In January 2009, the new president will take office with the hopes and expectations of the American people behind him, and an array of messy unfinished business left by the departing Bush Administration in front.
Profoundly changing the energy sources for our society (see accompanying article on this page) has the potential to create new frontiers of economic opportunity and a path of energy independence that facilitates our leaving Iraq as well as helping resolve conflicts throughout the Middle East. We must push for these intertwined goals, no matter who is elected.
Chief among the many long stalled domestic issues are the economy and the burning question of immigration reform. Organizing support for a pragmatic U.S. policy toward Mexico that benefits the U.S. economy and reduces the pressures that have so distorted U.S. immigration policy in recent years is critical. The fates of more than 12 million undocumented immigrants hang in the balance. During the last two years, Global Exchange has worked to forward the simple truth that any successful U.S. immigration policy must include genuine commitment to developing economic opportunities in Mexico that sustain communities and keep families intact and at home. Over the last year we have organized Congressional briefings, conferences, speaking tours, media appearances, and prior to the November election we are releasing a comprehensive report, The Right to Stay Home: Alternatives to Mass Displacement and ForcedMigration in North America. The report focuses on families and communities in Mexico uprooted by economic forces they neither control nor benefit from.
At home, foreclosure rates exceed those during the Great Depression, food and gas prices have risen sharply, and the financial system is creaking ominously. Many people are hurting; more are scared. American workers' concerns are real and legitimate, but the entry of displaced Mexicans into our labor market is not what threatens our country's well being.
Historically, irresponsible politicians and right wing social movements have used moments of economic insecurity to scapegoat immigrants, shifting attention away from the beneficiaries of, and decision makers responsible for the dilemmas facing working families. Today is no different.
Immigrants did not spark the mortgage debacle that is pushing hundreds of thousands of American families out of their homes. They do not reap the undeserved profits from the spike in gas prices. Nor are they the cause of the escalating health care costs that threaten to destroy the savings of senior citizens and younger workers alike.
On the contrary, says Bill Hing, University of California law professor. In our report, he extensively documents how the labor and entrepreneurial spirit of new immigrants has been a net positive for job growth and better wages among U.S. receiving communities with the highest numbers of immigrants.
Mexican labor has become an indispensable component of our economy and should be safe, legal, and unfettered. Indeed, the only way to guarantee the rights of all workers is to "decouple employment and immigration status", says human rights activist David Bacon who contributed, "Equality and Human Rights, Instead of Displacement and Criminalization" as well as his exquisite photographs to the report: "If employers are allowed to recruit contract labor abroad, and these workers can only stay if they are continuously employed, they will never have enforceable rights." A two-tier labor system also undermines the rights and bargaining power of U.S. workers.
Dealing forthrightly with the causes and effects of unauthorized immigration—something ignored in most reform proposals—will be critical to the political viability and long-term success of immigration reform. That is why the contributions in this report are so important for the U.S. public and policy makers to understand.
Improved conditions in Mexico are essential to stemming the outflow of Mexicans to the United States. Nonetheless, in the short term, the impetus for immediate change may need to come from the United States: Felipe Calderon's administration has demonstrated neither the political imagination nor the will to engage the sustained attention and substantial investment of resources required to stabilize communities and reduce migration pressures at its roots. They may need a push from an incoming U.S. administration with a compelling interest in fundamentally recasting the emotionally volatile and politically gridlocked immigration debate.
The only effective and nonviolent way to reduce immigration is through community and economic development that raises standards in Mexico. Yet both Barack Obama and John McCain have both identified "securing the border" as a top priority. Border fortifications, heightened surveillance, Immigration (ICE) raids, and deportations have a punishing cost measured in death, tax dollars spent, rights violated, and families divided. Ultimately they are ineffective in the face of the powerful economic forces driving immigrants north across the 1,969 miles of our shared border.
The Right to Stay at Home is part of a broad effort to refocus our badly skewed national priorities, and how we respond to this challenge will have a dramatic impact on the future our children and we will live in.
To view or order the report please visit: www.globalexchange.org/the-right-to-stay-home
