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.

A political alliance is developing between countries with a labor export policy and the corporations who use that labor in the global north.

The November vigil to close the School of the Americas (SOA), that U.S. Army training school at Ft. Benning that instructs soldiers and military personnel from Latin American countries,, brought together hundreds of anti-militarization activists from around the hemisphere.

Sebastian Fernandez, 25, a graduate student born in Colombia, works the Spanish information desk of the Occupy Wall Street camp on the edge of Zucotti Park. At the corner of Liberty and Broadway, flanked by hot dog vendors and police barricades, he sits at a folding table laden with Spanish-language copies of the protest’s newspaper, the “Occupy Wall Street Journal”.

Mexico’s peace caravan visits the southern border, where Central American migrants report violence and abuse in their travels north.

By Christine Kovic From July 25 to August 2 of this year, hundreds of Central American migrants, their family members, and activists participated in the Caravan “Step by Step for Peace” to demand respect for immigrant rights.  Part I (here) of this article details the goals of the Caravan, especially its protest of the kidnappings [...]