Immigration: Causes
Immigration, Mexico to US (excerpted from the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras letter of 3/15/07
“As you know, the corn tortilla is the main item in the Mexican maquila worker’s diet, and the price of tortillas just increased to $1.50 US a kilogram. A family of four consumes three kilograms a day for $4.50. But a maquila worker in a US or Canadian-owned factory only makes $5. for an eight hour work day.
“The living conditions of the maquils workers in the Blanca Navidad shantytown in Nuevo Laredo are the same as those of the maquila workers living in the Strength and Unity shanty town of Matamoros, or in Maclovio Rojas in Tijuana. They have no running water, no sewage or electricity and all the houses are made from cardboard boxes or wooden pallets. Across the country and expecially on the northern border, poverty and hunger are the air that you breathe.
“The workers of Cardinal Brands, a paper company based in Valle Hermoso, whose headquarters is in Kansas, are working 14 hours a day, seven days a week with mandatory overtime. They are exposed to glues, solvents, dyes, and ammonia without an safety equipment. .....
“The lack of decent jobs, housing, and schooling for children are just a few of the challenges workers face every day along with the low wages and unsafe working conditions ….
“...A fair amnesty could help the 10 millions of undocumented people already in the US, but what will happen to the one hundred and twenty million in Mexico who are ready to cross because the choice is either to die of hunger or to risk crossing the border?”
— Peter Mott
Immigration policy--basic question
US Immigration Policy Change vs. the powers that be
Do you agree with the following (excerpted) view of Prof. Wm. Robinson, U.of California (Santa Barbara) (see complete article in Z-Net 3/10/07 or the summary in our newsletter INTERCONNECT—via this website home page, click on “newsletter”, then “archives”, then the 7/07 issue page 3):
“The powers that want to reorganize the world feel they must control workers worldwide and capture natural resources and labor pools worldwide….(to create) the division of workers into immigrants and citizens—a new axis of inequality worldwide, between citizen and non-citizen. The system…can’t function without this reserve army of immigrant labor. It needs this to maintain the status quo…immigrant labor that is vulnerable, undocumented, deportable…controllable. The aim of the powers that be is not to do away with…immigrants but to exercise repressive control over immigrants…to super-exploit with impunity. Hence, the dual emphasis on guest worker programs alongside criminalization, enforcement and militarization.”
Do you agree? If so, should we continue to try to help build the campaign to change US immigration policy to a humane one…or would this effort be impossible and just patching up the rotten overall system of corporate globalization/free trade/neoliberalism? Should we focus more of closing down NAFTA, the World Bank/IMF/WTO...while expanding humanitarian programs for refugee rights, saving lives at the border, etc.?
What do you think? —-Peter Mott
— Peter Mott