Showing posts with label immigration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label immigration. Show all posts
Monday, October 5, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
notes on capital
chapters 26-33: primitive accumulation
(873-874): worth flagging this page, as it outlines the contrast between Marxist and liberal positions on force/conflict within capitalist production.
(874-875): "so-called primitive accumulation, therefore, is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production."
(875): Marx making explicit the normative consequences of the transition toward the "double freedom" of the proletariat: at once free from serfdom and the "fetters of the guilds" ["and it is this aspect of the movement which alone exists for our bourgeois historians"], and at the same time "robbed of all of their own means of production." Quite clearly, here, we are speaking of the dialectics and contradictions of historical progress.
(876): The last sentence contains all that is regrettable about Marx's "universalizing" of the British experience--by making Britain the "classic form" of expropriation of rural areas, he, quite unwittingly and against his more explicit instructions, inspired failed attempts to read quite different histories through this classic, universal lens.
(877): Feudalism finished by the fourteenth century--the vast majority of the population as "small peasants."
(878): FN #3, fascinating. reflections on Japan and liberal attitudes toward the Middle Ages, possibly hinting at a contempt for Whiggish interpretations of history's march that ought to dampen the spirits of crude Marxist modernizers.
(879): here Marx, in the manner of this entire book, leaves the question of the state-society interface open to history, without compromising the thrust of his class analysis.
(880): implicit in this is an appraisal of legislation's utility in the face of history's march. and, to be honest, marx is not very generous, especially if we're speaking of big sweeps. what this implies for agency, i think, is less clear, since these are cosmetic laws authored and implemented largely by kings at the behest of tradition. (see also 885). at the same time, it is important to stress that the identity between legislation and ruling class interests is not trivially true, in that--as one sees with the reports on proletariat health after the corn laws--a class can be economically ascendant but politically (and temporarily) relatively impotent. yet of course these are exceptions that can be assimilated into the rule.
(884): the theft of state assets at "ridiculous" prices--where have we heard that before?
(886): "the identity between the wealth of the nation and the poverty of the people" -- a not-so-indirect rejoinder to liberal triumphalism.
(887-888): "'Upon the whole, the circumstances of the lower ranks of men are altered in almost every respect for the worse.'" it should be clear, then, that we are not speaking of the Marx of the modernizers' imagination. or, at least, he does not share their totalizing fixation with the future, even if they would agree on policy forward. there is room, in other words, for a recognition of place.
(888): again, the non-identity between the "nation" and the "people" -- the bourgeois becomes the torch bearer for the "nation", a move which allows him to speak in the name of the people he dispossesses.
(889): dating enclosures: late 1400s to late 1700s
(892): hinting at the perpetual nature of primitive accumulation, much like harvey's position
(893): an interesting side-note to Marx on nature: here, in this portrayal of expropriation, the small farmer simply forms another part of the natural backdrop. he is dead to the bourgeois' history, precisely he--like all else that is "natural," precedes it. an alternative, very literal embedding of the "social" in the "natural."
(896): important passage, for two reasons: (a) prefigures the problems of the third world, in that the peasantry is being thrown onto a market that cannot properly absorb it (b) prefigures Foucault, in that the peasantry has to be disciplined into accepting an entirely new routine and set of values (cf. the listed punishments for vagabondage)--has to be "modernized." Lumpen activity is theorized in this context, and has to be done so in the contemporary Third World, as well (gangsterism, terrorism, etc.)
(899): "Even at the beginning of the reign of Louis XVI, the Ordinance of 13 July 1977 provided that every man in good health from 16 to 60 years of age, if without means of subsistence and not practising a trade, should be sent to the galleys."
(899-900): here Marx clearly seems to overstate his case, making normal a state of affairs that is highly idealized. against this passage, it is important to re-assert Harvey's reminder that primitive accumulation and the State are always important tools for the ruling class--in that sense, Marx's account is far too kind; the notion that this violence is transitional and particular to a specific epoch needs refutation.
(902): the first minimum wage, where before there were only maximum wages being proposed.
(903): the sordid history of bourgeois positions on trade unions, including the French Revolution's banning of them in 1791! liberty means, as it always has for the bourgeois, the liberty of a particular class. the timelessness of the worker's oppression, then, is here made clear.
(910): Marx's suggestion here, that observers are too ready to see the large-scale capitalist without also appreciating his dependence on a plethora of networks of smaller-scale production, resembles Arrighi's critique of the Euro-centrism of theories of the Big Corporation. We do have to ask what this means for theories of centralization/concentration--and it is not sufficient to say that it "opens them up to history", even if that is true and important.
(910-911): a further important point--expropriation is not simply important to the reconfiguration of structures of production, but it also is critical to reconfiguring consumption. it is only once the workers are divested from the right to produce their own means of subsistence that they become dependent on a market. (to this one can append Marx's Foucaultian moments--they have to be "taught" how to consume).
(915): "the author should have reminded himself that revolutions are not made with laws."
(916): Marx on violence, implicitly: "Force is the midwife of every old society which is pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power."
(916-917): Marx on the colonies, hardly an apologist for empire.
(918): Marx here makes a critical chronological intervention, in stressing that colonialism (as commercial supremacy) is coeval with manufacture, and that it helps mature industry. In other words, colonialism was critical for industrial predominance. By the late 19th century, this has changed--one can only sustain commercial supremacy if industrial forces are already sufficiently matured. This is important in better understanding the changing nature of colonialism, itself.
(920): Arrighi's narrative is here being prefigured, as Marx recounts the shifting centers of the international credit system. But, I think, there is a clear need to make it more systematic than what is presented here, as Arrighi does.
(920): Capital as "the capitalized blood of children"--unforgiving, and absolutely correct.
(921-922): These passages are key to any comprehensive Marxist theory of the state. Especially if we are going to argue that primitive accumulation is a continuous feature of life in modern capitalism, then the State--as provider of "original" capital--has a continuous, protective role to play (in other words, the bailouts can be represented as a kind of primitive accumulation).
(923): Marx's re-telling of the historical crimes of capitalism makes for important reading. Why do liberals never have to "own up" to these crimes when endorsing this system of production, the way that commies in the case of their own beliefs? There is something to be said here about Walter Benjamin and the stealthy cloaking of past crimes in the narrative of present progress.
(924): "Liverpool grew fat on the basis of the slave trade"
(926): "...capital comes dripping from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt"
(928): Though my own obsession with the normative implications of Marx's dialectics is important, it is also moot. Because Marx is, of course, not suggesting that we stop (or try to stop) history at any given stage of its advance. It is not a case of deliberating on the principles we find superior, and working to embody them in a world of our making. Rather, history advances quite in spite of our best efforts. We can observe dialectics, amidst all this (and the implications of that attentiveness for the bourgeois historians are important), but we cannot intervene.
(929): Why the proletariat? "...with this there also grows the revolt of the working class, a class constantly increasing in numbers, and trained, united, and organized by the very mechanism of the capitalist process of production." Might a close-reading of this passage be in order, especially concentrating on those three words, "trained, united, organized."
(929): This is important (and was argued on preceding pages, as well): when Capital mobilizes to argue that it defends the cause of private property, it falls to us to remind the ideologues that this is one kind of private property--or, rather, the private property of one class, in particular. what's more, in the process of primitive accumulation, this system has little problem in obliterating the private property of millions of small producers and peasants. (see also 931)
(932): speaking of the colonial imperative to transform structures of production in the colony, Marx invokes the schematics of uneven development: "In the interest of the so-called wealth of the nation, he seeks for artificial means to ensure the poverty of the people."
(932): absolutely foundational to this entire process is this point that Capital is not simply a wad of cash ready to be deployed, but a wad of cash ready to be deployed in a particular social relation: "property in money, means of subsistence, machines and other means of production does not as yet stamp a man as a capitalist if the essential complement to these things is missing the wage-laborer, the other man, who is compelled to sell himself of his own free will... capital is not a thing, but a social relation between persons which is mediated through things.
(938-939): excellent passages against which to develop a history of emigration--again, as always, this speaks of a Marx for whom theory is open to history, even if the framework's contours are established, as well.
chapters 26-33: primitive accumulation
(873-874): worth flagging this page, as it outlines the contrast between Marxist and liberal positions on force/conflict within capitalist production.
(874-875): "so-called primitive accumulation, therefore, is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production."
(875): Marx making explicit the normative consequences of the transition toward the "double freedom" of the proletariat: at once free from serfdom and the "fetters of the guilds" ["and it is this aspect of the movement which alone exists for our bourgeois historians"], and at the same time "robbed of all of their own means of production." Quite clearly, here, we are speaking of the dialectics and contradictions of historical progress.
(876): The last sentence contains all that is regrettable about Marx's "universalizing" of the British experience--by making Britain the "classic form" of expropriation of rural areas, he, quite unwittingly and against his more explicit instructions, inspired failed attempts to read quite different histories through this classic, universal lens.
(877): Feudalism finished by the fourteenth century--the vast majority of the population as "small peasants."
(878): FN #3, fascinating. reflections on Japan and liberal attitudes toward the Middle Ages, possibly hinting at a contempt for Whiggish interpretations of history's march that ought to dampen the spirits of crude Marxist modernizers.
(879): here Marx, in the manner of this entire book, leaves the question of the state-society interface open to history, without compromising the thrust of his class analysis.
(880): implicit in this is an appraisal of legislation's utility in the face of history's march. and, to be honest, marx is not very generous, especially if we're speaking of big sweeps. what this implies for agency, i think, is less clear, since these are cosmetic laws authored and implemented largely by kings at the behest of tradition. (see also 885). at the same time, it is important to stress that the identity between legislation and ruling class interests is not trivially true, in that--as one sees with the reports on proletariat health after the corn laws--a class can be economically ascendant but politically (and temporarily) relatively impotent. yet of course these are exceptions that can be assimilated into the rule.
(884): the theft of state assets at "ridiculous" prices--where have we heard that before?
(886): "the identity between the wealth of the nation and the poverty of the people" -- a not-so-indirect rejoinder to liberal triumphalism.
(887-888): "'Upon the whole, the circumstances of the lower ranks of men are altered in almost every respect for the worse.'" it should be clear, then, that we are not speaking of the Marx of the modernizers' imagination. or, at least, he does not share their totalizing fixation with the future, even if they would agree on policy forward. there is room, in other words, for a recognition of place.
(888): again, the non-identity between the "nation" and the "people" -- the bourgeois becomes the torch bearer for the "nation", a move which allows him to speak in the name of the people he dispossesses.
(889): dating enclosures: late 1400s to late 1700s
(892): hinting at the perpetual nature of primitive accumulation, much like harvey's position
(893): an interesting side-note to Marx on nature: here, in this portrayal of expropriation, the small farmer simply forms another part of the natural backdrop. he is dead to the bourgeois' history, precisely he--like all else that is "natural," precedes it. an alternative, very literal embedding of the "social" in the "natural."
(896): important passage, for two reasons: (a) prefigures the problems of the third world, in that the peasantry is being thrown onto a market that cannot properly absorb it (b) prefigures Foucault, in that the peasantry has to be disciplined into accepting an entirely new routine and set of values (cf. the listed punishments for vagabondage)--has to be "modernized." Lumpen activity is theorized in this context, and has to be done so in the contemporary Third World, as well (gangsterism, terrorism, etc.)
(899): "Even at the beginning of the reign of Louis XVI, the Ordinance of 13 July 1977 provided that every man in good health from 16 to 60 years of age, if without means of subsistence and not practising a trade, should be sent to the galleys."
(899-900): here Marx clearly seems to overstate his case, making normal a state of affairs that is highly idealized. against this passage, it is important to re-assert Harvey's reminder that primitive accumulation and the State are always important tools for the ruling class--in that sense, Marx's account is far too kind; the notion that this violence is transitional and particular to a specific epoch needs refutation.
(902): the first minimum wage, where before there were only maximum wages being proposed.
(903): the sordid history of bourgeois positions on trade unions, including the French Revolution's banning of them in 1791! liberty means, as it always has for the bourgeois, the liberty of a particular class. the timelessness of the worker's oppression, then, is here made clear.
(910): Marx's suggestion here, that observers are too ready to see the large-scale capitalist without also appreciating his dependence on a plethora of networks of smaller-scale production, resembles Arrighi's critique of the Euro-centrism of theories of the Big Corporation. We do have to ask what this means for theories of centralization/concentration--and it is not sufficient to say that it "opens them up to history", even if that is true and important.
(910-911): a further important point--expropriation is not simply important to the reconfiguration of structures of production, but it also is critical to reconfiguring consumption. it is only once the workers are divested from the right to produce their own means of subsistence that they become dependent on a market. (to this one can append Marx's Foucaultian moments--they have to be "taught" how to consume).
(915): "the author should have reminded himself that revolutions are not made with laws."
(916): Marx on violence, implicitly: "Force is the midwife of every old society which is pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power."
(916-917): Marx on the colonies, hardly an apologist for empire.
(918): Marx here makes a critical chronological intervention, in stressing that colonialism (as commercial supremacy) is coeval with manufacture, and that it helps mature industry. In other words, colonialism was critical for industrial predominance. By the late 19th century, this has changed--one can only sustain commercial supremacy if industrial forces are already sufficiently matured. This is important in better understanding the changing nature of colonialism, itself.
(920): Arrighi's narrative is here being prefigured, as Marx recounts the shifting centers of the international credit system. But, I think, there is a clear need to make it more systematic than what is presented here, as Arrighi does.
(920): Capital as "the capitalized blood of children"--unforgiving, and absolutely correct.
(921-922): These passages are key to any comprehensive Marxist theory of the state. Especially if we are going to argue that primitive accumulation is a continuous feature of life in modern capitalism, then the State--as provider of "original" capital--has a continuous, protective role to play (in other words, the bailouts can be represented as a kind of primitive accumulation).
(923): Marx's re-telling of the historical crimes of capitalism makes for important reading. Why do liberals never have to "own up" to these crimes when endorsing this system of production, the way that commies in the case of their own beliefs? There is something to be said here about Walter Benjamin and the stealthy cloaking of past crimes in the narrative of present progress.
(924): "Liverpool grew fat on the basis of the slave trade"
(926): "...capital comes dripping from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt"
(928): Though my own obsession with the normative implications of Marx's dialectics is important, it is also moot. Because Marx is, of course, not suggesting that we stop (or try to stop) history at any given stage of its advance. It is not a case of deliberating on the principles we find superior, and working to embody them in a world of our making. Rather, history advances quite in spite of our best efforts. We can observe dialectics, amidst all this (and the implications of that attentiveness for the bourgeois historians are important), but we cannot intervene.
(929): Why the proletariat? "...with this there also grows the revolt of the working class, a class constantly increasing in numbers, and trained, united, and organized by the very mechanism of the capitalist process of production." Might a close-reading of this passage be in order, especially concentrating on those three words, "trained, united, organized."
(929): This is important (and was argued on preceding pages, as well): when Capital mobilizes to argue that it defends the cause of private property, it falls to us to remind the ideologues that this is one kind of private property--or, rather, the private property of one class, in particular. what's more, in the process of primitive accumulation, this system has little problem in obliterating the private property of millions of small producers and peasants. (see also 931)
(932): speaking of the colonial imperative to transform structures of production in the colony, Marx invokes the schematics of uneven development: "In the interest of the so-called wealth of the nation, he seeks for artificial means to ensure the poverty of the people."
(932): absolutely foundational to this entire process is this point that Capital is not simply a wad of cash ready to be deployed, but a wad of cash ready to be deployed in a particular social relation: "property in money, means of subsistence, machines and other means of production does not as yet stamp a man as a capitalist if the essential complement to these things is missing the wage-laborer, the other man, who is compelled to sell himself of his own free will... capital is not a thing, but a social relation between persons which is mediated through things.
(938-939): excellent passages against which to develop a history of emigration--again, as always, this speaks of a Marx for whom theory is open to history, even if the framework's contours are established, as well.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Friday, September 14, 2007
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?
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?
Friday, July 6, 2007
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."
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."
Thursday, June 7, 2007
expanding NAFTA:
The expansion of NAFTA into the Security and Prosperity Partnership reveals the road ahead for other nations entering into free trade agreements. It is not a road most nations -- or the U.S. public -- would take if they knew where it led.
(...) The first problem is that very few people know about this next step of "deep integration." In March 2005, Presidents George Bush, Vicente Fox and Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Texas launched the Security and Prosperity Partnership with a splash. ... These rules and trinational programs have profound effect on the environment, the daily lives of citizens, and the future of all three countries.
(...) Its security component represents a new and ominous form of integration, all in the name of counter-terrorism.
(...) The official U.S. web page describes the SPP as "a White House-led initiative among the United States and the two nations it borders - Canada and Mexico - to increase security and to enhance prosperity among the three countries through greater cooperation."
(...) "White House-led" is a key element.
(...) Many of the priorities of the SPP benefit only a small handful of powerful actors, such as greater patent protection (Mexico holds very few patents) and joint anti-piracy campaigns (piracy is a major employer in Mexico and benefits low-income consumers).
(...) SPP on the other hand, was born in the "global war on terror" era and reflects an inordinate emphasis on U.S. security as interpreted by the Department of Homeland Security. The head of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, along with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Mexico's Secretary of Finance Carlos Gutierrez, represent the three ministries charged with attending SPP ministerial conferences.
(...) The SPP measures to coordinate security have pressured Mexico to militarize its southern border and adopt repressive measures toward Central and South Americans presumably in transit to the United States. The false conflation of undocumented immigration with security in the United States has also led to measures that have little to do with Mexico's own national security and cause friction with friendly nations, such as the decision to require visas for citizens of Brazil and Ecuador to enter the country.
(...) Moreover, in all three countries, significant civil society movements have questioned whether the high-tech solutions advanced by Homeland Security (and that profit major military suppliers) are really the best and most resource-efficient answer to security challenges. Again, for the most part, the decisions are being made without public knowledge or consultation.
(...) Economic integration under NAFTA has led to job loss and the erosion of job security and quality in the United States, while also increasing unemployment in Mexico. Over thirteen years, the model has confirmed, rather than reversed, Mexico's status as the less-developed partner. The rise in immigration to the United States attests to the failure of NAFTA as a development mechanism. Moreover, it has not increased the U.S. competitive edge although it has delivered record profits to a few major global traders. Unfortunately for the majority, those "few" are now driving the efforts to deepen integration under the NAFTA-plus-Homeland-Security model.
(...) But to deepen integration would mean deepening the contradictions and the problems that have led most Americans to express their rejection of the free-trade model in recent polls, and that has spurred widespread public protest in Mexico and Canada.
The expansion of NAFTA into the Security and Prosperity Partnership reveals the road ahead for other nations entering into free trade agreements. It is not a road most nations -- or the U.S. public -- would take if they knew where it led.
(...) The first problem is that very few people know about this next step of "deep integration." In March 2005, Presidents George Bush, Vicente Fox and Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Texas launched the Security and Prosperity Partnership with a splash. ... These rules and trinational programs have profound effect on the environment, the daily lives of citizens, and the future of all three countries.
(...) Its security component represents a new and ominous form of integration, all in the name of counter-terrorism.
(...) The official U.S. web page describes the SPP as "a White House-led initiative among the United States and the two nations it borders - Canada and Mexico - to increase security and to enhance prosperity among the three countries through greater cooperation."
(...) "White House-led" is a key element.
(...) Many of the priorities of the SPP benefit only a small handful of powerful actors, such as greater patent protection (Mexico holds very few patents) and joint anti-piracy campaigns (piracy is a major employer in Mexico and benefits low-income consumers).
(...) SPP on the other hand, was born in the "global war on terror" era and reflects an inordinate emphasis on U.S. security as interpreted by the Department of Homeland Security. The head of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, along with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Mexico's Secretary of Finance Carlos Gutierrez, represent the three ministries charged with attending SPP ministerial conferences.
(...) The SPP measures to coordinate security have pressured Mexico to militarize its southern border and adopt repressive measures toward Central and South Americans presumably in transit to the United States. The false conflation of undocumented immigration with security in the United States has also led to measures that have little to do with Mexico's own national security and cause friction with friendly nations, such as the decision to require visas for citizens of Brazil and Ecuador to enter the country.
(...) Moreover, in all three countries, significant civil society movements have questioned whether the high-tech solutions advanced by Homeland Security (and that profit major military suppliers) are really the best and most resource-efficient answer to security challenges. Again, for the most part, the decisions are being made without public knowledge or consultation.
(...) Economic integration under NAFTA has led to job loss and the erosion of job security and quality in the United States, while also increasing unemployment in Mexico. Over thirteen years, the model has confirmed, rather than reversed, Mexico's status as the less-developed partner. The rise in immigration to the United States attests to the failure of NAFTA as a development mechanism. Moreover, it has not increased the U.S. competitive edge although it has delivered record profits to a few major global traders. Unfortunately for the majority, those "few" are now driving the efforts to deepen integration under the NAFTA-plus-Homeland-Security model.
(...) But to deepen integration would mean deepening the contradictions and the problems that have led most Americans to express their rejection of the free-trade model in recent polls, and that has spurred widespread public protest in Mexico and Canada.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
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.
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.
Monday, May 7, 2007
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.
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.
what sarkozy brings:
A whopping record 86% of French voters went to the polls today to give an unambiguous victory to the autocratic, demagogic, hard-right nationalist Sarkozy, who campaigned on promises of a "rupture" with France's mixed economy and its welfare state, one of the most extensive in Europe.
(...) The crowd in the hall where Sarkozy declared victory after the polls closed repeatedly sang the national anthem, La Marseillaise -- with its famous xenophobic refrain, "Marchons, marchons! Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons!" (Translation: Let us march, let us march, May impure blood soak the furrows of our fields.) And Sarkozy's campaign was marked by incessant appeals to racism and the fear of immigrants, symbolized by his adoption of a slogan used by the neo-fascist leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, "France, love it or leave it," and by his proposal for a new "Ministry of Immigration and National Identity," which was widely criticized by the left and by anti-racist groups for amalgamating the two concepts and suggesting a fundamental opposition between the two.
(...) That lurch to the right five years ago by a significant portion of formerly left voters was confirmed by today's vote, in which more than two-thirds of former Le Pen voters -- many of them from the one-time Communist-dominated working class suburbs -- went for Sarkozy, according to the exit polls.
(...) But in reality, what Sarkozy's victory means for France is something closer to the so-called "Reagan Revolution" in the U.S. that began in 1981 the process of dismantling and destroying the institutional New Deal legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Chirac was a Gaullist, and the political heritage of General Charles De Gaulle, who led France from 1958 to 1969, included a vigorously statist approach to the economy and defense of a wide series of social protection and social safety-net measures that had been instituted by the left's Popular Front government in the mid-1930s, and which were renewed and extended by post-war governments dominated by the political activists of the Resistance movement to Nazi occupation, who had a conception of government as a guarantor of economic security for all. Sarkozy is of a new generation than Chirac and, ideologically, not a Gaullist -- but rather in phase with the "Chicago school" of economics led by Milton Friedman, which believes in minimal government, a slimmed-down state that interferes as little as possible in the economy, an aggressively laissez-faire approach that is dear to the economic barons of the MEDEF, the French business leaders' association, whose tycoons were solidly behind Sarkozy's candidacy. Sarkozy has already promised to, in effect, abolish the ISF (the tax on large fortunes), accord more tax breaks to big business and the upper-middle-classes, and make more cuts in the state-run national health system (declared by a U.N. survey to be the finest in the world in terms of delivery of health services and quality of care.) Sarkozy's economic program is designed to help the already-privileged classes retain and extend their socio-economic position, to the detriment of the have-nots (the massive pro-Sarkozy vote in the upper-income neighborhoods today confirms that they understood Sarko's message to them.) And he has promised a major down-sizing of the civil service employed by state agencies.
(...) Life for the have-nots will become even more difficult under Sarkozy's hard-right, anti-immigrant, law-and-order society. He has announced "zero tolerance" for illegal immigration, has deported tens of thousands of immigrants during his two terms as Interior Minister and split up immigrant families while making it tougher for them to become French citizens. He has proposed strict minimum sentences for all sorts of crimes, thus removing all discretion from French judges, and France's already-crowded prisons will soon be overflowing with expanded, and younger, populations. French prisons, like ours, are training institutes for criminals, and by sending ever-larger numbers of young people to them for petty offenses Sarkozy will, in fact, be manufacturing new generations of hardened voyous (thugs in French.)
(...) And, in a major campaign speech just days before the election, Sarkozy surprisingly devoted 20 minutes of his discourse to a violent denunciation of the May 1968 student-worker revolt (Sarko was only 14 at the time of that rebellion.). The heritage of May ';68, Sarko thundered, must be "liquidated." He blamed it for a generalized attitude of "laxisme," for France's having become a country "in which work has no value, in which people think they can do anything they feel like doing, in which people are lazy," and on and on. May '68 was, of course, the fountain of social ferment that led to the sexual revolution, to women's liberation and the legalization of abortion, the gay liberation movement and the eventual repeal of laws criminalizing homosexuality, and a whole series of cultural changes that opened up a stuffy, arteriosclerotic French society. But May '68 was also a general strike by 11 million French workers that gained union recognition in many factories, higher wages, and that won a reinforcement of the social safety net in an agreement (negotiated on behalf of then-President Georges Pompidou by a young Jacques Chirac) that became known as "les accords de la rue de Grenelle" (the agreement of Grenelle Street). What was unstated in Sarko's anti-May '68 speech was that all that sort of thing, too, must be "liquidated."
A whopping record 86% of French voters went to the polls today to give an unambiguous victory to the autocratic, demagogic, hard-right nationalist Sarkozy, who campaigned on promises of a "rupture" with France's mixed economy and its welfare state, one of the most extensive in Europe.
(...) The crowd in the hall where Sarkozy declared victory after the polls closed repeatedly sang the national anthem, La Marseillaise -- with its famous xenophobic refrain, "Marchons, marchons! Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons!" (Translation: Let us march, let us march, May impure blood soak the furrows of our fields.) And Sarkozy's campaign was marked by incessant appeals to racism and the fear of immigrants, symbolized by his adoption of a slogan used by the neo-fascist leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, "France, love it or leave it," and by his proposal for a new "Ministry of Immigration and National Identity," which was widely criticized by the left and by anti-racist groups for amalgamating the two concepts and suggesting a fundamental opposition between the two.
(...) That lurch to the right five years ago by a significant portion of formerly left voters was confirmed by today's vote, in which more than two-thirds of former Le Pen voters -- many of them from the one-time Communist-dominated working class suburbs -- went for Sarkozy, according to the exit polls.
(...) But in reality, what Sarkozy's victory means for France is something closer to the so-called "Reagan Revolution" in the U.S. that began in 1981 the process of dismantling and destroying the institutional New Deal legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Chirac was a Gaullist, and the political heritage of General Charles De Gaulle, who led France from 1958 to 1969, included a vigorously statist approach to the economy and defense of a wide series of social protection and social safety-net measures that had been instituted by the left's Popular Front government in the mid-1930s, and which were renewed and extended by post-war governments dominated by the political activists of the Resistance movement to Nazi occupation, who had a conception of government as a guarantor of economic security for all. Sarkozy is of a new generation than Chirac and, ideologically, not a Gaullist -- but rather in phase with the "Chicago school" of economics led by Milton Friedman, which believes in minimal government, a slimmed-down state that interferes as little as possible in the economy, an aggressively laissez-faire approach that is dear to the economic barons of the MEDEF, the French business leaders' association, whose tycoons were solidly behind Sarkozy's candidacy. Sarkozy has already promised to, in effect, abolish the ISF (the tax on large fortunes), accord more tax breaks to big business and the upper-middle-classes, and make more cuts in the state-run national health system (declared by a U.N. survey to be the finest in the world in terms of delivery of health services and quality of care.) Sarkozy's economic program is designed to help the already-privileged classes retain and extend their socio-economic position, to the detriment of the have-nots (the massive pro-Sarkozy vote in the upper-income neighborhoods today confirms that they understood Sarko's message to them.) And he has promised a major down-sizing of the civil service employed by state agencies.
(...) Life for the have-nots will become even more difficult under Sarkozy's hard-right, anti-immigrant, law-and-order society. He has announced "zero tolerance" for illegal immigration, has deported tens of thousands of immigrants during his two terms as Interior Minister and split up immigrant families while making it tougher for them to become French citizens. He has proposed strict minimum sentences for all sorts of crimes, thus removing all discretion from French judges, and France's already-crowded prisons will soon be overflowing with expanded, and younger, populations. French prisons, like ours, are training institutes for criminals, and by sending ever-larger numbers of young people to them for petty offenses Sarkozy will, in fact, be manufacturing new generations of hardened voyous (thugs in French.)
(...) And, in a major campaign speech just days before the election, Sarkozy surprisingly devoted 20 minutes of his discourse to a violent denunciation of the May 1968 student-worker revolt (Sarko was only 14 at the time of that rebellion.). The heritage of May ';68, Sarko thundered, must be "liquidated." He blamed it for a generalized attitude of "laxisme," for France's having become a country "in which work has no value, in which people think they can do anything they feel like doing, in which people are lazy," and on and on. May '68 was, of course, the fountain of social ferment that led to the sexual revolution, to women's liberation and the legalization of abortion, the gay liberation movement and the eventual repeal of laws criminalizing homosexuality, and a whole series of cultural changes that opened up a stuffy, arteriosclerotic French society. But May '68 was also a general strike by 11 million French workers that gained union recognition in many factories, higher wages, and that won a reinforcement of the social safety net in an agreement (negotiated on behalf of then-President Georges Pompidou by a young Jacques Chirac) that became known as "les accords de la rue de Grenelle" (the agreement of Grenelle Street). What was unstated in Sarko's anti-May '68 speech was that all that sort of thing, too, must be "liquidated."
Sunday, May 6, 2007
as'ad abukhalil on sarkozy:
The election of Sarkozy points to a trend. In the 1980s and 1990s, there were all these articles in the Western press (and scholarship) about the New Right. The New Right referred to those organizations with neo-Nazi and fascist agendas that made xenophobia a central element in their electoral campaigns. In recent years, there is a new trend. People often now talk about the decline of the New Right. I disagree. I believe that the New Right left from the window, to enter through the front door. The New Right and their supporters have migrated to mainstream conservative political parties: in Germany, France, and elsewhere in Europe. So it is not that Le Pen is no more popular: it is that Sarkozy is now a more intelligent (and better marketer of hatred and racism) than Le Pen. The New Right merely discovered that it will only win big if it hides under the mantle of the Old Right.
The election of Sarkozy points to a trend. In the 1980s and 1990s, there were all these articles in the Western press (and scholarship) about the New Right. The New Right referred to those organizations with neo-Nazi and fascist agendas that made xenophobia a central element in their electoral campaigns. In recent years, there is a new trend. People often now talk about the decline of the New Right. I disagree. I believe that the New Right left from the window, to enter through the front door. The New Right and their supporters have migrated to mainstream conservative political parties: in Germany, France, and elsewhere in Europe. So it is not that Le Pen is no more popular: it is that Sarkozy is now a more intelligent (and better marketer of hatred and racism) than Le Pen. The New Right merely discovered that it will only win big if it hides under the mantle of the Old Right.
Saturday, May 5, 2007
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.
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.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
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.
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.
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.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
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 MartÃnez, 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.
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 MartÃnez, 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.
immigrants in prison:
Approximately 400 immigrants are incarcerated in Hutto, and at least half of the prisoners are children, according to Texans United for Families. Many of the immigrants--who are limited to countries other than Mexico--have made requests for asylum in the U.S. They await deportation hearings without any charges for months, and sometimes years.
(...) On March 6, the ACLU sued Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on behalf of 10 children in the Taylor jail. The ACLU based its lawsuit on a 1997 settlement protecting immigrant minors that resulted from a class-action suit accusing immigration officials of abusing minors. In its current initiative, the ACLU accuses Hutto of violating every provision of the 1997 settlement, including not giving children the right to wear their own clothes or have privacy.
(...) Families are awakened at 5:30 or 5:45 a.m., and must be through bathing by 6 a.m. They are given 20 minutes to eat. "If we haven't finished," Elsa says, "the officials say they aren't interested--the time to eat has finished."
(...) After the 20-minute meal, the prisoners return to their cells "to do nothing," Elsa says. "They don't allow us to sleep, only to sit and wait for the hours, days, months to pass." The prisoners aren't allowed to have books sent to them, and a great deal of the day is spent in senseless head counts to make sure no one has escaped.
(...) In his deposition, Kevin complained about the ridiculous excuse for an education system at Hutto. "Students" in the class of 25 ranged in age from six to 12 years old. "All we do is color and draw pictures and watch Spanish movies," Kevin said. Kevin also said that his bed was small and cold, and stuck next to a smelly washroom. His mother had to use the toilet in front of him.
(...) Johnson-Castro also visited Raymondville, the home of a $65 million tent city that holds 2,000 immigrants who speak more than 40 different languages in windowless hothouses. They are locked down 23 hours a day.
Approximately 400 immigrants are incarcerated in Hutto, and at least half of the prisoners are children, according to Texans United for Families. Many of the immigrants--who are limited to countries other than Mexico--have made requests for asylum in the U.S. They await deportation hearings without any charges for months, and sometimes years.
(...) On March 6, the ACLU sued Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on behalf of 10 children in the Taylor jail. The ACLU based its lawsuit on a 1997 settlement protecting immigrant minors that resulted from a class-action suit accusing immigration officials of abusing minors. In its current initiative, the ACLU accuses Hutto of violating every provision of the 1997 settlement, including not giving children the right to wear their own clothes or have privacy.
(...) Families are awakened at 5:30 or 5:45 a.m., and must be through bathing by 6 a.m. They are given 20 minutes to eat. "If we haven't finished," Elsa says, "the officials say they aren't interested--the time to eat has finished."
(...) After the 20-minute meal, the prisoners return to their cells "to do nothing," Elsa says. "They don't allow us to sleep, only to sit and wait for the hours, days, months to pass." The prisoners aren't allowed to have books sent to them, and a great deal of the day is spent in senseless head counts to make sure no one has escaped.
(...) In his deposition, Kevin complained about the ridiculous excuse for an education system at Hutto. "Students" in the class of 25 ranged in age from six to 12 years old. "All we do is color and draw pictures and watch Spanish movies," Kevin said. Kevin also said that his bed was small and cold, and stuck next to a smelly washroom. His mother had to use the toilet in front of him.
(...) Johnson-Castro also visited Raymondville, the home of a $65 million tent city that holds 2,000 immigrants who speak more than 40 different languages in windowless hothouses. They are locked down 23 hours a day.
Friday, April 27, 2007
post-katrina:Mississippi - by many measures the most impoverished state in the US - received the brunt of the damage from the hurricane. In three hardest hit coastal counties, 64,000 homes were destroyed and more than 70,000 received damage. Many of the poorest residents still have received no federal assistance, and tens of thousands remain spread across the US.
(...) “There’s no rebuilding being done except for casinos and condos,” Vicky Cintra of the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance (MIRA) adds.
(...) Since Katrina, MIRA has helped workers recover over $1 million dollars in unpaid wages. “We’re fighting contractors who feel that, because they are dealing with immigrants, they don’t have to pay them, they don’t have to respect worker’s comp laws, or health and safety rules, or any guidelines of ethical behavior,” Cintra asserts.
(...) “They had it decided and were just waiting for Katrina,” Cintra asserts. “It could have been anything. They were going to get rid of poor people and people of color. They had plans ready.”
(...) “There’s no rebuilding being done except for casinos and condos,” Vicky Cintra of the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance (MIRA) adds.
(...) Since Katrina, MIRA has helped workers recover over $1 million dollars in unpaid wages. “We’re fighting contractors who feel that, because they are dealing with immigrants, they don’t have to pay them, they don’t have to respect worker’s comp laws, or health and safety rules, or any guidelines of ethical behavior,” Cintra asserts.
(...) “They had it decided and were just waiting for Katrina,” Cintra asserts. “It could have been anything. They were going to get rid of poor people and people of color. They had plans ready.”
Saturday, April 21, 2007
interview on immigrants rights:
AMY GOODMAN: What difference has it made that Democrats are now in power in Congress?
JAVIER RODRIGUEZ: Very little, at this time. Very little. Yes, last year the Congress was controlled by the extreme right. We were able to participate in the overall electorate that defeated, especially the antiwar sentiment. And now, we have, let's say -- the first proposal came from the Democrats, the Gutierrez-Flake bill, but it's essentially corporate-designed. It is designed to make a worker who has been here seven years, fourteen years, even up to thirty-eight years, which is my mechanic -- the project -- the proposal calls for a wait of approximately fourteen years to be able to get your green card, besides having a guest worker program, besides having a totally enforcement, let's say, section very similar to the Sensenbrenner bill.
(...) AMY GOODMAN: The significance of immigrants fighting in Army being sent to Iraq?
JAVIER RODRIGUEZ: Let's say, it's a shame. It is making criminals, murderers, mercenaries out of immigrants in exchange for a green card. And it is making -- what is it? -- an estimated 40,000 immigrants, human beings, that it's going after human beings in another country in a war that should not be a war, that it’s totally a war of occupation of, let's say, with politically designed rationale, as it is known now. It was totally fabricated. So if immigrants are going with a sense of patriotism, with a sense of getting in exchange their green card, or rather citizenship, it is totally wrong.
(...) AMY GOODMAN: What about these detention facilities around the country? I think now a record of more than 26,000 immigrants currently in prison in the United States...
JAVIER RODRIGUEZ: It is what we consider now the immigration-industrial complex. Prisons are on the -- let's say are on the vision of government and also industry, the enterprise. And along with the wall, it is nothing but a money-making scheme, the building of prisons, the building of detention centers. And it is totally also in violation of human rights to imprison children in this country, immigrant children, just for so the-called crime of crossing into the United States, just as adults.
AMY GOODMAN: What difference has it made that Democrats are now in power in Congress?
JAVIER RODRIGUEZ: Very little, at this time. Very little. Yes, last year the Congress was controlled by the extreme right. We were able to participate in the overall electorate that defeated, especially the antiwar sentiment. And now, we have, let's say -- the first proposal came from the Democrats, the Gutierrez-Flake bill, but it's essentially corporate-designed. It is designed to make a worker who has been here seven years, fourteen years, even up to thirty-eight years, which is my mechanic -- the project -- the proposal calls for a wait of approximately fourteen years to be able to get your green card, besides having a guest worker program, besides having a totally enforcement, let's say, section very similar to the Sensenbrenner bill.
(...) AMY GOODMAN: The significance of immigrants fighting in Army being sent to Iraq?
JAVIER RODRIGUEZ: Let's say, it's a shame. It is making criminals, murderers, mercenaries out of immigrants in exchange for a green card. And it is making -- what is it? -- an estimated 40,000 immigrants, human beings, that it's going after human beings in another country in a war that should not be a war, that it’s totally a war of occupation of, let's say, with politically designed rationale, as it is known now. It was totally fabricated. So if immigrants are going with a sense of patriotism, with a sense of getting in exchange their green card, or rather citizenship, it is totally wrong.
(...) AMY GOODMAN: What about these detention facilities around the country? I think now a record of more than 26,000 immigrants currently in prison in the United States...
JAVIER RODRIGUEZ: It is what we consider now the immigration-industrial complex. Prisons are on the -- let's say are on the vision of government and also industry, the enterprise. And along with the wall, it is nothing but a money-making scheme, the building of prisons, the building of detention centers. And it is totally also in violation of human rights to imprison children in this country, immigrant children, just for so the-called crime of crossing into the United States, just as adults.
Friday, April 20, 2007
from envio, july 2003:
[on urbanization]: The invasion of trans-national companies stimulates migratory movement in various ways. To be more competitive, landowners in poor countries acquire more land, mechanize agricultural work, introduce high-yield seed varieties and apply industrially produced inputs. All of these transnational-inspired novelties make a large part of rural labor redundant and also leave small producers at a disadvantage by reducing the prices of agricultural production. Those displaced seek employment in other areas of the country as well as abroad.
(...) This growing outflow of people from our countryside is considerably reducing the rural population’s overall weight and is a symptom of well-known changes caused by various factors, of which rural unemployment, most recently aggravated by the coffee crisis, is undoubtedly the most drastic.
(...) The penetration of transnational companies and their methods into rural areas undermines the peasant economy’s structures, which are based on reciprocity and established roles, replacing them with a labor market rooted in more individualistic conceptions and private profit, cultural features that trigger the uprooting of peasant populations. The increasing monetization of the economy tends to bring about the disappearance of the traditional institutions based on family networks and community solidarity that have provided the social infrastructure for many other exchanges. Wages as the exclusive mediator of all labor purchases erodes such rural institutions as the practice of bartering for services with no monetary exchange involved. Although this deterioration of the peasant economy’s structures is perhaps not quite so attributable to the transnationals in Nicaragua’s case, it is already palpable.
(...) [free trade zones´ role in this] Some of the maquilas and other foreign companies also produce goods that compete with those manufactured by local industry while familiarizing their workers with certain goods not within their financial reach. In short, these companies displace labor while at the same time whetting the national appetite for a new range of consumer goods. The result is an uprooted population group prone to migrate because it cannot attain the living standard to which it aspires and ideological links have been forged with the places from which the capital originated.
(...) [education as path to mobility] The 2001 living standards survey conducted by Nicaragua’s National Institute of Statistics and Censuses contains figures on almost 900 emigrants, provided by relatives responding to the census. Of the 52 who are university graduates, only 25% are working abroad in jobs that correspond to their professional qualifications. Another 13.5% work as waiters, cooks, nannies and above all salespeople; 19% work as carpenters, cabinetmakers, painters, mechanics, electricians and particularly foremen; and 21% as menial workers, domestics, doormen, launderers, agricultural laborers, security guards and unskilled construction workers.
[on urbanization]: The invasion of trans-national companies stimulates migratory movement in various ways. To be more competitive, landowners in poor countries acquire more land, mechanize agricultural work, introduce high-yield seed varieties and apply industrially produced inputs. All of these transnational-inspired novelties make a large part of rural labor redundant and also leave small producers at a disadvantage by reducing the prices of agricultural production. Those displaced seek employment in other areas of the country as well as abroad.
(...) This growing outflow of people from our countryside is considerably reducing the rural population’s overall weight and is a symptom of well-known changes caused by various factors, of which rural unemployment, most recently aggravated by the coffee crisis, is undoubtedly the most drastic.
(...) The penetration of transnational companies and their methods into rural areas undermines the peasant economy’s structures, which are based on reciprocity and established roles, replacing them with a labor market rooted in more individualistic conceptions and private profit, cultural features that trigger the uprooting of peasant populations. The increasing monetization of the economy tends to bring about the disappearance of the traditional institutions based on family networks and community solidarity that have provided the social infrastructure for many other exchanges. Wages as the exclusive mediator of all labor purchases erodes such rural institutions as the practice of bartering for services with no monetary exchange involved. Although this deterioration of the peasant economy’s structures is perhaps not quite so attributable to the transnationals in Nicaragua’s case, it is already palpable.
(...) [free trade zones´ role in this] Some of the maquilas and other foreign companies also produce goods that compete with those manufactured by local industry while familiarizing their workers with certain goods not within their financial reach. In short, these companies displace labor while at the same time whetting the national appetite for a new range of consumer goods. The result is an uprooted population group prone to migrate because it cannot attain the living standard to which it aspires and ideological links have been forged with the places from which the capital originated.
(...) [education as path to mobility] The 2001 living standards survey conducted by Nicaragua’s National Institute of Statistics and Censuses contains figures on almost 900 emigrants, provided by relatives responding to the census. Of the 52 who are university graduates, only 25% are working abroad in jobs that correspond to their professional qualifications. Another 13.5% work as waiters, cooks, nannies and above all salespeople; 19% work as carpenters, cabinetmakers, painters, mechanics, electricians and particularly foremen; and 21% as menial workers, domestics, doormen, launderers, agricultural laborers, security guards and unskilled construction workers.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
militarizing the border:
For 2008, the president is requesting $46.4 billion in funding for DHS, an 8% increase over 2007. And with President Bush’s belated focus on border security and immigration reform, it is likely that more money will be spent in a hurry. In border security, a new focus on high-tech solutions follows on a wave of failure and money wasted. A $425 million system of cameras and sensors was installed improperly and never worked effectively, and a $6.8 million unmanned aerial vehicle patrolling the border crashed and was destroyed.
(...) But the issue of militarizing the border goes beyond questions of accountability. In order to craft truly effective, humane and “comprehensive” immigration reform, the president is going to have to do a lot more than show up in his shirtsleeves once in a while. He has to learn that the border is not a war zone, Mexicans are not combatants, and military contractors are not the solution.
For 2008, the president is requesting $46.4 billion in funding for DHS, an 8% increase over 2007. And with President Bush’s belated focus on border security and immigration reform, it is likely that more money will be spent in a hurry. In border security, a new focus on high-tech solutions follows on a wave of failure and money wasted. A $425 million system of cameras and sensors was installed improperly and never worked effectively, and a $6.8 million unmanned aerial vehicle patrolling the border crashed and was destroyed.
(...) But the issue of militarizing the border goes beyond questions of accountability. In order to craft truly effective, humane and “comprehensive” immigration reform, the president is going to have to do a lot more than show up in his shirtsleeves once in a while. He has to learn that the border is not a war zone, Mexicans are not combatants, and military contractors are not the solution.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
on drought becoming normal in the Southwest (davis):
Some climatologists have not hesitated to call this a "mega-drought," even the "worst in 500 years." Others have been more cautious, not yet sure whether the current aridity in the West has surpassed the notorious thresholds of the 1930s (the Dust Bowl in the southern Plains) or 1950s (devastating drought in the Southwest). But the debate is possibly beside the point: The most recent and authoritative research finds that the "evening redness in the West" (to invoke the portentous subtitle of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian) is not simply episodic drought but the region's new "normal weather."
(...) Yet mere scientific pronouncement, even to the thunder of nineteen unanimous climate models, is unlikely to cause much of a flutter in golf-course suburbs of Phoenix, where luxury lifestyles consume 400 gallons of water per capita each day. Nor will it stop the bulldozers shaping monstrous strip suburbs of Las Vegas (a projected 160,000 new homes) along US 93 all the way to Kingman, Arizona. Nor, despite possible pumping out of the vast Ogallala Aquifer, the underground water resource lying under eight states in the Great Plains, will it prevent Texas from doubling its population by 2040.
(...) [technology eating itself up] More futuristically, there is also the "Saudi" option. Steve Erie, a University of California, San Diego, professor who has written extensively about water politics in Southern California, told me that desert developers in the Southwest and Baja California are confident that they can keep the population boom well-watered through the conversion of seawater. "The new mantra of the water agencies, of course, is incentivizing conservation and reclamation, but rapacious developers are casting covetous eyes at the Pacific Ocean and the alchemy of desalination heedless of the pernicious environmental consequences."
(...) [and who´ll bear the burden] As water becomes more expensive, the burden of adjustment to the new climatic and hydrological regime will fall on subaltern groups like farmworkers (jobs threatened by water transfers), the urban poor (who could easily see water charges soar by $100 to $200 per month), hardscrabble ranchers (including many Native Americans) and, especially, the imperiled rural populations of Northern Mexico. Indeed, the ending of the age of cheap water in the Southwest--especially as it may coincide with the end of cheap energy--will accentuate the region's already high levels of class and racial inequality as well as drive more emigrants to gamble with death in dangerous crossings of the border deserts. (It takes little imagination, moreover, to guess the Minutemen's future slogan: "They are coming to steal our water!")
(...) [and the future?] Conservative politics in Arizona and Texas will become even more envenomed and ethnically charged, if that is possible. The Southwest is already sown everywhere with violent nativism and what can only be described as proto-fascism: In the droughts to come, they may be the only seeds to germinate. As Jared Diamond points out in his recent bestseller Collapse, the ancient Anasazi did not succumb simply to drought but rather to the impact of unexpected aridity upon an over-exploited landscape inhabited by people little prepared to make sacrifices in their "expensive lifestyle." In the last instance, they preferred to eat one another.
Some climatologists have not hesitated to call this a "mega-drought," even the "worst in 500 years." Others have been more cautious, not yet sure whether the current aridity in the West has surpassed the notorious thresholds of the 1930s (the Dust Bowl in the southern Plains) or 1950s (devastating drought in the Southwest). But the debate is possibly beside the point: The most recent and authoritative research finds that the "evening redness in the West" (to invoke the portentous subtitle of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian) is not simply episodic drought but the region's new "normal weather."
(...) Yet mere scientific pronouncement, even to the thunder of nineteen unanimous climate models, is unlikely to cause much of a flutter in golf-course suburbs of Phoenix, where luxury lifestyles consume 400 gallons of water per capita each day. Nor will it stop the bulldozers shaping monstrous strip suburbs of Las Vegas (a projected 160,000 new homes) along US 93 all the way to Kingman, Arizona. Nor, despite possible pumping out of the vast Ogallala Aquifer, the underground water resource lying under eight states in the Great Plains, will it prevent Texas from doubling its population by 2040.
(...) [technology eating itself up] More futuristically, there is also the "Saudi" option. Steve Erie, a University of California, San Diego, professor who has written extensively about water politics in Southern California, told me that desert developers in the Southwest and Baja California are confident that they can keep the population boom well-watered through the conversion of seawater. "The new mantra of the water agencies, of course, is incentivizing conservation and reclamation, but rapacious developers are casting covetous eyes at the Pacific Ocean and the alchemy of desalination heedless of the pernicious environmental consequences."
(...) [and who´ll bear the burden] As water becomes more expensive, the burden of adjustment to the new climatic and hydrological regime will fall on subaltern groups like farmworkers (jobs threatened by water transfers), the urban poor (who could easily see water charges soar by $100 to $200 per month), hardscrabble ranchers (including many Native Americans) and, especially, the imperiled rural populations of Northern Mexico. Indeed, the ending of the age of cheap water in the Southwest--especially as it may coincide with the end of cheap energy--will accentuate the region's already high levels of class and racial inequality as well as drive more emigrants to gamble with death in dangerous crossings of the border deserts. (It takes little imagination, moreover, to guess the Minutemen's future slogan: "They are coming to steal our water!")
(...) [and the future?] Conservative politics in Arizona and Texas will become even more envenomed and ethnically charged, if that is possible. The Southwest is already sown everywhere with violent nativism and what can only be described as proto-fascism: In the droughts to come, they may be the only seeds to germinate. As Jared Diamond points out in his recent bestseller Collapse, the ancient Anasazi did not succumb simply to drought but rather to the impact of unexpected aridity upon an over-exploited landscape inhabited by people little prepared to make sacrifices in their "expensive lifestyle." In the last instance, they preferred to eat one another.
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