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| Volume 3, Issue 18 -- September 8, 2006 |
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From the JPIC Office This excerpted is from “A Labor Day Reflection on Immigration and Work” by Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, published September 4, 2006. Each year as summer draws to a close many of us gather on Labor Day with family, friends and neighbors to take a rest from our work. As a nation, we set this day aside to pay tribute to the workers who create our nation's wealth and strength. Our Catholic faith reminds us of the inherent dignity and value of our work, through which, no matter how large or small the task, we participate in God’s creation, support our families, and contribute to the common good. Each Labor Day we celebrate and share our values on work and workers and remember the importance and the contributions of the labor movement to society. Labor Day 2006 is a time when our nation and our church are struggling with the difficult and important issue of immigration. Men, women and children come here seeking work and a better life for their families, hoping to be welcomed as neighbors and contributors to our communities. They come as skilled and unskilled workers, agricultural laborers, or to study or join family already here. They come, in part, because U.S. employers need their labor and our economy depends upon them. Many come through official legal channels. Many others do not. These realities and our inadequate immigration system have led to a necessary, but sadly divisive, debate on how our nation should respond. Unfortunately, the debate sometimes has not brought out the best in us. People of good will can and do disagree over how to improve our immigration laws. Regrettably, this disagreement sometimes disintegrates into polarization, partisanship and now paralysis. We must get beyond the anger and fear, stereotypes and slogans that too often dominate this essential discussion. . . . . . . For the Catholic Church, immigration is not a political issue, but a fundamental human and moral issue. We bring to this discussion our faith, our moral principles and our long experience. Through the decades, immigrants have built our communities of faith and they are still bringing new life to our church. Immigrants are not numbers for us. They are our brothers and sisters; they are our “neighbors.” In his powerful encyclical Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict XVI reminds us that Jesus calls us to expand who we see as our neighbor. The Holy Father, citing the parable of the Good Samaritan, says that “neighbor” can no longer be limited to:
Who is our neighbor is not dependent on where they were born or what documents they possess. The immigration debate this Labor Day challenges us to consider again who we are as a nation, how our economy treats all workers, how we welcome the “strangers” among us. As Catholics, we should join this discussion and bring our belief in the sacredness of human life, the inherent dignity of the human person and the value of work. We cannot simply retreat behind walls at our borders or in our hearts and minds. As believers, we are called to build bridges between the native born and newcomer, between legitimate concerns about security and national traditions of welcome, from fear and frustration to hope and action for a better tomorrow. Today, and years ago when my grandparents came from Italy, immigration is a human story of people yearning for work and longing for freedom. Immigrants come seeking to provide a decent living for their families, dreaming of a better life for their children, hoping to make a contribution. These are the deeply held American values we celebrate on Labor Day. The principles of our faith and the traditions of our nation call us to welcome those who share these values and hopes. They add vitality and energy, diversity and hope to our communities and our country. Together, we can build a better nation, a stronger economy and a more faithful Church. Read the full Labor Day 2006 Statement at www.usccb.org/sdwp/laborday2006.htm Message from the Border
Lomas de Poleo Update Seventy families from Lomas de Poleo made their second trip to the Agrarian Tribunal in the capital, Chihuahua, from August 28-31. They are still confident that the judges are going to grant them legal ownership of their land on the mesa west of Ciudad Juárez and Anapra, Mexico. One bit of disappointing news was that the judge said the Pedro Fuentes Zaragoza family did not have to appear in court until November 6. He said a technical error in their subpoena rendered it ineffective, and they would have to be notified again. People had really been hoping that they would be forced to appear this same week—August 28-31—and present their documents, arguments, etc. The lawyer, Carlos Avitia, is still optimistic and working hard, believing the court is going to rule in favor of the people, at least the majority of them. The Zaragoza family’s agents continue working hard to divide the people, enticing some to accept the relocation, spreading rumors and restricting people bringing building materials through the gate. Please keep everyone in your prayers. There have been attempts before to get me out of the picture on the mesa. Most recently the Zaragozas’ lawyers initiated legal proceedings against me in Mexico. An order has been given for my deportation and we suspect that the Zaragozas are behind this, too.
There will be some resolution to the problem on, of all days, this September 11! Thanks again for your ongoing support and prayers. Genetic Engineering The monarch and the milkweed
By Roxana Robinson
Near my back door is a tall, straggly plant, with an awkward shape, nearly colorless flowers. If you saw it you’d think it was a weed, and you’d be right. I planted it. Synthetic chemicals are newcomers: it’s only about 50 years since they've been widely used by backyard gardeners. Now they’re everywhere, their cheery labels carrying ominous small-print warnings. No one knows the long-term consequences. On summer evenings children used to run alongside the DDT truck, letting its cool spray coat their arms and legs. When small green caterpillars attacked my roses, I used Bacillus thuringiensis, a naturally occurring organism that attacks caterpillars’ intestines. It doesn’t affect vertebrates and breaks down without a trace. It sounds safe. I hope my homely back-door plant will thrive, but not that the insects will leave it alone: actually, I want it ripped to shreds. The plant is asclepius syriaca, the common milkweed, and the destructive visitor I hope for is Danaus plexippus, the monarch butterfly. The ember-colored monarch may be the most beautiful of all butterflies; certainly it’s the most famous. Every fall, all the monarchs in the Northern Hemisphere make remarkable journeys. The West Coast ones head for California, the East Coasters — including mine in Maine—fly to Mexico. No one knows how they survive the buffeting thumps of airplane traffic, or El Niño. Most monarchs live about six weeks. The last generation, hatching in the fall, is called Methuselah, and lives from six to nine months. The Methuselahs fly to the winter retreat, though no one knows how they find it, since they’ve never been there. Milkweeds are the only plants on which monarchs lay eggs. Larvae — caterpillars — hatch, and eat the leaves. The caterpillar forms a chrysalis, which forms the butterfly. Every monarch on the planet depends on milkweed. In the mornings, on my milkweed, there are monarchs. Brilliant, fire-colored, their wings pulse slowly, in and out. On the leaves, the torpid caterpillars eat their way toward splendor. You used to see milkweeds everywhere—ditches, fields, empty lots. In the fall, they produce a thick brown pod, tightly packed with seeds, filmy white fibers. You see them seldom now. We’re eradicating milkweed. It produces cardenolide alkaloid, which disagrees with cattle. Cattle farmers dislike it. Crop growers dislike it because it’s a weed. Traditionally, weeds were tilled under. It’s probably what the Sicilians did. Tilling eliminates most weeds, though some survive. Until now, it wasn't possible to eradicate a plant altogether. Most monarch/milkweed habitat occurs in farmland, vanishing at nearly 3,000 acres a day. The remaining habitat, mostly owned by agribusiness, increasingly grows genetically modified (GM) corn and soybeans. GM crops resist glyphosphate, the active ingredient in RoundUp. Milkweed cannot. The GM switch meant the loss of 80 million acres of monarch habitat. Roadside milkweeds are eradicated by townships, backyard milkweeds by anyone who uses herbicides. Even organic gardeners are implicated— remember those tiny caterpillars, and the Bt?
The monarch and the milkweed will vanish. Everyone knows that economics come before beauty, commerce before conservation. Everyone knows that everything legal is safe. We can write letters, quit using herbicides, reject GM crops. We can plant milkweed. For a while, monarchs will appear, airborne jewels, landing dreamily on our plants as though this were the only place on earth they want to be. Which it is. Migration Fences and the Environment at the Border In the March 29, 2006, issue of Long Island Newsday, cartoonist Walt Handelsman portrays two Mexicans working on a construction site. One of them says, “I worry about them kicking us out and building a fence,” to which the other replies, “Who would build it?” Economic Impacts. The border with Mexico is nearly 2,000 miles long. Fencing it represents a huge capital investment. Even at a very low estimate of $1 million per mile (Rep. Duncan Hunter), that represents an expenditure of more than $2 billion for construction materials alone, to say nothing of service roads, surveillance equipment, maintenance and a horde of other major and minor costs. And experience indicates that Rep. Hunter’s $1 million per mile is much too low. The experience of building a fence near San Diego indicated a cost of $3.8 million per mile, with some construction in difficult terrain going much higher. HR 4437 calls for approximately 700 miles of fencing, while pending Senate legislation calls for about half that. One is immediately led to ask, “Won’t migrants simply go around the barriers?” One is reminded of the quip by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein: “If I say ‘I have locked the man up fast in the room - there is only one door left open,’ then I simply haven’t locked him up at all.” Congressional proposals have a similar ring to them and are not a very good return on a multi-billion-dollar investment. According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle on February 26, Mike Allen, director of the McAllen (Texas) Economic Development Corp., said leaders from along the Rio Grande agreed at a recent gathering that fencing will be ineffective. “Every single mayor from Brownsville to El Paso is against it. We want people to support our immigration laws because we live here, but this will be a tremendous waste of money, and it will not stop (illegal) immigration. People will just go around it.” The same article reported that leaders in many border cities already have vehemently objected to a fence. The city of Calexico in Imperial County passed a resolution in early January opposing it. “We should be in the construction of bridges of good relationships with Mexico,” said Calexico Mayor Alex Perrone. Environmental Impacts. The Real ID Act, according to political scientist Stephen Mumme, “trumped all federal, state, tribal, and municipal law, utterly exempting (the Department of Homeland Security) from either the environmental impact statement process or any other public disclosure required by the National Environmental Policy Act, even in the planning process.” Mumme continued: “There is little doubt that construction and traffic will worsen air quality in all border adjacent areas where roads are built. Conventional fences will impede or prevent wildlife flows and their construction may well impact endangered or threatened species. Fences, even permeable fences or a series of posts, will disrupt watersheds and runoff, altering patterns of percolation and absorption, changing patterns of germination and seed dispersal, and altering natural habitat.” “ … Along the Rio Grande, a vast, interconnected network of wildlife habitats comprise the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, home to 1,100 plants, 287 butterflies, and nearly 900 vertebrates including 465 types of birds. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service describes the refuge as one of the most biologically diverse wildlife corridors in the continental United States. These habitat zones span the international boundary and are sure to be impaired by the fencing project.” The Bottom Line: Border Patrol agent Pedro Martinez is quoted in an August 13 Los Angeles Times article: “You deal with a lot of human misery—real human misery. You’re dealing with the poorest of the poor. People are determined to get across the border no matter what. Jobs and the American dollar, that’s the issue.” In the same article we read the following: “[W]hen [Paul Backor, border patrol agent] catches mothers and fathers crossing with their children, he thinks about how much he wants to make life better for his daughters, Abby and Emily, and he wonders whether border agents could ever stop poor families from sneaking into America.” Economic Justice Access to Medicines Threatened by Trade Agreements While discussions on the repercussions for workers’ rights and environmental protections often dominate criticisms of free-trade agreements, equally troubling for human rights advocates is the inclusion of stringent intellectual property rights (IPR) protections that have grave consequences for public health. Extended terms for patents and protection of test data mean that it is more difficult to produce and market low-cost generic versions of life-saving drugs. This is particularly disturbing in light of a global HIV-AIDS epidemic and high international poverty rates. Stringent patent protections in the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement will deny many Peruvians access to medicines for treatable illnesses by preventing the entrance of generic alternatives in the market. A study released by the Health Ministry of Peru predicts drastic increases in costs for essential medicines, depriving 700,000 to 900,000 Peruvians each year of the medicines that they need. For people living in poverty and dealing with HIV-AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases, this will literally be a matter of life or death. Meanwhile, the United States enters into the third round of talks this week in Seattle for a free-trade agreement with South Korea. Both sides hope to conclude negotiations by the year’s end. While serious concerns are being voiced by farmers and workers over the terms of the agreement, intellectual property rights and access to medicines, to be elaborated this round, have already proved to be contentious issues. A country’s responsibility to provide for its citizens’ health and a people’s right to essential medicines should not be compromised by trade agreements. Access to life-saving medicines be guaranteed, not restricted by unnecessarily long patent lives and harsh data-protection provisions that impede the production of low-cost generic alternatives. With so many of our own citizens struggling to afford the medicines they need, we should hardly be exporting a broken system that puts profits above human needs. For more information on how free-trade agreements affect public health and access to essential medicines, read the Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) briefing paper: www.accessmed-msf.org/documents/ftabriefingenglish.pdf Action Alert Say no to the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement! Help us welcome Congress back to session with a call encouraging your representatives to vote no on the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement. A year ago, the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) was pushed through the House of Representatives by a razor-slim margin. Faith-based, labor, environmental, and health groups united to say that this model for trade is broken. Now, the Bush Administration wants to push through a new trade agreement, this time with Peru. Unfortunately, it is based on the same harmful model that does not live up to principles of trade justice. A vote for the trade pact could take place any time after Congress returns from summer recess on September 5. Tell Congress that expanding CAFTA to Peru is a bad idea. Call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. Ask to be connected to your House member (give your ZIP code if you’re not sure of your representative’s name).
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