The Border Crossed Us: The Case for Opening the US-Mexico Border

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The Border Crossed Us explains how US capitalism has trans-nationalized, criminalized labor migration, and how the movement for labor renewal begins with international solidarity and opening the border. For readers outraged by the xenophobia and racism of Trump 's immigration policy and confused by why US labor unions have been backwards on the issue of immigration reform, this book will explain how borders are used to increase exploitation within the capitalist system, and how labor and migrant solidarity movements can organize the social forces necessary to open the border. In a political moment when the fight against racism is growing and the hashtag #abolishICE trending this book will have broad appeal to a generation of activists looking for arguments about why we should demilitarize the US-Mexico border and organize with, not against, our brothers and sisters in other countries. Sales of Justin 's earlier book, No One Is Illegal, have continued to be strong and this is a welcome update and expansion on many of the topics covered there. It 's condensed size and readability makes it the perfect read for the activist, labor leaders, students and more who are looking for resources on how to build international solidarity.

Reviews

The Border Crossed Us is a meticulously researched manifesto on the US-Mexico border. Justin Akers Chacn masterfully exposes how capital mobility necessarily criminalizes the movement of labor and, with radical and urgent clarity, he calls on all of us to strengthen the movement to open the border. Harsha Walia, author of Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism

At last, here is a book showing just how critical the demand for the freedom of workers' mobility is to the anti-capitalist movement. Justin Akers Chacn makes the urgent case for a new internationalism, one that openly rejects the divisive, racist, and anti-worker politics upholding national borders. With a clear-eyed examination of how labor repression is the core of the migra-state, Chacn's call for cross-borderand anti-borderorganizing is shown to be a necessary part of working class politics everywhere. Nandita Sharma, author of Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants

This brilliant and timely book, The Border Crossed Us, lays bare the violent extortion and extraction of working-class migrant labor by untangling the hydra of the North American Model of capitalist accumulation. Justin Akers Chacn's incisive temporal and geographic analysis of US capitalist imperialism sets the stage for the urgent and immediate mobilization within labor, migrant, and union organizing across borders. As a scholar activist, Justin Akers Chacn empowers us to sharpen our critique of the border paradox of open borders for capital and closed borders for people, and to finally dismantle and abolish the migra-state, from Free Trade Agreements to detention centers. Our communities depend on it. Leslie Quintanilla, Co-founder of the Center for Interdisciplinary Environmental Justice and Assistant Professor of Women and Gender Studies at San Francisco State University

The Border Crossed Us provides a salutary antidote to the stale debate about whether immigration harms the working class. The book offers a convincing and comprehensive account of how the half-closed border between the United States and Mexico gives more power to employers and makes workers on both sides more exploitable. As US capital has inundated Mexico over the past century, increasing its hold on the Mexican economy in the era of free trade, the border has kept Mexican people impoverished and limited their rights and alternatives both at home and in the United States. This book cuts through the distorted nature of our current debates on immigration and makes the most coherent case Ive seen for how opening the border will help all workers, on both sides, by giving them the right to organize and fight for a decent life. The border only serves to prevent workers from fighting effectively against capital that has long been transnational. Aviva Chomsky, author of Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal

This book captures the current political moment perfectly. It takes a look at the past and how we arrived at this point, and the crises that have harmed workers on both sides of the border. It also sheds light on the emerging worker movements that have arisen to overcome the ongoing efforts by capitalist industries to prevent or break grassroots and independent worker organizing. The question of open borders is one that we as workers have to ask ourselves. The borders are already open to finance, products, capital, and wealth, but remain closed for the people who create the wealth through our labor. Yet, it is more than just a labor issue. It is a human right to migrate, and to stay home as well. Our union congratulates Justin for writing a book that is asking the questions we have always had to contend with, while also discussing and proposing a better world for all workers. Edgar Franks, political director of independent, Washington State-based farmworker union, Familias Unidas por la Justicia

In The Border Crossed Us, Justin Akers Chacn asksand answersthe hard questions about how the corporate capitalist class has been using border militarization and violent immigration enforcement to squeeze every last bit of profit out of workers, casting aside their dignity and humanity along the way. Chacn does the necessary work of staring hard into the everyday reality of people trampled by the border machine. This is an essential addition to border studies, as convincingof the need to open bordersas it is compelling. John Washington, author of The Dispossessed: A Story of Asylum at the US-Mexican Border and Beyond

If you want to understand why international borders are open for the corporate-class, while slammed shut for migrant workers, this excellent, incisive, thoroughly-researched, and thought-provoking book is for you. In The Border Crossed Us, Justin Akers Chacn addresses precisely what most discussions on open borders lack: how their enforcement is entrenched in capitalism and the free market system. He makes clear that there is no security or protection in militarized divisions, that borders need to be broken down for the sake of humanitys collective wellbeing, and that it is a working-class, cross-border solidarity movement that can lead us to justice. Todd Miller, author of Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the US Border Around the World

[The] deadly contradiction of the capitalist trade infrastructure has been written about many times, especially its place in the relationship between Mexico and the United States. Few writers, however, have covered it as explicitly and concisely as scholar Justin Akers Chacn does in his most recent work.Ron Jacobs, Counterpunch

Author Bio

Justin Akers Chacn is an activist, labor unionist, and educator living in the San Diego-Tijuana border region. He is a Professor of Chicana/o History at San Diego City College. His other books include No One is Illegal (with Mike Davis) and Radicals in the Barrio.