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The U.S. Agency for International Development's Production, Finance, and Technology (PROFIT) program in Lusaka, Zambia, is different from other development projects, according to Rob Munro, the program's senior market development advisor. This is because PROFIT has "real clients" in the private sector who maintain relationships with smallholder farmers.
By working with these partners, PROFIT isn't distorting the market "by throwing money at it" or giving farmers subsidies for inputs, such as fertilizer. Instead, it is working with farmers, the private sector, and donors to improve the competitiveness of rural businesses by linking large agribusiness firms to farmers. It's helping to improve linkages within industries that large numbers of small and medium-sized enterprises participate in, such as cotton, livestock, and non-timber forest products like honey.
Specifically, PROFIT helps communities select and train agricultural agents who work with agribusiness to provide inputs to farmers in rural areas-places where agribusiness firms had been reluctant to go because they didn't think there was a big enough market. The agents are essentially entrepreneurs who provide goods and services that the communities didn't have access to. In addition to selling things like hybrid maize or fertilizer, the agents can also provide ripping services to farmers practicing conservation farming methods, as well as herbicide spraying and veterinary services.
The "key" to the program's success, says Munro, is that the agent is a "community man" selected by the communities themselves, not by agribusiness firms. The farmers trust the agent not to run off with their money and to deliver the goods and services they've purchased.
Unlike traditional development projects that "inundate" communities with trainers, PROFIT minimizes the number of USAID staff involved locally, helping to ensure that the project isn't viewed as traditional "aid," which can create dependency. Unlike the AGRA-supported CNFA, which relies extensively on its own staff to train agro-dealers, 80 percent of the trainings for agents are not provided by PROFIT, but by firms that are training agents how to use their products.
PROFIT's model means that the program doesn't work "with the poorest of the poor," but with farmers who have the ability to scale up, says PROFIT chief of party Mark Wood. If you start with the very poorest, Wood says, "it's like trying to start a car without an engine." But by working with the 200,000 farmers in Zambia who have the means to collaborate with businesses, PROFIT is helping to create opportunities for thousands of poorer farmers in the future.
Stay tuned this week for more about PROFIT and Mobile Technology's work to help small and medium-sized enterprises and farmers use mobile phone technology for e-banking services and to access market information.
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This is the first in a series of blogs where we'll be asking policy makers, politicians, non-profit and organizational leaders, journalists, celebrities, chefs, musicians, and farmers to share their thoughts-and hopes-for agricultural development in Africa. Cross posted from Nourishing the Planet.
Last week, I had the privilege of meeting with the new U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe, Charles Ray. Ambassador Ray was gracious enough to take the time to answer my questions about agricultural development in a country facing political turmoil, high unemployment, and high food prices.
What do you think is needed in Zimbabwe to both improve food security and farmers incomes?
Over the past decade, Zimbabwean small holder farmers have endured a litany of economic, political, and social shocks as well as several droughts and floods resulting in the loss of their livelihoods and food security. Poverty for small holder farmers has greatly increased throughout the country.
In order to restore farmers' livelihoods they need to be supported in a process of sustainable private sector-driven agricultural recovery to achieve tangible household-level impact in food security and generate more household income, as well to promote more rural employment.
The U.S. government through USAID is doing this by supporting programs that provide effective rural extension, trainings and demonstration farms in order to improve farm management by small holder producers. The programs also include support for inputs and market linkages between the farmers and agro-processers, exporters and buyers. These programs are broad-based and cover all communal small holder farmers throughout the country.
The result of this work is increased production, and productivity, lowered crop production costs and losses, improved product quality, and production mix and increasing on-farm value-adding. Together these programs are increasing food security and farmer's incomes as well as generating more farmer income and rural employment of agro-business.
At present, the U.S. is the largest provider of direct food aid in Zimbabwe. We are working with our partners to move from food aid to food security assistance which will use more market oriented approaches and combine livelihoods programs as noted above, which will reduce the need for food distribution.
Do you think Zimbabwe needs more private sector investment? If so, what are ways the U.S. government and other donors can help encourage both domestic and foreign investment?
Zimbabwe certainly needs more foreign direct investment. There is little chance that the country can internally generate the investments required to promote the economic growth it needs without it. But it is the government of Zimbabwe that is responsible for creating the business enabling environment to attract investment including both foreign and national.
At present, much more needs to be done in policy and the legal and regulatory framework and in the rhetoric and actions by the government in order to create the environment conducive to attract investment. Without the clear will of the government to be FDI-friendly there is not much that the donors can do.
Check out the most recent issue of the journal Science which takes a look at ways to improve food security as the world's population is expected to top 9 billion by 2050. To best nourish both people and the planet, the journal suggests a rounded approach to a worldwide agricultural revolution by encouraging diets and policies that emphasize local and sustainable food production, along with the implementation of agricultural techniques that utilize biotechnology and ecologically friendly farming solutions.
There are numerous reasons why it would be wise for Washington to address the nation's failed immigration policies sooner rather than later and finally fix a system that no one on either end of the political spectrum believes is either functioning properly or serving the best interests of the people . Even though studies show that reforming immigration would be a boost to the economy at a time when it could surely use one, and human rights issues make reforming the system a moral imperative, many still believe that it's an issue too politically hot to handle.
Since nothing yet has provided the requisite motivation to those in Washington to move forward and tackle reform, it's time to start to look at it through a prism they can understand: Pure Machiavellian political calculation.
The most common explanation that comes from the right for the current failure of the immigration system is of course lack of enforcement. They claim the problem would be easily solved if only we spent more time, money, and effort locking up or deporting unauthorized immigrants, or patrolling thousands of miles of border to keep them out. They couple this with an argument against providing a normalization of status for 12 million undocumented immigrants based the failure of the 1986 IRCA amnesty.
They have taken these two ideas and tied them into nice package to form the foundation of their narrative in opposition to immigration reform. A narrative that essentially says; "You can't reform immigration unless the borders are totally secure...and you can't have an 'amnesty' because we tried that before and it only opened the floodgates to more 'illegal' immigration by rewarding lawbreakers."
This simple narrative has allowed them dominate debate and set the parameters of how CIR has been crafted in all past attempts, with a heavy reliance on enforcement and border security, restrictive guest worker programs, and in return, some limited normalization of status for some the undocumented population.
We see it's influence even in the framing used by Democrats when addressing the issue. Such as President Obama's statement in the SOTU:
"And we should continue the work of fixing our broken immigration system -- to secure our borders and enforce our laws, and ensure that everyone who plays by the rules can contribute to our economy and enrich our nation."
The problem for reformers is that, although based on faulty logic and misinformation, the narrative is compelling, easily understood, and unfortunately accepted by not only large swaths of the American public, but by those on both sides of the aisle in Washington.
Yesterday, thousands of immigration reform advocates converged on Washington to demand that Congress and the Administration live up to their promises to take up reform, and repair our broken immigration system. And while news of this gathering of pro-reform advocates was overshadowed by the events surrounding the health care debate, it should be remembered that both of these causes are part and parcel of the greater struggle for change that brought so many together last November in the hope of setting a new agenda for the 21st century.
Despite what some claim, support for some sort of progressive immigration reform is not tantamount to calling for "open borders" , "unrestricted immigration" or as Lou Dobbs likes to claim, "importing half the population of Mexico into the US."
And while credible arguments have been made from both the left, and Libertarian right, that favor open borders and the total unrestricted flow of people, goods, and services between nations, most pro-reform advocates don't take this position.
Instead, we see our current "immigration problem" as a failure of our system to live up to its historical duty to allow for the reasonable flow of people from all over the world to come to this nation to make a better life, add vitality and diversity to our national mosaic, and join in the great American democratic experiment.
Our current immigration system is the result of laws and codes that have been cobbled together over the last fifty years. The current Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) was originally written in 1952 and has been amended and rewritten numerous times over the proceeding years. With each change, various bits and pieces were added and others removed. This has left a Byzantine system of disjointed codes and regulations that are not only unresponsive to current immigration needs, but nearly impossible to navigate or enforce. Into this vacuum left by a web of disjointed and sometimes contradictory regulations, layers of further restrictions and punitive measures have been added over time in attempts to somehow make this unworkable system work.
Clearly, a system that allows for only 5000 unskilled workers to enter the country legally, out of a total of over one million new admissions a year, is out of touch with current immigration needs. Certainly any system that has wait times of up to twenty years to allow family members to join relatives legally present in the country is not living up to the spirit of its intent.
But after years of toxic and divisive debate, are the American people ready for a real and practical discussion of this issue? Or will they get bogged down, as in the past, in meaningless sloganeering and petty tribalism and xenophobia?
The answer depends not as much on the actions of the anti-immigrant right, who will inevitably try to turn all the collective fears and insecurities of the American public towards the immigrant population, but rather on the actions of those looking for truly rational, fair, and practical reform.
As we saw in the debate over health-care reform, the lack of meaningful immigration reform in the past has left a door open for opponents of any progressive agenda to use immigration issues in attempts to stall and block much needed change.
Those looking for meaningful immigration reform must see this as a new opportunity to now reinvigorate the debate. Immigration reform must become just one element of a comprehensive plan to revitalize a new 21st century America ... just one component of an aggressive plan to address not only the nation's economic health, but its future direction.
For us to accomplish true reform, we must acknowledge that current economic conditions put this issue in a precarious position and that increased blowback from the right is inevitable. But we must also remember that despite all the divisive rhetoric we heard during this past election cycle, or during the health care debate, the majority of the public rejected the calls to tribalism, dog-whistle appeals to racism, and simplistic slogans. They want meaningful and practical change, and are willing to listen, learn, and work towards that change.
If we are to be part of that change, and make immigration reform part of a new agenda for the 21st century, we will need to take the lead, and make the American people understand that fair, practical, and humane immigration reform is a crucial component of any real and meaningful change for the future.
On Tuesday Oct 13th, members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus led by Rep. Luis Gutierrez(Il-D), will be joined in Washington by 2,500 representatives of labor, immigrant advocacy and civil rights groups, and faith-based communities from across the country to unveil what is being touted as a list fundamental principles behind a new progressive, comprehensive immigration bill to be introduced before the end of the month.
"I am overwhelmed by the support of immigrant, faith-based and community-based organizations in urging me to introduce comprehensive immigration legislation. I look forward to joining them on Tuesday so that I can share with them more specifically the key principles that will form the basis of such a bill," said Rep. Gutierrez.
"We simply cannot wait any longer for a bill that keeps our families together, protects our workers and allows a pathway to legalization for those who have earned it," continued Rep. Gutierrez. "Saying immigration is a priority for this Administration or this Congress is not the same as seeing tangible action, and the longer we wait, the more every single piece of legislation we debate will be obstructed by our failure to pass comprehensive reform."
"We need a bill that says if you come here to hurt our communities, we will not support you; but if you are here to work hard and to make a better life for your family, you will have the opportunity to earn your citizenship. We need a law that says it is un-American for a mother to be torn from her child, and it is unacceptable to undermine our workforce by driving the most vulnerable among us further into the shadows."
"I believe the support base for this kind of compassionate and comprehensive legislation is strong and far reaching, and I believe the votes are there to pass it. I have always said that immigration reform will not be easy; but it is time we had a workable plan working its way through Congress that recognizes the vast contributions of immigrants to this country and that honors the American Dream."
After the shadowy Bush years, the emergence of reasonable policy can be a little surprising. Immigration law has suffered from a lack of planning and is often influenced by fear rooted in the Sept. 11 attacks. But the national dialogue on immigration has begun to grow healthier. Activists, immigration advocacy groups and Latino and Asian American communities dug in and are working toward reform. Right wing and anti-immigration voices have less sway. This week we see two tangible and positive developments on this front: An announcement from the White House regarding detention policy reform and a letter against aggressive enforcement sent to the White House from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Sadly, as seen in the health care debate, discussions about immigration continue to be led by the politics of fear. Immigration restrictionists have been very successful at inserting into the public debate the notion that immigration and immigrants are bad for the country. As discussed by John Casey, associate professor at the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College, immigrants are seen as a threat to current living standards—“often seen as most impacting on the working poor—but there are also fears about loss of existing cultures, about rising crime, and even greater ecological damage.” But in his recent paper, “Open Borders: Absurd Chimera or Inevitable Future Policy,” Casey argues that these fears have proved to not be true and that considering open borders as a future policy option is an inevitable consequence of globalization.
The assumption that fuels anti-immigrant sentiment is that without border control a mass number of the world’s poor would arrive to the country of destination and swamp the country’s capacity and public services. This fear, has led this country to increase funding for border security, immigration enforcement, and the detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants. It has also resulted in policies, at the federal, state and local level, that aim at targeting and persecuting, immigrant communities. Investing resources in protecting our borders from immigrants, however, can be considered inefficient government spending. As Casey says:
there should be widespread acceptance of the reality that current restrictions on immigration and considerable spending on border control have only had minimal impact on irregular immigration.
After months of wading through the mixed messages and red herrings thrown out by The Administration and Democratic leadership, trying to figure out exactly what form the long promised initiative to reform US immigration policy will take, a rough blueprint for Comprehensive Immigration Reform has finally emerged from The Council on Foreign Relations.
If I'm reading my tea leaves correctly, the report, written by a nineteen member bipartisan panel, lays out what will become the "middle ground" consensus position that pro-reform forces will rally around. The fact that the panel contains representatives from the various factions of the newest version of the CIR coalition, including those with ties to advocacy groups like NCLR and unions like SEIU, along with economists, scholars, politicians and members of government agencies, leads me to believe that my hunch is most likely right.
In my last post introducing the report, I promised I would follow through with further examination and analysis of exactly what I believe those within the beltway are formulating for the upcoming legislative battle. In fact, that initial post in what will become a series of articles examining all the various aspects of the report's observations and recommendation, attracted the attention of Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America's Voice.
While I intend to follow through with posts covering all the good, bad, and ugly contained in the report in hopes of getting a firm hold on exactly what to expect when the CIR debate begins, Mr. Sharry made a point in his response to my post of singling out the Task Force's recommendations on immigrant detention and incarceration for their forward thinking.
Since immigrant detention has been a topic of much concern and conversation among those of the broader pro-migrant movement, I figure I'll start by taking Mr Sharry up on his challenge, and examine the Task Force's recommendations and observations on detention.
Finally, the country seems serious about reforming health care. But with discussions about a public option, cost control and competition raging, one aspect of achieving true universal coverage is being left out: what to do about immigrants who lack coverage?
All of the plans getting serious consideration in Congress would exclude undocumented immigrants. Many proposals would even bar access to community health centers and emergency rooms -- a historic shift from America's humanitarian tradition that in an emergency no one should be turned away. Some proposals would exclude legal resident immigrants who have been in the United States for less than five years.
Unless the debate takes a different turn, millions of immigrants will be left out of the system. We should not enshrine discriminatory principles into a new health care system. A "universal" health care program that leaves out millions of Americans is a fraud.
Last week, it was announced that the Department of Homeland Security was signing 11 new local law enforcement agencies onto the program known as 287(g). The program grants local law enforcement agents the authority to enforce federal immigration laws. The destructive program cultivates a culture of fear among immigrants and communities of color, pours resources into the rounding up of immigrants instead of the protection of public safety and has been condemned by everyone from independent think-thanks to the Police Foundation.
So why is DHS continuing this failed program? While the announcement was made alongside the pledge of a long overdue "review" of the program, it is a mistake to expand any failed enforcement program in the absence of satisfactory comprehensive immigration legislation.
I am disappointed that the announcement of a review of this program was accompanied by an ill-advised expansion. This, more than anything, points to the need for a FULL OVERHAUL of immigration policy. We cannot continue failed programs in the absence of comprehensive reform.
Enforcement-only schemes were the rage back when anti-immigrant demagogues were in full roar and Bush officials wanted to show how tough they were. They bring us no closer to an immigration system that works. Mr. Obama promised fresh ideas on immigration reform. So far we don’t see them.
So here I am at the Reform Immigration for America Summit in DC and the opening luncheon inside the Victory Tent was filled with people chanting Si Se Puede/Yes we Can! The message from all the speakers was clear, yes there is alot of work to do but that ultimately victory will be ours. Pero what does victory look like?
Maria Socorro Pesqueira, from Mujeres Latinas in Accion de Chicago spoke of her own personal experiences coming from an immigrant family and looked at the immigrant woman's experience specifically. She gave examples of immigrant women whose families were fragmented by an enforcement first immigration agenda, an agenda that according to Socorro Pesqueira, left one child in the streets calling our for her detained and eventually deported father. As a mother, who is here with my youngest, this brought me to tears and even writing about it now makes my eyes well up.
The underlying assumption though, or my perception of it from the RI4A Summit and from the immigrant reform movement in general is that things are different now with Obama in the White House. Are they really?
Immigrant college grads in Arizona or anywhere cannot get jobs, Colorado and Rhode Island held their own versions of tuition equity hearings with reasonable success on the side of undocumented students, the anti-immigrant CIS is out with another public service (?) announcement now linking undocumented immigrants to the T-word, and the Gomez brothers have finally gained reprieve from deportation due to a private bill sponsored by Senator Dodd with the real solution—the DREAM Act—nowhere in sight. Fear not, we have good news buried in this post.
Following on the heels of the successful SCHIP battle, Congressperson Jose Serrano (D-NY) introduced the Child Citizen Protection Act (H.R. 182), a limited bill that would allow [3.1 million] U.S. citizen children to be heard before their immigrant parent is deported from the United States. Over 100,000 parents of U.S. citizens, have been deported thus far, which is simply outrageous:
“I am saddened, but not surprised to learn that our government, in its harsh anti-immigrant stance, has split hundreds of thousands of families apart over the past decade,” Serrano said. “Over the years, I have said many times that our current deportation regime is inhumane and un-American. Now we have direct proof that this is the case.”
A plea comes from Dream Act Texas to President Obama, who seems to only want to talk about immigration reform in the Spanish media.
Immigration is urgently needing your attention. You promised the DREAM Act would pass in the first 100 days. You said things would be different with U.S. immigration policy. Could you have a quick meeting with DHS Director, Janet Napolitano and tell her to go ahead and start changing immigration policy? Something has to be done with Arpaio in Arizona. ICE raids need to stop. The DREAM Act needs to pass (the U.S. economy needs the DREAMers).
Hint: The plea is likely to be answered in the House and Senate before April 6 session break.
Well researched and written history of immigration, and the roots of Mexican immigration -- even if you don't "buy" the source -- from the Vatican Information Service (FIDES) reprinted at: Spero News (http://www.energypublisher.com/article.asp?id=17478).
This first Fides Dossier on the Question of Immigration in the United States of America, opens with an overall view; an illustration of the socio-economic situation in the country which have encouraged immigration since the first settlements and an analysis of the policies employed over the years to regulate a vast movement of people, will precede the examination of a far more complex situation today, with the country facing enormous migratory challenges of the new millennium, lacking the necessary legislation, and in the grip of serious economic crisis and widespread social malcontent.
With regard to tougher measures taken in recent years to regulate the migratory immigration, an emblematic case is the situation on the US-Mexico border, where the latest strategies of closure culminated in the approval by the US Congress of a proposal to build a 700 mile wall along the border. The United States Catholic Bishops' Conference, together with the whole local Catholic community, has firmly condemned the ineffectiveness and violence of these measures. For many years the Catholic Bishops of America have strenuously fought for migrants and against systems of repression, actively involved in promoting immigration reforms which encourage legality and respect for human rights.
Earlier today the Obama-Biden Transition Team released the names of leaders of a number of Policy Working Groups including Immigration. "The focus of the Policy Working Groups will be to develop the priority policy proposals and plans from the Obama Campaign for action during the Obama-Biden Administration"
IMMIGRATION
T. Alexander Aleinikoff has been Dean of the Georgetown University Law Center and Executive Vice President of Georgetown University since July 2004. He has been a member of the Georgetown faculty since 1997. Dean Aleinikoff served as General Counsel and Executive Associate Commissioner for Programs at the Immigration and Naturalization Service for several years during the Clinton Administration. From 1997 to 2004 he was a Senior Associate at the Migration Policy Institute, where he now serves on the Board of Trustees. He has written widely on immigration, refugee and citizenship law and constitutional law. Dean Aleinikoff is a graduate of Swarthmore College and Yale Law School.
Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar is Professor and Deane F. Johnson Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School. His work focuses on how organizations manage complex regulatory, migration, international security, and criminal justice problems. During the Clinton Administration he served at Treasury as Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary for Enforcement, where he worked on countering domestic and international financial crime, improving border coordination, and enhancing anti-corruption measures. He has served on the boards of numerous organizations, including Asylum Access and the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation. He has testified before Congress on immigration policy and separation of powers, and was appointed to the Silicon Valley Blue Ribbon Task Force on Aviation Security. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute.
With only seventy-five days left in office, George Bush has finally taken some action to fix the woefully outdated and inefficient infrastructure of the U.S Citizenship and Immigration Service that handles millions of immigration cases each year.
Eight years after first requesting modernization of a system that still relies on pre-computer age technologies to handle 70 million paper-based files, the agency is finally going to enter the 20th century.
I guess all that can be said is .... Better late than never.
But one can only wonder about all the human suffering that could have been avoided if George had only had the political courage to do this eight years ago instead of waiting until he was just about out the door to "sneak" it past the rabid right-wing who wanted all DHS resources spent on walls, raids, and detention camps.
The Bush administration has launched a massive overhaul of the nation's long-troubled immigration services agency, tapping an IBM-led industry consortium to re-invent the way government workers help immigrants obtain visas, seek citizenship and get approval to work in the United States.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service announced that it has asked IBM to be its "solutions architect" to change the technology and processes used by its 16,000 government and 6,000 contract workers at 280 locations nationwide.
The contract, awarded this week and the largest federal homeland security bid on the market, includes a $14.5 million, 90-day assessment period with options over five years worth $491.1 million, and a ceiling value of up to $3.5 billion if Congress approves a broad overhaul of the nation's immigration laws that unleashes a flood of applications for legal status or other actions
...
The USCIS transformation effort is a long-awaited, much delayed undertaking that is years behind initial schedule yet considered a cornerstone of any broader effort to fix an immigration system all sides say is one of the most broken bureaucracies in the federal government.
The agency, which was spun off from the former U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services and merged into the Department of Homeland Security in 2003, receives about 6 million to 8 million applications from immigrants a year, but relies on a pre-computer age, paper-based system of 70 million files identified by immigrants' "A-numbers" or alien registration numbers.
The system costs tens of millions of dollars a year for to archive, store, retrieve and ship files; has led to the loss or misplacement of more than 100,000 files; and contributed to backlogs of hundreds of thousands of cases and delays of months and years, auditors have found.
Immigration officials say modernization efforts have been delayed since 1999 by funding problems, inertia, increased security demands, and the DHS reorganization....but has been delayed by bureaucratic infighting, indecision and caution as other major homeland security contracts have gone off track, such as SBInet, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection effort to build a "virtual" fence using surveillance technology on the border...
I frequently hear the tired old song that our immigration system is broken and must be fixed. Inevitably, the next line is a conclusory shortcut to thinking that involves massive fencing, rounding up morenos with military tactics, the forced separation of families, demonizing Spanish, or some combination thereof. Changing the debate surrounding immigration policy, and turning others to see immigrants as persons and not objects, requires that we reject the terms that are carelessly taken for granted. So I begin with this. I challenge the very premise that the system is broken at all.
We do not have upwards of 12 million people living here without legal status because the system is broken. They are here because the forces that have impelled them to come to our country are beyond the scope of unilateral government control, and because the political myths and the rhetorical frames that prevail in our discourse keep our politicians and policy makers from frankly admitting this to the American public.
This creates government paralysis when it comes to making sound immigration policy because meaningful reform will require us to recognize that policy solutions must involve compromising our traditional definition of sovereignty. This cooperation with other governments means a massive investment in the economic development of Latin America, and yes, the deregulation of labor markets in the form of an open border policy within the NAFTA block.
Faced with the daunting task of taking on a policy issue of this complexity, it isn't surprising that our political establishment chooses to treat the issue only when it serves as a prop in the political theater. What those who insist the system is broken have missed, however, is that broken things do not work as intended. The situation we have with our neighbors and family members the government calls "aliens" is working exactly the way they want it to.
Come January 20, 2009 a new administration will take office in perhaps the most precarious times the nation has faced since the 1930's. Fighting two seemingly endless wars and with an economy on the verge of collapse, it is not an enviable position for any leader.
While both candidates have avoided the immigration debate like the plague during the campaign, it has moved down the list of important issues for voters, replaced by more pressing issues like healthcare or the economy. But in order to address these more pressing concerns in any meaningful way, the new government will need to tackle immigration once and for all.
We cannot talk about supplying health care for 46 million uninsured Americans, and perhaps double that number that are underinsured, without addressing what is to become of the health needs of an additional 12mil undocumented immigrants. We cannot talk about fixing a broken economy and real economic justice for working Americans without addressing the 8 million workers living in the shadows and working in an underground economy.
Amid all the hype of political conventions, analysis of the Republican VP pick and Labor Day celebrations for the rest of the country, the Bush Administration will launch an attack on the nation's farmworkers.
Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao and Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, at any moment,will announce extensive changes to the H-2A guestworker program, slashing wages and reducing worker protections for hundreds of thousands of our nation's farmworkers. These policy changes deserve our attention.
The H-2A program is a temporary agricultural guestworker program that permits employers to apply for permission to hire foreign labor for jobs lasting ten months or less. To bring in H-2A guestworkers, employers must show that they cannot find U.S. workers who want the jobs. These will be the most far-reaching changes in the laws regulating guestworker programs since 1942. If the changes are finalized, as we expect them to be next week, and take effect, this Administration will have returned us to an era of agricultural labor exploitation that many thought ended over 65 years ago.
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The U.S. Agency for International Development's 
Last week, I had the privilege of meeting with the new U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe, Charles Ray. Ambassador Ray was gracious enough to take the time to answer my questions about agricultural development in a country facing political turmoil, high unemployment, and high food prices.
With only seventy-five days left in office, George Bush has finally taken some action to fix the woefully outdated and inefficient infrastructure of the U.S Citizenship and Immigration Service that handles millions of immigration cases each year.
I frequently hear the tired old song that our immigration system is broken and must be fixed. Inevitably, the next line is a conclusory shortcut to thinking that involves massive fencing, rounding up morenos with military tactics, the forced separation of families, demonizing Spanish, or some combination thereof. Changing the debate surrounding immigration policy, and turning others to see immigrants as persons and not objects, requires that we reject the terms that are carelessly taken for granted. So I begin with this. I challenge the very premise that the system is broken at all.
Receive information on the latest action items, media campaigns, and legislative initiatives from ProMigrant
No spam or press release dumps from DC advocacy groups, lobbyists, or politicos. No requests for donations, or re-directs to astroturf groups looking to harvest your e-mail information.
Just real action for real change from real grassroots activists.
