Often vilified and mistreated, migrant workers benefit both the countries they move to and the ones they leave behind, says the latest Human Development Report released Monday.

The State Department contracts with a private security firm - ArmorGroup North America, owned by Wackenhut. ArmorGroup employs 450 guards at the Kabul Embassy - two-thirds from Nepal and India, the rest from the U.S. and other English-speaking nations.

So, despite the apparent explosion of global development finance in the past year, there has actually been no effective transfer of resources for investment to the developing world. Financial liberalisation explicitly designed to increase access to resources for new investment has instead been associated simply with much more circulation of finance around the world, instead of creating a growth-oriented intermediation for developing countries. Citizens of the developing world – apart from the privileged few who can take advantage of the newly liberal regime to transfer their wealth around the world to maximise their own returns – may well ask whether the process of capital account liberalisation has been worth it.

This electoral shift in the suburbs, of course, mirrors even more fundamental changes in the American voting universe. In 1976 when Jimmy Carter beat Gerald Ford, the active electorate was 90 per cent white non-Hispanic. Last November, the white share was down to 74 per cent; a transition toward voter diversity whose future is assured by demographic momentum. Nearly half the babies, for instance, born in the United States during the last few years had Spanish surnames, and American ‘minorities’ separately counted would constitute the twelfth most populous nation on earth (100.7 million). [35] Over the course of the Bush administration, the Latino voting-age population in Virginia increased 5 times faster than the population as a whole, 11 times faster in Ohio, and almost 15 times faster in Pennsylvania. [36] As Karl Rove and other nervous Republican strategists well understand, the gop has probably already harvested its maximum crop of white evangelical votes and will be culturally and politically marginalized unless it sinks new roots amongst immigrants and the coming ‘minority-majority’.

While the capital funding for these construction projects comes from trade and fiscal surplus, the labour needed to work on these projects has to be imported. The construction boom led to an increase in demand for foreign labour -known in the Gulf as "expatriates" - usually recruited from the low-wage countries of South Asia. The domestic citizens of the Gulf, or the "nationals," would simply not work for the same low wages.
(...) By 2008, unofficial estimates put the population of Qatar at 1.25 million, 80 per cent of which were expatriates. By 2008, expatriates were unofficially reported to constitute 90 per cent of the labour force in the UAE.

On Wednesday, nestled in a white satin coffin, the 17-year-old girl became to farm labor advocates more a symbol of what they say are secretive and abusive conditions in some of the state’s orchards and vineyards.

harry potter and immigration:
Some have suggested that Voldemort’s obsession with purity of blood and ancient wizarding families is meant to suggest a reference to Nazi Germany. But the Nazis were not the only historical example of a group claiming the right to dominate others based on ancestry, birth or blood. Spanish Christians relied on the concept to justify the expulsion of Muslims and Jews in 1492, and the domination and enslavement of Africans and indigenous Americans thereafter. U.S. law uses the concept today to justify the exclusion of millions of people in the United States: non-citizens, or even worse, those it defines as “illegal immigrants.”
(...) It wasn’t always that way. Until the Civil War, U.S. citizenship was based on race rather than birthplace, and there were no restrictions on immigration. It wasn’t until after the Civil War that the concept of citizenship-by-birth was inscribed into U.S. law. Before that, whites could be citizens, no matter where they were born, while non-whites, which at the time meant primarily Native Americans and African Americans, could not be citizens, even if their ancestors were here long before any Englishmen arrived. People considered racially unfit for citizenship were welcomed, or even forced to immigrate, in the case of Africans, on condition that they and their descendants would remain a permanent underclass of non-citizens—physically present, but with few legal rights.
(...) But citizenship-by-birth didn’t mean the end of racial discrimination. It meant that lawmakers scrambled to make sure that those they considered racially unfit couldn’t take advantage of the new citizenship law. Almost immediately after the new law was enacted, in 1866, Congress began restricting immigration. Chinese, Japanese and then all Asians were only the first to be told that they couldn’t come any more, because the government didn’t want their children to be able to obtain citizenship by birth.
(...) What else can it be called, when millions of people are not allowed to work, not allowed to go to school, not allowed to live in certain places, not allowed access to all of the benefits that society offers to the rest of its members? When the police raid workplaces to round them up and deport them? When they live in fear that their very existence will be discovered, and they will be punished?

assimilation is a double-edged sword for immigrants:
Italian, Polish, and Jewish immigrants may not have identified with, or been accepted into, white society when they first arrived in the United States. But they, or more often their children, assimilated by becoming "white" and experienced upward mobility as they melded into the white majority. And part of the assimilation into whiteness meant the adoption of white racial attitudes.
(...) For immigrants of color, assimilation means something very different than it historically has for European immigrants. For Latin American immigrants, assimilation more often means shedding their American dream and joining the lowest rungs in a caste-like society where Native Americans and African Americans, the most "assimilated" people of color, have been consistently kept at the bottom. When Haitian immigrants assimilate, explains one study, "they become not generic, mainstream Americans but specifically African Americans and primarily the poor African Americans most vulnerable to American racism."

immigrants rights in the UK:
Recent statistics from the Sri Lankan government highlight the threat to the wellbeing of children under five years old who are left behind by mothers working abroad for long periods of time, and it is currently legislating to ban these mothers from working abroad. In Britain, where many migrant domestic workers come to earn money to support their children, the government is pushing a new piece of immigration legislation, part of its "Making Migration Work for Britain" strategy. This will reduce domestic worker visas to non-renewable, six-month, business-visitor visas, and make it illegal for them to change employers.
(...) All existing rights, won in 1998 after a decade of campaigning, will be washed away. Low-skilled migrant workers are currently entitled to basic protection under British employment law, such as the National Minimum Wage, statutory holiday pay and a notice period for dismissal. They also have the ability to annually renew their working visas, and are entitled to apply for settlement after five years.
(...) The status of migrant domestic workers was restored by immigration legislation in 1998, granting basic rights and regularising the status of a number of migrants who had been made undocumented under the earlier laws. These changes were aimed at a specific group of workers, but were part of a set of immigration policies which proved to be the harshest in British history. These were followed by "Secure Border, Safe Haven" in 2002 and "Controlling our Borders" in 2005. Pandering to tabloid hysteria over immigration, each piece of New Labour legislation has made it more and more intolerable for those coming into Britain.
(...) Both Devika's and Reena's experiences are widely shared among the 17,000 non-EU domestic workers who enter Britain every year. According to Kalayaan, 86 percent of domestic workers registered with Kalayaan during 2005-06 worked over 16 hours a day, 71 percent have been deprived of food, 32 percent had their passports withheld by their employers and 23 percent have been physically abused.
(...) Demand for migrant labour is highly racialised in domestic work. Mary, Reena and Devika were employed because they are non-EU migrant workers. As Bridget Anderson from the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society at the University of Oxford points out, it is the flexibility, extremely low costs, and the employer's power to retain, coupled with the necessity to stay in employment, that makes this section of workers so favourable to employers. Few EU workers can compete with these factors. As retention is maintained by workers' immigration status, immigration legislation determines the degree of employers' control over workers.
(...) "The new law will give employers even more power than they already have, and will be very damaging, not only to our lives, but our children's lives," Mary said. Her son and daughter are missing her. They said to her, "Come back home! We don't need that kind of money." But Mary knows it is not possible to return home, because she is the only breadwinner.

sarkozy taking france back to 1789:
In his victory speech, he vowed to “rehabilitate work, authority, morality, respect, merit”. Whether it was used deliberately or subconsciously, “rehabilitate” is an interesting choice of word, because it carries the implication of bringing back into vogue something that existed in the past. You will seldom find its proponents acknowledging that the neoliberal “reform” process falls squarely in that category, for it is based on the assumption that rapid “growth” and “wealth creation” are contingent on further empowering the owners and controllers of capital while wresting from workers many of the rights that were gained after long and arduous struggles.
(...) Trade unions tend to sell out, or become so bloated and bureaucratized that they lose the respect and allegiance of their members. But those that continue to serve their historic purpose of agitating and bargaining for better conditions face the wrath of the entrepreneurial classes: they are dismissed as relics of the distant past and as hurdles to “progress”. From the capitalist point of view, the ideal solution to the nuisance posed by organized labour is legislation that strips it of its powers.
(...) So much, then, for the legacy of May ‘68. It was, in fact, liquidated long ago. Sarkozy isn’t inheriting a socialist state any more than Royal would have sought to create one, had she won last Sunday’s election. France does, however, retain elements of the welfare state. As Tony Judt commented in The New York Times a couple of weeks ago: “The dysfunctional French social model, we are frequently assured, has failed. In that case there is much to be said for failure. French infants have a better chance of survival than American ones. The French live longer than Americans and they live healthier (at far lower cost). They are better educated and have first-rate public transportation. The gap between rich and poor is narrower than in the US or Britain, and there are fewer poor people.”
(...) European social democracy has been in decline for decades: most of the parties associated with that label have convinced themselves that there is no alternative to neoliberal economics and, furthermore, that deviations from the capitalist path are indefensible on the electoral battlefield. No one exemplifies this trend better than Sarkozy’s friend and admirer Tony Blair. The centre has shifted, making it simpler for conservatism to slide towards extremist variants of the creed. Sarkozy, with his appeals to nationalist pride, is one of the consequences. If the drift continues, it is not inconceivable that the far right in Europe will before long acquire “respectability” of the sort it hasn’t enjoyed since the 1930s.
(...) There is a small possibility, of course, that the reality of power will moderate Sarkozy’s crypto-fascist tendencies. However, given that their new president appears to have little time for notions such as liberté, egalité and fraternité, it’s more likely that the plurality of French citizens will sooner or later find themselves rallying to defend not the legacy of 1968 but the spirit of 1789.

democracynow summary (may 8, 2007):
Iraq's infant mortality rate has soared by 150 percent since 1990 according to a new report by the charity Save the Children. One in eight Iraqi children now die of disease or violence before the age of five. In 2005 alone, 122,000 Iraqi children died before reaching their fifth birthday. Save the Children said Iraq's child-survival ranking is now the lowest in the world.
(...) The New York Times is reporting, the U.S. oil company Chevron is preparing to pay up to $30 million in fines for illegally paying kickbacks to Saddam Hussein for access to Iraq's oil before the U.S. invasion in 2003. The penalty, which is still being negotiated, would be the largest so far in the United States in connection with investigations of companies involved in the oil-for-food scandal. It appears Chevron began paying Iraq kickbacks in August 2000. At the time Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was a member of Chevron's board and led its public policy committee, which oversaw areas of potential political concerns for the company.
(...) In Los Angeles, two high-ranking police department commanders have been reassigned over their role in the police department's violent crushing of a lawful immigrants rights rally last week. Police dressed in riot gear fired 240 rounds of rubber bullets and tear gas. Officers were seen on video clubbing protesters and journalists with batons. Overall 10 people – including seven journalists -- were taken to hospitals with injuries. On Sunday LA Police Chief William Bratton took 60 members of the police department's elite Metropolitan Division's B Platoon off the street.
(...) Investigative reporter Tim Shorrock of Salon.com has revealed that former CIA Director George Tenet has made at least $2.3 million since he left the agency by working for four corporations that are directly profiting from the so-called war on terror and the war in Iraq. Tenet did not disclose any of his corporate ties in his new book "At the Center of the Storm." Tenet sits on the board of directors of L-1 Identity Solutions, a major supplier of biometric identification software used by the U.S. to monitor terrorists and insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tenet is also a member of an advisory board for Analysis Corporation which is designing terrorist watch lists for the government. Tenet also serves on the boards of two other government contractors, Guidance Software and Kinetic.
(...) A new report from Amnesty International has revealed that Native American women are more than two and a half times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted than women in the United States in general. Studies show that one in three Native American women will be raped during their lifetime. Amnesty said many rape cases are never prosecuted because there is confusion regarding tribal and county jurisdiction. It is estimated that 86 percent of rapes against Native women are committed by non-Native men, but tribal councils have no jurisdiction over non-Native offenders even if the crime takes place on tribal lands.

hutto prison:
The April 27 press release from Geneva was clear as could be: Mr. Bustamante would be visiting the USA with particular interest in migrant detention centers such as the T. Don Hutto prison in Taylor, Texas. He would visit Hutto, said Geneva on April 27. Oh no he wouldn't, said the USA on May 3. And news of the government's refusal flew out across the AP wire.

immigration numbers:
When we think of immigrants, we generally picture people from poor countries moving to rich ones. But only about a third of the 200 million people who comprise the global migrant populace moves from developing to wealthier nations. Another third moves between developing nations, and the remainder moves from wealthier nations to developing nations.
(...) Of the many forces that drive individual immigration from developing countries, neoliberal capitalist policies are among the most significant. They have disrupted traditional and protected economies in nations like Mexico and Guatemala. “Free-trade” agreements like NAFTA (and the impending DR-CAFTA) have lowered tariffs and abolished the government subsidy and welfare programs that have sustained the campesino classes of these nations for generations. Absorption into the competition of the “world market”—dominated by heavily subsidized American agricultural corporations—has led to the clearing of indigenous peoples from their land at a rate that reproduces the Cherokee “Trail of Tears” weekly. Displacement in rural regions is matched by urban out-migration, as the “Wal-Martization” of the economy accelerates the rate of deindustrialization.
(...) Overall, the undertow of “economic restructuring” pushes about a million workers a year to risk unauthorized migration across reinforced borders.
(...) Ironically, these same policies make national boundaries increasingly irrelevant for migration in the reverse direction. During the last decade, according to U.S. State Department estimates, the number of Americans living in Mexico has soared from 200,000 to 1 million—a quarter of all U.S. expatriates. But we don’t call these people “immigrants.” They are “retirees.” They are the “managers” and “technicians” in the maquiladoras. They are the “commuters”—the working poor of the United States, gentrified out of inflated housing markets like San Diego and seeking refuge in more affordable Tijuana.
(...) José arrived at the pick-up spot this morning, but others have been waiting here for weeks. Some are among the approximately 850,000 Mexicans who, according to the Mexican Interior Ministry, try crossing each year, get caught, and are deported. Most will try again, because about 350,000 Mexicans do successfully make it to their destinations each year. And about 500,000 people from Mexico and farther south do find work in the U.S. each year.
(...) Since 1994, the U.S. enforcement strategy has been two-pronged: criminalize the immigrants and militarize the borders. The U.S. has choked off traditional urban crossing points by building double and triple walls, increased the number of agents, and introduced military technology and personnel into routine activities. This policy has made the journey more dangerous by pushing crossing points into remote, hazardous regions in desert and mountainous terrain, or into the equally dangerous underworld of human smuggling—through ports of entry as container cargo. Funding for border enforcement has increased from $1.3 billion in 1994 to $7.3 billion in 2005, and the yearly death toll during that period has mushroomed from 23 to 473.
(...) In all, more than 4,000 men, women, and children have died in the act of looking for work in the U.S. But the rate of unauthorized crossings has not slowed.
(...) During the past year, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) has issued 3,667 “administrative violations,” which generally involve the apprehension of undocumented immigrants at work sites—up from 485 in 2002.
(...) Another 24,000 people were picked up separately during Operation “Return to Sender.” Although it was theoretically a plan to arrest those with criminal records, two thirds of those apprehended in this operation had committed no crimes at all but were detained as “collateral arrests.”
(...) At least 25,000 undocumented migrants are imprisoned in more than 200 immigrant detention centers across the country. But there is still an overflow. So detainees en route to deportation hearings are routinely housed in local and state prisons, integrated into the general population there, and subjected to a host of foreseeable problems. Since 1995, about 1.5 million people have been ejected from the U.S. through this process.
(...) Deportations have tragic consequences for families. They separate parents from children, husbands from wives, and same-sex partners from each other. An estimated 5 million children in the United States—at least 3.1 million of them U.S.-born citizens—have parents who are undocumented immigrants.
(...) Deported parents, hoping that they can soon return, commonly leave citizen children with relatives. But current immigration law dictates that if an undocumented person is deported or leaves the country voluntarily, he or she cannot re-enter the United States for 10 years. Worse, anti-immigrant opponents have proposed legislation to deny “birthright citizenship,” so that the children of undocumented migrants born in the U.S. would be denied the right to citizenship that has historically been granted by the Constitution to all people born in the United States.
(...) In 2006, 570 immigrant bills were introduced in 32 states, mostly to implement such restrictions. Local governments have enacted restrictions on renting or providing services to migrants without proof of residency, passed “English-only” ordinances, and empowered local police to check immigration status as part of their normal routine.
(...) Despite the virtually open borders for the migration of American capital and people into Mexico (90 percent of the 2,000 foreign-owned firms in Mexico are U.S.-based), many layers of obstruction prevent Mexicans from obtaining authorization to work in the north. For one, displaced laborers or subsistence farmers like José are categorized as “unskilled,” and the U.S. distributes only about 5,000 visas each year for unskilled workers globally. In 2005, only two of those went to Mexicans.

more on immigration (interview with nativo lopez):
This is a false premise from the start, because this legislation specifically states that the enforcement provisions come first--the government must certify that such measures are successful in preventing undocumented migration before any legalization is triggered. Congressman Gutiérrez made strategic concessions related to enforcement, penalties against employers, invasive government intervention in the workplace, codified cooperation between local police and immigration authorities and others to obtain in exchange a very tortuous, expensive and difficult-to-qualify-for legalization program. In other words, it is a bad framework to start legislative negotiations. The Republicans will fight any attempt to make them give back the political terrain that Gutiérrez ceded legislatively. A terribly bad chess move on his part.
(...) The Gutiérrez initiative calls for a six-year temporary visa for those undocumented already in the country, after which they could presumably qualify for permanent legal status upon returning to their country of origin (and waiving legal rights in the process by submitting to such a voluntary departure), and waiting at the back of the visa line. Doesn't this six-year period look something like the Bush plan? These workers would be just as vulnerable as before, maybe even more so. I characterize this clause of his legislation as the first stage guest-worker program. The second stage guest-worker program is his 400,000-plus "new worker visa" for future entrants.
(...) I don't think that such a compromise would be good for workers or for immigrants. Both represent an internal NAFTA-type option to guarantee an available supply of vulnerable laborers to and for Corporate America. Our role as class-conscious workers and organizers is to fight for the class interest of both particular sectors of the class and the total class, and within the context of the immigrants' rights movement, we are called upon to strengthen the weakest link in the chain. We are called upon to make the immigrant whole in America, legally and socially. Making the immigrant whole means unconditional legalization and an enjoyment of all the constitutional rights and their derivative protections and privileges--parity with all other workers.

immigration:
After the Swift & Co. raids, whole cities rallied to take in abandoned children, and the news couldn't ignore wives begging ICE for word of their husbands' fate for months without response. So ICE learned to keep the raids small but frequent and harsh, to strike at small towns and farmlands. Now, ICE agents burst into homes in early morning hours to roust sleeping families and drag parents away from cringing, terrified children. People who's "crime" of entering the U.S. without a visa is subject to a $50 fine are dragged off to private prisons for being in the vicinity of ICE sweeps for felons. Farmers in North Dakota are handcuffed and helplessly overlook vacant fields after thirty-six ICE agents cart away thirteen workers at gunpoint. Rumors persist of bicyclers dragged away and ICE raids on public busses. Two hundred children wear prison uniforms and languish in cells 23 hours a day at the T. Don Hutto facility in Taylor, Texas.
(...) Not surprisingly, in the two months leading up to this year's May Day protests, the detentions have intensified. Armed, warrantless home invasions have left hundreds of families shattered. People have been hauled out of pizza joints, and "Latino-looking" shoppers at a Chicago mall were lined up against a wall at gunpoint, while white shoppers walked away. The Department of Homeland Security's notorious raid and deportation program, Operation Return to Sender, brags that it has imprisoned 18,000 people since its inception eleven months ago.
(...) According to Dave Schmidt of Se Se Puede Coalition, "This bill incorporates some of the most odious elements of the Sensenbrenner Bill. It's a step backwards. It still has the criminalization element of the Sensenbrenner bill. The people hear it's from the Democrats, and they think it's the best they can get. But it's a common thing in Latin America, people really think pretty radically. The answer, if you don't want people dying in the desert, you allow a humane immigration policy that allows people to work humanely." Si Se Puede Coalition is coordinating a march from San Diego State College to Presidio Park on Tuesday.
(...) It allows broader use of indefinite detention--imprisonment without a sentence--for lack of government paperwork than proposed in the 2006 Sensenbrenner proposal, and a fifteen-year prison term for misuse of identification. And the sweeps won't end if the bill is passed: the Gutierrez-Flake bill provides for building twenty more detention facilities, and a total of 20,000 beds.
(...) "People are forced to emigrate for lack of work. Otherwise, they will die. Fourteen men were rescued last December trying to cross the Atlantic Ocean from Senegal to New York City in a 50-foot boat, in search of work. Every other week we hear of the death or injury of a construction worker in New York, because the bosses don't follow safety rules. Any guestworker program is bullshit, it's not acceptable. We demand full legalization for all who are here." The May 1st Coalition New York is marching from Union Square to the Federal Building and immigration center at Foley Square.

working-class jobs are bad for your health:
By now I've done enough of these disability cases to profile my typical client. She'll have done factory work from the age of 14 in Mexico or the Dominican Republic and then more of the same in one of New York's many non-union sweatshops. By her mid-40s her lower back will be an unsteady tower of herniated discs and lumbago; she'll have arthritic pain in at least two of her knees and shoulders; inevitably asthma and more often than not type-two diabetes. On top of all this she'll confide to me that she's "deprimida," and will be taking a daily cocktail of antidepressants accompanied by a visit to a therapist once a month.
(...) Not a happy story, but my prototypical client really isn't an anomaly in America, not even close. For tens of millions of Americans, work itself is the sickness unto death. Consider the following: throughout the 1960s and early 70s, more Americans died every year in automobile plants than died in any year of the Vietnam War. More Americans were struck down with disabling injuries and diseases from work in the auto plants than were hospitalized in any year for wounds from the war. 16,000 dead, 63,000 sick and sidelined, 1.7 million deafened or hearing damaged-every year.
(...) The epidemic continues: In the United States, 65,000 workers die of work-related injuries or illnesses every year, according to the impeccably mainstream American Journal of Publi Health.
(...) That's a lot of disabled workers. But the physically crippling effects of work aren't just normal, they're normalized: a plethora of government programs concern themselves with occupational health and safety, and guess what? They're often useless. OSHA has no teeth and its supposed regulators are a bunch of industry hacks--even the New York Times has gotten wise to that (5).
(...) But there are no special programs for the non-whites and women who make up the majority of poultry processing plant workers, homecare attendants, and hospital workers. And of course the most dangerous jobs- in slaughterhouses, nonunion consruction sites, cleanup the 9-11 wreckage in Manhattan-go to undocumented immigrants. If they get injured on the job, they're pretty much screwed.
(...) But beefing up the welfare state addresses the problem far too late, and creates too many problems of its own. America's medical-industrial complex (15% of GDP!) is plainly and fundamentally broken, and however insatiable Big Pharma, to the American Medical Association may be, diverting another river of cash to them is surely not the answer. Besides, do we really want more doctors, therapists and "counseling" as a response to workplace injustice? Doping people to the gills with antidepressants is not the solution to a political problem, but it does turn out to be a semi-effective way for the medical system to pacify a large group of people with plenty of good reasons to be militantly pissed-off about the status quo.
(...) In short our task is to transform the economy into a source of worthwhile labor that doesn't kill you or make you sick. Hey, nothing wrong with getting a little utopian on May 1st. All of the above is just one of the things that will be on my mind and the minds of my many clients-they may have gotten their disability benefits but they're still pissed off-- when we go out on May 1st and raise some hell for workers' rights y un minimo de justicia. ¡Sí se puede!

immigration and STRIVE:
IF IT were up to the public at large, the estimated 11 to 13 million undocumented immigrants in this country would be eligible to apply for citizenship. That’s the conclusion of a new Gallup poll, which found 78 percent of people in favor of legalization.
(...) First, there’s George W. Bush’s proposal to force a small minority to pay a $10,000 fine to become eligible for citizenship--while the rest are confined to permanent second-class status as guest workers on proposed “Z” visas. Maintaining the three-year Z visa would require payment of a $3,500 fine--and another $3,500 for each renewal, thereby putting the federal government in the role of the labor brokers who extort payments from guest workers in order to get them jobs in the U.S.
(...) Moreover, the guest-worker program wouldn’t begin until after 570 miles of fence is installed on the U.S.-Mexico border.
(...) And like the Bush plan, the STRIVE Act legalization procedures would have to follow the enactment of enforcement measures. STRIVE even incorporates repressive measures from last year’s draconian HR 4437 proposal, known as the Sensenbrenner bill after its House sponsor.
(...) “Congress continues to view immigrants through a national security and disposable worker lens, proposing harsh enforcement while it moves away from permanent, family-based immigration toward temporary worker programs,” wrote Lillian Galedo on the New America Media Web site. “For the aspiring millions who spoke out for immigrant rights last year, this is not the response we wanted.”
(...) Yet many organizations historically committed to immigrant rights also support STRIVE. Grouped in the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CCIR), the list includes not only NIF, but also UNITE HERE, the Service Employees International Union, the United Farm Workers, the National Council of La Raza, the Center for Community Change and organizations like the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. The CCIR objects to certain aspects of STRIVE, such as the requirement to “touch back” to immigrants’ home countries. But Clarissa Martínez, a spokesperson for the coalition, said the group endorsed STRIVE because “the bill presents the right architecture to deal with this issue.”
(...) “We call this ‘Sensenbrenner Lite,’” Alexis Mazon, a member of the Tucson, Ariz.-based Coalicion de Derechos Humanos (Coalition for Human Rights) and an activist in the Tucson May 1 Coalition, told a reporter. “A lot of the provisions that were in HR 4437 are in HR 1645 [the STRIVE Act]...It is a proposal intended to criminalize the entire immigrant population.

may day:
THE EFFORT to win “eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, and eight hours for what we will” became a crusade for U.S. labor in the years after the Civil War of 1861-65.
(...) “The way to get [the eight-hour day],” Peter McGuire of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners wrote in 1882, “is by organization...We want an enactment by the workingmen themselves that on a given day, eight hours should constitute a day’s work, and they ought to enforce it themselves.”
(...) Everywhere, workers joined the campaign. Historian Philip Foner describes workers smoking “Eight-Hour Tobacco” and wearing “Eight-Hour Shoes”--as products produced in shops that already had the shorter working day were known--and singing the “Eight-Hour Song”:

We want to feel the sunshine; we want to smell the flowers;
We’re sure that God has willed it, and we mean to have eight hours.
We’re summoning our forces from shipyard, shop and mill:
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will.

(...) MAY 1 was a huge success. About 200,000 workers went on strike across the country, and nearly that number won shorter hours just by threatening to strike. The heart of the eight-hour day movement--and the political center of the left in the U.S.--was Chicago. On the first day of the strike, some 80,000 strikers and supporters--almost one in every six people living in the city at the time--paraded down Michigan Avenue.
(...) As he was led to his death, August Spies called out: “There will come a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today!”
(...) “If you think that by hanging us, you can stamp out the labor movement...the movement from which the downtrodden millions, the millions who toil in want and misery expect salvation--if this is your opinion, then hang us!” Spies said. “Here you will tread upon a spark, but there and there, behind you and in front of you, and everywhere, flames blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out.”