We Can Change an Unjust Immigration Policy

Testimony given by David Bacon at the People’s Tribunal at the West County Detention Center in Richmond, CA
By David Bacon
48 Hills, 6/4/18

RICHMOND, CA – May 5, 2018 – Imam Abu Qadir Al-Amin testifies at a tribunal at the West County Detention Center, where immigrants are incarcerated before being deported.

It came from two centuries of colonialism, from the announcement of the Monroe Doctrine, when this government said that it had the right to do as it wanted in all of the countries of Latin America. It came from the wars that turned Puerto Rico and the Philippines into direct colonies over a century ago.

It came from more wars and interventions fought to keep in power those who would willingly ensure the wealth and profits of U.S. corporations, and the misery and poverty of the vast majority of their own countries.

Smedley Butler, a decorated Marine Corp general, told the truth about what he did a century ago:

“I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism,” he said. “I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.”

When people in El Salvador and Guatemala and Honduras and Haiti tried to change the injustice of this, the U.S. armed rightwing governments that made war on their own people. Sergio Sosa, a combatiente in Guatamala’s civil war who now heads a workers’ center in Omaha, says simply, “You sent the guns and we buried the dead.”

Two million people left El Salvador in the 1980s and crossed the border to the U.S. How many more hundreds of thousands from Guatemala? How many more after the U.S. overthrew Aristide in Haiti? How many from Honduras after Zelaya was forced from office, and the U.S. said nothing while sending arms to the army that uses them still today against Honduran people?

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