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The immigration reform debate just got hotter. Yesterday there were
multiple arrests of workers and employers in a national company that makes
transportation pallets. They face real jail time. This must have sent a real
chill throughout the business community, as they face the consequences of the
GOP intersection of isolationalism with law and order purists. This is a long overdue national debate with complex issues. If we allow
this to be only a question of law enforcement and not about economics of
opportunity and the politics of poverty, then we are only going to see more
isolationalist tribal tendencies promoted. By the way, Arizona’s governor just vetoed a bill that would have made
criminals of undocumented workers and employers who hire them, but Georgia’s
governor signed one into law, though it will face legal challenges. The geopolitics
of immigration may alter the midterm elections significantly, just as Dixiecrat
politics of the Civil Rights era changed the two political parties back then. And, just as corporations have learned to protect their brand image
from bad publicity, the GOP Brand USA is paying the price for poor policy
choices – as well as poor implementation, and that may accelerate further. In
today’s email and text messaging world, grassroots organizing is cheap, fast
and effective. Stay Tuned. Kwc Mexican consumers
plan 'great American boycott' Millions of people throughout Mexico are threatening to turn their
backs on US products and businesses on May 1 as part of a protest that is being
dubbed "The great American boycott". Teachers, telephone operators, housewives and farmers are
just a handful of the groups that have decided on the boycott as a way to
support Latin Americans living in the US who have vowed not to turn up to work
on May 1. The protest in the US,
called "A day without immigrants", aims to put pressure on Congress
to legalise the status of millions of undocumented migrant workers who have
become a vital source of cheap labour for the US economy. Senators have been
debating several proposals to reform immigration laws but have failed to reach a
compromise. The delay has led to
increasing frustration among the Hispanic community in the US, and now it is
starting to spread across the border. In Mexico, by far the
biggest source of cheap labour for companies in the US, the boycott is
threatening to turn into a nationwide movement. Fernando Amezcua, a
high-ranking official at the Mexican Union of Electricians (SME), says his
organisation will raise the issue at its general assembly on Monday with the
idea of urging its 60,000 members to participate in the protest. He also says the SME is calling on a
wider coalition to support the boycott, which he claims brings together about
10m members of unions, social groups and non-governmental organisations. On the streets of
Mexico City, the word is spreading. Cristina Robles, an elegantly dressed
business woman who has just done the family shopping at Superama, a supermarket chain owned by US
retailer Wal-Mart, says she will support the ban. "I am not going to buy
anything American," she says. "I know it is not easy because there
are a lot of illegal immigrants but the US has to treat them the same as any
other worker." Joaquín García Nava,
owner of a corner cafe in La Condesa, a swanky neighbourhood in central Mexico
City, agrees. "For me, the protest serves a double purpose: I get to
support the immigrants and I also get to express my slightly anti-Yankee
sentiments." In other regions, too,
what started out as a grass-roots initiative
spread through e-mails is catching on. In Jerez, a town of about
60,000 in Zacatecas, a largely agricultural state to the north of the capital,
residents have staged a number of demonstrations in parallel with those that
have taken place in recent weeks throughout the US. Antonio Pereyra, a
local government official, says people feel strongly about the need for
immigration reform in large part because of their increasing dependence on
remittances - money sent back home by immigrants in the US. "Every single
family has at least one member working in the US and without the money they
send back home every month many would not be able to survive," he says. According to Mexico's
central bank, the estimated 7m Mexicans living and working illegally in the US
send their families back home more than $20bn (€16.28bn) a year, making
remittances Mexico's second-biggest source of foreign currency after oil. Larry Rubin, who heads
the American Chamber of Commerce in Mexico City, a body that represents US
companies in Mexico, is sympathetic to those who are pushing for far-reaching
and progressive immigration reform. But he argues that boycotting US products
and businesses in Mexico is misguided. "It is totally the wrong approach
because the US business community has been one of the most adamant supporters
and lobbyists of a comprehensive immigration bill." http://news.ft.com/cms/s/f0857bb2-d009-11da-80fb-0000779e2340.html ALSO SEE Ronald Brownstein Blame builds more barriers in Immigration debate: does chutzpah translate in Spanish? [A]s
House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) prepared
his border security bill last year, the Justice
Department asked him to include a provision making unlawful presence
in the U.S. a crime. Sensenbrenner,
on the House floor in December, said the idea
came from the Bush administration, and an administration official last week,
speaking anonymously, confirmed his account. Everyone, including the White House and Senate leaders in both parties,
shares culpability for the impasse on immigration. But rewriting the past only
makes it tougher to move forward. With this misleading statement, Hastert and
Frist seem worried less about resolving the stalemate than trying to ensure
that Republicans won't be blamed if it persists. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-outlook16apr16,1,6553805.column?coll=la-headlines-politics Economist JK Galbraith Morning in America again: the GOP has awakened an
unfriendly giant in their stance on immigration http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0413-28.htm Eduardo Porter Cost of Illegal Immigration may be less than meets the eye http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/business/yourmoney/16view.html Jonathon Singer Criminalization of Illegal Immigration came directly from the White House
http://mydd.com/story/2006/4/17/25718/4311 Matt Yglesias “Don’t be
our guests” Immigration poses some genuine dilemmas
for liberals, but one issue should be a no-brainer: guest-worker programs make
for bad policy and bad politics. Immigration is that rarest thing in politics - a
controversial issue that’s not just “controversial” but actually difficult.
People who think immigrants are “stealing their jobs” are mistaken, but
politicians who say immigrants do jobs “Americans won't do” are lying. There's
no job Americans won't do – it’s
just a question of how much Americans want to be paid to do the job. Research
indicates that large flows of low-skilled immigrants from Mexico have a small,
but quite real, downward pull on the wages of poorly educated people including,
of course, many people who’ve already immigrated from Mexico and most of their
descendants. On the other hand, immigration has a mildly positive effect on the
rest of us, and a hugely positive
effect on the immigrants themselves, who tend to be much poorer than even the
poorest Americans. http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=11378 |
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