CIP Americas

Over the 27 years since IRCA, a general division has marked the U.S. immigrant rights movement. On one side are well-financed advocacy organizations in Washington DC, with links to the Democratic Party and large corporations. They formulate and negotiate over immigration reform proposals that combine labor supply programs and increased enforcement against the undocumented. On the other side are organizations based in immigrant communities, and among labor and political activists, who defend undocumented migrants, and who resist proposals for greater enforcement and labor programs with diminished rights.

Over the last 25 years, guest worker programs have increasingly become a vehicle for channeling the migration that has stemmed from free market reforms. Increasing numbers of guest workers are recruited each year for labor in the U.S. from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean under the H1-B, H2-A and H2-B programs. Recruiters promise high wages and charge thousands of dollars for visas, fees and transportation. By the time they leave home, the debts of guest workers are crushing.

One of the last century’s most notorious despots, Jean-Claude Duvalier, has returned to Haiti after 25 years in exile. The most effective way for the United States and the MINUSTAH-contributing countries of Latin America to help Haiti would be to provide the support it needs to hold accountable those who flagrantly and violently abuse power at the great expense of the Haitian population.

Congress could vote any day now to strike a new blow against already-battered U.S. workers and the unemployed in the form of three Bush-era Free Trade Agreements. The Obama administration and corporate interests are urging their passage. Read why unions and human rights groups say no.

Across the political spectrum, education holds a central place in Haiti’s reconstruction and development plans. The education of children is rightfully their primary concern. But in a nation where 55 percent of adults cannot read or write, according to the United Nations Educational Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the potential value of a large-scale effort to increase their literacy rate is worth considering as well.

An epidemic of forced evictions that began shortly after the earthquake is making life even harder for the countless Haitians that remain in displacement camps. The International Organization for Migration estimates that 233,941 Haitians have been evicted from camps, and that 166,000 of the 680,000 people remaining in camps face an ongoing threat of eviction. They say that the “rapid pace of eviction” is causing people to leave the camps even though they have nowhere else to go. Of the more than 180,000 residential buildings destroyed in the earthquake, only 4,100 have been repaired. Only a fraction of the needed temporary shelters have been built.

Contradictions and complexities abound within the aid industry, causing it to struggle to make headway in a sputtering reconstruction process. The good news is that, unlike a few years ago, there is near unanimity on the need for a strong Haitian state to direct the aid flows. The bad news is that state capacity is wanting — and no one is quite sure how to build it. How do aid agencies act responsibly in the interim with few functional public institutions to coordinate the aid?