M/Lat 12: US Relations with Mexico and Latin Ameri

Please read the following article by Nov. 8th

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2896
The False Debate Over 'Broken Borders'
When pro-business passes as pro-immigrant

By Saurav Sarkar

Since 2005, much of the mainstream media has been rife with coverage of what has been called “immigration reform”—a policy debate over what kind of immigration legislation would be passed among a narrow range of options. One pole of the legislative debate was the McCain-Kennedy proposal, which would have created a temporary or “guest” worker program, followed by conditional and heavily delayed legalization of workers. The other was the Sensenbrenner Bill, passed by the House in December 2005, which would, among other harsh provisions, turn undocumented immigrants into felons and massively increase detentions and deportations.

Either measure by itself would be the biggest change in U.S. immigration law since 1996, when Congress restricted economic and legal benefits for immigrants, and vastly expanded grounds for deportation and detention of immigrants. There has not been an amnesty or other large-scale legalization of the millions of undocumented people in the United States since 1986. The information that the American public is receiving is therefore of enormous and direct consequence to tens of millions of people and indirectly to billions.

As an example of how immigration policies affect people around the world, the World Bank’s 2003 Global Development Finance report noted:

Remittance flows [from immigrant workers] are the second-largest source, behind FDI [foreign direct investment], of external funding for developing countries. In 2001, workers’ remittance receipts of developing countries stood at $72.3 billion, much higher than total official flows and private non-FDI flows, and 42 percent of total FDI flows to developing countries.

Unfortunately, despite the global significance of immigration legislation and immeasurable effects on individual lives, there have been deep flaws in media coverage of the legislative debate. In particular, large segments of the media have biased their coverage towards a pro-business standpoint on the debate, which is misleadingly portrayed as a pro-immigrant position; the opposition to this view is a racialized, nativist perspective that is misrepresented as advocacy for U.S.-born workers. Actual pro-immigrant, pro-worker and international points of view have been almost entirely absent.

Constructing a false dichotomy between the harsh nativist measures being considered by the House of Representatives and the more business-friendly measures endorsed by the Senate, the media have also fostered an unjustified sense of urgency to promote sweeping legislation that is likely to end up harming immigrants and non-immigrant U.S. workers alike.

Buying into the spin

Mainstream media have helped to set the terms of the debate by endlessly repeating catchphrases and buzzwords like “porous borders” and “comprehensive immigration reform.” Consider the adjective “broken,” widely used to describe the current immigration system. The New York Times editorialized last year (9/26/05) on “American’s broken immigration policy,” calling the system “unsafe and unfair.” The Denver Post (3/9/06) and Miami Herald (3/6/06) editorialized against the “broken immigration system.” The Des Moines Register (8/28/05) declared, “The current immigration system is clearly broken, as evidenced by the estimated 11 million immigrants in the United States without documentation.”

Some outlets have chosen to describe the situation as a “crisis” instead. CNN’s Lou Dobbs (4/13/06), in a frequent refrain, said that the United States “is facing an unprecedented immigration and border security crisis.” The American Prospect’s November 2005 issue was likewise devoted to “Solving the Immigration Crisis” (subhead: “The Road to Comprehensive Reform”).

This alleged immigration “crisis” seems to have been going on for at least a decade. In a July 1996 letter to the New York Times (7/11/96), Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson referred to “the nation’s immigration crisis,” during a year in which Congress passed bills to extensively increase jailing and deportations and deny financial benefits to both documented and undocumented immigrants. But this history of crisis rhetoric—which recalls similar talk during the Social Security debate and the leadup to the Iraq War—did not spark questions about what exactly the current “crisis” consists of.

The urgency of reform

Once the media accepted that the system is “broken” or in “crisis,” they quickly moved to the conclusion that a solution is urgently needed and began to cheerlead. In describing the current effort to pass legislation related to immigration, much of the media coverage has adopted the word “reform”—and thereby promoted support for immediate legislative action. According to a Google News search of U.S. sources (3/18/06), in the 30 days prior, 2,540 media pieces used the phrase “immigration reform.” In comparison, only 1,210 used the more neutral phrase “immigration bill,” and only 687 used the phrase “immigration legislation.”

“Immigration reform” generally consisted of some variation on the contents of the McCain-Kennedy proposal—legislation that would create a permanent class of second-class workers while establishing a heavily delayed and conditional legalization program, usually referred to as “earned legalization” or “a path to citizenship,” along with harsher enforcement measures at the border.

“A get-tough enforcement strategy should be coupled with move toward a guest-worker program,” editorialized the San Jose Mercury News (3/19/06). “Immigration reform legislation being debated in Congress must regulate the flow of migration and tie it to U.S. labor needs,” declared the Baltimore Sun (3/7/06).

60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley said in a CBS News “Reporter’s Notebook” (CBSNews.com, 12/9/05) that the only way to “stem the tide of illegal immigration” would be to “go to where illegal migrants are working and kick them out” or “come up with some kind of effective guest-worker program.”

Nativist views like those of CNN’s Dobbs (see page 22) and the House of Representatives provided a useful foil to the preferred corporate media solution of “guestworkers.” The result was a narrow public discussion reflecting the terms set by policymakers and lobbyists for business interests, with sops to immigration restrictionists, including increased surveillance and force at the Mexican border, with no remedies for the criminalization and workplace exploitation of immigrants.

The New York Times (5/21/05) summed up this debate: “The arrival last week in the U.S. Congress of a sweeping, bipartisan immigration proposal brought forth the usual conflict between those who want a solution and those who just want an emotional issue to howl about.” The Times was distinguishing between those who accept the business-friendly “reform” proposal and the nativists who reject such a plan; those who see a two-tiered workforce divided by citizenship as not being in the interests of either immigrants or native-born workers are entirely out of the picture.

Selective coverage

News columns as well as opinion commentary attempted to enforce this truncated debate. Consider “U.S. Bill to Broaden Immigration Law Gains in Senate” (3/28/06) by Rachel Swarns, the New York Times beat reporter on the subject. The article covered—and promoted—the late March compromise reached in the Senate Judiciary Committee that used portions of the McCain-Kennedy bill in combination with more restrictionist provisions.

Swarns emphasized that the bill would “legalize the United States’ 11 million illegal immigrants and ultimately . . . grant them citizenship” (if they meet certain conditions), and would “allow roughly 400,000 foreigners to come to the United States to work each year and would put them on a path to citizenship as well.” She reported that the plan “was quickly hailed by Democrats, a handful of Republicans and business leaders, as well as by the immigrant advocacy organizations and church groups that have sent tens of thousands of supporters of immigrant rights into the streets of a number of cities to push for such legislation in recent days.”

Swarns mentioned that the bill “includes provisions to strengthen border security,” and much farther down in the article pointed out that the legislation “would nearly double the number of Border Patrol agents over the next five years, criminalize the construction of tunnels into the United States from another country and speed the deportation of illegal immigrants from countries other than Mexico.”

But Swarns missed some other aspects of the Senate Judiciary bill that were later pointed out by the Immigrant Defense Project of the New York State Defenders Association (3/31/06): The bill would expand the types of criminal offenses that lead to mandatory jailing and deportation, allow lifetime detention of immigrants who cannot be deported, fund an additional 10,000 detention beds for immigrants and increase anti-immigrant cooperation between local and federal police.

Nancy Morawetz, a New York University law professor who is sympathetic to immigrants, says that this is a general trend in media coverage. In an email, she points to “lack of attention to unnecessary, inhumane and costly detention policies; restrictions on access to the courts; increase in mandatory grounds for removing noncitizens with status who have been residents most of their lives; [and] criminalization of the undocumented.”

Missing voices

Meanwhile, progressive pro-worker, pro-immigrant or international perspectives have been almost completely absent. For example, with all of the discussion of how the immigration system is “broken,” there has been scant coverage on the massive increase in jailing and deportations in the past 10 years, something that would likely have been brought up had progressive organizations like the Immigrant Defense Project been represented.

Despite Swarns’ claim that the Senate Judiciary bill was “hailed by . . . immigrant advocacy organizations,” many local progressive organizations have publicly objected to various provisions or the entire legislative approach, though their complaints were practically uncited. These include the Break the Chains Coalition, Chinese Staff and Workers Association, Families For Freedom, Friends of Farmworkers and the Drum Major Institute, just to name a few who have presence in the northeastern United States. Though they objected from a variety of perspectives and offered a variety of proposals as fixes, these organizations received a total of four hits in a Google News search of U.S.-based sources for the 30 days prior to March 19, before the massive rally in Los Angeles began calling media attention to immigrant activism.

Instead of viewpoints from such critical groups, or pro-immigrant experts like Morawetz, those who have been selected by the media to represent the “pro-immigrant” side of this debate are generally people like Frank Sharry, the executive director of the National Immigration Forum.

The National Immigration Forum is a pro-immigration lobbying group based in Washington, D.C. It has played a lead role in bringing immigrant groups and unions to support the business-friendly McCain-Kennedy bill, even going so far as to say that it is too light on enforcement provisions (American Prospect, 11/05). A Google News search on March 19 shows that, in the prior 30 days, 98 pieces from U.S.-based sources contained the phrases “National Immigration Forum” and “immigration reform.” On the other hand, the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights—one of the few national pro-immigrant organizations that consistently refused to endorse any of the existing legislative options—received no hits for an analogous search.

Inclusion of a greater diversity of “pro-immigrant” sources might have shifted the focus from D.C. politics to a fuller description of the substance and potential impact of these proposals. The ethnic press has done a better job of this. Consider “McCain Against Amnesty,” a recent cover story in Caribbean Life (3/7/06). The article, covering a rally organized by immigrant lobbyists, states that McCain was “clearly out of touch with the true state of affairs” in New York, because he “spoke as though it’s very easy for immigrants to find affordable English language classes, legal representation, etc.” This level of detail on the real-world effects of the media’s preferred solution on immigrants is virtually absent in mainstream newspaper pages.

In general, the ethnic press has offered a level of detail on immigrant lives that the mainstream media has simply ignored. For example, the March 6 issue of El Diario/La Prensa reported that there has been a 78 percent rise in deportation orders over the past five years, including over 220,000 orders in 2005 alone.

From the replication of the terms of the debate from Washington to the creation of an artificial sense of urgency to pass a bill to the backing of business-friendly proposals that would assist immigrants insofar as they provide cheap labor, segments of the mainstream media did little to serve immigrants, native-born U.S. workers or people in the rest of the world. Only with the shock of the massive demonstration in Los Angeles and elsewhere have the mainstream media finally begun to notice immigrant perspectives that go significantly beyond asking for guestworker status.
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2896

ZNet | Activism

The Kennedy-McCain Bill

by Suvrat Raju; May 16, 2006
The past two months have witnessed an explosion in the immigrant rights movement in America. When Representative Sensenbrenner introduced his bill, proposing the large scale deportation of undocumented immigrants, little did he suspect that millions of people would come out on the streets in protest. Los Angeles and Chicago saw the largest demonstrations in their history. Soon other cities followed suit. This movement, full of energy and enthusiasm, holds out the promise of radically changing America.

Predictably, conservative sections of the immigrant leadership have tried to rein in the militant tendencies of this popular outburst. Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles, explained that May 1st could be a made a 'win-win ' day [1] while urging workers to reject calls for a nationwide strike! Earlier, Mahony had written “Only comprehensive reform ... embodied in the principles of ... the Secure America and Orderly Immigration bill, will help solve our current immigration crisis.” [2] In this article, I will attempt to analyze this viewpoint. I will argue that the “Secure America and Order Immigration bill” introduced by Kennedy and McCain is deeply flawed and it would be a serious mistake for the immigrant rights movement to look to this piece of legislation for relief.

A good summary of the Kennedy-McCain(K-M) proposals may be found at the Library of Congress website [3]. Briefly, the bill establishes a new visa type to facilitate future legal immigration. It also offers undocumented immigrants, already present in the country, an opportunity to legalize their status for 6 years with a chance at permanent residency later. While introducing the bill, McCain said ”Homeland security is our nation's number one priority” [4] and, indeed the first section of the bill deals with increased border security.

A quick look at the actual provisions of the bill [5] reveals serious problems. First, consider the opportunities for future legal immigration. The bill proposes the creation of 400,000 new H5-A visas for 'low-skilled workers'. However, according to the latest data compiled by the Pew Hispanic Center, the number of undocumented immigrants over the past 5 years averaged 850,000 per year [6]. Even assuming a steady rate of increase in the number of visas by 15% each year, it will take at least 6 years for the number of visas to catch up with the number of immigrants. Unless, K-M plan to apprehend and turn back hundreds of thousands of people at the border, in a few years there will be several million additional undocumented workers in the US.

Second, the bill ties legal status in the US to employment. If a person is unemployed for 45 days, s/he must leave the country. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics [7], 10.9% of the Hispanic workforce was unemployed at some point during 2004, with the median length of unemployment being 16 weeks(112 days). Within a few years, there would be several million H-5A immigrants in the US. Hence, the 45 day provision would put two to three hundred thousand people at risk of deportation each year [8]. This estimate is quite possibly conservative since it is well known that young workers are subject to a greater incidence of unemployment than older workers [9] and the H-5A population is likely to be younger than the rest of the Hispanic population.

Third consider the clauses dealing with family uni?cation. Currently, US laws place per-country limits on family sponsored visas [10]. Not more than 33,600 family preference visas per year may be given to any one country. The K-M bill raises this limit to 48,000. Given that half a million Mexicans migrate into the US each year, this reform is grossly inadequate.

The senators recognized, probably intuitively, that any attempt at large-scale deportation would be foolish. So, the bill legalizes the presence of undocumented immigrants in the US for a period of up to six years by granting them the status of 'H5-B non-immigrants'. It is hard to critique this in detail, since the exact modalities of the 'H5-B' visa are somewhat unclear. It is evident, nevertheless that this is a recipe for creating second-class citizens who would live in constant fear of losing their status. 'Two offences', according to the Immigration and Nationality Act lead to automatic loss of status [11].

At the end of this mandatory six-year long humiliation, immigrants would be allowed to petition the government for permanent residency. The K-M bill never discusses the issue of accepting the immigrants as full citizens. So, it is a mistake to claim, as some do, that the K-M bill includes a 'path to citizenship'.

In addition to these questions of implementation, the Kennedy-McCain bill overlooks three central issues. First, there is the issue of capitalism! One has often heard, over the past two months, comparisons of the taxes immigrants pay with the social spending they receive. Such comparisons miss the point entirely. As is obvious to any observer of the US economy, under the current (capitalist) system, immigrants are among the most intensely exploited of all workers. This means that while they contribute a lot of labor, the wages they receive in compensation are tiny. If one were to properly tally all the work immigrants do, one would find that it not only overwhelms the proportion of social welfare they receive but is more than enough for them to be provided with comprehensive health-care and many other benefits. In this light, the Kennedy-McCain proposal to ask the Mexican government to foot part of the bill for immigrant health-care is preposterous.

Second, there is the question of imperialism. For the past 200 years, the American government has plundered Latin America and the Caribbean. Capitalist development in North America could not have taken place without the extraction of surplus from other countries. Conversely, this exploitation is also one of the leading causes of poverty in the countries that provide an immigrant population to the US. There is no moral principle that can justify the closure of American borders to victims of American policies.

Third, there is the question of nationalism. A broad argument against current immigration policy must include a radical challenge to the concept of a nation-state. Indeed, imperialist powers have been hypocritically arguing for the past 15 years that human rights supersede sovereignty. I propose that we turn this argument on its head. The right to life and employment is an uncontroversial human right. To accommodate this right, the American nation-state must concede part of its sovereignty.

The perspective, that US imperialism is responsible for immigration and that far from having a right to assert its sovereignty, the US must respect immigrants for the work they do, has immediate consequences. First, it invalidates proposals to militarize the border [12]. Second, it is apparent that the civic-responsibility and English-speaking clauses in the K-M bill are an unacceptable attempt to impose Anglo-Saxon heritage on the immigrant population. Third, K-M's claims to promote economic development in Mexico ring hollow. How can poverty alleviation occur while successive bipartisan administrations continue to push through disastrous free-trade agreements with Mexico? Samir Amin's critique of the millennium development goals is amply applicable here. These proposals are “nothing but empty incantations as long as the policies that generate poverty are not analyzed and denounced and alternatives proposed.” [13]

In summary, the Kennedy McCain bill is a series of insufficient and unworkable proposals. Currently, the Senate and House of Representatives are trying to work out a compromise between the proposals of K-M and Sensenbrenner. Since this compromise will necessarily be worse than K-M, Immigrant rights supporters should reject this move. Rather than relying on minimal legislative reform, we must work to build the movement till it becomes an organized political force capable of winning concessions not only for itself but for people all over the world.

Notes and References

[1] “Positive Action For Positive Change: Suggestions Toward Promoting Immigration Reform On Monday, May 1st, 2006”, Archdiocesan News Archive, April 19,2006
http://www.archdiocese.la/news/story.php?newsid=738
[2] “Called by God to Help”, Roger Mahony, The New York Times, March 22, 2006.
[3] Congressional Record Summary of S1033: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:SN01033:@@@D&summ2=m&
[4] Press Advisory from the O?ce of Senator Kennedy, “Members of Congress Introduce Comprehensive Border Security & Immigration Reform Bill” (May 12,2005).
http://kennedy.senate.gov/ kennedy/statements/05/05/2005512A04.html
[5] Full text of S1033: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:S.1033:
[6] “Size and Characteristics of the Unauthorized Migrant Population in the U.S.” ,Je?rey S. Passel, Pew Hispanic Center, March 2006
http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=61
[7] http://www.bls.gov/news.release/work.t04.htm
[8] If we assume that number of H-5A visas that are given out each year will stabilize at 800,000/year with each visa being valid for 6 years, this leads to an estimate of a stable H-5A population in the US of size 4,800,000. Even if 5% of these workers are threatened with deportation, that number is 240,000.
[9] National Longitudinal Survey of Youth
http://www.bls.gov/nls/y79r20unempbyage.pdf.
[10] See K-M, Title VI: 'Family Unity and Backlog Reduction'.
Also see Immigration and Nationality Act:Section 202(a)
[http://www.uscis.gov/graphics/lawsregs/INA.htm]
[11] See K-M, Title VII: 'H-5B Nonimmigrants' and the Immigration and Nationality Act, Section 212(a)(2). Of course, in line with other paleolithic drug laws, posession of marijuana could also lead to deportation.
[12] In the first section of their bill, Kennedy and McCain gleefully write about the new aerial surveillance technologies they plan to introduce on the border. One must remark on the almost childish fascination that US o?cials share for ineffective high-tech military gadgets.
[13] “The Millennium Development Goals: A Critique from the South”, Samir Amin, Monthly Review, March 2006.
http://www.monthlyreview.org/0306amin.htm

Original article is at http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/111714.php Print comments.

Mesoamerica comes to North America: The Dialectics of the Migrant Workers’ Movement
by James Petras Wednesday May 03, 2006 at 07:04 PM

Between March 25 and May 1, 2006 close to 5 million migrant workers and their supporters marched through nearly 100 cities of the United States. This is the biggest and most sustained workers’ demonstration in the history of the US. In all of its 50-year history, the US trade union confederation, the AFL-CIO has never been capable of mobilizing even a fraction of the workers convoked by the migrant workers movement.
Mesoamerica comes to North America: The Dialectics of the Migrant Workers’ Movement
James Petras
Rebelión

Between March 25 and May 1, 2006 close to 5 million migrant workers and their supporters marched through nearly 100 cities of the United States. This is the biggest and most sustained workers’ demonstration in the history of the US. In all of its 50-year history, the US trade union confederation, the AFL-CIO has never been capable of mobilizing even a fraction of the workers convoked by the migrant workers movement. The rise and growth of the movement is rooted in the historical experience of the migrant workers (overwhelmingly from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean), the exploitative and racist experience they confront today in the US and the future in which they face imprisonment, expulsion and dispossession.

The migrant workers movement is engaged in an independent political struggle, directed against local, state and particularly the national government. The movement’s immediate objective is to defeat congressional legislation designed to criminalize employed migrant workers and a “compromise” designed to divide recently arrived workers from older workers. The key demand of the migrant workers is the legalization of all workers, new and old. The choice of direct action methods is a response to the ineffectiveness of the legalistic and lobbying activities of established middle class controlled Latino organizations and the total failure of the labor confederation and its affiliates to organize migrant workers in trade unions or even build solidarity organizations.

To understand the dynamic growth of migrant labor movement in the US and its militancy, it is necessary to analyze the profound structural changes of the 1980’s and 1990’s in Mexico and Central America.
NAFTA, Proxy Wars and Free Markets

Beginning in the 1980’s, the US via the IMF, and its client presidents in Mexico (Salinas, Zedillo and Fox) promoted a “free trade” policy codified in the North American Free Trade Area. This policy opened the door to the massive inflow of heavily subsidized US agricultural commodities undermining local small and medium size farmers. Large-scale foreign investments in retail enterprises, banking and finance led to the bankruptcy of millions of small business people. The growth of free trade industrial zones (maquiladoras) led to the decline of protective social and labor legislation. Foreign debt payments, corrupt privatizations and large-scale growth of precarious employment led to an absolute decline of wage levels, even as the number of Mexican billionaires multiplied. Huge profits and interest payments accruing to US corporations and banks flowed back to the US, as did billions of dollars from corrupt politicians, money laundered by US banks like CITI Corporation.

Displaced and impoverished rural and urban workers soon followed the outward flows of profits and interest. The reasoning according to the “free markets” was that free flows of US capital to Mexico should be accompanied by the free flow of labor, of Mexican workers to the US. But the US did not practice the “free market” doctrine: it pursued a policy of unrestricted entry of capital into Mexico and a restricted policy on labor migration.

The free market policies created a vast reserve army of unemployed and underemployed Mexican labor while the legal restraints on free migration forced the workers to migrate without legal documents.

The huge influx of labor was not simply a result of Mexican or Central American workers seeking higher wages, it was a result of the adverse structural conditions imposed by NAFTA which expelled workers from their workplace. The Mexican free market structure was an ‘empire-centered model of accumulation’, and because it was empire-centered, it became a magnet attracting labor in pursuit of employment in the Empire.

The second major structural feature determining massive migrant worker movements from Central America was the US imperial wars of the 1980’s: the massive US military intervention via proxy armies in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras destroyed the possibility of social reform and viable economies throughout Central America. By financing death squads and promoting “scorched earth” counter-insurgency activity the US drove millions of Central Americans out of the countryside into the squalor of urban slums and overseas to Mexico, the US, Canada and Europe. The US “success” in imposing corrupt right-wing rulers throughout Central America, closed off all options for collective or self-improvement in the domestic economy. The implementation of neo-liberal measures led to even greater unemployment and a sharp decline in social services, forcing many to seek employment in the empire: the source of their misery.
Legacy of Struggle: Migrant Labor Militancy

The first wave of immigrants in the 1980’s in the aftermath of the neo-liberal shock and the military terror sought anonymously any kind of work even under the worst conditions; many hid their militant past but did not forget it. As the flow of migrant workers gained momentum, great concentrations of Latino workers settled in major cities of California, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. This led to the creation of a dense network of social, cultural and sports clubs and informal organizations based on previous family, neighborhood and regional ties. New small businesses flourished, consumer power increased, children attended school with clear Latino majorities and numerous radio station were directed to the migrant workers in their own language. Quickly the sense of solidarity grew from the strength of numbers, the facility of communication, the proximity of fellow workers, and above all from the common experience of unregulated and unmitigated exploitation at the hardest jobs and the lowest pay, accompanied by racist attitudes from employers, white workers, police and other public authorities.

The decision by the Congress to add the further threat of imprisonment and mass expulsions occurred at the same time in which the social networks and solidarity within the Latino communities was deepening and expanding. The earlier militancy carried over from the mass popular resistance to the death squads in El Salvador, the taste of freedom and dignity during the Sandinista period in Nicaragua, the multiple militant peasant movements in Mexico came out of the closet and found a new social expression in the mass migrant workers movement.

The convergence of submerged or latent militancy and the demands for labor rights and legal recognition in the new exploitative/repressive context created the impetus for social solidarity of entire communities. Participation included whole families, entire neighborhoods and crossed generational boundaries: high school students joined construction workers, gardeners, garment workers and domestics to fill the streets of Dallas, Texas and Los Angeles, California, with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, much to the surprise of non-Latino observers ignorant of their historical legacy, their powerful social networks and their decision to draw the line now between social existence and massive expulsion.

In summary we cannot understand the massive labor migration from Mexico without examining the massive flow of US capital to Mexico, its destructive impact on the socio-economic relations and the unregulated outflow or remittance of profits and interests back to the US. Likewise we cannot explain the massive long-term flows of labor migrants from Central America to the US without taking into account the massive flow of US arms to the ruling classes of the region, the large-scale destruction of small scale agriculture, the restoration to power of the kleptocratic oligarchies and the reversal of social reforms, especially in Nicaragua.

Central American and Mexican labor migration is a direct result of the victory of the US-led counter-revolution in the region. The emergence of the mass movement of labor migrants, in a sense, is the replay of the earlier struggles between US capital and Mexican and Central American labor on the new terrain of US state politics and with a new set of issues. The continuity of the struggles, in Central America and Mexico and now in the US is found in the common demands for “self-determination” and the common methods of struggle, direct action. This is reflected in the strong working class or ‘popular’ composition of the struggle, and the historical memory of class solidarity.

Significance of the New Mass Migrant Workers Movement (NMMWM)

The emergence of the mass migrant workers’ movement opens a new chapter in the working class struggle both in North America, and Central America. First and foremost it represents the first major upsurge of independent working class struggle in the US after over fifty years of decline, stagnation and retreat by the established trade union confederation. Secondly, NMMWM reveals a new class protagonist (“subject”) as the leading sector in the labor movement, the migrant worker. While in the past the dynamic sectors of organized labor in the private sector (auto, teamsters, steel, and longshore (West Coast)) have lost over 2/3 of their members and now represent only 9% of the private labor force, over 2 million migrant workers demonstrated and manifested the kind of social solidarity, unseen in the US since the 1930’s. Thirdly, NMMWM was organized without a big bureaucratic trade union apparatus, and with a minimum budget on the basis of voluntary workers through horizontal communication. In fact, one of the key factors accounting for the success of the mobilization was that it was largely out of the control of the dead hand of the trade union hierarchy, even as a minority of workers were members of trade unions. Fourthly, the leadership and strategists of the movement were independent of the two major capitalist parties, especially the deadly embrace of the Democratic Party.

Because of their political independence, the NMMWM was in the streets, was critical of both Party policies of expulsion of labor migrants and did not confine itself to the futile action of ‘lobbying politicos’ in the corridors of Congress. The mass migrant workers movement has served, to a certain extent, as a “social pole” attracting and politicizing tens of thousands of high school, community college and even university students especially those of Latin- American origins. In addition, a minority of dissident “Anglo” trade unionists, middle class progressives and clerical liberals has been activated to work with the labor struggles. The NMMWM struggle is political -–directed at influencing political power, national legislation and against the rule of ‘white capital’ directed at criminalizing and expelling ‘brown labor.’

The movement demonstrates the proper approach to combining race and class politics. The emergence of an organized mass labor-based socio-political pole has the potential to create a new political movement, which could challenge the hegemony of the two capitalist parties. The dynamic growth of the migrant workers movement in the US can serve as the basis for an international labor movement (free from the tutelage of the pro-imperialist AFL-CIO) from Panama to the US West, Southwest and southeastern states. Family and ethnic ties can strengthen class solidarity and create the basis of reciprocal support in struggles against the common enemy: the neo-liberal model of capitalism, the repressive state apparatus and legislation South and North.

The positive developments of the NMMWM however face political obstacles to growth and consolidation: First “from the outside” numerous employers fired workers who participated in the first wave of mass demonstrations. Latino workers who were trade unionists received little or no support from the labor bosses.

Secondly, after the mass success of the movements, numerous traditional Latino politicos, social workers, professional consultants, non-governmental organizations and clerical notables jumped on the bandwagon and are active in deflecting the movement into the conventional channels of “petitioning” Congress or supporting the “lesser evil” Democratic Party politicians. These middle class collaborators are intent on dividing the movement to serve their purpose of gaining a political platform for career advancement.

Finally the movement faces the problem of the uneven development of the struggle within the working class and between regions of the country. Most “Anglo workers” are at best passive while probably over half perceive migrant workers as a threat to their jobs, salaries and neighborhoods. The general absence of any anti-racist, class-based education by the trade union bureaucracy makes working class unity a difficult task. The challenge is for the migrant workers to reach out and build coalitions with black, Puerto Rican and Asian workers – as well as a minority of advanced Anglo trade unionists. There is also the pressure from the leaders of the capitalist parties to divide migrant workers, by passing legislation that favors ‘legal’ versus ‘illegal’ workers, ‘long-term’ versus ‘short-term’ workers, literate versus less literate workers, skilled versus unskilled workers.

Finally there is the need to confront the new wave of large-scale police raids at workplaces and neighborhoods, where hundreds of Latino workers are rounded up and expelled. Today, in Nazi style, entire Latino neighborhoods are closed and the police go on house-to-house searches. The Immigration police have recently escalated their mass ‘round-ups’ at work sites trying to provoke a climate of intimidation. During the week April 21-28, NeoCon Chief of Homeland Security Agency, Michael Chertoff directed the arrest of 1,100 undocumented migrants in 26 states.

Despite these challenges the migrant workers movement is in the ascendancy: on March 25 hundreds of thousands demonstrated; on April 10 over 2 million marched and on May 1, millions more will join massive marches and workers strikes. While the reactionary politicians are holed up in Congress, scheming of new ways to divide and conquer the movement, the Latino people by the millions are in the streets…for their rights, their self-determination and their dignity.

Rebelión

You can download the reading on the Zapatistas here Revealed.

I will bring the Sixth Declaration of the Zapatistas to class, but you can also print it at:
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/SixthDeclaration.html

I notice that some people were not prepared this past Monday. I will be looking closely at responses to make sure that people are doing the readings.
Please print the magazine out and bring it to class.

Agustin

This Wed. Oct. 25th is Laney's Staff Development day, so we won't have class.
Please use that time to read all the articles online, including the articles on immigration.
[the last three post]

Peace.

Some of the following Articles are PDF files, which you will need Acrobat Reader, Preview, or files that open pdf. Please print and read the following by Nov. 8th.

A look at so-called "Illegal Immigration." Be careful with this one, and like always, question, always question.

1.
"illegal Immigration
"Illegal Immigration"
2.
"Executive Summary: Rise, Peak and Decline: Trends in U.S. Immigration 1992-2004"
http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/53.pdf
3.
"2006 National Survey of Latinos: The Immigration Debate"
http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/68.pdf

Please read all of the following articles. You might have a quiz on these.

washingtonpost.com, front page

America's Population Set to Top 300 Million
Immigration Fuels Much of Growth

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 12, 2006; A01

Clicking upward at a rate of one person every 11 seconds, the U.S. population will officially surpass 300 million in the next week or so.

The milestone is a reminder that the United States remains a remarkable demographic specimen, 230 years old (since the Declaration of Independence) and still in a growth spurt.

Behind only China and India, it is the planet's third most populous nation. For a rich, highly developed country, it is anomalously fertile, with a population that is increasing briskly, in sharp contrast to anemic growth or decline in Western Europe and Japan. Some demographers say this continued growth is essential to support an aging population in retirement and a sign of the continued allure of the United States even at a time when its image around the world has been sullied by the war in Iraq.

Yet, how will the momentous 300-million marker be celebrated in Washington?

"Those plans, believe it or not, are still being finalized," said Robert B. Bernstein, a Census Bureau spokesman. "I don't yet know what, if anything, we are going to do in the way of an event."

When the U.S. population surpassed 200 million on a census clock in 1967, cheers rang through the lobby of the Commerce Department, and applause interrupted President Lyndon B. Johnson's celebratory speech.

Four decades later, however, 300 million seems to be greeted more with hand-wringing ambivalence than chest-thumping pride.

"When we hit 100 million, it was a celebration of America's might in the world," said Dowell Myers, a professor of urban planning and demography at the University of Southern California. "When we hit 200 million, we were solidifying our position. But at 300 million, we are beginning to be crushed under the weight of our own quality-of-life degradation."

One reason for anxiety may be that U.S. population growth is fueled in large measure by immigrants and their children, a circumstance that increasingly worries native-born Americans and makes politicians jumpy, especially four weeks before an election.

Immigrants, legal and illegal, account for about 40 percent of population growth. Immigration is also an important reason the "natural increase" in the population -- excess of births over deaths -- is significantly higher in the United States compared with Europe or Japan. Hispanics from Latin America, by far the largest share of recent immigrants, are driving the natural increase here. On average, Hispanic women have one more child than non-Hispanic white women.

Three hundred million is also a discomfiting reminder of a nation that, on its east and west coasts, at least, is running noticeably low on elbow room. More humanity is stirring up more traffic, more sprawl, more rules against growth, more protests against anti-growth rules, and more of the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. A surging population in the arid Southwest is also straining the supply of water. The growth is adding to a country that represents 4 percent of the world's population but consumes 25 percent of the planet's oil.

"We are not the wide-open spaces anymore," said Martha Farnsworth Riche, who headed the Census Bureau in the mid-1990s and is now a research demographer at Cornell University. "Our choices are constrained."

In Los Angeles, the nation's most densely populated metropolitan region and its most heavily Latino area, 300 million will be yet another confirmation that congestion is out of control, Myers predicted.

"I don't think people view population growth as a plus anymore," he said, noting that Angelenos are punished by it "every single day" when they go out in freeway traffic.

The 300-million milestone, it should be noted, is an educated guess by the Census Bureau, not an actual people count. It emerges from a formula that crunches births and new immigrants against deaths. The 300-millionth person, therefore, will never win a trip to Disneyland because he or she will not be identified.

The 100-million markers are also coming more quickly. From the Declaration of Independence in 1776, it took the country 139 years to get to 100 million in 1915, then 52 more years to reach 200 million in 1967 and 39 more years to hit 300 million. The 400 million mark, according to census projections, will be reached in about 37 years. That, of course, could change if the current anxiety about immigration were to result in the closing of the country's borders. Without immigration, the U.S. population could go into a European-style stall.

It was a change in immigration law in 1965, when Congress abolished a national-origins quota system, that unintentionally reignited immigrant-led population growth, according to William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution. "It made family reunification an important criteria for immigration and it led to a chain reaction of higher fertility," he said.

The relative presence of immigrants, about 12 percent of the total population, is more than double what it was when the population topped 200 million. Immigrants are also more visible than ever, having fanned out from gateway cities such as New York and Los Angeles to parts of the rural South and Midwest where they had not been seen in substantial numbers before. Still, the foreign-born share of the population remains lower than between the melting-pot years of 1860 and 1920, when it was about 14 percent.

Many demographers believe it is shortsighted to be anxious about the 300-million marker. They regard it as a symbol of an economically dynamic democracy that remains popular in much of the world.

"As almost nothing else can, immigration-led growth signals the attractiveness of the American economy and polity," said Kenneth Prewitt, a former head of the Census Bureau and now professor of public affairs at Columbia University. "You don't see large numbers of immigrants clamoring to move to China."

Indeed, lots of good news is embodied in the lives of the 300 million. Longevity has jumped from 55 years in 1915, to 71 years in 1967, to 78 years now. Over that time frame, the percentage of the adult population with a high-school diploma has jumped from 14 percent to 85 percent. Homeownership has risen from 46 to 69 percent. The death rate from tuberculosis has fallen from 140 to 0.2 per 100,000 people. While houses are 4.5 times as expensive (in constant dollars) as they were in 1915 and twice as expensive as in 1967, a gallon of milk in 2006 costs less than half what it went for in 1915 and in 1967.

After this year's election rhetoric cools, Frey hopes that Americans will see a silver lining in immigration: Foreign-born residents and their children will surge into the workforce, and their payroll taxes will help reduce funding shortfalls for Social Security and other social programs that benefit older people.

"So many middle-aged baby boomers who oppose immigration may be biting the hand that could feed them," Frey said.

This assumes, though, that immigrant children, especially Hispanics and blacks, will be educated well enough in American schools to find competitive jobs in the global economy.

Poverty rates for children have exceeded poverty rates for the elderly for more than 40 years, according to Linda A. Jacobsen, director of domestic programs at the Population Reference Bureau, a nonpartisan research group.

Hispanic and black children are between three and four times as likely to live in poverty as whites, so their growing numbers may not translate into growing national wealth. In addition, the divide between aging baby boomers in retirement and the younger workers who are supporting them with payroll taxes will have a racial, as well as a generational, dimension.

"Unless we can reduce age, racial and ethnic disparities in poverty," Jacobsen warns, "children from minority groups may be less able and less willing, as they grow up, to support the predominantly white elderly population."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Another look at the fine priint.

Front page, Washington Post

In Border Fence's Path, Congressional Roadblocks

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 6, 2006; A01

No sooner did Congress authorize construction of a 700-mile fence on the U.S.-Mexico border last week than lawmakers rushed to approve separate legislation that ensures it will never be built, at least not as advertised, according to Republican lawmakers and immigration experts.

GOP leaders have singled out the fence as one of the primary accomplishments of the recently completed session. Many lawmakers plan to highlight their $1.2 billion down payment on its construction as they campaign in the weeks before the midterm elections.

But shortly before recessing late Friday, the House and Senate gave the Bush administration leeway to distribute the money to a combination of projects -- not just the physical barrier along the southern border. The funds may also be spent on roads, technology and "tactical infrastructure" to support the Department of Homeland Security's preferred option of a "virtual fence."

What's more, in a late-night concession to win over wavering Republicans, GOP congressional leaders pledged in writing that Native American tribes, members of Congress, governors and local leaders would get a say in "the exact placement" of any structure, and that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff would have the flexibility to use alternatives "when fencing is ineffective or impractical."

The loopholes leave the Bush administration with authority to decide where, when and how long a fence will be built, except for small stretches east of San Diego and in western Arizona. Homeland Security officials have proposed a fence half as long, lawmakers said.

"It's one thing to authorize. It's another thing to actually appropriate the money and do it," said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.). The fine-print distinction between what Congress says it will do and what it actually pays for is a time-honored result of the checks and balances between lawmakers who oversee agencies and those who hold their purse strings.

In this case, it also reflects political calculations by GOP strategists that voters do not mind the details, and that key players -- including the administration, local leaders and the Mexican government -- oppose a fence-only approach, analysts said.

President Bush signed the $34.8 billion homeland security budget bill Wednesday in Scottsdale, Ariz., without referring to the 700-mile barrier. Instead, he highlighted the $1.2 billion that Congress provided for an unspecified blend of fencing, vehicle barriers, lighting and technology such as ground-based radar, cameras and sensors.

"That's what the people of this country want," the president said. "They want to know that we're modernizing the border so we can better secure the border."

Bush and Chertoff have said repeatedly that enforcement alone will not work and that they want limited dollars spent elsewhere, such as on a temporary-worker program to ease pressure on the border. At an estimated $3 million to $10 million per mile, the double-layered barrier will cost considerably more than $1.2 billion.

Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who chairs the Senate subcommittee that funds the Department of Homeland Security, said that before the legislation was approved, the department had planned to build 320 miles of fencing, secure 500 miles of hard-to-traverse areas by blocking roads and monitor electronically the rest of the 2,000-mile-long southern frontier.

"I think there'll be fencing where the department feels that it makes sense," Gregg said, estimating that "at least 300 to 400 miles" will be built.

Congress withheld $950 million of the $1.2 billion, pending a breakdown by Chertoff of how he plans to spend the money. It is due in early December, after the midterm elections.

Asked whether Homeland Security would build 700 miles of fence, department spokesman Russ Knocke would not say. Instead, he noted that department leaders announced last month that they will spend $67 million to test a remote-sensing "virtual fence" concept on a 28-mile, high-traffic stretch of border south of Tucson over eight months, and then adjust their plans.

"We plan to build a little and test a little. . . . Stay tuned," Knocke said. "We're optimistic that Congress is going to provide the department with flexibility."

The split between GOP leaders hungry for a sound-bite-friendly accomplishment targeting immigration and others who support a more comprehensive approach also means that the fence bill will be watered down when lawmakers return for a lame-duck session in November, according to congressional aides and lobbyists.

The office of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) yesterday released a letter from House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) promising to ensure that Chertoff has discretion over whether to build a fence or choose other options. Homeland Security officials must also consult with U.S., state and local representatives on where structures are placed.

The letter was inserted in the Congressional Record on Friday night because Congress ran out of time to reach a final deal, aides said.

"State and local officials in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas should not be excluded from decisions about how to best protect our borders with their varying topography, population and geography," Hutchison said in a statement added to the record.

Congress also hedged on when a fence would be completed. The law mandating it said Homeland Security officials should gain "operational control" of the border in 18 months. But the law funding it envisions five years. Chertoff has set a goal of two to three years, but only after completion of an immigration overhaul.

Staff writer Peter Baker contributed to this report.


Front page
latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-immig30sep30,1,5146575.story?page=2&coll=la-headlines-frontpage

Border Barrier Approved
The bill, which calls for 700 miles of fence and beefed-up enforcement, easily clears the Senate. It does not include a guest worker program.
By Nicole Gaouette
Times Staff Writer

September 30, 2006

WASHINGTON - The Senate on Friday approved and sent to President Bush a bill calling for construction of a 700-mile wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, voting overwhelmingly for a project that became the centerpiece of efforts to improve border security and stem illegal immigration.

Bush is expected to sign the measure into law.

"Most immigrants come to America with good intentions, but not all of them," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said in supporting the bill. "We need an enforcement-first approach Š [that] allows us to get full operational control of our border."

The bill, which passed 80 to 19 and is identical to legislation passed by the House last week, authorizes the building of double-layered fencing in areas near Tecate and Calexico, Calif., and border towns in New Mexico, Arizona and Texas.

It also empowers the government's Homeland Security secretary to "take all actions Š necessary" to stop "all unlawful entries into the United States."

The legislation's opponents dismissed it as a costly political gimmick that would have little effect on stopping illegal immigration. They also chided Congress for failing to create a guest worker program or to address the status of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already in the U.S.

The fence is "a feel-good plan that will have little effect in the real world," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

Even before the bill passed, it prompted an angry condemnation from the Mexican government.

"We have indicated in a clear and unambiguous manner that the wall is unnecessary and that it is not a gesture that shows friendship between the countries of Latin America, the Caribbean and the United States," said Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez.

He said Mexico would send a note of diplomatic protest about the fence to the White House.

The debate on immigration dominated much of this year's congressional session, especially after Bush in a nationally televised speech in May called for a sweeping rewrite of current policy. He called for legislation that, in addition to increased border security, would create a path to U.S. citizenship for many illegal immigrants and a guest worker program as part of a broad effort to control entry into the U.S.

The Senate later that month passed a bill embracing the approach, but efforts to reach agreement with the House quickly reached a stalemate.

Republican House leaders objected to citizenship proposals as a form of "amnesty" for illegal immigrants and insisted that any legislation passed this year should focus on enforcement at the border. With an eye on the November midterm election, they argued that their view was in line with the sentiments of most voters.

After months of back-and-forth over the issue, the fence bill is the main result of the debate, representing a partial victory for House Republicans. Some other enforcement measures sought by the House, such as making it easier to deport illegal immigrants linked to gangs, fell by the wayside.

As part of the larger push to secure the border, the House and Senate on Friday approved and sent to Bush a spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security that, among other provisions, will alter the way Americans travel to and from Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean.

The bill, which Congress made a priority to pass before recessing for the November election, will require U.S. citizens to present a passport when returning from other countries in the Western Hemisphere, ending Americans' ability to cross these international borders with simply a driver's license or other forms of identification.

The provision, recommended by the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, is to take effect June 1, 2009.

The $33.7-billion spending bill also significantly boosts funding for border security and enforcement of immigration laws at work sites and elsewhere.

The bill will enable the Department of Homeland Security to hire an additional 1,500 border patrol agents and buy 6,700 more beds at detention centers for illegal immigrants. In the past, the lack of enough beds at these facilities has caused authorities to release some of the illegal immigrants they apprehended.

The bill also provides $1.2 billion to pay for border fencing, vehicle barriers and improved sensor equipment at border crossings.

The money "provides flexibility for smart deployment of physical infrastructure that needs to be built along the Southwest border," said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

Estimates of the cost of construction of 700 miles of fencing range from $2 billion to $9 billion, so Congress will need to allocate more money for the project in future years.

Fencing over about 90 miles now runs along the border with Mexico. Some secondary fencing has been installed 50 to 200 yards north of the border around San Diego and Tucson.

The Secure Fence Act specifies that fencing extend 10 miles to the east and west of Tecate, Calif., and from 10 miles west of Calexico, Calif., to five miles east of Douglas, Ariz.

In other areas, the fencing would start five miles west of Columbus, N.M., and extend to 10 miles east of El Paso; extend from five miles northwest of Del Rio, Texas, to five miles southeast of Eagle Pass, Texas; and from 15 miles northwest of Laredo, Texas, to Brownsville, Texas.

The Homeland Security spending bill also makes it a criminal offense to build tunnels under U.S. borders, and includes prison terms for landowners who allow the tunnels to be built on their property.

The measure was sponsored in the Senate by Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and in the House by David Dreier (R-San Dimas).

Although Feinstein was among those voting for the fence bill, she was highly critical that it did not include a guest worker program, arguing that such a measure was vital to agriculture in California and other parts of the country.

On Friday, she joined with Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho) in a failed effort to attach the program to the bill.

Labor shortages in the field are costing billions of dollars in lost produce this year.

Feinstein, noting that California produces about half of all America's fruits, vegetables and nuts, warned that harvest problems in the state would affect consumers in the other 49.

"I don't know what it takes to show that there is an emergency," she said. "I think next year we should be ready, willing and able to [create a guest worker program], but we will have lost one agricultural season. I just hope that someone will listen."

California's other senator, Democrat Barbara Boxer, also voted for the fence bill. Other prominent Democratic senators who supported it included Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois.

Overall, the bill was backed by 54 Republicans and 26 Democrats; opposing it were 17 Democrats, one Republican (Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island) and the Senate's lone independent (James M. Jeffords of Vermont).

Some of those voting for the bill said they believed it could serve as a prelude to the type of broader changes in immigration policy sought by Bush.

"Many people have told me they will support comprehensive immigration reform if we secure the border first," said Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.). "I hope we can use passage of this bill as a starting point toward long-term, comprehensive immigration reform."

Immigrant advocates expressed skepticism that the 700 miles of fencing would ever be completed, given how costly it may prove. They also predicted the bill would have the unintended effect of hurting the long-term prospects of the Republican Party by sparking intense opposition among Latinos.

"I'm going to go out on a limb and say we'll never see a 700-mile wall along the southern border," said Frank Sharry, executive director of National Immigration Forum. "This is about incumbent protection, not border protection."

Cecilia Muñoz, a vice president at the National Council of La Raza, characterized the fence bill as "more symbolism than substance."

She added, "It's pretty clear to me it's going to have a negative impact on Republican prospects."

nicole.gaouette@latimes.com

Times staff writer Hector Tobar contributed to this report from Mexico City.

Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times

Front Page
washingtonpost.com

Herndon Zeroing In On Illegal Immigrants
Policies Could Affect Police, Businesses

By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 28, 2006; A01

Herndon's decision Tuesday night to seek federal training for some of its police officers so they can enforce federal immigration law is part of a long-term effort by a new mayor and Town Council to aggressively curb the presence of residents who are in the country illegally.

Two proposals on the draft agenda for next week's council session would intensify the town's scrutiny of private employers. One would require anyone seeking a business license to prove legal immigration status. The other would compel contractors doing business with the town to provide evidence that their employees live in the United States legally.

The measures are likely to enlarge Herndon's role as a crucible in the national debate on immigration policy -- a position that town officials say they were forced into because of inaction by the federal government. The proposals also add fuel to charges from immigration advocates and some residents that Herndon, which has the largest proportion of foreign-born residents of any locality in the Washington area, has become implacably hostile to all immigrants, legal and illegal.

Illegal immigration has been the dominant issue in town politics since summer 2005, when the council voted, after bitter debate, to open a publicly funded center to help workers connect with employers. Before the Herndon Official Workers Center was established, laborers had gathered each morning in a 7-Eleven parking lot to find jobs -- an arrangement that neighbors and officials said was chaotic and confusing. Opponents of the center said that by opening it, the town was abetting illegal immigration.

In May, Herndon voters unseated Mayor Michael L. O'Reilly and two council members who supported the publicly funded facility and replaced them with challengers, including new Mayor Stephen J. DeBenedittis, who were highly critical of the idea.

Vice Mayor Dennis D. Husch, one of two council members who voted against the labor center last year, said that the new proposals are still "notional" at this point but that the council intends to send a message that illegal immigrants are not welcome in Herndon.

"These [proposals] may never see the light of day," Husch said. "But we need to do something."

Business licenses have traditionally served as revenue-raising instruments, with governments charging owners a set percentage of projected gross sales. But in an advisory opinion this summer, Virginia Attorney General Robert F. McDonnell said local governments can withhold licenses from applicants who are not living legally in the United States.

What the contracting measure would accomplish is less clear. Federal law already establishes penalties for employers who knowingly keep illegal workers on their payroll. Herndon's own standard contract language also forbids companies that employ the undocumented from working on major projects. Town Attorney Richard B. Kaufman said the council was interested in "beefing up" the language so that it applied to all contractors who provide services to the government.

The council's 6 to 1 vote late Tuesday authorizes town officials to contact U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to express interest in enrolling some officers in the agency's "287 (g)" program, a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

If the town is accepted into the program, it would negotiate an agreement covering the scope of the training officers would receive -- often in the areas of document identification and cross-cultural communication -- and what the law would empower them to do. In general, those who pass the five-week course are authorized to question or detain people they believe to be in the country illegally, according to ICE descriptions of the program.

In a hearing preceding the vote, supporters of the program said it would take criminals off the streets.

"You guys were elected because you said you would take action," Brenda Kelley, a 21-year resident of the town, told the council. "We all want safe, secure, happy, respectful neighborhoods."

"Herndon has a chance to lend a helping hand to federal immigration agents," Stacey Brooks said.

Jorge Rochac, a Salvadoran immigrant and former translator for the Herndon police department who ran unsuccessfully for a council seat this year, said adoption of the federal program "would tend to alienate the Hispanic community and makes them less apt to cooperate and trust the police."

Former council member John DeNoyer was also critical. "Would I be profiled as a suspected terrorist or illegal alien because I have a beard and often turn brown toward the end of an outdoor summer?" he asked. "Please do not glorify and nurture the xenophobic hysteria that is affecting our town."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company


Exhuming the Past In a Painful Quest
Victims' Families Seek Closure, Justice

By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, September 28, 2006; A01

NEBAJ, Guatemala -- A decade after the conclusion of the long civil war that ravaged this Central American nation, Guatemalans are literally trying to dig up their past.

Spurred by a surge of requests from victims' families this year, dozens of forensic anthropologists have been fanning out across the countryside to search for remains of the 200,000 people -- most of them Mayan Indian civilians -- who were killed or abducted during the 36-year conflict.

Many were massacred by military forces and dumped into mass graves. Others were buried hurriedly in unmarked, secret locations by relatives anxious to avoid rampaging troops.

About 40,000 victims simply disappeared after being seized by government operatives.

Nearly every day brings another grisly discovery: skulls of toddlers executed with gunshots to the head; corpses of young men whose necks are still looped with the garrotes used to strangle them. Nearly every week brings another funeral packed with weeping relatives: once-youthful widows now wrinkled and gray, children long since grown to adulthood.

Meanwhile, in a cavernous, damp warehouse in Guatemala's capital, investigators wearing protective masks and surgical gloves are combing through piles upon piles of mildewed documents from a recently discovered secret police archive, hunting for clues to the fate of the disappeared.

The current effort is hardly the first probe of wartime atrocities since peace accords ended the conflict in 1996. But its scope and pace are unprecedented in a country where those responsible have enjoyed near impunity. Only two military officials have been imprisoned for war crimes, according to human rights activists, despite findings by a U.N. commission that government and allied paramilitary forces committed nearly all of the atrocities.

Much of the bloodletting occurred in the late 1970s, when the military-backed dictatorship that had been battling leftist guerrillas expanded its targets to include anyone critical of the government -- including students, priests and union members. But the slaughter reached its peak in the early 1980s, when the military launched a scorched-earth campaign through the countryside to eliminate any potential support for the guerrillas from the long-oppressed Mayan Indians. Hundreds of villages were burned, livestock destroyed and tens of thousands of people killed.

The remains of fewer than 5,000 victims have been returned to their families.

The anguish of those still searching was palpable among the two dozen Mayan Indians who attended a recent exhumation near this town in the central Guatemalan department of Quiche.

Most were subsistence farmers and manual laborers who could speak only their native Mayan language and could ill afford to take time off from work. Yet day after day they hiked to the grave site atop a mist-shrouded mountain -- the women bearing small children strapped to their backs with colorful blankets, the men shouldering shovels to help the forensic team dig for bodies.
'I Don't Think It's Her'

Jacinto Bernal, a 56-year-old with weathered skin, blinked back tears as he watched an anthropologist brush away dirt from the skeleton of a woman who appeared to be in her thirties and may or may not have been his wife, Maria Perez. She was gunned down by a military helicopter in 1985, he said, leaving him to raise their four young children on his own.

"I don't think it's her," Bernal muttered miserably. "She was struck in the back of the head, but it looks like this skull has a hole in the front."

There was little else to go on.

Like others who used the spot as a secret burial ground during the 1980s, Bernal had been forced to sneak there after dark and could no longer remember exactly where he had buried his wife's body.

A few feet away, in a different group of peasants, Petrona Bernal, 45, squatted by a grave containing the tiny bones of a young child whom she hoped would prove to be her baby boy. He was born in 1982, shortly after Bernal's village was destroyed.

"We lived on the run," she recalled. "All we had to eat was herbs and flowers."

Malnourished and weak, she had given birth to her son in the forest, only to watch the infant die of hunger days later. Ever since, Bernal said, she has ached to recover the boy's body and give him a proper Christian burial.

Until now, she had not dared to return to the secret grave site. Many members of civil defense patrols who carried out atrocities at the military's behest still live among the communities they once terrorized. Many military leaders who directed the war remain powerful -- including Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, the former dictator who today heads one of the largest parties in the legislature.

Ríos Montt has repeatedly denied ordering the hundreds of massacres documented during his 1982-83 tenure and has even questioned whether they took place. Forensic workers, lawyers and activists seeking to uncover war crimes have also faced repeated threats. Several have been killed.

But thanks in part to an infusion of foreign funds, private forensic teams and grass-roots organizations dedicated to helping indigenous peoples have expanded their efforts to file claims with the state to authorize exhumations.

The campaign also received a boost in 2004 when the newly elected president, Óscar Berger, publicly apologized to the victims of wartime atrocities on behalf of the government. He has established a commission to compensate them as well as help fund some of the forensic work this year.

Back in the late 1990s, noted Fredy Peccerelli, head of the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation, his organization was a tiny outfit able to conduct only about 10 exhumations a year. This year his staff of 80 has already reached 120 sites. They expect to recover about 450 bodies by the end of this year, and about 1,000 per year in the near future.

Even so, at that rate it will take decades to recover even a fraction of the total number of victims.

Finding and identifying the 40,000 who went missing is an even greater challenge. Many were pulled off buses or back roads and taken to military bases far from their home provinces to be tortured by interrogators.

Of the 650 bodies Peccerelli's group has recovered from exhumations at military bases, only 220 have been identified. The rest are being stored in stacks of cardboard boxes at the foundation's headquarters, awaiting a new initiative to collect and compare DNA samples from victims and their relatives that Peccerelli hopes to begin soon.
A Massive Police Archive

Another potential source of leads is the recently discovered secret police archive. Deputies of Guatemala's human rights ombudsman stumbled upon it accidentally in July 2005 when they were investigating complaints that explosives were being unsafely stored in the area.

The documents number more than 80 million pages and date as far back as the 1880s. Stacked from floor to ceiling in room after room, they have been badly damaged by water, rats and insects, and do not include records from precincts in several regions where the worst atrocities occurred. However, buried in the mountains of paper are priceless finds like death certificates for unidentified bodies found by police. By comparing the fingerprints on the certificates with those on the national identity cards of missing victims, said Peccerelli, "you can find if there's a match and then search for the body at a specific cemetery."

Alberto Fuentes, who is overseeing the preservation and analysis of the archives, said investigators have also come across a few arrest warrants for people detained for "political crimes" who later turned up dead -- including grandmothers and babies.

But he cautioned that it would take time to find enough documents in the archives to mount a legal case against their killers. "This is a project of 20 years," he said.

The evidence generated by the recent exhumations has also failed so far to spur a rise in prosecutions.

"We still have a weak state that is scared of the military," said Frank LaRue, one of Guatemala's leading human rights advocates. "Local prosecutors are authorizing the exhumations. But when the results come in, they don't initiate criminal proceedings. So we're having all these exhumations but no trials."

Even if prosecutors were to open cases, convictions could be hard to achieve. While Guatemalan judges have sentenced some members of the civil defense patrols, suits against those who issued their orders have been tied up in legal wrangling or languished in the attorney general's office for years.

Efforts by Guatemalans to obtain justice from foreign courts have also met with obstacles. In July, Judge Santiago Pedraz of the Spanish National Court issued arrest warrants for eight former military officials, including Ríos Montt, on charges of genocide, torture, terrorism and illegal detention. Guatemalan authorities have not acted on the warrants, and Guatemalan courts blocked Pedraz from deposing the accused during a fact-finding trip in June.

Nonetheless, Peccerelli remains hopeful, pointing out that it took years of activism and hundreds of exhumations just to get the government to admit that civilians had been killed. "Now it is accepted that those massacres occurred," he said. "We're just waiting for the next step, and we know that the work we're doing will contribute."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Please come prepared for Wed. Quiz.

The PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) ruled México for more than 70 years. Using the concept of 'hegemony,' discuss how a political party/ruling class, maintains itself in power. Discuss how such hegemony is challenge and finally replaced. Use at least four specific examples from Mexican history.

I will be looking for the following information:

1. Definition of Hegemony
Hegemony: control or dominating influence by one person or group over others. Hegemony has been understood as being constituted by a combination of force and consent. A strong hegemony is one that does not depend on force, and instead relies on the use of education, the media, religion, and other means which influences a person's / group's thinking.

2. How the PRI established its hegemony after the Mexican revolution. Lazaro Cardenas, Corporatist/Clientist system.

3. Specific examples from Mexican history. The 'earthquakes' that shook the foundations of the PRI and that 'woke up' Mexican civil society.
A. 1968 Student Massacre at Tlatelolco. B. 1982 Economic crisis, economic restructuring, the rise of the technocrats. C. 1985 Mexico City Earthquake, the awakening of civil society. D. 1988 Election fraud against Cuahutemoc Cardenas, E. 1994 NAFTA

Also, we won't have class Friday Oct. 20th.

I need time to correct your papers and do lesson plans, so we won't be having class this Friday October 6th.
Peace.