Re: Underpinning euqal education opportunity & ELL education: the immigration debate

[aburke5054@aol.com]

Leaving Ben Franklin, gloabalization, and Wall Street aside, La Raza 
and the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund argue that NCLB (or 
whatever new and improved version of NCLB will remain true to its core) 
is an important and positive force for improving educational 
opportunities for ELL students.  Seems important to keep that in mind 
when a testing list starts posting rants on building walls across the 
border.

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: QCao009@aol.com
To: flsst@yahoogroups.com; azble@asu.edu; multied-l@usc.edu; 
arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Fri, 8 Feb 2008 5:40 am
Subject: [arn-l] Underpinning euqal education opportunity & ELL 
education: the immigration debate


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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