Underpinning euqal education opportunity & ELL education: the immigration debate

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Immigrants Come Here Because Globalization  Took Their Jobs Back There 
By _Jim Hightower_ (http://www.alternet.org/authors/1289/) ,  
Posted _February  7, 2008_ 
(http://www.alternet.org/ts/archives/?date[F]=02&date[Y]=2008&date[d]=07&act=Go/) . 
The wailing in our country about the "invasion of  immigrants" has been long 
and loud. As one complainant put it, "Few of their  children in the country 
learn English ...The signs in our streets have  inscriptions in both languages 
... Unless the stream of the importation could be  turned they will soon so 
outnumber us that all the advantages we have will not  be able to preserve our 
language, and even our government will become  precarious." 
That's not some diatribe from one of today's Republican presidential  
candidates. It's the anxious cry of none other than Ben Franklin, deploring the  wave 
of Germans pouring into the colony of Pennsylvania in the 1750s. Thus,  
anti-immigrant eruptions are older than the United States itself, and they've  
flared up periodically throughout our history, targeting the Irish, French,  
Italians, Chinese, and others. Even George W's current project to wall off our  
border is not a new bit of nuttiness -- around the time of the nation's  
founding, John Jay, who later became the first chief justice of the Supreme  Court, 
proposed "a wall of brass around the country for the exclusion of  Catholics." 
Luckily for the development and enrichment of our country, these past public  
frenzies ultimately failed to exclude the teeming masses, and those uproars 
now  appear through the telescope of time to have been some combination of 
ridiculous  panic, political demagoguery and xenophobic ugliness. Still, this does 
not mean  that the public's anxiety and simmering anger about today's massive 
influx of  Mexicans coming illegally across our 2,000-mile shared border is 
illegitimate.  However, most of what the politicians and pundits are saying 
about it is  illegitimate. 
Wedge issue 
There is way too much xenophobia, racism and demagoguery at play around  
illegal immigration, but such crude sentiments are not what is bringing this  
problem to a national political boil. Polls show -- as do conversations at any  
Chat & Chew Cafe in the country -- that there is a deep and genuine alarm  about 
the issue among the nonxenophobic, nonracist American majority. In  
particular, workaday families are fearful about what an endless flow of low-wage  
workers portends for their economic future, and they're not getting good answers  
from Republicans, Democrats, corporate leaders or the media. 
For the GOP candidates in this year's presidential run, the contest is coming 
 down to who can be the most nativist knucklehead. They accuse each other of 
not  wanting to punish immigrant children enough, of not being absolutists on  
"English-only" proposals, of having coddled illegal entrants in the past with 
 amnesty proposals and sanctuaries, and of not being hawkish enough on 
sealing  off and militarizing the border. 
The leader of the anti-immigrant Republican pack is Tom Tancredo, a Colorado  
congress-critter who based his ill-fated presidential campaign on immigrant  
bashing. This goober is so nasty he'd scare small children. His website  
screeched that immigrants are "pushing drugs, raping kids, destroying lives,"  and 
his campaign slogan is a sledgehammer demand: "Deport those who don't  belong. 
Make sure they never come back." As for illegal immigrants, Tom thinks  that 
the term "illegal" is too soft, preferring to demonize immigrants as  
"aliens." Tancredo doesn't merely rant, he foams at the mouth, maniacally  warning 
about waves of Mexican terrorists who are "coming to kill me and you and  your 
children." Accused of trying to turn America into a gated community, he  
exulted, "You bet!" 
At least he's taken a position, even if it's un-American and loopy.  
Democratic leaders, on the other hand, have mostly tried to do a squishy  shuffle, 
wanting to beef up law enforcement against illegal immigrants while  also 
mouthing soothing words about the good work ethic of our friends south of  the border 
and offering a bureaucratic rigmarole to allow some of the younger  ones to 
gain permanent residency in our country. Worse, such corporate Democrats  as 
Rep. Rahm Emanuel urge the party's candidates either to adopt the  Republican's 
punitive message or simply to try ducking the issue. 
Which brings us to the wall, both figuratively and literally. The fact that  
we are resorting to the construction of an enormous fence between two friendly 
 nations admits to an abject failure by policy makers, who are so bereft of  
ideas, honesty, courage and morality that all they can do is to try walling 
off  the problem. 
We've had experience here in Texas with the futility of tall border fences.  
Molly Ivins reported a beer-induced incident that took place in 1983. Walling  
off Mexico had been proposed back then by the Reaganauts, and a test fence 
had  been built way down in the Big Bend outpost of Terlingua. This little town 
also  happened to be the site of a renowned chili cookoff that Molly helped 
judge, and  it attracted a big crowd of impish, beer-drinking chiliheads. 
There stood the barrier, 17 feet tall and topped with barbwire. It didn't  
take many beers before the first-ever "Terlingua Memorial Over, Under, or  
Through the Mexican Fence Climbing Contest" was cooked up. Winning time: 30  
seconds. 
Yet here come the border sealers again. Bush & Co. (including Democrats  who 
have allowed the funding) is putting up an initial $1.2 billion to start  
building this version of the wall, which is projected to cost up to $60 billion  
over the next 25 years to build and maintain. It's a monster wall -- two or  
three 40-foot-high rows of reinforced fencing that take a swath of land 150 feet 
 wide and stretch for 700 miles. 
The Mexican government and people are insulted and appalled by the wall;  
ranchers, mayors and families living on either side of the border hate it;  
environmentalists are aghast at its destructive impact on the ecology of the  area. 
Still, it's being built. Indeed, a 2005 federal act contained a  
little-noticed section authorizing Bush's Homeland Security czar to suspend any  laws that 
stand in the way of building the wall. Current czar Michael Chertoff  has 
already used this unprecedented authority to waive 19 statutes, including  the 
Endangered Species, Clean Water and National Historic Preservation Acts. 
All this for something that will not work. As Gov. Janet Napolitano of  
Arizona put it, "Show me a 50-foot wall and I'll show you a 51-foot ladder."  
People have literally been dying to cross into the United States, and it's not  
possible to build a wall tall enough to stop them. They will keep coming. 
Why? 
The question that policy makers have not faced honestly is this one: Why do  
these immigrants come? The answer is not that they are pulled by our jobs and  
government benefits, but that they are pushed by the abject poverty that 
their  families face in Mexico. That might seem like a mere semantic difference, 
but  it's huge if you're trying to develop a policy to stop the human flood 
across  our border. 
Although you never hear it mentioned in debates on the issue, you might start 
 with this reality: Most Mexican people really would prefer to live in their 
own  country. Can we all say, duh? Pedro Martin, who has seen most of the 
young men  and women in his small village depart for El Norte, put it this way: 
"Up  north, even though they pay more, you're not necessarily living as well. 
You  feel out of place. Here you can walk around the whole town, and it's  
comfortable. Life is easier." 
Their family, language, culture, identity and happiness is Mexican -- yet  
sheer economic survival requires so many of them to abandon the place they  
love. 
Again, why? Because in the last 15 years, Mexico's longstanding system of  
sustaining its huge population of poor citizens (including small self-sufficient 
 farms, jobs in state-owned industries and subsidies for such essentials as  
tortillas) has been scuttled at the insistence of U.S. banks, corporations,  
government officials and "free market" ideologues. In the name of "modernizing" 
 the Mexican economy, such giants as Citigroup, Wal-Mart, Tyson Foods and GE 
--  in cahoots with the plutocrats and oligarchs of Mexico -- have laid waste 
to  that country's grass-roots economy, destroying the already-meager 
livelihoods of  millions. 
The 1994 imposition of NAFTA was particularly devastating. Just as Bill  
Clinton and the corporate elites did here, Mexico's ruling elites touted NAFTA  as 
a magic elixir that would generate growth, create jobs, raise wages and  
eliminate the surge of Mexican migrants into the United States. They were  
horribly wrong: 
    *   Economic growth in Mexico has been anemic since '94, and the  
benefits of any growth have gone overwhelmingly to the wealthiest families.  
    *   Since NAFTA, Mexico has created less than a third of the millions  of 
decent jobs it needs.  
    *   Average factory wages in Mexico have dropped by more than 5 percent  
under NAFTA.  
    *   Unemployment has jumped, and unskilled workers are paid only $5 a  
day.  
    *   U.S. agribusiness corporations have more than doubled their  shipment 
of subsidized crops into Mexico, busting the price that indigenous  farmers 
got for their production and displacing some 2 million peasant farmers  from 
their land.  
    *   Huge agribusiness operations, many owned by U.S. investors, now  
control Mexican agricultural production and pay farmworkers under $2 an hour.  
    *   Since NAFTA passed, there has been a flood of business bankruptcies  
and takeovers in Mexico as predatory U.S. chains have moved in. U.S.  
corporations now control 40 percent of the country's formal jobs, with  Wal-Mart 
reigning as the No. 1 employer.  
    *   Nineteen million more Mexicans live in poverty today than when  NAFTA 
was passed.
So, here's the deal: Thanks to Mexico's newly corporatized economy, wage  
earners there get poverty pay of $5 a day (about $1,600 a year), while a few  
hundred miles north, they might draw that much in an hour. What would you  do? 
The wrong debate 
In our national imbroglio over Mexican immigration (yes, some illegal  
migrants come from elsewhere, but more than three-fourths are from Mexico), our  
"leaders" have set us up to look down at impoverished working people forced to  
leave their homeland and risk death in order to help their families escape  
poverty. 
Instead of coming down on them, why not start looking up -- up at the  
executive suites on both sides of the border. Up is where the power is. The  moneyed 
elites in those suites are the profiteering few who have rigged all of  our 
trade and labor policies to knock down workers, farmers and small  businesses, 
not merely in Mexico but in our country as well. 
In the United States, the middle class feels imperiled because ... well,  
because it is imperiled. Politicians, economists and the richly paid pundits  
keep telling us that the American economy is robust and that people's financial  
pessimism and anxieties are irrational. At the kitchen table level, however,  
folks know the difference between chicken salad and chicken manure. Yes, these 
 are boom times for the luxury class, but the middle class is imploding. In a 
 recent letter to the editor, a working stiff in California put it this way: 

"We've replaced steaks with corn flakes; we can't afford to get  sick; our 
kids can't afford health insurance; we hope that our 10-year-old van  keeps 
running because we can't afford a new one; our kids can't buy a home  because 
housing prices are exorbitant; our purchasing power continually  regresses; and 
worst of all, the poverty and near-poverty classes are  growing."
It's this economic fragility that anti-immigrant forces play on. But even if  
there were no illegal workers in our country -- none -- the fragility would  
remain, for poor Mexican laborers are not the ones who: 
    *   Downsized and offshored our middle-class jobs.  
    *   Perverted our bankruptcy laws to let corporations abrogate their 
union  contracts.  
    *   Stopped enforcement of America's wage and hour laws.  
    *   Perverted the National Labor Relations Board into an anti-worker tool 
for  corporations.  
    *   Illegally reclassified millions of employees as "independent 
contractors,"  leaving them with no benefits or labor rights.  
    *   Subverted the right of workers to organize.  
    *   Turned a blind eye to the re-emergence in America of sweatshops and 
child  labor in everything from the clothing industry to Wal-Mart.  
    *   Made good healthcare a luxury item.  
    *   Let rich campaign donors take over both political parties.  
    *   Passed by hook and crook a continuing series of global-trade scams to 
 enrich the few and knock down the many.
Powerless immigrants didn't do these things to us. The richest,  
most-powerful, best-connected corporate interests did them. Judy Ancel, director  of the 
Institute for Labor Studies at the University of Missouri, offers this  example 
of Iowa Beef Processors (IBP), the largest meatpacker in the United  States, 
now owned by the multibillion-dollar conglomerate Tyson Foods: 
Until the late 1970s, meatpacking was a high-wage industry, with highly  
skilled workers in charge. Factories were in union cities, union contracts  
provided good wages and benefits, and unions set professional standards for  
everything from worker training to safety conditions. Then IBP's executives  
transformed this beneficial model into today's profiteering system. The  factories 
moved to nonunion cities and rural areas, and lower-skilled workers  were hired 
to do repetitive cuts on speeded-up assembly lines. With Reagan as  president, 
meat-industry lobbyists were able to emasculate labor laws, and  unions lost 
their influence over the workplace, which became much less rewarding  and more 
dangerous. IBP began intensive recruiting of Mexican workers (legal or  not) 
to do what had become very nasty work. In only 20 years, meatpacking wages  
dropped by roughly half, the union was ousted, and the rate of workplace injury  
became one of the highest of any industry (more than a fourth of meatpacking  
workers now suffer "accidents"). 
The fix 
Immigration reform cannot be separated from labor and trade reform. We can't  
fix the former without dealing with the other two. We must stop the 
exploitative  NAFTAfication of such aspiring economies as Mexico and instead develop 
genuine  grass-roots investment policies that give people there an ability to 
remain in  their homeland. Then we must enforce our own labor laws -- from wage 
and hour  rules to the NLRB -- so as to empower American workers to enforce 
their own  rights. 
Eliminating the need to migrate from Mexico and rebuilding the middle-class  
ladder, here is an "immigration policy" that will work. But it requires us to 
go  right at the corporate kleptocracy that now owns Washington and controls 
the  debate. 
We must challenge Democrats, especially, to broaden the debate and to  
recognize that they must choose sides -- to be for workers or for more trade  
imperialism. Right now, the Democratic leadership is siding with imperialism and  
exacerbating the economic causes of Latino migration. For example, just last  
month, Speaker Nancy Pelosi engineered a vote to extend NAFTA to Peru, a  
corporate favor that could be called the Tom-Rahm Bipartisan Axis of Immigration  
Stupidity, for it drew enthusiastic support from both Tom Tancredo and Rahm  
Emanuel. 
America's immigration problem is not down on the border, it's in Washington  
and on Wall Street.




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