To erase our presence: the growing political force in this country

by Fernando A. Torres
Special for El Reportero

The incorporation of the question about the migratory status into the Census 2020 that the presidency is trying to impose is still in legal dispute. The first legal opinion in this regard was that of Jesse Furman, a federal judge in New York who rejected its inclusion. The appeal to this decision, from the Trump administration to the Supreme Court, has not yet been answered by the highest court.

To date, five additional lawsuits have been filed throughout the country, one in California where the attorney general, Xavier Becerra, described the question as not just a “bad idea” but “illegal. Obviously the interests of California and our entire country are interested in having a precise census,” said Becerra.

Due to this question, experts have estimated that hundreds of thousands of people will not respond to the census out of fear. “I am pleased that a federal judge rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to undermine the United States Constitution by discouraging whole communities from being included in the 2020 Census,” said State Senator Richard Pan. “The judicial ruling of today is a victory for all those who believe in democracy and the purpose of the founders of our country. Clearly, the interests of California and our entire country are interested in having a precise census, “he added.

In a recent national teleconference organized by Ethnic Media Services with leaders and experts from various social organizations at the national level, Angela Manso, Director of Political and Legislative Affairs of the National Association of Elected and Appointed Latino Officials, NALEO, Fund for Education , said that from the first moment of the announcement of the Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross about the inclusion of the question, it was seen as a “machination to hide a political intention, We believe that (the question) was designed to erase our presence, the growing political force in this country. ” Manso also warned that Congress should act to pass legislation and eliminate the question once and for all.”

Experts agreed that Commerce Minister Wilbur Ross “gave in to political pressure” and in March 2018 he ordered the question to be added to the census form. The secretary said that this was necessary to effectively enforce the Voting Rights Act “but we know that this is not true and Judge Furman also knows that,” said Beth Lynk, Director of the Census Campaign of the Leadership Conference.

In his decision of Jan. 15, the judge found that the real reason for adding the question about his immigration status was somewhat different from the reason given by Ross. Speaking by telephone with a group of mostly ethnic media journalists, Lynk said the judge came to the conclusion that the secretary’s decision was illegal and will reduce the participation of those who are not immigrant citizens and Hispanic communities.

Judge Furman wrote in his opinion that “if the question is included, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people will not be counted in the census,” the data collected will be of lower quality and will damage the rights to federal funds, weaken representation in Congress and will undermine participation within the municipal political power. “The court could infer the various ways in which Minister Ross and his aides acted as people with something to hide, that they had something to hide,” Furman wrote.

Meanwhile, local leaders also rejected the inclusion of the question and some considered it as part of a campaign to exclude important political forces.

For university professor Rick Ayers the purpose of the Presidency is to crush the growing strength of the electorate of the various ethnic groups. “Many, if not most, of the Latino respondents, as well as those in Africa and Asia, probably do not respond to the census at all.” Therefore, these communities will not have a political representation according to the demographic reality.

And the numbers indicate that Latinos are becoming a powerful political force in the country. According to a report released last week by the PEW Research Center, Latinos will be the nation’s largest ethnic voting group qualified to vote in the presidential elections. For the 2020 election year, Latinos with the right to pay will be 32 million, African-Americans will be 30 and Asians 11 million, double the data for the year 2000.

Nearly two-thirds of Asian-Americans “express concern about the use of census data,” said John Yang, executive director of Asian-Americans Advancing in Justice (AAJC). The 41 percent was extremely worried. “There is great fear for anti-immigrant sentiment inside the country,” Yang concluded.

This is part of a “generalized Republican campaign to suppress African-American and Latino votes – a campaign that includes intimidation … is another racist initiative of the current offensive of white supremacy in the United States,” said Ayers, who works at San Francisco State University.

“I’m not surprised that they seek to change the parameters of one of the most impartial and economically significant institutions for all of society, such as the Census,” said Edgar Ayala, well-known graphic designer of the Bay Area. “A desperate gesture on the part of those who, from an Anglo-Saxon supremacy ideology, unsuccessfully try to tear down those social bridges that make us participate in the constant multicultural and radically diverse construction of this country, north of the American continent,” he added.

“For many immigrants, even those who enjoy the precious documents, the memory of state persecution is on the surface and any delivery of additional information is perceived with suspicion,” said the singer of the city of Richmond Marci Valdivieso.

Giving information “is not only scary but also a direct threat to the integrity of the family since any cross-cutting use of that information among government agencies can result in deportation. And we are not going to say that the line of legality is never crossed here when the xenophobic, racist and excluding perceptions of some people in positions of authority are at stake. For all this, I join the voices of those who insist that this question is unnecessary, “said Valdivieso.

“This country does not consult: it imposes. Inside and outside its borders “said theater actor Carlos Barón.
“What they are trying to do is to intimidate immigrants – whether they are documented or not – and thus manipulate the elections. Who are behind that move? Conservative political groups. Fear rules in this country, “Baron said.

Mexico is providing them with one-year humanitarian visas

by Mexico News Daily

Immigration authorities have now registered more than 10,000 migrants at the southern border as part of a new government program that has been described by an official as “super successful.”

The National Immigration Institute (INM) announced on Twitter today that it registered 8,446 requests for humanitarian visas from adult migrants currently in Chiapas and 1,897 requests from minors in just six days.

Many of the migrants crossed into Mexico last week as part of a new caravan that left San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on Jan. 14.

Some of them entered Mexico illegally and continued walking to Tapachula but later returned to the border crossing to regularize their immigration status. Some returned in buses provided today by the federal government.

Of 10,343 migrants, 75 percent are from Honduras while most of the remainder are from Guatemala and El Salvador, although the total also includes a small number of Nicaraguans, Haitians, Brazilians and Cubans.

INM chief Tonatiuh Guillén told the newspaper La Jornada that the initiative to offer humanitarian visas to the migrants has been successful and will continue, explaining that it is part of the federal government’s new immigration policy.

“I understand that for Donald Trump it’s not his ideal scenario and that he prefers another vision but this is Mexico’s sovereign decision and we hope that it also has an impact on reducing human trafficking,” he said.

“It’s been a super successful program, it’s really establishing a new paradigm in Mexico’s immigration policy that is based on Mexico’s laws and the country’s international commitments,” Guillén added.

The humanitarian visas, which allow migrants to work in Mexico and access services for a period of 12 months, are issued five days after the INM receives the requests.

Once in possession of the visa, the migrants are able to move legally throughout the country, meaning that if their goal is to apply for asylum in the United States, they can travel to the northern border.

“The objective on our part is for their entry to be regular, for all of them to have their legal situation in order and for them to consider Mexico as an alternative for employment,” Guillén said while in Chiapas to oversee the issuing of visas.

An added benefit of the visa scheme, he said, was that it allows authorities to know who is in the country.

“… For the first time, we’re going to know who has crossed into Mexico . . . and obviously we’ll have the possibility of identifying those who have a legal problem in Mexico or in another country,” Guillén said.

Thousands of Central American migrants are already in cities on Mexico’s northern border, especially Tijuana, where they face long waits for the opportunity to request asylum with United States authorities.

It is unclear how many of the cohort currently in Chiapas will also attempt to reach the Mexico-U.S. border and how many will choose to remain in Mexico.

Salvadoran migrant Aura Guinea, who is traveling with her five-month-old daughter, told CBS News today that she saw the humanitarian visa as a means to get to the United States and that she remained determined to do so.

However, a Honduran woman said that she would stay in Mexico because Trump doesn’t want people like her in the United States.

She said she hoped to be able to find a better paying job in Mexico than in Honduras, where she earned just US $2 a day washing dishes.

Trump, who has accused Mexico of doing nothing to stop migrants from reaching the United States’ southern border, is currently locked in a bitter battle in the United States over funding for his long-promised border wall.

“Build a wall and crime will fall,” he tweeted today.

Source: La Jornada (sp), CBS News (en).

In other related caravan news:

Government is monitoring new migrant caravan from Honduras
Senior official says they won’t be allowed to ‘bang down the door’

The federal government is determined to avoid any repeat of violence on the southern border, a high-ranking official said yesterday as a new migrant caravan set out from Honduras bound for the United States.

Alejandro Encinas, undersecretary for human rights, migration and population in the Secretariat of the Interior, said the government has a clear strategy with which to receive the next migrant caravan and warned that its members will not be permitted to “bang down the door.”

A clash between Central American migrants and Mexican police on the Mexico-Guatemala border near Tapachula, Chiapas, in October resulted in the death of one Honduran man.
Thousands of migrants reached Mexico’s southern border in the final months of last year as part of several migrant caravans.

Many of them entered Mexico illegally, some by wading or floating across the Suchiate River, which separates Chiapas from Guatemala.

Large numbers of migrants are now stranded on Mexico’s northern border, especially in Tijuana, where they face a long wait for the opportunity to request asylum in the United States.

Interior Secretary Olga Sánchez Cordero said earlier this month that the government is reinforcing the southern border to guarantee that migrants’ entry into Mexico is safe, orderly and regulated, a strategy reiterated by Encinas yesterday.

“Everybody has the right to human mobility, to orderly, safe and regulated migration, and he who enters in a regular manner… will have no impediment…” he said.

Source: El Sol de México (sp), Associated Press (sp).

by David Bacon

NAFTA had been in effect for just a few months when Ruben Ruíz got a job at the Itapsa factory in Mexico City in the summer of 1994. Itapsa made auto brakes for Echlin, a U.S. manufacturer later bought out by the huge Dana Aftermarket Group. In the factory, asbestos dust from brake parts coated machines and people alike. Ruiz had hardly begun his first shift when a machine malfunctioned, cutting four fingers from the hand of the man operating it.

It seemed clear to Ruiz that things were very wrong, so he went to a meeting to talk about organizing a union. When Itapsa managers got wind of the effort, they began firing the organizers. Nevertheless, many of the workers joined STIMAHCS, an independent democratic union of metalworkers.

Itapsa workers filed a petition for an election, but then discovered that they already a “union” – a unit of the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM). They’d never seen the union contract – in essence, a “protection contract,” which insulates the company from labor unrest.

The plant’s HR manager told Ruiz that Echlin management in the U.S. said any worker organizing an independent union should be immediately fired. “He told me my name was on a list of those people,” Ruiz recounted, “and I was discharged right there.”

Nevertheless, there was a vote, in September 1997, to decide which union workers wanted. But before the election, a state police agent drove a car filled with rifles into the plant. Two busloads of strangers arrived, armed with clubs and copper rods. During the voting, workers were escorted by CTM functionaries past the club and rifle-wielding strangers. Some workers were forcibly kept in a part of the factory to keep them from voting. At the polling station, employees were asked aloud which union they favored, in front of management and CTM representatives.

STIMAHCS tried to get the election canceled. But the government body administering it, the Conciliation and Arbitration Board (JCA), went ahead, even after thugs roughed up one of the independent union’s organizers. Predictably, STIMAHCS lost.

For 20 years the Itapsa election has been a symbol of all that’s gone wrong with Mexico’s labor law, which provides protection on paper for workers seeking to organize but which has been routinely undermined by a succession of governments bent on using a low-wage workforce to attract foreign investment. Dana Corporation was just one beneficiary – Itapsa has been the norm, not the exception.

In 2015 thousands of farm workers struck U.S. growers in Baja California. Instead of recognizing their new independent union, however, growers signed protection contracts with the CTM, which were certified by the local JCA. Strikers were blacklisted. Later that year workers tried to register an independent union in four Juarez factories. Some 120 workers making ink cartridges for Lexmark were fired, as were another 170 at ADC Commscope, and many more at Foxconn and Eaton.

The labor board declined to reinstate the fired workers in Juarez and Baja – following the pattern it had set at Itapsa two decades earlier. Indeed, the JNCs have been key to the defeat of workers’ attempts to form democratic unions, invariably protecting employers and corporate-friendly unions.

The new Mexican government, headed by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), says that’s all over. Deputy Secretary of Labor in the new administration, Alfredo Dominguez Marrufo, promises that, “after all these struggles, we can finally get rid of the protection contract system. We can make our unions democratic, choose our own leaders and negotiate our own contracts. This government will defend the freedom of workers to organize.
That right has existed in theory, but we’ve had a structure making it impossible. This will change.”

That could have a big impact on political life in Mexico, where corporate union leaders have had an inside track to political power and corruption. It could change the dominating role U.S. corporations have played in the Mexican economy, and affect relations between workers in both countries. Most of all, it would raise a standard of living for workers that Lopez Obrador has called “among the lowest on the planet.” In his speech to the Mexican Congress during his December 1 inauguration, the new president charged that 36 years of neoliberal economic reforms had lowered the purchasing power of Mexico’s minimum wage by 60 percent. Today, on the border, that wage comes to a little above $4 per day. (President López Obrador announced that salaries in border states with the US would increase the minimum wage twice as much).

According to University of California Professor Harley Shaiken, “The Mexican government created an investment climate that depends on a vast number of low wage-earners. This climate gets all the government’s attention, while the consumer climate – the ability of people to buy what they produce – is sacrificed.”

Protecting corporations from demands for higher wages has made Mexico a profitable place to do business. Big auto companies, the world’s major garment manufacturers, the global high tech electronic assemblers – all built huge plants to take advantage of Mexico’s neoliberal economic policies, starting more than two decades before the negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

That wild-west climate for investors produced more than low wages, however. Between 1988 and 1992, 163 Juarez children were born with anencephaly – without brains – an extremely rare disorder. Health critics charged that the defects were due to exposure to toxic chemicals in the factories or their toxic discharges. The Chilpancingo colonia below the mesa in Tijuana where the battery plant of Metales y Derivados was located experienced the same plague.

(Due to the length of this article, it has been cut to fit space. You can read the full piece at: https://prospect.org/article/new-day-mexican-workers).