Matt Stannard
If you aren’t willing to share the country with those who seek its refuge, security, or economic opportunity, you shouldn’t be allowed to live here. That’s foundationally fair and just.
It’s not the people seeking to live here — not in any defensible view of economic and political systems — who are responsible for others’ lack of security or opportunity. It doesn’t work that way. All deprivation and inequity in this country is the fault of its irresponsible and indifferent economic elites.
The high-and-mighty argument that “a nation MUST have the right to determine who does and doesn’t come in; it’s the cornerstone of sovereignty and security blah blah blah” assumes what we call our nation has a right to be on this land in the first place, and that we are actually making just and rational decisions about the inevitable human migration that we experience–and which will soon accelerate in response to climate instability. Until we take money out of politics, create more just economic relationships, and come to terms with our settler colonialism, I trust the people in the caravan a thousand times more than I trust our policymakers, and a million times more than I trust the violent fascists at ICE and other police forces.
Want to make a just “movement” policy? Create a just and truly representative body representing all communities impacted by that policy, including migrating people themselves.
I’d rather live next to indigenous people and immigrants from anywhere and everywhere than near settled citizens who would close our borders. We would be better off if we could just replace the former with the latter in some systemic fashion, 1:1, but I’m trying not to be too techno-utopian about this. That would make a great short story though.
In any case, whenever someone asserts that some migrating person(s) don’t have a right to be here, I just counter-assert that person not having a right to be here.
Cowboys on the Commons 