Readers respond: U.S. created Latin American migration

The Oregonian/OregonLive’s Yesenia Amaro’s piece on the detention of Nelson Pablo-Morales was heart-wrenching for me, (“

ICE arrested him in Oregon. His 24-year-old fiancée wonders what will happen to their toddler

,” July 6). I worry that many Oregonians might see such detentions as a matter of law and order.

I hope readers will ask themselves why so many travel to the U.S. for work. I hope they realize that the United States itself created the conditions that Latin American people are forced to flee. As these countries were emerging from European colonial occupation, U.S. corporations bought their land for pennies, forcing ordinary people to grow bananas and coffee for subsistence wages. When people demanded the right to own and farm their own land, the U.S. called it communism and either forcibly overthrew their democratically elected leaders, or funded insurgencies to destabilize them.

Later, the ravenous American appetite for illegal drugs created the cartels that have corrupted governments, spawned gangs and turned parts of Latin America into killing fields. The gigantic U.S. production of climate pollution contributes every day to farm-destroying droughts and hurricanes.

It’s not just humanitarian sympathy that should motivate us to welcome Pablo-Morales and his family and let them live in peace. It’s not just that without tens of thousands like him, Oregon’s economy will collapse. It’s that the U.S.’s own actions have put Latin American people in this position. We care for them, and we need them, of course. But history shows also that we owe them.