Tag: immigration

What to Do About Arizona

Seth Anderson0 comment

Mark Olmsted wants the workers of Arizona to help solve Arizona’s harsh new law by going on strike. I’d move, if it were my family. If Arizona wants to institute ethnic cleansing, and “white-out” their state, let em.

Superman and Terminator

The Arizonans who support this measure — and they appear to be a majority — need to understand the economic consequences of their ignorance. Undocumented workers who use false social security numbers have wages withheld that they never get back — a net gain to state and federal coffers. They pay sales tax. They buy food and clothes and cars and pay rent, creating thousands of jobs. They keep labor costs down, doing twice the work at half the pay that most native Americans get. The send millions back home, much of which is re-spent in border cities and during visits, buying American goods and services, not to mention keeping real human beings out of poverty.

These workers need to give Arizona what it wants. They need to go on strike, even go home for well-deserved vacations or visit other states. Arizona needs to see what happens when you remove crucial organs from the economic body. The rest of us need to boycott Arizona completely — conventions, visits, even driving through. These people need to understand that hate has a very steep price. The law should be repealed — but by the same voters who demanded its passage in the first place.

This doesn’t mean the status quo is tenable. Of course we need comprehensive immigration reform. But as long as voters keep responding to propaganda that illegal aliens are sitting around collecting welfare (see the California gubernatorial campaign) the politics of moving forward are untenable for either party. Politicians won’t act if voters punish them for it. The voters must find out the hard way that their jingoistic nativism misreads the economic impact of migrants completely. Only then will they reward politicians for enacting sane immigration policy.

[Click to continue reading Mark Olmsted: What to Do — Or Not — About Arizona]

Or Arizona could just secede from the US – that’s what they really want to do. Apparently, Arizona doesn’t need any federal dollars to maintain their highways and so forth.

Arizona and its looming tourism disaster

Seth Anderson1 Comment

I’m not going to Arizona until this law is repealed, not that it matters much. We had planned to visit relatives there, but that trip has been put on hold. What a ridiculous and crazy situation!

We Are workers not criminals

Backers of the ethnic cleansing law in Arizona claim that nationwide calls for boycotts of Arizona won’t amount to much. Maybe they will, or maybe they won’t, but this won’t be so easy to laugh off.

The Mexican government warned its citizens Tuesday to use extreme caution if visiting Arizona because of a tough new law that requires all immigrants and visitors to carry U.S.-issued documents or risk arrest.

Why should this worry Arizona? Because Arizona is heavily dependent (PDF) on the tourism industry. From the state’s tourism board 2008 annual report (the last year they have available):

The total (direct and secondary) impact of the Arizona travel industry in 2008 was 310,000 jobs and $10.2 billion earnings.

Of that amount, Mexico is a huge percentage (PDF).

The results of this study, as in the past, demonstrate the economic importance of Mexican visitor spending to Arizona’s economy. Close to 23,400 wage and salary jobs in Arizona at eating and drinking establishments, retail establishments and other spending-related sectors are directly attributable to Mexican visitor spending. Through local purchases of supplies by businesses and the spending of income derived from visitor-related jobs, these visitors generated almost 7,000 additional jobs in Arizona in 2007-08. These jobs account for a total income of $837.24 million and $3.61 billion in sales.

That’s over 30,000 jobs in the tourism trade alone, that Arizona xenophobes have put at serious risk.

It gets worse. Those doubting the success of any domestic boycott should note this:

With Arizona’s international visitorship decimated, the state now must rely on domestic visitors — many of which come from liberal California, where cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles are seeking official boycotts of the state. Late Tuesday, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), leader of the California State Senate, also proposed a statewide boycott of Arizona.

Indeed, according to a 2008 report on domestic visitors (PDF) by the office of tourism, 34 percent of all visitors to Arizona came from California. The next largest contributor, Texas, lagged far behind at 5 percent. Liberal Washington, New York and Illinois constitute another 11 percent of the total.

[Click to continue reading Daily Kos: Arizona’s looming tourism disaster]

I’d encourage any business that has contracts with Arizona residents to reconsider. The boycott of South Africa over their racist policies took a few years to bring down apartheid, but it was ultimately successful. Bigots of Arizona take note.

Reading Around on December 14th through December 15th

swanksalot0 comment

A few interesting links collected December 14th through December 15th:

  • Zillow starts charging for listings | 1000Watt Consulting – Starting tomorrow Zillow will be charging for all manual listing uploads to their site. This, as they also add rental properties to their site as well…photo by swanksalot

  • Beer Money at the MCA

  • Should We Launch a War on Immigration? – Harry Shearer – What’s striking is that none of these governments acknowledges, in these long-running, rancorous debates, that the issue is anything other than a particular, localized one, and, further, that none of these governments seems to have discovered and implemented a solution–a quota, a points system, an electric border fence–that works, that can be adapted or shared by its brethren. In this, the immigration problem resembles nothing so much as the drug problem.

    What we need, obviously, is a War on Immigration.

    Photo Credit: Flickr User swanksalot

  • immigration rally6

  • Jane Fulton Alt’s “After The Storm” – Chicagoist – Like the rest of America, Chicago photographer Jane Fulton Alt watched the events, the destruction, and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on television. But unlike many people, she found herself in a position to do something. Within weeks of Katrina’s landfall, Jane found herself in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, the hardest hit part of the city, block after block wiped out by flood waters as the levees gave way. Jane was part of a program run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that assisted residents in returning briefly to their homes to see what they could find but who also had to immediately turn around and leave. And in this time in New Orleans – as well as several subsequent visits – Jane found herself taking photos of the destruction.

Rio Wins 2016 Olympic Games

Seth Anderson1 Comment

I’m with Andrew Huff of GapersBlock1, the Olympics games were not going to be a panacea for all the problems Chicago faces.

Went to Brazil

Not everyone was displeased. “My hope is that we’ll get back to paying attention to the problems that are facing the city on an ongoing basis,” said Andrew Huff, editor and publisher of Gaper’s Block, an independent Web site that covers local Chicago news. “We can concentrate on 2009 and 2010 instead of 2016. There are so many things we should be paying attention to rather than whether we’re going to host an event in the future.”

[Click to continue reading Rio Wins 2016 Olympic Games – WSJ.com]

Eric Zorn and Dennis Byrne expressed similar sentiments: funnel all the cash that would have been spent preparing for a two week event seven years from now into lasting improvements for the city right now.

Now that the U.S. Olympic Committee has killed Chicago’s fledgling bid for the 2016 Summer games, we’re free from all the fuss, headaches and financial risks of that event.

While Los Angeles stews and spends for the next 30 months until the International Olympic Committee choose a host city, Chicago can get on with the business of building and improving this region for people who live here rather than in preparation for a momentary burst of tourists, athletes and reporters nine summers from now.

an insider wrote into Talking Points Memo, one possible reason for Chicago not being chosen, the bad reputation the US Immigration policies have:

Id prefer to not have my name published if you post any of this, but I wanted to give you some inside perspective on the Olympic planning as I had the privilege to work and help with some of the architecture and planning proposal for Chicago’s Bid.
Mainly, this is just an email to say that regardless of the headline on Drudge, and your comment that the IOC might not enjoy being “big-footed” by Obama, that is not the case. In fact, it was probably helpful, even though we were voted out in the first round. Almost every other country has their leader making personal appearances in support of major international architecture and planning endeavors, but the American president. There have been a number of projects, New Mariinsky Theater in St Petersberg, Russia (for example), where all the finalists, were supported by the leader of their country in having a call placed to the committee, however, the US architect/planner never receives that level of support or interest from the President. So it can only be refreshing to have the President support its country in these types of selections.

A few months ago, (getting back to the Olympic selection) it was made clear to us that Chicago was going to have some difficulty in gaining the selection for a number of reasons including that we have had a large percentage of games hosted here, but most importantly, that we do not have the best international reputation at this time, and it is well known that it is a frustrating and difficult process compared to the other host countries for travelers to gain admittance into the US. There was not a lot that could be done with our planning about this, but it was still brought up as an unofficial “official” concern of the IOC. I think Obama’s visit was prob in some effort to help remove this concern from the selection committee. I would say from knowledge of work on this bid, as well as having produced work to assist with London’s planning effort for Foreign Office Architects in London (before starting my own practice in Chicago) that there was little chance that the decision would be able to be changed this late in the game, and that at this point (the last week), most of the IOC already knows their rankings, and are just discussing the top two. So, again, regardless of Obama’s influence (or lack of), at best, all he would have been able to do was help push over the top, or slightly hurt, but not much more. The decision was most likely already made that Chicago would not host it a few weeks ago by the IOC.

[Click to continue reading Not Their Kinda Town | Talking Points Memo]

Chicago 2016 Olympic

I hope Rio has a great Olympic games, I’ve always wanted to visit there actually.

Footnotes:
  1. notice a link to them over on my sidebar? [↩]

Guam 1974 redux

Seth Anderson2 Comments

Our far-flung correspondent1, Shannon Murphy, adds some corrections to the record re: Roger Gale’s article excerpted in Guam in 1974.

Spain first occupied the Marianas (named after Queen Mariana), to include Guam, in 1668. Legaspi claimed the island in 1565. So that means the Marianas have been colonized for 443 years if you go by Legaspi or 340 years if you go by when the Spanish first settled there – not 250. The US took Guam from Spain during the Spanish American War in 1898, so its been under American rule for only 110 years, minus the 2 and a half years of Japanese occupation during World War II.

Guam changed the most just after World War II then any time during Guam’s history as the island was badly bombed and then 150,000 American military occupied the island for three years or so making it a staging base for the planned attack on Japan and Asia. The villages were destroyed and then relocated, much of the land was seized (by writ of eminent domain to non- U.S. citizens) and the bases were built. The 22,000 Chamorros on the island were marginalized to the military mission. They had no rights and no voice and those who survived a brutal Japanese occupation (the Japanese punished them for being loyal to the Americans) were sickly and starved.

[The United States military] built something like 6 runways, 6 field hospitals, filled in land to make a better harbor and port, built hundreds of quonset huts all over the island. Then they dropped the bombs on Japan (taking off from next door Tinian) and the war was over.


“We Fought the Navy and Won: Guam’s Quest for Democracy (Latitude 20 Books)” (Doloris Coulter Cogan)

Doloris Coulter Cogan’s book has been highly recommended if you are interested in this history. From the blurb:

We Fought the Navy and Won is a carefully documented yet impassioned recollection of Guam’s struggle to liberate itself from the absolutist rule of the U.S. Navy. Doloris Cogan concentrates on five crucial years, 1945-1950, when, fresh out of journalism school, she had the good fortune to join the distinguished team of idealists at the newly formed Institute of Ethnic Affairs in Washington, D.C. Working as a writer/editor on the monthly Guam Echo under the leadership of the Institute’s director, John Collier, Cogan witnessed and recorded the battle fought at the very top between Collier (assisted by former Secretary of the Interior Harry L. Ickes) and Navy Secretary James V. Forrestal as the people of Guam petitioned the U.S. Congress for civilian government under a constitution. Taken up by newspapers throughout the country, this war of words illustrated how much freedom of the press plays in achieving and sustaining true democracy.

Part of the story centers around a young Chamorro named Carlos Taitano, who returned home to Guam in 1948 after serving in the U.S. Army in the Pacific. Taitano joined his colleagues in the lower house and walked out of the Guam Congress in 1949 to protest the naval governor, who had refused their right to subpoena an American businessman suspected of illegal activity. The walkout was the catalyst that introduced the Organic Act of Guam, which was signed into law by President Truman in 1950. Many other Guamanians, including the men and women who testified before the U.S. Congress, were involved in this historic struggle. We Fought the Navy and Won is the first book to tell their story and the first detailed look at the events surrounding Guam’s elevation from possession to territory.

Our far-flung correspondent continues:

It took another several years before Chamorros were made US citizens and then many more before they could elect their own governor. We still can’t vote for President or by a meaningful part of Congress.

All the rest of the corrections are just because this is a 30 year old article:

Our population by the last census update was 162,000.

The military gave some “excess” land back in the 90s so now they only have about 1/4 of the island, rather than 1/3. They might take some more again though.

We have our new airport and lots of airlines now.

The Political Status Commission isn’t doing anything anymore. Sen. Frank Lujan died already as have others who spoke up so well. Most people now have accepted the status quo and are just trying to figure out how to make this all work out. We don’t believe there is anything we can do about the military build up here. Many people welcome it, seeing it as an opportunity to make some money.

Your last paragraph was right on – Guam is an occupied territory. Chamorros (they don’t call themselves Guamanians anymore as that was an American idea to give them a new name to differentiate themselves from Chamorros who were considered a thing of the past!) are a minority in their own home due to US immigration policies which they have no control over. We are nowhere near getting a new political status.

There is a cool group of Chamorro graduate students who are trying to raise awareness and wake people up at http://famoksaiyan.blogspot.com/

Also the PDN is not owned by foreigners but by Gannett Corp. But if the point is that it is not locally owned you got it! There is another paper and two TV news stations that are locally owned though. But the PDN is the big news organization.

Thanks, Shannon, for the informative, brief history. Care to fact-check this anecdote too?

Footnotes:
  1. borrowed title from the New Yorker I think, always wanted to use it [↩]

Seasonal Employees

Seth Anderson0 comment

We wrote about this a while ago, but the issue continues to be unresolved.

U.S. businesses that rely heavily on seasonal immigrant workers are grappling with a crippling labor shortage as summer nears. The reason: increased restrictions on H-2B visas, issued for nonagricultural seasonal workers.

The ski industry was the first to feel the impact of the shortage of seasonal workers. Now landscapers, hotels and restaurants are among those being hit hardest.

Anna Spalings, who along with her husband manages two Best Western Inns near Yellowstone National Park in Montana, usually hires more than a dozen housekeepers every summer under the H-2B program. This year, she wasn’t able to hire any workers under the program. “Summer is the only time we make money, and if we aren’t able to get all the rooms clean, we can’t check people into them,” she said.

The U.S. issues 66,000 H-2B visas a year, half for the fall and winter and half for the spring and summer. But in the past few years, Congress exempted from the cap foreign workers returning to the U.S. to do seasonal work. This year, efforts to extend the “returning-worker” exemption, which expired Sept. 30, got tangled up in a broader battle over immigration reform, and both sides say there’s little hope this year for congressional action. Meanwhile, the cap for summer visas was reached in January.

[From New Visa Curbs Hit Seasonal Employers]

One solution (similar to what I blabbed about earlier) is to radically restructure the economic landscape in America, cut compensation of CEOs and instead pay hourly wage workers a much higher salary. Odds are slim, shall we say?

The concerns are overstated, some say. “I find it beyond belief that there’s any place in the country where you can’t find landscape laborers if you pay them a decent wage,” said Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, a think tank in Washington.

Mr. Eisenbrey argues that the shortage of immigrant workers will force businesses to hire American workers — a good thing, considering the weakening labor market and high teenage unemployment.

But many employers say they can’t find Americans to do the work. In fact, employers must attest to that to be eligible for the H-2B program.

Every year, Jennifer Fraser, 34 years old, and her husband spend the summer traveling from fair to fair in California, selling barbecue, teriyaki and corn dogs from their concession stands. She says American workers are rarely interested. “This is a hard job,” she said, with long days and constant travel.

She and her husband usually hire about nine H-2B workers every summer. But this year, most of their previous employees can’t get visas, so the couple is scaling back on the number of food stands they’re operating.

Employers who do manage to fill entry-level positions, with American teenagers, for instance, are often unhappy with having to treat children of privilege with respect and decency, preferring the old ways of treating employees like immigrants. Or something.

Still, most of the jobs involve low-skilled work in landscaping, forestry and housekeeping. Dede Gotthelf, who owns and manages the Southampton Inn and OSO restaurant on Long Island, says she usually uses the H-2B program to double her work force to 80 over the summer. This year, she has had to look elsewhere for workers to fill positions.

“We reached out right away to American college students,” she said. Her daughter, who will start college in the fall, and her daughter’s friends will help replace the workers from Ireland and Croatia that can’t get visas this year. She says the arrangement isn’t ideal: College students usually aren’t available for the entire April-October season, and their work ethic sometimes isn’t as good as that of foreign workers. Plus, some have “an arrogance and independence” that may not be good for business, she added.