OntheWilderSide

Greens call for immigration reform legislation based on immigrants’ rights and economic stability on all sides of the border

Current immigration reform plans in Congress are based on paranoia and exploitation of
immigrants, say Greens

Green Party leaders called on Congress to replace its current ‘deal’ for comprehensive immigration reform, and instead enact legislation that will protect human rights, facilitate the path to citizenship, and help reverse the economic devastation that has uprooted people in Mexico and Central and South American countries.

“Both major parties are operating out of the same framework to implement a massive cheap labor management program for the benefit of major and minor US corporations under the guise of immigration reform. No matter how many times they repeat ‘comprehensive,’ it still will not make it fair, humane or rational for immigrant workers and families or for domestic workers,” said Nativo Lopez, National President of Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana and the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA) http://www.mapa.org and a member of the Green Party.

Greens across the US have supported and participated in several recent demonstrations for immigrants’ rights. Green leaders in California http://gp.org/press/states/ca/ca_2007_05_04.shtml protested the police brutality, including clubbings and shootings with nonlethal bullets, visited on protesters and members of the media at a peaceful immigrants’ rights march in Los Angeles on May 1.

Greens urged Congress to enact the following:

• Amnesty and legalization for all currently undocumented immigrants in the US, with efforts to help them with education, living-wage jobs, and residential stability, with an emphasis on uniting families (same-sex and nontraditional as well as traditional): Greens call such measures an investment in our immigrant population that will pay off for everyone.

“We are responsible as a nation for creating the horrendous conditions that brought so many people here, and it is our moral responsibility to create a comprehensive immigration reform policy that is fair, just and humane and that provides a path towards permanent residency,” said Gayle McLaughlin, Mayor of Richmond, California. “We in Richmond benefit very much with the wealth of culture, skills, talent, work habits, neighborhood pride, family prioritization and entrepreneurial spirit that we observe in our immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, India, Africa, and the whole world.”

• Cancellation of plans for a 370-mile border wall between the US and Mexico, part of
Congress’s current deal under discussion for immigration legislation.

“Congress wants to create a new wall of shame comparable to the Berlin Wall during the Cold War,” said Rebecca Rotzler, Co-Chair of the Green Party of the United States and Deputy Mayor of the Village of New Paltz, New York. Ms Rotzler is Alaskan Native. “It would be environmental nightmare, disrupting wildlife and damaging the
Rio Grande’s delicate ecosystem as well as a monument to the paranoia, racism, and enforced poverty that have plagued and separated indigenous peoples of the Americas for centuries. Whether our brothers and sisters live above or below the US border, we are all the same people, and need to break down these psychological borders, not reinforce them.”

• Renegotiation of NAFTA and other international trade agreements, which have caused economic devastation in Mexico and other Latin American nations as well as the loss of US jobs: current policies, which drive down wages for the benefit of corporate investments, dump US products on their markets, and uproot workers and their families, must be replaced with ‘fair trade’ agreements that protect and increase wages and benefits. Fair trade and policies that help working people instead of corporate lobbies will ensure economic stability, ending the flood of desperately poor and newly unemployed immigrants into the US after passage of NAFTA.

• An end to harassment and violent, disruptive raids on workplaces by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

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