Analysis: Immigration and Global Justice
Article written by Alex Rocklin and Rachel Wallis
When Rueben, a community human rights defender from Chiapas, flew to Miami for the protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), he was surprised to discover that he was not the only Chiapanecan in the crowed. Several members of Root Cause, a labor rights organization in Florida, greeted him with enthusiasm. They were from communities from across the state of Chiapas, and had come to the US to seek work as migrant laborers.
Their story is a common one. While most of the factory jobs created by
NAFTA were in the border states in the north of Mexico, most of the
economic damage it caused was in the states of the south like Chiapas,
with large rural populations who depend on agriculture to survive. In
the years after the passage of NAFTA, Mexican campesinos were unable to
sell their produce, as heavily subsidized US agriculture flooded the
market. Hundreds of thousands of people headed north to look for work
in the maquilas (sweatshops) near the border, or in the US itself.
According the Mexican Council on Population there are currently 9.9
million Mexican migrants living in the United States. Many come from
Chiapas and the surrounding states.
Given these numbers, you might expect that President Bush's immigration
"reform" would be warmly greeted in Mexico. But the public reaction has
been mixed here, with many speaking out strongly against the proposed
legislation. When one looks closely at Bush's proposal, it is easy to
see why. Bush promotes the reform as a way to bring Mexicans working
illegally in the US "out of the shadows" and to give them legal status,
which would allow them to claim their rights under US law.
But the
proposal, which would allow employers to apply for a temporary 3-year
work visa for foreign employees, falls far short of that "goal." By
linking employees' visa status to the employer who hired them, the new
accord would leave guest workers in the same bind as undocumented
workers currently face: anger your employer by unionizing, reporting
unjust or illegal conditions, or even asking for a raise, and you will
be deported. This creates an easily replaceable underclass of workers
who can be paid little, denied brakes and overtime, and used to bring
down the wages of everyone working in the country. One needs only to
read the recent accounts in the New York Times of the undocumented
janitors exploited by Wal-Mart and then deported when their story came
to light to understand how this system works. Not only would the guest
workers be vulnerable to abuses, but the reform would not offer them
any means to eventually become citizens of the country in which they
worked.
If this proposal seems unjust to you, call your representatives in
Congress, and tell them that we not only need an immigration reform
that protects the rights of immigrants, but that we need to address the
root cause of the problem: the system of corporate globalization that
is transferring money out of poor and developing nations and into the
pockets of the rich. This means opposing the FTAA, fighting for debt
forgiveness for highly indebted nations, and ending the US subsidies to
corporate agriculture that are destroying family farmers both in the US
and abroad.
When Rueben, a community human rights defender from Chiapas, flew to Miami for the protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), he was surprised to discover that he was not the only Chiapanecan in the crowed. Several members of Root Cause, a labor rights organization in Florida, greeted him with enthusiasm. They were from communities from across the state of Chiapas, and had come to the US to seek work as migrant laborers.
Their story is a common one. While most of the factory jobs created by
NAFTA were in the border states in the north of Mexico, most of the
economic damage it caused was in the states of the south like Chiapas,
with large rural populations who depend on agriculture to survive. In
the years after the passage of NAFTA, Mexican campesinos were unable to
sell their produce, as heavily subsidized US agriculture flooded the
market. Hundreds of thousands of people headed north to look for work
in the maquilas (sweatshops) near the border, or in the US itself.
According the Mexican Council on Population there are currently 9.9
million Mexican migrants living in the United States. Many come from
Chiapas and the surrounding states.
Given these numbers, you might expect that President Bush's immigration
"reform" would be warmly greeted in Mexico. But the public reaction has
been mixed here, with many speaking out strongly against the proposed
legislation. When one looks closely at Bush's proposal, it is easy to
see why. Bush promotes the reform as a way to bring Mexicans working
illegally in the US "out of the shadows" and to give them legal status,
which would allow them to claim their rights under US law.
But the
proposal, which would allow employers to apply for a temporary 3-year
work visa for foreign employees, falls far short of that "goal." By
linking employees' visa status to the employer who hired them, the new
accord would leave guest workers in the same bind as undocumented
workers currently face: anger your employer by unionizing, reporting
unjust or illegal conditions, or even asking for a raise, and you will
be deported. This creates an easily replaceable underclass of workers
who can be paid little, denied brakes and overtime, and used to bring
down the wages of everyone working in the country. One needs only to
read the recent accounts in the New York Times of the undocumented
janitors exploited by Wal-Mart and then deported when their story came
to light to understand how this system works. Not only would the guest
workers be vulnerable to abuses, but the reform would not offer them
any means to eventually become citizens of the country in which they
worked.
If this proposal seems unjust to you, call your representatives in
Congress, and tell them that we not only need an immigration reform
that protects the rights of immigrants, but that we need to address the
root cause of the problem: the system of corporate globalization that
is transferring money out of poor and developing nations and into the
pockets of the rich. This means opposing the FTAA, fighting for debt
forgiveness for highly indebted nations, and ending the US subsidies to
corporate agriculture that are destroying family farmers both in the US
and abroad.
Follow CASA's stories and events via Facebook and Twitter.