Stunning numbers heard on Mermet’s radio show about the US-Mexican border being erected: since NAFTA came into effect, Mexico has been flooded with cheap US goods and subsidized crops, resulting in 1.7 million Mexican farmers losing their livelihood. In turn, more and more people travel across the desert to try to enter the US, still an eldorado. Naturally, the US benefits from it, on the Mexican side in Maquiladora production lines, and on the US side, mainly in farmland labor.

The fence is viewed by some as a fresh new Wall of Shame, others as a necessary protection against a “cultural invasion”. With increasing numbers of human beings on this earth, and the issue of sharing wealth that’s never truly raised or addressed, the poorer countries will always be the first to suffer, and the rich ones, the first to protect themselves.

In the same radio program, a lady named Monica was interviewed, with her husband, four days after being expelled from Arizona, where new laws have been passed to crack down on illegal immigrants. She was a factory supervisor, had been in the US for 30 years (came in when she was four…), had a house, two cars, three children. They were caught at the factory and were thrown out just as they were; they were sleeping under a bridge just across the border, and owed it to Mermet and his crew to be able to call their kids who had remained behind. Senseless situations, where people who paid taxes, contributed to the local economy and were well-integrated in society for decades, become outcasts in just a few hours. Surely immigration policies should take into account how well people are integrated in their communities.

The situation isn’t quite as brutal in France, but the policy is to expel a certain quota, and that doesn’t make for much compassion either. A few people have already died trying to avoid the police. Some communities are actively protecting immigrants, especially when kids in schools are scheduled to be expelled, which typically creates a widespread uproar (RESF). Just today, we learned that a Chechnya family that managed to make it all the way here to escape the mess that’s Grozny, was being expelled and returned. Sickening.