No Human Being is Illegal

Voces de la Frontera1027 S. 5th St.

Milwaukee, WI 53204414-643-1620

info@vocesdelafrontera.netwww.vocesdelafrontera.net

About Voces de la Frontera

• Mission– Community based organization– Organize to protect and improve

the lives of low wage and immigrant workers

More about Voces…

• Services– Citizenship classes– English classes– Legal clinic– Labor Rights Workshops– Leadership development– Referrals to community

resources and agencies– Health & Safety counseling with

OSHA

Why do Immigrants Come Here? The way our global economy is

structured

− First year of NAFTA in Mexico: 80,000 manufacturing jobs created and one million agricultural jobs lost

− Since then, 2 million small farmers forced out of work due to subsidized US agribusiness exports

− Around 28,000 small and medium-sizedbusinesses have been eliminated due to Mega-retailers (such as Wal-Mart) moving into Mexican market(3)

NAFTA passed in 1994

Devastating Effects of NAFTA on Mexico

•Currently, 2,826 maquiladoras, US owns 79%. 300,000 manufacturing jobs at US multinational companies in Mexico moved to China (2003). (4)

•No enforcement labor, safety regulations or environmental standards for U.S manufacturing factories. (5)

•19 million more Mexicans living inpoverty today than in 1994 (6)

•Forced migration: 2.5 million Mexican undocumented in 1995; as of 2006, an additional 8 million crossed the border. (7)

Myths Cont…

• No motivation in Mexico to change the country

• EZLN • Civic campaigns for

democratic elections (8)• UNT –national independent

union federation (9)

“Today we say enough! …we call on all our brothers and sisters to join us on the only path that will allow us to escape starvation caused by the insatiable ambition of a seventy-year-old dictatorship…ready to sell out our country.”

New Year’s Day 1994—Declaration of the Lacandonal Jungle bySubcomandanteMarcos of the EZLN on the day of the signing of NAFTA

– Since NAFTA, 2.5 million manufacturing jobs were lost nationwide in the US. (10)

– Wisconsin was one of the 10 worst hit states as a total share of jobs losing 25,403 jobs and counting. (11)

– According to DOL, two years after losing their jobs: 1/3 held new jobs that paid as well, 1/3 earned 15-20% less, 1/3 dropped out of labor force (12)

Impact of NAFTA on US and Canada

Impact of NAFTA on US and Canada

– More than 38,000 US small farms have gone out of business as a result of NAFTA and overall US farm income has declined (13)

– In Canada, a decade of competition with the United States is eroding social investment in public spending on education, unemployment compensation, and other public services. (13)

Whose benefiting?

• Average CEO in US earned 262 times the wages of the average worker. (14)

• 1965- 24X• 1975 28X• 1985 52X• 1995 100X• 2005 262X

Myths cont.

• Immigrants take jobs from American workers

• 4.5% unemployment in US(15)

• States with higher concentration of undocumented have lower unemployment (16)

• Create jobs (17)

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. –John F. Kennedy

• Immigrants don’t pay taxes• Contribution to Social Security:

$189 billion worth of wages recorded in the suspense file over the 1990's, two and a half times the amount of the 1980's. (18) 

• $7 billion in annual Social Security tax revenue and about $1.5 billion in Medicare taxes. (19)

Myths

"Our assumption is that about

three-quarters of other-than-legal immigrants pay payroll taxes,"

said Stephen C. Goss, Social

Security's chief actuary, using the agency's

term for illegal immigration. 

Immigrants & Taxes (19)

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

Billions annually

Contribute Receive

• Increased border patrol is the solution– From ’86-’98, border patrol’s budget

increased six-fold & number of agents stationed at border doubled to 8,500 while undocumented immigration population doubled at same time. During 80s apprehension rate was 33%, in 2002 it was 5%

– Since 1995, the number of dead on the border has doubled from 254 in 1998 to 472 in 2005

“We must learn to live together as

brothers [and sisters]

or perish together as

fools.”

–Martin Luther King,

Jr.

Myths Cont…

• Armed Vigilantes – Bodies found with gunshot wounds

or bludgeoned

“If our government doesn’t help us boot ‘em,

I guess we’ll just have to up and shoot ‘em!”

Life on the Border

Who profits?

• Companies such as Halliburton, GE, Lockheed, Boeing

• For profit prisons: Corrections Corporation of America, the Geo Group, and Texas based Cornell

• Politicians with shares in companies that benefit from the criminalization and detention of the undocumented.

“we’re asking you to come back and tell us how to do our business…We’re inviting you to tell us how to run our organization.”

Deputy Director of DHS, Michael Jackson speaking to more than 400 defense contractors and industrialists,

Jan. 25, 2006

The System is Broken• We have a discriminatory quota

system from certain countries• Work visas primarily for well

educated immigrants• Prior legal channels of migration

have been taken away by Congress

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with

inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” –Declaration of Independence

Visa Bulletin VISA BULLETIN FOR SEPTEMBER 2007

• Worldwide Family-Sponsored preference limit: 226,000

Fam-ily All Charge- ability Areas Except Those Listed

CHINA-mainland born

INDIA MEXICO PHILIPP- INES

1st 01OCT01 01OCT01 01OCT01 01JAN91 15MAY92

2A 08OCT02 08OCT02 08OCT02 01APR02 08OCT02

2B 01JUL98 01JUL98 01JUL98 08MAR92 15NOV96

3rd 01JAN00 01JAN00 01JAN00 08FEB88 15FEB91

4th 01MAR97 22JUL96 15APR96 01SEP90 01JUN85

Worldwide Employment-Based preference limit: 147,148

FAMILY-SPONSORED PREFERENCESFirst: Unmarried Sons and Daughters of Citizens Second: Spouses and Children, and Unmarried Sons and Daughters of Permanent Residents: Third: Married Sons and Daughters of Citizens: Fourth: Brothers and Sisters of Adult Citizens:

Nothing new…

US Citizenship: Who else has been excluded?

All treaties were broken

Chinese Exclusion Act

In a Thomas Nast cartoon from 1879, an Indian warns a Chinese immigrant about the white solutions to "the Chinese problem." Oregon convention delegates prohibited Chinese from voting and outlawed Chinese new to the state from owning property or mining claims. (Image courtesy assumption.edu)

Yellow Peril (or Yellow Terror) was a racist color metaphpr fpr Chinese and Japanese immigrants in the late nineteenth to mid-20th century. It was believed that the mass immigration of Asians threatened white wages and standards of

living.

Slavery in America

This 1774 broadside, typical of the advertisements used in the North as well as the South before the Civil War, advertises the sale of slaves and land, the availability of employment for an overseer, a recall of debts, and a reward for anyone who captured two runaway slaves.

Southern and Eastern Europeans

This 1891 cartoon expresses the views of those opposed to immigration into the USA. The politician is telling Uncle Sam that "If immigration was properly restricted you would no longer be troubled with anarchy, socialism, the Mafia, and such kindred evils!'" Captions on immigrants in the picture label them :Polish vagabond, Italian brigand, English convict, Russian anarchist, Irish pauper.

Irish Go Home

This cartoon, published in the 1880s, reinforces the stereotype of the Irishman as a combative troublemaker. Uncle Sam reprimands him, "Look here, you, everybody else is quiet and peaceable, and you're all the time a-kicking up a row!"  The editorial that accompanied the cartoon asserted: "the raw Irishman in America is a nuisance, his son a curse. They never assimilate; the second generation simply shows an intensification of all the bad qualities of the first. . . .They are a burden and a misery to this country." 

Impact of Raids on children

A new report Paying the Price: The Impact of Immigration Raids on America's Children released by the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) and the Urban Institute found that for every two people detained in immigration enforcement operations, one child is left behind. Two-thirds of these children are U.S. citizens and a similar share is under age ten.

Mental health experts noted that children's and parents' fears and the events surrounding the raids led to depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, separation anxiety, and suicidal thoughts in children.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Impact of raids on workers• The Bay Guardian on June 13, 2007 revealed that Samuel

Hardage – owner of the Woodfin Suites hotel chain – used his political influence to have Congressman Brian Bilbray persuade the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agency to investigate his very own hotel and workers during a workplace organizing campaign, despite ICE’s written policy not to intervene in labor disputes.

• UFCW union organizing drive in meatpacking plants targeted for ICE raid this year.

• ICE official quoted as referring to Know Your Rights Training as “harboring” illegals.

• ICE conducted raid in 2006 pretending to be OSHA at a workpace training.

The Rise of Nativism today

Nativism:

1 : a policy of favoring native inhabitants as opposed to immigrants

2 : the revival or perpetuation of an indigenous culture especially in opposition to acculturation.

Xenophobia: fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign is a fear of negative attitude toward immigrants, an

This is often catalyzed by other things happening in the society at the time (economic insecurity, demographic changes, political)

The Southern Poverty Law Center has documented a 40 percent increase in the number of hate groups since 2000, an increase that SPLC analysts attribute to the anti-immigrant fervor sweeping the country.

The FBI recently released statistics showing a 35 percent

rise in hate crimes against Latinos since 2003.

Honoring our past

The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus (1849-1887)

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,With conquering limbs astride from land to land;Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall standA mighty woman with a torch, whose flameIs the imprisoned lightning, and her nameMother of Exiles. From her beacon-handGlows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes commandThe air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

• "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries shewith silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Solutions

• Legal channels for migration to address the current population & future flows

• Fix the broken immigration system in a way that is family centered and realistic

• Enforceable environmental & labor protections for trade agreements (NAFTA & CAFTA)

• Strong labor protections regardless of immigration status

What you can do

• Become an active member of VF• Attend town halls• Refer VF for speaking engagements• Contact community leaders & legislators • Vote• Participate in rallies and marches• Write editorials to the paper• Make a donation• Host a movie and discussion• Participate in a border tour• Become active in your labor union• Encourage your church join the New

Sanctuary movement

“Our lives begin to end

the day we become silent

about things that matter.”

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sources• (2) Randall Pinkston, “Is NAFTA good for Mexico’s farmers?,” CBS Evening News, July 1, 2006

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/01/eveningnews/main1773839.shtml

• (3) Jose Maria Imaz, “NAFTA Damages Small Businesses,” El Barzon (Mexico City), Jan. 1997

• (4) Ellen Lenny-Pessagno, “ Mexican Manufacturing Devours U.S. Goods ,” U.S. Commercial Service, Mexico , http://www.buyusa.gov/pittsburgh/mexmanufacturing.html

David Bacon, “Anti-China Campaign Hides Maquiladora Wage Cuts”, February 03, 2003http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=2949

(5) Human Rights Watch, “TRADING AWAY RIGHTS: The Unfulfilled Promise of NAFTA's Labor Side Agreement,” April 2001http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/nafta/index.htm#TopOfPage

Garrett Brown, Speak Out: Portrait of a Failure, NAFTA and Workplace Health and Safety , The Synergist – Monthly magazine of the American Industrial Hygiene Association, August 2004http://mhssn.igc.org/brown_synergist.htm

Sierra Club, “NAFTA's Investor Rights: a Threat to the Environment and our Democracy”http://www.sierraclub.org/trade/nafta/backgrounder.asp

(6) Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan, “Trade Brings Riches, but Not to Mexico’s Poor,” Washington Post, March 22, 2003http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/ffd/2003/0322mexico.htm

(7) Roger Bybee Carolyn Winter, “Immigration Flood Unleashed by NAFTA’s Disastrous Impact on Mexican Economy, Common Dreams News Center, April 5, 2006http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0425-30.htm

Jacob Hill, “Free Trade Immigration: Cause and Effect”, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, July 18, 2007http://www.coha.org/2007/07/18/free-trade-and-immigration-cause-and-effect

(8) Democracy Now interview, Mexico Court Declares Calderon Winner of Disputed Election, Lopez Obrador Vows to Form Parallel Gov't, September 6th, 2006http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/06/1359233

(9) Dan La Botz, “THE FOUNDING OF THE UNT: A PROGRESSIVE STEP FOR MEXICAN LABOR,” Mexican Labor News and Analysis, December 5, 1997, Vol. II, No. 22http://www.ueinternational.org/vol2no22.html

(10) Timi Gerson, Raul Islas, Fiona Wright, and Adalila Zelada, LCLAA and Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, “Another Americas is Possible: The Impact of NAFTA on the US Latino Community and Lessons for Future Agreements,” August 2004

Sources cont. (11) Robert E. Scott, Carlos Salas, Bruce Campbell, Revisiting NAFTA: Still Not Working for North

America’s Workers, Economic Policy Institute, September 28, 2006, Briefing Paper #173http://www.epinet.org/briefingpapers/173/bp173.pdf

(12) USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, “Farms and Lands in Farms 2002,” Feb. 2003, p. 191.

U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statisticshttp://www.bls.gov

(13) Robert E. Scott,“The high price of 'free' trade: NAFTA's failure has cost the United States jobs across the nation,” Economic Policy Institute, November 17, 2003 http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/briefingpapers_bp147

(14) Lawrence Michel, “CEO-to-worker pay imbalance grows,”Economic Policy Institute, June 21, 2006http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_snapshots_20060621

(15) U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, June 2007 http://www.bls.gov

(16) & (17) Robert McNatt and Frank Benassi , Econ 101 on Illegal Immigrants, April 7, 2006. http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/apr2006/pi20060407_072803.htm

The White House, Council of Economic Advisors, “Immigration’s Economic Impact”, June 20, 2007http://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/cea_immigration_062007.html

Congress of the United States, Congressional Budget Office, “The Role of Immigrants in the US Labor Market”, November 2005http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/68xx/doc6853/11-10-Immigration.pdf

(18) By Eduardo Porter, “Illegal Immigrants Are Bolstering Social Security with Billions”, The New York Times, April 5, 2005 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/business/05immigration.html?ex=1270353600&en=78c87ac4641dc383&ei=5090

(19) Reference from Justice for Immigrants, Catholic Campaign for Immigration Reform, http://www.justiceforimmigrants.org/myths.html

original source from National Immigration Forum see: http://www.immigrationforum.org/about/articles/tax_study.html

Randy Capps and Michael Fix, “Undocumented Immigrants: Myth and Reality,” Urban Policy Institute and Migration Policy Institute, October 25, 2005http://www.urbaninstitute.org/UploadedPDF/900898_undocumented_immigrants.pdf

Sources cont.

Jenifer and Peter Wipf, “Top 10 Reasons to File Individual U.S. Tax Returns if you are an Undocumented Immigrant ,”http://immigration.about.com/od/uslegaltroubles/tp/UndocsFileTaxes.htm

Lipman, Francine J. , "Taxing Undocumented Immigrants: Separate, Unequal and Without Representation" . Tax Lawyer, Spring 2006 Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=881584

(21) Douglas S. Massey, Jorge Durand, and Nolan J Malone, Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration,”Russel Sage Foundation, New York, 2002

• (22) Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Project• http://www.splcenter.org/index.jsp

(23) Roberto Lovato, “Sensenbrenner Portfolio—Does Congressman Profit from Undocumented Labor”, October 24, 2006, New America MediaQuote of Michael Jackson- CorpWatch: Border for Sale Immigration Enforcement Benefits Prison Firms by Meredith Kolodner, July 19, 2006

(24) Douglas S. Massey, Jorge Durand, and Nolan J Malone, Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration,”Russel Sage Foundation, New York, 2002