It’s common sense that when Latin Americans face economic hard times they come to the United States because they share a history of political and economic interdependence with the United States, said Seyla Benhabib, a political science and philosophy professor at Yale.
She said Americans who are upset about illegal immigration often don’t understand that Latin Americans are immigrating to the United States because the U.S. government has asserted its influence over them for decades.
Benhabib made her comments during one of two keynote speeches for the Tanner Center for Nonviolent Human Rights Advocacy conference titled “Migration Rights and Identities: Examining the Range of Global and Local Needs.” The conference, which began on Thursday, was held at the Fort Douglas Officer’s Club and at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. The conference brought together professors from the U and universities throughout the United States and Canada.
The speakers emphasized that 191 million people, or 3 percent of the world’s population, are in constant motion, living in another country besides the country of their birth.
Several hundred scholars, students and community members gathered in the Dumke Auditorium at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts to hear Benhabib give a speech titled “The Great Immigration Debate: Facts and Fictions, Ideals and Illusions.”
She said that when people decide to migrate to a foreign country, the decision is usually motivated by historical ties and interdependence with that country.
“I think people see foreigners in their communities, but unless they get to know these people, they don’t know the reasons why they are coming and they don’t understand the historical interdependence between nations, especially between the United States and Latin America,” Benhabib told The Daily Utah Chronicle.
One of the panelists, Patricia Fernández-Kelly, a sociology professor at Princeton, focused on myths about undocumented immigrants in the United States. Fernández-Kelly said the creators of the North American Free Trade Agreement included provisions for the movement of products and investments to create a porous border, but failed to include provisions for the legal movement of people and labor.
“It is irrational to liberalize for capital movement and think that people will stay put in their countries,” Fernández-Kelly said. “Legislators do not read results based on empirical research before they decide if they love or hate immigrants.”
Many panelists said one of the greatest dilemmas about migration is that the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees all people the right to emigrate or leave their nations in its 13th article, but it does not guarantee the right to immigrate or enter another nation.
Benhabib said developed nations that have impacted developing nations have a moral duty to lessen their burdens.
“If our actions in the past have led to demonstrable alterations in (developing) countries, if we have impacted them then we have a moral obligation to carry the burden of our actions,” she said.