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Jeff CrosbyBear Sterns B.S.? Jeff Crosby, president of IUE-CWA Local 201 in Lynn, Mass., has had enough of it. |
‘They Got Walter’
My daughter told me, when I dropped her off at work at Market Basket last week: “They got Walter.” The police, or the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), had come to the supermarket and picked up “Walter.” He was a young Latino who had worked his way up to full-time. Nobody on the job knew where he was taken, and nobody knew why he was taken. In the following days it was said he had a false Social Security number. The large-scale raids were supposed to be aimed at the MS-13 gang, but others, including a union organizer, were caught up, and terror spread through the “New Immigrant” communities like a thunderstorm across the Kansas plains.
White neighborhoods didn’t even know about the raids. But the Latino neighborhoods were deserted. Around the corner from my union hall in Lynn,
Legal residents were affected, as well as those who had crossed the border illegally or overstayed their legal welcome. People knew from the workplace raids in
The night before I heard about Walter from my daughter, I had met with a group of Guatemalans from Lynn who wanted to organize a union. Their story is important to anyone who thinks a massive crackdown on undocumented workers will improve conditions for the rest of us. I’ll call the company Avaricious Inc.
The day after word spread of the raids, 60 percent of the workers did not show up on the job. So Avaricious called a temp agency. They paid less than the regular employees received—top rate after 10 years was about $14 an hour—and, of course, no benefits. Now the workers expect Avaricious to lay many of them off and use the temp agency permanently.
Avaricious thus saves money but, more importantly, is protected from ICE. They no longer are responsible for the “illegals” since they are not the employer of record. ICE would be faced with chasing ever more desperate and impoverished workers through shifting, shadowy scab temp agencies that make Avaricious look like a model employer.
So fear reigns over millions of workers and their families in the United States, making them less likely to stick their heads up and organize unions or file complaints with government agencies. Just this week a Guatemalan construction worker from Lynn fell off a roof and was killed—it turned out he was 17. The problem only gets worse—wages and benefits at the low end of the labor market are dropping and are a downward pressure on all wages. This is where we are headed.
Will this stop undocumented workers like the Guatemalans in Lynn from coming? No. We really need to correct our willful ignorance of our own history if we are going to figure out what to do about immigration.
In 1950, Guatemalans elected the mildly reformist President Jacobo Arbenz. Arbenz wanted to give plantation workers rights to the land under their company houses. This would mean the workers could organize unions without being thrown out of their homes. This angered the Boston-based United Fruit Co., which had enjoyed the unrestricted right to exploit Guatemalan workers at their whim. So in 1954, United Fruit and the CIA organized an invasion from
Many Guatemalans reasonably concluded that the United States would kill them if they challenged the domination of the corporations and headed to the mountains. A 30-year civil war cost 300,000 lives. The U.S. State Department reported to then-President Ronald Reagan that U.S.-funded and -trained government soldiers committed atrocities like throwing babies down wells, in the course of defending “democracy.” More than 400,000 people fled the country, largely to the United States.
Most Guatemalans in
Until conditions improve, immigrants will keep coming. Duh. And it’s a desperate journey. You leave your families. You pay a smuggler $5,000-10,000 to get across the border. Thousands died during the trip. U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Border Patrol funding has multiplied by six since 1990 to $1.6 billion annually before the wall-builders got their hands in our pockets—to no avail. All so you can send a little more than $300 a month to feed hungry mouths at home. You could say that Lynn’s Guatemalans are just making informed market choices, joining the hundreds of millions of workers who search the desolate neoliberal global landscape for work. Simply to eat. Simply to live.
ICE raids will make things worse for immigrants and other workers here in the United States.
There is, of course, another, better choice. Workers at Avaricious could be granted the basic human right to organize a union. Wages and benefits would stabilize and improve. A path to citizenship would bring these workers and their families out from the shadows. Guatemalans already have the highest rate of labor market participation and work the longest hours of any group in Lynn. They could participate in civic life. Businesses on Union Street and even Avaricious would have steady customers and workers. The growing chasm between rich and poor would begin to shrink for the first time in decades as a major downward pressure on wages was eliminated.
These are our choices, at a turning point in our movement’s history. The right choice means fighting not only the haters and their apologists on the right, including the simplistic and intellectually facile harangues of Lou Dobbs. It also means insisting that brothers and sisters in our movement among U.S.-born workers think this through and act accordingly.
A couple of clichés seem appropriate as a conclusion to this column. We need to ask our members to be careful of what they wish for—because we reap what we sow.
That’s how “They got Walter.”
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Where our job go and who is to blame for.
Today America is at war in two fronts, in Iraq and at home, the Iraq war it is nothing compare to the war we have at home, at home our enemy is with-in our Government, the special interest, the big corporation and the Council on Foreign Relations.
The conspiracy to control the American government, the media and some special interest to form the North American Union has become known to more people over the last 15 years. In Dec. 17, 1992, President Bush, Sr. signed NAFTA. President Bill Clinton acknowledges and signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Congress approved NAFTA in 1993. NAFTA became effective in Canada, Mexico, and the United States on January 1, 1994. NAFTA forms the world’s second largest free-trade zone, bringing together 365 million consumers in Canada, Mexico, and the United States in an open market.
A prime benefit of NAFTA for the United States was supposed to be that if economic and social development were spurred in Mexico, Mexicans would be encouraged to stay home rather than come north and undercut American laborers on their own turf. Well the pro NAFTA were wrong now we have over 20 million illegal aliens in our country taken American Workers jobs.
What is responsible for the decline in U.S. wages? Trade is certainly one of the most significant causes, because it hurts workers in several ways. First, the steady growth in our trade deficits over the past two decades has eliminated millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs. Growing trade deficits eliminate good jobs and reduce average wages in the economy. Since then, many more jobs have been lost to NAFTA and other sources of our trade problems, including China, and recently, Europe.
Trade deficits also have a direct impact on wages, especially for non-college educated workers, who make up three-quarters of the U.S. labor force. The average real wage for U.S. production workers declined more or less steadily through 2006, to more than 12.2% since 1994, for a worker earning 25,000 this lost will be 3050.00 per year.
The 2006 exports to Canada ($230.6 billion) and the 2006 imports from Canada ($303.4 billion) at 72.8 Billion Dollars deficit trade with Canada.
The 2006 deficit with Mexico ($64.1 billion), exports to Mexico ($134.2 billion) and imports from Mexico ($198.3 billion)
NAFTA is a good deal for the invisible government, that have control on the corrupt politicians that sell-out, now these corrupt politicians want to force on us the North American Union “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America Prosperity Agenda”
To enhance the competitive position of North American industries in the global marketplace and to provide greater economic opportunity for all of our societies, while maintaining high standards of health and safety for our people, the United States, Mexico, and Canada will work together, and in consultation with stakeholders, to: Promote Growth Competitiveness and Quality of Life.
President Bush and all the corrupt politicians want to force on us this SPP agenda. Our experience with NAFTA shows that this type of trade agreement only benefit the invisible government, the American working class is becoming an economic slave, their income is such that they are not earning enough to support their families many have two jobs, their quality of life is on the decline, the middleclass is shrinking and many are underemployed and taken jobs that pay far less that what they use to earn.
This invisible Government, the rich elite and the big corporations and some especial interest are in support of the corrupt politicians that sell-out, to have them continue their agenda, they are expending millions of dollars to convince the American people that they are the best to get our country in the right path.
This invisible government which likes a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation is our enemy with-in. At the head is a small group of banking houses, some big US corporations and some of our elite rich citizens. This little exclusive group runs our foreign policy and our government, for their own selfish ends. It operates under cover of a self-created screen…seizes…our executive officers…legislative bodies…schools…courts…newspapers and every agency created for the public protection.
Why do you think that our President George W. Bush, Home land Security, The US Department of Justice, ICE, The US Dept. Of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security some of our States, Cities, the catholic church and some of the congressmen and senators and elected official are pro open border and amnesty to 20 million illegal aliens ?. Why our own people rally in support of an issue that we all know is destroying our country and our way of life?
The answer is plain and simple, they all sell out to the big corporations, the rich elite, and the special interest, which the Council on foreign Relation control, and they become our enemy with-in, that their objective is to form the North American Union and destroy our sovereign, our constitution and our country. Day after day we experience the destruction of our country, in our schools, our hospitals, our social service and our cities. Our demand for capital to meet expenses of illegal aliens for social services, education, Medicaid, law enforcement and incarceration run into hundreds of billions nation wide.
The Iraq war cost about $10 billion per month (plus another $1.9 billion per month for Afghanistan), and a total accumulated cost by 2017 of between “about $1 trillion to $1.45 trillion” including both wars and other costs of the Global War on Terror. All of that money we have to barrow it and our national debt is over 10.7 trillions and growing.
The Debt Tax
The debt tax is twenty one cents out of every federal tax dollar. This is the amount required to pay the interest on the existing national debt, and pays nothing toward principal.
The U.S. Congress has done this damage to their constituents in a little over twenty years!
Both Houses of Congress have been unwilling or unable to say no to the President’s disastrous economic and foreign policies. Unfortunately for the future of our nation, Mr. Bush has not seen fit to shrink spending. Despite his rhetoric, his actions show controlling spending has certainly not been one of his priorities.
Our trade Deficit is over $ 59 billions per month. In 2006 the bureau said that the trade deficit or gap between what the United States sells abroad and what it imports, reached a new high of $763.3 billion last year, a 6.5 percent increase over the year before. The deficit was fueled by the continuing need for foreign oil and imports of consumer goods from China and other countries.
China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) was supposed to improve the U.S. trade deficit with China and create good jobs in the United States. But those promises have gone unfulfilled: the total U.S. trade deficit with China reached $235 billion in 2006. Between 2001 and 2006, this growing deficit eliminated 1.8 million U.S. jobs (Scott 2007). The world’s biggest retailer, U.S.-based Wal-Mart was responsible for $27 billion in U.S. imports from China in 2006 and 11% of the growth of the total U.S. trade deficit with China between 2001 and 2006. Wal-Mart’s trade deficit with China alone eliminated nearly 200,000 U.S. jobs in this period.
The manufacturing sector and its workers were hardest hit by the growth of Wal-Mart’s imports. Wal-Mart’s increased trade deficit with China eliminated 133,000 manufacturing jobs, 68% of those jobs lost from Wal-Mart’s imports. Jobs in the manufacturing sector pay higher wages and provide better benefits than most other industries, especially for workers with less than a college education.
Jobs lost to outsourcing in the US, while more than 400,000 jobs were sent offshore from January 2000 to August 2006. This only means that more companies in the US find the idea of outsourcing jobs wiser to improve their bottom line and profits. That is why there are a large number of total jobs lost to outsourcing.
Jobs lost to Illegal aliens, Harvard Professor George Borjas has reported that illegal aliens displaced American workers at a cost in excess of $133 billion dollars in 2005. No one cannot convince me that if you paid a decent wage to American workers, that they would not take many of these jobs. Drywall hangers, for example, used to make $18, $20 an hour; now the going rate is $8 to $10 an hour. These are jobs that Americans cannot afford to work in because they cannot afford to live in sub-standard living conditions. On the other hand, people who have no interest in this country, who live with 15 adult males, unrelated, in a one-bedroom apartment…and send most of their money back home – They are more than willing to take those jobs. Corruption is the obstacle to economic and social development. That is why it is important to distinguish between legal and illegal immigration. Illegal aliens send home $24 billions Dollars in 2006, that is $24 billion Dollars out of our economic that should create job for Americans, but benefit other foreign countries economics.
Attention Republican National Committee: I know that Congressman Ron Paul scares you; I understand you’re scared of new ideas. But the thing is, they are old ideas; as old as this country.
You need to realize that many people want Ron Paul for our President, They don’t want your candidates that sell out to the Council on Foreign Relations, we are going in the wrong direction and we need a change of direction.
You think Ron Paul has some radical ideas about getting the government off our backs, ending foreign aid and bringing our troops home to protect this country. Those are not radical ideas really, they are the ideas of George Washington, Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan - they are quintessentially conservative ideas. I know you’ve gotten confused about what conservative means but believe me when I say that neo-conservatism is not conservatism.
Ron Paul is a REAL conservative; listen to the roots of the Republican conservative idea of smaller less intrusive government, lower taxes, and more freedom.
Ron Paul is the only Republican who has staked out popular positions on the two most significant issues of the 2008 election cycle. He is anti-occupation and pro-border control. No amount of Bush administration spin is going to change the fact that “the surge” is strategically irrelevant, that the neocon’s Democratic World Revolution is a total failure and that Mexico is being allowed to invade the United States. In short, Ron Paul is the only Republican whose positions on the two primary issues are different than Hillary Clinton’s stance on them, and, more importantly, are more credible and more popular than Hillary Clinton’s. He is the only Republican whose nomination can realistically be considered a potential impediment to what otherwise looks like a Democratic landslide.
Before you support any candidates you should know which of the 2008 candidates, and potential candidates, are current members of this Council on Foreign Relations organization. You will notice that they are from both of the Democrat Party and the Republican Party, men and women.
They are:
Fred Thompson, Michael Bloomberg, Michael Bloomberg, Rudy Giuliani
John McCain. Mitt Romney, Jim Gilmore, Newt Gingrich, Hillary Clinton
Barack Obama, John Edwards, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson. If any of these candidates become president he or she will pass an amnesty to illegal aliens and the future of the American working class will be one of an economic slave, and our country will be no more it will become part of the North American Union.
Ron Paul is one of the few candidates who are not members of the CFR. We must vote for him to be our next President. We are against the big money of this country, we need your support any amount will help, spread the word Ron Paul is our man.
www.ronpaul2008.com www.ronpaul2008.com
Juan Reynoso
voteforamerica@hotmail.com
3406 Maitland
San Antonio, Texas 78259
210-481-9725
I feel bad for this Walter Character but he should have never been here in the first place. Before we create any guest worker program we need to have accountability. I am totally against the AFL-CIO stance on this issue.