Immigrants Reach Beyond a Legal Barrier for a Reunion

Washington Post
By REBEKAH ZEMANSKY and JULIA PRESTON
Published: June 11, 2013

NOGALES, Ariz. — Three young immigrants had a jubilant and painful reunion here on Tuesday with parents who had been deported from the United States, sharing hugs through the steel bars of the border fence that separates this American town from its Mexican twin.

The young adults are part of the movement of immigrants who grew up in this country without legal status who call themselves Dreamers. Their parents traveled to the Mexican side of the fence from Brazil, Colombia and Guadalajara, Mexico, seeing their children in person for the first time in many years.

The meeting, under a searing borderlands sun, was a new piece of the highly personal political theater that young immigrants have used to dramatize their support for a bill in the Senate to overhaul the immigration system. Hours before the encounter here, President Obama spoke at the White House to urge Congress to move quickly to pass the bill. Suggesting the growing influence of the youth movement in the debate, the president framed his remarks — both literally and politically — with Dreamers.  Read more. 

Mexico arrests 12 in prostitution ring in connection with women’s border slayings

Washington Post

Associated Press, Published: June 12

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — Mexican prosecutors have arrested 12 people in connection with the slayings of 11 young women whose skeletal remains were found near the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez early last year.

The suspects include alleged drug dealers, pimps and small store owners. They allegedly belonged to a gang that forced young women into prostitution and drug dealing and then killed them when they were “no longer of use,” the prosecutors’ office for the northern state of Chihuahua said in a statement late Tuesday. The 10 men and two women face charges of human trafficking and homicide. Six were already in local jails for other offenses, and six other were detained early Tuesday.  Read more. 

In the hot land, Mexicans just say no to drug cartels

Los Angeles Times
By Tracy Wilkinson
June 11, 2013

COALCOMAN, Mexico — Rafael Garcia slaps the oversize wooden desk where he sits, one of the last mayors still in office in this region of Mexican farm country known as Tierra Caliente — hot land.

Mayors from a couple of the nearest towns fled with their drug-cartel pals, people here say, when locals took up arms against them.

But at Garcia's City Hall, the facade is festooned with hand-lettered signs supporting local gunmen who challenged the cartel, loosely referred to as community "self-defense" guards, comunitarios. Several cities in Tierra Caliente are now patrolled by such groups, whose members, often masked, man checkpoints and pull over passing vehicles for inspection. They have reached a kind of tense coexistence with the army, which moved in a couple of weeks ago in an attempt to bring order.  Read more. 

Democratic Revolt Against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Fast Track

The Americas MexicoBlog and Americas Updater has been following TPP negotiations, what it means for Latin America and anti-TPP organizing closely, after twenty years of looking at the disastrous results of NAFTA. This is encouraging news, sent by the Citizens Trade Campaign. Obama's nominee for US Trade Representative, Michael Froman--a typical product of the revolving door between private companies and the government agencies charged with overseeing them for the public good--is a former investment manager at Citigroup and has been accused of tax avoidance. 

No doubt about it, the 2008 candidate Obama who promised to renegotiate NAFTA and design trade deals to promote decent jobs and relief for small businesses has vanished into thin air. Now it's up to citizen, labor and environmental groups to find allies in and  outside Congress to stop the spread of these job-killing Free Trade Agreements. And it looks like they're making some headway. But one of the big problems we have as progressive policy analysts, is finding out what is in the TPP. Government negotiaters not only think they can deal away our interests, but they think they can do it while keeping us uninformed and silenced. If anyone has any new inside information on the negotiations and the current draft, please send it on. info@cipamericas.org

Over Two-Thirds of Democratic House Freshmen Tell Party Leadership They Oppose Transferring Their Constitutional Trade Authority to the President

Washington, DC — More than two-thirds of Democratic freshmen in the U.S. House of Representatives expressed serious reservations today about the Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement (TPP FTA) negotiations and the prospect of delegating Fast Track "trade promotion authority" to the President.  They voiced their concerns in a letter sent to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Ranking Ways and Means Member Sander Levin that was spearheaded by Wisconsin Congressman Mark Pocan and signed by 35 other House freshmen.  

"The administration has yet to release draft texts after more than three years of negotiations, and the few TPP FTA texts that have leaked reveal serious problems," the letter reads.  "Thus, we are especially concerned about any action that would transfer Congress's exclusive Constitutional trade authority to the president."

The TPP is poised to become the largest Free Trade Agreement in U.S. history.  The twelve countries currently involved — the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam — already cover approximately 40% of the global economy, and the TPP also includes a "docking mechanism" that could enable other countries to join over time.  The TPP's seventeenth major round of negotiations concluded in Lima, Peru last month, and negotiators are racing to complete their work by an October deadline set by President Barack Obama and others.  

Under Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, Congress possesses exclusive authority to determine the terms of international trade agreements, but the Obama administration wants Congress to transfer that authority to the executive through a new delegation of Fast Track "trade promotion authority."  The President's nominee for U.S. Trade Representative, Michael Froman, reiterated that request during his Senate confirmation hearing last Thursday.  

Fast Track delegates Congress' constitutional trade authority to the executive branch, allowing negotiators to determine the contents of trade agreement and to sign them before Congress has a vote on the matter.  The rarely-used procedure also allows trade agreements to circumvent ordinary Congressional review, with the White House writing lengthy implementing legislation that is not amendable in committee or on the floor and must be voted on within 90 days of submission, leaving Congress with only take-it-or-leave-it approval of a completed package that, in the case of the TPP, is expected to be at least hundreds of pages long and cover some 29 separate chapters, affecting everything from food safety standards and medicine patents to energy regulations and public procurement decisions.  

"It's encouraging that so many new Members of Congress recognize the problems inherent with Fast Track, and are demanding a more meaningful role in trade policymaking for themselves and their constituents," said Arthur Stamoulis, executive director of Citizens Trade Campaign.  "Congressman Pocan and these other freshmen have demonstrated a real commitment to creating fair trade agreements that promote job creation and economic prosperity.  That type of leadership is desperately needed if we're going to stop letting big corporations ship our jobs overseas and dump our wages and benefits overboard along the way."

A copy of the letter and its signatories follows:

The Honorable Sander M. Levin

Ranking Member

Ways and Means Committee

1106 Longworth House Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20515

Cc: The Honorable Nancy Pelosi

Dear Ranking Member Levin:

We look forward to working with you to establish United States trade policies that promote the creation of American jobs and support our national economic interests while safeguarding Congress’s prerogatives to determine what domestic policies best promote the public interest.

As the economy continues to recover from the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, we can all agree that we cannot afford to have American production and American jobs sent offshore because of unfair trade agreements that undermine our economic growth. When jobs and production factories are offshored, American wages are lost, American-made products decline, and our international interests are compromised.

Job offshoring was a major issue in the previous election that unites our constituents - Democrats, Republicans and Independents alike. Polling consistently shows that Americans oppose our past model of “trade” agreements that facilitate offshoring, undermine Buy American policies, and subject American laws to review by foreign tribunals empowered to order payment of unlimited U.S. tax dollars to foreign firms that seek to avoid playing by the same rules as U.S. firms.

Thus, we write with serious concerns about both the Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement (TPP FTA) now being negotiated by the Obama administration and the prospect of Congress delegating wide swaths of its Constitutional authority to regulate trade (Article 1, Section 8) to the president through “Fast Track”  or any other open-ended delegation of “trade promotion” authority.

In the last Congress, two-thirds of House Democrats joined together on a letter to President Obama demanding access to the draft TPP FTA texts and raising concerns about how the pact could internationally preempt Congress’s domestic policymaking prerogatives. They wrote:

“Since the United States will be obliged to bring existing and future U.S. policies into compliance with the norms established in the TPP FTA, the negotiations USTR is pursuing will create binding policies on future Congresses in numerous areas. These could include those related to labor, patent and copyright, land use, food, agriculture and product standards, natural resources, the environment, professional licensing, state-owned enterprises and government procurement policies, as well as financial, healthcare, energy, telecommunications and other service sector regulations.”

Unfortunately, today TPP FTA talks continue in extreme secrecy. The administration has yet to release draft texts after more than three years of negotiations, and the few TPP FTA texts that have leaked reveal serious problems. Thus, we are especially concerned about any action that would transfer Congress’s exclusive constitutional trade authority to the president.

Congress needs to work together to get American trade policy back on track - not give away its authority to do so.  Reducing our authority to ensure our trade agreements serve the public interest will undermine our efforts to create American jobs and to reform a misguided trade policy that has devastated our manufacturing base through the offshoring of American production and American jobs.

Indeed, given the vast scope of today’s “trade” agreements, we do not believe that a broad delegation of Congress’s constitutional trade authority is generally appropriate. Negotiations on the TPP FTA delve deeply into many non-trade matters under the authority of Congress and state legislatures. If completed, the TPP FTA would lock in policies on these non-trade matters that could not be altered without consent of all other signatory countries. Thus, ensuring Congress has a robust role in the formative aspects of trade agreements is vital.

We are all deeply committed to creating jobs in our communities and across the country. To do so effectively, we believe it is critical that Congress maintains its authority to ensure American trade agreements are a good deal for the American people.

Sincerely,

U.S. Reps. Mark Pocan (WI-02), Ron Barber (AZ-02), Joyce Beatty (OH-03), Ami Bera (CA-07), Julia Brownley (CA-26), Tony Cardenas (CA-29), Matthew A. Cartwright (PA-17), William L. Enyart (IL-12), Bill Foster (IL-11), Lois Frankel (FL-22), Tulsi Gabbard (HI-02), Pete P. Gallego (TX-23), Joe Garcia (FL-26), Alan Grayson (FL-09), Steven A. Horsford (NV-04), Jared Huffman (CA-02), Hakeem S. Jeffries (NY-08), Joseph Kennedy, III (MA-04), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ-01), Annie McLane Kuster (NH-02), Alan S. Lowenthal (CA-47), Michelle Lujan Grisham (NM-01), Daniel B. Maffei (NY-24), Patrick Murphy (FL-18), Gloria Negrete McLeod (CA-35) , Richard M. Nolan (MN-08), Beto O’Rourke (TX-16), Donald M. Payne Jr. (NJ-10), Raul Ruiz (CA-36), Carol Shea-Porter (NH-01), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ-09), Eric Swalwell (CA-15), Mark Takano (CA-41), Dina Titus (NV-01), Juan Vargas (CA-51), and Marc A. Veasey (TX-33)

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Arthur Stamoulis

Citizens Trade Campaign

(202) 494-8826

Near the Border, a Few Deputies Are Outnumbered by Drugs and Bodies

“It’s hard,” he said. “I stop these guys and they pull out their wallets. I see the pictures of their kids and I think about my own kids. I realize I’d probably do the exact same thing if the situation was reversed.” Deputy Brad Gill, Ajo, AZ

I find that consistently local law enforcement officers, forced by recent laws to treat immigrants as criminals, are far less convinced of their task and far more compassionate than lawmakers in Washington or the state capital. As the "border security" hype heats up in the context of immigration reform, legislators should pay more attention to our own "boots on the ground" and less to the defense lobbies that roam the halls with stuffed pockets, selling the tragically false equation of immigration=national security threat. 

We'll be putting out a series on recent reports on immigration in Arizona and Texas on www.cipamericas.org this week. They document the high death rate and massive human rights violations that should shame a nation committed to justice. They also reinforce the deputy's view here that the multibillion-dollar plan of building a total wall is useless and a gigantic waste of tax dollars.

NYT. June 11, 2013 AJO, Ariz. — On a recent morning, Lt. Bill Clements, commander of a remote sheriff’s department substation here, sent his deputies into the sun-blasted Sonoran Desert to recover a body — the fifth in five days. Hours later, back at the station, a deputy unzipped a white body bag, revealing the corpse of a man who had died making the brutal crossing from Mexico, his lips shrunken, either with dehydration or from being partly eaten by wild animals, the deputies said.

Pima County sheriffs moved the body of a person who had apparently died crossing the border.

Out here, life expires suddenly and without dignity. The Ajo district station recovered 18 bodies last year. As of late May, the station had recovered eight, and the summer sun was still a few weeks away.

Read More...

Monsanto and DuPont-Pioneer Threaten Food Security in Mexico (La Jornada, Mexico)

La Jornada – Original Article (Spanish)
Translated By Kyle Shepard

The International Day of Protest Against Monsanto, convoked by a range of civil rights and environmental organizations, managed to attract shows of support in hundreds of cities and more than 50 countries, including the United States, Argentina, México, Japan, South Africa, Germany and Australia, among many others.

Significantly, this massive social mobilization, practically simultaneous around the world, was not on this occasion addressed to any state or financial institution. Rather, It was against a particular entity that holds a hegemonic and illegal position in the field of food production and biotechnology. This is particularly the case when it comes to the development and commercialization of genetically-modified maize; the enormity in power and scope of which puts it in a position to threaten biodiversity and food supplies for entire populations.  Read more. 

Who’s crossing the Mexico border? A new survey tries to find out.

Washington Post
By Brad Plumer
June 2, 2013

Last year, the Border Patrol caught about 356,000 immigrants trying to cross illegally at the U.S.-Mexico border. That’s thought to be about half of all attempts.

It also isn’t much of a deterrent. About 43 percent of those detained say they’ll try to cross again in the near future — often because they’re trying to get back to a job or family members waiting for them in the United States.

That’s one upshot of a big new survey (pdf) from the National Center for Border Security and Immigration at the University of Arizona. The researchers interviewed more than 1,000 detainees at the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector in 2012.  Read more.