Guest Workers Aff
1AC
Contention 1: Conditions
SUBPOINT A: MAQUILADORAS
There is a significant empirical correlation between maquiladora employment and applying for work in the U.S.
Kopinak (King’s University College, University of Western Ontario) 5, Kathryn, “The Relationship Between Employment in Maquiladora Industries in Mexico and Labor Migration to the United States”, The
Center for Comparative Immigration Studies(CCIS), University of California, San Diego,
http://ccis.ucsd.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/wrkg120.pdf
This paper uses both quantitative and qualitative data to investigate the relationship between maquiladora
employment and migration to work in the United States. The first hypothesis, that maquiladora employment
leads to people crossing the border to work, is supported. People who cross to work are usually quite young, in
their twenties, and have worked in a maquiladora previously, often as their first paid job, carried out at the
same time as attending school. People who cross to work are often assisted by maquiladora employers in getting US visas, since a person must have a letter of recommendation from one’s employer. Having documents to
enter the US but not permitting employment makes it more difficult to cross to work in the US, but this does not
stop people from doing so. Those who succeed in crossing the border to work, in comparison to those caught
by the border patrol and returned, are often highly educated, and get better jobs than those available in Mexico.
The second hypothesis, that maquiladoras inhibit migration to work in the United States, is not supported with
the findings from this research. The fact that Mexican maquiladoras have policies prohibiting transfer of
personnel to US operations indicated that this has been attempted. They don’t want to lose their employees
after investing in their training. However, two of the in-depth interviews show the extent to which some
managers have gone to get around such policies. One solution is marrying a US national, migrating to the US,
and then applying for work within the same firm. The individual described in this paper who followed that
pattern did not marry in order to cross the border to work, but crossed the border after marriage despite the fact
that he was denied an internal transfer. He and his family absorbed the costs of migrating, when his firm would
not help him. Some years later, however, he was employed by the same firm in San Diego. The case of the
Tijuana maquila manager who bought a house in East Lake, but kept his maquiladora job while his family
moved to the US for better schools and a more prestigious address, is evidence of the inability of maquiladora
industries to foster the type of development which will provide the services and facilities required by those who
are most successful in them. The differences found between labor migrants to the US who had previously
worked in agriculture and maquiladoras allows us to conclude that former maquiladora workers are a new
migratory current from Mexico to the United States. Maquiladora workers who cross to work, in comparison to
agricultural workers, are more likely to live at the northern border after having migrated to a border city from
within the same state. In contrast, agricultural workers are not so concentrated in any one region, but the largest
numbers come from Guanajuato, Michoacan, and Oaxaca. While not much variation was observed in age,
those crossing who worked in maquilas are the youngest, while those crossing who worked in agriculture are
the oldest. Women labor migrants are more likely to have previous work experience in maquiladoras than in
agriculture. Both male agricultural workers and female maquila workers tended to be heads of their households
more often than men and women generally. Women labor migrants with maquiladora experience are attracted
to US jobs by the higher wages, as are men, but also because working conditions are better for them in the US
and the workplace more open to their participation. None of the twenty people interviewed in depth had ever
worked in agriculture. The very high proportion (63%) of maquila workers who lived in the city where interviewed, in comparison with those having work experience in other sectors, has methodological implications
for the EMIF in future years. If residents of the border cities where interviews take place were included in the
survey, as they are in the deported current, then more international migrants would be found to have maquiladora working experience. It is recommended that the sampling method be changed to include them, and also
that those who say they live in the United States be asked about their work history. It is also recommended that
the collapsing of closed ended answers, removing the distinction between maquiladora and domestic industries, but reversed
The unemployed in Mexico are forced to accept any available employment: “maquiladoras” represent the most dismal sweat shops in the world and carnal abuses of human rights: this is modern day slavery
JSGA No Date
(The Juss Semper Global Alliance; TLWNSI is a long-term program developed to contribute to social justice
in the world by achieving fair labour endowments for the workers of all the countries immersed in the global
market system. “Mexico: Hell Is The Tijuana Assembly Line”,
http://www.jussemper.org/Resources/Corporate%20Activity/mexicohellinmexico'smaquil.html)
Anne Vigna’s incisive account of the maquiladora sector –in-bond plants that import about 97% of the parts,
which are assembled to be then “exported” back to their contractors– exhibits the dire and complete disenfranchisement of Mexican workers in the formal economy. Yet over 50% of workers toil at a living in the
even worse underground economy.
In Vigna’s first hand experience, right on the field during 2009, she
talked to workers earning even lower wages. She found workers –mostly women– earning $58 per week in
the electronics sector. That is barely more than a dollar an hour (about $1,16), for the typical work week of
at least 48 to 50 hours. In the apparel sector, the hourly pay could easily be below a dollar an hour. Such
labour endowments are, to be sure, what is now commonly regarded as modern-slave work wages.
Contrary to popular wisdom, slavery in the 21st century is not by any account a thing of the past. It is a
social phenomenon that has been growing in direct proportion to the grip that today’s global Darwinian capitalism –the worst of its kind– is increasing on a world where representative democracy has been supplanted by
marketocracy, where the institutional investors and their corporations dictate the pubic agendas.
Indeed,
the most prominent feature of the practice of modern-slave work in Mexico’s maquiladora sweatshops –
a far more accurate adjective to refer to this mode of production– is the complete, systematic and customary
violation of all international labour rights as well as many other human rights that Mexico’s Congress
ratified many years ago. This creates an ethos clearly reminiscent of the worst kind of social Darwinism
practiced in the factories of the English Industrial Revolution that Charles Dickens so eloquently portrayed.
In the case of Mexico, Anne Vigna’s brief vividly exposes the dire circumstance that millions of
Mexicans working in the maquiladora sector throughout Mexico endure daily in a gripping account of first
hand experiences. Since NAFTA took effect, millions of Mexicans have been displaced –completely disenfranchised– for they lost their past livelihoods as part of the so-called “market externalities” of today’s
global economy. Many of them have sought to work in the sweatshop sector as a measure of last recourse; many after trying unsuccessfully to migrate to the U.S. where many corporations and millions of
consumers benefit from the modern-slave work conditions model of Mexico’s maquiladora industry.
Women working in Maquiladoras are exposed to extreme abuse and subject to the
worst forms of commodification
Sarria (Research assistant) August 3rd, 2009 (“Femicides of Juárez: Violence Against Women in Mexico”
Council of Hemispheric Affairs MLW)
Some people see the femicides as a product of a cultural image of women in Latin America. A female worker
in a maquiladora is can be looked upon as a form of variable capital; the labor value of a Mexican
maquiladora worker declines over time because, according to her managers, her value as a worker is used up
after years of endless, exhausting hours of factory work. Men, on the other hand, are seen as trainable and
intelligent. They are valued higher than female workers due to their alleged ability to constantly learn and
produce value over a protracted period of time. In essence, women are filtered into the lesser skilled jobs at
these factories and simultaneously are left vulnerable to sexual harassment and assault. The intrinsic value
of a victim of femicide is usually questioned following her death. Members of the media and the community
alike try to categorize these women as either “good girls”, fitting the archetype of a good daughter or worker, or
as fallen women, usually described as prostitutes, sluts, or barmaids. By putting emphasis on the identity of the
women, onlookers seem to be placing a higher value on the lives of “well-behaved women” as well as
providing a twisted justification for overlooking or minimize the crimes at hand. For instance, in 1995, the
then-governor of Chihuahua, Francisco Barrio, advised parents to keep an eye on their daughters and not allow
them to go out at night. The implication was that good girls did not “go out” at night and since the unfortunate
victims typically disappeared during the night, it followed that by objective standards they were found to not be
very good girls. Likewise, when speaking to the family members of the murdered women, the police often
explained the disappearance of the victims by pointing out “how common it [was] for women to lead double
lives.”
Conditions for the female body are dismal – women in the Maquiladora are reduced to
machinery and intolerably abused
Jorgensen September 7th, 2010 (Sierra, “Maquiladoras and the Exploitation of Women’s Bodies” Brian Mawr College Female and Gender Studies) MLW
Women, particularly mestizas(3) , are also favored because of "cultural upbringing that encourages total serviceability" (Castillo, 2004). Women in Mexico are raised to believe in compliancy and submissiveness.
Women of mixed blood have a double pressure to be submissive because they generally inhabit the lower
classes, where the upper classes are generally comprised of fairer skinned Mexicans of European decent. These
women not only have to submit to the authority of men, but the upper classes as well. By hiring submissive
women maquiladoras are more easily able to exploit the women—who are to them simply bodies filling their
factories. They are not only able to pay lower wages, but they are able to offer little or no benefits. Even
companies who claim to offer benefits often don't follow through with it. Women are also made to and accept
working in dire conditions with often no breaks and very short lunch periods. When the women do try to improve their working conditions they are immediately dismissed. For example, in one factory a few women tried
to have a cafeteria set up in the maquiladora and they were immediately fired. Maquiladoras are able to fire
their workers so easily because they consider the women simply bodies in the factories. The women workers
are not valued individually for their work for many reasons. One of the reasons is the vast number of women in
the area that are able and willing to work. When the factories in Juárez began opening there was a huge migration from all over Mexico and the migration continues in a smaller degree still today. There are many more
women available where all of the women in the factories came from and many of them even come to the
factories in hope of work everyday. Also, because the labor in factories is unskilled and easy to learn any pair
of hands, eyes, or essentially any body is sufficient to do the work. The person is not important as long as
the work is done and the product created. This displays the perceived interchangeability of women and their
bodies. All women are the same and valued only—and very little at that—for the product that they produce.
Therefore women are dismissed or sent home at whim for reasons—real or unreal—such as inadequate performance, tardiness, or delinquency. Once women are employed by a factory that factory does very little to
protect that woman's body, in fact they often put a lot of strain on it and cause harm to it. Women are put
under terrible conditions in the factories in which they work. They have to do "relentless, concentrated
work" that is very "hard on the eye" which may cause their eyesight to become bad and unacceptable for the job
(Vulliamy, 2003). This in turn could cause their body to be no longer usable by the factory. At which point that
woman's body will be replaced by another woman's body. Not only do the working conditions wear down
women's bodies, but in many cases women bodies are violated by others; they are often raped and beaten
while at work. This is perfectly acceptable and rarely prosecuted because it is frequently considered the
woman's fault that she was subjected to these actions. In fact, her mere presence in the factory violates cultural
beliefs about a woman's place. The men who rape and beat these women may believe that they have a right,
even a duty to exert their force on these women to put them back in their places. The conditions in which
women are traveling to and from work also put their bodies in danger. Companies do not provide transportation
to and from the maquiladoras. Women frequently walk alone to and from busses and even to and from work. It
is usually in this transit that women disappear. Employers also have a practice of sending home women for
being the slightest bit late. Claudia Gonzalez was sent home for being only three minutes late for work and she
attempted to walk home. She went missing and her body was found a month later. Factories also make shift
changes that take women off of shifts with friends and family members and place them on shifts that require
them to travel alone. Women are also motivated to take later shifts because they pay a few cents more but the
difference is significant enough. These women with late shifts leave after dark with no security present making
them susceptible to kidnapping, even making abduction easy. Factories, though, are not motivated to take
action and feel no responsibility to provide security for their workers because the murders do not occur on
factory property. In fact the "North America Free Trade Agreement exempts the sweatshops from any laws
requiring them to provide better security—because such laws might interfere with 'the ability to make profit,'"
which is more important to these companies than the women they employ (Dellit, 2003).
SUBPOINT B: GUEST WORKERS
Non-professional foreign nationals are forced to work under extremely abusive conditions and enjoy a dearth of civil rights compared to U.S. citizens
Elmore 7
ELMORE (Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Bureau of the New York State Office of Attorney
General. The following analysis is offered purely in the author's private capacity and not as a representative of
the New York State Office of Attorney General), ANDREW J. EGALITARIANISM AND EXCLUSION:
U.S. GUEST WORKER PROGRAMS AND A NON-SUBORDINATION APPROACH TO THE LABOR-BASED ADMISSION OF NONPROFESSIONAL FOREIGN NATIONALS. 2007 Georgetown Immigration Law Journal. 21 Geo. Immigr. L.J. 521
Despite the fact that there are visa-based protections, employment laws with private rights of action, and
governmental agencies charged with protecting the workplace rights of guest workers, nonprofessional guest
workers labor under difficult and often dangerous circumstances, and are often underpaid or are paid nothing at
all for their work. Guest worker programs are often utilized by employers to impermissibly discriminate in
their employee selections, and employer retaliation against guest workers have been found in reports and by
courts and administrative agencies to include widespread practices of blacklisting, and violence and false
criminal allegations. Uniform workplace rights serve foreign nationals' interest in equality in the workplace
and the sovereignty interest in preventing the creation of a vulnerable sub-class of workers that drives down
wages and workplace conditions for U.S. workers. Courts analyzing guest workers' workplace rights have
generally presumed the applicability of labor and employment laws to guest workers, on the grounds that these
laws should be uniformly applied to effect their remedial purposes. For example, an immigration regulation
permitting the revocation of work authorization of employed nonimmigrant workers when a strike was ratified
by a minority of U.S. workers in the firm was held invalid, because the regulation squarely conflicted with the
NLRA grant of "employee" status to nonimmigrant workers. The district court rejected defendants' argument
that enforcement of the regulation protects U.S. workers, in part because "the long term consequence of enforcement of the regulation would be detrimental to American labor." In Olvera-Morales v. Sterling Onions, a
district court held that a female H-2B worker who alleged that defendant grower and recruiter steered her and
other women into less remunerative H-2B occupations instead of H-2A occupations could file suit despite the
fact that the alleged discriminatory conduct occurred before she obtained the H-2B visa. In holding that anti-discrimination law protections are triggered before the employee obtains authorization to work in the U.S.,
the court observed that a contrary rule "has the potential to invite abuse by employers and to undermine the
goals of Title VII." Thus, courts have recognized an interest of foreign nationals and U.S. workers in equal
rights irrespective of immigration status in order to effectuate equality in the workplace and to avoid creating a
vulnerable sub-class of foreign national workers. However, the equality and sovereignty interests in uniform
workplace rights are in tension with guest worker programs, which admit foreign nationals under two irreconcilable conditions: that they enjoy fewer rights than U.S. workers, yet their admittance cannot "adversely
affect" workplace standards. While guest worker policies purport to justify workplace inequalities based on the
sovereignty goal of protecting U.S. workers, the lack of enforceable workplace rights for guest workers harms
U.S. workers by depressing the workplace standards where guest workers labor.
Plan
The United States federal government should make available visas without employer
control for acquirement to persons in Mexico.
Contention 2: Solvency
The plan increases the QOL for Mexicans, addresses illegal immigration, benefits the
ag industry, and is popular in both nations politically
LaFranchi (Staff writer at the Christian Science Monitor) 1, Howard, "A new plan to legalize illegal workers
from Mexico." Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA). (January 23, 2001 , Tuesday ): 917 words. LexisNexis
Academic. Web. Date Accessed: 2013/07/19.
Five US senators are working on a 'guest worker' program. Bush will go to Mexico on Feb. 16. For decades,
Mexicans have been going north illegally to pick tomatoes, wash dishes and clean houses. Now a group of US
lawmakers says it's time to make it legal. With the number of Mexican illegal laborers now estimated to be
between 3 and 7 million, the five US senators want to make changes that would give the Mexicans the legal
status of "guestworkers." "We want to set up a workable guest-worker program so people can come into
America legally to work, have their rights protected, and accumulate human and financial capital to
take back to Mexico," says Sen. Phil Gramm (R.) of Texas. Yet, though US and Mexican officials say such a
program will draw support from both countries' presidents, immigration experts caution that a worker program
is unlikely to reverse a long tradition of undocumented northward migration. Enforcement is seen as one of the
difficulties, along with the challenge of convincing Mexicans that they will be better off applying under the
new program than following the traditional path across the border. The plan would benefit both the US and
Mexico, the senators argue: Labor-intensive US industries like agriculture and construction would have a
reliable source of workers, while the workers would have salary, labor-condition, and other rights that as illegals they cannot demand. Given the option of working in the US legally, Mexicans would be less likely to
migrate illegally, says Sen. Gramm, who hopes to have the program operative within a year. The program
would first apply to legal workers already in the US. It would not include the possibility of US citizenship,
since one goal of the program is to encourage Mexicans to take their savings and new skills back to Mexico.
Economic engagement from outside the domesticizing scenario is key to providing the
cultural transformation to give maquiladora workers a shot at liberty: economic
transgressions of the border are imperative to egalitarianism
DePaul Law Review (The DePaul Law Review is a scholarly journal published four times a
year by students at DePaul University College of Law. The Law Review serves as a forum
for practitioners, judges, professors, and law students to discuss and analyze important topics in
the law) 2k, 49 DePaul L. Rev. 729. Copyright (c) 2000 DePaul Law Review
I asked the assistant manager of our shift why they can't pay us a little more. On the other side of the border,
people working for the same company earn in an hour what we earn in a day. He told us that the company came
here because we work so cheap. If we pressured them to pay more, they would just take the work
somewhere else and we would be left without jobs. I think this is really just an excuse, to make us grateful
for our jobs. n315 - Maria, a maquiladora worker. Contemplating her future, Maria thinks mostly about not
losing her job because "once you get to be a certain age, they don't want you anymore.” Maria's closing words
to a reporter in 1996, a few years after the signing of NAFTA, illustrate how the lives of maquila workers are
central to the reinforcement of bordered attitudes - between United States corporate privilege and a Third
World nation's economic dependency, between charges of exploitation and defenses of a foreign economy's
surplus labor, or women's work and men's work, citizens and illegal aliens, Mexicans and Americans and so
on. The U.S.-Mexico border powerfully affects the psyche of those living in the Ibarra household on a
daily basis: I've thought about crossing the border, but I'm scared to do it. I have my sons. What would
happen to them if I left them by themselves? ... But the younger one is desperate, and he says he wants to go
across. I tell him he has to be 18 but he's free. How could I stop him? Here or there, who knows what could
happen? And over there, it's very bad. Because of lack of schooling, he doesn't know English. So what would
he be going to? To be humiliated? To work? No, no, I tell him, better here. But he just says, well, maybe later
on then. n317 - Maria, a maquiladora worker. To the working poor, the border is a symbol of escape from
the kind of poverty and despair seen in the lives of Maria and her two sons - of having to live in a
makeshift house, with another family and on approximately U.S. $ 35.00 a week. The border is a powerful
magnet drawing people to it from the north and from the south. From the north come the American investors
who know the border means more profits and lower production costs (cheaper wages). From the south come
the people who leave behind the way of life under subsistence farming and forced by fate and circumstance to
find work hopefully, at or across the border. But, the border is a symbol of freedom on both sides. While the
Mexican side of the border symbolizes the hope for freedom from destitution and poverty, the American side
lures employers to escape the pressures of unionized workers and demands for livable wages or working
conditions. The myths and realities of the border as the symbol of corporate opportunity and privilege are so
powerful today that the idea of a Dallas-based maquiladora being sued for the wrongful death of several
workers in a Texas court because of the company's negligent practices struck the President of the Maquiladora
Association as just plain odd. When he heard of the $ 30 million settlement he stated, "What's the legality of
having a jury in Eagle Pass decide about something that happened in Mexico?" These are the words of
someone who clearly knows that to cross the border as an investor into Mexico entails great freedoms. Indeed,
it is a certainty that is not available to the frustrated maquiladora employee who wants to venture away
from Mexico in search of a better life.
[…]
Sometimes the story of a maquiladora worker is one of promise. Sometimes it is one of utter pessimism. The
story of promise is that of Angela, who was interviewed in 1982 by Norma Iglesias Prieto and who grew up
very poor on a farm. For her, the eventual transition to being an independent worker in a maquiladora would be
gender liberation from the entrenched cultural expectations for girls and women of the peasant or
working poor classes. At home, she always had to perform the domestic chores, such as cleaning the house,
washing, ironing, and cooking for her father and her brothers. At the age of fifteen, her father granted the
request of a woman that Angela stay with her to help with chores in return for room and board. For years her
typical job, which never paid much, was as a domestic servant.
The plan is the best realistic option for improving migrant worker conditions
Elmore 7
ELMORE (Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Bureau of the New York State Office of Attorney
General. The following analysis is offered purely in the author's private capacity and not as a representative of
the New York State Office of Attorney General), ANDREW J. EGALITARIANISM AND EXCLUSION:
U.S. GUEST WORKER PROGRAMS AND A NON-SUBORDINATION APPROACH TO THE LABOR-BASED ADMISSION OF NONPROFESSIONAL FOREIGN NATIONALS. 2007 Georgetown Immigration Law Journal. 21 Geo. Immigr. L.J. 521
There is an inherent tension in how to balance liberty, sovereignty, and equality interests in regulating the
migration of nonprofessional foreign nationals. Guest worker programs have attempted to balance liberty and
sovereignty interests by admitting foreign nationals to contract with U.S. employers for temporary work, while
excluding undocumented workers, and restricting the number of guest work visas, and the nature and conditions of guest work. However, this Article has shown how an immigration policy of small, restrictive guest
worker programs alongside an enforcement-driven approach to deterring unauthorized migration undermine
the liberty, equality, and sovereignty interests of foreign born and U.S. nonprofessional workers, and are
therefore an unsound foundation for comprehensive immigration reform. n191 At the same time, expanding
work-based visas for nonprofessional foreign nationals to balance the interests of nonprofessional U.S.
workers and foreign nationals is preferable to ending temporary work-based programs entirely or
maintaining the status quo, and may be more realistic and targeted than controlling the migrant flow by
increasing permanent immigration quotas. First, the alternative to authorized migration is not an absence of
immigration, but rather unauthorized migration. There will remain a high rate of unauthorized migration so
long as developing countries lack sufficient employment opportunity and there are available jobs in the U.S.,
n192 and the migrant flow cannot be contained by immigration enforcement alone. The current unauthorized
flow therefore presents a compelling need for expanding labor-based admissions to manage the migration of
nonprofessional foreign nationals. Further, responding to the failings of the current guest work system by
ending labor-based admissions for nonprofessional foreign nationals would sacrifice liberty and equality gains
that do not threaten, but rather complement, sovereignty goals. Given that authorized migration is generally
beneficial for U.S. workers because it adds to the U.S. workforce and expands the U.S. economy, n194 labor-based admissions with meaningful measures to manage the migrant flow and to preserve workplace
standards in nonprofessional occupations would be preferable from a sovereignty standpoint than immigration
enforcement alone. As in the end of the Bracero Era, when undocumented immigration soared after its discontinuance as workers who established regular migration patterns as braceros found themselves shut out of
authorized status, n195 ending guest worker programs entirely will likely increase unauthorized migration,
violating a key sovereignty interest. Thus, ending labor-based admissions without providing a means for authorized migration would sacrifice liberty, equality, and sovereignty interests. Second, the argument that the
status quo is preferable to the expansion of guest worker programs because it would establish a formal subclass
of workers does not acknowledge that U.S. currently maintains an informal labor migration policy of managing
over seven million undocumented workers by relaxing or intensifying immigration enforcement. This informal
policy allows U.S. employers to employ a sub-class of millions of workers during times of high labor demand,
and permits their exclusion during times of economic anxiety. n196 While this informal policy serves the
liberty interest of affording greater migration flow than a formal expansion of labor-based admissions might, it
undermines the value of this liberty by causing fear by migrants of government institutions n197 and the public
during economic downturns which are attributed to unauthorized migration. n198 It also violates key sovereignty goals of reducing unauthorized migration and maintaining the rule of law in nonprofessional workplaces, and the equality interest of nonprofessional foreign nationals who are undocumented workers, who face
crushing debts from the expense of migration, n199 and often cannot access government-provided health care,
public benefits, legal representation, or higher public education. n200 Given these realities, expanding labor-based admissions would be preferable to the status quo if it adjusted the status of all currently undocumented workers, controlled the future migrant flow, and did not undermine workplace conditions in nonprofessional occupations. n201 Lastly, expanding labor-based admissions is a more realistic and tailored
approach to control migration than replacing guest worker programs with increased permanent residence.
Permanent residence is limited to 140,000 people per year, n202 and the INA currently provides for adjusting
the status of only 5,000 low-skilled workers per year to permanent legal resident status. n203 Even if the INA
reserved all permanent residence visas for labor purposes, this would not approach the number of H-2A, H-2B,
J-1, A-3, and G-5 visas, or the current unauthorized migrant flow of 750,000 per year. Inasmuch as permanent
residence admissions currently privileges family-based admissions, reserving these admissions for labor
purposes would sacrifice the considerable interest of foreign nationals in reuniting with family members. Thus,
permanent residence is not a realistic alternative to replace the hundreds of thousands of guest worker visas, on
top of additional visas necessary to control the migrant flow, and may sacrifice the interest of foreign nationals
in family reunification. A temporary labor-based admissions system that allowed for eventual adjustment of
status would satisfy the liberty interests of those nonprofessional foreign nationals who seek entrance to the
U.S. to engage in circular migration. n204 For transnational workers who do not wish to permanently settle in
the U.S., a work-based visa that permitted circular migration to the U.S. to would be preferable to waiting for
permanent migration. n205 For those desiring permanent settlement in the U.S., a temporary work-based visa
that permitted adjustment of status would afford foreign nationals with a reasonable alternative to unauthorized
migration. Given the liberty and sovereignty interests in maximizing authorized migration to manage the migrant flow, and the fact that many transnational workers seek to engage in circular migration rather than to
permanently settle in the U.S., a labor-based admission program that offered eventual adjustment of status
would be a more practical and targeted means to control the migrant flow than replacing guest work visas with
permanent migration. Thus, a non-subordination approach to temporary work-based visas that accommodated
core liberty, sovereignty, and equality concerns may be preferable to ending guest worker programs entirely or
preserving the status quo, and may be more practical and tailored to controlling the migrant flow than increasing labor-based admissions through permanent migration.
A non-subordination approach to migratory workers best protects their liberty, equality, and sovereignty
Elmore 7
ELMORE (Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Bureau of the New York State Office of Attorney
General. The following analysis is offered purely in the author's private capacity and not as a representative of
the New York State Office of Attorney General), ANDREW J. EGALITARIANISM AND EXCLUSION:
U.S. GUEST WORKER PROGRAMS AND A NON-SUBORDINATION APPROACH TO THE LABOR-BASED ADMISSION OF NONPROFESSIONAL FOREIGN NATIONALS. 2007 Georgetown Immigration Law Journal. 21 Geo. Immigr. L.J. 521
This Article proposes a re-envisioning of work-based visa programs to balance the interests of foreign nationals outside the U.S. in free movement to and from the U.S. and in equality in the workplace, and of U.S.
workers in deterring unauthorized migration and in preserving employment opportunities with meaningful
workplace standards in nonprofessional occupations. This Article recommends expanding labor-based admissions and permitting visa holders the right to circular migration and eventual permanent settlement to satisfy the liberty interest in free movement, applying uniform workplace rights to establish formal equality
between U.S. workers and foreign nationals, and allowing the least restrictive measures necessary to preserve
workplace standards for U.S. workers. I term this balancing of interests a "non-subordination" approach.
This approach does not suggest an "optimal" labor-based admission policy for nonprofessional foreign nationals, whether a strictly work-based visa awarded by lottery, a "point" system like those in Canada, Australia,
and New Zealand that would evaluate visa applicants based on their individual characteristics, or a European
Union model of establishing a geographic common market, or some mix of these. n206 Given the U.S. history of guest worker programs and the likelihood of their continuance, it will apply this approach primarily to a
strictly employment-based system, understanding that it could be applied to others. In recognition of the failure
of guest worker programs to meet core liberty, equality, and sovereignty interests, I will call this program a
"temporary work-based" visa rather than a "guest" work visa.
This approach would satisfy the liberty interests of foreign nationals outside the U.S. to engage in circular
migration and permanent settlement in the U.S. at the point beyond which would exceed the U.S. economy's
ability to absorb new entrants into nonprofessional occupations. This approach would give respect to the
sovereignty view of managing migration by limiting immigration to preserve workplace standards for U.S.
workers. At the same time, this approach would permit far more nonprofessional foreign nationals to engage in
authorized work in the U.S. than guest worker programs currently allow, because the work-based visa program would not be restricted to a particular industry, or to seasonal or otherwise temporary employment.
Second, this approach would de-link employers from the visa process, and permit porting to other worksites. It
would reject a sovereignty-based critique that portability would undermine workplace standards where visa
holders port, because that concern can be addressed by restricting portability to workplaces that are not subject
to a labor dispute, and in other instances is outweighed by the liberty gain in freedom of movement, the
equality interest in a uniform application of the at-will doctrine, and the sovereignty interest in avoiding the
creation of a vulnerable sub-class that cannot engage in self-help to leave an exploitative workplace.
Third, a non-subordination approach would establish clear minimum allowable terms and conditions of employment equally applicable to workers in the U.S. regardless of immigration status, and provide for improved
government monitoring over nonprofessional workplaces and access to the judiciary for nonprofessional foreign nationals. A non-subordination approach would reject a globalist critique that permitting foreign nationals
to sell their services at rates below the legal minimum would advance their liberty interests, because that interest is outweighed by the equality and sovereignty interests in uniform workplace standards.
Lastly, in light of the liberty interest in freedom of movement without fear of apprehension and the sovereignty
interest in preventing the creation of a vulnerable sub-class of workers, a non-subordination approach would
adjust the status of current unauthorized migrants in the U.S. and would permit their adjustment of status from
within the U.S., understanding that some level of immigration enforcement is necessary to control the future
migrant flow.
Contention 3: Impact Framing
The Cold War was won and the nuclear threat secreted its own disease. The nuclear
threat of the Soviets wasted away as it transformed into the new specter of the nuclear
terrorist. It was precisely the seeming effectiveness of nuclear deterrence at immunizing ourselves against war that created this new disorder
Miller (Distinguished Research Professor at the University of California at Irvine) 8
(J. Hillis, Derrida's Politics of Autoimmunity, Discourse, Volume 30, Numbers 1 & 2, Winter & Spring, MUSE)
The War on Terror has made all of us live in terror. As Derrida has argued in Le "concept" du 11 septembre (2004)
(Philosophy in a Time of Terror [2003] in the English version), this terror is not directed toward what has happened, the
destruction of the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon, but toward what we are all taught to be certain will
happen, something worse than the cold war, something without precedent, "the worst." It will be nothing less than the end
of the world as we have come to think of in these days of teletechno economicomediatic globalization. That end may come
by way of global warming or by way of a "nuclear winter," but our absolute terror tells us it is bound to happen sooner or
later. Derrida focuses on the "nuclear menace," with a prophetic anticipation (his long interview-essay on 9/11 was given
in 2001, five weeks after 9/11) of our present anxiety about Iran's development of nuclear weapons or about some
anonymous terrorists armed with a nuclear bomb in a suitcase:
From now on, the nuclear threat, the "total" threat, no longer comes from a state but from anonymous forces that are
absolutely unforeseeable and incalculable. And since this absolute threat will have been secreted by the end of the Cold
War and the "victory" of the U.S. camp, since it threatens what is supposed to sustain world order, the very possibility
of a world and of any worldwide effort [mondialisation] (international law, a world market, a universal language, and so
on), what is thus put at risk by this terrifying autoimmunitary logic [more about that terrifying logic later on (JHM)] is
nothing less than the existence of the world, of the worldwide itself. . . . Absolute evil, absolute threat, because what is at
stake is nothing less than the mondialisation or the worldwide movement of the world, life on earth and elsewhere,
without remainder [sans reste et rien de moins].
Meanwhile, while we tremble in terror, we are almost completely failing to take care of ourselves at home, much less
guarantee a happy globalization in fulfillment of what George W. Bush defines as his and our "mission." Mission is a
Christian word. Bush and the rest of us Americans have been sent by God to bring democracy (and capitalism) to the
whole world. Think what we could have done at home with two trillion dollars to fight global warming, to improve education, to make good health [End Page 210] care a universal right, to guarantee social security for our old people, to
reduce poverty and homelessness, not to speak of fighting AIDS here and around the world, preparing seriously for natural disasters here or elsewhere, many caused or exacerbated by man-made global warming, and so on! Instead of that,
many of our lawmakers have been bribed by lobbyists and contributions made by pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, automobile companies, and the like to pass laws, like Medicare Part D, that benefit not ordinary people but, in this
case, the pharmaceutical companies. Medicare Part D was written by the pharmaceutical industry for the pharmaceutical
industry, for example by prohibiting the federal government from negotiating drug prices. Real income for ordinary wage
earners has remained about the same or even somewhat lower over the last forty years. Their health-care and pension
situations are worse, whereas the average income of the top 1½ percent of our citizens has gone up by several hundred
percent, about 328 percent, according to one figure I saw.
We reject the repressive terrorism of grand scenarios in favor of an actual redress of
the real struggles of those that are oppressed
Koskenniemi 3
(Martti Book Review, Giovanna Borradori (Ed.), Philosophy in a Time of Terror. In German Law Journal, v4
n10)
Derrida, too, refuses to focus on “9/11”. Far from being an “event” in the philoso- phical sense that juxtaposes it with
(mere) “being”,7 that signifier has now become part of a political discourse appropriated for varying purposes. Approaching it through deconstruction, Derrida’s discussion of the 9/11 “event” is, like that of Habermas, ideology criticism.
Terrorism now becomes an “autoimmunity disorder”: produced by the United States during the Cold War and after, a kind
of “suicide of those who welcomed, armed and trained [the terrorists]” (95) - a product of that which it rejects, mirror-image of its target.8 The prognosis is sombre: product of the violence that seeks to suppress it, terrorism created a
trauma that cannot be relieved by mourning because the heart of the trauma is not the past event but the fear for the future
event whose catastrophic nature can only be guessed. Imagination is here fed by a media without which there would have
been no “world-historical event” in the first place. The circle is almost unbreakable: terrorism and that which it is against
are locked in a reciprocal game of destruction where causes may no longer be distinguished from consequences. Both
philosophers discuss terrorism in the context of globalisation, or as Derrida insists, mondialisation. For Habermas, this
provides an occasion to indict the injus- tice of the global system. To reconfigure the international as a democratic political community must begin “through the improvement of living conditions, through a sensible relief from oppression
and fear” (36). This is absolutely necessary as a pre-condition of an atmosphere of trust and truthfulness within which
discursive de- mocracy may emerge. If the West is to have a “civilizing impact” (36), it will have to renounce a politics (of
identity) that allows inclusion only by assimilation or conversion. However difficult this may be in the international
context, one should aim for shared understandings, the hermeneutic moment of a fusion of horizons be- tween that which
is and that which is not “the West”.
Addons
Ag
Guestworker program is key to the U.S. food supply – great warrants
Goodlatte (House Judiciary Committee Chairman; R-Va) 4/26 , Bob. "Chairman Goodlatte Introduces Ag Guestworker Bill." Chairman Goodlatte Introduces Ag Guestworker Bill. Committee on the Judiciary, 26 Apr. 2013. Web. 17 July 2013. <http://judiciary.house.gov/news/2013/04262013.html>.
Washington, D.C. – House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) today introduced the Agricultural Guestworker “AG” Act (H.R. 1773) a bill to provide American farmers with a workable temporary
agricultural guestworker program that will help provide access to a reliable workforce. Chairman Goodlatte
released the following statement on the bill’s introduction. Chairman Goodlatte: “Today’s introduction of the
AG Act is one piece that brings us closer to solving the immigration puzzle. While it is important that we
reform our immigration system as a whole, we must look at each of the individual issues within the larger
system to ensure that we get immigration reform right. If we fail to examine each issue methodically, we risk
making the same mistakes of the past that have created the problems we face today. “One component that
needs fixing is our temporary agricultural guestworker program, which American farmers avoid using altogether since it exposes them to frivolous litigation and burdens them with excessive regulations. The
new guestworker program created under the AG Act remedies this problem by removing red tape, streamlining
access to a reliable workforce, and protecting farmers from abusive lawsuits. It also allows more participation
in the guestworker program by opening it up to dairies and food processors, both of which often need access to
foreign labor. In addition, the AG Act is good for those seeking a better life for their families by providing
opportunities to earn a living while temporarily working in agricultural jobs U.S. citizens are not willing to do.
“By putting farmers in the driver’s seat rather than Washington bureaucrats, they will be better equipped to
compete in the global economy and continue growing our crops. It is vital that American farmers have access
to a workable guestworker program now so that they can continue putting food on Americans’ tables. We
have to get this right so that farmers aren’t burdened with another failed guestworker program for decades to
come.” Original cosponsors of the AG Act include Reps. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), Blake Farenthold (R-Texas),
George Holding (R-N.C.), Ted Poe (R-Texas), Lamar Smith (R-Texas), and Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.).
Key Components of H.R. 1773: Eliminates Excessive Red Tape: The new temporary agricultural guestworker
program removes barriers and excessive paperwork farmers face in hiring foreign workers. If a grower is
designated as a registered agricultural employer by USDA and agrees to the terms and obligations of participating in the program, then they can easily hire guestworkers already admitted to the U.S. without having to
file yet another petition for the individual worker. The new guestworker program’s petition process is also
attestation based, meaning that the grower simply has to promise to meet the program’s standards rather than
having to prove in advance that they will. Protects Farmers from Abusive Litigation: In order to discourage
frivolous and abusive litigation against growers, growers may require as a condition of employment that
guestworkers be subject to binding arbitration and mediation of any grievances in relation to the employment
relationship. This bill also eliminates special treatment for the Legal Services Corporation. Enacts Market-Based Approach to Meet Demand and Supply: The bill eliminates the artificial government-imposed wage
rate that is part of the current temporary agricultural guestworker program and replaces it with the prevailing
wage rate or the state minimum wage—whichever is greater. And while the cap for the new program is set at
500,000, the Secretary of Agriculture has the authority to raise or lower the cap based on the demands and
needs of the market. Helps American Farmers Keep Up with Global Competitors: The new guestworker
program will allow American growers to better compete in the global economy by removing the exorbitant
costs associated with abusive litigation, excessive regulation, and artificially high, government-imposed wage
rates. Farmer Friendly: The bill designates the Department of Agriculture to administer the new guestworker
program rather than the Department of Labor. USDA is better equipped to help farmers and better understands
their needs. Protects Taxpayers: Under the new program, guestworkers are not eligible for Obamacare, the
Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, or other welfare programs.
Solves Extinction
Lugar 04 (Richard G., former U.S. Senator – Indiana and Former Chair – Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “Plant Power”, Our Planet, 14(3), http://www.unep.org/ourplanet/imgversn/143/lugar.html)
In a world confronted by global terrorism, turmoil in the Middle East, burgeoning nuclear threats and other crises, it
is easy to lose sight
of the long-range challenges. But we do so at our peril. One of the most daunting of them is meeting the world’s
need for food and energy in this century. At stake is not only preventing starvation and saving the environment , but
also world peace and security. History tells us that states may go to war over access to resources, and that poverty and
famine have often bred fanaticism and terrorism. Working to feed the world will minimize factors that contribute
to global instability and the proliferation of w eapons of m ass d estruction. With the world population expected to grow from 6
billion people today to 9 billion by mid-century, the demand for affordable food will increase well beyond current international production levels. People in rapidly developing nations will have the means greatly to improve their standard of living and caloric intake. Inevitably, that
means eating more meat. This will raise demand for feed grain at the same time that the growing world population will need vastly more basic food
to eat. Complicating a solution to this problem is a dynamic that must be better understood in the West: developing countries often use limited
arable land to expand cities to house their growing populations. As good land
disappears, people destroy timber resources and even
rainforests as they try to create more arable land to feed themselves. The long-term environmental consequences
could be disastrous for the entire globe . Productivity revolution To meet the expected demand for food over the next 50
years, we in the United States will have to grow roughly three times more food on the land we have. That’s a tall order. My farm in
Marion County, Indiana, for example, yields on average 8.3 to 8.6 tonnes of corn per hectare – typical for a farm in central Indiana. To triple our
production by 2050, we will have to produce an annual average of 25 tonnes per hectare. Can we possibly boost output that much? Well, it’s been
done before. Advances
in the use of fertilizer and water, improved machinery and better tilling techniques combined to generate a threefold increase in yields since 1935 – on our farm back then, my dad produced 2.8 to 3 tonnes per hectare. Much US agriculture has
seen similar increases. But of course there is no guarantee that we can achieve those results again. Given the urgency of expanding food production
to meet world demand, we must invest much more in scientific research and target that money toward projects that promise to have significant
national and global impact. For the United States, that will mean a major shift in the way we conduct and fund agricultural science. Fundamental
U nited S tates can take a leading position in a
productivity revolution . And our success at increasing food production may play a decisive humanitarian role in
research will generate the innovations that will be necessary to feed the world. The
the survival of billions of people and the health of our planet.
Mexican Economy
Mexico's economy is collapsing and shows no sign of getting better
Market Realists 7/9
(Market Realists, Sr Emerging Markets Analyst, democratizing investment research, Jul 9, 2013, "Why
Mexico’s economic slide continues and a recovery isn’t happening",
http://marketrealist.com/2013/07/mexico-june-pmi/)
The survey is at its lowest point since it started slightly over two years ago The Purchasing Managers Index (PMI)
measures several items along the manufacturing supply chain, including new orders, production, inventory
levels, prices, and employment. The PMI serves as a leading indicator of the economy’s near-term
performance, so economists and financial analysts closely follow the index. The June PMI continued the downward slide
that began when the year started. The value came in at 51.3, which is a further drop from the 51.7 in May. This is the lowest
value ever recorded for the survey, which started to be collected in Mexico in the spring of 2011. Sergio
Martin, HSBC’s chief economist in Mexico, stated, ”This confirms that the loss of steam in the manufacturing sector will prevail in the second quarter.
In addition, it is consistent with our uneven GDP growth path for this year, which foresees a moderate growth in 1H13, followed by a gradual recovery
for the 2H13.” Alive, but barely kicking While most indicators were able to remain above the 50 point neutral growth line, the rates
of growth were the lowest or among the lowest ever recorded. New work orders were the lowest ever in
the series, and new export orders remained under 50 for the second month in a row, signaling a contraction in the amount of foreign business. The report cites weak economic conditions in key export
markets. Mexico’s main export partner is the United States, which accounts for just under 80% of its exports. About a quarter of Mexico’s exports
are in the auto sector and related industries. A recent uptick in car sales worldwide may help Mexico in the next PMI reading. Production output was
the weakest year to date, even though companies were able to run down their backlog of work. Actually, the backlog dropped at the fastest rate we’ve
seen since last fall despite production growth being at its weakest rate.
This data highlights the weakness in future demand
and lack of confidence in future outlook since both input purchases and inventory levels remained unchanged Margins squeezing and weak employment
No squo recovery - slowing growth and inflation
Cattan 7/12
Cattan (writer for Bloomberg),Nacha, Jul 12, 2013, "Mexico Likely to Hold Rate as Weaker Peso Boosts
Inflation Risk",
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-12/mexico-likely-to-hold-rate-as-weaker-peso-boosts-inflation-ris
k.html
Mexico’s central bank will probably keep its overnight rate at a record low as policy makers balance slowing growth with
above-target inflation and a weakening currency in Latin America’s second-biggest economy. Banco de Mexico,
led by Governor Agustin Carstens, will maintain the overnight rate at 4 percent today, according to all 23 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. The
peso has plunged 3.7 percent since Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke signaled May 22 that the Fed could dial back its monthly
bond-buying program. Bernanke said July 10 that the U.S. needs “highly accomodative monetary policy for the foreseeable
future.” Annual inflation remains above the bank’s 2 percent to 4 percent target range and economists have
lowered their growth forecasts for this year to the slowest pace since the 2009 recession. While sluggish
growth may seem to favor a rate cut, the weaker peso has increased risks inflation will accelerate, complicating
Carstens’s decision, said Benito Berber of Nomura Holdings Inc.
“The outlook for monetary policy has changed,” Berber, a New
York-based strategist at Nomura, said in a telephone interview. “Cutting in this scenario doesn’t go well with stopping second-round effects of the foreign exchange depreciation on inflation.”
Mexican economic collapse leaves 10% of Mexico’s poplation stranded and vulnerable,
depresses the economy, leads to increased drug violence, hurts the U.S. economy, and
leads to violence in the borderlands
Littlefield (COHA Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs), 9, Edward W. "As Mexico's
Problems Mount: The Impact of the Economic Recession on Migration Patterns from Mexico." Council on
Hemispheric Affairs. N.p., 5 Mar. 2009. Web. 17 July 2013.
<http://www.coha.org/as-mexico’s-problems-mount-the-impact-of-the-economic-recession-on-migration-pat
terns-from-mexico/>
Harsh economic conditions on both sides of the border also promise to leave the 11.8 million Mexicans, or 10
percent of the Mexican population, living in the United States and their southern dependents in desperate
situations. In general, Hispanic unemployment in the United States rose from 5.1 percent in 2007 to 8.0 percent in 2008. Hispanic immigrants are heavily concentrated in the industries left most vulnerable by current
conditions, such as construction, manufacturing, leisure and hospitality, and support and personal services.
Americans’ increased concern with job availability during the crisis further limits the economic livelihoods of
migrants and their families. The remittance flows of other Central American states with large migrant populations in the United States, such as El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, are not expected to be as severely
effected as those of Mexico. Many of these immigrants are granted temporary protected status under special
arrangements with the United States, making their countries less vulnerable than Mexico to northern political,
legal, and economic fluctuations. The fact that the United States and Mexico constitute, according to the World
Bank, the “largest immigration corridor in the world” further illustrates the profound effect the decrease in
migration and remittances may have on both sides of the border.
Evidently, through migration, remittances, and NAFTA-induced trade integration, the Mexican economy has
become increasingly dependent upon that of the United States, making the former extremely vulnerable to
the effects of the current financial crisis. The decrease in migration flows and remittances is thus implicit in
the current debate about Mexico’s descent into being a “failed state.” A Mexican economic collapse, spurred
by a decrease in the migrants and remittances upon which the country’ s economy is reliant, would weaken the
state’s capacity to finance counter-narcotics activity, increase pay-rolls to prevent political and military officials from corruption related to drug trafficking, recuperate the depressed economy, and keep their best and
brightest at home. These series of developments would have a negative consequence for the United States
economy and the Obama administration, as well. Mexico is the United States’ third largest export market, and
the cheap labor that Mexican immigrants provide, although not nearly as coveted given the current recession, is
an important part of the national economy. Additionally, Mexico’s potential economic and military collapse
deserves to be viewed as a national security threat to the U.S., given the spread of drug-related violence to
border states such as Arizona, where authorities blame a rise in home invasions and kidnappings on organized
crime from south of the border.
Global economic crisis causes war
Royal 10
Jedediah Royal, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of Defense, 2010, Economic
Integration, Economic Signaling and the Problem of Economic Crises,? in Economics of War and Peace:
Economic, Legal and Political Perspectives, ed. Goldsmith and Brauer, p. 213-215
Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may increase the likelihood of external conflict. Political science
literature has contributed a moderate degree of attention to the impact of economic decline and the security and
defence behaviour of interdependent states. Research in this vein has been considered at systemic, dyadic and national levels. Several notable contributions follow. First, on the systemic level, Pollins (2008) advances Modelski
and Thompson's (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding that rhythms in the global economy are associated
with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often bloody transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next.
As such, exogenous shocks such as economic crises could usher in a redistribution of relative power (see also Gilpin,
1981) that leads to uncertainty about power balances, increasing the risk of miscalculation (Fearon, 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain redistribution of power could lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a
rising power may seek to challenge a declining power (Werner, 1999). Separately, Pollins (1996) also shows that
global economic cycles combined with parallel leadership cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major,
medium and small powers, although he suggests that the causes and connections between global economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown. Second, on a dyadic level, Copeland's (1996, 2000) theory of trade
expectations suggests that 'future expectation of trade' is a significant variable in understanding economic conditions
and security behaviour of states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific benefits from trade so
long as they have an optimistic view of future trade relations. However, if the expectations of future trade decline,
particularly for difficult to replace items such as energy resources, the likelihood for conflict increases, as states will
be inclined to use force to gain access to those resources. Crises could potentially be the trigger for decreased trade
expectations either on its own or because it triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states.4 Third, others
have considered the link between economic decline and external armed conflict at a national level. Blomberg and
Hess (2002) find a strong correlation between internal conflict and external conflict, particularly during periods of
economic downturn. They write, The linkages between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and
mutually reinforcing. Economic conflict tends to spawn internal conflict, which in turn returns the favour. Moreover,
the presence of a recession tends to amplify the extent to which international and external conflicts self-reinforce
each other. (Blomberg & Hess, 2002, p. 89) Economic decline has also been linked with an increase in the likelihood
of terrorism (Blomberg, Hess, & Weerapana, 2004), which has the capacity to spill across borders and lead to external tensions. Furthermore, crises generally reduce the popularity of a sitting government. 'Diversionary theory'
suggests that, when facing unpopularity arising from economic decline, sitting governments have increased incentives to fabricate external military conflicts to create a 'rally around the flag' effect. Wang (1996), DeRouen (1995),
and Blomberg, Hess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing that economic decline and use of force
are at least indirectly correlated. Gelpi (1997), Miller (1999), and Kisangani and Pickering (2009) suggest that the
tendency towards diversionary tactics are greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact that
democratic leaders are generally more susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic support.
DeRouen (2000) has provided evidence showing that periods of weak economic performance in the United States,
and thus weak Presidential popularity, are statistically linked to an increase in the use of force. In summary, recent
economic scholarship positively correlates economic integration with an increase in the frequency of economic
crises, whereas political science scholarship links economic decline with external conflict at systemic, dyadic and
national levels.5 This implied connection between integration, crises and armed conflict has not featured prominently in the economic-security debate and deserves more attention. This observation is not contradictory to other
perspectives that link economic interdependence with a decrease in the likelihood of external conflict, such as those
mentioned in the first paragraph of this chapter. Those studies tend to focus on dyadic interdependence instead of
global interdependence and do not specifically consider the occurrence of and conditions created by economic
crises. As such, the view presented here should be considered ancillary to those views.
Economic collapse causes global war.
Walter Russell Mead, the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign
Relations, February 4, 2009, “Only Makes You Stronger,” The New Republic
History may suggest that financial crises actually help capitalist great powers maintain their leads--but it has other,
less reassuring messages as well. If financial crises have been a normal part of life during the 300-year rise of the
liberal capitalist system under the Anglophone powers, so has war. The wars of the League of Augsburg and the
Spanish Succession; the Seven Years War; the American Revolution; the Napoleonic Wars; the two World Wars;
the cold war: The list of wars is almost as long as the list of financial crises. Bad economic times can breed wars.
Europe was a pretty peaceful place in 1928, but the Depression poisoned German public opinion and helped bring
Adolf Hitler to power. If the current crisis turns into a depression, what rough beasts might start slouching toward
Moscow, Karachi, Beijing, or New Delhi to be born? The United States may not, yet, decline, but, if we can't get the
world economy back on track, we may still have to fight.
Migrant worker programs dramatically benefit the economies of the donating and receiving countries while reducing global poverty
Ruhs and Martin 8
Ruhs and Martin (ESRC Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), University of Oxford; Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California at Davis) Martin and Phillip,
“Numbers vs. Rights: Trade-Offs and Guest Worker Programs 1” 5 March 2008.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-7379.2007.00120.x/pdf
Economic theory and experience confirm that moving workers from low-income to higher-income countries
benefits migrants and raises global income while creating small net economic benefits in receiving countries,
largely because the migrants hold down wages and prices (see, for example, Borjas, 1995; Freeman, 2006). For
the US in the mid-1990s, a National Research Council report estimated that the net economic benefits of immigration ranged from $1 billion to $10 billion, meaning that US economic output was this much higher because of immigration (Smith and Edmonston, 1997). Proponents of immigration stressed the positive economic benefits of immigrants; opponents pointed out that a then $8 trillion economy expanding by 3 percent
grows by $240 billion a year, or $10 billion in two weeks. The new twist in proposals for more guest workers is
the argument that low-income countries would benefit by sending more workers abroad. The World Bank
estimated that moving an additional 14 million workers from low-income to higher-income countries would
generate a global income gain of over $350 billion, exceeding the $300-billion gain from completing the Doha
round of trade negotiations (World Bank, 2005). The press release accompanying the World Bank’s Global
Economic Prospects report for 2006 argued that more “managed migration programs, including temporary
work visas for low-skilled migrants in industrial countries . . . would contribute to significant reductions in
poverty in migrant sending countries, among the migrants themselves, their families and, as remittances increase, in the broader community.” In its report to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, the Global
Commission on International Migration recommended “carefully designed temporary migration programs as a
means of addressing the economic needs of both countries of origin and destination” (GCIM, 2005:16).
Expanded guest worker programs would be extremely beneficial for both the U.S. and
Mexican economies
Schmitt (Eric, "The Nation: Between the Lines; Getting To Know You: America Fills Fox's Dance Card") The New
York Times. (April 8, 2001 Sunday ): 981 words. LexisNexis Academic. Web. Date Accessed: 2013/07/18.
SOMETHING very curious is happening between the United States and Mexico: the countries are seriously
talking about thorny issues like migration that for years had been the elephant at the party that no one wanted to
discuss. American officials, for instance, had long criticized Mexico for turning a blind eye to border control
problems. Mexico viewed migration as a fundamental right of its workers, who bolstered American industry
and provided an escape valve for Mexico's own struggling economy. But President Bush
made President
Vincente Fox's ranch his first foreign stop in February, and their personal friendship -- Mr. Bush had met Mr.
Fox at least three times when Mr. Bush was governor of Texas -- has almost single-handedly transformed the
tone of United States-Mexico relations. The two leaders have broken new ground in talks about trade, energy
and fighting drug trafficking, and last Wednesday Cabinet-level officials from both governments met here and
pledged to work on a broad set of proposals aimed at making the border safer for Mexican immigrants, expanding guest worker programs in the United States and creating new incentives to keep Mexicans from deserting their homeland for jobs in this country. To be sure, all of this has consequences for Mr. Bush. If Mr.
Fox can succeed in stabilizing the border and strengthening the Mexican economy, for instance, the United
States stands to gain a stronger trading partner, a safer, more secure, border and fewer problems with illegal
immigration. But Mr. Fox, whose election ended decades of one-party rule in Mexico, has become a totem not
just for Mr. Bush and the Republicans, but for the Democrats as well. Both parties seem to see in the Mexican
president a rising star on the world stage, and a power broker whose ideas they can play for their own political
advantage. Republicans see Mr. Fox, a former Coca Cola executive, as a hard-nosed businessman out to fight
corruption and drug trafficking, and promote free trade and less-onerous regulations. Democrats, for their part,
underscore Mr. Fox's commitment to improving the lives of migrant farmworkers in America. Also, of university students in Mexico by providing them with high-speed Internet access to libraries worldwide. California's Democratic governor, Gray Davis, played host during Mr. Fox's two-day visit to the state last month,
squiring the Mexican leader through Silicon Valley boardrooms (where Mr. Fox sought more high-technology
investment and jobs in Mexico) and migrant rallies in farming communities. Mr. Davis is eager to shed California's anti-immigrant image, which grew under former Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican, and from Proposition 187, the 1994 measure that sharply restricted benefits to undocumented immigrants. (Not to be outflanked
on Mr. Fox's California visit, Mr. Bush dispatched First Lady Laura Bush to join Mr. Fox on a tour of an
elementary school in the San Fernando valley.) "Fox is capable of being influential with the president, the
Cabinet and the Congress, on all levels," said Representative Silvestre Reyes, a Texas Democrat who heads the
Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Still, of all the issues driving the romance between Fox and the two parties,
immigration remains the most prominent. Since Mr. Fox's inauguration, Senator Phil Gramm, a Texas Republican who supports expanding guest worker programs, and the Democrat-dominated Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which opposes Mr. Gramm's plan, have made pilgrimages to Mexico City to win Mr. Fox's
blessing for their competing positions. IN an unusual accord, farmers and labor unions struck a compromise
late last year to gradually grant undocumented workers legal residency in exchange for expanding and
streamlining the current temporary visa program that brings workers from Mexico for limited stays. But Mr.
Gramm opposed the legalization component and scuttled the deal at the eleventh hour. Mr. Fox, sensing the
political vise he could put himself in should he court either the Republicans or the Democrats too closely, has
been careful to tell each side a little of what they want to hear without committing himself to a hard and fast
position. By doing so, the Mexican president is maintaining the leverage he needs to continue wooing American lawmakers from both sides of the aisle on the issue on which his own popularity at home depends. "Migration is the most fractious issue between these two countries," said Demetrios G. Papademetriou, director of
the international migration policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "If they can
show show real gains and create experiments where they test each other, then there will be a greater willingness
to deliver on other promises." Mr. Fox is interested in Mr. Gramm's guest worker program as a way to allow
Mexicans to come home with skills and money for the Mexican economy. But Mr. Fox also needs some
sort of legalization plan to avoid alienating his liberal supporters in the United States. "If the purposes are in
conflict, it could sink the whole deal," said Rick Swartz, an immigration advocate in Washington who has close
ties to the Mexican government. For his part, Mr. Bush has signaled he wants some kind of deal on the guest
worker issue, but has been cool to an amnesty, a politically charged term that has been banned from the
Fox-Bush dialogue in favor of the deliberately vague word "regularize." But as Democrats and Republicans
joust to court the Mexican president, Mr. Fox may see to it that the concept becomes the centerpiece of a new
foreign policy. "The jury is still out on how far Fox will get on defining the interests of farmworkers, both
documented and undocumented," said Ramon Ramirez, president of the Northwest Treeplanters and Farmworkers United, Oregon's farmworker union, in Woodburn, Ore. "But it's encouraging. A lot of people are
watching."
Other Cards
The current NAFTA model has the potential to allow for the contemporary Mexican
economy to function without the extreme degradation of the maquiladoras, but a
healthy Mexican export economy is necessary
Gruben 1
William C. Gruben. Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Did NAFTA Really Cause Mexico's High Maquiladora
Growth?, July 2001
There are reasons why NAFTA might have motivated companies starting or expanding operations in Mexico,
but it is also possible that NAFTA might have discouraged maquiladora expansion or even discouraged
maquiladora operations in general. On its own, NAFTA has begun to allow U.S.-Mexico production-sharing
operations in the maquiladora mode, but without the maquiladora program. By 1999 the majority of imports that used to be processed under the maquiladora program and then entered the United States could
enter duty free without the reference to maquiladoras. For this majority, the Automotive Products Trade Act,
and duty-free treatment of certain products from all most favored nation (MFN) suppliers, as well as regular
or accelerated phase-ins of tariff eliminations under NAFTA could allow as easy entry as what took place via
the maquiladora program (see Watkins, 1994a). To the extent that additional paperwork is involved for participation in the maquiladora program, membership in the maquiladora program in the age of NAFTA
might seem unnecessarily costly. Another disincentive to operate under the maquiladora program involves environmental restrictions. In some cases, waste handling and treatment regulations may be interpreted as stricter for maquiladoras than for other Mexican plants making the same products – even though
under NAFTA some of these plants would have little difficulty exporting to the United States under levels of
protectionism no higher than what the maquiladoras enjoy. 7 Beginning January 1, 2001, moreover,
NAFTA became the only premise for duty free treatment of imported inputs to Mexican maquiladoras –
signaling the effective end of the old maquiladora program as it related to trade among North American
countries. As of that date, NAFTA provisions phased out Mexico’s temporary unconditional dutyfree
treatment for imported components and equipment for plants operating under the maquiladora program.
Rules requiring certain North American content minimum (50 percent or, in some cases, more) apply to duty
free movements of products between Mexico and the United States or Canada.
Depressions in the Mexican economy lead to dramatic swathes of layoffs in Northern
Mexico
Lederman and Oliver 13 (Daniel & Julia, Journalists for America Economia, The Lessons of Mexico's Maquiladoras: Where Free Trade and Labor
Rights Compete,
http://www.worldcrunch.com/business-finance/the-lessons-of-mexico-039-s-maquiladoras-where-free-trade-and-labor-rights-compete/nafta-low-skill
ed-workers-globalization/c2s11434/, 4/22/13) C.A.
Second, the study showed that financial crises translated into layoffs and not salary cuts. The reason can
be the small size of individual companies, who take wages as given. International trade shocks do not affect
worker’s salaries; they tend to affect employment instead. A third trend that appeared in the study was that the
level of competitiveness among maquiladora employees increased in response to financial crises. Data
suggested that the increase in imports and exports was conducive to a disproportionate hiring of unskilled workers and that trade shocks caused job losses in this specific group. In other words, the main
beneficiaries of an increase in trade are the least skilled workers, but they are also the ones most at risk
of losing their jobs when trade is suddenly reduced. Fourth, the study revealed that trade shocks that
affect employment in related industries also affect maquiladora factories. This can be described as a
“domino effect” that propagates through factories in northern Mexico and increases employment in-
stability in the sector. The data confirmed that a decrease in related imports affects the number of jobs in an
economic scale that is equal to the decrease in direct imports. For example, a decrease in computer chip imports – which has a great impact on workers that work in computer assembly plants – can cause similar damage
to employees from the service industry (such as restaurants, retail stores) who serve workers in computer
assembly plants. These lessons learned from Mexico shed light on the relationship between trade and
employment in a labor environment that is becoming more and more common throughout the world: that of
export-oriented industries that depend on the regularity of imports. If globalization and its associated trade
flows are generally beneficial for development, and the links between the U.S. and Mexico have been
beneficial for both countries, it is also important to know how this affects workers. At a time when more
and more developing countries are adopting export-focused strategies for growth, Mexico’s experience helps
politicians understand how these strategies impact workers’ lives. Ideally this type of analysis will help
countries develop complementary policies to stabilize employment in sectors that depend on foreign trade.
Multiple warrants – U.S. guest programs represent forced penury and a modern
permutation of human slavery
Southern Poverty Law Center (organization used to track down various human rights violations)
February 2013 (“Close to Slavery: Guest Worker Programs in the United States” Southern Poverty and Law
Center” MLW)
In the debate over comprehensive immigration reform, various policymakers and business groups have suggested that Congress create a new or expanded guestworker program to ensure a steady supply of foreign workers for industries that rely on an abundance of cheap labor. Congress should look before it leaps. The current H-2 program, which
provides temporary farmworkers and non-farm laborers for a variety of U.S. industries, is rife with labor and human rights
violations committed by employers who prey on a highly vulnerable workforce.It harms the interests of U.S. workers, as
well, by undercutting wages and working conditions for those who labor at the lowest rungs of the economic ladder. This
program should not be expanded or used as a model for immigration reform. Under the current H-2 program overseen by
the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), employers brought about 106,000 guestworkers into this country in 2011 — approximately 55,000 for agricultural work and another 51,000 for jobs in forestry, seafood processing, landscaping, construction and other non-agricultural industries. But far from being treated like “guests,” these workers are systematically
exploited and abused. Unlike U.S. citizens, guestworkers do not enjoy the most fundamental protection of a
competitive labor market — the ability to change jobs if they are mistreated. Instead, they are bound to the employers
who “import” them. If guest workers complain about abuses, they face deportation, blacklisting or other retaliation. Bound to
a single employer and without access to legal resources, guestworkers are routinely: Cheated out of wages. Forced to
mortgage their futures to obtain low-wage, temporary jobs. Held virtually captive by employers or labor brokers who seize
their documents. Subjected to human trafficking and debt servitude. Forced to live in squalid conditions. Denied medical
benefits for on-the-job injuries. Former House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel put it this way:
“This guestworker program’s the closest thing I’ve ever seen to slavery.”1 Congressman Rangel’s conclusion
is not mere hyperbole nor the first time such a comparison has been made. Former DOL official Lee G. Williams described
the old “bracero” program — an earlier version of the guestworker program that brought thousands of Mexican nationals to
work in the United States during and after World War II— as a system of “legalized slavery.2 On paper, the bracero program had many significant written legal protections, providing workers with what historian Cindy Hahamovitch, an expert on
guestworker programs, has called “the most comprehensive farm labor contract in the history of American agriculture.3 Nevertheless, the bracero workers were systematically lied to, cheated and “shamefully neglected.4 In practice,
there is little difference between the bracero program of yesterday and today’s H-2 guestworker program. Federal law and
DOL regulations provide a few protections to H-2 guestworkers, but they exist mainly on paper. Government enforcement
of guestworker rights is historically very weak. Private attorneys typically won’t take up their cause. And non-agricultural
workers in the program are not eligible for federally funded legal services. The H-2 guestworker system also can be viewed
as a modern-day system of indentured servitude. But unlike European indentured servants of old, today’s
guestworkers have no prospect of becoming U.S. citizens. When their temporary work visas expire, they must leave the
United States. They are, in effect, the disposable workers of the U.S. economy. U.S. workers suffer as a result of these
flaws in the guestworker system. As long as employers in low-wage industries can rely on an endless stream of vulnerable
guestworkers who lack basic labor protections, they will have little incentive to hire U.S. workers or make jobs more appealing to domestic workers by improving wages and working conditions. Not surprisingly, many H-2 employers discriminate against U.S. workers, preferring to hire guestworkers, even though they are required to certify that no domestic
workers are available to fill their jobs. In addition, it is well-documented that wages for U.S. workers are depressed in
industries that rely heavily on guestworkers.
No options - current visa programs reduce the migrant to chattel status – workers are
robbed of all mobility and chained to the will of the employer
(SPLC, Southern Poverty Law Center, 2013, "How Guestworker Programs Operate",
http://www.splcenter.org/publications/close-to-slavery-guestworker-programs-in-the-unitedstates/how-guestworker-programs-ope)
The United States currently has two guestworker programs under which employers are authorized to import unskilled
labor for temporary or seasonal work lasting less than a year: the H-2A program for agricultural work and the
H-2B program for non-agricultural work.14 Although the H-2A and H-2B programs offer different terms and benefits, they are
similar in one significant way: Both programs permit the guestworker to work only for the employer who
petitioned the Department of Labor (DOL) for his or her services. If the work situation is abusive or not
what was promised, the worker has little or no recourse other than to go home. That puts the worker at
a distinct disadvantage in terms of future opportunities in the United States, because his ability to return during any subsequent season depends entirely on an employer’s willingness to submit a request to
the U.S. government. In practical terms, it means that an employee is much less likely to complain about
wage violations or other abuses. Under federal law, employers must obtain prior approval from the DOL to bring in guestworkers. To
do that, employers must certify that: There are not sufficient U.S. workers who are able, willing, qualified and available to perform work at the place
and time needed; and The wages and working conditions of workers in the United States similarly employed will not be “adversely affected” by the
importation of guestworkers.15 The H-2 visas used by guestworkers are for individuals only and generally do not
permit them to bring their families to the United States. This means that guestworkers are separated from their
families, including their minor children, for periods often lasting nearly a year.
2AC ATs
AT Coloniality K
2AC
First, framework – you vote aff or neg based on the merit of the plan. This doesn’t exclude their argument – the k impact is a reason to vote negative.
Including the plan is necessary because without it, the 1AC becomes moot and the neg
gets a 2 to 1 constructive advantage. The neg can’t reframe the debate about an arbitrary issue of their choosing like the locus of enunciation, but instead must consider the
merit of their issue relative to those of the aff.
Only our framework solves coloniality – policy simulation turns spectators into competent advocates
Joyner 99 – Professor of International Law in the Government Department at Georgetown University
(Christopher C., Spring, 199, 5 ILSA J Int'l & Comp L 377)
Use of the debate can be an effective pedagogical tool for education in the social sciences. Debates, like other
role-playing simulations, help students understand different perspectives on a policy issue by adopting a perspective
as their own. But, unlike other simulation games, debates do not require that a student participate directly in order to
realize the benefit of the game. Instead of developing policy alternatives and experiencing the consequences of different choices in a traditional role-playing game, debates present the alternatives and consequences in a formal, rhetorical fashion before a judgmental audience. Having the class audience serve as jury helps each student develop a
well-thought-out opinion on the issue by providing contrasting facts and views and enabling audience members to
pose challenges to each debating team. These debates ask undergraduate students to examine the international legal
implications of various United States foreign policy actions. Their chief tasks are to assess the aims of the policy in
question, determine their relevance to United States national interests, ascertain what legal principles are involved,
and conclude how the United States policy in question squares with relevant principles of international law. Debate
questions are formulated as resolutions, along the lines of: "Resolved: The United States should deny
most-favored-nation status to China on human rights grounds;" or "Resolved: The United States should resort to military force to ensure inspection of Iraq's possible nuclear, chemical and biological weapons facilities;" or "Resolved: The
United States' invasion of Grenada in 1983 was a lawful use of force;" or "Resolved: The United States should kill Saddam Hussein." In addressing both sides of these legal propositions, the student debaters must consult the vast literature of international law, especially the nearly 100 professional law-school-sponsored international law journals now
being published in the United States. This literature furnishes an incredibly rich body of legal analysis that often treats
topics affecting United States foreign policy, as well as other more esoteric international legal subjects. Although most
of these journals are accessible in good law schools, they are largely unknown to the political science community specializing in international relations, much less to the average undergraduate. By assessing the role of international law
in United States foreign policy- making, students realize that United States actions do not always measure up to international legal expectations; that at times, international legal strictures get compromised for the sake of perceived national interests, and that concepts and principles of international law, like domestic law, can be interpreted and
twisted in order to justify United States policy in various international circumstances. In this way, the debate format
gives students the benefits ascribed to simulations and other action learning techniques, in that it makes them become actively engaged with their subjects, and not be mere passive consumers. Rather than spectators, students become legal advocates, observing, reacting to, and structuring political and legal perceptions to fit the merits of their
case. The debate exercises carry several specific educational objectives. First, students on each team must work together to refine a cogent argument that compellingly asserts their legal position on a foreign policy issue confronting
the United States. In this way, they gain greater insight into the real-world legal dilemmas faced by policy makers.
Second, as they work with other members of their team, they realize the complexities of applying and implementing
international law, and the difficulty of bridging the gaps between United States policy and international legal principles, either by reworking the former or creatively reinterpreting the latter. Finally, research for the debates forces
students to become familiarized with contemporary issues on the United States foreign policy agenda and the role
that international law plays in formulating and executing these policies. 8 The debate thus becomes an excellent vehicle for pushing students beyond stale arguments over principles into the real world of policy analysis, political critique,
and legal defense.
And, permute – endorse the plan as a good idea at the federal level under the framework of recognizing and challenging northern enunciation
We’ll accept any residual link, but the alt should solve it – if not, then the alt is necessarily incapable of solving the aff independently which means the K is no longer a reason to vote negative and becomes only a DA to the aff, if we win 1% risk of solvency
then you vote aff every time
Only the permutation solves the case - decoloniality is not sufficient to address conditions in the maquiladora and in the guest worker program – if the neg makes a floating
PIK in the block you vote aff immediately because it proves that the perm is legitimate.
Only the perm solves the kritik –
A. Crossapply Joyner, the negative won’t access politics until they concede framework in order to roleplay, which can give them the tools necessary to actually
advocate decoloniality in the political
B. The perm signifies neplantism, or the condition of being in-between: this rejects
coloniality and allows for a more holistic expression of the Latin academic trandition
Foster (Professor at the University of Arizona) 12, David W., reviewing Jose David Saldivar’s
Trans-Americanity: Subaltern Modernities, Global Coloniality, and the Cultures of Greater Mexico.
Hispania, Volume 95, Number 4, December 2012, pp.765-766 (Article). Published by The Johns
Hopkins University Press.
There has been a notable trend to create administratively Chicano Studies programs, either as autonomous academic units or as interdisciplinary centers bringing together scholars of an array of home
departments. While this has led, especially in the case of the former model, to some exceptionally
distinguished research bases, it is important to note that, for whatever acknowledgement there is made
of the substratum, residual, iconic importance of Spanish, these programs are conducted paradigmatically in English. Moreover, to judge by the recent histories on the evolution of Chicano Studies—Chicano Studies: The Genesis of a Discipline (2009), by Michael Soldatenko; and The Making of
Chicana/o Studies: In the Trenches of Academe (2010), by Rodolfo F. Acuña—cultural studies generally and in literature specifically have no place in the curriculum, being given about a two-page
treatment in both books. One cannot image a well-trained Chicana/o literary scholar who does not have
a serious grounding in Chicano his- tory, but the implication is unmistakable that one can be a serious
Chicano sociologist without ever having read a Chicano poem. This top-heavy introduction to Saldívar’s study is necessary to frame what is really very important about his work. In the first place, this is
a work of cultural analysis. Saldívar develops his proposals for a trans-American consciousness with
specific reference to literature and other cultural texts. Nepantlism, the condition of being
in-between (the elaboration of a Nahuatl trope), is postulated by Saldívar not just as a fundamental
horizon of cultural consciousness of writers like Gloria Anzaldúa and Sandra Cisneros (the primacy
given to Chicana feminists is quite remarkable), but as a way of placing much more nationalistic
works in contraposition to each other, such as Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders (American imperialist nationalism) with Miguel Barnet’s Biografía de un cimarrón (Cuban socialist nationalism), such
that the reader is asked to develop a Nepantlist consciousness that overarches the nationalism, in favor
of an optics of what is called trans-Americanity, of the grounding texts. This process is enhanced by
reaching beyond the strictly geographic boundaries of the Americas to include some South Asian
writers such as Arandhati Riy, for whom a Nepantlist consciousness is very much at work. Thus, the
trans-American focus is supplemented by and conjugated with other similar global phenomena.
Saldívar, to be sure, does not argue for an Americanist/Americanitist privilege but only for the particularly vivid models of global postcoloniality that arise from the Latina/o experience in the
United States. For my interests in the languages of literature, language in a literal sense, one of the
most intriguing aspects of Saldívar’s analyses refers to the concept of braided language. To the best of
my knowledge, this is his original term, and with it he means to refer to the way in which Spanish and
English are braided together in an intricate way into the particularly linguistic materiality of certain
works of Chicana/o literature: exemplary reference is made to Gloria Anzaldúa and George Mariscal,
but it is a concept of broad theoretical application and certainly goes far beyond bland concepts such as
bilingualism and code-switching, which, complex as they are, respond to sociological parameters and
not to artistic/cultural ones. In a certain sense, Saldívar’s book, which speaks of Greater Mexico (a
gesture toward detaching Chicana/o studies from the strictly US cultural purview), and his connecting
Latina/o cultural production with global postcolonialism evoke a post-Chicana/o Studies perspective.
This would not mean denying the validity of Chicana/o, and the broader Latino/a studies, as a structurally different discipline. Rather, I see it as a way of strengthening the movement away from
either English or Spanish departments and according a status that is no longer ethno- regional
in nature. This, despite the fact that one can lament that is a movement that only seems possible in the
best of academic English-language prose.
Group their impact claims here – [EXTEND FRAMING CARDS/READ NEW ONES]
Group epistemological indicts –
A. Presume that our impacts are real until the negative constructs specific and coherent refutations
Yudkowsky 6 – Eliezer Yudkowsky, Research Fellow at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence that has published multiple peer-reviewed papers on risk assessment. Cognitive biases potentially affecting judgment of global risks Forthcoming in Global Catastrophic Risks, eds. Nick
Bostrom and Milan Cirkovic. August 31, 2006.
Every true idea which discomforts you will seem to match the pattern of at least one psychological error.
Robert Pirsig said: “The world’s biggest fool can say the sun is shining, but that doesn’t make it dark out.” If
you believe someone is guilty of a psychological error, then demonstrate your competence by first demolishing their consequential factual errors. If there are no factual errors, then what matters the
psychology? The temptation of psychology is that, knowing a little psychology, we can meddle in arguments where we have no technical expertise – instead sagely analyzing the psychology of the disputants.
If someone wrote a novel about an asteroid strike destroying modern civilization, then someone might criticize that novel as extreme, dystopian, apocalyptic; symptomatic of the author’s naive inability to deal with a
complex technological society. We should recognize this as a literary criticism, not a scientific one; it is about
good or bad novels, not good or bad hypotheses. To quantify the annual probability of an asteroid strike in
real life, one must study astronomy and the historical record: no amount of literary criticism can put a number
on it. Garreau (2005) seems to hold that a scenario of a mind slowly increasing in capability, is more mature
and sophisticated than a scenario of extremely rapid intelligence increase. But that’s a technical question, not
a matter of taste; no amount of psychologizing can tell you the exact slope of that curve. It’s harder to abuse
heuristics and biases than psychoanalysis. Accusing someone of conjunction fallacy leads naturally into
listing the specific details that you think are burdensome and drive down the joint probability. Even so, do not
lose track of the real- world facts of primary interest; do not let the argument become about psychology.
Despite all dangers and temptations, it is better to know about psychological biases than to not know. Otherwise we will walk directly into the whirling helicopter blades of life. But be very careful not to have too
much fun accusing others of biases. That is the road that leads to becoming a sophisticated arguer –
someone who, faced with any discomforting argument, finds at once a bias in it. The one whom you must
watch above all is yourself. Jerry Cleaver said: “What does you in is not failure to apply some high-level,
intricate, complicated technique. It’s overlooking the basics. Not keeping your eye on the ball.” Analyses
should finally center on testable real-world assertions. Do not take your eye off the ball.
B. Even if our predictions are colonialist, western policy debate is productive, improves predictive accuracy, and solves cession of the debate to cloistered experts
Tetlock and Gardner 2011 (Philip Tetlock is a professor of organizational behavior at the Haas
Business School at the University of California-Berkeley, AND Dan Gardner is a columnist and senior
writer for the Ottawa Citizen and the author of The Science of Fear, received numerous awards for his
writing, including the Michener Award, M.A. History from York, "OVERCOMING OUR AVERSION TO ACKNOWLEDGING OUR IGNORANCE" July 11
www.cato-unbound.org/2011/07/11/dan-gardner-and-philip-tetlock/overcoming-our-aversion-to-ack
nowledging-our-ignorance/)
The optimists are right that there is much we can do at a cost that is quite modest relative to what is often at
stake. For example, why not build on the IARPA tournament? Imagine a system for recording and judging
forecasts. Imagine running tallies of forecasters’ accuracy rates. Imagine advocates on either side of a policy
debate specifying in advance precisely what outcomes their desired approach is expected to produce, the
evidence that will settle whether it has done so, and the conditions under which participants would agree to
say “I was wrong.” Imagine pundits being held to account. Of course arbitration only works if the arbiter is
universally respected and it would be an enormous challenge to create an analytical center whose judgments
were not only fair, but perceived to be fair even by partisans dead sure they are right and the other guys are
wrong. But think of the potential of such a system to improve the signal-to-noise ratio, to sharpen public
debate, to shift attention from blowhards to experts worthy of an audience, and to improve public policy. At a
minimum, it would highlight how often our forecasts and expectations fail, and if that were to deflate the
bloated confidence of experts and leaders, and give pause to those preparing some “great leap forward,” it
would be money well spent. But the pessimists are right, too, that fallibility, error, and tragedy are permanent
conditions of our existence. Humility is in order, or, as Socrates said, the beginning of wisdom is the admission of ignorance. The Socratic message has always been a hard sell, and it still is—especially among
practical people in business and politics, who expect every presentation to end with a single slide consisting
of five bullet points labeled “The Solution.” We have no such slide, unfortunately. But in defense of Socrates,
humility is the foundation of the fox style of thinking and much research suggests it is an essential component
of good judgment in our uncertain world. It is practical. Over the long term, it yields better calibrated
probability judgments, which should help you affix more realistic odds than your competitors on policy bets
panning out.
C. Debating in a sphere of possibility, even if bias can taint advocacy, is a valuable
activity
Kurasawa, Assistant Professor of Sociology at York University, Toronto, and a Faculty Associate of the Center for Cultural Sociology
at Yale, 2004 (Fuyuki, “Cautionary Tales,” Constellations Volume 4 No. 11, December)
When engaging in the labor of preventive foresight, the first obstacle that one is likely to encounter from
some intellectual circles is a deep-seated skepticism about the very value of the exercise. A radically post-
modern line of thinking, for instance, would lead us to believe that it is pointless, perhaps even harmful, to
strive for farsightedness in light of the aforementioned crisis of conventional paradigms of historical analysis.
If, contra teleological models, history has no intrinsic meaning, direction, or endpoint to be discovered
through human reason, and if, contra scientistic futurism, prospective trends cannot be predicted without
error, then the abyss of chronological inscrutability supposedly opens up at our feet. The future appears to be
unknowable, an outcome of chance. Therefore, rather than embarking upon grandiose speculation about what
may occur, we should adopt a pragmatism that abandons itself to the twists and turns of history; let us be
content to formulate ad hoc responses to emergencies as they arise. While this argument has the merit of
underscoring the fallibilistic nature of all predictive schemes, it conflates the necessary recognition of the
contingency of history with unwarranted assertions about the latter’s total opacity and indeterminacy. Acknowledging the fact that the future cannot be known with absolute certainty does not imply abandoning the
task of trying to understand what is brewing on the horizon and to prepare for crises already coming into their
own. In fact, the incorporation of the principle of fallibility into the work of prevention means that we must be
ever more vigilant for warning signs of disaster and for responses that provoke unintended or unexpected
consequences (a point to which I will return in the final section of this paper). In addition, from a normative
point of view, the acceptance of historical contingency and of the self-limiting character of farsightedness
places the duty of preventing catastrophe squarely on the shoulders of present generations. The future no
longer appears to be a metaphysical creature of destiny or of the cunning of reason, nor can it be sloughed off
to pure randomness. It becomes, instead, a result of human action shaped by decisions in the present – including, of course, trying to anticipate and prepare for possible and avoidable sources of harm to our successors.
D. The kritik fails to provide the normative judging criteria by which the relationship between power and knowledge can be known: this indicates a fundamental
misconceptualization of that interaction
Alcoff (a philosopher at the City University of New York who specializes
in epistemology, feminism, race theory and existentialism. She is currently the president of the APA,
Eastern Division.[1] She earned her PhD in Philosophy from Brown University. She was recognized
as the distinguished Woman Philosopher of 2005 by the Society for Women in Philosophy and
the APA and is also listed on Hispanic Business's 2006 "100 Most Influentials") 7, Linda Martin, CR:
The New Centennial Review, Volume 7, Number 3, Winter 2007, pp. 79-101 (Article), published by
Michigan State Press
Walter Mignolo’s epistemological claims about subaltern knowl- edge owe much for their inspiration
to the work of Michel Foucault. Thus it is little wonder that, in some important respects, Mignolo bears
a similar relationship as Foucault to the discipline of philosophy, and to epistemology in particular.
Even though the entirety of Foucault’s theoretical writings con- cerned knowledge in the human sciences, the principal discussions in Anglo- American epistemology continue to ignore Foucault’s work,
an inattention considered justified on the grounds that Foucault’s analyses of knowledge are taken to
be a species of critical sociology, not normative epistemology. It is also largely believed that Foucault
repudiated the very possibility of the normative goals of epistemology given the constitutive relationality between power and knowledge. Yet Foucault himself formulated that relationality as dyadic
rather than reductive, insisting that knowledge is not reducible to power, even though it cannot be
properly understood as disassociated from power (Foucault 1980; Alcoff 1996). Power operates not
only in the spheres of application and discovery—the two spheres traditional epistemologists
acknowledge as af- fected by “irrational” elements—but also in the spheres of justification and the
delimitation of the “regime” (or sphere) of the truth, or what passes for truth. Foucault worked out
these claims with detailed case studies that both supported them and elucidated their meaning. For
those of us who found these arguments plausible, even persuasive, the normative implications are
clear: epistemology needs to work with this better and more truthful description of how actually
existing knowledges (as opposed to idealized reconstructions) emerge, and needs to incorporate not
only an analysis of power in its analysis of knowledge but also a set of normative criteria for
judging various relationships between power and knowledge. Foucault provided such criteria in
his epistemic assessments of hegemony-seeking versus subjugated knowledges: subjugated or local
knowledges always tend to do less violence to the local particulars and are also less likely to impose
hierarchical structures of credibility based on universal claims about the proper procedures of justification that foreclose the contributions of many unconventional or lower-status knowers.
E. Coloniality uses a flawed method to arrive at a normative epistemological indict;
this is, in fact, unnecessarily discriminatory
Alcoff (a philosopher at the City University of New York who specializes
in epistemology, feminism, race theory and existentialism. She is currently the president of the APA,
Eastern Division.[1] She earned her PhD in Philosophy from Brown University. She was recognized
as the distinguished Woman Philosopher of 2005 by the Society for Women in Philosophy and
the APA and is also listed on Hispanic Business's 2006 "100 Most Influentials") 7, Linda Martin, CR:
The New Centennial Review, Volume 7, Number 3, Winter 2007, pp. 79-101 (Article), published by
Michigan State Press
Many Latin American philosophers—from Leopoldo Zea to Enrique Dussel to Mignolo and others—have pointed out the hierarchical patterns of epistemic judgment under colonial systems. As Zea
succinctly put it, the identity, the rationality, and the very humanity of the peoples of the “New World”
were “put on trial and judged by the jury of its conquerors” (Zea 1988–89, 36). Amerindian peoples
were not considered to be in a position to present their own epistemic credentials, much less to judge
European ones. This fact is clear. What is also clear is that extra-epistemic concerns are being used
to do epistemic work in cases where, for example, one’s ethnic or racial- ized identity determines
one’s epistemic justification or the status of one’s beliefs. But these facts do not, for most epistemologists, have normative epis- temological significance. Conquerors used bad epistemic practices,
and it is assumed that the eff ort to establish good epistemic practices can only take negative lessons
from such examples. However, we might also ask, following both Charles Mills (1997) and Michele
Le Doeuff (1991) who have asked similar questions: what is the relationship between the project of
conquest and this reliance on bad epistemic practices? Could it be that conquerors are in an epistemically poor cultural, intellectual, and political context for judgment, and are more likely to develop
what Mills calls “epistemologies of ignorance” that include substantive cognitive practices that obscure social realities? If so, this would indicate that in developing an account of best practices, we need
to consider more than individual epistemic agency and include a much broader array of structural background conditions that directly enhance or inhibit the pursuit and identification of
truth. The relationship between justificatory status and one’s social identity is not, of course, foreign
to the traditions of Western epistemology. In both ancient and modern canonical writings, epistemic
credibility is associated with identity, and sometimes determined by it. Gender, age, one’s status as a
slave, the sort of work one performed, ethnic identities such as Jewishness, and since the modern period, one’s racialized features were variously used to assess epistemic competence by philosophers
including Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Locke, Hume, Kant, and Hegel. (For an interesting take on the modern prejudices, see Shapin 1994.) Th us, identity-based assessments were integrated into epistemic
practice as well as into epistemologies that justified favoring certain groups over oth- ers with a
measure of presumptive credibility. Much of Mignolo’s analytics of epistemology, as we’ll see,
concerns its role in creating, developing, and maintaining a hierarchy of knowledge and knowers
particularly adapted for colonialism, in which the most relevant distinction concerned one’s cultural
identity. Much of Mignolo’s attempt to formulate an alternative to this im- perial epistemology involves an eff ort to topple the cultural hierarchy that colonialism enforced. But more than this, “subaltern reason,” as he calls it, must aim to “rethink and reconceptualize the stories that have been told
and the conceptualization that has been put into place to divide the world between Christians and
pagans, civilized and barbarians, modern and pre- modern, and developed and undeveloped regions
and people,” especially to the extent such divisions are based on putative cognitive capacity (2000b,
98). Such a reconstructive project demands not only a new sociology of knowledge but also a new
normative epistemology that can correct and improve upon the colonial worldview.
F. Err aff on the epistemology debate – this K has such a big scope that any defensive claim we make could fall to the criticism unless we go outside of the western
lit base
Coloniality became less applicable with the advent of postmodernism, where traditional divides between the north and south became confused: remaining diffraction occurs
primarily in the linguistic, not positional, sphere, which decoloniality fails to adequately address
Foster (Professor at the University of Arizona) 12, David W., reviewing Jose David Saldivar’s
Trans-Americanity: Subaltern Modernities, Global Coloniality, and the Cultures of Greater Mexico. Hispania,
Volume 95, Number 4, December 2012, pp.765-766 (Article). Published by The Johns Hopkins University
Press.
Because literary and cultural studies programs tend to be defined primarily in terms of language, Latina/o
studies experience an inevitable tension as to whether they are based in Spanish or English departments.
Spanish departments make sense since, in the early days, most Chicano writers had an advanced command of
academic Spanish and, besides, most English departments were simply not interested in anything that contradicted the high modernism in English that in the twentieth century came to constitute the identity of most such
faculties. As English programs became postmodern, cross- and multi-cultural, Latina/o writers, who in
many cases no longer had/ did not have a command of academic Spanish came to be acceptable under a
rubric of American ethnic literature. But the accommodation continues to be a difficult one: unlike virtually
all other so-called ethnic American writers, who write in English (even when it may be ethnically inflected, as
is the case of a large swath of Afro-American writing), Latina/o writers retain an undiminished commitment to
Spanish. Although they may not always write it on the level of Latin American writers, the language is there: it
is there, as Francisco X. Alarcón says in one of his brilliant poems, as what his grandmother whispered in his
ear; it is there as the grounding of cultural sustainability in a community in which major segments of private,
domestic, intimate life are conducted in (mostly) colloquial varieties of Spanish (so much so that one of
Richard Rodriguez’s main points in opposing bilingual education is that he did not want the state, often in the
form of poorly trained Anglo bilingual teachers, intruding on these intimate domains of the language); it is
there in the material culture of daily life, as foods, products, practices, rituals, symbols, phatic tags (including
proverbs and other sayings), all of which make the barrio the barrio; and it is there, at whatever level of usage,
at whatever level of linguistic competence, as a central form of cultural resistance to the oppressive indignities
of Anglo word. Walter Mignolo has written about the conversion of Spanish, in the Americas, from being the
language of imperial expansion to the language of the colonially dominated, although this is a history that
has not yet been adequately written, due, I would assert, to the limited familiarity on the part of most
cultural studies scholars with the principles of scientific linguistics.
AT Neoliberalism K
AT Security K
AT CIR CP
CP doesn’t solve guest workers advantage – 100% of hopeful immigrants must be admitted into the program to address liberty concerns
Elmore 7
ELMORE (Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Bureau of the New York State Office of Attorney
General. The following analysis is offered purely in the author's private capacity and not as a representative of
the New York State Office of Attorney General), ANDREW J. EGALITARIANISM AND EXCLUSION:
U.S. GUEST WORKER PROGRAMS AND A NON-SUBORDINATION APPROACH TO THE LABOR-BASED ADMISSION OF NONPROFESSIONAL FOREIGN NATIONALS. 2007 Georgetown Immigration Law Journal. 21 Geo. Immigr. L.J. 521
This Article has argued that a temporary work-based visa that eliminates employer certification and recruitment, grants nonprofessional foreign nationals formal equality in the workplace, and allows foreign nationals
to engage in circular migration and permanent settlement would advance the interests of nonprofessional foreign nationals able to obtain visas, and the U.S. workers who compete with them. Yet, this allocation of rights
would subordinate foreign nationals outside the U.S. who are unable to obtain a work-based visa, because it
would exclude them from the U.S. unless they engaged in unauthorized migration. To the foreign national
forced to engage in unauthorized migration to arrive in the U.S., a more formalized immigration enforcement
system may be inferior to the current U.S. immigration policy of turning a blind eye to undocumented workers
in industries reliant on immigrant labor during periods of high labor demand. Thus, from the vantage point of
excluded foreign nationals and future undocumented workers, any approach that would restrict the number of
work-based visas is less desirable than the status quo.
Ultimately, a system that does not allow all foreign nationals seeking entrance to the U.S. an opportunity to
engage in authorized migration cannot reconcile the liberty, sovereignty, and equality interests of foreign
nationals and U.S. workers. This is the paradox of egalitarianism: any egalitarian system must define its
community, which, in the context of an immigration policy that enforces national borders, necessarily implies
exclusion. The impossibility of accommodating the global demand to immigrate to the U.S. is a symptom of
global inequality, and a result of the U.S. role as a wealthy nation with a dynamic economy and a large presence in world relations. This conclusion suggests that controlling unauthorized migration would require U.S.
trade policies that would expand access to credit and promote job creation for nonprofessional workers in
sending countries. n228 By evaluating the impact of U.S. trade policies on nonprofessional foreign nationals,
and adopting measures that tend to reduce the demand to migrate, the U.S. may simultaneously address global
inequality and advance the sovereignty interest in managing the future migrant flow.
Here is an independent advocate with fantastic warrant – the plan solves illegal immigration, it’s actually BETTER than the actual bill in congress for solving immigration
Nowrasteh (Alex Nowrasteh is the immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global
Liberty and Prosperity. Previously he was the immigration policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Houston Chronicle,Boston Globe, San Jose Mercury, Richmond Times-Dispatch,Huffington Post, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and
elsewhere. He has appeared on Fox News and numerous television and radio stations across the United States.
He received his B.A. in Economics from George Mason University and MSc in Economic History from the
London School of Economics. ) Alex, 6/24 "The Border Security Obsession." Cato@Liberty. (June 24, 2013
Monday 8:45 PM EST ): 637 words. LexisNexis Academic. Web. Date Accessed: 2013/07/19.
Securing the border is largely a rhetorical excuse to oppose reforming the immigration system. Senator Jeff
Sessions (R-AL) said[1] of the Hoeven-Corker amendment that, 'I do not think this amendment is going to
touch many of the objections that I spoke about.' The Hoeven-Corker amendment militarizes the border to an
embarrassing degree - replacing the Statue of Liberty's promise of liberty to all with a wall facing southward.
How will this $5-billion-a-year security buildup be financed? The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates enormous fiscal gains from immigration reform - reducing deficits from between $700 billion and
$1.2 trillion[2] over the next 20 years. Spending large portions of those anticipated savings on more security
will convince some Republicans to vote for the entire immigration bill, but it won't solve the unlawful immigration problem going forward. Fixing the legal immigration system will. Allowing more legal low-skilled
guest workers will channel would-be unlawful immigrants into the legal market. Immigrants won't cross
illegally if they can come in legally through a checkpoint. Shrinking the size of the unlawful immigrant population by channeling most of them into the legal system will help Border Patrol weed out the criminals, national security threats, and sick people from the vast majority of willing peaceful workers. History shows us the
way. In the early 1950s unlawful immigration was a problem, but Border Patrol did not just punish the immigrants, it funneled them into the legal market. During that time there was a guest worker visa program called
Bracero. After arresting unlawful immigrants, Border Patrol drove[3] them down to the Southern border and
immediately let them enroll in the Bracero program, allowing them to return to their jobs after taking a few
steps over the border and coming back into the U.S. with lawful permission. Soon, would-be unlawful immigrants learned they could just enter legally - and they did. Unlawful immigration dropped by more than 90
percent in the following years. If there was a legal immigration option today, expanded to sectors of the
economy besides just agriculture, immigrants would overwhelmingly make the same choice. Today, the
immigration enforcement infrastructure already exists to funnel would-be unlawful immigrants into the legal
market. The only thing lacking is a functional guest worker visa program. The currently immigration reform
bill's guest worker visa program is a complicated mess that is barely better than the current system. Allowing
additional legal guest workers will accomplish more than spending $5 billion a year on border security.
It will channel peaceful people in the legal immigration system while leaving Border Patrol to deal with
the real criminal and national security threats that remain. Militarizing the border without improving the
guest worker visa system risks a repeat of the 1986 Reagan amnesty. The good portions of this immigration
reform bill still outweigh the bad but we cannot afford too many more Hoeven-Corker amendments.
AT Economic Engagement T
C/I – economic engagement includes a multitude of practices that benefit nations.
Visa issuance engages not only from a foreign assistance perspective but also provides support for those suffering in current economic conditions
US Department of State 1 “What is Total Economic Engagement?” United States Department of State
Archive 2001-2009. MLW
To quote Franklin D. Roosevelt: “True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.
People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.” Poverty and political unrest
walk hand-in-hand, and too many countries’ economic situations offer little hope to their citizens. However, the
economic landscape does not need to remain dormant. We believe, the crop of economic security, individual prosperity and
political stability can be grown through total economic engagement. Total economic engagement looks beyond
the current practice of using financial development assistance as the only ox at the plow . We
know that developing countries own the keys to their own economic success. Just as democracy relies on the educated
and active common man, so a healthy economy rests on the liberated individual. Ronald Reagan summed it up well: “We
who live in free market societies believe that growth, prosperity and ultimately human fulfillment, are created from the
bottom up, not the government down. “Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals
are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefiting from their success – Only then can societies
remain economically alive, dynamic, progressive, and free.” Our goal, therefore, must be the creation of the right conditions
for individual economic growth and success. We must cultivate conditions for private sector growth, investment and trade.
This cannot be accomplished through Official Development Assistance (ODA) funds alone. Foreign assistance must
support a developing country’s own effort to improve their economic climate. Total economic engagement is putting all of
the players to the same plow. EEB is harnessing trade and economic policy formation, proper governance, and ODA
activities together. The bureau also integrates the American individual. Working with U.S. citizen-partners
participating in developing economies abroad is a key element of total economic engagement.
An accurate accounting of a nation’s total engagement must include economic policies as well as, trade, remittances, and
foreign direct investment. In these areas, the U.S. leads the world in total economic engagement with the developing world.
The private donations of American citizens, military emergency aid and peacekeeping and government assistance provide
the primary sources for development financing.
Lit checks – we cite a variety of authors that all deal with the economic relations between the U.S. and Mexico in some context – T isn’t an excuse for a lack of research
Visas are frequently discussed in the context of economic engagement – US-Burma relations discussion proves
Zwa Moe (Commentary from "Opinion" section) 9 Kyaw "Commentator assesses potential "breakthrough"
moment in Burma-US relations." BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific - Political Supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring.
(August 20, 2009 Thursday ): 858 words. LexisNexis Academic. Web. Date Accessed: 2013/07/17.
So, how much importance should we give to the recent clamour about a potential "breakthrough" moment in
US-Burma relations? The US and Western countries could lift sanctions on the regime, open up economic
engagement, lift visa bans on the generals, and so on, but the wise observer should not expect anything in
return: no release of Suu Kyi and the 2,100 political prisoners, no full participation of opposition parties in the
election, no free and fair election. Any quid pro quo offer is not in the cards with the junta. It's never
"give-and-take" with the generals; it's always "give-and-give." If you don't believe it, look at the generals'
history. Already, they are reveling in their good fortune. On Tuesday, the junta's state-run newspapers called
Webb's visit a "success." An opinion piece in The New Light of Myanmar said: "The visit of Mr Jim Webb is a
success for both sides as well as the first step to promotion of the relations between the two countries." It is
interesting to see that the junta and Webb on are the same page in their views of the events. More interestingly,
Webb told reporters in Bangkok on Sunday: "I don't want to misrepresent her [Suu Kyi] views, but my clear
impression is that she is not opposed to the lifting of some sanctions," But the next day that interpretation
began to unravel. What Suu Kyi said to Webb was that "interaction" between the junta and the domestic opposition must occur before sanctions are lifted. The senator may have believed that the "interaction" referred to
the junta and the international community's sanctions, according to Nyan Win, a spokesperson of her party, the
National League for Democracy, who met with Suu Kyi on Monday. "She told me that when she met with Sen
Webb she reiterated the need for the Burmese regime to first interact 'inside the country.' She said only when
that happens 'will Burma benefit from relations with the international community,'" Nyan Win told The Irrawaddy. He said the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who is regarded as a strong supporter of economic sanctions,
also told Webb: "She was not the one who imposed sanctions against the Burmese regime. She is not in a
position to lift those sanctions." Understandably, the international community is anxious to know exactly what
Suu Kyi said. The New York Times, in its Wednesday editorial, wrote: "We would like to hear her views
directly," referring to Webb's statement that she "is not opposed to lifting some sanctions." Thus, Suu Kyi's
clarification is important for international policy makers, including the Obama Administration, in order for it to
shape its policy on the reclusive regime. So what's the bottom line on this sorry episode? You can be happy
that Yettaw, an ill man, is not in Insein Prison, but mourn the day the eccentric American decided to swim to
Suu Kyi's rescue, offering the junta a golden opportunity to extend her house arrest. On Webb's "breakthrough," there's no such thing. The future will be more of the same: a manipulative junta set in its ways,
determined to form a military-dominated parliament next year, determined to ignore the calls of the international community.
Prefer breadth – our interpretation allows us to learn about a larger variety of economic mechanisms and have a more complete understanding of U.S./Mexican economic engagement
We don’t hurt neg strat – they get generics, agent CPs, and lots of other offensive arguments even if they know absolutely nothing about the aff
Default to reasonability – our aff is predictable
Have a high threshold on T – voting us down constitutes a wholesale rejection of our
entire category of affs, hold them to a high argumentative standard
AT FX T
C/I – economic engagement includes a multitude of practices that benefit nations.
Visa issuance engages not only from a foreign assistance perspective but also provides support for those suffering in current economic conditions – our aff is directly
topical
US Department of State 1 “What is Total Economic Engagement?” United States Department of State
Archive 2001-2009. MLW
To quote Franklin D. Roosevelt: “True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.
People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.” Poverty and political unrest
walk hand-in-hand, and too many countries’ economic situations offer little hope to their citizens. However, the
economic landscape does not need to remain dormant. We believe, the crop of economic security, individual prosperity and
political stability can be grown through total economic engagement. Total economic engagement looks beyond
the current practice of using financial development assistance as the only ox at the plow . We
know that developing countries own the keys to their own economic success. Just as democracy relies on the educated
and active common man, so a healthy economy rests on the liberated individual. Ronald Reagan summed it up well: “We
who live in free market societies believe that growth, prosperity and ultimately human fulfillment, are created from the
bottom up, not the government down. “Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals
are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefiting from their success – Only then can societies
remain economically alive, dynamic, progressive, and free.” Our goal, therefore, must be the creation of the right conditions
for individual economic growth and success. We must cultivate conditions for private sector growth, investment and trade.
This cannot be accomplished through Official Development Assistance (ODA) funds alone. Foreign assistance must
support a developing country’s own effort to improve their economic climate. Total economic engagement is putting all of
the players to the same plow. EEB is harnessing trade and economic policy formation, proper governance, and ODA
activities together. The bureau also integrates the American individual. Working with U.S. citizen-partners
participating in developing economies abroad is a key element of total economic engagement.
An accurate accounting of a nation’s total engagement must include economic policies as well as, trade, remittances, and
foreign direct investment. In these areas, the U.S. leads the world in total economic engagement with the developing world.
The private donations of American citizens, military emergency aid and peacekeeping and government assistance provide
the primary sources for development financing.
Lit checks – we cite a variety of authors that all deal with the economic relations between the U.S. and Mexico in some context – T isn’t an excuse for a lack of research
Prefer breadth – our interpretation allows us to learn about a larger variety of economic mechanisms and have a more complete understanding of U.S./Mexican economic engagement
We don’t hurt neg strat – they get generics, agent CPs, and lots of other offensive arguments even if they know absolutely nothing about the aff
Default to reasonability – our aff is predictable
Have a high threshold on T – voting us down constitutes a wholesale rejection of our
entire category of affs, hold them to a high argumentative standard
[INSERT FX T GOOD THEORY]
Reject arguments, not the team – if they win FX T bad the whole debate still isn’t
tainted, only discard parts of the aff that are FX T
AT Extra T
W/M – the creation of a new visa issuance program is a holistic action that constitutes
economic engagement – the neg can’t deconstruct our plan because each portion is
contingent on the whole
Furthermore each part of the aff independently meets – any action that functions as a
tool to assist nations economically is topical
US Department of State 1 “What is Total Economic Engagement?” United States Department of State
Archive 2001-2009. MLW
To quote Franklin D. Roosevelt: “True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.
People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.” Poverty and political unrest
walk hand-in-hand, and too many countries’ economic situations offer little hope to their citizens. However, the
economic landscape does not need to remain dormant. We believe, the crop of economic security, individual prosperity and
political stability can be grown through total economic engagement. Total economic engagement looks beyond
the current practice of using financial development assistance as the only ox at the plow . We
know that developing countries own the keys to their own economic success. Just as democracy relies on the educated
and active common man, so a healthy economy rests on the liberated individual. Ronald Reagan summed it up well: “We
who live in free market societies believe that growth, prosperity and ultimately human fulfillment, are created from the
bottom up, not the government down. “Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals
are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefiting from their success – Only then can societies
remain economically alive, dynamic, progressive, and free.” Our goal, therefore, must be the creation of the right conditions
for individual economic growth and success. We must cultivate conditions for private sector growth, investment and trade.
This cannot be accomplished through Official Development Assistance (ODA) funds alone. Foreign assistance must
support a developing country’s own effort to improve their economic climate. Total economic engagement is putting all of
the players to the same plow. EEB is harnessing trade and economic policy formation, proper governance, and ODA
activities together. The bureau also integrates the American individual. Working with U.S. citizen-partners
participating in developing economies abroad is a key element of total economic engagement.
An accurate accounting of a nation’s total engagement must include economic policies as well as, trade, remittances, and
foreign direct investment. In these areas, the U.S. leads the world in total economic engagement with the developing world.
The private donations of American citizens, military emergency aid and peacekeeping and government assistance provide
the primary sources for development financing.
Extend the Elmore evidence – he indicates that a new program that consists of increased visa issuance, elimination of employer centrality, and a focus on the liberty of
participants is one contiguous unit that economically engages potential guest workers
in Mexico
Have a high threshold on T – voting us down constitutes a wholesale rejection of our
entire category of affs, hold them to a high argumentative standard
[INSERT EXTRA T GOOD THEORY]
Reject the argument, not the team – only discard parts of the aff that the neg proves
are extra T
AT “Migrant Worker Programs abusive”
Non-unique to the plan – these conditions exist in the status quo
We don’t force workers to participate – there’s only a chance we offer a better alternative to people
High-demand labor market means nations are willing to offer workers’ rights
Ruhs and Martin 8
(ESRC Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), University of Oxford; Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California at Davis) Martin and Phillip, “Numbers vs. Rights:
Trade-Offs and Guest Worker Programs 1” 5 March 2008.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-7379.2007.00120.x/pdf
Because there is a global quest for talent (Kuptsch and Pang, 2006), high-income countries recognize the need
to grant skilled migrants substantial rights in order to attract significant numbers. For example, Canada and
Australia, two countries that have long been successful at attracting skilled migrants, grant qualified migrants
permanent residence and the associated comprehensive set of rights immediately upon arrival (see, for example, Richardson and Lester, 2004). The UK’s Highly Skilled Migrant Programme aims to attract qualified
migrants by offering them the opportunity to migrate to the UK without a job offer and with the right to apply
for permanent residence after five years of residence in the UK (Home Office UK, 2006a). Ireland is introducing a long-term residence status to attract migrants with scarce skills in short supply in the Irish economy
(Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, 2006). In contrast, Germany’s “Green Card” program for
attracting IT workers from abroad offered a five-year work permit rather than permanent residency status, and
attracted fewer than the 20,000 visas offered (for a discussion, see Kolb, 2005).5
We solve – Elmore indicates that the plan qua a non-oppressive approach to
guest-worker programs is effective in protecting the liberty and quality of life of migrant foreign nationals
AT PTX DA
Frontline
The politics DA was solved in the 1AC – we have several advocates of the plan as a way
to address migration problems, extend LaFranchi and both Elmore cards – they indicate that issuing guest worker visas greatly reduces the incentive for illegal migration
to occur
Here is an independent advocate with fantastic warrant – the plan solves illegal immigration, it’s actually BETTER than the actual bill in congress for solving the DA
Nowrasteh (Alex Nowrasteh is the immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global
Liberty and Prosperity. Previously he was the immigration policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Houston Chronicle,Boston Globe, San Jose Mercury, Richmond Times-Dispatch,Huffington Post, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and
elsewhere. He has appeared on Fox News and numerous television and radio stations across the United States.
He received his B.A. in Economics from George Mason University and MSc in Economic History from the
London School of Economics. ) Alex, 6/24 "The Border Security Obsession." Cato@Liberty. (June 24, 2013
Monday 8:45 PM EST ): 637 words. LexisNexis Academic. Web. Date Accessed: 2013/07/19.
Securing the border is largely a rhetorical excuse to oppose reforming the immigration system. Senator Jeff
Sessions (R-AL) said[1] of the Hoeven-Corker amendment that, 'I do not think this amendment is going to
touch many of the objections that I spoke about.' The Hoeven-Corker amendment militarizes the border to an
embarrassing degree - replacing the Statue of Liberty's promise of liberty to all with a wall facing southward.
How will this $5-billion-a-year security buildup be financed? The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates enormous fiscal gains from immigration reform - reducing deficits from between $700 billion and
$1.2 trillion[2] over the next 20 years. Spending large portions of those anticipated savings on more security
will convince some Republicans to vote for the entire immigration bill, but it won't solve the unlawful immigration problem going forward. Fixing the legal immigration system will. Allowing more legal low-skilled
guest workers will channel would-be unlawful immigrants into the legal market. Immigrants won't cross
illegally if they can come in legally through a checkpoint. Shrinking the size of the unlawful immigrant population by channeling most of them into the legal system will help Border Patrol weed out the criminals, national security threats, and sick people from the vast majority of willing peaceful workers. History shows us the
way. In the early 1950s unlawful immigration was a problem, but Border Patrol did not just punish the immigrants, it funneled them into the legal market. During that time there was a guest worker visa program called
Bracero. After arresting unlawful immigrants, Border Patrol drove[3] them down to the Southern border and
immediately let them enroll in the Bracero program, allowing them to return to their jobs after taking a few
steps over the border and coming back into the U.S. with lawful permission. Soon, would-be unlawful immigrants learned they could just enter legally - and they did. Unlawful immigration dropped by more than 90
percent in the following years. If there was a legal immigration option today, expanded to sectors of the
economy besides just agriculture, immigrants would overwhelmingly make the same choice. Today, the
immigration enforcement infrastructure already exists to funnel would-be unlawful immigrants into the legal
market. The only thing lacking is a functional guest worker visa program. The currently immigration reform
bill's guest worker visa program is a complicated mess that is barely better than the current system. Allowing
additional legal guest workers will accomplish more than spending $5 billion a year on border security.
It will channel peaceful people in the legal immigration system while leaving Border Patrol to deal with
the real criminal and national security threats that remain. Militarizing the border without improving the
guest worker visa system risks a repeat of the 1986 Reagan amnesty. The good portions of this immigration
reform bill still outweigh the bad but we cannot afford too many more Hoeven-Corker amendments.
AT Unpopular
Cross-apply the LaFranchi evidence – politicians are largely in favor of issuing guest
visas
Rubio specifically is a fan of issuing more guest visas
Herald Tribune 5/6
"No longer aloof, technology companies see lobbying pay off." The International Herald Tribune. (May 6, 2013
Monday): 1823 words. LexisNexis Academic. Web. Date Accessed: 2013/07/15.
In interviews, Mr. Rubio and an aide to Mr. Schumer, the New York senator, said the draft bill took a balanced
approach to penalize those who did not hire American workers. They say the proposal is good for the country,
while it may also benefit U.S. technology firms. In March, some of the biggest figures in the technology industry, including Mr. Zuckerberg, the Microsoft founder Bill Gates and the venture capitalist John Doerr,
unveiled a new advocacy group, Fwd.Us, with its first mission being to push Congress to overhaul immigration
law. The group has hired lobbyists and a staff of veteran political operatives. One of its first campaigns was to
bankroll the television ad for Mr. Rubio. Two other ads backed Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South
Carolina, and Senator Mark Begich, Democrat of Alaska, who is considered a critical swing vote, in a state
where there are many critics of the legislation. Mr. Jesmer said the group spent ''in the seven figures'' on the
ads. Mr. Rubio has been a vocal ally. He says he understands the industry's need for talent and wants to prevent
companies from having to ship work overseas. To negotiate the details on the immigration bill, Mr. Rubio
hired Enrique Gonzalez, who took a leave from a law firm that handles H-1B visa applications for many
technology companies. Mr. Gonzalez said the assignment presented no conflict of interest because he works
with universities handling visas, not technology companies. The fact that technology lobbyists were given an
unusual degree of access to the negotiators on the bill is entirely justified, he said. ''Because of the unique needs
of the technology industry, the newness of it, the novelty of a lot of the issues they are confronting, I think that
was why they were more engaged than some of the other industries were,'' he said.
Various groups are converging on visas: even labor agrees that program upsize is a
good idea
USA Today 4/1
"Guest workers a real break for immigration reform?." USA TODAY. (April 1, 2013 Monday ): 562 words. LexisNexis Academic. Web. Date Accessed: 2013/07/15.
Paul Mirengoff, Power Line: "It's nice that Big Business and Big Labor have come together to do the nation's
business for us. It would have been nicer if all other relevant interests had been included. One such interest is
that of the officers who enforce our immigration laws on the front line. Unfortunately, as Sen. Jeff Sessions has
pointed out, (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has asked repeatedly to be given a chance to participate
in White House discussions but has been unable to get a meeting." Sy Mukherjee, ThinkProgress: "Sens.
Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., (said on) NBC's Meet The Press that an (immigration) bill
could be introduced as soon as next week in light of a tentative deal on guest-worker programs struck by the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO. Under the tentative deal the U.S. would issue anywhere from
20,000 to 200,000 guest-worker visas annually. Labor and business groups also reached a tentative agreement
on wage levels. But despite the senators' optimism, the politically charged nature of many of the bill's provisions could present snags as actual legislation works its way through the committee process." Ral Labrador,
GOP representative from Idaho, Los Angeles Times: "While I am optimistic that Republicans, including
'Tea Party' members, will support reform, it must be done right. We must create a system (that) provides a
fair path for those seeking to come to the United States and fixes our broken borders. ... We must also create a
robust guest-worker program to match willing workers with employers according to flexible free-market
forces. In 2006 and 2007, then-Sen. Barack Obama and other Democrats sided with the labor unions in an
effort to water down such legislation. Reform will not go forward if the Democrats again resist the need to
create a guest-worker program." Penny Lee, U.S. News and World Report: "In the past, a majority of unions
have been unwilling to compromise and allow for temporary guest visas, but they now acknowledge that the
undocumented workers are both their current members and key to their future membership growth. So
they have dropped their opposition in hopes that their softer position will help them attract and organize more
Hispanic workers instead of alienating them."
Plan Solves Ag
Visa program key to getting workers for the agricultural industry
Gilmer 2-8-13 (Ray,
http://www.thepacker.com/opinion/fresh-produce-opinion/Laying-groundwork-for-immigration-reform--1
90377461.html)
For immigration reform, that unified voice is even louder this year thanks to a new alliance United has helped to form for advancing solutions for farm labor needs. The Agriculture Workforce Coalition proposes bold new principles for meaningful reform for all of agriculture. In addition to United, founding members include American Farm Bureau, American Nursery & Landscape Association, Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association, U.S. Apple Association, Western Growers and many more. The Agriculture Workforce Coalition represents a fresh approach to
crafting real solutions for farm employers. For example, the AWC recommends
an uncapped Agricultural Worker Visa Program that would allow for greater flexibility than the current H-2A guest worker program. This new program proposes that USDA be the administrator, whereas the current guest worker program is administered by the Department of Labor. The coalition proposes adding this visa program while leaving the current H-2A program intact, thereby allowing employers to continue using H-2A at their option.
Several lawmakers seem receptive to the idea of a worker visa program administered by USDA. The idea also gets support from
many farm employers, who believe a USDA-run program could be more responsive to their unique workforce needs. For the past several weeks,
United has been on the Hill getting time with many of the new faces in the 113th Congress, as well as lawmakers from key states and districts who
can play pivotal roles on our priority issues. Especially on the farm labor issue, members of Congress appreciate the chance to learn more and better
understand the challenges and costs facing produce industry employers.
Neg
Case
Maquiladoras
Link turn – increases in the U.S. economy increase employment in Maquiladoras
Lederman and Oliver 13
(Daniel & Julia, Journalists for America Economia, The Lessons of Mexico's Maquiladoras: Where Free Trade and Labor Rights Compete,
http://www.worldcrunch.com/business-finance/the-lessons-of-mexico-039-s-maquiladoras-where-free-trade-and-labor-rights-compete/nafta-low-skill
ed-workers-globalization/c2s11434/, 4/22/13) C.A.
Mexico allows materials used in maquilas to enter duty-free, provided the finished product is then immediately exported out of Mexico. The U.S. in turn
charges these products a much lower tariff than products from other countries. Companies using this labor arrangement include Levi’s and Siemens.
The world is as interconnected as ever, and there is no better place to see that than the U.S.-Mexico border. Lined
with factories, the
border between both countries has become less clear because of NAFTA (North American Free
Mexican side of the border, almost 3,000
factories import components and raw materials. Workers assemble the products – most of the finished goods are
destined for the U.S. market. The big question is: does this benefit Mexican workers? These export-oriented industries provide almost two
million jobs, which translates into a strong drive for development in Mexico. But as it turns out, these job posts can disappear
very quickly. In this sense, the economic benefits for the U.S. depend largely on the labor conditions of Mexican workers, who absorb up and down
cycles through a series of adjustments. While the U.S. economy is rarely unstable, this is an important finding that could have
political implications in the whole world. Mexico resembles a growing number of countries that promote the export-oriented industry as a strategy for development and enact trade reforms that integrate the local
economy to the global market. A study conducted by the World Bank International Trade Department, The Inter American Development
Bank and Macalester College, used data from Mexican social security records and U.S. customs records between 2007 and 2009 to analyze
how economic shocks emanating from the U.S. are transmitted to the offshoring maquiladoras of
northern Mexico. The study produced four specific conclusions: First, the study showed that when Mexican imports fell
during the crisis, employment in the maquiladoras did as well. This defies common sense with regard to what you would
Trade Agreement), international production chains and other economic and social links. On the
normally expect in trade. Normally, when imports drop, employment increases because industries that compete with imports thrive. In the typical
scenario, a decrease in imports cushions the negative impact of a decrease in export demand. However, the findings in the study are consistent with an
environment that relies heavily on imports for the assembly of finished goods, as is the case in northern Mexico. Such an environment, the study showed,
is subject to large fluctuations in employment. In
fact, the maquiladora industry is doubly affected when the U.S.
economy deteriorates: first, because American consumers buy less, and second, because they stop
sending raw goods and U.S.-manufactured components to Mexico.
Although reprehensible, maquiladoras themselves represent an escape from traditional gender oppression
DePaul Law Review (The DePaul Law Review is a scholarly journal published four times a
year by students at DePaul University College of Law. The Law Review serves as a forum
for practitioners, judges, professors, and law students to discuss and analyze important topics in
the law) 2k, 49 DePaul L. Rev. 729. Copyright (c) 2000 DePaul Law Review
Once married, she knew another side of the life of domestic slavery and unhappiness. Her husband was a
batterer; only with some outside help from a friend was she able to leave him. Again, she took on a variety of
jobs in domestic service. The separation cost her the custody of two of her children. She lost other children
because economic uncertainties forced her to send one daughter to live with a relative. By the time she could
afford to support her, the daughter did not want to live with her. For Angela, the point in her life when she
would be working in a maquiladora served as an important crossing of the gendered borders that dictated a kind
of domestic slavery, where she was under the thumb of demanding male relatives, of a battering husband, and
of mistresses who used her domestic services. She would be grateful for her job in Tijuana assembling
cassettes because it meant a [*795] little more security and independence, even if the wages were not
much above the pittance she earned as a live-in domestic.
Guest Workers
Plan fails to help guest workers
Farm Worker Justice 11 (This report by Farmworker Justice was researched and written by Etan
Newman under the guidance of Bruce Goldstein and Adrienne DerVartanian, with assistance from Weeun
Wang, Virginia Ruiz, and
Jessica Felix-Romero) “No Way to Treat a Guest: Why the H2-A Agricultural visa fails U.S. and Foreign
Workers”,
http://farmworkerjustice.org/sites/default/files/documents/7.2.a.6%20No%20Way%20To%20Treat%20A%2
0Guest%20H-2A%20Report.pdf
Guest worker programs drive down wages and working conditions of U.S. workers and deprive foreign
workers of economic bargaining power and the opportunity to gain political representation. ➜ The H-2A
program’s protections for U.S. workers and against exploitation of guest workers by employers are
modest; in fact, they are similar to those in the Bracero program (1942-1964), which was terminated
due to its notorious labor abuses. ➜ Once an employer decides to enter the H-2A program, the law creates
incentives to prefer guest workers over U.S. workers. For example, the employer must pay Social Security
and unemployment taxes on U.S. workers’ wages but is exempt from paying these taxes on guest workers’
wages. ➜ Violations of the rights of U.S. workers and guest workers by H-2A program employers are
rampant and systemic. The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), which has primary responsibility for administering the H-2A program, frequently approves illegal job terms in the H-2A workers’ contracts. U.S.
workers who apply for H-2A jobs are rejected or forced to quit. Employees at H-2A employers routinely
experience wage theft and other unlawful practices. ➜ Abuses in the recruitment of foreign workers
are endemic. H-2A employers and their recruiting agents in Mexico and other poor countries exploit the
vulnerability of foreign citizens. Many guest workers must pay recruiters for H-2A jobs and enter
the U.S. indebted, desperate to work, and fearful that the loss of their job will lead to financial
ruin. The H-2A recruitment system has led to numerous documented cases of debt-peonage, human
trafficking, and forced labor. ➜ More than one-half of the farmworkers on U.S. farms and ranches lack
authorized immigration status. The presence of so many undocumented workers deprives all farmworkers of bargaining power and political influence. Deporting all or most undocumented farmworkers
would be costly and impractical, inflict harm on hundreds of thousands of hard-working farmworkers and
their families, many of whom are United States citizens, and deprive agriculture of the workforce it needs to
produce our fruits, vegetables and livestock.
PTX
Bipart Link
Plan destroys bipartisanship
Hispanically Speaking News 3/30, "Lawmakers Fighting Over Guest-Workers Portion of Immigration
Bill.". (March 30, 2013 Saturday 1:21 PM EST ): 287 words. LexisNexis Academic. Web. Date Accessed:
2013/07/19.
Republicans, allied with the business community, want to see up to 400,000 visas a year issued to foreigners
willing to fill mainly low-paying positions. Labor unions and many Democrats say the maximum number of
guest-worker visas per year should be closer to 10,000 and that the foreign workers should receive higher pay
and have the opportunity to remain in the United States and apply for citizenship, The Post said. In an interview
this week with Telemundo, President Barack Obama[ 2] rejected the idea that the dispute over
guest-workers threatens to derail the Senate negotiations on immigration reform. 'I don't agree that it's
threatening to doom the legislation,' the president told the Spanish-language network. The last attempt to get
immigration reform through Congress, in 2007, foundered due to a lack of consensus on how to regulate the
future flow of immigrants. Now, according to The Washington Post, the plan by a bipartisan group of eight
senators to present a draft reform bill next month could be complicated by arguments about the
guest-workerprogram.
Cap/Neolib
Link
Worker Visas exist as a form of corporate control
Chacon 7 (JUSTIN AKERS CHACÓN, co-author, with Mike Davis, of No One Is Illegal: Fighting Violence and State Repression on the U.S.-Mexico Border (Haymarket Books, 2006), and is a frequent contributor
to the ISR on immigrant rights, 2007, http://isreview.org/issues/54/casualties.shtml)
In spite of the electoral thrashing of the Republican Right—who oppose any form of decriminalization of
undocumented immigrants—these forces have still been able to set the terms of the debate over immigration
reform. The potential now exists for unity with Congressional Democrats to implement what has come to be
called “comprehensive immigration reform.” Despite its neutral façade, this phrase implies a very specific
formula when annunciated by the Bush administration or the bipartisan architects of current proposals in
Congress.1 This represents Corporate America’s blueprint for the comprehensive restructuring of North
American labor under the aegis of immigration policy. This includes the realization of a mass “guest-worker”
labor importation program, increased militarization of the border, and a martial campaign of “attrition through
enforcement” to corral, expel, or reclassify the existing undocumented population as a transient and subordinate workforce. In the words of security chief Michael Chertoff, immigration reform must include “stronger
border security, effective interior enforcement and a temporary-worker program.”2 Reform—a term normally
used to imply progress—has come to signify regression in modern political parlance.3 Corporate immigration restructuring seeks to sever immigrants’ historic right to citizenship once and for all, replacing the process
of gradual incorporation of immigrant workers and their families with a temporary and revolving dual-labor
structure. Rather than acknowledge and address the failed economic policies that lie at the root of northward
migration, this model is designed to capitalize on the dislocation of Latin American economies, particularly
Mexico’s. Liberals, for their part, have fallen in line. As Democrat Ted Kennedy concluded, “Only a bipartisan bill will become law.… There is a lot of common ground, especially in the need to strengthen our borders
and enforce our laws.”4 On the other hand, the immigrant rights movement—visible and audible across the
country on May 1, offers a completely different vision for immigration reform.