border controls

[Philip Ferguson <plf13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tony Abdo wrote:

>But San Diego and Tijuana are one gigantic metropolitan area with about
>5.5 million population now.     What has been the record in esablishing
>a Left presence in this area that jointly works together in both sides
>of the border?


I've found Tony's comments on the 'border question' really interesting.  I
don't read GLW or 'Workers World' so I don't want to comment on whether
they give sufficient priority to the border issue, other than to say that
I had the impression that both the DSP and WWP probably had pretty good
records on the issue.

But leaving that aside, I was quite fascinated by Tony's general comments.
Although I knew San Diego and Tijuana were just across the border from each
other, I had no idea that they constituted one big metropolitan area with
this many people.  Wouldn't this be the next biggest urban area north of
the Rio Grande,  after Mexico City, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago?

I would say that is actually really exciting, and opens up all kinds of
prospects for really interesting and important political work.

In fact, given that California and Texas are two of the three
largest-population states in the US, that Arizona is undergoing a major
population growth/economic development, and that Mexico is such an
important country (certainly in terms of the Americas), the border would
seem to me to be an incredibly important issue.

You would think that it would hold out the possibility of US radical
organisations jointly organising with the Mexican left and progressive
forces, mass demonstrations on the border, for an open border.  That would
really challenge the US ruling class and undermine US chauvinism, in a way
that stuff like the anti-globalisation protests do not.

In recent conversations with a few friends in other countries, I have found
that they have been thinking that immigration controls are becoming an
increasingly important issue and one that can really challenge both the
political requirements and prerogatives of imperialist capital - which is
to keep the impoverished masses of the Third World out of the First World -
and the backward, chauvinist ideas which afflict large sections of the
working class (especially the white working class) in the First World.

In Australia and New Zealand, we don't have land borders with any other
countries, so it is easier for our ruling classes to maintain the fiction
that borders are 'natural frontiers' and to rigidly control and restrict
the entry of Pacific Islanders and poor Asians.  But even here, there is a
substantial tightening up going on.  In NZ, certainly, the left hasn't even
begun to take this on board.

Cheers,
Phil