Viktoriya Volozhynska, Houston / Beschäftigung

Guest worker programs

In Motion Magazine: What do think of some of the specific things that President Fox of Mexico has brought up. He's been talking about amnesty, and so has Bush.

Maria Jimenez: No, no, no. I think both governments, before this week, had been talking about a guest worker program. Both the Bush administration and the Fox administration have the same interests in the sense of coinciding in their economic and philosophical and ideological views of the world. They are both proponents of free trade and expansion of commerce. Their proposition for legalization was basically 'how do we better establish a control of labor across international borders.' Their proposal was legalization without rights, while the immigrants in the United States raised the issue of legalization with rights for those already here. The Mexican immigrant, particularly, as soon as both governments began to talk about this possibility of a guest worker program, was the one who raised the issue 'you can't legalize people tied to an employer without rights if you first don't come in and give a legal status to the millions of Mexicans already in the United States'.

Because of the pressure by unions, churches, and different coalitions among Mexican immigrants themselves, the Fox government was pushed to give lip service to amnesty and that pushed them to put it before the Bush administration. But the Bush administration was always very clear in saying no to that proposition and yes to the guest worker program.

When Fox left the United States, it was fairly clear that the only agreement they were reaching was the agreement on the guest worker program.

In Motion Magazine: And how does that work?

Maria Jimenez: In a guest worker program, U.S. employers decide they need a certain worker and the government in Mexico opens up offices and recruits workers to go to specific employers and specific industries. In the Fox/Bush proposal it looked like the workers would be in the agricultural area, the service area, construction, light manufacturing, and the hotel and restaurant area. Fundamentally what happens is that these workers are brought in for a specific job with a specific employer and are dependent upon the employer to renew their visas. One of our local labor leaders expressed it the best - it's the legalizing of the practice of exploitation of a whole group of workers.

The proposition we wanted was for people to legalize the workers who are already here, with rights. If they were going to talk about bringing in workers, those workers should not be tied to a particular employer, and they should be protected in their rights, all their rights, especially their labor rights and the right to organize. Also, after working a certain number of years, they should be allowed the option of applying for permanent residency.

But that has dramatically changed. It's going to be very difficult to raise both issues at this point as long as policy makers and political figures equate immigration with terrorism. Our work will be to place before the public and before public figures the fact that it's unfair to equate those two. Immigration is a phenomenon of people who are displaced by international economic policies and when they arrive they contribute in the reconstruction of certain sectors of the economy and they contribute politically and socially.