Issue link: https://nnumagazine.uberflip.com/i/198762
Immigration 7/25/06 12:30 AM Page 19 Organized labor must understand that immigrant workers' issues are all workers' issues, and lead the way for real reform. by fernando losada [ ] Common Cause TAM NGUYEN, RN W orking people are standing up and being counted in numbers never before seen in the United States. In every region of the country, from New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles to Houston, Bethesda, and Birmingham, working people have recently marched and rallied in record numbers, not for labor rights, per se, but for civil rights and for freedom from persecution for the "crime" of working. These working people are immigrants, and you could argue that the very definition of an American is "immigrant." The U.S. has prided itself on being a haven for the persecuted and destitute from other lands. As the well-known inscription on the Statue of Liberty states, "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!" And so it had been for the mostly European immigrant groups of previous generations, most who arrived here without visas and as, in today's parlance, "undocumented immigrants." Throughout U.S. history, the government has provided paths to citizenship for the undocumented. But not so today. Tinged with racism, cultural isolationism, and calls for militarization of our borders, the official response has been far less welcoming than the words of Lady Liberty. If there is one point of agreement across the political spectrum on the issue of immigration, it is that most of the approximately 12 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. have arrived as economic refugees. As the ranks of the world's destitute have swelled, free trade agreements and World Bank structural adjustment policies have institutionalized the downward spiral for both urban and rural workers. This is particularly true of Mexico, where the North American J U LY 2 0 0 6 Free Trade Agreement has driven an estimated 15 million peasants off the land by allowing cheap, U.S. government-subsidized corn and other basic crops to flood the national market, according to the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Between the time NAFTA passed in 1994 and 2001, an estimated two million Mexican jobs have disappeared. In stark contrast to the Mexican stock market's meteoric rally, real wages in Mexico have fallen 40 percent since 1994 and one-third of the nation's workforce currently makes less than the minimum wage of about $4 per day. This massive dislocation and the stark contrast across borders have pushed millions to leave their homes, families, and communities for low-wage work in the U.S. Since the U.S. limits visas through a quota system—and then only to those individuals who can prove substantial economic assets—it is practically impossible for the vast W W W. C A L N U R S E S . O R G REGISTERED NURSE 19