Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Immigration isn't a border issue – it's caused by U.S. interventions

People walking alongside a river

Migrants from Guatemala prepare to cross the Rio Grande, to enter the United States in February. The best way to address immigration is fix problems caused by past interventions in foreign countries.

Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images

Yates-Doerr is an associate professor anthropology at Oregon State University and the author of “Mal-Nutrition: Maternal Health Science and the Reproduction of Harm.” She is also a fellow with The OpEd Project.

Immigration is a hot-button topic in the presidential election, with Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump both promising to crack down hard at the border. But neither candidate is talking about a root cause of immigration: the long history of U.S. meddling, which has directly resulted in displacement. If our politicians really wanted to address immigration, they would look not at the border but at past actions of the U.S. government, which have directly produced so much of the immigration we see today.


Consider the case of Guatemala, the origin point of 11 percent of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Over the past 20 years, I have worked as an anthropologist in a region with one of Guatemala’s highest rates of exodus to the United States. Twenty years ago, it was mostly men who would migrate. Now women and children migrate regularly too. They are leaving conditions of extreme poverty and oppression for low-paid farm and factory labor. Though political discourse focuses on the “deterrence” of migrants at the border, this ignores the open secret that the U.S. economy relies on the labor force that migrants provide.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

To secure this labor force, the U.S. government has destabilized Guatemala for decades. People familiar with U.S. history will know that in the 1950s, the government helped to topple Guatemala’s democratically elected president, Jacobo Árbenz, who was implementing modest land reform. Powerful American politicians had financial ties to the United Fruit Company, which ran banana plantations throughout the country. Because Árbenz’s support of farmworkers interfered with company profit, the U.S. government worked to violently depose him.

What started as a terror campaign and coup in the 1950s became an outright strategy of Indigenous massacre by the 1980s. Military and paramilitary forces with U.S. training targeted Indigenous leaders, including mothers and midwives because they were skilled at caring for and nourishing their communities. Mercenary armies, operating a scorched earth campaign, razed and deforested communities with the goal of depopulating entire regions. The U.S. and Guatemalan governments worked together so that Guatemalans would starve.

A less familiar history is that the U.S. government's destabilization of Guatemala also took a form more covert than military violence, and that these activities continue to the present day. As the United Fruit Company was withdrawing from Guatemala in the second half of the 20th century, the U.S. Agency for International Development set up a headquarters in Guatemala’s capital. Under the pretense of encouraging development, USAID promoted monoculture farming. Many of the genetically hybridized seeds the agency distributed were ill adapted to Guatemalan climates and required industrial fertilizers and pesticides — several of which were banned as too dangerous for use in the United States. Meanwhile, cancer rates, miscarriage and neurological problems all began to spread.

In parallel to USAID’s development interventions, in the 1970 and ‘80s the U.S. government helped fund scientists to develop a synthetic protein powder, ostensibly meant to solve malnutrition. The powder was licensed to Guatemala’s largest beer corporation to mass-produce at scale and branded as a healthy alternative to traditional staples of corn, beans and squash. Guatemala has since seen decades of U.S.-backed nutrition interventions reliant on cheap, mass-produced powders. These can be found all across the country, and still Guatemala has one of the highest rates of chronic malnutrition in the world. Health workers frequently blame so-called uneducated mothers for being inept at feeding their families, pushing more packaged nutrients as the solution to their problems. If mothers object, they risk losing access to care.

But the challenges Guatemalans are experiencing are the result of cruel policies — not women’s ignorance. The forced reliance on agrochemicals has damaged soils and landscapes; the forced replacement of protein powders for traditional foods has damaged entire ways of life. Many Guatemalans who migrate today are looking for modest wages to care for family members sick with cancer, kidney failure or other diseases associated with living in a poisoned environment. Guatemalan soils used to be among the richest in the world; today crop failures are common and deforested hillsides are susceptible to deadly landslides. People are desperate. They are willing to work for pennies and they are willing to risk dying — which has been the point.

The narrative that immigrants are stealing jobs from people in the United States has the story backwards: The U.S. government has been complicit in destabilizing the livelihood and labor of Guatemalans for decades. Until this is addressed, people living in poverty and oppression will continue to migrate, no matter the obstacles put before them. If politicians were serious about addressing migration, they would stop talking about policing the border and instead work to reverse the harm that U.S. interventions have caused.

Read More

Did We Learn or Not? Why There Can Be No Going Back on COVID Lessons
blue and white plastic bottle

Did We Learn or Not? Why There Can Be No Going Back on COVID Lessons

Five years ago this month, COVID-19 changed the world. The first pandemic in a century altered how Americans saw themselves, each other, work, healthcare, relationships, government, mortality, and media. It tangled everyone across the globe in webs of fear, conflict, grief, disbelief, estrangement, and gratitude.

It prompted a parallel pandemic of disinformation that has only deepened in the years since and crescendoed in the last few months. It is foolish to ignore the impact of these past five years on every person in this country and the world, particularly with current policies and practices that ignore this distinct past.

Keep ReadingShow less
Holding Trump Accountable: He’s NOT the Emperor
shallow focus photography white crown hanging decor
Photo by Megan Watson on Unsplash

Holding Trump Accountable: He’s NOT the Emperor

Publishers' Notes:: Our challenge as a publication, dedicated to keeping our readers informed so we can repair our democracy and make it live and work in our everyday lives, is not to be overly reactive or partisan. At the same time, we must not ignore the dangers of the administration's degrading, hostile, and accusatory language and actions when they occur. We invite you to read this column outlining our editorial position covering the Trump administration by clickingHERE.

Not every column represents the editorial focus of the Fulcrum. However, consistent with our mission, the column below represents a commitment to sharing many perspectives to widen our readers' viewpoints.

Keep ReadingShow less
FEMA’s disaster relief practices under Biden administration spark legislation

A sign marks the location of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) headquarters building on January 29, 2025, in Washington, DC.

Getty Images, J. David Ake

FEMA’s disaster relief practices under Biden administration spark legislation

From 1995 until COVID hit, Scott Harding led student groups to volunteer in areas affected by natural disasters through the National Relief Network (NRN).

Harding, who also founded NRN, said he has taken groups across the country to disaster sites in his time and noticed Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) representatives, a group helping communities in the United States recover from natural disasters. But Harding said what he calls a “Biden Administration phenomenon,” caused by the Democratic culture in the nation’s capital, has politicized the disaster relief process.

Keep ReadingShow less
Trump to the Nation: "We're Just Getting Started"

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol on March 04, 2025 in Washington, DC. President Trump is speaking about the early achievements of his presidency and his upcoming legislative agenda.

(Photo by Mandel Ngan-Pool/Getty Images)

Trump to the Nation: "We're Just Getting Started"

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump addressed a joint session of Congress, emphasizing that his administration is “just getting started” in the wake of a contentious beginning to his second term. Significant themes, including substantial cuts to the federal workforce, shifts in traditional American alliances, and the impact of an escalating trade war on markets, characterized his address.

In his speech, Trump highlighted his actions over the past six weeks, claiming to have signed nearly 100 executive orders and taken over 400 executive actions to restore “common sense, safety, optimism, and wealth” across the country. He articulated that the electorate entrusted him with the leadership role and stressed that he was fulfilling that mandate.

Keep ReadingShow less