Trade and immigration

May 3, 2010 in Uncategorized | No comments

500 people rallied in Portland yesterday for immigration reform.

Kudos to our friends at PICA who made sure the message of trade made it into the news coverage in the Bangor Daily News.

http://www.bangordailynews.com/detail/142488.html

“Activists from People in Community Alliances — a Bangor organization that advocates for human and worker rights — attended the march and rally. They said effective immigration reform needs to begin with a reassessment of trade policies such as NAFTA.

“I think the perspective for many people is that this topic of immigration seems to begin at the border. It begins with a crime and the only alternatives we have are to give amnesty or punish the crime,” said Chinoy, who is also a PICA volunteer. “That’s obviously not where the story of immigration begins. The same forces that are displacing U.S. jobs south are displacing Latino people northward and there’s a lot of desperation involved. You can’t really reasonably think that simply beefing up security at the border is going to put a finger in the dike of that kind of desperation.”

“Those same free trade arrangements have wiped out the ability of many people to make a living south of the border,” said Jonathan Falk of Carmel, the director of PICA. “People need to make a living, so they go where they have to go to work.” “