be as USian as my kid. All right?

But I’m not seen in the same way that Trump and Biden are seen because at some point after they went through and gave names to every European that came in after them — The Irish got a bad name, the Italians got a bad… Everyone has a name that’s supposed to dehumanize them, they looked up and said that for the purposes of power, we are shifting how we’re talking about this. And so now, all of these people are going to be considered white people. And that is a trend that has continued.

We know that in this country, when you had the first Supreme Court decisions that were saying that, oh no, you’re Indian, you’re not white, you’re this, you’re not white. If you’re not considered white, then you’re considered to be someone who is not worthy, who is dehumanized, who is less than human. And that, of course, is a trend that has continued and that is a legacy that has continued in Europe as well.

And so, it shouldn’t be surprising that there is this interest with white supremacist groups and this sort of underlying energy of racism and anti-Blackness that then shows up as anti-other that is drawing because I get to be human as the white person and everyone else, regardless of my situation. I could be the poorest white person. I could be the person with the least amount of education, but at least I’m still human, unlike these other people. We’re allowing these subhuman people to come in and take our position. You will not replace us, is basically the theme song of that.

Now, when you take that same theme song and bring it to the United States and the question that you’re raising around African Americans, and even some Latino Americans that are in the country, I’ll start with that second tier.

It’s the same type of energy, but it’s based on an abandonment. Folks have been abandoned. They have been left to be houseless. They have been left to not be able to access education, not be able to access healthcare. Again, as part of the white supremacist, racial capitalism of the United States. And now, they find themselves abandoned, and there’s an appearance that there are people coming in from other countries that seem to be somehow getting something that they’re not getting.

One of the things I talk about within the immigrant rights movement as an executive director who’s talking to other people in the movement who are not Black, other leaders, this grand conversation that people keep wanting to have about how much immigrants bring to the economy is triggering for, particularly, African Americans for two reasons.

Number one, there’s like an erasure of how this country came to be a place that our parents, or us if we’re immigrants ourselves, wanted to be here. And it is because of 400 years of enslavement and more years of Jim Crow in which Black folks primarily built this country. That’s just thrown in the trash and it’s made to seem like what has happened is because immigrants are here, that’s why this country is moving.

And correlated with that is this idea that people have been replaced economically, jobs-wise. And so this conversation about how much money and tax money, et cetera, that immigrants bring to the country is also a reminder to other folks who are here and feeling abandoned that, yeah, that’s why you’re not doing construction anymore.

That’s why you’re not working at the hotels anymore. That’s why you’re not doing X, Y, and Z work that’s not necessarily in the fields anymore, is because these other people have come in and they’ve usurped your space. You can’t even have an African American be president of the United States, nor vice president of the United States, technically.

And so, the notion of the “Black jobs” that was brought up during the debate, though Black people made fun of that, there are some people that really believe that, based upon what they have seen in their lived experience and the misinformation and disinformation that’s been provided about why that’s happening.

And so to Jose’s point, instead of looking at the capitalists and understanding, they’ll replace you with a machine today. I won’t even say tomorrow. You’re being replaced right now by automation and by little robots that I’m seeing running around Los Angeles here. Instead of that being the focus, it’s turn on the immigrants because they’re subhuman anyway, get you to have that same kind of mentality, and then we can continue with that.

And then, lastly, we’re looking at people who are migrants who have been here for a long time, as you said, Juan, who are undocumented, who haven’t been able to access, who have done and played the game of respectability, and they still have turned up with a zero. And they’re looking, feeling abandoned and saying, wait a minute, how are these other people coming in just yesterday getting what I supposedly or allegedly am not being able to access?

And so it’s this. We have to do the work of making it clear that the abandonment is real, that the pitting against each other is real, that abundance is also real, and we need to be defunding war, defunding militarism, defunding the police, getting all this money from these corporate spaces, and voila, there will be our money to be able to take care of our families, to take care of our communities.

Juan González:  And how do we spread that understanding to larger swaths of the American people, to the people of France, of Germany, of Britain, of these other countries that are gravitating to these right-wing movements? I’m wondering, Emily, if you have any ideas?

Emily Lee:  Yeah, I mean, I think that my take on this question is that this is actually the result of the failure of neoliberalism to actually meet the basic needs of working families. The generation of children, millennials in this country growing up, they are less able, they’re worse off than their parents’ generation. That’s the first time that’s been true for many decades, that the younger generation today is worse off economically than their parents’ generation. People are less likely to be able to afford to buy a house. They’re less likely to be able to graduate from college without huge amounts of student debt.

And when schools are defunded and infrastructure is crumbling and healthcare is unaffordable, why is that? Let’s not focus on the privatization of public institutions like our schools or the skyrocketing profits of the pharmaceutical industry, let’s blame immigrants and the resulting crime that they supposedly commit.

So, I think there’s a very easy bait and switch, and it’s in the interest of MAGA, which is funded by huge corporate interests like Elon Musk and other huge industries to continue to tell that story so the accountability is not laid at the hands of the proponents of neoliberalism and the corporations that are actually reaping all the profits.

So I think that actually allows the current Americans, whether you’re a white person or not, if you’re a person of color, to use migrants as scapegoats because then it’s not the elected officials, it’s not the party in charge, it’s not corporations, but migrants are the ones responsible.

And I think, what can we do to cut through that? That is exactly what we need to do this election cycle because the reality is that has now become, with the rise, I think, of authoritarianism and the rise of this message and the rise of the MAGA party, the reality is regular, everyday people buy into this framing.

And so, I think the only way you can cut through that is you have to have real conversations with real people. And we say that all the time, that a real conversation face-to-face with a real person is the only way to cut through millions of dollars of advertising and propaganda.

That there is not another way. There’s no quick way where we just text message everybody or we do a quick phone call. IWe actually have to do the on-the-ground organizing work, the on-the-ground human-to-human conversation to cut through that kind of extreme polarization that is becoming more and more a real characteristic of American politics.

So I think that is the work of organizations like Seed the Vote and other community-based organizations like BAJI that are actually doing the on-the-ground human… That’s local based, and we have to be supporting the local organizations that are doing that kind of direct power, grassroots organizing, labor union organizing. That’s the only way we’re going to be able to turn the tide.

And I think that’s also, while in Europe there’s many examples, like you said, of right-wing movements rising to power. In many ways that’s not a foregone conclusion, like what we saw with the UK’s current elections of the Labour government, with France’s surprise rise of their left coalition. Nothing is foreordained.

It’s very important what we all decide to do and what we choose to spend our time and efforts and energy on because this is a fight that is worth fighting, and we need to mobilize every single person, every single volunteer specifically for this election to stop an extreme anti-immigrant administration from coming into office. But that’s just the work we have to do long-term is be organizing our movements for real power.

I think that’s an important part of sometimes we up here on panels, we’re talking to each other all the time, but this is not how regular people talk on the streets. We have to be with people in their places. At home, at school, in their churches doing this kind of work, organizing and talking about why the right target is not the migrant community, the right target is Amazon, the right target is Jeff Bezos who’s paid a dollar in taxes.

There’s people to blame for why our society doesn’t function for working people, and we need to be directing our attention towards that. And that doesn’t just happen magically. That’s about building strong political organization and strong civil society and strong advocacy organizations to hold actors accountable and then be doing that work on the ground.

José Luis Granados Ceja:  I wanted to jump in real quick on one point that Emily made there, and while I totally agree that it’s worth paying attention to what’s happening in the UK and France, but there’s a much closer example, much closer to home, here in Mexico. In fact, I wrote a piece for The Nation talking about this, that putting working class policies, the interests of the working class, the campesinos, the marginalized first, can also be a counterweight to that overall trend of wanting to move towards the right.

Mexico is an example of how that trend has been bucked, and it’s right next door. Claudia Scheinbaum, who’s now the president-elect here of Mexico, comes from the same political movement as López Obrador, very much represents the continuity. But she didn’t just win, she won by a landslide. Nearly 60% of the vote, the largest percentage of support in Mexico’s modern history. We’re talking about a supermajority, a qualified majority in Congress.

And a lot of it has to do with the fact that it was policies that favored the working class, of an anti-neoliberal program. And I think that’s really important to point to as well. I think one of the reasons you don’t hear much about Mexico, despite the fact that it’s right next door, is because people are worried about it being seen as possibly an example to follow, as an inspiration in terms of what does a political movement turned political party turned government look like in terms of implementing policies that put working-class people first?

I did an interview with a political cartoonist right before the election, and I love what he said. I’ve been citing it constantly. He says, one of the things about political transformations that makes them peculiar is that they’re contagious. And I think one of the reasons people don’t hear enough about the good news about Mexico is because they’re worried about that example being inspirational. Instead, we get the sepia-toned stories about drugs and crime and corruption and all this kind of stuff.

But there’s actually something very interesting in that sense happening in Mexico that I think there were a lot of lessons for organizers in the United States in terms of what things worked here in Mexico in terms of breaking with that tendency to move towards the center, towards the right.

Here in Mexico, I think, in fact, I would say for the world, is an example of how things can be done differently, and I would encourage people to pay more attention. It’s one of what we’re doing here with the Mexico Solidarity Project is there are lessons here for North American activists as well in terms of, and building that cross-border relationship that I’ve been emphasizing on understanding that we’re in this together.

Juan, you mentioned that even amongst our own communities, there are starting to emerge these attitudes, these xenophobic, anti-migrant attitudes, and I think a lot of that is a result of that distancing that’s been happening between our communities. We actually have far more in common with a working-class person in Chicago with somebody in Guadalajara than we do with the Jeff Bezos and the Elon Musks of the world and really driving that point home.

Juan González:  I want to follow up on that. In terms of the Mexico situation, first of all, clearly, what most people are not aware of, although Mexicans historically were about two-thirds of all the undocumented migrants in the United States, the last 10 years, there has actually been a shift.

More Mexicans have been leaving the country than have been coming in over the last 10 years, so that the Mexican percentage of the undocumented population has been dropping precisely because, as you mentioned, there was a doubling of the minimum wage, there was a right of unions to finally break free from government-controlled unions and elect their own leaders. There was a much more vibrant labor movement, and so many people didn’t feel the need to leave as they have in the past.

But I wanted to ask about these class battles within these communities. For instance, one study that I’ve been involved in shows that the Venezuelans, for instance, the Venezuelan migration of the last five years has been the most educated migrant group in American history. 61% of all the Venezuelans who have come to the United States in the last five years have a college bachelor’s degree or higher. The adult US population, only 34% have a college degree or higher.

So the Venezuelans who are coming are twice as educated as the average American, and they are much more of a middle-class migration similar to that, that came after the Cuban revolution in 1959. And once they learn English and adapt to their environment, they will probably be a very middle class and somewhat conservative wing of the Latino population of the United States.

Likewise, some of the migrants that are coming from Caribbean or African countries don’t come from the working classes or the peasants, the peasantry of these nations, but are pretty much often educated or middle strata people who maybe have a different political perspective from the historic migrants from Haiti and Jamaica and other countries that have come in previous decades.

I’m wondering how you see class conflict developing within the migrant communities of the United States and how that will affect how these communities act politically in the future?

Nana Gyamfi:  Absolutely [sung]. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that goes with some of what you were talking about, Juan. A piece that I neglected to mention earlier that is very important when you talked about the Global South and the migration in the Global South.

The United States and Europe have extended their borders way beyond what is considered the border of the geography map into other countries, including some of these countries that are considered more leftist. Black migrants are not enjoying their lives in Mexico. They are not having a grand old time because of changes that have occurred. Same in Colombia and in other countries. Brazil is probably one of the few exceptions.

And the reality is that, that extension, part of the purpose of that is like a continuation of having certain people come over. Remember when Trump was like, why don’t we get Norwegians, and talked about the s-hole countries and who people were. There’s always been this effort, but it’s been even increased over the past 10, 20 years to have a certain crew of people come.

So you can come through this program for Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, but you got to fly in. You can’t walk in, you got to fly. You got to have a ticket, you got to have a sponsor. So someone with money who’s able to not just take care of themselves in the United States of America, but has the capacity to extend care to someone else coming in from another country and say, I got them. I can cover them, also has to be involved. They’ve got to have a job. They’ve got to have all these things.

That doesn’t mean that you’re not going to have working-class people that are going to be able to do that. But for the most part, even if the person coming is working class, clearly the person sponsoring has got a little bit of funds. I’m not saying they got to be wealthy rich, but they’ve got to have some expendable income in order to make that happen.

And you see the same thing that’s happening in Europe where those borders are being extended into the continent so that, again, you keep people from being able to come in unless they come through these very narrow pathways that I refer to as obstacle courses.

They’re actually not pathways. They’re like capitalists, who can make it through, type of energy, where people who are going to come and become part of this wannabe middle class, excuse me, are going to come. And that is creating a situation in which you have, again, people looking at folks within our own communities in this stratified way.

And so, Africans want to be seen as, and talk about the fact that they’re amongst the most educated populations that come to this country, but they’re driving Uber. They don’t want to talk about the fact that they’re driving Uber. Something wrong with driving Uber. You get my point, right?

Because that part of wanting to hold on to this idea that we are middle class is so important and looking the nose down at those Africans that are on the bikes delivering for DoorDash, et cetera, when, in fact, we know that your degree, whether it’s your attorney license, your medical license was torn up and thrown in the trash when you got to the United States, and you had to go through all kinds of hoops in order to become a medical tech and a paralegal after all these years that you may have been doing something else. 

That stratification is there, and the embarrassment about not being in this middle class, the respectability politics that I know we’ll talk about later also serves as a sort of class conflict-inducing source.

Juan González:  And I’m wondering, Emily, your view on this issue? Especially, for instance, in recent years, Silicon Valley has been very, very militant about getting visas for Indian and Pakistani and Chinese technology folks to work in Silicon Valley, and they’re among the biggest proponents of expanded migration, but basically brain draining these countries and bringing them here where they’re able to pay lower wages to those educated migrants who come. How that has affected the politics of migration, from your perspective?

Emily Lee:  Yeah, I think it’s really interesting because there’s been a lot of speculation too about why J.D, Vance was the nominee as the vice president for the Republican Party, and obviously his close ties to Silicon Valley, his close ties to Peter Thiel, and the reality of wanting to attract certain immigrants and then, of course, exploit them too in a certain way, even if it is through professional, white-collar jobs, I think is very real.

I think that there’s an interesting connection too, around China, because in China, while the numbers are still very small compared to other countries, the reality is that, a couple of years ago, it was about 600 Chinese migrants coming through the southern border each year. Now it’s 37,000 Chinese migrants coming through the southern border. So that’s a huge increase for China in and of itself.

And that the reason for that migration pattern, obviously there’s many reasons, but one particular one is because these are Chinese nationals who are migrating because of socio-political norms in China, and not necessarily because of economic reasons.

The shutdown in Shanghai, the white paper movement, COVID really changing the paradigm of people’s rights, their basic rights to move and to operate in a certain way. And of course, that impacts people’s economic mobility too. And so, of course, there’s 1.4 billion Chinese people in China, and so 37,000 coming into the United States is a drop in the bucket. 

But it’s interesting because about 80% of those 37,000 are going to Flushing, New York, they’re getting busted in by Republican governors like DeSantis and Abbott, and the reality is it’s also impacting the local anti-immigrant rhetoric that local elected officials are using to try to tie to a public safety push around being more tough on crime and further incarceration and deportation.

So I think, yeah, it’s interesting because the economic stratas that people have been talking about, they really do play out in very different ways in very different communities, and in Silicon Valley in the last 10 years because of that need for these visa workers coming from India, from Asia working into tech sectors, there’s also been a more huge influence of tech money advocating for very specific immigration policy changes.

And I would like us to, at some point, touch on Project 2025. I think that that’s the blueprint for the next Republican administration. It’s very clear that in that way, yes, working class, working poor migrants will be the most severely impacted. And I think that there’s going to be some huge mass, the sweeping changes that are going to happen as a result of Project 2025 will touch immigrants of all economic levels, whether you’re a white-collar worker or if you are driving an Uber or if you’re working in the farms, farm fields.

I think that there’s many ways that it’s going to be on a scale we just haven’t seen before, with an expansion of detention and deportations, more sweeping rates, hundreds of thousands deported, to the millions. It’s a callback to replicate what happened under Eisenhower in the 1950s with Operation Wetback.

And then, from people coming in, reinstating a Muslim ban, there’s so many ways that it touches on all migrants. I think that the differences José Luis and Nana are talking about are very real, and I think what we would see with a Trump administration is something that goes far beyond what Trump did in his first term.

Juan González:  I wanted to ask you all about the whole issue of the militarization of the border and of efforts to crack down on migration. Between 2003 and 2023, the period when the Homeland Security Department was created, 20 years later, the United States spent $333 billion on border enforcement, and yet we are at record levels in terms of surges of migration across the border.

So all that money has not resulted in any reduction of the migrant flows into the United States, yet we have had this enormous industry that has developed a whole wing of the prison-industrial complex, which is immigration detention, facial recognition software, drones, all this money being spent, and obviously corporations taking it in, to enforce control of the border that has not happened. And I’m wondering your sense of the impact that that has had on the public perception and also on how people view immigration.

José Luis Granados Ceja:  I’ll start by saying that I really like the language Nana used, I’m going to borrow that, I’ll be using that from now on. They’re not pathways, they’re an obstacle course, especially if you think about the journey. The journey is brutal, and I really want to emphasize that the most difficult part of the journey is Mexico. As much as I think there are good things happening in this country, one of the biggest shames has been the treatment of migrants.

There is a huge gap in terms of the rhetoric the government uses about protecting the right to migrate, about protecting human rights of migrants, et cetera, et cetera, and the reality on the ground. It’s terrible for migrants here in Mexico. They have to pay bribes, they have to deal with extortion, they have to deal with organized crime groups. It’s really, really quite difficult.

Although the Mexican people in general are actually quite favorable, we don’t have very much of that anti-migrant rhetoric, but the truth is they do have a terrible experience here, and I do think that Mexico needs to do a better job of ensuring that they’re better taken care of while they’re in Mexican territory.

I don’t think there’s too much Mexico can do on its own to change US policy towards migrants, but I do think there’s a lot more that it could do when it comes to how they treat migrants.

And I think what we’ve seen is, I think you identified it correctly, Juan, is that an extension of US border policies further and further south. Now we have a huge barbed wire fence in the Darien Gap to prevent people from crossing by land there. But the same is true here in Mexico. We have seen an externalization of US migration policy, we’ve seen the National Guard be involved in controlling migration.

The terms that the policymakers use is “deterrence”. This doesn’t deter anybody. Ask any migrant on their journey or when they arrive to the United States. Those do not factor into their decision-making process. They are fleeing, they understand the risks. They know they may not even survive the journey. They do it anyway.

These kinds of the cruelty is the point policies to make it as difficult as possible, and we’ve seen some of that here in Mexico as well. What we’re seeing recently is migrants being deported inside of the Mexican territory from the north into the south so that they have to restart the journey, that difficult riding trains, et cetera, et cetera.

And so that doesn’t make a difference and all it does I think is make people view migrants in a negative light, to cast the shadow of criminalization on them, to make it seem like the only solution is this heavy-handed approach.

I think one of the things we could really do in the face of a mass deportation campaign, obviously, resist as far as possible, to present a united front that all of the countries of Latin America say that we don’t agree with this, we will not accept your deportation flights, things like that.

But I think beyond that, if it does come to pass, is also being far more humane and recognizing migrants’ human rights in this journey so if they are deported, that they’re being taken care of and that we reduce this potential for them to be a scapegoat. So that they’re offered opportunities to have work permits or residency or whatever it takes so that they’re not marginalized even within countries in Latin America.

Like the way we’ve seen Venezuelans criminalized, marginalized, demonized in Chile, for example. It’s been horrible to see these campaigns where neighbors will go and burn their camps down.

And that’s the product of these kinds of policies which again, to reemphasize this point, part of it is also US foreign policy. There was a time there where there was actually an effort to incentivize migration from Venezuela as part of the broader regime change effort against the Bolivarian Revolution there, as an example of just what a failed state it is, they can’t even take care of their own population.

And they actually were inducing migrants to leave, to go to places. I remember the late president of Chile, Sebastian Pinera, saying, no, no, no, we’ll make it easy for you. And then they get there and they have no actual opportunities, they have no work permits, no residency, they’re forced to live in these improvised camps and things like that.

So I think a lot of the attention needs to be on what governments are doing with the migrant population regardless of US policy, of actually treating them humanely and with human rights and respecting the right to migration in the first place. I think that starts with the United States, but also needs to be recognized as part of the whole journey so that it isn’t this obstacle course.

Juan González:  Anyone else want to tackle this issue of militarization and all the money spent on clamping down on migration?

Nana Gyamfi:  I don’t know if Emily wants to go. I have, yes, plenty to say about this. Again, the criminalization of migrants is a major issue for BAJI, whether we’re talking about inside this country or outside this country. Lots of reports, research you can find on our website about this externalization of the borders that goes along with militarization, as well as what’s happening with militarization at the US-Mexico border — And at the US-Canada border.

I can’t forget. The folks in Michigan and New York and other places close to that border would beat me up if I did not remind folks that there’s also militarization happening at that border for folks who are seeking to come in on the Canada end. Sometimes it’s easier for migrants to get to Canada to fly in and then come down to the United States. And so places like Detroit and other cities close to that border have a very huge ICE presence, a very huge CBP presence beyond the checkpoints.

And I would be remiss if I did not also talk about and remind us of the connection between the criminalization of migrants and, of course, 9/11 and the criminalization of Muslims in that context who were seen as other, foreign, et cetera, as well as the criminalization, even before that, of Haitian migrants who, remember the wet foot, dry foot.

And when the Haitian migrants came, if they were not caught at sea — And I’m using the terminology of the empire in this moment — And sent back, they were detained, quote unquote, but they were detained behind wires. They were detained at Guantanamo, maybe not at the naval base, but in detention camps, which are really prisons. There, the initial folks who got those ankle shackles were Garifuna, Black Indigenous folks from Honduras, Guatemala, mainly Honduras, but Guatemala, El Salvador as well, who, again, found themselves being the testing ground for another level of militarization in the form of surveillance.

And they have taken it, Juan, to such a level, all the things that you’ve mentioned, whether it be the walls and the fences, whether it be the prisons and the enforcement agents, the cops themselves, whether it be the surveillance which is no longer just by ankle shackle, but is also by telephone that’s like an iPhone type of phone, a watch which is like an iWatch type of thing so that you’re actually happy and excited to be able to have this thing that is tracking you and is surveilling your every move and your every text and your every email and your every photo. This is all part of that militarization. The drones, as you’ve discussed, part of that militarization.

And in terms of its impact on the narrative, all of this indicates that the immigration system in this country is a criminal sanction system. It is actually supposed to be a civil system. We remind people of that all the time. This is supposed to be almost administrative. This is not supposed to be a system that results in criminal punishment.

And the fact that you have, in some cases, private prisons, yes, which are also working, as we know, in the criminal sanction space. But in some places like here in Adelanto, I’m looking like I’m looking at it here in Adelanto, in California, you have state prisons that then have the division, some area that is for migrants. Same with Rikers in New York City, you’ve got some part that’s designated for immigrants.

You have a situation in places like Louisiana where the federal government will pay more money than the state government will per person that is incarcerated, to the point that, in some counties, they decarcerated a little bit under the criminal sanction space in order to make room for people who would be incarcerated under the civil immigration detention system.

And so that conflation creates a situation in which you have the same entities doing the work, the same surveillance entities, the same weaponry entities, the same agent entities, to the point that, as we point out in our report “Beyond Borders”, again, which can be found on our site as an online and PDF report, customs and Border Protection was in every single one of these George Floyd protests, had snipers on the roof at George Floyd’s funeral, which wasn’t nowhere near a border.

But this is how they’ve been so connected that one is seamlessly moving to the other, with CBP and ICE being amongst the largest, if not the largest, police departments in the country, and amongst the top 10 in the world.

Juan González:  And I’m wondering also, Emily, your sense of this whole issue of militarization.

Emily Lee:  Yeah, I think that José Luis and Nana said it very eloquently. The issue is only going to get worse, is the indication that we can see, because of the criminalization.

And so, when there’s going to be these temporary camps to hold detainees before deportation, Donald Trump will redirect military budget like he did in his previous administration to further militarize, deputizing police and National Guard as immigration enforcement agents by using the Insurrection Act, even moving funds from undocumented immigrant access to housing, healthcare, education via family members who have status, removing those benefits and redirecting that towards militarization of the border. Those are all things that I think we would anticipate, and actually has been laid out very clearly in Project 2025.

And so I think that it’s going to be what we’ve seen so far but on steroids, is what we’re going to see happening in the next four years if it’s a Republican administration in office. So I don’t think I have more to add on that, I think it’s terrifying and I think what we should all be thinking about is how do we prevent that from happening?

Juan González:  Well, I’d like to open it up to questions that we solicited beforehand from activists who have been involved in immigrant rights across the country, and I wanted to pose some of those questions to our panel.

The first, it comes from Aquilina Soriano-Versoza. She’s the executive director of the Filipino Workers Center in Los Angeles. And the question is, the Pilipino Workers Center has seen how our immigration system creates the conditions for immigrant workers to be taken advantage of. The threat of deportation allows employers to commit wage theft, and systems for issuing work visas give employers power to exploit workers and trap them in a modern form of semi-slavery as labor trafficking victims.

How do we bring other intersectional movements like the labor movement together and build enough power to bring about change in this system without sacrificing one group over another? The labor movement made some halting changes from being completely anti-immigrant to understanding the need to provide some support and immigrant rights, but there’s a long way to go there. Anybody want to tackle that one?

Emily Lee:  Maybe I can start and other folks can jump in. I think the issue of building, to me this is a question about building power, and it’s about how do we build power together in a way that doesn’t throw anybody else under the bus. I think that we as an immigrant rights movement, we need to be very clear, and I think this is part of the difficulty of even we’re seeing now playing out amongst this current election cycle, is having to be very clear who our enemies are and who our allies are, whether that be temporary allies or permanent allies.

What we have to operate in right now, this is a space where left social movements, progressive movements, we do not have enough power to take down the anti-immigrant forces that are surging and rising and building more, gaining more traction in mainstream society, that are operating out of a neo-fascist faction of the Republican Party.

And so to me, this is a moment of we need to actually be building with every single ally who believes that deportation, wage theft, all the issues that Aqui is talking about here are harming many, many working-class communities of color. So how do we actually work together with people in other sectors that aren’t always our natural allies?

I think we’re seeing that example right now in building an anti-MAGA united front or coalition, that the reality is none of us, whether it’s the mainstream centrist Democratic Party or it’s the left or it’s progressives, or even anti-Trump Republicans, nobody has enough power on their own to actually stop MAGA from taking more power. And so this means that we need to actually work in a coalition, and that means that we’re not going to agree on every issue. And so I think for me, that’s the question of this.

How do we build together with other movements like the labor union movement? Obviously, we saw the head of the Teamsters who spoke at the RNC next to Trump. We see that we can’t take anything for granted, that if we want to keep our movements consolidated and actually be able to build enough power to actually reject MAGA, then we have to actually be organizing ourselves, working in these uncomfortable coalitions where we don’t agree on every issue but we can agree that this threat, and if we actually want a functional immigration system, we need to start with actually what’s the political party we can actually get in power that is willing to even talk to our forces, even willing to talk to our movements and engage with our issues.

So I think that’s one piece that I would try to answer Aqui’s question, but I think I’m curious, José Luis and Nana, what you all think.

José Luis Granados Ceja:  I’ll jump in real quick. I think the fact that Donald Trump in his speech talked about the fact that, oh, the US is creating all these jobs, but the migrants are taking them all, is really telling. They understand that framing the discussion in this way can be effective in terms of winning support for their project.

But at the same time, it reels the fact that if we’re able to counter that narrative, to build power, as Emily’s talking about, then we’ll be able to help people understand that we actually have more things in common, that we should build a united front, maybe a popular front, by working with other class forces as well in terms of responding to that effort to make it seem that it is possible to divide us and be able for our opponents to secure more power.

I think it’s really telling that they signal it, and that means that, at the same time, we should be pushing back precisely around that to understand that.

And one of the things that we do, for example, at the Mexico Solidarity Project is building connections between trade union movements in the United States with those in Mexico. In Mexico, we had a long history of, basically, corporatist unions, protection unions that didn’t actually advocate for the interests of workers.

Now, we still have a long way to go but at the very least, there are mechanisms in place now to build an authentic, democratic, independent trade union movement, and that’s the movement that I hope that the trade union movement inside of the United States and Canada is dialoguing with. We had the election a little bit over a month ago now, and I was working with people from UFCW in Canada, Steelworkers in the United States. So we know that there is an interest there, but I think it really is going to require far more effort and resources.

Unfortunately, we have to be honest that it takes resources to build these kinds of links, but I do think that the potential is more available than it ever has been before because now we do have the possibility of a democratic independent trade union movement in Mexico. That wasn’t really the case for most of the 20th century and the early 21st century. So I think that changes as well.

And I think one of the opportunities where we can actually have this conversation, regardless of who wins in November in the United States, is the fact that the USMCA is going to be up for a renewed discussion, and I think that’s one of the places where we can put more safeguards.

There already were some pretty good advances in terms of the most recent free trade around labor protections and around raising the wages here in Mexico so that it’s not so tempting to offshore, to send manufacturing jobs to Mexico because wages are cheaper, because we’re also seeing wages rise here and the forces that are capable of actually protecting and getting good contracts.

So I think a key thing is also just unions in and of themselves expanding on this work of actually making these connections that I think are important but haven’t been exploited to its full potential yet.

Juan González:  I have a question here that goes along with something that Nana was raising earlier, and that question is from Anabel Mendoza. She’s the communication director of United We Dream in Oakland. And she asked, how has the politics of respectability contributed to the current dangerous narratives about immigration and immigrants to the US?

Nana Gyamfi:  Yes, it is a big problem. It even connects with what were just speaking about, Juan, because there’s a notion that there are some people, again, who are worthy and some people who are unworthy. In this country, the United States, a lot of that is based upon race. It can also have gender and other intersections, but race, as far as we’re concerned as Black folks, is the ultimate bottom line foundation.

And so even when we think about labor and the exploited workers that folks are talking about, and then I’m sure it being raised in that prior question, you’re talking about workers who are not being picked up by these major unions that were really designed to help those early Europeans I was telling you about, talking about earlier, who were trying to find jobs and they were like, great, you can be police, you could be construction, you can be this, you can be that, and they had those positions and fought like hell to keep Black people and any other folks from being able to be a part of those unions.

And we see something similar happening, which is why you have folks like in other spaces, janitorial unions out here in California, car wash, folks that are doing car washing, that are having to form their own spaces. And so how do we connect up with those folks who have a different perspective in terms of the worthy-unworthiness conversation, because that respectability is really there.

We look at agricultural workers, when we look at domestic workers and the ways that they’re excluded from so many of the regulations that would actually protect them and make their lives better, why are they excluded? Because this is coming off of sharecropping with respect to Black people and off of nanny and domestic working with respect to African Americans.

We’re not going to leapfrog over African Americans or over the legacy of enslavement of Africans in this country into some wonderful space of work conditions. We’re going to have to square up with that. And that squaring up is what’s going to give us the capacity to face respectability politics and define it really as what it is, which is another form of obstacle course into humanity. You’ve got to be able to show all of these things as a non-white person to be able to be seen as worthy of life, of living, of the capacity to thrive, that you don’t have to do if you are white.

And we have been willing, particularly migrants, because we feel like, oh my gosh, we’re so fortunate to be here, we’re so lucky to be able to get this opportunity, and so if we have to play this game, or if people are requiring for us to do this obstacle course to prove that we’re human beings that are worthy of human rights and human dignity, we’re willing to do that.

And it’s been a road, it’s started, people are at least bearing witness and speaking to the fact that we need to end that. But when you see them adding criminal bars to prevent people that have certain, not even convictions, but just crimes on their record, certain contact with the police, that will keep them from being able to have some permanent protection from deportation, when you see the happy increase of programs like felons not families, as if people who are convicted of crimes don’t have families, or are not worthy of family, being perpetuated and continued, all of these things are speaking to this need to criminalize those who are not going to fit into their box, and their allies.

And so, we have a situation that just happened, a person has been sentenced, just started an 18-month sentence, literally for being helpful to migrants in Texas who are asylum seekers, deemed by Governor Abbott, however, to be “illegal”.

And it’s fine, this person was prosecuted by the federal government, and they’re literally going to do 18 months, because the criminalization of people not doing things “the right way,” even when they do, goes to the folks, the migrants, as well as those who support migrants.

So, this respectability is an issue that plagues all communities that are trying to be free, but doesn’t mean that migrant communities need to fall into that bag. We need to work very hard to make sure that we are not talking about ourselves in this model minority type of way, but really speaking about migration as a human right and a normal human activity that entitles people to dignity.

Juan González:  I’d like to bring in another question from Bill Gallegos, who’s a long-time activist, member of the Liberation Road and Mexico Solidarity Project, and Bill asks, “In the face of the MAGA right’s vicious anti-immigrant campaign, what can we do to build a truly multiracial resistance that’s led by the communities that are most impacted by this campaign?

Emily Lee:  Well, I think the first thing we have to do is we have to stop MAGA at all costs. We need to block MAGA from seizing power at the federal government level, and at all levels of the ballot, from local, to state, to federal government.

So, in order to actually build this multiracial resistance that Bill’s talking about, we have to do two things. We have to block them from seizing power, but we also have to build and support a long-term strategy for the immigrant rights movement to be in leadership, and to be part of an intersectional movement, or a multiracial front, a coalition.

I think that this is done… There’s many, many organizations who are at the forefront of this fight, but especially in some of our most critical battleground states for this US presidential race, because of our racist electoral college, and the way that democracy is happening at the ballot box.

The election of this president, doesn’t matter how I vote in California, it doesn’t matter how somebody in New York votes for president, it really matters in a handful of states what someone votes, and it matters in a handful of counties in those states. So, an extremely important office is going to be decided by hundreds of thousands of voters, and it’s going to impact all of us.

And so, I think that from the top of the ticket all the way down, the MAGA movement has a very strong program, and as we can see, they are not just reaching out to white communities. They are making huge inroads in Black, Asian, Latinx communities, among working class people of color.

And so, I think that it’s very important for, if we’re trying to really counter the anti-immigrant program that they have, then we have to be very serious about going into those communities ourselves and organizing our own people to reject the MAGA ideology, because otherwise it is a very attractive policy because of all the reasons people said previously: I’m a good immigrant, those people were bad immigrants. Here’s the reason why I can’t get a job, here’s the reason why I can’t afford to get housing in my community, or I’m getting evicted.

So, I think that there’s just so much around the long-term fight that we need to be building towards, and that we really should take leadership from the frontline communities, and partner with the organizations and the people who are at the forefront of those most extreme fights around, is MAGA going to seize control of my city, of my governor, of my state, or are we going to reject those politics?

And the last few cycles have shown when the anti-MAGA coalition is able to coalesce together, we can ultimately reject it. That’s what happened in 2020, that’s what happened in the 2022 midterms, when there’s a very clear two choices put in front of regular people: do you want to have a country or a world where you don’t have the right to an abortion, you don’t have voting rights, you don’t have access to healthcare, basic democratic rights? Or do you actually want a society that is respectful, united, gives your kids a future?

There’s a very clear choice that people make, and overwhelmingly people do reject MAGA, but it’s up to us to be able to present those two choices to people, and to make it very clear to them.

So, I think that’s the job of what we need to do this year, is to make those choices very clear, and if we can do that compellingly, then regular people will come with us. But if we are not able to really build that on-the-ground organizing, on-the-ground people power, then they will get absorbed into the MAGA movement, because we can see that’s what’s happening already.

So, I think that, yes, it’s a big project, it’s not something… And it doesn’t end on Nov. 5. This is a project that we have to build towards for the next decade, and to really reject the politics that MAGA is putting out. And I think if we can say this country rejects Trump and his anti-immigrant program, then that means we can actually turn the tide. So, I think that there’s hope and possibility there, but it means that we have to act decisively in these next few months.

Juan González:  And I’d like to ask José Luis to also give us his thoughts. But I also want to share with you, before the last election, a year beforehand, I suggested on Democracy Now!, that the development of this neo-fascist movement in the United States was going to lead to potential resistance, violent resistance by Trump supporters. And sure enough, on Jan. 6, that’s exactly what happened.

I don’t think that those folks have gone away; I think that they have been steeled by their previous experiences, and are going to be even more determined to maintain power no matter what the election results show.

And I’m wondering to what degree immigrant rights, and advocates, and the left are really preparing for the nature of what is a growing fascist movement in this country? And beyond the elections, you’re talking about 10 years, I’m wondering about the next one or two years. And José Luis, I’m wondering your thoughts about that, and also how do you build these coalitions, multiracial coalitions, around immigration?

José Luis Granados Ceja:  I think, in a way, I can also answer the previous question around the respectability politics. I think you hit the nail on the head there. We have to be really honest about what’s coming. And I do think it’s not fearmongering to say, we could see pogroms, we could see efforts at rounding up people indiscriminately.

What worries me most about a possible Trump victory, yes, on the one hand, is MAGA taking over a very powerful edifice, a very powerful institution, but also the way that it empowers the fascists on the ground who will feel like they have the green light to move forward.

And I think you’re right, we have to be honest about what’s coming, and we have to be prepared for it. And that means different kinds of organizing. I think we need to review some of our history in terms of what does clandestine organizing look like? What does militant organizing look like?

There’s a phrase in Spanish that we use, [speaking Spanish], half-baked or half-thought-out measures. There’s no time for that anymore, the threat is very serious.

And I think a part of that also means understanding what it means to build a cross-border united front. I’ve been really disappointed to see some voices on the radical left, which I empathize with, I identify with, I myself consider myself a communist, that they’re more concerned about casting aspersions on the Mexican government for accepting the externalization of some of these border policies — Which I agree with their criticisms with — As opposed to actually identifying how do we actually dismantle the forces that are behind that.

So, less of these comments using scare quotes about how what’s happening in Mexico is not a real leftist program, and so much concern of judging another country’s political process. At the end of the day, we probably have some of the same criticism in terms of not going far enough.

But I think if we’re honest about what’s coming, then we need to understand that we need to build more bridges as opposed to building more walls, ideologically, metaphorically, and even literally in the case of the US-Mexico border. Of actually building more structures where we can exchange experiences and strategies.

If we do face mass deportations, that’s tremendous pressure on groups, civil society groups, particularly on Mexico’s northern border, that are already overstrained, that are already suffering to the point of near collapse in terms of their capacity to respond to the crisis on the ground of actually maybe mobilizing resources from the north to the south to assist us in the case of that.

But also, I’m really quite surprised, I think there’s a lot of exchange of experiences and information from organizing groups in the US southern states, and Mexico’s northern states, and the border region, but there isn’t enough exchange between groups in Washington and Mexico City.

There needs to be a higher level engagement, which is, what does our lobbying efforts look like in a binational way? How can we better build ties between grassroots organizers and, yes, political parties and institutions that are doing this work? There are forces here that want to see changes happening but know that the change really has to happen in Washington, not in Mexico City. So, how do we assist each other in actually getting there?

And I think that just means exchanging more, meeting more, maybe using technology to our advantage and having more exchanges more frequently. Making those personal relationships more solid.

But also, I think also face-to-face encounters, finding ways of having people have a bilateral encounter, maybe in the border regions so it’s easier. Mexicans need a visa to enter the United States, it’s not so easy for just anybody to go. So, maybe inviting people from the United States down into Mexico to spend time and figure out how we can really strengthen those relationships, and understand that the enemy is in Washington and not necessarily with folks here in Mexico.

Juan González:  And I’d like to give Nana the last word on this panel. And also, if you might be able to talk a little bit about the positive aspects that most people don’t really associate with the migration crisis. The fact that, first of all, those who migrate, who leave their country behind, and venture in long journeys to a distant country to find a new life are often the most entrepreneurial, the most audacious, the bravest of the members of their community.

And also the enormous support that these migrants provide to their own home countries, whether it’s Trinidad, Jamaica, or Haiti, El Salvador, Guatemala, Venezuela. The migrants, the amount of money that they send back to their families and to their countries on a monthly basis is far greater than any foreign aid that the United States has ever given to any of these countries. They are literally sustaining many of their relatives and family members back home just on the meager wages they make here in the United States. But people never look at that enormous contribution that the migrants make, not only to American prosperity, but also to their countries back home.

Nana Gyamfi:  It’s so interesting to me when we talk about migration, that, again… Just the word migrant. If someone says someone’s an immigrant, it is like, for Black folks, someone’s calling someone the N-word almost. You know what I mean? People get offended. You ask people where they come from, or people start… Everyone is nervous, there’s a lot of tension around that because it is seen somehow as being a lesser than.

When, in fact, when we really look at this country, and if we look specifically at migrants of color, and Black migrants specifically. Black migrants and migrants of color. How much of this everyday culture — And by culture I don’t just mean food, and I don’t just mean dance, and I don’t just mean…

But even how people think about certain things, the ideas that we bring to this country, the ideas about how things should be. The different philosophy that just comes from the fact that you are speaking a different language. There are words in all of our languages that you can’t say in another language, really. And that comes with this person and becomes part of what we are bringing and putting into the community.

So many folks are literally related to people that are migrants in just their own generation, a generation above, a generation below. Very few families, when you look at J.D. Vance and his Indian wife, there’s just very few families when you get to a certain generation in particular where people are not friends with folks who are migrants of color or Black migrants, working with folks who are migrants of color or Black migrants. Literally, we are a part of folks’ everyday lives and all that that means in terms of the contribution.

Yes, there’s the economic contribution, I try not to just focus on the economic contribution because enslaved Africans also create an economic contribution. And so, we want to be clear that some of this contribution is exploited labor, and we don’t want that.

But the reality is that, whether it be the development of science, whether it be development of agriculture, whether it be the development… Any time you are people that are doing work, you’re always going to come up with ways that you can do it better, ways that you can do it faster. Any time that you are here and able to be with your families and communities, you’re going to come up with different ways of preparing different aspects of your culture that are going to meld with cultures that are here.

So, there is just a humanness, an increase, an expansion of what it means to be human when you have people that are coming from cultures and lands outside of yourselves that you connect with. This is why white people used to go to Europe, and Africa, and Jamaica, all these other places, to “find themselves”. We bring it to you. If you don’t have the money to go, we bring it to you so that we can help find ourselves. And we do that through our interactions with each other. Very critical.

As well as us being able to bring to our countries. And so, yes, there’s an economy of our countries that is so dependent upon remittances, and that’s the reason that sometimes when they want to sanction our countries, they cut off those remittances, because they know how much our countries depend on our ability to send our funds back home.

But we don’t just send funds back home, we go home. We go home to vacation, we go home to see family members, and we bring, again, this meld of what we have developed together in this country, when we get back to our country it becomes a meld there, we bring that back. And so it continues again in an expansion of humanity and what it means to be human.

That doesn’t happen when you do not have that. When we see countries that do not let other people in, whether those countries are real, or whether those countries are cartoons like Wakanda, we understand that something is being lost by not having that interaction. And so, that’s not the world that we want to live in.

I find it so interesting that people will stand and sleep in lines on the ground for a week to get tickets to see movies that are sci-fi, that involve people interacting with folks that are not even human beings, and that is fabulous to them, but when it happens in real life, it is problematic. It’s something to think about in terms of the futuristic view that we have of our world and what it should look like.

And if we really… We know in our hearts, we know in our spirits that if we really want a world in which humanity is living at its highest level, it’s a world in which we are connecting with all living beings, and at very minimal, the humans and planet that we have right here.

Juan González:  Well, with those eloquent words, I want to thank our panelists, José Luis Granados from the Mexico Solidarity Project, Emily Lee from Seed the Vote, and Nana Gyamfi from the Black Alliance for Just Immigration for a stimulating conversation. The topic has been democracy, immigration, and the 2024 election. The time is approaching, folks, decisions have to be made, movements have to be further organized, and we’ll see the results very soon.

So, it’s been my pleasure. Juan González, co-host of Democracy Now!, to be the moderator for this event.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Thank you so much for watching The Real News Network, where we lift up the voices, stories, and struggles that you care about most. And we need your help to keep doing this work, so please tap your screen now, subscribe, and donate to The Real News Network. Solidarity forever.

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