Those of a certain age remember 1973 and “Panic in Detroit,” a David Bowie song describing the 1967 riots in the Motor City. The current Panic in El Paso seems different: made by and for the media, fueled by pandering politicians, and wholly related not to a “crisis at the border” but a major humanitarian/refugee crisis metastasizing in the Americas.
America has always been a land of immigrants, and the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty (Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free) are not in the Constitution but they represent a sort of bedrock set of American values. Our nation is wealthy, powerful, and prosperous thanks to healthy and copious immigrant flows. Nations that shut out immigration (think of Japan, Italy, Russia) don’t do well, economically, over the long arc of history.
Right now, the United States economy is in a labor deficit — we desperately need workers. And if you don’t believe us, ask anyone who owns a business. Or needs something repaired at home. There are approximately five million jobs that need to be filled, right now, in America. Why not create a reasonable, bipartisan bill to allow people who want to work, and who have passed a background check, the ability to do so? Presidents Biden, Trump, and Obama have been faced with the unregulated arrival of desperate people at our southern border and all three reacted via “executive action” — not exactly law, and subject to the whims and caprices of “the next” administration.
The American population is aging, our birthrate is low, and has been declining dramatically since 2007, and our populace is not so healthy. This means that, in order to sustain robust economic growth into the future, we need young people to come here and … work. We need nurses and doctors, but instead we get deceptive Canadian Ted Cruz at the southern border telling us we’re being invaded by immigrants. We need serious technological support and innovative solutions. Instead, we get vague mumblings from Chuck Schumer, a nice old man, leader of the U.S. Senate, who still uses a flip phone.
Looking at two neighboring nations — Mexico and Haiti— it becomes clear why we have people heading to the U.S. border. Technically, Mexican nationals are not seeking asylum at the U.S. border, but a drug war there, which began in 2006 and is largely financed by the U.S., has left an estimated 350,000 dead. The Mexican minimum wage is about 11 dollars per day, and there is literally no legal path for Mexican citizens with neither money nor skills to obtain a legal visa to travel and work in the USA. These people, then, are forced to migrate here in a clandestine and dangerous way, and the only ones who profit are the smugglers and other unscrupulous individuals who take advantage of this situation.
Haiti is a wholly different story. It has no functioning government since mercenaries murdered the sitting president about two years ago. Criminal gangs rule the streets of Port-au-Prince and the once proud nation — the first nation in the world to gain independence through a sustained slave revolt in the early 19th century — has descended into chaos. President Biden traveled recently to Canada to try and persuade Prime Minister Trudeau to tackle the Haitian morass: Both leaders walked away without an agreement or plan.
An alternative plan to the disinterest and handwringing of powerful nations is a local organization that has been supporting Haiti for the past 20 years. The “IC Haiti Outreach Ministry” is a not-for-profit that has focused on education, economic opportunity, and healthcare in a rural area of the Central Plateau — a 34-square-mile area consisting mostly of subsistence farmers. The organization, developed by University of Memphis professor and public health expert Debra Bartelli and Bob Lorsbach, MD, has hired a nurse and medical doctor for the region, and has provided dental, eye, and deworming clinics. They’ve also funded and trained a Haitian MD by supporting education opportunities in the U.S. and in Haiti. If the American government engaged in similar collaborative, innovative approaches designed to generate solutions rather than seeking to scapegoat suffering people for political points, the plight of the Haitian people would certainly improve.
This humanitarian crisis playing out at our southern border is neither new nor intractable. We need political action, we need people to tell the truth — including our friends in the media — and we need “real” information about the drivers of this situation. Sadly, many of us are manipulated by the media and our politicians. Tragically, a few take action while the rest of us sit around listening to Bowie songs from half a century ago.
Bryce W. Ashby is an attorney at Donati Law, PLLC. Michael J. LaRosa is an associate professor of history at Rhodes College.
