Summary:
The essay argues that the Marshall Plan, which was implemented after World War II to aid in the restoration of Europe, was a successful program. The author suggests that a similar plan could be implemented in Central America to address the root causes of migration to the United States, such as poverty and lack of opportunity. The author suggests that money for such a plan could be reallocated from current spending on border enforcement and the arms industry. The essay also criticizes the treatment of refugees seeking asylum in the US and the use of ICE and border patrols.
IF IT SUCCEEDS, WHY NOT TRY IT AGAIN: THE MARSHALL PLAN
by Jonathan A. Weiss
America’s history reveals that before, during, and after World War II, the savage siblings of Nazi sympathy and anti-Semitism were widespread, from Harvard’s Ivory Tower (Conant) to political leaders (Robert Taft) to permeate foreign policy. As the tide turned, civilian bombing of the continent increased, but the rails and trains of transports to concentration and death camps went untouched. After the war, the influx of German “scientists” reached a crescendo, with a “rat track” for some to Argentina – started during the war while the Jews were offered no new places for settlement but confinement in British camps accepted by no nation, except for some desert tracts in Santa Domingo. It took Primo Levi, as he wrote at book length, a year and a half to get back from Auschwitz to Turin. But one new good idea did emerge in this atmosphere: The Marshall Plan. American money poured for in restoration of Continental Damage (although not Russia and many other places – one can still see the damage in parts of Palermo) even accompanied by the Fulbright program, which repaid loans with scholarships for Americans in the borrower countries, originally luxurious.
The Marshall plan helped Europe recover. It led directly to Germany becoming the prime powerhouse in Europe again (with its current rise in fascism and anti-Semitism). It was a great success.
Many people point the deplorable finger of blame at the United States for the disastrous survival conditions in Central America (and even Mexico with guns and drugs for Cartels.) Nobody leaves home for arduous, life-threatening trips with no motivation. No hope in remaining but to die (or be raped, tortured, etc.) there leads people to risk dying in escaping to the North. So refugees at the American Border of Mexico (and theirs with Guatemala) have become, if not a practical problem solvable with education, training, and filling long-term job vacancies, solved by simply stopping those reasons for fleeing to become border “burdens.” A Marshall Plan to ensure staying at home is more desirable, indeed attractive, with food, shelter, clothing, transportation, and the other necessities of not only survival but also living might very well eradicate the cause of the migration to the North which has caused so much turmoil, politically at least, let alone the horrible specters, with concentration camp resonance, of treatment of refugees trying to enter the United States illegally and legally. Every winter night, people seeking to file papers for asylum alone, legally in the United States, lie for blocks on frozen New York City streets overnight waiting for the chance to meet at an appointed time in the Federal Building to apply. Off in the distance, you can see the Statue of Liberty.
The United States Supreme Court ruled in the 1960s that welfare mothers once they were living in a place could not be denied benefits because they just moved there; yet no one has even sued to prevent forcing people out of where they are to be bused to northern cities – apparently because they are refugees – yet a citizen can get medicaid.
Why wouldn’t a full Marshall plan immediately established in the locales fled not solve the problem? Why is it not even discussed? Should the oversensitive analogize the racial difference in the immigrants to the racial difference ascribed to the Jews for the different treatment than the Germans with Aryan DNA privileged? Or just simply realize that eradicating the cause, with a system proved successful, would work again.
Where would the money come from? Obviously, a switch of funds from ICE, border patrols, and houses of horrors for refugees, people yearning through expensive flawed walls would bring some. But let us start just by recognizing that the arms industry makes the highest profits of any area in the United States, close apparently to double other “productions”; that the American military budget is more than all the other countries in the world combined. A correction without major impact (except on lobbyist, legislators lobbied and “pork barrel”) could fund a Marshal Plan south of the Border. Who knows if such a success then might inspire real aid to the citizens of the Ukraine for health, safety, shelter, food, transportation, and infrastructure to accompany, supplement, or replace the deployment of weapons, particularly of new advanced means of killing and maiming (even though General love to play with their new toys). Perhaps such an idea might help ameliorate proxy wars like Yemen.
Certainly, at least it should be effectuated for refugees to this country now. It succeeded for German and Europe once, why not try it again?