Debating the Raids : A Misstatement and a Disagreement
letters Debating the Raids: A Misstatement and a Disagreement in his article in the november/december issue, “Building the Homeland security state,” roberto lovato says: “david Bacon posits...
...the “comprehensive reform” bills proposed over the last three years all included both vastly expanded guest worker, or bracero programs, and a huge increase in enforcement to punish migration outside of them...
...1 (November 2007...
...despite the regrettable error, the disagreement between lovato and Bacon—on how to interpret the immigrant deportation raids—stands...
...immigration policy then channels that flow of people to areas of the economy where their labor is used, enforces the unequal and second-class status of migrants, and ensures that the price paid for their labor is as low as possible...
...lovato will reply in the next issue...
...it is not enough to criticize the repression of the raids while ignoring the broad program they are intended to advance, or alternatives to it...
...KTTV-FOX Ten O’Clock News aired a similar report...
...what i have said over those years is that immigration enforcement is part of a social, political, and economic system, whose primary purpose is the supply and control of labor...
...that’s like saying the iraq war was fought to profit Halliburton...
...Box 77, Hopewell, PA 16650-0077 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2009 The Minga of Resistance 1. “An Open Letter From the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca, ACIN, to U.S...
...even without these bills being adopted, Bush’s raids are implementing their enforcement provisions by sending workers to prison for crossing the border and for working outside of guest-worker programs...
...continued on page 45) NACLA Report on the Americas (ISSN 104839) is published bimonthly by the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA...
...7. Ibid...
...u.s...
...this enforcement increases pressure on people to accept even lower wages and worse conditions, overwhelmingly benefiting employers...
...migration is a human right, but people should have alternatives for economic development that make migration voluntary, and not the sole means of survival...
...See Douglas McLeod and Benjamin H. Detenber, “Framing Effects of Television News Coverage of Social Protest,” Journal of Communication 49, no...
...2. See “Andes 2020: A New Strategy for the Challenges of Colombia and the Region (A Center for Preventive Action Report)” (January 2004...
...after setting up this straw man, he then proceeds to attack it...
...i spent months this year investigating the most recent wave of raids (“railroading immigrants,” The Nation, september 17...
...in Illegal People i describe this system, showing that trade treaties, structural adjustment policies, and neoliberal reforms displace communities and force millions of people to migrate...
...this investigation shows that the Bush raids program has two primary functions...
...Postmaster: Send address changes to NACLA Report on the Americas, P.O...
...in fact, contrary to lovato’s misstatement, i’ve exposed the false claims of “labor shortages” by employers and their government and lobbyist allies repeatedly over the years in numerous articles, most recently in Illegal People—How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon press, 2008...
...numerous statements by the u.s...
...Beyond the Four Freedoms 1. See the group’s self-published document, “Strategic Leadership: Framework for a 21st Century National Security Strategy,” available at cnas.org...
...and KCBS 2 News at 5, both on May 2. 7. As in: “The president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League released this statement earlier today...
...available at cfr.org...
...Director and Publisher Christy Thornton Editor Pablo Morales Outreach and Circulation Coordinator Joao Da Silva Web Editor Teo Ballvé Senior Analyst Fred Rosen Editorial Committee Kate Doyle, Sujatha Fernandes, Jean Franco, Marcial Godoy-Anativia, Greg Grandin, Jack Hammond, Deborah Poole, George Priestly, Seemin Qayum, Hobart Spalding, Lisa Vives, Greg Wilpert Board of Directors Chair: Eric Hershberg Judith Friedlander, Marcial Godoy-Anativia, Fred Goff, Pierre LaRamée, Mike Locker, Deidre McFadyen, Stuart Rockefeller, Robert M. Siegel, Max Uhlenbeck, Steven Volk Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY and additional mail offices...
...expanding ways for people to come to the united states with rights (not as guest workers...
...immigration policy is not intended to keep that labor out, but to determine the status of people in the places they go...
...Chamber of Commerce, the employer lobbies, and their washington advocates, and even members of Congress in both parties, say the same thing...
...Homeland security secretary michael Chertoff described this plan after the huge raids at swift two years ago, where more than 1,000 workers were picked up for deportation...
...while there’s no doubt that the Bush administration has been pushing guest-worker programs, i have never said that immigration raids are intended to produce a labor shortage...
...4. See Otto Santa Ana, Brown Tide Rising: Metaphoric Representations of Latinos in Contemporary Public Discourse (University of Texas, 2002), chapters 2 and 3. 5. These latter figures do not add up to the overall totals since we do not refer to so-called minor metaphors (which rarely occur) and metaphors that are neither violent nor peaceful...
...there’s more to the war than that, and there’s more to immigration enforcement than contracts and the growth of a repressive bureaucracy...
...6. The Andean Information Network, “Bolivian Coca Growers Cut Ties With USAID,” June 27, 2008: available at ain-bolivia.org...
...3. Council on Foreign Relations, “U.S.–Latin America Relations: A New Direction for a New Reality,” Independent Task Force Report no...
...4. Tony Phillips, “The Bolivian Crisis, the OAS, and UNASUR,” Americas Policy Program Discussion Paper, September 30, 2008, americas.irconline.org/am/5567...
...He never mentions the bills...
...Our officer gave a legal dispersal order and were met with the violence...
...Democracy Promotion’ in Bolivia,” Americas Policy Program column, October 31, 2008, americas.irconline.org/am/5638...
...raids and the criminalization of work and migration enforce immigration policy...
...we are already seeing the resurrection of the corporate “comprehensive reform” proposals...
...this was wholly my own editing blunder, not lovato’s...
...David Bacon Berkeley, California Editor Pablo Morales replies: the sentence that Bacon quotes from lovato’s article does indeed misstate Bacon’s view, as expressed in the Dollars & Sense article that lovato cited (“the real political purpose of the iCe raids,” January/february 2007...
...5. Laura Carlsen, “The Failure of U.S...
...notes (continued from page 2) Bush is simply implementing that program on the ground...
...3 (1999): 3–23...
...lovato argues that the sole economic motivation of enforcement is giving fat contracts to administration cronies like Halliburton...
...38 Greene Street, 4th floor, New York, NY 10013 Tel: (646) 613-1440 Fax: (646) 613-1443 E-mail: info@nacla.org Web: nacla.org The North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) is an independent nonprofit organization founded in 1966 to research the political economy of the Americas and U.S...
...in august he said, “we tried very hard last year to get a guest-worker program, which i continue to believe is not only necessary for the economy but it is actually a way of enabling the enforcement...
...President-Elect Barack Obama,” Santander de Quilichao, Cauca, Colombia, November 10, 2008...
...3. Roger Burbach, “The Rise of Food Fascism: Allied to Global Agribusiness, Agrarian Elite Fomenting Coup in Bolivia,” Global Alternatives News, June 30, 2008, globalalternatives.org/node/87...
...policy toward the region...
...3. LAPD report, 9, 50...
...i was a union organizer for 20 years before that, and have been an immigrant-rights activist during all that time...
...as a journalist i’ve covered immigration raids for 18 years...
...Treating Bolivia as a Sovereign Partner 1. Author interview, October 2008...
...progressive immigrant-rights organizations and most of the labor movement today advocate alternatives that focus on ending employer sanctions, raids, and the criminalization of work and migration...
...first, it terrorizes immigrant workers and their communities, attacking their efforts to organize in the big marches, and in workplace campaigns at smithfield, swift, agriprocessors, Howard industries, woodfin suites, etc...
...That is important...
...for three years progressive immigrant rights activists have fought proposals in Congress that would eliminate those changes in immigration policy that were won in 1964–5 by the Chicano civil rights movement—establishing family reunification as the centerpiece for immigration policy, ending the bracero program, and moving away from contract labor...
...available at mama radio.blogspot.com...
...and rejecting free trade treaties and structural adjustment policies that displace people and force them to leave home...
...available at cfr.org...
...those who have advocated the corporate “comprehensive” bills have claimed that legalization for the undocumented was possible only if we agreed to move backward, transforming immigration policy into a much more overt labor-supply system...
...2. We base our riot-suppression narrative on McLeod and Detenber’s “protest paradigm...
...the production of migration and the use of its labor are part of a single economic system...
...MALA: Framing Peace as Violence 1. The full report, titled “An Examination of May Day 2007 MacArthur Park,” was issued in October 2007 and can be downloaded at lapd online.org/assets/pdf/final_report.pdf...
...Allow me to quote it here...
...they all defend the corporate “comprehensive immigration reform” with big guest-worker programs and stepped-up enforcement...
...In coming days, it will become clear what transpired...
...9. Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Collective Action, Social Movements and Politics (Cambridge University Press, 1994...
...2. Shira Gordon, “Bolivia: Beyond the Rhetoric,” Columbia Political Review 7, no...
...Until then there should be no rush to judgment.’ ” KNBC Channel 4 News at 5 p.m...
...this gives a free pass to the backers of the corporate reform of immigration policy, and drops out any connection to displacement caused by trade and economic policies abroad...
...8. Hillel Nossek, Annabelle Sreberny, and Prasun Sonwalkar, “Introduction,” in Media and Political Violence (Hampton Press, 2007), 1–22...
...See also Kathryn Ledebur and Coletta A. Youngers, “ONDCP Reports No Increase in Coca Cultivation in Bolivia in 2006,” May 23, 2007: available at wola.org...
...letters Debating the Raids: A Misstatement and a Disagreement in his article in the november/december issue, “Building the Homeland security state,” roberto lovato says: “david Bacon posits that the crackdown is purposefully meant to trigger an immigrant-labor shortage, which will eventually enable the government to establish the migration policy it’s been pushing for all along: a temporary guest-worker program...
...the sentence should have read: “david Bacon posits that the crackdown is purposefully meant to trigger a political crisis that will pressure Congress to approve the migration policy the government has been pushing for all along: a temporary guest-worker program...
...guaranteeing real legal status (permanent residence visas) for the undocumented...
...60, (May 2008): 27...
...The clash at MacArthur Park started when officers tried to disperse demonstrators that moved off the sidewalk into the street threw rocks and bottles at officers.’ They go to say: ‘The officers gave a legal dispersal order...
...second, it produces a political crisis to pressure Congress to pass a corporate reform of immigration policy...
...Views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of NACLA...
...what is disturbing about lovato’s misstatement of my work is that he uses it to dismiss the idea that the raids advance any political program beyond the growth of the enforcement bureaucracy itself...
...to justify this, these advocates (including many democrats) claim employers face vast labor shortages if they don’t get the labor they want at a price they want to pay...
...i summarized a key part of the book’s argument in “displaced people—nafta’s most important product,” an article published in the september/october issue of the NACLA Report...
...6. KCAL 9 News at 4 p.m...
...there’s obviously a straightforward solution to the problem of illegal work, which is you open the front door and you shut the back door...
Vol. 42 • January 2009 • No. 1
