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2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumBernie Sanders Stands for: A Fair and Humane Immigration Policy
Despite the central role immigrants play in our economy and in our daily lives, undocumented workers are reviled by some for political gain and shunted into the shadows. It is time for this disgraceful situation to end. This country faces enormous problems and they will not be solved unless we are united. It is time to end the politics of division in this country.
We cannot and we should not be talking about sweeping up millions of men, women, and children many of whom have been here for years and throwing them out of the country. Thats wrong and that type of discussion has got to end.
In 2008, Sen. Sanders traveled to the tomato fields of southern Florida and met with migrant workers who were paid paltry wages for back-breaking work. After his visit, Sanders invited leaders of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to come to Washington and testify at a Senate committee hearing where they confronted growers on abusive labor practices. The result in Immokalee, Florida was better working conditions and increased pay.
But how many more Immokalees are out there? How many fields or factories are there where people often without legal status are used up and thrown away? We cannot continue to run an economy where millions are made so vulnerable because of their undocumented status.
Many in the business community have argued for a massive expansion of temporary guest worker programs as the answer to the immigration issue. That is not the answer. As the Southern Poverty Law Center has documented, guest workers are routinely cheated out of wages, held virtually captive by employers who seize their documents, forced to live in inhumane conditions and denied medical treatment for on-the-job injuries.
In addition, we as a nation have got to realize the importance of dealing not just with the issue of immigration but with the very real refugee crisis we face. It was appalling last year when so many voices were insisting that the large numbers of desperate, unaccompanied children who crossed our borders be turned away or simply shipped back to their country of origin like a package marked return to sender.
Unfortunately, American policy in Latin America has too often made difficult economic and political problems even worse. For example, supporters of NAFTA told us that this unfettered free trade agreement would increase the standard of living in Mexico and significantly reduce the flow of undocumented immigrants into this country as a result. The opposite was true.
Since the implementation of NAFTA, the number of Mexicans living below the poverty line has increased by over 14 million people. Almost 2 million small farmers have been displaced. And in the twenty years since NAFTA growth in per capita GDP has been only half of that experienced by other Latin American nations. Not surprisingly we have seen a 185 percent increase in the number of undocumented immigrants from Mexico from 1992 to 2011.
AS PRESIDENT, SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS WILL:
We cannot and we should not be talking about sweeping up millions of men, women, and children many of whom have been here for years and throwing them out of the country. Thats wrong and that type of discussion has got to end.
In 2008, Sen. Sanders traveled to the tomato fields of southern Florida and met with migrant workers who were paid paltry wages for back-breaking work. After his visit, Sanders invited leaders of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to come to Washington and testify at a Senate committee hearing where they confronted growers on abusive labor practices. The result in Immokalee, Florida was better working conditions and increased pay.
But how many more Immokalees are out there? How many fields or factories are there where people often without legal status are used up and thrown away? We cannot continue to run an economy where millions are made so vulnerable because of their undocumented status.
Many in the business community have argued for a massive expansion of temporary guest worker programs as the answer to the immigration issue. That is not the answer. As the Southern Poverty Law Center has documented, guest workers are routinely cheated out of wages, held virtually captive by employers who seize their documents, forced to live in inhumane conditions and denied medical treatment for on-the-job injuries.
In addition, we as a nation have got to realize the importance of dealing not just with the issue of immigration but with the very real refugee crisis we face. It was appalling last year when so many voices were insisting that the large numbers of desperate, unaccompanied children who crossed our borders be turned away or simply shipped back to their country of origin like a package marked return to sender.
Unfortunately, American policy in Latin America has too often made difficult economic and political problems even worse. For example, supporters of NAFTA told us that this unfettered free trade agreement would increase the standard of living in Mexico and significantly reduce the flow of undocumented immigrants into this country as a result. The opposite was true.
Since the implementation of NAFTA, the number of Mexicans living below the poverty line has increased by over 14 million people. Almost 2 million small farmers have been displaced. And in the twenty years since NAFTA growth in per capita GDP has been only half of that experienced by other Latin American nations. Not surprisingly we have seen a 185 percent increase in the number of undocumented immigrants from Mexico from 1992 to 2011.
AS PRESIDENT, SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS WILL:
1. Sign comprehensive immigration reform into law to bring over 11 million undocumented workers out of the shadows. We cannot continue to run an economy where millions are made so vulnerable because of their undocumented status.
2. Oppose tying immigration reform to the building of a border fence. Undocumented workers come to the United States to escape economic hardship and political persecution. Tying reform to unrealistic and unwise border patrol proposals renders the promise illusory for millions seeking legal status.
3. Sign the DREAM Act into law to offer the opportunity of permanent residency and eventual citizenship to young people who were brought to the United States as children. We must recognize the young men and women who comprise the DREAMers for who they are American kids who deserve the right to legally be in the country they know as home.
4. Expand President Obamas Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to include the parents of citizens, parents of legal permanent residents, and the parents of DREAMERs. We need to pursue policies that unites families and does not tear them apart.
5. Authorize and substantially increase funding for the Legal Services Corporation to provide legal representation to guest workers who have been abused by their employers. Further, employers should be required to reimburse guest workers for housing, transportation expenses and workers compensation.
6. Substantially increase prevailing wages that employers are required to pay temporary guest workers. If there is a true labor shortage, employers should be offering higher, not lower wages.
7. Rewrite our trade policies to end the race to the bottom and lift the living standards of workers in this country and our trading partners. Not only have free trade agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA hurt U.S. workers, they have been a disaster for small farmers in Mexico and Central America.
2. Oppose tying immigration reform to the building of a border fence. Undocumented workers come to the United States to escape economic hardship and political persecution. Tying reform to unrealistic and unwise border patrol proposals renders the promise illusory for millions seeking legal status.
3. Sign the DREAM Act into law to offer the opportunity of permanent residency and eventual citizenship to young people who were brought to the United States as children. We must recognize the young men and women who comprise the DREAMers for who they are American kids who deserve the right to legally be in the country they know as home.
4. Expand President Obamas Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to include the parents of citizens, parents of legal permanent residents, and the parents of DREAMERs. We need to pursue policies that unites families and does not tear them apart.
5. Authorize and substantially increase funding for the Legal Services Corporation to provide legal representation to guest workers who have been abused by their employers. Further, employers should be required to reimburse guest workers for housing, transportation expenses and workers compensation.
6. Substantially increase prevailing wages that employers are required to pay temporary guest workers. If there is a true labor shortage, employers should be offering higher, not lower wages.
7. Rewrite our trade policies to end the race to the bottom and lift the living standards of workers in this country and our trading partners. Not only have free trade agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA hurt U.S. workers, they have been a disaster for small farmers in Mexico and Central America.
https://berniesanders.com/issues/fair-and-humane-immigration-policy/
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Bernie Sanders Stands for: A Fair and Humane Immigration Policy (Original Post)
Cheese Sandwich
Aug 2015
OP
Cheese Sandwich
(9,086 posts)1. Effects of NAFTA assessed 20 years later
Displaced People: NAFTAs Most Important Product
Since the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993, the U.S. Congress has debated and passed several new bilateral trade agreements with Peru, Jordan and Chile, as well as the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Congressional debates over immigration policy have proceeded as though those trade agreements bore no relationship to the waves of displaced people migrating to the United States, looking for work. As Rufino Domínguez, former coordinator of the Indigenous Front of Binational Organizations (FIOB), points out, U.S. trade and immigration policy are part of a single system, and the negotiation of NAFTA was an important step in developing this system. There are no jobs in Mexico, he says, and NAFTA drove the price of corn so low that its not economically possible to plant a crop anymore. We come to the United States to work because theres no alternative.
Economic crises provoked by NAFTA and other economic reforms are uprooting and displacing Mexicans in the countrys most remote areas. While California farmworkers 20 and 30 years ago came from parts of Mexico with larger Spanish-speaking populations, migrants today increasingly come from indigenous communities in states like Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Guerrero. Domínguez says there are about 500,000 indigenous people from Oaxaca living in the United States, 300,000 in California alone.
Meanwhile, a rising tide of anti-immigrant sentiment has demonized those migrants, leading to measures to deny them jobs, rights, or any pretense of equality with people living in the communities around them. Solutions to these dilemmasfrom adopting rational and humane immigration policies to reducing the fear and hostility toward migrantsmust begin with an examination of the way U.S. policies have both produced migration and criminalized migrants.
http://nacla.org/news/displaced-people-nafta%E2%80%99s-most-important-product
Economic crises provoked by NAFTA and other economic reforms are uprooting and displacing Mexicans in the countrys most remote areas. While California farmworkers 20 and 30 years ago came from parts of Mexico with larger Spanish-speaking populations, migrants today increasingly come from indigenous communities in states like Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Guerrero. Domínguez says there are about 500,000 indigenous people from Oaxaca living in the United States, 300,000 in California alone.
Meanwhile, a rising tide of anti-immigrant sentiment has demonized those migrants, leading to measures to deny them jobs, rights, or any pretense of equality with people living in the communities around them. Solutions to these dilemmasfrom adopting rational and humane immigration policies to reducing the fear and hostility toward migrantsmust begin with an examination of the way U.S. policies have both produced migration and criminalized migrants.
Lori Wallach on U.S. Job Losses, Record Income Inequality, Mass Displacement in Mexico
Cheese Sandwich
(9,086 posts)2. The link between trade policy and mass displacement...
JEB
(4,748 posts)3. K&R&bookmark
Thanks for posting.
Skwmom
(12,685 posts)4. Thanks to the above posters for all the great information. n/t
LWolf
(46,179 posts)5. Informative and positive.
Thanks, Cheese Sandwich.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)6. undo CAFTA, stop intervening to make sure the cartels win and democracy loses ...