Flavia Dzodan at Tiger Beatdown: In the name of safety: the multi-national anti immigration industry and their billionaire profits

meloukhia:

All of this is done in the name of safety. Safety for the citizens of the Nation States that allow these atrocities; safety for national borders; safety for the politicians’ careers who appeal to an increasingly populist platform to gather support from a population who, in the absence of responses about their troubles have turned to immigrants as an easy scapegoat. Meanwhile, mainstream media continues pushing the “immigrant menace” and uncritically disseminating the figure of the immigrant as a criminal, a non person, an illegal. This dissemination, in turn, allows for the abuses to continue unchecked, with a population that has become desensitized to the injustices perpetrated over the bodies of “non people”, the illegals. And when people do anything in their power to avoid spending time in such environments, when it is clear that their very survival might depend on a well told untruth, they are also going to be penalized for doing so. Because the system has deemed that even the mere attempt at avoiding such fate is a punishable offense by itself. “Illegal bodies” deserve the abuse, we are told.

It is often said that the world changed on 9/11. Ever since we have seen a seemingly unstoppable growth in xenophobia, racism and anti immigrant rhetoric. I often wondered why the Western world seemed to have shifted almost at once. Why ostensibly disparate nations like the US, The Netherlands, France or Australia (just to name a few), all seemed to have gotten on board with the anti immigrant sentiment at once. Why, within a short period of time, media seemed inundated with these stories of threats, fear and unrestrained menace. However, the same media that quickly exposes the threats of lawless, uncontrolled immigration rarely addresses the profiteers behind these trends. Every detainee is a point in the profit margins of these corporations. Every battered immigrant body forced to live in these conditions represents an extra income for these multi-national businesses. Nothing is gratuitous, as Mr. Buckles so poignantly said, “There’s nothing like a political crisis to stimulate a bit of change”. Especially if said crisis can create monstrous profits off the backs of undocumented migrants who sometimes lose their lives under the care of these corporations.

This expose of global ‘security’ firm G4S is strongly recommended reading for the day. 

Yes. READ THIS. Not because I wrote it but because these atrocities are committed under the pretense that these battered bodies are a threat to Western nations.