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Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants | 
 enlarge | Author: David Bacon
Publisher: Beacon Press
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $15.50
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Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 48354
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 261
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 0807042269
Dewey Decimal Number: 331.620973
EAN: 9780807042267
ASIN: 0807042269
Publication Date: September 17, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: A nice clean hardcover, in excellent dj, of the 2008 Beacon Press 1st edition (as pictured). No marks to text. Ready to ship.
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Product Description
For two decades veteran photojournalist David Bacon has documented the connections between labor, migration, and the global economy. In Illegal People Bacon explores the human side of globalization, exposing the many ways it uproots people in Latin America and Asia, driving them to migrate. At the same time, U.S. immigration policy makes the labor of those displaced people a crime in the United States. Illegal People explains why our national policy produces even more displacement, more migration, more immigration raids, and a more divided, polarized society.
Through interviews and on-the-spot reporting from both impoverished communities abroad and American immigrant workplaces and neighborhoods, Bacon shows how the United States' trade and economic policy abroad, in seeking to create a favorable investment climate for large corporations, creates conditions to displace communities and set migration into motion. Trade policy and immigration are intimately linked, Bacon argues, and are, in fact, elements of a single economic system.
In particular, he analyzes NAFTA's corporate tilt as a cause of displacement and migration from Mexico and shows how criminalizing immigrant labor benefits employers. For example, Bacon explains that, pre-NAFTA, Oaxacan corn farmers received subsidies for their crops. State-owned CONASUPO markets turned the corn into tortillas and sold them, along with milk and other basic foodstuffs, at low, subsidized prices in cities. Post-NAFTA, several things happened: the Mexican government was forced to end its subsidies for corn, which meant that farmers couldn't afford to produce it; the CONASUPO system was dissolved; and cheap U.S. corn flooded the Mexican market, driving the price of corn sharply down. Because Oaxacan farming families can't sell enough corn to buy food and supplies, many thousands migrate every year, making the perilous journey over the border into the United States only to be labeled "illegal" and to find that working itself has become, for them, a crime.
Bacon powerfully traces the development of illegal status back to slavery and shows the human cost of treating the indispensable labor of millions of migrants?and the migrants themselves?as illegal. Illegal People argues for a sea change in the way we think, debate, and legislate around issues of migration and globalization, making a compelling case for why we need to consider immigration and migration from a globalized human rights perspective.
"David Bacon is the conscience of American journalism; an extraordinary social documentarist in the rugged humanist tradition of Dorothea Lange, Carey McWilliams, and Ernesto Galarza."
?Mike Davis, author of No One Is Illegal
"Illegal People documents how undocumented workers have become the world's most exploited workforce?subject to raids and arrests, forced to work at low pay and under miserable conditions, and prevented from organizing on their own behalf. In this richly reported book, David Bacon makes a powerful case for the centrality of 'illegals'?of all nationalities?in the global struggle for economic justice."
?Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
"David Bacon's book brings us the reality of the deplorable conditions under which immigrants live when they get here. David also demonstrates that there is hope, and we can win something better, today, not just for immigrants, but for all working people. We just have to commit ourselves to make the policy changes that create these unacceptable conditions. Si Se Puede!"
?Dolores Huerta, co-founder of United Farm Workers and president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation
"Read this book to understand why we must stop uprooting people abroad and how we can ensure rights and jobs for all people in this country. Bacon's book highlights the real value of a comprehensive approach to immigration reform, which America supports!"
?Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee
"In clear and compelling language, Bacon connects the dots between trade, migration and the maldistribution of wealth. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand the cynical politics and human costs of the corporate protection racket we call globalization."
?Jeff Faux, distinguished fellow at the Economic Policy Institute and author of The Global Class War
"This new and urgently needed rethinking of the global economy and migration is a unique roadmap, showing not only how we arrived at our current immigration debate impasse but outlining the possibilities for what lies ahead."
?Raj Jayadev, journalist, organizer, and executive director of Silicon Valley De-Bug
"As he has before with both pen and camera, Bacon reminds us that we're all in this together?and that organizing to reject divisive racism and nativism both celebrates our common humanity and promotes a twenty-first-century vision of global citizenship."
?John W. Wilhelm, president/Hospitality Industry, UNITE HERE
"Illegal People is like a fine Oaxacan tapestry woven ever so carefully with the human face of the main protagonist of the immigration dynamic?the mighty migrant laborer."
?Nativo V. Lopez, national president of Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana and the Mexican American Political Association
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| Customer Reviews:
 A necessary and powerful work October 20, 2008
David Bacon has been fighting for the rights of working people for decades. This book is a monument to a life well spent. Bacon goes through the issues around immigration in a highly readable way. The impact of NAFTA and Neoliberalism. The dangers and hardships faced by economic refugees, documented or not. The exploitative conditions that employers force economic refugees to work under. Bacon is very good on the history of guest worker programs and how they oppress its participants. His book is a great mix of hard facts and analysis plus heart wrenching stories from the front lines. I fear that anti-immigrant sentiment may turn even uglier as the economy weakens. We desperately need the information that Bacon provides to counter the bigotry and ignorance in our work places and among our friends and family.
 Leftist diatribe misses the mark October 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I give the author credit for one position he takes: NAFTA was an absolute disaster for both the U.S. and Mexico. Notwithstanding, I can't endorse this book. It is intellectually dishonest. Like many open-border advocates he uses dishonest language--such as saying (repeatedly) that conservative politicians are "anti-immigrant." No, they're anti-illegal immigration, which isn't at all the same thing. He uses, as open-borders advocates always do, the very misleading term "undocumented immigrant." Many illegal aliens, in fact, have many false documents in their possesion. This dishonest word obfuscates the issue.
It is also untrue that a hard line against illegal immigration cost the Republicans a number of seats in the 2006 election--a lie the open-borders Wall Street Journal made repeatedly. My own Congressman, Brian Bilbray of San Diego, was easily reelected on a stance of tough border security. J.D. Hayworth, a strong opponent of illegal immigrantion, lost his reelection because of ties to Jack Abramoff, not his position on border security. Every opinion poll done nationwide shows support for immigration restrictions. A well-known poll by the Chicago Council of Foreign Relation--not a right-wing organization-- showed 70% of the Americans polled wanted strict limitations on immigration.
There was another disturbing part in the book, namely the invocation of the Ku Klux Klan to smear anyone who does not support open borders. This is the argument: the Klan opposes illegal immigration, the Klan is racist, and therefore all opponents of illegal immigration are racists. QED. I cannot recommend Illegal People as a legitimate study of the contentious issue of immigration, legal and otherwise. I suggest Carol Swain's balanced and fair look at the issue in Debating Immigration.
Illegal People = (more) profits October 11, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I cannot agree more with the author about revealing the fact that illegals are needed by both the government and corporate America to minimized cost to any service/product in this country. Both slaves and illegals have been making possible the American dream for the original invaders of this land. And they will continue to...
Those who shout "illegals go home" profit the most. Lou Dobbs and others like him should read this book and shot their mouths once and for all. This book also, should be read by all those occupying a possition at any of the three branches of government in the US. And army and police personnel too. Maybe every American should...
What an eyeopener October 6, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a must read for anyone feeling pinched by a job loss in the US or who is boiling mad about illegal immigration to the US. This book goes a long way toward developing a context and the reasons for the mass migrations of labor throughout societies. If you are not mad at the US government and the Corporations who own it- you soon will be!
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