Recently in U.S. Economic Policy Category

I'm happily returning from my blogging hiatus this week to make a common-sense argument: passing the DREAM Act is not only the right thing to do, but in these trying economic times it is also the sensible thing to do. 

I am such a passionate advocate for the DREAM Act that I often forget there are people in this world that don't know what the DREAM Act is.  According to Wikipedia:

The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act (also called "The DREAM Act") [is] a piece of proposed federal legislation in the United States that would provide certain immigrant students who graduate from a [U.S. high school], are of good moral character, arrived in the US as children, and have been in the country continuously for at least five years prior to the bill's enactment, the opportunity to earn conditional permanent residency.

Wikipedia (23 March 2009)

The National Immigration Law Center also has a basic information sheet (pdf) that I print out and give to people who are not familiar with the DREAM Act.  I don't go into any migration-related meeting without it.  In 2007, I pushed hard for the DREAM Act when it was introduced  in the U.S. Senate, and I was crushed when it failed.  Migrant youth cannot wait any longer.  The time to pass the DREAM Act is now. 

Award-winning author and photojournalist David Bacon spoke here in D.C. last night at the AFL-CIO about his new book Illegal People: How globalization creates migration and criminalizes immigrants.

Bacon is emphasizing the need to frame the immigration debate in this country within its larger context (economic globalization).  It's globalization that is the cause of so many people having to migrate in the first place.  If earlier migrants (i.e. people already here in the U.S. whose families migrated in previous generations) understand the reason why people in other countries are having to come here now, I think we will be able to have a more rational debate about how to create more humane policies and reduce human suffering all around.  Globalization and immigration are different parts of the same story.  To speak of one without the other is to give only a partial telling of that story. 

One large step for migrant kind.  Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre is reporting that the Federal Trade Commission laid the smack-down on those pesky prepaid calling cards that advertise more minutes than they actually offer.  This is a major victory for migrants whose only connection to their home, sometimes, are these cheap calling cards.  Hopefully this is one less way that migrants will get ripped off in the future.  If you don't read spanish, USA Today also has an article on this.

Today on NOVA, I heard the usual outrage. Asked if an American would work a 12-hour day in a [dangerous, highly exploitative , blood-slick, bone-chilling, puke-inducing] meat packing plant for $6.25 an hour, the caller yelled, irate: “No! Americans won’t work for that! ‘Illegals’ are holding down the wages at these places!”

Whoever he is, he doesn’t know whether to wind his watch or run.

He could be any Anglo camped outside the Macehualli Worker’s Center in North Phoenix. We may even have seen him pounding his flagpole, screaming curses through his bullhorn at the (obviously legal) immigrants waiting inside the chain link fence for somebody like us to give them a day job. He might even have been Rick Galeener himself, that sun-addled, publicly urinating , dried up, racist old rattlesnake who, probably, was the guy videotaping my license plate and my face as I got out to make arrangements with Sal Reza , the tough and beloved de facto leader of pro-migrant Phoenicians.

I wanted to say to him, “So Ricky baby. You’re saying you “Christian patriots” do want to pay $15 a pound for raw, uncut chicken, right?” Guys like Galeener can’t have it both ways. No undocumented, exploited immigrants, no $1.99/lb roasters. No $4.95 Church’s fried, either, with or without jalapenos on the side.

This is the bottom line that American racist-nativists happy to have cheap chicken as long as they don’t have to see who provides it aren’t willing to talk about. They don't realize it yet, but the self-limited choice, the sublimely short-sighted and settle-for-nothing choice they offer is this: Grow your own or tolerate “illegals.” Which will it be?

Those of us with considerably higher self esteem and a much more wholesome vision for tomorrow see a way better way. For starters, we don’t advocate exploiting anybody. Read on.