So fear reigns over millions of workers and their families in the United States, making them less likely to stick their heads up and organize unions or file complaints with government agencies. Just this week a Guatemalan construction worker from Lynn fell off a roof and was killed-it turned out he was 17. The problem only gets worse-wages and benefits at the low end of the labor market are dropping and are a downward pressure on all wages. This is where we are headed.

Will this stop undocumented workers like Lynn’s Guatemalans from coming? No. We really need to correct our willful ignorance of our own history if we are going to figure out what to do about immigration.

In 1950, Guatemalans elected the mildly reformist President Jacobo Arbenz. Arbenz wanted to give plantation workers rights to the land under their company houses. This would mean the workers could organize unions without being thrown out of their homes. This angered the Boston-based United Fruit Co., which had enjoyed the unrestricted right to exploit Guatemalan workers at their whim. So in 1954, United Fruit and the CIA organized an invasion from Honduras and expelled Arbenz to Mexico, replacing him with pro-corporate military leaders.

Many Guatemalans reasonably concluded that the United States would kill them if they challenged the domination of the corporations and headed to the mountains. A 30-year civil war cost 300,000 lives. The U.S. State Department reported to then-President Ronald Reagan that U.S.-funded and -trained government soldiers committed atrocities like throwing babies down wells, in the course of defending “democracy.” More than 400,000 people fled the country, largely to the United States.

Most Guatemalans in Lynn come from San Marcos, which was hit hard by the civil war. Since the guerrillas signed a peace agreement in 1996, “free trade” has continued to devastate San Marcos. Foreign power and mining interests have driven people from their homes to make way for “mega-project” development. Since the neoliberal model mandates that development is for export, 25 percent of the homes in the countryside still have no electricity, while power is shipped North. There is no work for displaced farmers. Villages are emptied, especially of men. Indigenous protesters have been harassed, even killed, and the area is becoming increasingly militarized.

Until conditions improve, immigrants will keep coming. Duh. And it’s a desperate journey. You leave your families. You pay a smuggler $5,000-10,000 to get across the border. Thousands died during the trip. U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Border Patrol funding has multiplied by six since 1990 to $1.6 billion annually before the wall-builders got their hands in our pockets-to no avail. All so you can send a little more than $300 a month to feed hungry mouths at home. You could say that Lynn’s Guatemalans are just making informed market choices, joining the hundreds of millions of workers who search the desolate neoliberal global landscape for work. Simply to eat. Simply to live.

I copied a lot, but I just loved the post so much.