My Experience at the U.S/Canadian Border

On Monday, the 13th of February, we watched a TedTalk in my global studies class in regards to migration. The TedTalk was by a Dr. Khalid Koser, a British professor/ author, and an expert in international migration. In the TedTalk Dr. Koser shed some light on the issue illegal transnational migration. He did make a few points that I did not agree as his propositions seemed to advocate for cracking down on migration and didn’t touch on how to make access to economic opportunities easier for people in developing countries (those who tend to migrate). However, he gave a different perspective on how migrants and their smugglers are seen by some people of the countries migrants go to. They see the migrants as sleazy and subhuman, and the smugglers of the migrants as even sleazier. However, Dr. Koser argued that that is not the case. He said that the act of migrating is seen as a good investment in many developing countries, where people struggle to get visas to more developed countries. He gave an example of a poor Pakistani family. If they were to save up about $10,000 the most practical thing they could with that money would be to get their son smuggled into the UK. The reason for this is because even if in the UK the son ends up cleaning toilets for less than minimum wage, the value of that money is worth a lot in Pakistan, and if the son were to send to his family in Pakistan the money he earned from cleaning toilets, they would get a return on that investment in just 2 years (TedTalk, Why Migrant Smuggling Pays).

This aspect of the TedTalk really spoke to me as my parents are immigrants albeit legal immigrants, and I am very well aware of the fact that people, regardless of where they come from, leave their homes for a reason. They are not sleazy or sub-human, but rather they leave their countries for a reason, even if they are coming into a country illegally. Not only that, but their reason is the most human thing they can be doing, and that is trying to thrive. But immigrants, legal, and especially illegal are treated like garbage. In the second reading of the third chapter in Globalization The Transformation of Social Worlds, a compilation of numerous articles on globalization by Stanley Eitzen and Maxine Zinn. Author William Robinson makes several points on the exploitation of illegal immigrants. He brings up the point that illegal immigrants come here for better economic opportunities, and are exploited under the threat of deportation (Eitzen, Zinn, 56). Immigrants have to do the dirty work and serve almost as slaves dealing with discrimination, and racism all along the way, and if they try to speak up they are forced to go back to a place where they have very little opportunities.  The system we have dealing with immigrants, in the Global North, and I would argue, especially here in North America is problematic, and little did I know that the day after I watched Dr. Koser’s TedTalk I would directly witness and even experience some of the fear, and discrimination that this system creates.

            About 9 years ago my aunt in Poland applied for and received a visa to the U.S. She had wanted to leave Poland and come to the U.S, because even though her life in Poland was not completely devoid of social and economic opportunities, Poland in Europe is seen as a second-rate country. Although a part of the European Union it is still seen as lesser than one like Germany or France. Poles are seen as weaker, in a lower social class, and Poland itself is not as developed as other European countries. My parents left for those reasons and nine years ago, so did my aunt. The visa she received was a tourist visa in which during a ten-year period she could be in the U.S for six months at a time. She went back and forth from Poland to the U.S twice, after she decided that she was going to stay here, as her six months began running out we realized that it was very difficult to obtain a residency here in the U.S without a green card marriage which she did not want, and so her friend in Vancouver, Canada, offered to let my aunt stay with her, where Poles can be in visa-free for up to six months. During this time my aunt tried to get a Canadian visa, and apply for a residency status. Her efforts failed, and not wanting to go to Poland she stayed. We had tried to urge her to go back to Poland, but she refused. We did not condone her staying in Canada Illegally, but it was her decision. Now six years had passed with her in Canada illegally, and all of a sudden I get a call from her that she is seriously ill. She was unable to get a proper diagnosis at the ER because she wasn’t Canadian resident, and there was a language barrier with her and the doctors, as her friends abandoned her at the ER out of fear of being caught harboring an illegal immigrant. She was sent home from the ER unable to communicate with the doctors, and without a proper diagnosis, she did not know what was wrong with her. She was especially afraid as she believed she had a stroke since her face was partially paralyzed. The situation being as drastic as it was, I and my mother had to come up to her, to at least check on her.

My mother drove up from the suburbs of Seattle where my home is, picked me up in Bellingham, and we drove to New Westminster BC, where she was staying now. There we were told that no one wanted to have her anymore,  people were afraid of what would happen now that she was sick. Not sure what to do we decided to try to get her into the US as her US visa was still valid. We approached the U.S border around 10 pm on Tuesday, February 14th. I was driving. I pulled up to the border, showed the border agent me and my mother’s passports and my aunt's visa. Immediately we were detained and told to wait in the Border Control office for her to get her immigration form. We walked in and the first thing I noticed was that the other people who had been detained were sitting on a bench that read “do not sit down unless instructed to do so”. We were called to speak with a border officer, and after enough probing, her illegal status in Canada was discovered. We were told to sit down on the bench and were not allowed to leave the bench or move too much on it unless we were instructed to do so. Then the waiting began. I was trembling, and afraid. I had no idea what was going to happen. I noticed a tv with a video playing in the background advertising how much of a positive experience crossing a border and getting one's immigration papers is,  “all you have to do is cooperate”, the video claimed, everything will be fine, the video implied. At the end of it a logo for the U.S popped up and the narrator said “welcome to the United States of America” in English and then in several other languages. I kept thinking about how inaccurate the video was. The officer called my aunt several times, about every half an hour or so, and I would have to interpret for her. After 2 hours of this the officer put on gloves grabbed her hands and took fingerprints, then he took her picture, filled out a form which I overheard him call the “suspect alien” form, and called all three of us over. He told us that he could not let her into the U.S as she was illegal in Canada, and told us to report at the Canadian side of the border, where Canada will handle the problem. I was disappointed but relieved that we weren’t arrested right then and there. I was also shocked by his response as he did seem genuinely sorry for us.

After that, we crossed back into Canada where we were detained at their border office. It was already around midnight. The Canadian border officer who was handling our case was somewhat professional about it, but he was visibly not pleased with her staying in Canada for so long under the radar, and I thought that was very unprofessional of him. He took our car keys and told us that we “dodged a bullet” and that we should have been arrested by the US border patrol, and that he had “a lot of questions for us”. He then directed us to a set of seats and told us to wait, thankfully we weren’t restricted to just sitting in the chairs this time. He also offered us some water. After about 2 minutes he called us up and began asking the questions. He asked for names, addresses, phone numbers, and everything that my aunt did in the last 6 years. I had to answer them as I was the acting interpreter for my aunt. This process took about an hour. After that, he disappeared into his office and we were instructed to wait again, and so we waited nervously. I was still uncertain of what was going to happen, and that uncertainty was scary.

While we waited I witnessed an even worse situation unfold for someone else. A young man, around my age was detained. His skin was darker, he looked like he was from south eastern Europe. I hear a border officer speaking sternly to him “who are you? You’ve been caught with a fake Romanian passport. How much was the passport?”. The man speaking quietly and with a thick accent said “10,000 euros”. “You paid “10,000 euros for a fake Romanian passport? Why? Who are you?” the border officer said, but it was almost like he was yelling at this point. The young man was quiet and looked terrified. The officer handling our case came up to the counter. “You can come over here,” he said. I came forward with my aunt. He gave back me and my mother’s passports “I don’t need these he said”, and then left to finish the paperwork. We went back to our seats. I turned my attention to the young man. “I did not get visa,” he said. The officer shouted “So you paid 10,000 euros for a fake passport?” I couldn’t help but think of the Khalid Koser TedTalk, in which Koser explained that $10,000 was a good investment to get your son into a different country. I looked at the man, he was so young and from a poorer country. "Could he be someone's son trying to make money for his family"? I thought to myself. I then saw them pat the man down, and look through all his things.  They continued asking him questions which I couldn’t hear, but they were continuing to shout at him. I kept thinking about the language barrier. The man was scared and probably couldn’t speak or understand English very well, which was why he was quiet. But the border officer’s response to that was to shout even louder. I kept thinking about how stupid that was. If a person can’t speak a language, you don’t cross the language barrier by shouting, that will only make things worse, yet that’s what they did, and the man remained quiet and terrified. After that ordeal they seated the young man and told him he was going to be deported immediately, and that he was banned from entering Canada for a year.

Hours went by, it seemed like every time I’d look at my phone to check the time another hour had passed. It was already almost 3 am. I had begun pacing around the room. I asked a border officer what was taking so long and he told me that their system had broken down but that now it was fixed. I then saw a ford van pull up. The officers grabbed the young man put him in handcuffs and led him outside. He was placed in the back of the van. It was probably going to the airport.  Soon after we were called to the desk and our officer returned our car keys to us and had some paperwork which he proceeded to explain to us. My aunt’s passport was to be confiscated. She had copies of her passport given to her. She had one week to leave the country, or else a warrant for her arrest would be put out. On the day of her flight she would have to arrive at the airport, report herself to CBSA (Canadian Border Services Agency), return the forms that were to be given to us signed, and then she would be giver back her passport and escorted to her flight. ‘That is more than enough time and you can do this right now” he said. Which kind of pissed me off my family doesn’t just have $1500 just lying around. My family members are immigrants, most of them work lower paying jobs, and struggle with payments. But we were thankful to leave that place. My mom had a friend in Surrey BC, who she immediately called. We were able to spend what was left of the night there. It was past 4am when we arrived, and we spent the next day trying to figure things out.

We were able to pool together the money to send my aunt back to Poland. She is now living with my uncle getting the medical care she needed. She thankfully did not have a stroke but rather Bell’s Palsy a kind of serious infection that spreads to the face and paralyzes it. I don’t think I will ever forget what happened that night. It will always be ingrained in my memory. My aunt and especially the young Romanian man were both illegal migrants. Both were caught, and they both suffered the consequences.  My aunt was not a bad person, (all thought maybe a little irresponsible), and I don’t think the Romanian man was either. Yet the system that is in place with migration and borders treats them as such. Although there are a lot of bad people in the world, this system doesn't stop them. Rather it ends up harming a lot of good people, as countries can have any reason they want for keeping someone out. This only perpetuates discrimination, division and inequality in our world.

TEDxTalks. "Why Migrant Smuggling Pays." YouTube. YouTube, 24 Sept. 2013. Web. 26 Feb. 2017.

Sweatshops, the Good, Bad, and the Ugly

           

Sweatshops are a rather controversial aspect of globalization. There are those who argue that it stimulates the economies of developing countries and provides people who desperately need jobs with jobs. Whilst others argue that basic human rights are violated in sweatshops and that workers are treated less than poorly. I would argue that there is truth to both points of view and that they both deserve to be analyzed further.

So first off what even are sweatshops? Well, I took to the web to find that definition. The Oxford dictionary defined sweatshops as: “A factory or workshop, especially in the clothing industry, where manual workers are employed at very low wages for long hours and under poor conditions”. This definition obviously does not have a positive connotation to it and brings to mind a factory where basic human rights are violated. Interestingly, when I looked at other definitions from other sources such as the Merriam-Webster dictionary, Wikipedia, and Google, I found that the definitions of “sweatshop” from those sources too had negative connotations to them, and used words such as “poor”, “unhealthy”, “inhumane”, etc in their definitions. What this means to me is that it’s accepted that sweatshops are cruel and generally inhumane and that the issue of sweatshops being cruel and inhumane isn’t exactly where the controversy lies. Instead, it seems to me that the reason for all the controversy behind sweatshops is because people are aware of all the pain and suffering going on in sweatshops and dismiss it, or justify it as being part of an economic process.  

           

As the world globalizes there is undoubtedly a great deal of inequality in the global system. Many developing countries, especially in the global south, are not as economically or socially developed as other countries in the global system and are therefore highly disadvantaged. These countries are usually in need of some sort of economic development to help them catch up with the rest of the world so to speak. Many large western corporations are aware of this and are more than willing to “help”. They do this by bringing their manufacturing to those countries, this is especially

convenient for them as they can manufacture products cheaper in developing countries than in western ones, as developing countries have laxer workers’ rights laws and, and the western corporations can get away with paying significantly lower wages because of the high value of western currencies in the global south. Now, to me, this in itself, seems to be questionable, but from the mainstream economic viewpoint, it doesn’t seem that bad. In their article on why sweatshops aren’t bad Benjamin Powell and David Skarbek of San Jose State University, argue that “the apparel industry has been widely criticized for ‘exploiting’ Third World workers in sweatshops, but the data show that these workers are better off than most of their countrymen” (Powell, Skarbek, 9). What these economists argue is that the conditions in those developing countries are usually so bad that sweatshop jobs, as terrible as they may be, provide people with at least some money and job security, and that is better than none. Of course, that is a very good point, and it is true. Sweatshop jobs do provide impoverished families with an income, which is something they would struggle to find without the jobs. This kind of economic perspective views this situation from an “absolute gains” point of view wherein corporations gain more in operating sweatshops than if they didn’t operate sweatshops, and developing countries gain more from having sweatshops than if they didn’t have sweatshops. According to this perspective, it’s a win-win situation. This is all good and true but this perspective doesn’t focus on the humanitarian aspect of sweatshops.

The conditions in sweatshops are terrible. Workers, mostly women, are overworked, sexually harassed, abused, underplayed, and fired for being too old. The film we watched in class The Hidden Face of Globalization brought light to these abuses. Footage from the film showed the unhealthy conditions workers were forced to work in. Workers were crammed into small unventilated rooms, were beaten for being too slow, had a mere 5 minutes to eat their only meal of the day, etc. Some of the workers were interviewed and asked about what it was like to work in a sweatshop, and none of them had anything positive to say, and to top off all those abuses, the wages were so low, that workers couldn’t even afford necessities, yet alone have enough money to stimulate the economy. In one instance during the film, it was argued by a labor rights activist in Bangladesh, that merely a few cent increases would be enough to help lift many of the workers out of extreme poverty, yet when a group of workers at a Disney sweatshop unionized for the very purpose of asking for better pay and slightly better labor practices, Disney closed the sweatshop, and left all its employees jobless, just like that. So why would corporations be so bent on saving every penny? There are many that would argue that the corporations simply cannot afford to pay workers more because that would increase the production costs and thus increase the selling cost in the West and result in lower sales. However, this is not necessarily true. According to John Miller, who writes for Challenge an Economics and Business Journal, economists Robert Pollin, James Heintz, and Justine Burns examined the impact that a 100% increase in the wages of apparel workers in Mexico would have on the retail prices of garments in America. In their study, they found that doubling the wage of workers in sweatshops would only add about 50 cents to the price of a men’s shirt sold for $32 (Miller, 108). That increase in price is extremely minimal and well within the range of the average American consumer.

           

This issue of corporations not wanting to pay its workers enough is motivated by greed, but I would also argue that it is motivated by a sort of fear. The corporations are paying workers just enough so that they will come back for more, whilst not paying workers enough to actually stimulate the development of any sorts. Because what happens when countries develop? Countries become more independent, they become better at sustaining themselves, more jobs become available, and social rights start becoming more of a concern, all of which make it more difficult and expensive for corporations trying to manufacture abroad. This would explain why in The Hidden Face of Globalization, Disney closed its factory as soon as there was unionization. Unionization empowers people to fight for their rights, if Disney were to allow that behavior, they would be normalizing workers’ rights, which could have adverse consequences for them in the future, such as workers asking for even more rights, or the undeveloped country becoming too developed. It’s a classic example of exploitation by purposely maintaining a status quo. Of course, these future “adverse consequences” wouldn’t be nearly as adverse as the CEO’s would seem to think, and it wouldn’t have a drastic consequence on the retail price of goods in the west, but it would undermine a corporation’s power and influence.

             All in all, I think that sweatshops are an aspect of globalization that is problematic. In theory, they can be extremely beneficial to the development of a country and can help bring people out of extreme poverty, but that is only in theory, and they don’t seem to be doing that.  I think that sweatshops do have the potential to help people and to stimulate development, but for that to happen corporations need to improve working conditions and pay. They are more than capable of doing this, but they don’t because, in a world where corporations are constantly competing against each other, you must do what it takes to stay ahead, even if it means abusing the rights of a countless number of individuals and contributing to their suffering.  That is a problematic viewpoint, and it requires a fundamental shift in how we view competition in our society.

I will admit that I am not an economist and more biased towards a humanitarian perspective. There are things about the issue of sweatshops that I do not understand and I would be more interested in learning about some more pro-sweatshop arguments. But even so, I do think that as humankind progresses, it is our responsibility to do what we can to make our civilization a better place. Some may argue that getting rid of sweatshops will destabilize the world economy, and that may be true to a certain degree, but when did humankind ever get anywhere by accepting the status quo? We can eliminate unjust labor practices, we can make sweatshops beneficial to the development of the global south, it may be difficult, there may be a few negative consequences, but it is possible to change. All it requires is the kind of unique and creative thinking that has helped us move forward thus far. 

Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights. “Hidden Face of Globalization.” 3 Apr. 2007. Web.

Miller, John. “Why Economists Are Wrong About Sweatshops and the Antisweatshop Movement.” Challenge, vol. 46, no. 1, 2003, pp. 93–122. www.jstor.org/stable/40722184.

Powell, Benjamin, and David Skarbek. "Sweatshops and third world living standards: Are the jobs worth the sweat?" Journal of Labor Research 27.2 (2006): 263-74. Web. <http://www.independent.org/publications/working_papers/article.asp?id=1369>.