By Greg Sargent, The Plum Line, Washington Post
September 20, 2013
In a blow to the hopes of passing immigration reform anytime soon, the bipartisan House “gang of seven” plan is probably dead, and almost certainly won’t be introduced this fall as promised, a top Democrat on the “gang” acknowledges.
“It doesn’t appear that we’re going to move forward with the group of seven,” Dem Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a key player on immigration as a member of the gang, said in an interview with me. “The process is stalled. I don’t believe we’re going to produce a bill anytime soon.”[...]
Read the full article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/09/20/in-blow-to-immigration-reform-house-gang-of-seven-bill-looks-dead/
Saturday, September 21, 2013
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Sakuma Berry Workers Need Your Help NOW!
Dignity Campaign, September 18, 2013
The workers at Sakuma Berry Farms north of Seattle are on strike - the fourth strike against the company this season. The company has gone back on its promises of wage increases, and fired Ramon Torres, the leader of the workers' organization, Familias Unidas para la Justicia. Boycott picketlines have gone up at the company's processing plant, and in front of stores in Seattle. Now the company may be moving security guards into the labor camp where the strikers live.
The workers need your help now.
Call Sakuma Farms, and tell them:
Sit down and negotiate with the workers.
Rehire Ramon Torres.
Stop harassing workers in the labor camp.
Guarantee the jobs of the striking workers, this season and next.
Sakuma sells a lot of strawberries for Haagen Dasz ice cream, which is owned by Nestle Foods. Call Nestle, and tell them they are in violation of their principles of social responsibility. They need to tell Sakuma Farms the same thing - sit down with the workers.
Sakuma Farms berries are sold under the Driscoll label. Driscoll needs to do the same thing - to tell Sakuma Farms to sit down and talk.
Workers need your help NOW! If you can only make one call, please make this one.
Sakuma Brothers Farms
360-757-6611
If you can make three more, call Haagen Dasz and Driscoll.
Diane McIntyre, media contact for Nestle Foods
510-601-4338
diane.mcintyre@us.nestle.com
Haagen Dasz
800-767-0120
Driscoll
800-871-3333
The workers at Sakuma Berry Farms north of Seattle are on strike - the fourth strike against the company this season. The company has gone back on its promises of wage increases, and fired Ramon Torres, the leader of the workers' organization, Familias Unidas para la Justicia. Boycott picketlines have gone up at the company's processing plant, and in front of stores in Seattle. Now the company may be moving security guards into the labor camp where the strikers live.
The workers need your help now.
Call Sakuma Farms, and tell them:
Sit down and negotiate with the workers.
Rehire Ramon Torres.
Stop harassing workers in the labor camp.
Guarantee the jobs of the striking workers, this season and next.
Sakuma sells a lot of strawberries for Haagen Dasz ice cream, which is owned by Nestle Foods. Call Nestle, and tell them they are in violation of their principles of social responsibility. They need to tell Sakuma Farms the same thing - sit down with the workers.
Sakuma Farms berries are sold under the Driscoll label. Driscoll needs to do the same thing - to tell Sakuma Farms to sit down and talk.
Workers need your help NOW! If you can only make one call, please make this one.
Sakuma Brothers Farms
360-757-6611
If you can make three more, call Haagen Dasz and Driscoll.
Diane McIntyre, media contact for Nestle Foods
510-601-4338
diane.mcintyre@us.nestle.com
Haagen Dasz
800-767-0120
Driscoll
800-871-3333
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Subcontractor Servitude
Guest workers...offer something hiring a local worker does not: subservience.
By Jennifer Gordon, New York Times
September 1, 2013
THE words “guest workers” and “strike” are not often seen together. Yet twice this summer, members of a group of more than 150 Jamaican guest workers who clean luxury Florida hotels and condos walked off the job. The workers came to the United States in April anticipating a summer of hard work and decent earnings to send home. Instead, they encountered the black hole of labor subcontracting.
Labor-recruitment firms brought the workers from Jamaica to the Florida Panhandle. Cleaning contractors hired them and then leased them out to scrub toilets and sweep sand from floors for vacation property companies.
By the time the workers first went on strike, in June, they had much to protest. [...]
Read the full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/opinion/subcontractor-servitude.html
By Jennifer Gordon, New York Times
September 1, 2013
THE words “guest workers” and “strike” are not often seen together. Yet twice this summer, members of a group of more than 150 Jamaican guest workers who clean luxury Florida hotels and condos walked off the job. The workers came to the United States in April anticipating a summer of hard work and decent earnings to send home. Instead, they encountered the black hole of labor subcontracting.
Labor-recruitment firms brought the workers from Jamaica to the Florida Panhandle. Cleaning contractors hired them and then leased them out to scrub toilets and sweep sand from floors for vacation property companies.
By the time the workers first went on strike, in June, they had much to protest. [...]
Read the full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/opinion/subcontractor-servitude.html
Monday, September 16, 2013
Erik Camayd-Freixas' book on the U.S. immigration reform
By Glady Matthews, Translation and Interpretation in America
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
In the United States, immigration of documented or undocumented individuals underlies the provision of interpreting services for persons who have limited proficiency in English. On May 12, 2008, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency carried out a raid on a meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa, that resulted on the arrest and deportation of 389 undocumented non-national workers. This raid was to be a pilot operation, a model, for future raids. As a court interpreter and human being, I cannot help to consider the Postville raid as a shameful episode in the treatment of immigrants in this country.
Erik Camayd-Freixas is a Federally-certified interpreter who witnessed firsthand these events. He has just released a book -- US Immigration Reform and Its Global Impact: Lessons from the Postville Raid – which presents an insider’s view of the raid. He chose to speak up and comment on the events he witnessed as an interpreter. This post is a way for me to support Erik’s efforts to address a very contentious topic. [...]
Read the full post:
http://translationandinterpretationinamerica.blogspot.com/2013/08/erik-camayd-freixas-book-on-us.html
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Erik Camayd-Freixas is a Federally-certified interpreter who witnessed firsthand these events. He has just released a book -- US Immigration Reform and Its Global Impact: Lessons from the Postville Raid – which presents an insider’s view of the raid. He chose to speak up and comment on the events he witnessed as an interpreter. This post is a way for me to support Erik’s efforts to address a very contentious topic. [...]
Read the full post:
http://translationandinterpretationinamerica.blogspot.com/2013/08/erik-camayd-freixas-book-on-us.html
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Transgender Immigrants Detail Detention Abuse
By Cristina Loboguerrero, El Diario La Prensa
August 29, 2013
Translated by Emily Leavitt, Voices of NY
Transgender individuals face a double whammy when it comes to being jailed in immigration detention centers, not only for being undocumented but also because their gender identity isn’t officially defined within the prison system, according to victims and activists.
“I don’t wish it on anybody, it’s like dying while you’re still alive,” said María, 32, a Mexican transgender woman who came to live in New York 10 years ago, fleeing the persecution that she suffered in Mexico City. [...]
Read the full article:
http://www.voicesofny.org/2013/08/transgender-immigrants-detail-detention-abuse/
August 29, 2013
Translated by Emily Leavitt, Voices of NY
Transgender individuals face a double whammy when it comes to being jailed in immigration detention centers, not only for being undocumented but also because their gender identity isn’t officially defined within the prison system, according to victims and activists.
“I don’t wish it on anybody, it’s like dying while you’re still alive,” said María, 32, a Mexican transgender woman who came to live in New York 10 years ago, fleeing the persecution that she suffered in Mexico City. [...]
Read the full article:
http://www.voicesofny.org/2013/08/transgender-immigrants-detail-detention-abuse/
Friday, September 13, 2013
Immigration activists arrested at detention center protests as movement grows nationally
Laurie Smolenski, Waging Nonviolence
August 26, 2013
Ten immigrant justice activists, including one elderly nun, were arrested in New York City on Thursday in protest of the unprecedented detentions and deportations under the Obama administration. They also condemned the U.S. House of Representatives for its lack of action in passing a comprehensive immigration reform bill that would include a clear path to citizenship for the 11 million people living in the United States without U.S. residency papers.
Several faith leaders led a “Jericho walk” to the Varick Street Detention Center in Lower Manhattan, where people being detained are held for processing before they are transferred. The marchers arrived cloaked in white and singing freedom hymns. Others who were unable to risk arrest because of their immigration status amassed along the sidewalk, carrying signs, chanting and singing. The 10 activists spoke out against detentions, as well as the particular challenges for LGBT detainees, before the crowd coalesced in the street, effectively blocking the entrance to the detention center. Police gave warnings before the protesters, who included faith leaders and an academic, were handcuffed and taken away in a police vehicle. [...]
Read the full article:
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/immigration-actions-grow-nationally/
August 26, 2013
Ten immigrant justice activists, including one elderly nun, were arrested in New York City on Thursday in protest of the unprecedented detentions and deportations under the Obama administration. They also condemned the U.S. House of Representatives for its lack of action in passing a comprehensive immigration reform bill that would include a clear path to citizenship for the 11 million people living in the United States without U.S. residency papers.
Several faith leaders led a “Jericho walk” to the Varick Street Detention Center in Lower Manhattan, where people being detained are held for processing before they are transferred. The marchers arrived cloaked in white and singing freedom hymns. Others who were unable to risk arrest because of their immigration status amassed along the sidewalk, carrying signs, chanting and singing. The 10 activists spoke out against detentions, as well as the particular challenges for LGBT detainees, before the crowd coalesced in the street, effectively blocking the entrance to the detention center. Police gave warnings before the protesters, who included faith leaders and an academic, were handcuffed and taken away in a police vehicle. [...]
Read the full article:
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/immigration-actions-grow-nationally/
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Who Really Benefits From Sweatshops?
"[L]abor costs typically constitute 1-3 percent for a garment produced in the developing world." -- Zahid Hussain
by David L. Wilson, MRZine
Sept. 12, 2013
Consumers are ultimately the ones responsible for dangerous conditions in garment assembly plants in the Global South, Hong Kong-based business executive Bruce Rockowitz told the New York Times recently. The problem is that improved safety would raise the price of clothing, according to Rockowitz, who heads Li & Fung Limited, a sourcing company that hooks up retailers like Macy's and Kohl's with suppliers in low-wage countries like Bangladesh. "So far," he said, "consumers have just not been willing to accept higher costs."
Rockowitz isn't alone in blaming consumers in Europe and the United States for sweatshop conditions in the apparel industry. The idea pervades popular culture.[...]
Read the full article:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2013/wilson120913.html
by David L. Wilson, MRZine
Sept. 12, 2013
Consumers are ultimately the ones responsible for dangerous conditions in garment assembly plants in the Global South, Hong Kong-based business executive Bruce Rockowitz told the New York Times recently. The problem is that improved safety would raise the price of clothing, according to Rockowitz, who heads Li & Fung Limited, a sourcing company that hooks up retailers like Macy's and Kohl's with suppliers in low-wage countries like Bangladesh. "So far," he said, "consumers have just not been willing to accept higher costs."
Rockowitz isn't alone in blaming consumers in Europe and the United States for sweatshop conditions in the apparel industry. The idea pervades popular culture.[...]
Read the full article:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2013/wilson120913.html
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