Article: "Forgotten Corners of the Economy"

Another dead day on the street corner and Gonzalo Mejia is wondering how he will get by. He's been finding work just one or two days a week lately. Worse yet, a contractor recently stiffed him out of $400 worth of pay.

"All the time there is less work," grumbles Mejia, a short, muscular man in his mid-50s. His pals nod in agreement as they wait like hawks, ready to swoop down on the next contractor who pulls up. But it's well past 9 A.M., only three cars have trolled by in search of workers, and hardly anyone has budged off the street.

Yet it is not just the disappearance of work that troubles him and the 150 or so men killing time at Milwaukee and Belmont, once Chicago's busiest street corner for day laborers. Everything has become so difficult, so frustrating, so dangerous. For workers with minimal protections against employers who steal from their wages or sometimes leave them dead or maimed, life has lately become bare existence.... More

Fun facts about Miami - enjoy!

(Found in This Land is Our Land: Immigrants and Power in Miami by Alex Stepick, et al.)

• Miami has the highest proportion of foreign-born residents of any major metropolitan area in the United States, proportionally 50% more than either Los Angeles or New York.
• Over 70% of Miami's population are either first-generation (48.6%) or second-generation (22.9%) immigrants.
• In the wake of every crisis in Latin America, the Miami Latino population grows.
• While Miami has only 5% of the total US Latino population, it has close to half of the 40 largest Latino owned industrial and commercial firms in the country.
• Nearly 50% of US exports to the Caribbean and Central America and over 30% of US exports to South America pass through Miami.
• Miami's airport is the top US airport for international freight, with more nonstop cargo flights to Latin Ameirca and the Caribbean than Orlando, Houston, New Orleans, Atlanta, Tampa and New York's Kennedy Airport combined.
• The airport also has more airlines than any other airport in the Western Hemisphere,a nd it is frequently easier to get from one Latino American country to another by going through Miami than by flying direct.

Opinion piece on farmworkers in Florida

The Daily Texan > Opinion

The Texas Union and slavery

By Kandace Vallejo
Daily Texan Guest Columnist

Published: Tuesday, October 6, 2009

The day after Thanksgiving 1960, millions of Americans tuned into the landmark documentary “Harvest of Shame.” Narrated by Edward Murrow, the legendary pioneer of television news broadcasting, the report provided viewers with vivid portrayals of the degradation experienced daily by migrant farmworkers throughout the U.S. In an iconic soundbite, one produce grower casually explained, “We used to own our slaves. Now we just rent them.”

Very little has changed in 50 years. For example, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders notes that “the norm is a disaster, and the extreme is slavery” for tomato harvesters in Florida. The picking piece rate has remained stagnant since 1980. A worker today must pick and haul roughly two and a half tons of tomatoes to earn minimum wage for a typical 10-hour day.

These wages, combined with the precarious nature of farm labor and virtually nonexistent legal protections, result in workers’ sub-poverty annual earnings and create an environment where abuses as extreme as slavery can flourish.

Slavery. As in seven prosecuted cases involving 15 farm employers and over 1000 workers – native-born and immigrant alike – in the last decade. In the most recent case, a dozen workers escaped from a box truck in Immokalee, Florida where they were being held against their will, beaten, chained and forced to pick tomatoes for little or no pay. After successfully prosecuting their enslavers, U.S. Attorney Doug Molloy acknowledged that the handful of cases that have come to light are “just the tip of the iceberg.”

At the forefront of today’s abolition movement is an award-winning farmworker’s organization, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW). Their anti-slavery efforts have been praised by Florida Governor Charlie Crist, FBI Director Robert Mueller, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and leading trafficking experts the world over. The CIW is not only the undisputed leader in uncovering slavery cases in Florida’s fields., it is also advancing a strategic program to eliminate the systemic poverty and powerlessness that lie at the heart of the state’s agricultural industry.

On Sept. 25, the CIW and Compass Group North America announced sweeping changes to improve tomato harvesters’ wages and working conditions. Compass is the first major foodservice provider to join Yum Brands, McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway, and Whole Foods Market in partnering with the CIW to address the human rights crisis in Florida’s fields.

These innovative agreements harness the market power of large retailers to improve labor standards in their tomato supply chains.

Yet Aramark – the foodservice provider of the Texas Union – remains on the sidelines. On its Web site, Aramark claims to “conduct business … according to the highest ethical standard.” With news of the Compass agreement, Aramark can no longer claim that it meets the highest ethical standard. If it wishes to retain the goodwill of students and the broader Austin community, Aramark should, with all due diligence, establish an agreement with the CIW to demand those same higher standards of its tomato suppliers. Until that time, Aramark will continue to play an indefensible and unnecessary role in prolonging Florida’s harvest of shame.

Vallejo is a cultural studies in education graduate student.

Recent Deportations in Miami-Dade County

There have been a lot of deportation in Homestead, which is a suburb and major agricultural area just South of Miami.

Angela, a woman I met recently, woke up at 5am to have her home surrounded by armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and local police officers who pounded on the door, saying if she didn't open up they would knock the door down. Angela was terrified and opened the door. ICE then went through her entire home, searching, going through bedding and closets. When she asked what they were looking for, they wouldn't say. Turns out they were looking for her husband. Her 8-year-old, Benny, ran out into the yard, climbed a tree, and -only knowing that armed gunmen had entered their home- started shouting “Criminales! Criminales!” from the tree. An ICE agent told him to get down from the tree, but he wouldn't. The ICE agent then threatened to deport him, his two brothers, and his mother if he didn’t get down. This agent, who’s salary is paid by us- the taxpayers- threatened a child who is (by the way) a US Citizen, as are his siblings. His mother has legal status in this country, with Temporary Protected Status.

Angela's husband, Benito, came home from work at 6:30, and was immediately taken into custody. Benito has a valid work permit and has been trying to process his immigration paperwork for years. It seems that he was taken advantage of by an unscrupulous notary public.

I had a conversation with a pastor recently that I’ve been reflecting on a lot. If your child was hungry or sick, what would you do for them? If you couldn’t find work that would save them, what would you do? If someone told you that you couldn’t move to the U.S. where you could work, where you could make the money that could save your child, would you say, “Okay, that’s that. I guess my child will have to starve”? No. I cannot believe that anyone would choose to give up, to refrain from breaking some man-made law and give up on their child’s chance at health and life.

Pray for the families in Homestead.