Solnit on migrants, barriers, and borders

"Throughout this century, various bracero programs have brought in Mexicans to do the work citizens don't want--namely, to toil in the garden, not only the gardens of the wealthy, but the agricultural fields. Despite all the rhetoric depicting immigrants as assailants of the economy, the vast agricultural economy of California and much of the rest of the country is propped up by farmworkers from south of the border, documented or not (including many fleeing the post-NAFTA economic collapse of small farms, brought about by the sale of cheap U.S. corn in Mexico; NAFTA opened the borders to goods but not people).

-Rebecca Solnit, Landscapes for Poltics (93).