African immigrant advocates gather

[AlphaCentauri]

Source: C Enquirer

About 200 people from 10 African nations gathered at Withrow International High School on Saturday to talk about how to work together so their voices are heard by their employers and elected officials.

Sponsored by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1099, the Greater Cincinnati African Unity Meeting featured New York-based Senegalese consul general Cheikh Niangl; state representatives Tyrone Yates and Steve Driehaus, who spent time in Senegal with the Peace Corps and who is running for Congress; plus information about Local 1099 and registering to vote.

"No one has even really reached out to (African immigrants) to let them know what's available to them," said UFCW organizer Brigid Kelly. Local 1099 represents nearly 20,000 workers in Southwestern Ohio, Northern Kentucky and Southeastern Kentucky.

Organizers of the event said that as many as 50,000 African immigrants live in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, although the U.S. Census Bureau's 2006 American Community Survey counts only 5,655 African-born residents in the metropolitan area.



Read more: http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080504/NEWS01/805040359/1056/COL02

[Lasher]

1. It's good to see this covered in the press.

Africa is woefully underrepresented in the immigrants that come to the US each year.

[AlphaCentauri]

3. That would be a good question for Ted Hayes n/t

[jody]

2. Rather than immigration, we should help countries develop their industries but wait, that would mean

outsourcing jobs and that's a no-no.

Looks like a dilemma to me. :shrug:

[otherlander]

4. Industrialization isn't the only way to reduce poverty.

[jody]

5. I'll listen. For example, what do you propose for Mexico. n/t

[otherlander]

6. For one thing...

the government could guarantee indigenous people's right to their land (and not the crap land, the land that can actually be farmed), so that they wouldn't have to farm other people's land or be forced into the city to take low-paid factory jobs (although I guess a lot of those have moved out of Mexico to China).
It seems like most of the outsourcing sends jobs to countries with high poverty rates and rightwing governments. (And yes, I'm calling China's government right-wing. The Communist slogans mean nothing.) There hardly seem to be any jobs being outsourced to countries with leftwing governments that are reducing poverty, like Bolivia / Ecuador, etc.

[jody]

7. OK, you propose true land reform. Do you have an example in modern times where that has worked? n/t

[Hannah Bell]

8. japan.

which is, ahem, one of the few places real land reform has ever been done - that is, to destroy the power of the old land-owning class.

[jody]

9. How is Japan with its industrial growth after WWII and almost mystical belief in farming heavily

subsidized by government, a modern example of land reform?

[Hannah Bell]

11. I don't understand your question. Post ww2 is generally considered

modern, and how do you think those farmers came to own their land?

"In prewar Japan, two-thirds of the agricultural land was rented, not owned, by the farmers who farmed it. The farmers, who made up over 50 percent of the labor force, often rented the land from landlords who lived in distant cities and paid them as much as half of the crops they grew. Since the average "farm" was little more than an acre, many farm families lived in poverty. The land reform took land away from big landlords and redistributed it to the farmers, so that farm families could own the land they worked."

The land reform was one of the bases for Japan's post-war development. It's considered the most successful land reform in history. It was instituted by the US gov't under the Occupation.

S. Korea's land reform was pretty successful, too.

The results in both cases: broke the power of the land-owning class, brought former tenant workers out of poverty, established a rural middle class & equalized rural incomes, increase in food production, & generally established the more equal living conditions that have persisted to the present day.

[Hannah Bell]

12. The stuff about "land reform doesn't work" is bull. The US

knows it works, because the US successfully implemented the two most successful land reforms in modern history.

[jody]

13. OP was about African immigration to the US and the only jobs available for them would be industry.

In #2 I suggested developing industry in their own nations.

In #4, otherlander said "Industrialization isn't the only way to reduce poverty."

I see nothing in land reform that could produce in any African nation the type of industrial growth that occurred in Japan and South Korea since 1945.

Poverty in those two countries was not eliminated by land reform but rather by industrialization.

[Hannah Bell]

15. So you think it's just an accident that European industrialization occurred

first in those countries who broke the power of the feudal landowners?

And historically, fastest in the US, where there was free land & such an entrenched power never developed to the extent it had in Europe?

And in the US, slowest in the South, where land tenure was closest to the old European feudal model?

The capital & energy for independent modernization comes from democratic reform, & that includes the breaking of older power structures, including land tenure.

Land reform is prerequisite to modernization.

[jody]

16. Unusual point of view. Have a wonderful evening and goodbye. n/t

[Hannah Bell]

17. well, that's one way to deal with lack of a rebuttal.

you asked for examples of successful land reforms: i gave you two, both of which led into successful industrialization.

Guess you'd rather focus on zimbabwe or something, cause it suits your preconceptions.

[otherlander]

10. How modern?

It worked for a little while in Guatemala... then Eisenhower overthrew the government.

[jody]

14. The OP was about people wanting to leave Africa for jobs in industry. That suggests

the path to eliminating poverty is through industry.

I don't see how giving each family a few hectares of land to be farmed with practices and equipment that are labor intensive could provide the food supply necessary for a nation to be food-independent and have the labor supply need for a growing industry.

That might eliminate hunger but it would hardly eliminate poverty.

[otherlander]

18. Do they leave because the work in other countries

is a better kind of work, or because work in general pays better? Some might even leave not because of the work situation, but to get away from violence or unstable political situations.

I guess what I was thinking of when I posted the land reform thing was this one tribe of people (can't remember the name at the moment) that was forced off of their land, and as a result, the society broke down and the children had to leave home when they were very young and formed traveling gangs of really young kids. Maybe someone else here will know the name of the group I'm talking about.

[Hannah Bell]

19. why would it mean outsourcing jobs? is there some requirement

that africa should produce goods for the US market, rather than for their home market?

Historically, successful industrialization first focused on building up home markets under protection while developing nascent industries.

Putting in a foreign plant doesn't develop africa, it just exploits its cheap labor. african development = african capitalists = african agriculture.

Not a dumping ground for subsidized grain from cargill & adm.