TRUMP'S IMMIGRATION ORDER: FAST TRACK TO AN ABUSIVE PAST by David Bacon

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TRUMP'S IMMIGRATION ORDER: FAST TRACK TO AN ABUSIVE PAST by David Bacon The American Prospect, July 2, 2020 https://prospect.org/labor/trump-immigration-order-farmworkers-no-rights/ https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2020/07/trumps-immigration-order-fast-track-to.html Bert Corona, father of the modern immigrant rights movement On June 24, new COVID-19 cases passed 200 in one day in rural Yakima County in central Washington state for the third time this June. That brought the total number of people infected to 6,940, and the number of the dead to 132. The infection toll for Seattle's King County, with a population ten times larger than Yakima's, was 9,453. COVID numbers are spiking in farmworker communities all over the United States. On June 26, the Imperial Valley, on the California-Mexican border, the source of winter vegetables worth over $1.8 billion per year, registered 5,549 cases and 70 deaths. In California's huge San Joaquin Valley, Fresno County had 3,892 infections and 71 deaths, and Kern County had 4,108 cases and 63 deaths. Collier County in Florida, center of the U.S. tomato crop and headquarters of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, had 3,778 cases and 70 deaths. Cumberland County, New Jersey's agricultural heartland, had 2,876 cases and 124 deaths, and nearby Chester County, Pennsylvania, where workers labor in Kennett Square's mushroom sheds, had 3,437 cases and 313 deaths. In Arizona's Yuma County, an irrigated desert along the Colorado River, there were 5,323 cases and 76 deaths. This raging rural infection rate, which tracks those of urban counties many times their size, is not due to a refusal by farmworkers to wear facemasks. It is a function of structural racism-the way immigrants in general, and farmworkers in particular, are treated as disposable labor. People in the fields are viewed as machines, whose ability to work is the only aspect of their human value worth considering. There is no clearer demonstration of this fact than the immigration order issued by the Trump administration on June 23. President Trump boasted that he would "preserve jobs for American citizens" by stopping the recruitment of guest workers in four visa categories. He failed to mention, however, that he was leaving untouched the country's main guest worker program, under which growers bring farm laborers to the U.S.-the H-2A visa program. Faced with the need to please agribusiness, Trump made clear that no rhetoric about family values applies to farmworkers. H-2A migrants cannot bring a wife or a child with them (the program notoriously discriminates against hiring women), so they live the lives of lonely men in barracks. And in its most significant impact on families, Trump's order would close down the country's historic path for keeping families together-the family preference system for granting residence visas, or "green cards." Smoke and Mirrors There's nothing new about streamlining the labor supply for growers, making it cheaper and more vulnerable, under the cover of anti-immigrant rhetoric. Trump's order ostensibly stops the issuance of visas for four much smaller guest worker programs, including H-1B for workers in health care and high tech; H-2B for non-agricultural workers, mostly in landscaping, forestry, and food processing; L-1 for corporate executives; and J-1, the visa for students in cultural exchange programs, au pairs, and university researchers. Nativist anti-immigrant organizations duly praised the order, which a senior administration official claimed to Vox "would open up 525,000 jobs." The anti-immigrant Center for Immigration Studies declared, "Now there is a new sheriff in town. For the first time, a president has stood up for the American people." According to Tom Homan, former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Trump, "With record unemployment crushing millions of Americans ... importing more foreign labor ... is simply unacceptable." Almost all media coverage took Trump's claim at face value. Yet the announcement was clearly a case of smoke and mirrors. According to Mary Bauer, counsel for the Centro de los Derechos de Migrantes (the Center for Migrant Rights), "We can't figure out where these numbers are coming from. This administration just makes things up." In March, Trump shut down the international division of Citizenship and Immigration Services, the office that processes all visa applications abroad, and effectively closed visa operations at U.S. consulates. Most H-1B and H-2B work visa applications for this year had already been made and approved, however, and will be unaffected by the new order. The impact on employers, therefore, will be small, despite their loud, pro-forma protests.   In any case, those two visa categories have caps of 65,000 each, making them much smaller than the untouched guest worker program for agribusiness, which has no cap. Last year the administration certified grower applications to fill over a quarter of a million jobs with H-2A workers. And when Trump in March shut down the processing of all other visa applications, growers got the administration to keep their flow of guest workers going. Adding one more wrinkle, the order allows employers to apply for exceptions to the work visa bans. A blanket exemption has already been made for the food supply and health care industries. Meatpacking companies that use H-2B visas to send workers into COVID-saturated plants will undoubtedly win exemptions, as will hospital corporations that want H-1B nurses to risk their lives in the pandemic's emergency rooms. "But where's the protection from OSHA, or for wages and sick pay, or any reform of the abuses of these guest worker programs?" Bauer asks. "There's nothing here to protect workers, regardless of whether they're guest worker visa holders or citizens." Resisting the Impact of the Virus That lack of protection is especially serious for the huge wave of workers recruited by agribusiness. Bringing H-2A workers into the country in the middle of a pandemic is dangerous. Mexico, the country from which over 250,000 were recruited last year, is struggling to contain its own outbreak. There is no testing for these contract workers as they cross the border. Meanwhile, in the U.S. towns where they're put to work, COVID cases are spiking. COVID infections go back and forth between workers themselves and their surrounding communities. In March and April, the biggest apple grower in Washington, Stemilt Fruit, admitted that over 50 workers it had recruited in Mexico had the virus. Because these workers showed symptoms more than one month after their arrival, it was likely they hadn't brought the illness with them-they were infected here. In many places, non-H-2A farmworkers and their families have gone on strike to enforce working conditions that would keep the virus from spreading. On the same day that virus cases reached 3,533 in California's Tulare County, with 118 deaths, sorters went on strike in the sheds of Primex Corporation's 5,000 acres of pistachio groves. Although workers say 61 have tested positive, one worker, Veronica Perez, says the company was selling them facemasks for $8 apiece. Another worker, Ernestina Mejia, charged, "The company told us nothing. We found out workers were getting sick by talking with each other in the bathroom. Now my whole family is infected." Workers in Yakima Valley apple packinghouses went on strike earlier this month for the same demand-safety from the virus. Knowing the disease was peaking in their county, they wanted hazard pay to compensate for the terrible risk involved in just going to work. Raising wages, however, is not part of the administration's plan. Instead, Trump has promised to help growers lower the required pay for H-2A workers, who now make up 10 percent of the U.S. farm workforce. Currently, each state has to calculate an Adverse Effect Wage Rate that won't undermine the wages of farmworkers already living here, who are mostly immigrants themselves. The new rule that the administration is proposing would cost workers up to $6 an hour, while saving growers millions. Lowering wages for H-2A workers would pull the floor from under farmworker wages in general. In Georgia, growers already fill a quarter of all farm labor jobs with H-2A visa holders. Local farmworkers are not in a strong position to insist on higher wages in the face of this forced competition. The income of farmworkers nationally is already below the poverty line, with an average annual family income between $17,500 and $20,000. Grower pressure to lower costs, even at the risk of the spread of the virus, descends on states as well. In Washington, a state with a Democratic governor and legislature, the department of health was pressured to issue a toothless "guideline" for grower housing that puts workers' lives at risk. In the barracks for H-2A migrants, workers sleep in bunk beds closer to each other than the six-foot distance recommended by the state's own epidemiologists. Prohibiting bunk beds, however, would have required growers to build additional housing or hire local workers instead. Either alternative would increase costs. The "guidelines" therefore gave bunk beds the stamp of approval, and farmworker unions and advocates are now suing the state's Democratic administration. Undoing What the Civil Rights Era Won Unsurprisingly, Trump has repeatedly declared his support for the agricultural guest worker program.  In a 2018 Michigan speech he told a grower audience, "We're going to let your guest workers come in, because we have to have strong borders, but we have to let your workers in ... We have to have them." Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has explained that the administration wants "to separate immigration, which is people wanting to become citizens, [from] a temporary, legal guest-worker program. That's what agriculture needs, and that's what we want." There's nothing new about streamlining the labor supply for growers, making it cheaper and more vulnerable, under the cover of anti-immigrant rhetoric. Growers' desire for low-wage labor was the justification for the bracero program, which brought up to half a million people per year from Mexico, to harvest U.S. crops between 1942 and 1964. The program was notorious. Braceros were held in labor camps, often behind barbed wire. If they went on strike, they were deported. If local workers went on strike, growers brought in braceros to replace them.

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Free City Radio (Canada) interview: journalist David Bacon on solidarity with Iraqi unions and labour's role in activism

https://soundcloud.com/freecityradio/journalist-david-bacon
 

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LABOR MARCH PROTESTS THE POLICE MURDER OF GEORGE FLOYD
BERKELEY, CA - 13JUNE20 - Hundreds of union members and outraged people march through the streets of Berkeley to protest the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and other African American and people of color killed by police.  The march was organized by the labor councils of Alameda, San Francisco, Contra Costa and San Mateo Counties, and Service Employees International Union Local 1021.

To see a full set of photos, click here:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/56646659@N05/albums/72157714734338062

STUDENTS MARCH TO PROTEST THE POLICE MURDER OF GEORGE FLOYD
BERKELEY, CA - 09JUNE20 - Hundreds of students, teachers and outraged people march through the streets of Berkeley to protest the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and other African Americian and other people of color killed by police. 

To see a full set of photos, click here:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/56646659@N05/albums/72157714656895057

HUGE CAR CARAVAN PROTESTS THE POLICE MURDER OF GEORGE FLOYD
OAKLAND, CA - 31MAY20 - Thousands of people participate in a caravan of over 2000 cars from the Port of Oakland, to protest the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and African American and people of color killed by police.

To see a full set of photos, click here:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/56646659@N05/albums/72157714533842187
 

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IN THE FIELDS OF THE NORTH
Online Exhibit, May 29 to August 2, 2020
Los Altos History Museum

https://www.losaltoshistory.org/exhibits/in-the-fields-of-the-north/


 

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TAKE A VIRTUAL TOUR OF THE EXHIBITION - IN THE FIELDS OF THE NORTH
at the History Museum of Tijuana

HAGA UN RECORRIDO VIRTUAL DE LA EXPOSICIÓN - EN LOS CAMPOS DEL NORTE
en el Museo de Historia de Tijuana



https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=659536991515786
 

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TARTINE HARDSHIP FUND
Newly organized Tartine Bakery workers in the Bay Area need your help and assistance!  This fund, supported by the International Longhsore and Warehouse Union, will help hose workers unable to collect unemployment insurance.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/tartine-union-hardship-fund?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet

 

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The exhibitions in the following list were scheduled before the current COVID-19 crisis.  Public gatherings are not now taking place and these exhibitions have now been postponed or rescheduled.

Stay healthy!

IN THE FIELDS OF THE NORTH / EN LOS CAMPOS DEL NORTE

Online exhibition until August 2
Los Altos History Museum, Los Altos

March 21, 2021 - May 23, 2021
Carnegie Arts Center, Turlock

MORE THAN A WALL - THE SOCIAL MOVEMENTS OF THE BORDER

August 29,, 2020 - November 29,, 2020
San Francisco Public Library

DEPORTATIONS

Rescheduled for December
Uri-Eichen Gallery, Chicago

 

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In the Fields of the North / En los Campos del Norte
Photographs and text by David Bacon
University of California Press / Colegio de la Frontera Norte
302 photographs, 450pp, 9”x9”
paperback, $34.95 (in the U.S.)

order the book on the UC Press website:
ucpress.edu/9780520296077
use source code  16M4197  at checkout, receive a 30% discount

En Mexico se puede pedir el libro en el sitio de COLEF:
https://www.colef.mx

Los Angeles Times reviews In the Fields of the North / En los Campos del Norte - click here
 

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 "The Criminalization of Migration: A Socialist Perspective" with David Bacon and Rafael Pizarro.
http://ouleft.org/wp-content/uploads/David-Bacon-The-Criminalization-of-migration.mp4 

A video about the Social Justice Photography of David Bacon:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14TvAj5nS08ENzWhw3Oxra4LMNKJCLF4z/view
 

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En los campos del Norte documenta la vida de trabajadores agrícolas en Estados Unidos -
Entrevista con el Instituto Nacional de la Antropologia y Historia
http://www.inah.gob.mx/es/boletines/6863-en-los-campos-del-norte-documenta-la-vida-de-trabajadores-agricolas-en-estados-unidos

Entrevista en la television de UNAM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdSaBKZ_k0o

David Bacon comparte su mirada del trabajo agrícola de migrantes mexicanos en el Museo Archivo de la Fotografia
http://www.cultura.cdmx.gob.mx/comunicacion/nota/0038-18

Trabajo agrícola, migración y resistencia cultural: el mosaico de los “Campos del Norte”
Entrevista de David Bacon por Iván Gutiérrez / A los 4 Vientos
http://www.4vientos.net/2017/10/04/trabajo-agricola-migracion-y-resistencia-cultural-el-mosaico-de-los-campos-del-norte/

"Los fotógrafos tomamos partido"
Entrevista por Melina Balcázar Moreno - Milenio.com Laberinto
http://www.milenio.com/cultura/laberinto/david_baconm-fotografia-melina_balcazar-laberinto-milenio_0_959904035.html

Die Apfel-Pflücker aus dem Yakima-Tal
http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=23990

EN LOS CAMPOS DEL NORTE:  Farm worker photographs on the U.S./Mexico border wall
http://us7.campaign-archive2.com/?u=fc67a76dbb9c31aaee896aff7&id=0644c65ae5&e=dde0321ee7
Entrevista sobre la exhibicion con Alfonso Caraveo (Español)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJeE1NO4c_M&feature=youtu.be
 

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THE REALITY CHECK - David Bacon blog
http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com

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Books by David Bacon

The Right to Stay Home:  How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration  (Beacon Press, 2013)
http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2328

Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants  (Beacon Press, 2008)
Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008
http://www.beacon.org/Illegal-People-P780.aspx

Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100558350

The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004)
http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520244726

En Español:  

EL DERECHO A QUEDARSE EN CASA  (Critica - Planeta de Libros)
http://www.planetadelibros.com.mx/el-derecho-a-quedarse-en-casa-libro-205607.html

HIJOS DE LIBRE COMERCIA (El Viejo Topo)
http://www.tienda.elviejotopo.com/prestashop/capitalismo/1080-hijos-del-libre-comercio-deslocalizaciones-y-precariedad-9788496356368.html?search_query=david+bacon&results=1

For more articles and images, see  http://dbacon.igc.org and http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com
and https://www.flickr.com/photos/56646659@N05/albums