Most immigration debates focus on the border. But the real story starts much earlier — with trade deals, war, inequality, climate breakdown, corporate globalization, and political systems that force people from their homes while concentrating wealth and power in fewer hands.

This educational resource explores why migration happens, how immigrant labor is exploited while immigrants are scapegoated for problems they didn’t create, and how systems like ICE and programs like 287(g) expand fear, surveillance, and repression across entire communities.

It also examines why division between immigrant and non-immigrant workers benefits the powerful, how solidarity can improve life for all working people, and what organizing for labor rights, community defense, economic democracy, and human dignity could look like in practice.

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The Real Story Behind Immigration, Work, and Power

Why people migrate, who profits from division, and how working people can build power together

Written by: Alexandria Shaner
Video production & narration: Dominick Conidi

Special thanks for editorial input from: Jennifer Wu, Matic Primc, & Michael Albert

Host a Screening / Teach-In

Originally published by ZNetwork.org under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Feel free to share widely.

Introduction: The Question We’re Not Supposed to Ask

When immigration comes up in politics or the news, the conversation usually starts at the border.
Who crossed?
How many?
Legal or illegal?
Who gets deported?
Who gets detained?

Today, many people are hearing about immigration through stories of workplace raids, deportations, ICE operations, and local police departments entering agreements with federal immigration authorities through programs known as 287(g).

In communities across the country, these agreements allow local law enforcement to take on immigration enforcement functions that were once primarily federal responsibilities.

Supporters say these programs improve public safety. Critics argue they undermine trust, make communities less safe, and pull local governments deeper into systems of detention and deportation.

Whatever someone’s opinion on immigration may be, these policies raise a bigger question:
Why are so many people migrating?

If we only look at what happens after someone reaches the border, we’re starting the story too late.

So why are people leaving their homes in the first place?

Because migration doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Most people don’t wake up one morning and casually decide to leave behind their language, their family, their community, and everything familiar to travel thousands of miles into uncertainty.

People migrate because something pushed them. And because something else pulled them.

To understand immigration, we have to look upstream. That means looking at trade policy, war, climate change, corporate power, labor markets, and political decisions made over decades. It means understanding how the global economy works — and who benefits from it.

And if we do that honestly, something becomes clear very quickly:
The same system hurting immigrants is hurting working-class people almost everywhere.

That’s why immigration isn’t just about immigrants. It’s about work. Housing. Healthcare. Democracy. Wages. Fear. Power. And ultimately, it’s about whether ordinary people will be divided against each other — or organized together.

Migration Is Usually Forced — Even When It’s Called “Voluntary”

There’s a phrase often used by economists and politicians: “Economic migrants.” It sounds neutral. Technical. Like migration is just a lifestyle choice.

But what does “economic migrant” really mean?

Usually, it means someone can no longer survive where they are.

A farmer whose family had grown corn for generations, only to discover they could no longer compete against heavily subsidized imports selling for less than the cost of production.
A worker whose town’s public utility was privatized, leading to layoffs, rising prices, and fewer stable jobs.
A family trapped between rising debt, stagnant wages, and cuts to public services, where working full time no longer covers basic necessities.
A rural community displaced when a mining project contaminated local water supplies, bought up surrounding land, or transformed farmland into an industrial extraction zone.
A village facing years of drought where crops repeatedly fail and families can no longer count on harvests to survive.

These aren’t abstract economic trends. They’re the kinds of stories that often appear in local newspapers, labor reports, environmental investigations, and community meetings.

When enough of these stories happen at once, migration becomes less a choice and more a survival strategy.

Take trade agreements like NAFTA. When NAFTA took effect in the 1990s, heavily subsidized U.S. corn entered Mexico at prices small farmers couldn’t compete with. Millions of rural livelihoods were devastated. Entire communities were economically shattered.

At the same time, factories along the border expanded using low-wage labor to produce goods for U.S. corporations.

This is important: The system didn’t stop migration. It redirected it to its own benefit. People displaced from stable livelihoods became part of a labor force that corporations could exploit across borders.

And this pattern repeats all over the world. Global South countries are often pressured into debt arrangements, austerity programs, privatization, and export-oriented economies that enrich multinational corporations while weakening local stability.

Trade and debt policies aren’t the only forces that shape migration. Military intervention and foreign policy often play a role as well.

Consider Guatemala. In 1954, a democratically elected government pursuing land reforms that threatened powerful corporate interests was overthrown with support from the United States. The decades of instability, repression, and violence that followed helped create conditions that contributed to migration for generations.

The point is not that every migrant story traces back to a single event. It’s that migration often emerges from long histories of political and economic decisions made far from the communities most affected by them.

Then, when people migrate because survival at home becomes impossible, they are blamed for the consequences of the very system that displaced them.

As Eduardo Galeano once wrote: “People were imprisoned by poverty and arrived imprisoned by borders.”

The Border Is Not Just a Line — It’s a Labor System

Listen to enough immigrant stories and a pattern emerges.

A construction worker leaves his hometown because years of economic hardship made it impossible to support his children.
A mother takes agricultural work because it’s the only job available, despite long hours and dangerous conditions.
A teenager grows up fearing that a routine traffic stop could separate their family.

These stories are different. But they share something in common:
People are trying to build stable lives under conditions they did not create.

It’s easy to talk about immigration as numbers, statistics, or political slogans. It’s harder to look at individual lives and see how economic systems, labor markets, and public policies shape the choices people face.

One of the biggest myths about immigration is that governments genuinely want to stop undocumented immigration entirely. If that were true, many industries would collapse overnight.

Agriculture. Construction. Meatpacking. Warehousing. Hospitality. Domestic labor. Food processing.

The reality is more contradictory. The economy often depends on immigrant labor while the political system criminalizes the workers providing it.

Why? Because vulnerability is profitable.

A worker who fears deportation is easier to underpay. Less likely to report abuse. Less likely to organize. Less likely to strike. Less likely to demand healthcare or safer conditions.

This is not accidental. It creates a labor force that is economically essential but politically disposable.

And this doesn’t just hurt immigrants. It lowers standards for everyone. When employers can exploit one section of workers through fear and precarity, it puts downward pressure on wages and conditions across entire industries.

This is why many labor organizers argue that immigrant rights are labor rights.

Because the real conflict is not between immigrant and non-immigrant workers. It’s between working people and systems that profit from division and insecurity.

The Biggest Lie: “Immigrants Are Taking Your Jobs”

This idea has been repeated for generations.

Irish immigrants. Italian immigrants. Chinese railroad workers. Jewish refugees. Mexican laborers. Muslim immigrants. Refugees from Central America.

Different groups. Same story.

“They’re taking jobs.”
“They lower wages.”
“They’re ruining the country.”

But when researchers actually study immigration, the picture is far more complicated — and often the opposite of what people are told.

Immigrants are workers, consumers, neighbors, taxpayers, caregivers, and organizers. They start businesses at high rates. They fill essential jobs. They contribute more into many systems than they take out.

More importantly, wage stagnation in the United States didn’t happen because immigrants crossed borders. It happened because unions were attacked. Because corporations outsourced jobs. Because billionaires gained enormous political power. Because labor protections weakened. Because housing became financialized. Because healthcare became privatized. Because wealth concentrated at the top.

A CEO moving factories overseas for profit can destroy thousands of jobs overnight. A private equity firm can gut an entire town. A landlord company can raise rents across a city. A corporation can automate jobs while paying executives millions.

But immigrants become the scapegoat because they are visible, vulnerable, and politically convenient. It’s easier for elites to point downward than upward.

And fear works. When people are economically insecure, they search for explanations – and the powerful often provide targets instead of solutions.

That’s one reason solidarity matters so much. Because when workers blame each other instead of concentrated wealth and power, the people benefiting from inequality remain untouched.

What About Culture?

For many people, concerns about immigration aren’t only economic.

Sometimes the concern sounds more like this:
“Will my town still feel like home?”
“Will we lose our shared culture?”

These feelings are real, even if people draw different political conclusions from them.

Communities change. They always have. The United States itself is the product of centuries of migration, cultural exchange, conflict, adaptation, and reinvention.

The question is not whether culture changes. Culture is always changing.

The question is who gets to participate in shaping it.

The same neighborhoods where people worry about losing community are often places that have also lost local newspapers, union halls, public gathering spaces, family farms, locally owned businesses, and democratic institutions.

In other words, many people are experiencing a genuine loss of community.

But immigration is often blamed for changes that have much deeper causes.

When a factory closes, when rents double, when a town loses stable jobs, when young people leave because they can’t afford to stay, people naturally feel disoriented.

The problem is that immigrants did not cause those changes.

In many cases, immigrants arrive in communities already being transformed by forces neither they nor longtime residents control.

The challenge is not choosing between preserving community and welcoming newcomers. The challenge is rebuilding communities where everyone has a stake, a voice, and the ability to belong.

Because at the end of the day, culture is not a museum exhibit. It’s something people create together.

And communities are strongest not when they’re frozen in time, but when people have the power, security, and democratic voice needed to shape their future collectively.

ICE, Fear, and the Expansion of Repression

After 9/11, immigration enforcement expanded dramatically under the language of national security.

Agencies like ICE gained enormous power. Surveillance increased. Detention centers expanded. Deportation machinery intensified.

Over time, immigration enforcement became deeply tied to policing, incarceration, and private profit. Private prison companies began making billions from immigrant detention. Entire local economies became financially dependent on detention facilities.

Politicians competed over who could appear tougher on immigration. And fear spread far beyond undocumented people.

Mixed-status families live with constant anxiety. Children fear parents disappearing. Workers fear speaking up. Communities fear cooperation with schools, hospitals, or local government.

This damages democracy itself. Because democracy depends on trust, participation, and collective life. Fear destroys all three.

And history shows that systems built to target one population rarely stay limited to that population forever. As Pastor Martin Niemöller warned in his famous “First They Came” reflection, whatever you allow your government to do to others, they will eventually do to you.

Surveillance expands. Police powers expand. Civil liberties shrink. Authoritarian politics gain legitimacy.

When a society becomes comfortable with mass detention, militarized policing, and normalized dehumanization, everyone becomes less free.

What 287(g) Means for Communities

One example of this expansion is something called 287(g). Most people have never heard of it. But its impact is enormous.

287(g) agreements allow local law enforcement agencies to collaborate directly with federal immigration enforcement.

In practice, this means local police can act as immigration agents in various ways.

Supporters claim this improves safety. But many studies and community organizations have found the opposite.

Why? Because when immigrants fear police contact could lead to deportation, they become less likely to report crimes. Less likely to cooperate as witnesses. Less likely to seek help during emergencies. That makes entire communities less safe.

Domestic violence survivors may stay silent. Workers may not report exploitation. Families avoid institutions altogether.

And there’s another problem.

Programs like 287(g) increase the risk of racial profiling. When immigration enforcement becomes tied to local policing, ordinary traffic stops can become gateways into detention and deportation systems.

People get targeted because of language, accent, neighborhood, or appearance. That erodes trust not just for immigrants, but for everyone living in those communities.

And once local governments normalize cooperation with expanding federal surveillance and enforcement systems, democratic accountability weakens further.

It’s worth asking who benefits when neighbors become suspicious of one another. When workers fear reporting wage theft. When witnesses avoid reporting crimes. When communities stop trusting public institutions.

The result is not just more deportations. It’s weaker civic life. Weaker worker power. Less public safety. And less democratic participation for everyone.

In that sense, programs like 287(g) don’t only affect immigrants. They reshape the social fabric of entire communities.

This is not only an immigration issue. It’s a civil liberties issue. A labor issue. A community issue. A democracy issue.

Climate Change and the Future of Migration

One of the biggest migration stories of the future is climate change.

Rising seas. Extreme heat. Crop failures. Water shortages. Storm devastation. Millions of people are already being displaced.

And here’s the uncomfortable reality: The countries most responsible for historical carbon emissions are often not the ones suffering first and worst.

Meanwhile, wealthy countries increasingly respond not by addressing root causes, but by militarizing borders.

In other words: The same economic model contributing to ecological collapse is preparing and enacting repression to manage the human consequences.

Instead of justice, we get walls. Instead of redistribution, we get detention. Instead of cooperation, we get fear.

But no border wall can stop climate breakdown. No detention center can solve drought. No deportation policy can reverse ecological collapse.

The question is whether societies will respond through solidarity and transformation — or through escalating cruelty and authoritarianism.

Why Solidarity Matters

The most powerful thing working people have is each other.

That’s true whether someone was born in Texas, Mexico, Haiti, Palestine, or the Philippines.

Because most ordinary people want similar things: Safety. Dignity. Healthcare. Time with family. Decent work. Housing. Community. A future for their children.

And historically, the biggest gains for working people happened when solidarity expanded rather than contracted.

Multiracial labor organizing. Tenant unions. Civil rights coalitions. Worker strikes. Immigrant justice movements.

The ruling idea has often been: Keep workers divided.
Native-born versus immigrant. Black versus white. Citizen versus undocumented. Urban versus rural.
Because divided people are easier to govern. Easier to underpay. Easier to manipulate.

But solidarity changes the equation.

When immigrant workers organize, labor standards rise. When unions include undocumented workers, employers lose leverage. When communities resist fear politics together, repression becomes harder to sustain.

The question is not whether immigrants and non-immigrants compete.

The question is: Who benefits when they do?

What a Different Vision Could Look Like

A humane immigration system would start upstream. It would mean reducing the forces that displace people in the first place.

That includes: Ending exploitative trade arrangements. Supporting labor rights globally. Addressing climate change seriously. Reducing militarism and intervention. Canceling crushing debt structures. Protecting indigenous land and food sovereignty.

Domestically, it would mean: Pathways to citizenship. Strong labor protections for all workers. Universal healthcare. Housing guarantees. Union rights. An end to mass detention systems. Demilitarizing immigration enforcement. Protecting civil liberties.

And maybe most importantly: Building institutions where ordinary people actually have democratic power over the conditions shaping their lives.

Because migration crises are often really democracy crises. Economic crises. Ecological crises. Crises of concentrated power.

A society where people have secure housing, healthcare, meaningful work, democratic voice, and strong communities is also a society where fear has less power.
When people feel secure, they’re less likely to look for scapegoats. They’re more likely to look for solutions.
And when communities have real control over the decisions affecting their lives, migration becomes something that can be managed humanely rather than exploited politically.

What Can People Actually Do?

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by all of this. The problems are global. The systems are enormous. The forces involved can seem impossible to challenge.

But history changes when ordinary people organize together.

That can mean: Supporting immigrant worker centers. Joining unions. Fighting wage theft. Opposing local cooperation with abusive enforcement systems. Showing up at city council meetings. Supporting sanctuary policies. Helping neighbors know their rights. Building multilingual organizing spaces. Creating relationships across communities that fear and propaganda try to divide.

It can also mean joining organizations already doing this work — groups fighting for economic democracy, political democracy, labor rights, housing justice, immigrant solidarity, and community self-defense. For many people, that might mean getting involved with a local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, labor and tenant organizing projects, immigrant justice organizations, faith-based community groups, or grassroots mutual aid networks rooted in their own communities.

For people wondering where to even begin, resources like the All of US Directory can help connect you with local grassroots organizations, worker centers, immigrant justice groups, labor campaigns, and community defense efforts already active nearby.

And it also means changing how we talk about immigration. Not reducing people to statistics. Not treating migration as an invasion. Not accepting narratives built around fear and punishment. But asking deeper questions. Why are people displaced? Who profits? Who benefits from division? What kind of society are we building together?

Those questions don’t just help us understand immigration. They help us understand power.

And once people start asking questions about power, new possibilities begin to emerge.

Conclusion: The Real Border

There’s a story we’re often told: That the biggest threat to working people is other working people crossing borders.

But maybe the real border is something else. Maybe the real border is between those who profit from exploitation and those who live with its consequences. Between concentrated wealth and democratic life. Between systems organized around profit and systems organized around human needs.

Migration reveals those contradictions very clearly.

Because immigrants are not outside the system. They are often the people most exposed to its violence and instability.

The worker laboring under threat of deportation. The family displaced by economic policies they never voted for. The community targeted by surveillance and policing. The farmworker harvesting food while struggling to access healthcare. The refugee fleeing conditions shaped by decisions made thousands of miles away.

These are not separate stories. They are connected stories.

And the response to those realities will shape all of our futures. Whether democracy will continue to shrink under the pressures of concentrated wealth, repression, and fear — or expand through participation, organization, and collective action.

In the end, the future will not be shaped primarily by walls or borders. It will be shaped by whether ordinary people can recognize themselves in one another, build power together, and demand a society organized around human dignity instead of fear and exploitation.

The most important question is not who crossed a border. It’s why the border became the story in the first place.

When we start looking upstream, we discover that many of the problems blamed on immigrants were never caused by immigrants at all.

Once we understand that, we can stop fighting one another over the consequences of a broken system and start changing the system itself.

Written by: Alexandria Shaner
Video production & narration: Dominick Conidi

Special thanks for editorial input from: Jennifer Wu, Matic Primc, & Michael Albert

HOST A SCREENING / TEACH-IN\\\\Email