Border Crossings Start in the Boardroom

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/02/08/border-crossings-start-in-the-boardroom/

by Tula Connell, Feb 8, 2008

This is a cross post from the Firedoglake blog.

Before the immigration debate builds steam later this election year, I really wish candidates at all levels and in every party could spend a few hours in a maquila talking with workers.

A few years ago, I spent two weeks in Guatemala with STITCH, a U.S.-based labor group that supports women workers in Latin America. Once or twice a year, a small group of women travel throughout Guatemala with STITCH, which arranges visits to talk with workers at maquilas and banana plantations and hosts discussions with labor leaders and policy experts. After a few days there, the question becomes not how many immigrants cross into the United States but, why don’t more leave?


Despite working long hours, workers throughout Latin America are paid so little they must live in Asentamientos, like this one in Prosperando, Mexico.


While I was there, I met Gloria. Gloria worked 11 hours a day, six days a week, for the privilege of living in a one-room corrugated metal shack, with one exposed light bulb and no running water—except during the four-month rainy season, when the house regularly is flooded. She worked at the Korean-owned textile plant just down the dirt road, but had no one to take care of her four children until she returned home at 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. Public schools in Guatemala close in the early afternoon each day.

Gloria was allowed only one bathroom break during the entire workday—and frequently her paycheck did not include overtime or bonus pay for exceeding work quotas. She made the equivalent of $78 every two weeks and scrimped on water, which she purchased by the barrel at roughly $1.50 per day—more than one-fourth of her wages.

Alioto, the shanty town where Gloria built her home with her own hands, sprawls for miles, thousands of tin and wood shacks tumbling over each other and stretching up the side of the hill across dusty, treeless land. Tens of thousands of people migrated there from rural areas in search of work at maquila plants. Now, even these modern sweatshops are closing throughout Latin America, in search for ever-cheaper labor and higher profit in places like China and Bangladesh.

Earlier this week, hundreds of thousands of Mexican farmers packed the streets of Mexico City to protest what few in the U.S. public are even aware of: On Jan. 1, Mexico repealed all tariffs on corn imported from north of the border as part of a 14-year phaseout under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). When these farmers can no longer compete, they will have no choice but to leave their farms for the city, for the maquilas—and for a better opportunity across the border. As CNN reported:

FULL story at link.

[blondeatlast]

1. In my dreams, the new Democratic president would set up talks with Mexico

and Central America regarding trade and human rights--as I say--"in my dreams." I know better.

Stories like this reinforce my belief that there ought to be a "economic refugee" status. Migrants were here before NAFTA, of course, but they were barely noticed and frequently returned to their families (I've grown up in the Southwest and remain there).

Great article that SHOULD be requitred reading for anyone with an opinion on migrants, but again, I know better.

k&r

[ulysses]

2. thank you.

Essentially, this underpins my whole train of thought on immigration.

[ulysses]

3. a little

:kick:

[Strelnikov_]

4. "workers aren’t . . slaves because they’re “free”—free to work for poverty wages or emigrate"

So, guess what? The problem isn’t about immigrants who cross borders. The problem starts with trade deals negotiated without consideration of the impact on workers. The problem germinates in the offices of CEOs whose profit-maximization creates a form of 21st century slavery in which workers aren’t technically slaves because they’re “free”—free to work for poverty wages or emigrate.

Gee, ain't globalization grand! Ain't NAFTA grand!

[ulysses]

5. yup.

But threads about NAFTA have always sunk like stones on DU for a variety of reasons, including some workers blaming the wrong people. I want to keep this thread kicked.

[havocmom]

6. Kicking to the Greatest Page

If we want peace, we work for economic justice. Global Economy HAS to mean more than ultra rich getting richer on the backs of all the world's poor.

[1776Forever]

7. OK People - First they did it to the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew....

http://www.telisphere.com/~cearley/sean/camps/first.html

First They Came for the Jews

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Pastor Martin Niemöller

This is exactly what I was trying to get across in my post about what the big boys are trying to do with NAFTA/NASCO! They want us all to be like this! For God's sake - I am FOR us all having the best life and future we can have, all of the human beings on this earth! As long as THEY have the power and keep the pion's down we will never get to that point and the very things that the immigrants cross our boarders for will be gone and we will all be slaves!

I have been looking here in Florida for 1 and 1/2 years now for a job that will pay me more the $8.00 an hour!!!!! Is it already here?????

:hide:

[Pastiche423]

8. K&R

[truedelphi]

9. With one billion people living south of the border

Their continued migration north of the border might seem like an answer, but is it?

If everyone comes, no one benefits. The middle class continues its downward spiral.

But hey, the rich of both Parties will have even cheaper gardeners, au pairs, and construction workers.

[ulysses]

10. the answer

is viable, sustainable, independent economic growth throughout Central and South America. The starts when we stop fucking with them and start helping them. NAFTA, in reality, is just the continuation of the more obvious ways of fucking with them that we used to use.

[truedelphi]

11. I friggin' hate NAFTA

CAFTA and other one World Order policies, including the G 8 summits.

[alfredo]

12. It's a win win situation for the rich. Americans get cheap labor, Mexico

gets rid of their poor and hungry.