Fw: anti-racist group quits campaigns against "free trade"

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Tue Sep 21 11:43:18 PDT 1999


At 03:11 AM 9/22/99 +1000, Angela quoted:
>
>De Fabel van de Illegaal {articles in english}
>http://www.dsl.nl/~lokabaal/english.htm
>
>Fight for open borders!
>For international solidarity!
>
>De Fabel van de illegaal commits itself to help refugees and migrants. The
>policy of the government is based on the selection and illigalisation of
>these people. The illegalised are then cut off from all kinds of social
>benefits, are exploited by businesses and are chased by the police. After

-- snip ---

I hate to pick up that subject, but that seems to me as another misguided focus. The problem is not with immigration - after all, folks like Rupert Murdoch, Zbig Brzezinski, or Henry Kissinger are immigrants. Immigration is only a symptom of a problem - economic exploitation, war, or persecution.

Focus on immigration is a symbolic homage to the bourgeois notion of personal freedom of movement while overlooking the economic freedom or rather absence of it that forces people to emigrate in the first place. Helping refugees is a noble thing - but the idea of open boarders to 'solve' economic problems that cause people to emigrate sounds to me like neo-liberal 'globalization' crap in the leftish disguise.

The only freedom of travel worth pursuing by the Left is that enjoyed by the US-ers, the Japanese, and Western Europeans - people should be able to make enough money in their home country to freely travel as tourists to any exotic country of their choice, including the US.

BTW - US has probably one of the most restrictive travel and immigration policies among the developed countries. For one thing, no Western European nation prohibits its own citizens from traveling to places that the government does not like.

wojtek



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