The consequences of political fear-mongering and tough talk on immigration in the American Southwest.
The Tea Party and its allies celebrate the rogue states of the Southwest as a model for the nation in their go-it-alone posturing and tough immigration-enforcement talk. In Border Wars, dogged investigative journalist Tom Barry documents the costs of that model: lives lost; families torn apart; billions of wasted tax dollars; vigilantes prowling the desert; and fiscal crises in cities, counties, and states. Even worse, he warns, the entire nation risks following their lead. As Barry explains, the lack of coherent federal policy on immigration and drug war conduct and the uncritical embrace of all things in the name of national security has opened doors for opportunists from boardrooms to governor's offices in Texas and Arizona. Corporate-prison magnates eagerly swallow up undocumented immigrants into taxpayer-funded dungeons, border sheriffs and politicians trade on voters' fears of Latinos and “big government,” and pro-business policy institutes and lobbyists battle the public interest. Border Wars offers a stark portrait of the domestic cost of failed federal leadership in the post-9/11 era.

Border Wars (Boston Review Books)

History

Barry, Tom

Americas

The MIT Press

The other side of paradise: Foreign control in the Caribbean (The Grove Press Latin America series)

GROVE PRESS

Presents a detailed synopsis of the current economic and political conditions in each Central American country

The Central America Fact Book

Preusch, Deb

Grove Pr

Presents a detailed synopsis of the current economic and political conditions in each Central American country

The Central America fact book

Grove/Atlantic, Incorporated

A look at the U.S. economic and humanitarian assistance programs in Central America

The Soft War: The Uses and Abuses of U.S. Economic Aid in Central America

Business & Money

Central America inside out: The essential guide to its societies, politics, and economies

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

Grove Weidenfeld

Provides an incisive analysis of the relationship between the United States and Mexico, exploring such issues as economic development, immigration policy, and the drug trade

The Great Divide: The Challenge of U.S.-Mexico Relations in the 1990s

Sims, Beth

BROWNE, Harry

Social Sciences

Central America Fact Book

This indispensable guide offers a comprehensive, country-by-country look at the current state of affairs in the most explosive region of the hemisphere. Largely ignored by the American public and often exploited by Washington, Central America became a center of U.S. and world attention in 1979 with the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua and the continuing guerrilla war in El Salvador. Over the next decade more than $8 billion in U.S. military and economic aid poured into the region as it became an ideological and social battleground.This indispensable guide offers a comprehensive, country-by-country look at the state of affairs in the most explosive region in the hemisphere. Digging from the inside out, Tom Barry provides a trenchant analysis of the region's internal dynamics and international relations, examining in detail each country's government and politics, military, economy, society, and environment, as well as the role played there by the United States.

Central America Inside Out: The Essential Guide to its Societies, Politics, and Economics (Experience; 1)

Feeding the Crisis: U. S. Food Aid and Farm Policy in Central America

Since 1980 the United States has increased tenfold its shipments of food to Central America. Supposedly, tis humanitarian aid has alleviated social turmoil and economic underdevelopment in Central America. But has it really been in the best interests of the people it was intended to assist? After nearly two years of research that took them to Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Costa Rica, Rachel Garst and Tom Barry have concluded that U. S. food shipments and assistance in agricultural development are, in fact, feeding the crisis in Central American, hurting rather than helping. The findings of Garst and Barry are disturbing. They discovered that increased U. S. food aid to Central America is being used to achieve short-term foreign-policy objectives that undercut long-term U. S. interests. The authors reveal that, instead of being allocated on the basis of need, U. S. food aid is being used to support military programs; and that it is distorting Central American economies by reducing production of and prices for local crops, by benefitting agribusiness at the expense of small farmers, and by encouraging new consumption habits that neither family incomes nor national treasuries can sustain. For recipient governments, food aid has become a permanent solution instead of an emergency measure. Garst and Barry charge that the Agency for International Development and U. S. Department of Agriculture are partly to blame for this state of affairs. They make detailed recommendations for changes in the way food aid is administered, changes that are urgently needed to stem the negative social, economic, and political effects of programs that until now have largely been shielded from scrutiny.

Garst, Rachel

University Of Nebraska Press

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Books by Barry, Tom