Regarding Immigration Reform, TPP, and Maryland's real unemployment:
WATCHING OBAMA/O'MALLEY ONE CAN ACTUALLY SEE THE CORPORATE STRINGS PULLING HIS MOUTH UP AND DOWN! THIS IS SERIOUS FOLKS----NEO-LIBERALS RIGHT HERE IN MARYLAND ARE PUSHING THIS AS HARD AS THEY CAN AND JUSTICE ORGANIZATIONS HEADED BY PEOPLE WANTING TO MAKE A BUCK ARE LEADING IMMIGRANTS AND JUSTICE TO SUPPORT THIS AS A SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUE!
One thing you can bet on when you listen to main stream media and NPR/APM is news that has no basis in fact. As they are shouting the unemployment is 6.1% here in Maryland it is really 36%......far higher than at the time of the crash. So, why are national and local news deliberately deceiving the public? First, people would be out in the street protesting as in other Western countries that still have free press.....second, the entire premise of Immigration Reform tied to TPP is that employment figures must be low enough for corporations to bring in immigrant/green card labor. SEE WHY MARYLAND MUST MAKE ITS 36% UNEMPLOYMENT LOOKS LIKE 6.1%? If you look at national advertizements you will see this figure used for unemployment in Baltimore if you can believe it! So, as with all stats released by Maryland state or Baltimore City.....there is no basis of truth in the figures. This happens because neo-liberals and republicans have dismantled all of public agencies tasked with oversight and producing this data. WE FIX IT BY RUNNING LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL PRIMARIES AND REPLACING THESE NEO-LIBERALS.....ALL POLS IN MARYLAND ARE NEO-LIBERALS!
This is great....it shows Maryland with a long-term unemployed at 36% as they shout out that unemployment in Maryland is at 6.1%. Keep in mind that Congress passed an extension of unemployment insurance with a 6.7% level of exclusion for states falling under that level. Maryland immediately feel below that 6.7% and as a result.....all those who would have gotten longer unemployment dropped off the rolls....ergo...the 6.1%.
Keep in mind that with long-term unemployed and part time workers over 40% of Americans are income distressed and neo-liberals like it that way!!!! Desperate workers maximizes corporate profits! Take a look at the interactive map/graph in this article below to see how each state in America has the highest unemployment in Western world. YOU HEAR NPR SHOUT OUT THAT SPAIN HAS THE HIGHEST AT 25%.....MARYLAND HAS SPAIN BEAT AND NEO-LIBERAL STATES HAVE HIGHER UNEMPLOYMENT BECAUSE THAT'S THE WAY NEO-LIBERALS ROLL!
Long-Term Unemployment Is at Record Levels in Virtually Every State
www.epi.org
During last night’s State of the Union address, President Obama stressed the urgency of reinstating the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program for long-term unemployed workers, which, in an unprecedented move, Congress allowed to expire last month. This federal program typically provided a maximum of 28 weeks of additional benefits to workers who lost a job, through no fault of their own, and had exhausted their regular state benefits but were still unable to find work. With the program’s expiration, more than 1.5 million jobless workers have already stopped receiving aid and more than 2 million more will exhaust their benefits by the end of this year.
Laid-off workers will now lose any support after only six months, the maximum duration of unemployment insurance benefits in most states. The map below shows the share of the unemployed who have been jobless for six months or more in each state. There are 28 states, plus the District of Columbia, where more than a third of the unemployed have been jobless for six months or more. In New Jersey (46.6 percent), the District of Columbia (46.6 percent), and Florida (46.2 percent), nearly half of the unemployed are long-term unemployed.
With long-term unemployment still at record levels, Congress’ failure to renew this program is shocking; long-term unemployment benefits have never been cut off before with long-term unemployment so high. The highest the national long-term unemployment share ever reached prior to the Great Recession was 26 percent in June of 1983. Currently, there are 41 states (plus the District of Columbia) with long-term unemployment shares above 26 percent.
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How is the Immigration Reform and TPP attached to employment figures? Let's remember what the neo-liberal Senate and republicans have as their main goal with this market-based Immigration bill sold as a help for Hispanic undocumented workers.
First there is the law enforcement element of Immigration Reform that has US prisons now filled with undocumented workers....Obama as a neo-liberal has placed imprisonment on steroids......think about California being the incarceration capital of the world.....neo-liberals. The border enforcement along with countries like Peru will join Mexico knowing the same massive displacement of its citizens will happen again as global corporations come into these countries and send the citizens packing as described in the article below. So, the Immigration Bill works to stop what will be a rush to the US border for jobs as it takes these immigrants now in the US and places them on restrictions that will indenture them for life or until they fail to meet the terms are are deported.
The Pathway to Citizenship is like the Trail of Tears for the native Americans. It says you must remain continually employed for years......think how abusive workplaces are now and then think what will happen when employers know these immigrants will not be able to quit. When they do.....these employers report them to authorities and the immigrant is deported. When talking to the Super Shuttle workers in Maryland who are shouting they are indentured and enslaved by contracts that allow them no money.....their words were.....'we will lose our jobs and be deported but we cannot live like this'. THIS IS MARYLAND AND THIS IS NOW! IMMIGRATION REFORM SIMPLY PUTS THIS INTO LAW.
PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIP INDENTURES IMMIGRANTS AND MAKE DEPORTATION A STRONGER LIKELIHOOD.
This is all important because TPP is all about bringing immigrants just like these Maryland immigrants from Africa to America and tying them to just the same contracts that they too will not be able to tolerate. So, they will work a while, discover they are enslaved in America and want to leave but have no way to disengage from these contracts. With the US having suspended Rule of Law, these workers will not have the US Federal Justice/Maryland Attorney General protecting them. So, how will immigrants be able to pay back taxes and current taxes and all these Pathway requirements as indentured servants? Add to that stolen wages and illegal independent contractor status for those lucky enough to avoid endenturement....THE ANSWER IS THEY WILL NOT. THEY WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO ACCUMULATE ENOUGH MONEY TO BUY THEIR WAY TO CITIZENSHIP.....WHICH IS THE POINT OF TPP.
The 1% say we'll take bring a few immigrants into our ranks to lord over the bulk of workers as they do now in Maryland.....as slavery always has.......but most immigrants will be trapped in the same indenturement as now exists in third world countries. THIS IS WHAT IMMIGRATION REFORM IS ALL ABOUT.
The second piece of Immigration Reform is the high-skilled labor end where TPP has high-skilled labor come to the US and if they are working for a global corporation....which most skilled businesses are these days....the employer will be able to hire them under terms of the country to which the corporation is attached if following US law causes lost profit.....which it always does. So, John Hopkins partners with an Indian health corporation which then comes to the US as a global corporations hiring health care workers and those workers would be brought from India and work under Indian law. So, this will not be a win for those immigrants workers being brought thinking they will be apart of the American Dream....unless they are the few selected to higher positions.....they will toil here as they did in India.
Why is this bad for domestic workers just as it is immigrant workers? IF YOU ARE A DOMESTIC WORKER NEEDING A JOB....YOU WILL AGREE TO WORK FOR THE TERMS THE IMMIGRANTS DO OR YOU WILL NOT HAVE A JOB. So, the foreign corporation comes to your town with manufacturing jobs, brings immigrant workers to fill many jobs and offers some to the locals if they work for the same as the immigrants. This will go for the high-skilled jobs as well.
IT NEGATES ALL OF US LAW BY MAKING GLOBAL CORPORATIONS EXEMPT FROM ALL US LAW WHICH IS ILLEGAL AND A COUP AGAINST THE US CONSTITUTION.
'Domestic workers don't have to work there if they don't like the conditions say neo-liberals'. See why unemployment has been left so high?
PATH TO CITIZENSHIP
—The estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. illegally could obtain "registered provisional immigrant status" six months after enactment of the bill as long as:
(1) The Homeland Security Department has developed border security and fencing plans.
(2) They arrived in the U.S. prior to Dec. 31, 2011, and maintained continuous physical presence since then.
(3) They do not have a felony conviction or three or more misdemeanors.
(4) They pay a $500 fine.
—People in provisional legal status could work and travel in the U.S. but would not be eligible for federal benefits.
—The provisional legal status lasts six years and is renewable for another $500.
—People deported for noncriminal reasons can apply to re-enter in provisional status if they have a spouse or child who is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident, or if they had been brought to the U.S. as a child.
—After 10 years in provisional status, immigrants can seek a green card and lawful permanent resident status if they are up-to-date on taxes and pay a $1,000 fine, have maintained continuous physical presence in the U.S., meet work requirements, and learn English. Also the border triggers must have been met, and all people waiting to immigrate through the legal system as of date of enactment of the legislation must have been dealt with.
—People brought to the country as youths would be able to get green cards in five years, and citizenship immediately thereafter.
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Sign on to this letter calling for border justice and fair trade
This letter explains the relationship between ‘free’ trade agreements and militarization of the border. The struggle for immigrant rights includes opening borders, not locking them down, and creating fair trade for people and the planet, not corporate trade for profit with impunity. Please consider signing on to this letter (fill out the form below). Then also share this letter with individuals and organizations in your community that work for immigrant rights or that also might be willing to sign on, and encourage them to add their names. We can stop the TPP! The first step is to educate more people about the effects the TPP will have on our communities. Then together, we will flush the TPP.
July, 2013
Stopping the TPP is Immigrant Rights
We write this letter out of concern regarding a looming humanitarian crisis. The prospect of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) along with a surge in border militarization will leave in its wake a trail of displacement and death. The TPP will continue destroying rural economies and uprooting workers in Mexico and elsewhere. More border militarization and criminalization will leave yet more bodies of the undocumented and their families abandoned and lifeless in the desert. We call on fair trade and immigrant rights activists to join together to stop the TPP and to demand real, just immigration reform.
Over 6,000 undocumented workers and their family members have died crossing the US-Mexico border since 1994, the year that the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was passed. It was also when construction of the border wall began. NAFTA led to a 60% increase in migration across the Southern border–a forced migration of people desperately looking for jobs to feed their families. Because of border militarization the undocumented generally enter the US via its most sparsely populated and harshest desert terrains to avoid apprehension. Those who don’t make it die from dysentery, dehydration and exposure.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership has been called “NAFTA on Steroids”. If it passes, it will be the largest FTA in the world, including not only Mexico, the United States and Canada, but also Peru, Chile, Vietnam, Brunei, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Malaysia, and Singapore. The Obama administration is asking for “Fast Track” authority to negotiate the TPP. Fast Track would enable the President to circumvent Congress’ constitutional power to establish the parameters of US trade policy. It allows the President to sign an agreement before a Congressional vote, which must take place within 90 days of the signature and which prohibits the addition of amendments.
Immigration reform legislation is also moving forward. The proposed reform includes a “border surge” of militarization and related benchmarks that must go into effect before road to citizenship provisions kick in. This surge would include between $30 and $50 billion for “security”, including the construction of 350 to 700 more miles of the border wall. The number of agents on the border would be doubled to 40,000. The US-Mexico border would become one of the most militarized borders in the world.
It is no coincidence that the year 1994 saw not only passage of NAFTA, but the beginning of border wall construction. And it is no coincidence that the border surge is being considered at the same time the TPP is being negotiated. Also closely related is the proliferation of private prisons, especially immigration detention centers. Militarized borders and new prisons help manage social disruptions as well as political dissent resulting from FTAs. Criminalization of the undocumented creates a sub-class of workers denied basic labor rights while forced to work long hours for low wages. The ones who benefit are transnational corporations and agribusinesses.
If things were already bad under NAFTA and the current level of border militarization, a border surge and the TPP will make them worse. When NAFTA went into effect, Mexico was importing 30,000 tons of pork. By 2010, that had gone up to 811,000 tons. Mexico lost 4,000 hog farms and 20,000 farm jobs as a result. If we include indirect jobs dependent on the pork industry, as many as 120,000 jobs were lost. Likewise, corn imports rose from 2 million tons in 1992 to 10.3 million tons in 2008 and the cost of corn tortillas rose by 50%. This scenario was repeated in different sectors, such as wheat and sorghum production. By 2006, NAFTA had forced two million Mexicans out of farm work and some 28,000 small and medium sized businesses had been eliminated. Wages in maquiladora zones along the border had been driven down by 25%. A 2005 study for the Mexican government by the World Bank showed that rural poverty had risen from 35% between 1992 and 1994, to 55% between 1996 and 1998. By 2010, 53 million Mexicans were living in poverty, or half the population, and 20%, mostly in rural areas, lived in extreme poverty.
The TPP is being negotiated in secrecy. Only a few insistent Congress persons have seen it. However, some 600 corporate lobbyists have read the text and made comments on it. What few details have been leaked to the public reveal a document that guards the interests of big corporations even more than NAFTA, which at least includes a provision allowing countries to withdraw with only six months notice. Investor-State provisions will be strengthened letting foreign corporations sue a government over policies that provide environmental and community protection but curb private profits. Suits would be decided by a special court comprised from a rotating pool of corporate lawyers.
What will it mean if passage of the TPP is coupled with a border surge? We have already seen significant growth in border militarization. Whether it be because of this, or because the US is recovering from its own economic crisis, apprehensions by the border patrol have dropped by 50% since 2008. But at the same time, deaths in the desert of border crossers has risen by 27%. The National Foundation for American Policy has found that an undocumented immigrant is eight times more likely to die crossing the border today than ten years ago. With the TPP and a border surge, deaths will increase.
The fight to defeat the TPP is advocacy for immigrant rights, or better put, for the rights of Mexican and other workers and farming families to not be forcibly displaced. One of the central rights of any potential immigrant is the choice whether or not to migrate. Even more central is the right not to die crossing the desert in search of jobs. We must tell Congress: End border militarization, deny fast track authority and reject the TPP. What we need, what we require, is fair trade, not free trade, and border justice, not militarization and criminalization.
****************************************
The reason WYPR and Basu keep telling you the unemployment rate is 6.1% instead of 36% has to do with the Immigration Bill and the rates needed before green card workers take jobs. Can you imagine 180,000 foreign high-skilled workers coming to the US each year when the US has STEM grads unemployed in great numbers? It will flood the work force. Not only are high-skilled workers coming.....but all that 'innovation' money that Maryland shouts is creating jobs but is used for marketing Maryland to these prospective foreign workers.....can be given to foreign immigrants to start new companies. THESE GOES ALL THE MONEY FOR DOMESTIC CITIZENS WANTING TO SIMPLY BUILD A SMALL BUSINESS!
The good news is that all the figures are a lie and TPP is illegal and a COUP against the American people and can be made NULL AND VOID with Rule of Law. Neo-liberals cannot simply fail to enforce US law because a foreign treaty was signed....the point is that it was illegal for the US Trade Rep to sign this deal!
'The cap could go as high as 180,000 a year depending on demand and unemployment rate'.
HIGH-SKILLED WORKERS
—The cap on the H-1B visa program for high-skilled workers would be immediately raised from 65,000 a year to 110,000 a year, with 25,000 more set aside for people with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering or math from a U.S. school. The cap could go as high as 180,000 a year depending on demand and unemployment rate.
—New protections would crack down on companies that use H-1B visas to train workers in the U.S. only to ship them back overseas.
—Immigrants with certain extraordinary abilities, such as professors and researchers, multinational executives and athletes, would be exempted from green-card limits.
—A startup visa would be made available to foreign entrepreneurs seeking to come to the U.S. to start a company.
—A new merit visa, capped at 250,000 a year, would award points to prospective immigrants based on their education, employment, length of residence in the U.S. and other considerations. Those with the most points would earn the visas.
—The bill would eliminate the government's Diversity Visa Lottery Program, which randomly awards 55,000 visas to immigrants from countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States, so that more visas can be awarded for employment and merit ties.
******************************
Below you see the good points for the low-skilled workers given by the Tea Party. These republicans are right....it is devastating to all domestic workers, but low-skilled especially. Now, a republican has always been ready to enslave workers.......they want to get rid of the minimum wage for goodness sake, so they are simply playing good cop on an issue they really , really, want.
The national ID for immigrants will be the republican way of holding these workers in indenturement and deport anyone breaking these harsh rules. You notice that nowhere are corporations going to be held accountable to breaking these laws as Rule of Law has been suspended.
LETTER WARNS: IMMIGRATION BILL WILL COLLAPSE MIDDLE CLASS AND INCREASE UNEMPLOYMENT, POVERTY
Posted by tomfernandez28 on January 9, 2014
LETTER WARNS: IMMIGRATION BILL WILL COLLAPSE MIDDLE CLASS AND INCREASE UNEMPLOYMENT, POVERTY
A group of House Republicans has written a letter to Barack Obama to warn that the immigration bill he supports will have an adverse effect on American workers. The immigration bill will, the letter writers say, lead to an increase in unemployment and poverty, help collapse the middle class, and decrease wages for American citizens.
“[W]e reject your call for the House to get an immigration bill to your desk that would permanently displace American workers,” the House Republicans write. “The Senate immigration bill, which the White House helped craft and which you personally endorse, would double the number of guest workers brought into this country at a time of crippling joblessness and falling incomes. On top of that, the Senate immigration bill would also add millions more permanent immigrant workers through green cards – handing out permanent residency to more than 30 million immigrants over the next decade. This represents a tripling of the normal green card rate.
CBO confirms that these immigrants will be mostly lower-skilled, and that wages for American citizens would fall while American unemployment would rise. Per-capita GNP would sink as well.
According to research from Harvard Professor Dr. George Borjas, low-skilled immigration has, between the years 1980 and 2000, resulted in nearly an 8% wage reduction for US-born workers without a high school degree. Rapidly expanding unskilled immigration – at time when factory work and blue collar jobs are disappearing – would represent the final economic blow for millions of workers who have been struggling to gain an economic foothold.
This group of House Republicans, who say that are writing the president “on behalf of the 21 million Americans who can’t find a full-time job” and “on behalf of the 90 million Americans over 16 – including early retirees, college grads living at home, and those living on welfare – who are not part of our nation’s workforce,” warn that things will get worse if this immigration bill becomes law.
“According to research from Harvard Professor Dr. George Borjas, low-skilled immigration has, between the years 1980 and 2000, resulted in nearly an 8% wage reduction for US-born workers without a high school degree. Rapidly expanding unskilled immigration – at time when factory work and blue collar jobs are disappearing – would represent the final economic blow for millions of workers who have been struggling to gain an economic foothold,” the letter writers say.
And it concludes: “Job number one for Congress should be to reduce the unemployment rolls, get families and communities out of poverty and government dependency, rebuild our deteriorating communities and collapsing middle class, and increase wages for American citizens. Your immigration proposals do the exact opposite on every count.”
The letter has been signed by 16 Republican members of Congress: Mo Brooks of Alabama, Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania, Kerry Bentivolio of Missouri, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Walter Jones of North Carolina, Phil Gingrey of Georgia, Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, John Fleming of Louisiana, Steve King of Iowa, Ted Yoho of Florida, Joe Wilson of South Carolina, Steve Stockman of Texas, Lamar Smith also of Texas, Steven Palazzo of Mississippi, Mike Rogers of Alabama, and Jeff Duncan of South Carolina.
Here’s the entire letter, which is dated today:
Dear Mr. President:
We write to you today on behalf of the 21 million Americans who can’t find a full-time job. We write to you on behalf of the 6 million young Americans who are neither working nor in school. We write on behalf of the countless American workers whose wages today are lower than they were more than a decade ago. We write on behalf of the 90 million Americans over 16 – including early retirees, college grads living at home, and those living on welfare – who are not part of our nation’s workforce.
That is why we reject your call for the House to get an immigration bill to your desk that would permanently displace American workers. The Senate immigration bill, which the White House helped craft and which you personally endorse, would double the number of guest workers brought into this country at a time of crippling joblessness and falling incomes. On top of that, the Senate immigration bill would also add millions more permanent immigrant workers through green cards – handing out permanent residency to more than 30 million immigrants over the next decade. This represents a tripling of the normal green card rate.
WATCHING OBAMA/O'MALLEY ONE CAN ACTUALLY SEE THE CORPORATE STRINGS PULLING HIS MOUTH UP AND DOWN! THIS IS SERIOUS FOLKS----NEO-LIBERALS RIGHT HERE IN MARYLAND ARE PUSHING THIS AS HARD AS THEY CAN AND JUSTICE ORGANIZATIONS HEADED BY PEOPLE WANTING TO MAKE A BUCK ARE LEADING IMMIGRANTS AND JUSTICE TO SUPPORT THIS AS A SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUE!
One thing you can bet on when you listen to main stream media and NPR/APM is news that has no basis in fact. As they are shouting the unemployment is 6.1% here in Maryland it is really 36%......far higher than at the time of the crash. So, why are national and local news deliberately deceiving the public? First, people would be out in the street protesting as in other Western countries that still have free press.....second, the entire premise of Immigration Reform tied to TPP is that employment figures must be low enough for corporations to bring in immigrant/green card labor. SEE WHY MARYLAND MUST MAKE ITS 36% UNEMPLOYMENT LOOKS LIKE 6.1%? If you look at national advertizements you will see this figure used for unemployment in Baltimore if you can believe it! So, as with all stats released by Maryland state or Baltimore City.....there is no basis of truth in the figures. This happens because neo-liberals and republicans have dismantled all of public agencies tasked with oversight and producing this data. WE FIX IT BY RUNNING LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL PRIMARIES AND REPLACING THESE NEO-LIBERALS.....ALL POLS IN MARYLAND ARE NEO-LIBERALS!
This is great....it shows Maryland with a long-term unemployed at 36% as they shout out that unemployment in Maryland is at 6.1%. Keep in mind that Congress passed an extension of unemployment insurance with a 6.7% level of exclusion for states falling under that level. Maryland immediately feel below that 6.7% and as a result.....all those who would have gotten longer unemployment dropped off the rolls....ergo...the 6.1%.
Keep in mind that with long-term unemployed and part time workers over 40% of Americans are income distressed and neo-liberals like it that way!!!! Desperate workers maximizes corporate profits! Take a look at the interactive map/graph in this article below to see how each state in America has the highest unemployment in Western world. YOU HEAR NPR SHOUT OUT THAT SPAIN HAS THE HIGHEST AT 25%.....MARYLAND HAS SPAIN BEAT AND NEO-LIBERAL STATES HAVE HIGHER UNEMPLOYMENT BECAUSE THAT'S THE WAY NEO-LIBERALS ROLL!
Long-Term Unemployment Is at Record Levels in Virtually Every State
www.epi.org
During last night’s State of the Union address, President Obama stressed the urgency of reinstating the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program for long-term unemployed workers, which, in an unprecedented move, Congress allowed to expire last month. This federal program typically provided a maximum of 28 weeks of additional benefits to workers who lost a job, through no fault of their own, and had exhausted their regular state benefits but were still unable to find work. With the program’s expiration, more than 1.5 million jobless workers have already stopped receiving aid and more than 2 million more will exhaust their benefits by the end of this year.
Laid-off workers will now lose any support after only six months, the maximum duration of unemployment insurance benefits in most states. The map below shows the share of the unemployed who have been jobless for six months or more in each state. There are 28 states, plus the District of Columbia, where more than a third of the unemployed have been jobless for six months or more. In New Jersey (46.6 percent), the District of Columbia (46.6 percent), and Florida (46.2 percent), nearly half of the unemployed are long-term unemployed.
With long-term unemployment still at record levels, Congress’ failure to renew this program is shocking; long-term unemployment benefits have never been cut off before with long-term unemployment so high. The highest the national long-term unemployment share ever reached prior to the Great Recession was 26 percent in June of 1983. Currently, there are 41 states (plus the District of Columbia) with long-term unemployment shares above 26 percent.
***************************************
How is the Immigration Reform and TPP attached to employment figures? Let's remember what the neo-liberal Senate and republicans have as their main goal with this market-based Immigration bill sold as a help for Hispanic undocumented workers.
First there is the law enforcement element of Immigration Reform that has US prisons now filled with undocumented workers....Obama as a neo-liberal has placed imprisonment on steroids......think about California being the incarceration capital of the world.....neo-liberals. The border enforcement along with countries like Peru will join Mexico knowing the same massive displacement of its citizens will happen again as global corporations come into these countries and send the citizens packing as described in the article below. So, the Immigration Bill works to stop what will be a rush to the US border for jobs as it takes these immigrants now in the US and places them on restrictions that will indenture them for life or until they fail to meet the terms are are deported.
The Pathway to Citizenship is like the Trail of Tears for the native Americans. It says you must remain continually employed for years......think how abusive workplaces are now and then think what will happen when employers know these immigrants will not be able to quit. When they do.....these employers report them to authorities and the immigrant is deported. When talking to the Super Shuttle workers in Maryland who are shouting they are indentured and enslaved by contracts that allow them no money.....their words were.....'we will lose our jobs and be deported but we cannot live like this'. THIS IS MARYLAND AND THIS IS NOW! IMMIGRATION REFORM SIMPLY PUTS THIS INTO LAW.
PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIP INDENTURES IMMIGRANTS AND MAKE DEPORTATION A STRONGER LIKELIHOOD.
This is all important because TPP is all about bringing immigrants just like these Maryland immigrants from Africa to America and tying them to just the same contracts that they too will not be able to tolerate. So, they will work a while, discover they are enslaved in America and want to leave but have no way to disengage from these contracts. With the US having suspended Rule of Law, these workers will not have the US Federal Justice/Maryland Attorney General protecting them. So, how will immigrants be able to pay back taxes and current taxes and all these Pathway requirements as indentured servants? Add to that stolen wages and illegal independent contractor status for those lucky enough to avoid endenturement....THE ANSWER IS THEY WILL NOT. THEY WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO ACCUMULATE ENOUGH MONEY TO BUY THEIR WAY TO CITIZENSHIP.....WHICH IS THE POINT OF TPP.
The 1% say we'll take bring a few immigrants into our ranks to lord over the bulk of workers as they do now in Maryland.....as slavery always has.......but most immigrants will be trapped in the same indenturement as now exists in third world countries. THIS IS WHAT IMMIGRATION REFORM IS ALL ABOUT.
The second piece of Immigration Reform is the high-skilled labor end where TPP has high-skilled labor come to the US and if they are working for a global corporation....which most skilled businesses are these days....the employer will be able to hire them under terms of the country to which the corporation is attached if following US law causes lost profit.....which it always does. So, John Hopkins partners with an Indian health corporation which then comes to the US as a global corporations hiring health care workers and those workers would be brought from India and work under Indian law. So, this will not be a win for those immigrants workers being brought thinking they will be apart of the American Dream....unless they are the few selected to higher positions.....they will toil here as they did in India.
Why is this bad for domestic workers just as it is immigrant workers? IF YOU ARE A DOMESTIC WORKER NEEDING A JOB....YOU WILL AGREE TO WORK FOR THE TERMS THE IMMIGRANTS DO OR YOU WILL NOT HAVE A JOB. So, the foreign corporation comes to your town with manufacturing jobs, brings immigrant workers to fill many jobs and offers some to the locals if they work for the same as the immigrants. This will go for the high-skilled jobs as well.
IT NEGATES ALL OF US LAW BY MAKING GLOBAL CORPORATIONS EXEMPT FROM ALL US LAW WHICH IS ILLEGAL AND A COUP AGAINST THE US CONSTITUTION.
'Domestic workers don't have to work there if they don't like the conditions say neo-liberals'. See why unemployment has been left so high?
PATH TO CITIZENSHIP
—The estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. illegally could obtain "registered provisional immigrant status" six months after enactment of the bill as long as:
(1) The Homeland Security Department has developed border security and fencing plans.
(2) They arrived in the U.S. prior to Dec. 31, 2011, and maintained continuous physical presence since then.
(3) They do not have a felony conviction or three or more misdemeanors.
(4) They pay a $500 fine.
—People in provisional legal status could work and travel in the U.S. but would not be eligible for federal benefits.
—The provisional legal status lasts six years and is renewable for another $500.
—People deported for noncriminal reasons can apply to re-enter in provisional status if they have a spouse or child who is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident, or if they had been brought to the U.S. as a child.
—After 10 years in provisional status, immigrants can seek a green card and lawful permanent resident status if they are up-to-date on taxes and pay a $1,000 fine, have maintained continuous physical presence in the U.S., meet work requirements, and learn English. Also the border triggers must have been met, and all people waiting to immigrate through the legal system as of date of enactment of the legislation must have been dealt with.
—People brought to the country as youths would be able to get green cards in five years, and citizenship immediately thereafter.
***************************
Sign on to this letter calling for border justice and fair trade
This letter explains the relationship between ‘free’ trade agreements and militarization of the border. The struggle for immigrant rights includes opening borders, not locking them down, and creating fair trade for people and the planet, not corporate trade for profit with impunity. Please consider signing on to this letter (fill out the form below). Then also share this letter with individuals and organizations in your community that work for immigrant rights or that also might be willing to sign on, and encourage them to add their names. We can stop the TPP! The first step is to educate more people about the effects the TPP will have on our communities. Then together, we will flush the TPP.
July, 2013
Stopping the TPP is Immigrant Rights
We write this letter out of concern regarding a looming humanitarian crisis. The prospect of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) along with a surge in border militarization will leave in its wake a trail of displacement and death. The TPP will continue destroying rural economies and uprooting workers in Mexico and elsewhere. More border militarization and criminalization will leave yet more bodies of the undocumented and their families abandoned and lifeless in the desert. We call on fair trade and immigrant rights activists to join together to stop the TPP and to demand real, just immigration reform.
Over 6,000 undocumented workers and their family members have died crossing the US-Mexico border since 1994, the year that the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was passed. It was also when construction of the border wall began. NAFTA led to a 60% increase in migration across the Southern border–a forced migration of people desperately looking for jobs to feed their families. Because of border militarization the undocumented generally enter the US via its most sparsely populated and harshest desert terrains to avoid apprehension. Those who don’t make it die from dysentery, dehydration and exposure.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership has been called “NAFTA on Steroids”. If it passes, it will be the largest FTA in the world, including not only Mexico, the United States and Canada, but also Peru, Chile, Vietnam, Brunei, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Malaysia, and Singapore. The Obama administration is asking for “Fast Track” authority to negotiate the TPP. Fast Track would enable the President to circumvent Congress’ constitutional power to establish the parameters of US trade policy. It allows the President to sign an agreement before a Congressional vote, which must take place within 90 days of the signature and which prohibits the addition of amendments.
Immigration reform legislation is also moving forward. The proposed reform includes a “border surge” of militarization and related benchmarks that must go into effect before road to citizenship provisions kick in. This surge would include between $30 and $50 billion for “security”, including the construction of 350 to 700 more miles of the border wall. The number of agents on the border would be doubled to 40,000. The US-Mexico border would become one of the most militarized borders in the world.
It is no coincidence that the year 1994 saw not only passage of NAFTA, but the beginning of border wall construction. And it is no coincidence that the border surge is being considered at the same time the TPP is being negotiated. Also closely related is the proliferation of private prisons, especially immigration detention centers. Militarized borders and new prisons help manage social disruptions as well as political dissent resulting from FTAs. Criminalization of the undocumented creates a sub-class of workers denied basic labor rights while forced to work long hours for low wages. The ones who benefit are transnational corporations and agribusinesses.
If things were already bad under NAFTA and the current level of border militarization, a border surge and the TPP will make them worse. When NAFTA went into effect, Mexico was importing 30,000 tons of pork. By 2010, that had gone up to 811,000 tons. Mexico lost 4,000 hog farms and 20,000 farm jobs as a result. If we include indirect jobs dependent on the pork industry, as many as 120,000 jobs were lost. Likewise, corn imports rose from 2 million tons in 1992 to 10.3 million tons in 2008 and the cost of corn tortillas rose by 50%. This scenario was repeated in different sectors, such as wheat and sorghum production. By 2006, NAFTA had forced two million Mexicans out of farm work and some 28,000 small and medium sized businesses had been eliminated. Wages in maquiladora zones along the border had been driven down by 25%. A 2005 study for the Mexican government by the World Bank showed that rural poverty had risen from 35% between 1992 and 1994, to 55% between 1996 and 1998. By 2010, 53 million Mexicans were living in poverty, or half the population, and 20%, mostly in rural areas, lived in extreme poverty.
The TPP is being negotiated in secrecy. Only a few insistent Congress persons have seen it. However, some 600 corporate lobbyists have read the text and made comments on it. What few details have been leaked to the public reveal a document that guards the interests of big corporations even more than NAFTA, which at least includes a provision allowing countries to withdraw with only six months notice. Investor-State provisions will be strengthened letting foreign corporations sue a government over policies that provide environmental and community protection but curb private profits. Suits would be decided by a special court comprised from a rotating pool of corporate lawyers.
What will it mean if passage of the TPP is coupled with a border surge? We have already seen significant growth in border militarization. Whether it be because of this, or because the US is recovering from its own economic crisis, apprehensions by the border patrol have dropped by 50% since 2008. But at the same time, deaths in the desert of border crossers has risen by 27%. The National Foundation for American Policy has found that an undocumented immigrant is eight times more likely to die crossing the border today than ten years ago. With the TPP and a border surge, deaths will increase.
The fight to defeat the TPP is advocacy for immigrant rights, or better put, for the rights of Mexican and other workers and farming families to not be forcibly displaced. One of the central rights of any potential immigrant is the choice whether or not to migrate. Even more central is the right not to die crossing the desert in search of jobs. We must tell Congress: End border militarization, deny fast track authority and reject the TPP. What we need, what we require, is fair trade, not free trade, and border justice, not militarization and criminalization.
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The reason WYPR and Basu keep telling you the unemployment rate is 6.1% instead of 36% has to do with the Immigration Bill and the rates needed before green card workers take jobs. Can you imagine 180,000 foreign high-skilled workers coming to the US each year when the US has STEM grads unemployed in great numbers? It will flood the work force. Not only are high-skilled workers coming.....but all that 'innovation' money that Maryland shouts is creating jobs but is used for marketing Maryland to these prospective foreign workers.....can be given to foreign immigrants to start new companies. THESE GOES ALL THE MONEY FOR DOMESTIC CITIZENS WANTING TO SIMPLY BUILD A SMALL BUSINESS!
The good news is that all the figures are a lie and TPP is illegal and a COUP against the American people and can be made NULL AND VOID with Rule of Law. Neo-liberals cannot simply fail to enforce US law because a foreign treaty was signed....the point is that it was illegal for the US Trade Rep to sign this deal!
'The cap could go as high as 180,000 a year depending on demand and unemployment rate'.
HIGH-SKILLED WORKERS
—The cap on the H-1B visa program for high-skilled workers would be immediately raised from 65,000 a year to 110,000 a year, with 25,000 more set aside for people with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering or math from a U.S. school. The cap could go as high as 180,000 a year depending on demand and unemployment rate.
—New protections would crack down on companies that use H-1B visas to train workers in the U.S. only to ship them back overseas.
—Immigrants with certain extraordinary abilities, such as professors and researchers, multinational executives and athletes, would be exempted from green-card limits.
—A startup visa would be made available to foreign entrepreneurs seeking to come to the U.S. to start a company.
—A new merit visa, capped at 250,000 a year, would award points to prospective immigrants based on their education, employment, length of residence in the U.S. and other considerations. Those with the most points would earn the visas.
—The bill would eliminate the government's Diversity Visa Lottery Program, which randomly awards 55,000 visas to immigrants from countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States, so that more visas can be awarded for employment and merit ties.
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Below you see the good points for the low-skilled workers given by the Tea Party. These republicans are right....it is devastating to all domestic workers, but low-skilled especially. Now, a republican has always been ready to enslave workers.......they want to get rid of the minimum wage for goodness sake, so they are simply playing good cop on an issue they really , really, want.
The national ID for immigrants will be the republican way of holding these workers in indenturement and deport anyone breaking these harsh rules. You notice that nowhere are corporations going to be held accountable to breaking these laws as Rule of Law has been suspended.
LETTER WARNS: IMMIGRATION BILL WILL COLLAPSE MIDDLE CLASS AND INCREASE UNEMPLOYMENT, POVERTY
Posted by tomfernandez28 on January 9, 2014
LETTER WARNS: IMMIGRATION BILL WILL COLLAPSE MIDDLE CLASS AND INCREASE UNEMPLOYMENT, POVERTY
A group of House Republicans has written a letter to Barack Obama to warn that the immigration bill he supports will have an adverse effect on American workers. The immigration bill will, the letter writers say, lead to an increase in unemployment and poverty, help collapse the middle class, and decrease wages for American citizens.
“[W]e reject your call for the House to get an immigration bill to your desk that would permanently displace American workers,” the House Republicans write. “The Senate immigration bill, which the White House helped craft and which you personally endorse, would double the number of guest workers brought into this country at a time of crippling joblessness and falling incomes. On top of that, the Senate immigration bill would also add millions more permanent immigrant workers through green cards – handing out permanent residency to more than 30 million immigrants over the next decade. This represents a tripling of the normal green card rate.
CBO confirms that these immigrants will be mostly lower-skilled, and that wages for American citizens would fall while American unemployment would rise. Per-capita GNP would sink as well.
According to research from Harvard Professor Dr. George Borjas, low-skilled immigration has, between the years 1980 and 2000, resulted in nearly an 8% wage reduction for US-born workers without a high school degree. Rapidly expanding unskilled immigration – at time when factory work and blue collar jobs are disappearing – would represent the final economic blow for millions of workers who have been struggling to gain an economic foothold.
This group of House Republicans, who say that are writing the president “on behalf of the 21 million Americans who can’t find a full-time job” and “on behalf of the 90 million Americans over 16 – including early retirees, college grads living at home, and those living on welfare – who are not part of our nation’s workforce,” warn that things will get worse if this immigration bill becomes law.
“According to research from Harvard Professor Dr. George Borjas, low-skilled immigration has, between the years 1980 and 2000, resulted in nearly an 8% wage reduction for US-born workers without a high school degree. Rapidly expanding unskilled immigration – at time when factory work and blue collar jobs are disappearing – would represent the final economic blow for millions of workers who have been struggling to gain an economic foothold,” the letter writers say.
And it concludes: “Job number one for Congress should be to reduce the unemployment rolls, get families and communities out of poverty and government dependency, rebuild our deteriorating communities and collapsing middle class, and increase wages for American citizens. Your immigration proposals do the exact opposite on every count.”
The letter has been signed by 16 Republican members of Congress: Mo Brooks of Alabama, Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania, Kerry Bentivolio of Missouri, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Walter Jones of North Carolina, Phil Gingrey of Georgia, Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, John Fleming of Louisiana, Steve King of Iowa, Ted Yoho of Florida, Joe Wilson of South Carolina, Steve Stockman of Texas, Lamar Smith also of Texas, Steven Palazzo of Mississippi, Mike Rogers of Alabama, and Jeff Duncan of South Carolina.
Here’s the entire letter, which is dated today:
Dear Mr. President:
We write to you today on behalf of the 21 million Americans who can’t find a full-time job. We write to you on behalf of the 6 million young Americans who are neither working nor in school. We write on behalf of the countless American workers whose wages today are lower than they were more than a decade ago. We write on behalf of the 90 million Americans over 16 – including early retirees, college grads living at home, and those living on welfare – who are not part of our nation’s workforce.
That is why we reject your call for the House to get an immigration bill to your desk that would permanently displace American workers. The Senate immigration bill, which the White House helped craft and which you personally endorse, would double the number of guest workers brought into this country at a time of crippling joblessness and falling incomes. On top of that, the Senate immigration bill would also add millions more permanent immigrant workers through green cards – handing out permanent residency to more than 30 million immigrants over the next decade. This represents a tripling of the normal green card rate.
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