Bush Floats Bad-Faith Immigration Plan as U.S. Celebrates Cesar Chavez Holiday
And to make matters worse, the White House floats this impossible plan on the eve of the Cesar Chavez holiday, a legal holiday in 4 states which commemorates the great civil rights leader's March 31, 1927 birthday.
My guess is that the Washington D.C. establishment just doesn't understand..... or doesn't care... that Cesar Chavez is a highly revered figure in the southwest U.S. and well beyond. And like Martin Luther King, Jr,. who supported Chavez' drive for justice for Latinos, Chavez was much-reviled in his day. The great ones usually are...
Celebrating Cesar Chavez Day, March 31
Cesar Chavez Holiday parade and birthday breakfast celebration will be held in Los Angeles on Saturday, March 31, and will doubtlessly be attended by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony, who both worked with Chavez.
And in Phoenix, Arizonans will mark the Chavez Holiday with a weekend-long celebration featuring "a variety of music, food, entertainment, an education and housing fair, national leaders and a community service village to carry on Cesar’s legacy of civic engagement."
Again this year, "... high school and college students skipped classes in Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles this morning and marched to demand an expansion of the holiday commemorating Cesar Chavez's birthday," per the Los Angeles Times.
And a powerful grassroots movements has arisen to push to make March 31 a National Cesar E. Chavez Holiday. CLICK HERE to sign the petition to President Bush and Congress to establish a national holiday to recognize the man Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s dubbed "one of the heroic figures of our time."
At the California Democratic Party website, Christine Chavez writes movingly of her grandfather's legacy at A Different Vision of a Union Movement.
Slave Wages, Poor Working Conditions, But No Legal Residency
Yes, just as the Latino community celebrates Cesar Chavez Day, the White House quietly began circulating a "reform" plan that would require all 12 million undocumented workers and their families now in the U.S. to return to their home countries and pay a $10,000 fine before they can be considered for legal U.S. resident "green card" status... much less actual citizenship.
But of course, under the Republican proposal, these undocumented workers can still stay here under 3-year visas and work under poor, unsafe conditions for slave wages to fatten profits for U.S. corporations. They can be used... they just can't stay once they've outlived their usefulness.
Cesar Chavez would be livid. And he wouldn't stand for it.
In 2007, I plan to more fully explain the issues facing undocumented workers. I'm a Los Angeles native, and have lived my entire here. Perhaps because daily, Los Angelenos experience the challenges, charades and cruelties of immigration, we view it differently than much of our country.
In summary, though, I fully agree with the Los Angeles Times' #1 New Year's wish, as editorialized on January 1, 2007, for:
"Sensible immigration reform that addresses the nation's economic needs and the facts on the ground, not the needs of xenophobic media personalities or Midwestern politicians.With an election out of the way, perhaps congressional deliberations will be more realistic."
Celebrate Cesar Chavez Day this weekend. Si se puede!
Related Reading
Profile of Cesar Chavez, Latino Champion of Civil Rights
Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony Pledges to Defy House Immigration Bill
Childrens' Book on Cesar Chavez (Labor Issues)
Illegal Immigration Explained - Profits & Poverty, Social Security & Starvation
Comments
Did You Know that Cesar Chavez Fought AGAINST Illegal Immigration?
Cesar Chavez fought against illegal immigration because of what he knew it did to our wage base and quality of life.
The truth is that the billionaire class in Mexico uses illegal immigration as a pressure-escape valve to keep the social/political control that they have over Mexico.
Those that posses the fortitude and determination to fight their way into our country are those most feared by the Mexican billionaire class. Were these illegal immigrants to stay home, they would be the most revolutionary Mexican citizens.
The very best way to fight the wage devastation that illegal immigration delivers to America’s poor is to back sanctions against US employers of illegal immigrants and NOT attack or jail the illegal immigrants, themselves.
With enforced sanctions against US employers, illegal immigrants will return to Mexico and other countries of their own accord, without coercion.
How Illegal Immigration Hurts the Poor
Wages and Poverty
Because immigration increases the supply of U.S. labor, it reduces wages or makes jobs more scarce for natives. Job competition between immigrants and natives is especially fierce at the bottom of the labor market, because so many immigrants are employed in the low-skilled/low-wage segments of the economy. When the average American wage exceeds the average Mexican wage by a factor of ten, even the most menial American job can be a forceful inducement to emigrate.
The large number of immigrants with low levels of education means that immigration policy has dramatically increased the supply of workers with less than a high school degree. Although immigrants comprise about 12 percent of America’s workforce, they account for 31 percent of high school dropouts in the workforce. This means that any effects on the wages or job opportunities of natives will disproportionately affect less-skilled workers. Immigrants are 60 percent more likely to be employed in low-skilled occupations than are native-born workers.
As a consequence, poverty in the U.S. is increasingly being driven by immigration policy. Between 1979 and 1997, immigrant households increased their representation in the U.S. population by 68 percent, but over that same period their share of the total poor population increased 123 percent. And the gap between the immigrant and native poverty rates is widening - this gap tripled between 1979 and 1997.
One of the factors that is thought to mitigate the consequences of immigrant poverty is entrepreneurship, with immigrant small businessmen supposedly recharging our nation’s creative spirit. Unfortunately, research shows that while immigrants were once significantly more entrepreneurial than natives, that is no longer true.
more
http://cis.org/topics/wagesandpoverty.html
I think that us hispanics should be getting fair treatment instead of getting hated on