interviews
A Lack of Political Will, Pt. I
by Rey Koslowski
August 5, 2021
This interview with Rey Koslowski, Professor of Political Science at the University at Albany, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
Rey | My research is largely on international migration and border security, primarily looking at international cooperation on migration. I'm particularly interested in the politics of immigration policy-making. I'm also interested in emigration — policies regarding exit and the impact of immigrants on their home country politics.
I have been doing this for way too many years, several decades now. My research was originally focused on migration within the European Union. Gradually over time, the focus has moved more to US immigration policymaking and has since branched out from there to comparing the US with Canada and Australia, and even countries like China.
I compare migration policy in different parts of the world and put the United States in a comparative perspective, but also examine the broader consequences of migration for international relations.
I love talking to people who have studied this for a long time because even to my layman's ear, the arguments about borders and immigration are stale. There is a consistent level of migration happening, I think about 3.3% worldwide, and I wonder –
I'm gonna have to correct you here. I believe what you are referring to is the UN's figures on the international migrant stock. There are 281 million international migrants in the world, which is approximately 3.5% of the world's population right now. Migrant stock is not about the people who are migrating (or migrant flows), but rather those who have migrated, according to the UN’s definition, the number of people who are outside of their state of birth or nationality for more than a year. So that number includes my 90-year-old aunt who came to the United States in the 1960s, but it also includes some of the refugees from the DRC who are now in Albany.
I like to think in terms of the broader concept of global mobility, which includes all people who have crossed international borders for any length of time, for any purpose. For example, this includes the 1.5 billion international tourist arrivals in 2019, more than doubling 673 million arrivals in 2000, according to the UN World Tourism Organization. I’ve estimated that there were well over 2 billion international border crossings per year. That’s, of course, before COVID-19 travel restrictions were imposed worldwide last year. When you say all these people are still migrating, that perhaps gets to the issue a little bit better.
I guess I mean, more generally, that there’s a consistency to human movement over time.
Yes, the number of migrants as a percentage of the world population has been consistently around 3% to 3.5% since I started studying this decades ago. So it's remained fairly consistent but relatively small. The majority of people never leave their country of birth, even Americans. 44% of Americans have passports and fewer than half of Americans have traveled abroad. If you think about large populations of India and Sub-Saharan Africa and even China for that matter, large majorities of those populations never will leave their country. Those who cross borders need to have sufficient resources to do so, whether as a short-term tourist or a permanent immigrant. Migrants are not the poorest of the poor. In contrast, the number of international border crossings has increased dramatically over the past few decades mostly because a relatively small but growing percentage of the world’s population has enough money to travel internationally – for some, many times in their lifetimes and even many times per year.
I want to talk about border security in the U.S. You look at a place like El Paso, it’s been increasingly militarized over the last few decades. But has that done anything to deter migration? Is there a correlation between borders and security in a tangible way?
Let me start with the question of deterring migration. Most of the focus has been on unauthorized migration when we talk about the border.
There have been many episodes of "securing the border" by either hiring more border patrol agents or building more fences — this is referred to as increased border security or the militarization of the border.
In the mid-1990s Operation Hold the Line and Operation Gatekeeper stationed border patrol agents every hundred yards along the border to deter people from coming. Border Patrol also put up fences so that people trying to cross in urban areas would have to go around through mountains and deserts. The thinking was that migrants wouldn't cross where it is so dangerous. Well, guess what, they continued to cross and as a result, we have more people dying in the desert.
And then of course after 9/11, there was an additional focus on border fencing, through the Secure Fence Act in 2006. But despite all of those resources, the population of unauthorized migrants in the United States basically increased from around 6 million in 1996 to about 12 million in 2007. And it's been around 11 million the last few years.
I would suggest that all of this fencing and increased Border Patrol staffing didn't reduce the unauthorized population in the United States. In fact, Doug Massey and others have made the argument that essentially what happened is that people who had been going back and forth, particularly in agriculture, basically, were now fenced in. Instead of going back and forth to be with their families in the off-season after they made some money, families started to reconstitute themselves in the United States, and were, in most cases, smuggled in. That's how we got to this point.
When it comes down to it, US policymakers aren't willing to do the one thing that they've often said is really important – and that reduces demand for unauthorized migrant labor.
We have very little enforcement of employer sanctions, people who hire unauthorized migrant workers.
There is a fairly good correlation between the business cycle and migration. During the Great Recession, for example, there were fewer apprehensions along the border and many more people leaving the United States. It's not surprising that as we see more demand for labor, we see more migration.
You touched on symbolic politics as a way to look like someone is doing something. Why does that still work?
One thing to be clear about is that many permanent residents and naturalized citizens compete in similar labor markets with unauthorized migrant workers. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, labor unions were pushing for tougher border controls and to get employer sanctions. When labor unions were stronger back then, Democratic politicians would often say, "we are in favor of legal migration, but we need to stop illegal migration.”
One of the reasons that we've seen a certain realignment politically is because along comes a guy who has been employing unauthorized migrant workers, is probably one of the best at practicing these symbolic politics of border control, and starts his campaign no less with this issue. And then he becomes the “champion of the working class.”
Democrats also used to oppose NAFTA and trade liberalization, if you go back to the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. In many ways, Trumpism was a means of taking away those issues from the Democrats that appealed to the economic interests of the working class. Keep in mind how well Trump did with Latino voters in 2020. This was a surprise for a lot of people, but a lot of these economic issues resonated and particularly resonated in the Southwest.
How should today’s left respond to these claims about immigration and migration?
I think there needs to be a bit of a rethinking and relistening to a broader range of constituencies that are concerned about economic competition from unauthorized migrants. I think that is a starting point.
Gallup for many, many years has asked the public, "Do you think that the level of immigration in the United States should be decreased, increased or kept at the same level?" And for a long time, the majority of Americans thought that it should be decreased or kept at the same level while fewer than 20 percent thought it should be increased. Now there are more people who would say we need more immigration. But, I think in general, the percentage of those in the middle, is shrinking. We are polarized in the way we are approaching the politics of immigration.
And, if you look at all comprehensive immigration reform efforts in the past, reform has only been enacted through coalitions of Republicans and Democrats. It's really hard to see anything like that occurring in the current Congress. Part of the challenge here is that everyone feels like the system is broken, but we don't have the wherewithal to politically address this.
Disappointing.
interviews
The Fight is in Mississippi
by Melissa Garriga
February 16, 2021
This interview with Melissa Garriga was conducted and condensed by franknews.
Melissa | I was born and raised in Mississippi. I serve on the board of directors for the Mississippi Rising Coalition, which is an anti-racist, social justice nonprofit. I'm involved with the Mississippi Poor People's Campaign also, as a national organizer.
Everything that I'm involved in, puts an emphasis on how all of these issues are entangled. Poverty doesn't stand alone. There's an element of climate injustice, of criminal justice, of racial justice that explains why people live in poverty and why the number of people living in poverty is growing. Until we address all of them, we are truly not going to solve the issue.
frank | What are the goals of the Mississippi branch of The Poor People's Campaign?
We don't base that off of the federal poverty measure, we use the measure that the Poor People's Campaign has constructed. A lot of people are one paycheck away from that poverty line that is discounted in the federal measurement and we think it is critical to include them.
There's no representation for these folks. When elected officials make legislative decisions, we see time and time again that those decisions always almost negatively affect low-wealth folks. The idea behind the Poor People's Campaign is that until we move as one, until we make these 1.3 million voices heard and have a say in how policy is made, we are never going to progress as a society. We poor and low-income folks are never going to have a chance to get out of poverty. It's going to be generational.
We call ourselves an organism rather than an organization because we move as one. We don't have a hierarchy. You don't have to have a degree to get involved. You don't have some great resume to be a part of the campaign. All you have to do is know your truth and speak your truth. And the hope is that if we can get everyone moving together, then we'll be a force that's unrecognizable and we can actually get policies that will better Mississippi and Mississippians.
Of course, in our state, that feels like we are trying to move a mountain. Mississippi is the last on many good lists and the first on many bad lists. We continue to fail to adequately address why that is. It comes down to the way resources are distributed around our state. It comes down to a predatory payday lending industry. It comes down to our minimum wage — our minimum wage is the federal minimum wage is $7.25, while the cost of living here is around $13 an hour.
Poverty and race are tangible and visible in Mississippi, whereas in a lot of other places it’s under the radar.
The fact that almost 50% of folks here are poor does seem like, as a group, we should have a lot of political agency. It's a huge demographic, but it's a demographic that has had their access to voting chipped away at. Whether that's through redistricting or through voter suppression, their agency has been weakened in order to keep the capital with the Republican Party. The Poor People's Campaign had a study that showed how if poor and low-wealth folks were able to get access to the polls, they could make a huge shift in how states are represented.
The idea is that we have to get everyone united, and I think begins with a narrative. And even the Democratic Party is missing the narrative. We have to challenge even the idea that liberal policies are always representative of the poor, because oftentimes they aren’t. Sometimes they are means-tested, and if we know that the federal poverty measure doesn't represent reality, we know that these policies are automatically excluding many people who are struggling.
Both parties fight over who is going to be the champion of the middle class. Politicians are not speaking to the poor and low-wealth folks. If you are continuously excluded from the conversation, why would you bother to show up? What is going to draw you into the fight the problems that you are facing are not even being talked about?
On top of that, we need to get people comfortable saying I am part of the poor and low-wealth, and I am being ignored. I work hard, but I don't bring home enough money to survive. People are uncomfortable saying those sorts of things because they see their reality as a personal failure. There is a stigma around poverty. We want to shift the conversation to talk about it as a failure of the system.
There is this saying that if we can move Mississippi, the rest of the country will move. That is part of the reason why I can't move from here. I feel like the fight is here. There's a lot of resiliency in folks here, and we are starting to see slow progress. We know that when you're fighting here, you can't just give up. We're always going to face adversity. It is always going to be a large mountain to climb. We made gains in the civil rights movement, yet today it feels like we're not really that far ahead.
You did remove the Confederate flag from the state flag.
We did do that. And that was a great symbolic gesture. It was a hard fight and it took a long time. But now it's time to take that symbolism and make it something concrete, right? In this past session, they also voted back in a new Jim Crow law that was still on the books. We can't just stop there and not keep pushing forward.
I will say that, I feel like it's starting to turn a little bit to where legislators are wanting to know, well, where y'all going? What are you wanting? They're wanting to listen to our ideas and where we stand on issues. And, you know, I guess that's one step in the battle. I think it's a lot more than what we've had in the past.
What did this election feel like in Mississippi?
When Trump got elected in 2016, I warned a few friends in the media that what Mississippi looks like right now is what America would look like with this type of administration. Meaning, almost the majority of our population is Black, but we see a race divide. Like I said before almost 50 percent of our population is poor or low-wealth. We see a class divide. And we are under this super conservative majority with the Governor, the House, and the Senate. We are completely divided, but neither party addresses race and class together. Many Mississippians, then, feel left out of the conversation.
How do you talk about race and class together?
As a white ally and organizer, I literally question that every day. That is the challenge, especially when everything is so hyper-partisan and politicized.
My theory and what I think I've seen work is staying consistent with your messaging and your actions. You have to get into a community and break down how policies are affecting that community. Like, you're paying more taxes because of this. And you might think that you don't like taxes, but in reality, if the taxes were doing something else for you, you might view them differently.
I think that is one approach, but I will be honest with you. I don’t have a clear answer. I grew up in a conservative household. My whole family is conservative and has voted Republican their whole life. By just staying consistent and having honest conversations with them, my mom went from a Trump voter to a Biden voter in 2020.
Why do you think?
I feel like she saw the bad in the past four years, and chose to accept it instead of ignoring it.
But, poverty doesn't discriminate. In reality, we're all subject to being homeless. We're all subject to chronic illness and not having insurance to pay for it. We're all subject to losing our job. When you talk about these things in an open way with people, people realize that it's happening in their communities just as much as it is happening in other communities. You have to keep relating poor white folks and poor Balck folks to each other to bring them together. It sounds very idealist, but it's all you can do.
The scope of The Poor People’s Campaign is great.
The original Poor People's Campaign did not have state-by-state campaigns. I think we win by applying pressure to each state, and to each state legislature.
As you organize nationally, you start to realize that the same problems in Mississippi are impacting folks in Maine. And if you could connect Maine and Mississippi, politically, you're already starting to change that kind of narrative. We're excited about what's to come. Obviously, 2020 was a nightmare, but I really don't feel like we slowed down that much. We had a strong digital campaign this year for the election. We increased the number of poor and low-wealth folks who were voting nationwide. If we can get these people to show up we can change the political landscape.
I hope the national narrative, among media, among policy, among electoral campaigns starts to focus on poor and low-wealth people. Our conversations have seemed to mostly center on business owners in the middle class, and we never left space for poor and low-wealth folks. That is what we are going to change.