How Immigrant Repression and U.S. Incarceration Serve Global Capitalist Interests by Chandra Russo

As of August 18, 2011, the Obama Administration had deported over one million immigrants, more deportations than under any other president to date (Dinan, 2011; D’Almeida, 2011). Many of those deported spend at least some time being detained in an immigrant detention center, often a for-profit prison. In the face of such inhumane treatment and with families being torn apart, many of us are left asking: why is this happening? In this paper, prepared for Coloradans For Immigrant Rights (CFIR) and the American Friends Service Committee Denver Office, I will explore this question.

More specifically, I will examine who benefits from the deportation of immigrants and incarceration of both immigrants and citizens. CFIR has asked if immigration policy and practices can be related to mass incarceration in the United States? I suggest that yes, these two phenomena are linked, and that understanding the operations of neoliberal capitalist globalization helps us see how. The U.S. government’s failure to legalize the undocumented, the mass detention and deportation of immigrants, and the incarceration of certain segments of U.S. citizenry are parts of a common system.

We are thrilled that Chandra Russo has written this paper for CFIR/AFSC. To read the full paper please go to: http://www.afsc.org/sites/afsc.civicactions.net/files/documents/GlobalizationPaper_Chandra%20Russo_fall%202011.pdf

Chandra Russo is working on her PhD in Sociology at the University of California in Santa Barbara. Having spent some of her formative years in Denver as a member of CFIR (Coloradans for Immigrant Rights, AFSC’s ally project), she gives much credit to both CFIR and the AFSC for much of her current analysis of social justice and immigrant rights.

Globalization and Migration workshop

This past Saturday at the AFSC headquarters, we had our amazing workshop on Globalization and Migration. The workshop was designed to dissect the immense topics that are Globazation and Migration while taking into account the economic components as well. As epic and overwhelming as these topics sound, we were able to design a workshop that attempted to tackle the monster of a topic. There were about 35 people in the audience and they were all fully engaged. The activities were enlightening and were well received by the audience.

Globalization Y Migration Head, Heart and Feet from participants:
I learned…
That we can teach each other a lot of things.
The difference between the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
About Nigeria standing up for its people against Neoliberalism.
About the key players and the important terms to know when talking about neoliberalism.
That activities make it easier to show what’s going on
That popular education actually works
That it’s really important to come together and pull some of these things apart, and THEN act
We need to work together as nations and fight at a global level

I felt…
Happy about how this workshop turned out
Overwhelmed
Excited about being with like minded people
That truth wins out in the end
Hopeful
Refreshed
More equipped
More connected to the suffering caused by the system and my role in it
Inspired by everyone’s contributions
Like I thought really hard today

I will…
Educate myself about resistance in other countries, like Nigeria
Take what I learned to the streets
Do a workshop at CIRC
Talk about the root causes of migration more
No longer buy name brands
Look for more opportunities for action and education around globalization
Bring it to build on our work at RAP
Bring it to my Social Justice faith leaders group, and other faith communities

*written by Fadima Gologos