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The immigrant
perspective, at least partially for now. Please note
the numbers of green cards issued per year, below. The Bush2 proposal as it
stands now could lead to more abuses by employers. I know several immigrants from
Eastern Europe whose employer fraudulently denied health benefits and shorted paychecks
for years. These were highly skilled workers; there are many thousands who
labor in restaurants or construction sites on ‘personal sponsorship’ status and
are indeed too often treated like indentured servants. - KWC Immigration Nation? By Marcelo Ballve,
Pacific News Service, January 8, 2004, Viewed on January 9, 2004 The immigrant media, and Latino media in particular, were
quick to pick apart the new White House proposal that would grant temporary
legal status to millions of undocumented workers in the United States. The day
after the plan was made public, the front pages and editorial sections of key Latino, Chinese, Korean and Filipino newspapers were filled with news of the
proposal, which if passed would be the most significant revision to immigration
policy since the amnesty of 1986. As the battle over the plan escalates, the fast-growing
ethnic media will lead in framing the debate for their audiences in immigrant
communities. White House officials and lawmakers haggling over the details as
the plan enters the U.S. Congress would be wise to take note. The headline of an editorial published in the Ft. Worth,
Texas Spanish-language daily El Diario La Estrella read, "Bush's Dangerous
Immigration Gift." In the commentary, Rafael F�rnandez de Castro warns
that the immigration proposal poses a double danger to Mexico. The proposal is accompanied by a tightening of the
"fortification," through technology and policing, of the U.S.-Mexico
border to placate right-wing opponents, de Castro writes. The risk is that the
portions of the proposal aimed at hardening the border will be approved easily,
even as the guest worker program founders due to conservatives' opposition. Although many of their readers and viewers would stand to
gain from the reforms, opinions in immigrant media were not unanimously in
favor of the new plan. If the guarded reaction from some media is any
indication, President Bush may have more trouble attracting immigrant voters
with his proposed reforms than many expect. Or, it may be that the real debate
will only come as the plan's details are hashed out in Congress. In the New York-based Filipino Reporter weekly, a headline
read, "Bush Plan Offers New Hope for Illegal Immigrants." A measured response came in the Los Angeles Spanish-language
paper La Opini�n, with a daily circulation of 126,000. Its lead editorial
began, "The principles laid out yesterday by President Bush are
interesting as a start for reopening the immigration debate, but they leave
much to be desired." Mar�a Elena Salinas, the co-anchor of the national newscast
for Univision, the country's top-rated Spanish-language television network,
portrayed the Bush proposal mainly as an opportunity for foreign workers who
are able to match themselves up with jobs in the United States. This facet of the proposal, which would create a digital database of jobs that
must be offered to U.S. citizens before they can be offered to guest workers, has also drawn early scrutiny from ethnic
media. Advocacy groups like the League of United Latin American
Citizens were cited in several ethnic media reports expressing worry that the
plan would value only the needs of corporations and employers, not families.
"We are in favor of an immigration reform, but we have to make sure that
it comes with a family reunification component and not just work permits at the
convenience of a few people," Ana Y��ez, political affairs spokeswoman for
LULAC in Austin, Texas, told El Diario La Estrella. The headline in the popular Korean-language news Web site
Donga.com read, "180,000 Illegal Korean Immigrants in the U.S. May Receive
Legal Status." Observers say the number of undocumented Koreans in the
United States could be as high as 500,000. But the article said a strenuous
"screening process" that accompanies the plan would likely make it
difficult for legalized workers to gain permanent residency cards, or green
cards, and get on track for U.S. citizenship. The Bush plan would offer a renewable three-year temporary
legal status to the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants nationwide,
and offer a chance at this guest worker status to immigrants internationally.
Participating immigrants would be enrolled in Social Security and be able to
immediately apply for a green card, but waiting periods for green cards can
stretch for longer than 10 years. A
relatively low number of green cards are granted each year, about 140,000, which are issued for employment
purposes, and a tiny proportion of those are given to non-skilled workers. The
Bush plan led the Chinese-language Sing Tao Daily -- but the story immediately
asked if the quota of green cards would be increased under the plan to
accommodate the new influx of temporary workers likely to apply for permanent residency.
As might be expected, the consensus in immigrant media was that the
proposal is politically motivated, with Latino voters in particular being the
intended target of
what is being called an election year gambit. Political analyst Carlos Ramos,
writing a commentary in La Opini�n, says, "It's certain that the
immigration initiative is a master stroke on the political chessboard of this
electoral year." Marcelo Ballve is an editor for Pacific News Service. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17519 Jan. 08: Here’s the collection of commentary from Center for American
Progress on this topic, which definitely believes it is a Trojan Horse, or
institutionalizing the Wal-Martization of America. I’ve also since learned that other border municipalities utilize matricula consulars to give Mexican
workers some access to legitimate identification. Blue Links are live. Italics are mine. - KWC IMMIGRATION The President announced his new temporary guest
worker proposal yesterday in the East Room of the White House, touting the plan
as "more compassionate and more humane."
But the President's proposal, which would allow
undocumented immigrant workers to obtain temporary legal status, falls far
short of his lofty rhetoric. The primary beneficiaries are businesses that
employ undocumented workers, whose low-wage workforce will now be legitimized. Meanwhile, workers who provide years of labor could be forced to
return to their home countries in as few as three years or face deportation
proceedings. Susan F. Martin, an immigration expert at Georgetown University
and former director of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, called the plan "as troubling an immigration proposal as I've seen
in the past 25 years." DANGER OF WORKER ABUSE: According to the President, "Participants who do not remain employed...will be required to return to their home." As a result
workers are forced "to tie their fates to employer 'sponsors' who could
ship them back home for complaining about job conditions." Specifically, there is no reason to believe that workers
who report discrimination, labor law violations or any other abuses would be
protected from termination of their employment and deportation. AFL-CIO
president John Sweeney said that as a result, "the plan deepens the
potential for abuse and exploitation of these workers." In an interview
with American Progress, former INS General Counsel and Georgetown Law Professor
Alex Aleinikoff noted the plan fails to “regularize long-term contributors to
the U.S. economy.” Unsurprisingly, "business groups, made up of some of Bush's biggest financial backers,
welcomed the plan" as a way to fill
"low-wage and dangerous jobs." Professor Martin, said that Bush's
plan effectively created "a large number of basically indentured
servants." NO PERMANANT SOLUTION: The President assured his audience that the plan requires
"temporary workers to return permanently to their home countries
after their period of work in the
United States has expired" and that he "opposes amnesty." The White House makes clear that "the program should not connect participation to a green card or
citizenship." Demetrios
Papademetriou, co-direction of the Migration Policy Institute sums up the
problem this way: "Why should they show up, pay the fees that will be
required of them, go through all the process...so, what, they can be thrown out of the country in six years."
Frank Sharry, executive director of the National
Immigration Forum, predicts that "if the offer is a temporary visa with
uncertain prospects for renewal and no path to permanent residency, you won't
have a lot of takers." NEEDED: MORE POLICY, LESS
PANDERING: There is little
evidence the Administration is genuinely committed to advancing a meaningful
immigration reform agenda. The proposal was announced yesterday without accompanying legislation, few details
and no timetable for action. In
fact, the most detailed information on the proposal may be contained in a transcript of a conference call conducted Tuesday by a senior Administration official that was
posted on the Internet by blogger Josh Marshall. The LA Times reports,
"Bush's supporters hope he will reap a substantial political dividend just by proposing it."
According to a senior Congressional aide the
early word from the White House on the proposal was "not essential for the
president that it be enacted this year." And questions abound on whether
the White House will even expend the political capital to take on conservatives
in Congress who already oppose the plan. As Raj Goyle, an expert at American Progress, told the NY Daily News, "If
Bush really cared about this policy, he would stand up to his anti-immigration
friends in Congress." Also see Bumiller: Border Politics as Bush Woos 2 Key Groups with
Proposal @ http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/08/politics/08ASSE.html EW wrote: I've just read part of Scott McClellan's press
briefing. If I understand what he was saying, the people who are being
brought out from the shadows will be allowed to stay in the US for a
time, three years it would seem, but will then be required to return
to their home countries. They will be paying into Social Security while
in the US and it would appear to be the intention that they get SS benefits
when they return home provided that there is an agreement on SS with the home
country. There is no SS agreement with Mexico, though McClellan said
informal talks have been held. If there were no agreement, or if there
were a problem in tracking the legitimized illegals after they had gone
home, whatever they had paid in would stay in. I agree that illegal immigrants would see this as a threat. It
appears to put a time limit on their stay in the US when many would have
entered the US with the intention of staying. It would require employers to
hire the legitimatised immigrants only if the job had been turned down by
Americans, and it probably would have been turned down because wages offered
were too low or because of the nature of the work. I can see why ever so
many illegal immigrants might not want to come out of the shadows. BW wrote: Ed, I don't think this is about votes at all. I feel that
there are a lot of low income Hispanics who view this as a threat, first due to
increased competition from immigrants, and second, due to the fact that there
will be a lot more police and judicial hassle. What Bush is doing is to find ways to shore up social security without
significantly restructuring it. Although I see this as another effort to
undermine wages, the US will need to increase the pool of younger workers to
support Social Security in the very near future. On Thu, 8 Jan 2004 10:21:42 -0500 "Ed Weick" writes: It's all part of a grander vision. In
the US, working for a living is no longer as important as it once was.
Who does it matters less and less. Crappy jobs can be done by cheap
insourced labour, while expensive jobs can be outsourced overseas. How
are ordinary Americans going to make a living? Why, by being part of
Bush's "ownership society"! They will own the capital and let others
do the work. |
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