By David Bacon
The DACA youth, the “dreamers” are the true children of NAFTA – those who, more than anyone, paid the price for the agreement. Yet they are the ones now punished by the Trump administration as it takes away their legal status, their ability to work, and their right to live in this country without fearing arrest and deportation. At the same time, those responsible for the fact they grew up in the U.S. walk away unpunished – even better off.
We’re not talking about their parents. It’s common for liberal politicians (even Trump himself on occasion) to say these young people shouldn’t be punished for the “crime” of their parents – that they brought their children with them when they crossed the border without papers. But parents aren’t criminals anymore than their children are. They chose survival over hunger, and sought to keep their families together and give them a future.
The perpetrators of the “crime” are those who wrote the trade treaties and the economic reforms that made forced migration the only means for families to survive. The “crime” was NAFTA.