By Vijita Fernando 

The world has almost forgotten the plight of Rizana Nafeek, the Sri Lankan teenager who was sentenced to death for the alleged killing of her employer’s infant during her three months’ stay as a housemaid in a wealthy Saudi household in 2005.

Rizana’s story is not a pretty one. A Sri Lankan job agent changed her age from 15 to 17, four years ago, enabling her to go abroad as a housemaid. She travelled on this false passport and secured employment in a place entirely unfamiliar to her. There she had to look after an infant of a few weeks who choked on his bottle and died.

Since Rizana had never fed an infant before, she did not know what to do. The infant’s parents handed her over to the police, who got her to sign a confession in Arabic, a language she could not read, and on this ‘confession’ she was summarily tried and condemned to death. The judicial system responsible for this sentence has been condemned by the Sri Lankan authorities, Amnesty International and the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission, who were able to get the execution date deferred.

Though the date of her beheading has passed by, Rizana, now 19, has been languishing in jail for the past four years, waiting for her fate to be decided – a pardon from her previous employer, or death.

The stories of Sri Lankan housemaids being ill treated, beaten, tortured and sometimes killed overseas are legion. The Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE), the government agency responsible for all aspects of migration of workers abroad, notes that there has been a tenfold increase in the number of migrants in the last two decades. Current estimates suggest that over one million migrants are working abroad with an annual outflow of about 200,000 men and women. Of this number an average of 54 per cent are women in low skilled domestic work.

The feminisation of the migrant labour force is a unique character of the country with the number of women migrants increasing every year. In 2007, 114,677, or 52 per cent, of the total migrants were women. Generally, women amount to about 54 per cent of migrants. Over the years, foreign employment has generated substantial inflow of remittances, relieved local employment pressures and provided employment especially to women.

The migrant profile is a woman between 18 and 45, uneducated, usually married with children and dependent parents. They hail from low-income communities. The biggest demand for them is from the Middle East – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Dubai, Jordan, Jeddah, Lebanon, and from Singapore. There is marginal demand from Turkey, Cyprus and the United States as well.

Unfortunately, while these women go abroad to work housemaids but once they are there the job descriptions includes much more than household chores like cooking and cleaning. “What we find is that we have to look after large extended families, clean two-three storey houses, wash about four cars, care for infants and elderly and sometimes bed-ridden old people. We hardly get any sleep and are always working,” reveals K.P. Millie Nona, 50, who worked in Kuwait for four years.

At 20, Sujeeva Anoma Ranasinghe was a mother of a one-year-old son when she went to Jordan to work as a housemaid. She worked under a kind family fort eight years with a break of one month every two years. She was able to build a house and move away from the slum where she lived. But what she gained in money she paid for with the estrangement of her son and husband. “When I came back four years ago I decided never to go back, forget about the money and see that my son gets on track and goes to school,” she says.

Migrant workers do face many problems, whether it is at their workplace or back home, but their contribution is vital both for the country’s economy and for their impoverished families. Therefore, to ensure that their interests are protected, the newly-created Ministry of Foreign Employment Promotion and Welfare has just released a National Policy on Labour Migration. “The National Labour Migration Policy represents a unique and pioneering initiative for the South Asian region… articulating state commitment to ensuring a labour migration process that adheres to the principles of good governance and the rights and responsibilities enshrined in international instruments to advance opportunities for men and women to engage in decent and productive employment in conditions of freedom, dignity, security and equity,” said K. Rambukwella, Minister for Foreign Employment Promotion and Welfare, while introducing the policy.

The policy, which covers all levels of migrants – skilled, unskilled and professional and both men and women – was developed under the overall guidance of the Tripartite Steering Committee (TSC). The TSC consisted of representatives of concerned ministries, the University of Colombo, Vocational Education Commission, Employers Federation, Trade Unions, Economic Research Division of the Central Bank, Association of Licensed Foreign Employment Agencies and Sri Lanka Nidahas Sevaka Sangamaya. Prof. Siri Hettige of the Department of Sociology and Dr Markus Meyer of the Social Policy Analysis Research Centre, University of Colombo, were the advisors.

“The migration policy has been developed with the active participation of all key stakeholder and it outlines Sri Lanka’s commitment to a process of labour migration consistent with good governance, protection of migrant workers and development objectives… Steps have already been taken to appoint the National Advisory Committee comprising representatives of government, trade unions, employment agencies and civil society to ensure proper implementation,” reveals Ramani Jayasundere, Process Manager of the formulation for the Policy.

In view of the problems and travails suffered by women migrants the national policy comes as a vital piece of legislation. According to the New York-based Human Rights Watch, probing the various forms of abuse suffered by women migrant workers from Sri Lanka, a large percentage of ‘housemaids’, who are employed in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates return “in distress”. Sometimes they return mentally disturbed, crippled in wheel chairs and occasionally, in a coffin. “Labour laws in many of these countries exclude migrant domestic workers from the most basic protections – unpaid wages, sexual harassment, overwork,” reports HRW.

The story of Sri Lankan women migrants unfolds startling contradictions. Their migration causes untold problems for their children and family, instances of frittering away of earnings sent home have caused mental trauma. Once they were back, some women have also resorted to prostitution to earn the kind of money they were paid abroad. On the other hand, their earnings have brought better nutrition for their children, higher schooling, better housing, safe water, electricity, gas, telephones and much needed hygienic toilets. The country benefits, too. The 2007 report of the Central Bank states that the inward foreign remittances from migrants were US$ 2505 million that year. On an average this provided 1.45 million households with an additional income of Rs. 16,000 (approx. US$150) monthly. Of this women’s contribution is about 60 per cent.

Already, a training programme to develop knowledge, skills and attitudes of prospective migrants in accordance with international levels has been launched by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). Under the national policy other areas of concern such as safety, fair work and fair salaries will also be dealt with. The rationale for the policy is “that the country’s labour migration process has a number of pressing issues, which demand attention. Despite diverse initiatives both by the state and the non-government community, they face a multitude of obstacles at all stages of the process; pre departure, in service and upon return and reintegration. Much of this stems from the fact that the majority fall within low killed and housemaid categories…,” says Jayasundere.

Womens Feature Service covers developmental, political, social and economic issues in India and around the globe. To get these articles for your publication, contact WFS at the www.wfsnews.org website.

By John Moreno Gonzales (AP) 

NASHVILLE — Toribio Jimenez says an asbestos removal company used a guest worker program to trap him in virtual servitude, then fired him when he complained, forcing him to work illegally. Robert Martin believes the same company kept him unemployed by hiring foreigners like Jimenez. The men have become surprising allies in a lawsuit that claims a long-standing guest worker program harms American and immigrant workers alike. The program has issued visas for 22 years amid steady complaints, and both sides of the immigration debate say it warrants close scrutiny as the Obama administration prepares to tackle comprehensive immigration reform next year.

“I don’t blame Latino workers for this at all,” said Martin, 49. “Immigrants don’t own the heavy equipment, the trucks, the warehouses. You have to get mad at the people who own these business and take advantage.”

Jimenez, 32, said he was promised work as a janitor, only to be told on his arrival from El Salvador that he would be removing hazardous asbestos — work that Martin said he would have taken after 13 months of unemployment.

Jimenez was fired after complaining, and losing the job meant he also lost his visa. He said that forced him to work illegally so he can pay back the money he borrowed to make the trip.

“I feel terrible that I may have taken someone else’s job,” he said in Spanish, “only to end up being taken advantage of myself.”

Jimenez and Martin are among a dozen U.S. and immigrant workers who allege Cumberland Environmental Resources Company of Brentwood, Tenn., and Accent Personnel Services Inc. of Baton Rouge, La., discriminated against them by abusing the H2-B nonagricultural guest worker program.

The U.S. Department of Labor issues 66,000 visas a year under the program, but only after certifying that there were no qualified domestic applicants for the jobs. Another requirement is that prevailing wages be paid to guest workers to ensure the program does not drive down salaries for the U.S. work force.

The plaintiffs’ federal lawsuit maintains that the companies lied in documents that stated the U.S. workers turned down job offers. It also contends the companies required workers from El Salvador and Peru to pay illegal fees and accept less than the prevailing wage. If they complained, the men said, they lost the job and their visa.

Both companies deny the charges, and have filed documents blaming each other in the case.

Cumberland’s Nashville attorney, Ben Bodzy, called the plaintiffs “disgruntled former employees and applicants.” He has offered the guest workers partial settlements of about $10,000 each.

Accent attorney Jeff Weintraub of Memphis said that firm has followed all of the program’s rules.

Not everyone does.

The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, found in a 15-state survey last year that 98 percent of H2-B workers were paid less than the prevailing wage in occupations they commonly filled.

Dan Stein of the Washington-based Federation for American Immigration Reform, which calls for strict immigration control, believes H2-B should be scrapped because U.S. workers are “incrementally squeezed out of their jobs and their livelihoods.”

Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, a Los Angeles-based immigrant rights organization, said rules making the visas non-transferrable should be changed “to ensure guest workers can leave an abusive situation and do not take jobs U.S. workers have applied for.”

A spokesman for Sen. Charles Schumer, who is working on a sweeping proposal for immigration reform, declined to comment on the future of H2-B. Schumer, D-N.Y., has said reform should include a commitment to “discourage businesses from using our immigration laws as a means to obtain temporary and less expensive foreign labor to replace capable American workers.”

President Barack Obama has said he expects to see draft legislation for an immigration overhaul by year’s end, with changes to the system waiting until next year.

It’s unclear how many lawsuits have been filed over the H2-B visa program. Current cases include a claim that Kansas City businesses fraudulently obtained visas to fill hundreds of hotel cleaning jobs, allegations that 2,000 landscapers were not properly paid in Arkansas and a charge that a Utah law firm raked in fees by securing as many as 5,000 fraudulent visas.

In the Nashville case, the Latin American workers say they borrowed $3,000 to $4,000 each to pay illegal fees for visa expenses and travel costs charged by recruitment companies in their homelands. They also faced fees of $350 for a training class and $200 a month for housing in a Madison, Tenn., apartment where half a dozen workers slept on the floor, according to the lawsuit.

From mid-2008 through early this year, they said they were rarely given the full-time work needed to pay their debts to family and friends who loaned them money for the fees.

So Jimenez has gone underground, into the basement garage of a house outside Nashville shared by seven immigrants. He sleeps on a mattress on the concrete floor, suitcases piled at its head for privacy, and pressed shirts from a second hand store dangling in a makeshift closet.

He wears the shirts to work at a sparkling restaurant where he wiped down tables on a recent Friday night ahead of fashionably dressed couples who never knew he was there.

“After all of this, I just want to be back home,” said Jimenez, who decided to take Cumberland’s settlement offer of $9,191 but won’t see the money for up to three months. After paying legal fees and back rent at the house, he plans to return home with just enough to repay the $5,000 he borrowed from his family.

Martin, who is studying at a community college to become an electrician, said he is in even worse financial shape after borrowing nearly $15,000 from relatives during his job search.

“To be doing what some companies are doing is just totally un-American,” he said. “Just straight greed that doesn’t care about anybody who needs work.”

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

By Johann Hari

There are three different Dubais, all swirling around each other. There are the expats; there are the Emiratis, headed by Sheikh Mohammed; and then there is the foreign underclass who built the city, and are trapped here. They are hidden in plain view. You see them everywhere, in dirt-caked blue uniforms, being shouted at by their superiors, like a chain gang – but you are trained not to look. It is like a mantra: the Sheikh built the city. The Sheikh built the city. Workers? What workers?

Every evening, the hundreds of thousands of young men who build Dubai are bussed from their sites to a vast concrete wasteland an hour out of town, where they are quarantined away. Until a few years ago they were shuttled back and forth on cattle trucks, but the expats complained this was unsightly, so now they are shunted on small metal buses that function like greenhouses in the desert heat. They sweat like sponges being slowly wrung out.

Sonapur is a rubble-strewn patchwork of miles and miles of identical concrete buildings. Some 300,000 men live piled up here, in a place whose name in Hindi means “City of Gold”. In the first camp I stop at – riven with the smell of sewage and sweat – the men huddle around, eager to tell someone, anyone, what is happening to them.

Sahinal Monir, a slim 24-year-old from the deltas of Bangladesh. “To get you here, they tell you Dubai is heaven. Then you get here and realise it is hell,” he says. Four years ago, an employment agent arrived in Sahinal’s village in Southern Bangladesh. He told the men of the village that there was a place where they could earn 40,000 takka a month (£400) just for working nine-to-five on construction projects. It was a place where they would be given great accommodation, great food, and treated well. All they had to do was pay an up-front fee of 220,000 takka (£2,300) for the work visa – a fee they’d pay off in the first six months, easy. So Sahinal sold his family land, and took out a loan from the local lender, to head to this paradise.

As soon as he arrived at Dubai airport, his passport was taken from him by his construction company. He has not seen it since. He was told brusquely that from now on he would be working 14-hour days in the desert heat – where western tourists are advised not to stay outside for even five minutes in summer, when it hits 55 degrees – for 500 dirhams a month (£90), less than a quarter of the wage he was promised. If you don’t like it, the company told him, go home. “But how can I go home? You have my passport, and I have no money for the ticket,” he said. “Well, then you’d better get to work,” they replied.

Sahinal was in a panic. His family back home – his son, daughter, wife and parents – were waiting for money, excited that their boy had finally made it. But he was going to have to work for more than two years just to pay for the cost of getting here – and all to earn less than he did in Bangladesh.

He shows me his room. It is a tiny, poky, concrete cell with triple-decker bunk-beds, where he lives with 11 other men. All his belongings are piled onto his bunk: three shirts, a spare pair of trousers, and a cellphone. The room stinks, because the lavatories in the corner of the camp – holes in the ground – are backed up with excrement and clouds of black flies. There is no air conditioning or fans, so the heat is “unbearable. You cannot sleep. All you do is sweat and scratch all night.” At the height of summer, people sleep on the floor, on the roof, anywhere where they can pray for a moment of breeze.

The water delivered to the camp in huge white containers isn’t properly desalinated: it tastes of salt. “It makes us sick, but we have nothing else to drink,” he says.

The work is “the worst in the world,” he says. “You have to carry 50kg bricks and blocks of cement in the worst heat imaginable … This heat – it is like nothing else. You sweat so much you can’t pee, not for days or weeks. It’s like all the liquid comes out through your skin and you stink. You become dizzy and sick but you aren’t allowed to stop, except for an hour in the afternoon. You know if you drop anything or slip, you could die. If you take time off sick, your wages are docked, and you are trapped here even longer.”

He is currently working on the 67th floor of a shiny new tower, where he builds upwards, into the sky, into the heat. He doesn’t know its name. In his four years here, he has never seen the Dubai of tourist-fame, except as he constructs it floor-by-floor.

Is he angry? He is quiet for a long time. “Here, nobody shows their anger. You can’t. You get put in jail for a long time, then deported.” Last year, some workers went on strike after they were not given their wages for four months. The Dubai police surrounded their camps with razor-wire and water-cannons and blasted them out and back to work.

The “ringleaders” were imprisoned. I try a different question: does Sohinal regret coming? All the men look down, awkwardly. “How can we think about that? We are trapped. If we start to think about regrets…” He lets the sentence trail off. Eventually, another worker breaks the silence by adding: “I miss my country, my family and my land. We can grow food in Bangladesh. Here, nothing grows. Just oil and buildings.”

Since the recession hit, they say, the electricity has been cut off in dozens of the camps, and the men have not been paid for months. Their companies have disappeared with their passports and their pay. “We have been robbed of everything. Even if somehow we get back to Bangladesh, the loan sharks will demand we repay our loans immediately, and when we can’t, we’ll be sent to prison.”

This is all supposed to be illegal. Employers are meant to pay on time, never take your passport, give you breaks in the heat – but I met nobody who said it happens. Not one. These men are conned into coming and trapped into staying, with the complicity of the Dubai authorities.

Sahinal could well die out here. A British man who used to work on construction projects told me: “There’s a huge number of suicides in the camps and on the construction sites, but they’re not reported. They’re described as ‘accidents’.” Even then, their families aren’t free: they simply inherit the debts. A Human Rights Watch study found there is a “cover-up of the true extent” of deaths from heat exhaustion, overwork and suicide, but the Indian consulate registered 971 deaths of their nationals in 2005 alone. After this figure was leaked, the consulates were told to stop counting.

At night, in the dusk, I sit in the camp with Sohinal and his friends as they scrape together what they have left to buy a cheap bottle of spirits. They down it in one ferocious gulp. “It helps you to feel numb”, Sohinal says through a stinging throat. In the distance, the glistening Dubai skyline he built stands, oblivious. (…)

Continue reading on the Independent

By Young Ran-jeon

With the international community tightening economic sanctions on North Korean entities for their alleged involvement in nuclear and weapons activities, Pyongyang is ever more eager to earn hard currency. One of the few options for the regime to get foreign dollars is to rely on its own labor exports. VOA’s Korean Service reporter Young Ran-jeon recently visited Vladivostok, Russia and filed this report voiced by Kate Woodsome. Pseudonyms were used to protect the workers interviewed for this story. 

Skilled laborers
In Russia’s largest port city on the Pacific Ocean, Vladivostok, several small-framed Asian men are bustling around a half-built apartment building, trying to move large metal beams. They are North Koreans sent out by their government to earn much-needed foreign currency for the country. Kim Dong Gil came from North Korea’s second largest city of Hamhung. He brags that North Korean workers have the best skills in the Russian construction market, which is also filled with laborers from Central Asia and Vietnam. The estimated 5,000 North Koreans in Vladivostok come from various backgrounds and even include doctors. “I didn’t have any construction skills since I used to be with the military,” said Kim Soon Nam, who served in the army back home. “I learned from scratch when I arrived here. I got trained by a really young person who used to curse and swear at me all the time.”

Appreciation for capitalism
Despite the stress of living and working in a foreign country, the North Koreans have come to appreciate the culture of capitalism. “Back home I couldn’t make money even if I wanted to. But here if I work hard, I can make a dozen times more,” explained Han Jong Rok.  Choi Jong-kun, an assistant professor of political science at Yonsei University in Seoul, says money is just one reason to leave home. The other is improving one’s status among North Korea’s political elite. “If they bring in more money, then they would sort of have sort of upward mobility in their social class,” explained Choi Jong-kun.

Potential political opening
Communist North Korea has one of the most isolated and centrally controlled economies in the world. After the country suffered a deadly famine in the mid-1990s, the government allowed private farmers markets for a few years. But it tightened the policy in 2005.
Pyongyang is known to pour money into weapons programs instead of public services. And it has kicked out many international development agencies, allowing just limited food aid primarily from China and South Korea. That has saved the population from starvation, but North Koreans still struggle with malnutrition and poor health conditions. Pyongyang earns foreign currency from South Korean companies employing North Korean workers at the Kaesong Industrial Complex. But opening up to cross-border commerce means opening up politically, too. Professor Choi suggests it is easier to send workers overseas than to deal with the impact of liberalizing the economy. “They have to think of not only economic prosperity but also they have to think of so-called regional security,” said Choi. “What kinds of implications would it have to their regional security.”

Key source of foreign currency
North Korea does not reveal significant economic data, but exporting workers is considered a key source of hard foreign currency. A report by the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy in Seoul estimated in 2007 that Pyongyang earns at least $40 million to $60 million a year from labor exports. Outside of Russia, the institute has tracked North Korean workers in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bangladesh, China and Mongolia. In Vladivostok, every North Korean worker is required to pay the Pyongyang government around $800 each month.  Kim Soon Nam says he works extra hours to make sure he has money for himself. “If we want to save some money, we have to work Sundays and holidays, too,” he said. “We must earn a lot of money no matter what. North Koreans have to work from 8 am to 10 pm.”

Sacrifices help family members
The North Koreans in Vladivostok usually get a five-year visa, but many get extensions to earn more money. They sleep in dormitories and live to work, spending much of their time outside the construction sites doing extra jobs in local Russian homes. Kim Chul Woong, a welder, says he is willing to sacrifice time from his family back in Pyongyang to give his son opportunities few North Koreans enjoy, like a computer.
“The video footage on the computer can enhance children’s intellectual development, but I don’t have the kind of money,” he said. “When I go back home after working in Russia I’ll have a good amount of money. I can buy expensive stuff for my son. If he wants to do music I can buy him a violin or a guitar.” He says he is taking advantage of the work while he can get it. Kim Chul Woong says the construction jobs are dwindling in Russia because of the economic crisis. There is also greater competition from newly arriving Central Asians who are as hungry for dollars as he is.

Additional reporting by Kurt Achin in Seoul and Kate Woodsome in Washington.
(Voice of America news)

By Steven Greenhouse

The A.F.L.-C.I.O., the nation’s largest labor organization, has often been criticized for being “male, pale and stale” — dominated by cigar-chomping, golf-playing chieftains. But as Richard L. Trumka assumes the group’s presidency on Wednesday, he says he is determined to improve labor’s image and woo a younger generation that either thinks of unions as irrelevant, or does not think of them at all.

Mr. Trumka — a burly former coal miner who comes out of one of the nation’s oldest unions, the United Mine Workers, and looks like Mike Ditka — acknowledges that reversing labor’s seemingly inexorable slide will be a challenge. Still, he thinks the weak economy, long stagnant or declining wages, the prospect of a jobless recovery, and the continuing exodus of jobs to developing countries will all bolster the case for unions.

“The generation of workers 18 to 34 probably needs union more than any generation ever before because of what’s happening with this economy,” said Mr. Trumka, 60, a forceful speaker who packs far more charisma than his immediate predecessor, John J. Sweeney, 75.

Of course, waiting for unions to rise to their former strength may be like waiting for Godot.

When Mr. Sweeney assumed the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s presidency 14 years ago, he also pledged to greatly expand labor’s ranks. Instead labor’s numbers fell somewhat because of many of the same forces Mr. Trumka will face, including factory shutdowns, corporations battling to beat back unions and workers’ fears that their workplaces will close if they vote to unionize.

“It would be incredible if Trumka succeeded, but if he does not succeed he will have a lot beyond his control to blame it on,” said Gary N. Chaison, a professor of labor relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. He said that the crisis of Detroit’s automakers had given labor’s image a beating.

“Labor has a lot of catching up to do,” he said.

Michale Lotito, a management-side labor lawyer with Jackson Lewis, said Mr. Trumka could only revive labor’s fortunes if Congress passes pending legislation that would make it easier for unions to organize workers. Labor and its Democratic allies have struggled to round up the 60 votes to overcome a potential Senate filibuster. But union leaders say the votes will be there once a replacement is named for the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

But Mr. Trumka plans to rely on new means and new messengers too. So while organized labor has traditionally done much of its communicating through picket signs and handbills, to reach the young it will rely more on Facebook and Twitter.

One step in putting a fresher face on labor is Mr. Trumka’s choice of Liz Schuler, 39 and a cheery and articulate former clerical worker, as the federation’s youngest ever secretary-treasurer, the group’s second in command.

By focusing on young workers, Mr. Trumka and his team are admitting many members of the millennial generation and younger are not keen on unions.

“They don’t hate us, they don’t like us, they just don’t know us,” said Ms. Schuler, long a top assistant to the president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Mr. Trumka’s priorities will include ways to lift not just unions, but workers, among them pushing for a tougher posture on trade — like President Obama’s newly announced punitive tariffs against Chinese tires — expanding the federation’s already powerful political operations, and seeking to unionize more low-wage minority workers.

For the first time ever, two of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s top three officials will be women. Its executive vice president, Arlene Holt Baker, who is African-American, is an emissary to low-wage minority workers, who are generally more inclined to join unions.

Mr. Trumka does not always fit the new image. He can come across as macho — he fills his office with pictures of football players and labor heroes. And he is sometimes called bull-headed — he once led a violence-ridden nine-month strike against Pittston Coal in West Virginia in which 4,000 workers were arrested for sitting in and seeking to block strikebreakers by studding roads with bent nails.

The A.F.L.-C.I.O., a grouping of 56 unions representing 10 million workers, has commissioned several studies on what makes young workers tick. (One study found that one in three Americans between 18 and 35 lives at home with their parents.)

“We haven’t done a good job communicating with this group,” Mr. Trumka said. “It’s not going to be an overnight thing.”

Surprisingly, one issue the Trumka team is debating, in response to findings from focus groups, is whether to use the word “worker” in talking with the under-35 generation, because so many of them, especially young professionals, do not define themselves as “workers” or as members of particular occupational groups — say, steelworkers or autoworkers.

Although the percentage of workers in unions has slid to 12.4 percent, about one-third the number of a half century ago, Mr. Trumka thinks the time is ripe for unions to increase their numbers.

“I think the American public is more willing to look at the way to curb excessive corporate power that’s gone unchecked for years,” he said. “The public knows that unions are the best curb on that.”

Like his predecessors, Mr. Trumka cannot tell member unions what to do, for instance to focus on organizing more young workers. But he can use his bully pulpit.

“Rich will lay it on the table, he’ll out people if they’re not doing enough organizing, “ said Gerald W. McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Like Mr. Sweeney, Mr. Trumka will continue to press Congress to enact a health care overhaul. But Mr. Trumka promises to be far more quotable when doing so.

For example, here in Pittsburgh, where Mr. Obama spoke on Tuesday at the A.F.L.-C.I.O. convention, Mr. Trumka defended the president’s health plan.

“We do have death panels,” he said. “They call them insurance companies.”

Mr. Trumka hopes to make the federation’s vaunted political operation more effective by transforming it from an operation largely during the summer and fall of Congressional and presidential campaign years to a 52-week-a-year operation that can be instantly called upon to do legislative work on the federal, state or local levels.

Mr. Sweeney came out of a service sector union representing janitors and hospital workers, while Mr. Trumka comes out of the mine workers — his father died of black lung disease — and out of a region, southwestern Pennsylvania, where manufacturing was king.

With his industrial bent, Mr. Trumka plans not just to reach out to a new generation, but to focus on expanding labor’s traditional base by seeking to revive the nation’s manufacturing sector, through, for example, expanding green industries.

“You can’t be a world-class country and have a world-class economy unless you produce things,” Mr. Trumka said. “As we’ve lost manufacturing jobs in this country — we’ve lost millions since 2000 — we’ve lost a lot of R.&D., and when you lose the R.&D., you lose your technological edge, and when you lose that edge, you start to lose everything.”

Mr. Trumka is already displaying a far more aggressive stance on trade than Mr. Sweeney did. Mr. Trumka talks with relish about trade policy and works closely with the Pittsburgh-based United Steelworkers Union, which has been the main force behind efforts to penalize China on tires and other exports.

Mr. Trumka applauded President Obama’s decision, saying, “The trade laws that weren’t enforced in this country for eight years under George Bush have had a devastating effect on manufacturing.”

(The New York Times 2009)

by Abby Alford, South Wales Echo

MIGRANTS are being left homeless and destitute on the streets of Cardiff after being brought over to work under false pretences, a charity has claimed. A third of those sleeping rough on the streets of Cardiff come from eastern Europe, says the city council.

And because they are excluded from claiming benefits and help with housing, they are left with nothing. Housing charity Shelter Cymru said it has interviewed eastern European economic migrants of Czech and Slovak Roma origin in the capital as part of a project designed to find out why increasing numbers of them are ending up on the streets.

Interviews with migrants, mainly from Poland, have also taken place in Bridgend, as well as in West Wales and North Wales. Shelter Cymru research officer James Radcliffe told the Echo: “Quite a few people are being brought over under false pretences by employment agencies and are being offered accommodation.”

But he said the job they are brought over to do often finishes after a couple of months and the agency will tell them to pack their bags and leave their accommodation. Mr Radcliffe said he has heard of migrants who have nowhere to go being dropped at the nearest train station late at night. But he added: “There are some positive stories of people coming here with nothing and making a success of themselves.”

The study on homelessness among central and eastern European migrants in Wales is being funded by the Big Lottery Research Programme and is being undertaken in partnership with Cardiff and Swansea universities. One of the main reasons for homelessness is that people from countries that joined the European Union after 2004 – including Bulgaria, Romania, Czech Republic, Poland and Latvia – are not entitled to claim any benefits or apply for housing unless they are a registered worker and can prove they have worked for 12 months continuously.

As the low-paid jobs they are brought to Wales to do – including fruit picking, crop harvesting, labouring and cleaning – last just a couple of months, they often find themselves destitute and forced to survive by begging as they are deemed to have no recourse to public funds. A Cardiff council spokeswoman said: “Thirty-two individuals have been sleeping rough over the last six weeks.

“Of the 32 recorded, 11 have been central or eastern European migrants.
“None has access to public funds, with five having underlying drug and/or alcohol issues – one with serious alcohol-induced health problems. “Of the 11 central or eastern European migrants, four Romanians who slept rough on and off during August have not been to the rough sleeper intervention breakfast run so far in September.
“We do have three migrants who attend the breakfast run who are accommodated in hostels. They also have drug and alcohol issues.”

The Wales TUC is among the bodies campaigning for better protection of migrant workers. Research and campaigns officer Chris Hartwell said: “Addressing language barriers, improving rights awareness, better enforcement of employment rights and robust implementation of the Agency Workers’ Directive are some of the important steps that are needed to better protect vulnerable workers.”

By William Lacy Swing

Perceptions of migration and broad recognition of the positive contributions that migrants make to society have regrettably regressed in most migrant-receiving countries during the current economic downturn. As job markets in the developed world have contracted, a perception has emerged of migrants as the unwanted flotsam and jetsam of globalization, a reserve army of surplus labor that can be jettisoned or rehired with the ebb and flow of the global economy.

But while many migrants, especially the less-skilled, continue to be more affected than host populations in terms of exclusion from the job market, others are showing a remarkable capacity to batten down the hatches and wait for better days.

While there is growing anecdotal evidence that the economic downturn has led to a slowing of migration flows, the impact of this on remittances remains varied. In the Western Hemisphere, the Inter-American Development Bank believes that remittances to Latin America could drop by 11 percent over 2008 values. But in the Asia-Pacific region, remittances sent by overseas Filipino workers appear to be growing, albeit at a slower pace.

The world over, migrants remain committed to doing their best to help families back home. Many have drastically reduced their daily expenditures, are taking second or third jobs, or are drawing on their dwindling savings to ensure that they deliver on their commitments.

In the United States, as in other parts of the developed world, there is some evidence that the flow of remittances is being reversed as a result of the economic crisis, with migrants instructing families back home to sell assets acquired during years of hard work to tide them over in host countries until a recovery kicks in.

This resilience and the belief that migration can contribute significantly to meeting the development challenges facing emerging economies should be encouraged, especially by those developed nations that carry the greatest responsibility for the current global recession.

To date, the response from rich nations has been lukewarm. Migration and development-friendly policies, which are clearly needed to help poorer countries through the recession, have remained on the back burner.

Pledges by G-20 leaders last April in London to make additional funding available to poorer countries have yet to fully materialize. Nor have promises to increase Official Development Assistance to countries affected by reduced remittances.

This sends the wrong message to the developing world and to many migrants, who may now see the exploitative back doors offered by human traffickers as their only real chance of working in a rich country.

Developed countries cannot afford to turn their backs on migrants. Highly skilled migrant workers can bring the knowledge and innovation they need to emerge from recession. The low-skilled can also contribute by taking essential jobs that host country nationals shun.

Continuing demographic and skills deficits in much of the industrialized world, coupled with global supply chains resulting from economic integration, mean that migration is both necessary and here to stay. Policymakers must recognize that the economic and social contributions of migrants are a factor in both global economic recovery and in the achievement of broader, long-term development goals for both developing and more-developed countries, and they must respond accordingly.

William Lacy Swing is director general of the International Organization for Migration.
(article published by The New York Times)

“An important new study has cast an appalling light on a place where workplace laws fail to protect workers, where wages and tips are routinely stolen, where having to work sick, injured or off the clock is the price of having a job. The place is the United States, all across the lower strata of the urban economy”. This is an editorial of today’s New York Times. It’s worth noting  that US have not ratified some fundamental International labour conventions (ILO) and that there is still a debate on the Employee Free Choice Act.

The most comprehensive investigation of labor-law violations in years, released Wednesday by the Center for Urban Economic Development, the National Employment Law Project and the U.C.L.A. Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, surveyed 4,387 workers in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. Its researchers sought out people often missed by standard surveys and found abuses everywhere: in factories, grocery stores, retail shops, construction sites, offices, warehouses and private homes. The word sweatshop clearly is not big enough anymore to capture the extent and severity of the rot in the low-wage workplace.

Workers told of employers who ignored the minimum wage, denied overtime, took illegal deductions to pay for tools or transportation, or forced them to work unpaid before or after their shifts. More than two-thirds of them had endured at least one wage violation in the previous workweek. More than a quarter had been paid less than the minimum wage, often by more than $1 an hour. Violations typically robbed workers of $51 a week, from an average paycheck of $339.

The report paints an acute picture of powerlessness. Of workers who had been seriously injured on the job, only 8 percent had filed for workers’ compensation — a symptom, researchers said, of the power of employer pressure. Although 86 percent of respondents had worked enough consecutive hours to be entitled to time off for meals, more than two-thirds had had their breaks denied, interrupted or shortened. Workers who complained to bosses or government agencies or tried to form unions suffered illegal retaliation: firing, suspension, pay cuts or threats to call immigration authorities.

It is, of course, morally abhorrent that the American economy should be so riddled with exploitation. But it is also powerfully evident that there are practical consequences when the powerless are abused. Low-wage workers spend a high proportion of their income on necessities; when their paychecks are systematically bled by greedy employers, an entire community’s economic vitality is sapped as well.

The answers are basic, though too long ignored. Government needs to send more investigators to back rooms, offices and factory floors, and to enlist labor organizations and immigrant-rights groups as their investigative eyes and ears. Penalties for wage-law violations need toughening. Employees who have historically been denied basic labor rights — domestic workers and home health aides — need to finally be given the protection of wage-and-hour laws. Companies must not be allowed to skirt their legal obligations by outsourcing hiring to subcontractors, letting others break the law for them.

The report has particular significance for immigrant workers, who made up 70 percent of the survey (39 percent of them were undocumented). Workplace abuses are flourishing in the absence of a working immigration system, where illegal immigrants are vital to the economy but helpless to assert their rights.

The report upends the argument that the way to help American workers is to make illegal immigrants ever more frightened and exploitable. Only by protecting all workers will the country begin to rebuild a workplace matching its ideals of decency and fair play.

(Editorial of 3 Sept. 2009, The New York Times)

Philippines Workers’ Groups are elated over government’s declaration of support for a new International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention on Domestic Work and the passage of a Magna Carta for Domestic Workers. In her closing remarks at the Second National Domestic Workers Summit held at the Occupational Safety and Health Center in Quezon City last week, Labor and Employment Undersecretary Rosalinda Baldoz declared government’s “categorical full support” for a new International Convention on Domestic Workers and the Magna Carta for Domestic Workers.

“The extent to which DOLE has given its commitment as a reliable partner in the Philippine campaign for decent work should speak for itself,” she added. “Government’s decision to push for a new Convention together with workers shows that it is sensitive to the plea of domestic workers,” said Julius Cainglet, spokesperson of the Federation of Free Workers (FFW). “We hope that government will continue to listen and actively participate with workers throughout the campaign,” he added.

Last week, government was mum on the issue at the Working World Trialogues sponsored by the Institute for Labor Studies (ILS), but confirmed that its internal process of consultation on domestic work has commenced.

“This is definitely a big step forward. With considerable support at the local front, we can effectively contribute to the international campaign on decent work for domestic workers until we see an International Convention adopted at the International Labor Conference and ratified by ILO member states,” Cainglet explained.

Ball in Employers’ court
With this development, employers’ group are now under pressure to revise its position on the issue. A week earlier, in the same Working World Trialogues of the ILS, they said they “favor a Recommendation at this point in time.”

“We will continue to convince employers to upgrade their position towards endorsing a Convention,” Cainglet added. Unlike an International Convention, which shall be binding to a state once it is ratified, a Recommendation only serves as a guide for the crafting of national laws and policies. States are not obligated to implement its provisions because this international instrument is not open for ratification.

The International Labor Conference of the ILO meets each year in Geneva to deliberate on international labor standards. Unlike other UN bodies, the ILO does not only have government as delegates. Workers and employers are also represented. Thus, members of the Philippine delegation are entitled to a vote each. 

More to Lose
Unionists may have actually more to lose financially than employers by endorsing a Convention and the Magna Carta for Domestic Workers. “Once these come into force, workers might have to dig deeper into their pockets to meet the new standards for domestic workers, should they decide to get their services,” Cainglet explained. “Employers will presumably have less problems since they have the means to adjust,” he added. “But we are pushing for a new Convention in solidarity with domestic workers, who are our sisters and brothers in the trade union movement.”  

Undeserving of a minimum wage
“Household service workers should not be minimum wage-earners,” said Baldoz, who quickly explained that “this is because they deserve more than the minimum wage.” She recalled that as an administrator of the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA) she used to receive good feedback about the quality of service Filipino household service workers provide. “Malinis sila sa katawan, malinis sa trabaho at sa bahay.” (“They are neat, they work cleanly and clean the house well.”)

Priority agenda
Referring to the Magna Carta for Domestic Workers, she said, “bills must be subjected to continuous consultations to gather a broad consensus.” Once she assumes her role as Undersecretary for Labor Relations, Usec. Baldoz vowed to have the DOLE’s Legislative Liaison Office “include this (Magna Carta on Domestic Workers) in the priority agenda” and “have the bill certified as urgent.” The Technical Working Group on the Philippine Campaign on Decent Work for Domestic Workers, to which the FFW and the Visayan Forum are members of, conducted the 2nd National Domestic Workers’ Summit.  

The output of the Summit will aid the Philippine government in answering the ILO questionnaire distributed to all member states on the possibility of crafting a new Convention on Domestic Work. Governments have until the end of the month to submit the accomplished questionnaire to the ILO in Geneva.

by Sacha Feinman

ALTAR, Mexico—I hadn’t yet taken 10 steps off the bus when I made eye contact with someone for the first time.  “Are you going north?” he hissed, walking quickly toward me. “Let’s go. Let’s go,” he implored. A strange way to be welcomed someplace, no doubt, though the question is the only one of any real import here, and it often takes the place of a proper greeting. Sitting just 60 miles south of the Arizona-Mexico border, Altar, in Sonora state, is a place unlike any other. Once a quiet community of farmers and ranchers, this dusty desert town of 8,000 is now one of the most important staging points for the movement of undocumented workers. Migrants from all over Mexico and various Central and South American countries come here to find a guide who will take them through the dangerous desert crossing and into the United States.

The entire economy of Altar is based on the business of human smuggling. Rows of shops sell all the materials necessary for the border crossing. Backpacks, canned goods, and electrolyte-infused soft drinks are sold everywhere. Headhunters who work for the town’s coyotes pass the day looking for new customers. Their job is to spot Altar’s newest arrivals and sell them on a guide who knows the way into Arizona. They are fast talkers and hustlers, willing to promise anything to drum up business.

It is a disorienting sensation, arriving in Altar. The town feels like something out of an old Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western. When you step into the central plaza, dozens of strangers assess you, wondering what exactly you are doing here, while contemplating the ways a profit might be generated off your presence. A bodega selling cold beer and potato chips only adds to the effect; it features a slot machine that plays the theme music of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly over and over again.

During the hot spring and summer months, most business transactions take place during the morning hours. By the time I arrive, it is 3 in the afternoon, and the plaza has nearly emptied out for the day. Dogs lie about on patches of cracked earth, too lazy to react to the flies that blanket them. Migrants sit under what little shade they can find, clutching their backpacks and staring off into the horizon. They are waiting. Maybe they are short of the money needed to pay for the trip and are hoping for a family member to arrange a wire transfer. Perhaps their guide told them that the Border Patrol is out in force today and it is best to wait until tomorrow.

This is the pattern of life here. For the migrants in Altar, passing the time in silence, preferably in one of the few patches of shade, is the day’s main activity. Some even sleep in the plaza, though others prefer to pay rent at one of the town’s flophouses. More plentiful and affordable than motels, they are communal rooms densely packed with rows of bunk beds. A migrant’s 40 pesos ($3) rents a piece of plywood and a tattered blanket rather than a proper mattress.

With my bags in tow, I make my way to the Community Center for the Assistance of Migrants and the Needy (in Spanish, Centro Comunitario de Atención al Migrante y Necesitado). CCAMYN is Altar’s only free shelter. It is supported by the local church and run by Marcos Burruel, a remarkable man who once worked as a quality-control supervisor at the Tecate beer factory in Baja, Mexico. He was charged with smelling each batch of the freshly brewed product to ensure that nothing was off. One profession would seem to have little to do with the other, though Marcos found the common link.

As he explains it, “There are many different types of people who come through Altar and this shelter. There are the very good, the good, the normal, the bad, and the very bad. My job is to determine who is who and to protect the people that need my help.”

Marcos never turns away anyone who comes asking for a free meal. But visitors looking to spend the night and enjoy the comfort of a real mattress and an actual bed sheet must first make it past his discerning nose.

A migrant’s first stop upon arrival at the shelter is a wobbly plastic chair in front of Marcos’ desk. Other than a crucifix hanging from the far wall, the room is free of decoration. In quick succession, Marcos asks his guests a series of questions. Name, age, marital status, and hometown are all registered before he delves deeper.

“Did you already try to cross? Yes? And the Border Patrol caught you and shipped you back? How many people were in your group? What was the cost of your guide? And the narcos … how steep was the tax—how much did you pay them before you were allowed to leave Altar? What about the driver who drove you up to the border—how much did he charge?”

Marcos knows the answers to each of these questions before he asks them. How his guest responds, however, allows him to differentiate between a migrant in need of help and a lying stranger, someone who has come to the shelter with an ulterior motive. It also presents a great opportunity for me to learn how Altar works.

The first man Marcos interviewed went by the name Orlando, and he didn’t conform to the migrant stereotype. Sporting a gold tooth and an expensive-looking watch on his left wrist, he answered every question confidently. Nevertheless, he was told he could only stay for dinner. After Orlando left the room, Marcos explained.

“He’s a coyote, here looking for customers,” he said. “I try never to turn away anyone who asks me for food, but he definitely will not spend the night.”

Next up was Jose. Born in the state of Hidalgo, he claimed to have been caught and deported by Border Patrol that very day.

“And how much was the tax you had to pay the narcos?”

Jose was confused. “What tax?” he asked.

“The narcos, the mafia … no one gets in those vans if they don’t pay the tax first. How much did you have to pay them?”

Jose looked at his feet, and after a pause, responded.

“Five hundred pesos,” he answered cautiously. His response was a question as much it was a statement.

Marcos shook his head, sure that a real migrant who had crossed recently would know that the tax is much higher. “You’ll have to leave after dinner,” he said.

Antonio followed, and it was instantly clear that he was the real thing. An older man carrying a beat-up backpack, he had a week’s worth of stubble and walked with a pronounced limp. The question-and-answer session seemed to be going well, until Marcos paused, leaning forward slightly.

“And how many beers did you drink today?” he finally asked.

Antonio was clearly startled. “None,” he replied.

“With respect, I know you’ve been drinking today. How many beers?”

“I haven’t had anything to drink,” Antonio reiterated.

“Listen. It’s a rule. You can’t have alcohol in your body and stay here. I have an incredible sense of smell. It’s a gift, and I thank God for it every day. I can smell beer on your breath. I know you’ve been drinking. Just tell me: How much have you had to drink today?”

Antonio relented. “Two beers,” he said, “I’ve had two beers today.”

“Well, then,” answered Marcos, “I’m sorry, but you can’t stay the night.”

Of the six men he who filed through, only one was given permission to sleep at the shelter.

“We don’t have many resources; we have to be selective about who we help,” Marcos would later explain. “I have to protect those who need protection, and I have to offer help only to those who are truly migrants. Those are the people this shelter is meant for. It’s not too difficult to spot a real migrant. He will come here with his backpack, he’ll be dirty, and he will have trouble walking, all because of the desert. And he’ll tell you that all he wants is to go home, that he doesn’t want anything more to do with the United States.”

After a quiet dinner, I am shown to the dormitory. The sun has set, and Marcos is preparing to leave. The shelter has no room in the budget to hire a night watchman, so guests are locked inside until sunrise. As I lay on my bed, three additional guests are admitted. They file in quickly, the door closing behind them. No one makes eye contact or acknowledges anyone else’s presence. Everyone keeps one hand on their bags as they drift off to sleep.

The bed is clean, if a bit uncomfortable. A single spring pokes upward from the middle of the mattress. Trying to avoid it, I sleep on my side. It’s a battle fought in vain, though; an unfortunate shift results in a sharp stab to my lower back. The sleep had been shallow and uneasy, anyway, and I am now fully awake. There is no clock on the wall, but the window frames a pitch-black desert night, the sky clear and filled with stars. It must be about 3 a.m.

The room is rather cramped, mostly because of the number of bunk beds stacked together. One of the migrants snores loudly. He fills the rooms with the sound of a motorcycle failing to start again and again. In the bed next to me, another migrant is masturbating underneath his blanket. With his climax, he releases a deep sigh, sounding as though a priest has just exorcised him.

I lie on my back, allowing the spring to dig into me. I’ll just have to wait out the rest of the night. There is no use going back to sleep after witnessing a thing like that.

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From: Sacha Feinman

Subject: Waiting for the Right Guide

Updated Thursday, Aug. 20, 2009, at 10:01 AM ET

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ALTAR, Mexico—Breakfast is a simple affair at the CCAMYN shelter: a cup of coffee and a doughnut before we leave. The doors are locked for most of the day, reopening again at 5 p.m. The guests scatter in all directions, but most eventually make their way to the central plaza where they wait the day out. It’s 7:30 in the morning, and Altar is just waking up. Pickup trucks with darkly tinted windows slowly make their way down the unpaved streets, stirring dirt into the desert air. Wild dogs stand guard in front of the neighboring houses, growling at passers-by.

There is so much paranoia in a town where the entire economy is built around smuggling people and drugs across international borders. Even though it gives off the impression of being a sleepy desert town, there is never any doubt that if you cross paths with the wrong people in Altar, things can go wrong very, very quickly.

The three men who arrived at the shelter late the night before are walking behind me, and I drop back to strike up a conversation with them. They are quick to introduce themselves, shaking hands while making direct eye contact. This will prove to be a rarity during my stay in Altar, especially among the migrant population.

It is a strange thing to introduce yourself to the man who made his first impression by masturbating next to you in the early morning hours. He has a sweet, boyish smile, which immediately puts me at ease. He is tall and wears a clean, unwrinkled shirt tucked into his jeans. A small crucifix dangles from his neck, made visible by three open buttons. His name is Uvaldo. Introductions are made, and I explain myself to the group. It’s a story I will tell again and again over the course of two weeks: I am a journalist, here to collect migrants’ stories. Where are they from, where are they going, how will they cross the border, what work will they look for in the United States? This is as much a security measure as it is an act of disclosure; Mexico’s infamous drug cartels are well-represented in Altar, and my explanation serves as a pre-emptive strike to keep people from accusing me of sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong.

The three men had been strangers until a week ago. They met while staying at a flophouse in Sonoyta, farther to the west. They were unimpressed with the guides they met there. They just hadn’t felt right, so they took a bus to Altar, where Jesus, the natural leader of the group, knew of a guide reputed to be trustworthy. All three were born in southern Mexico, and they had come to trust one another for the simple purpose of self-preservation. In a place where everyone is sizing you up, trying to find a way to profit from you, it’s good to have someone watching your back.

In the plaza, we find a shaded bench under the tall wall of the town church. Two pushcart vendors sell instant coffee and homemade tamales to the crowd of would-be migrants. Headhunters wearing cowboy boots and baseball caps walk by, talking on their cell phones and eyeballing us. They are looking for a signal of some kind, a sign that we are open to their sales pitch. Business is slow, and they are desperate to bring in clients for their coyote bosses.

As we sit there, watching the town’s business transpire, Uvaldo starts to rifle through his bag.

“Have you read this?” he asks, “A friend gave it to me. It’s practice for my English.”

Eventually he brings out a tattered paperback, passing it to me gently, as though it were a full cup of coffee. Uvaldo’s copy of Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life is heavily underlined and features a picture of his infant daughter taped to the inside cover.

My experience in extraordinary locales has taught me that in an environment like Altar, expectations are often subverted. Once, while touring a notorious slum in Buenos Aires, a young teenager stuck a gun in my face and yanked my camera bag from my shoulder. A woman who had accompanied me on the trip immediately stepped in front of the gun, yelling at the boy that his mother would be ashamed if she could see what he was doing to a visitor. His eyes turned glassy, and he handed back my camera bag, literally begging for forgiveness as he backed away. On another assignment, I spent a week in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, home to one of the world’s most notorious black markets, as well as a small Muslim community that the U.S. government has repeatedly accused of funneling money to Hezbollah. On my last day in town, I met a wholesale drug dealer, a man who claimed to move hundreds of pounds of marijuana across the Brazilian and Argentine borders on a regular basis. We were discussing the market rate of his goods when he suddenly stopped to ask me my last name. I had lied earlier, introducing myself with a false name, but this question caught me off guard, and I blurted out my real surname. He smiled reflexively, bringing a Star of David necklace from his back pocket.

I can’t help but think of both incidents as Uvaldo and I discuss Warren’s philosophy. He is particularly fond of the chapter titled “You Are Not an Accident.” Underlined and starred is a passage that reads, “If there was no God, we would all be ‘accidents,’ the result of astronomical random chance in the universe. You could stop reading this book, because life would have no purpose or meaning or significance. … But there is a God who made you for a reason, and your life has profound meaning!”

I ask Uvaldo what the passage means to him.

“There are people there in the U.S. who think that I want to live there forever. But that is not the case. No! Life is too short. I want to be with my daughter here in Mexico; I only want to provide for her. That is the purpose of my life, and this trip is not an accident.”

Slowly, the hours pass, though we barely move, shifting only with the shade as morning becomes afternoon. Uvaldo, Jesus, and Juan, the third member of the group, huddle up and whisper. From time to time, they cross the street to a phone booth. They call family. They call the friend who recommended the guide, trying to coordinate where and when they will meet him.

By 1:30, the pushcarts are gone, and the plaza has emptied out. We wait, and we wait, and we wait. We smoke a cigarette, we enter the church to seek the Virgin Mary’s blessing, and we wait. The whole experience appears unremarkable. Nothing happens. And yet lives and futures hang in the balance. Institutions larger than any group of individuals all operate independently along the border, and a successful crossing depends on their accidental coordination, on a migrant setting out at the lucky moment when the stars happen to align.

Uvaldo and his friends must first find a guide they are comfortable with. That accomplished, they travel the unpaved desert road that connects Altar to the physical border, 60 miles to the north. On certain days, the Mexican military will set up an outpost halfway up the road, stopping all traffic to demand a bribe. Guides have a habit of delaying their trips when this happens. Once the border is reached, the guides choose their routes carefully, desperate not to cross paths with the ever-present narcotraffickers moving marijuana and cocaine. There is no sure way to know the movements of the U.S. Border Patrol, but scouts working for the coyotes are posted at certain vantage points. They keep an eye out, radioing in the best moments to risk the crossing. And there is still the desert to contend with; forecasts of a summer heat wave or a winter cold spell can speed up or indefinitely delay even the best-laid plans. Some migrants arrive in Altar and are gone in less than 24 hours. Others find themselves stranded for a week, 10 days, with nothing to do but pass time in the empty plaza, listening to the cries of the ice cream vendor selling coconut popsicles for 10 pesos.

Uvaldo, Jesus, and Juan sit in purgatory, waiting for elements beyond their control to come together so that they can move toward the promise of the north. They go through their equipment, triple-checking that they have all the supplies they need. Two gallons of water and four tins of tuna apiece. A can of deodorant, a toothbrush, and a razor—a migrant must look fresh upon arrival, or the just-completed journey will be obvious. A belt with all of the group’s crucial phone numbers etched into the leather on the inside. Scraps of paper have a habit of falling out of pockets on long hikes through the desert. A jug of water stuffed with cloves of garlic. Soaking your feet in the resulting infusion is a common means of scaring off rattlesnakes.

By 4, the plaza is empty, and we have barely moved. Jesus crosses the street to make yet another phone call. Their guide should have been here by now. They think he might be in another town a short bus ride away. For the first time all day, Juan starts to talk to me. He is a shy man, short and pudgy, with silver fillings that outline his front teeth whenever he smiles.

“I had a dream a few days back,” he starts. “It was awful. We were just about to cross the line, when our guide told us to hang back. ‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘Eat something while I go up ahead to look for Border Patrol.’ Three hours later, he still hadn’t come back. Five hours later, he was still gone. I was tired and freezing cold, so I wrapped myself in my extra pair of pants. I started to fall asleep when a man dressed in black suddenly appeared and started grabbing at me. I reached over to warn my friends, but they were gone; I was alone in the middle of the desert.”

As Juan describes his dream, Jesus comes back with word that their guide isn’t in Altar. They’ve waited the entire day before realizing that they aren’t even in the right town. Human smuggling is an elusive and imprecise business; its central agents are, by their very nature, hard to pin down. But a good guide is a valuable commodity, and when the next bus pulls into the plaza, Uvaldo, Jesus, and Juan climb aboard. Ten minutes earlier, we had talked about heading back to the shelter and trying again in the morning. Now, suddenly, they are gone, following their purpose to another border town.

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From: Sacha Feinman

Subject: Two Migrants for the Price of One!

Posted Friday, Aug. 21, 2009, at 7:21 AM ET

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NOGALES, Mexico—Enrique Enriquez is a veteran of the battles fought along the border. As one of the local heads of the humanitarian immigration agency Grupos Beta, Enriquez has spent almost 15 years watching as the business of human smuggling morphed from a series of independent “mom and pop” shops into a big business.

The first time I paid Enriquez a visit, I was ushered into his sparsely furnished office and offered an orange plastic chair. He was dressed in the orange polo shirt that is Grupos Beta’s uniform. With a cell phone glued to his ear, he flashed a quick smile and raised an index finger in lieu of a proper hello. He’d be with me as soon as he could; right now he was literally in the middle of a life or death situation. A teenage migrant from the state of Tabasco was lost in the desert, having been separated from the rest of his group of border crossers only hours after starting out. The boy had no food or water, and he was in bad shape. His cell phone battery was low, but he had a clear signal. He was on the Mexican side of the border, which made his situation even more perilous. There would be no miraculous rescues by the U.S. Border Patrol. The boy had called his parents, who had in turn rung up Enriquez in a furious panic.

“Where did he enter?” Enriquez asked the boy’s distraught mother. “Altar? Sasabe? Nogales? What was the last city he was in?”

She doesn’t know; her son isn’t very smart. He is young and naive, and he can’t identify his surroundings. Enriquez takes a deep breath and hangs up the phone.

“I’m sorry, but can you come back tomorrow?” he asks. “I’m a little busy.”

The next day, I return to find Enriquez in a better mood; he had managed to rescue the boy before his phone died. The whole ordeal was just another afternoon on the job, another instance of the desert swallowing up a lost soul. On that day, Enriquez was lucky to have gotten one back.

“Ninety percent of the people who cross the border are assaulted in one way or another,” Enriquez begins. “And so was that boy. There are the bajadores, bandits who set upon the migrants and rob them. Sometimes the guides can turn on their people. The Border Patrol can get a little rough. And then there are the narcos.”

Moving migrants across the border and into the United States has become so profitable that even Mexico’s narcotraffickers have become involved. Drivers use a single twisting dirt road, rutted with pot holes, to bring their human cargo the 60 miles from Altar to the border town of Sasabe. The road, referred to by local media as the “route of death,” is controlled by local narcotraffickers.

According to Enriquez, the cartels have consolidated their control over the area in the last three years. They levy a tax of roughly 50-150 pesos (about $4-$12) on every migrant shipped north; those from countries other than Mexico pay more. Grupos Beta estimates that as many as 500,000 migrants are moved through Altar on the way to the United States during the busiest years. This “tax” represents an incredible source of extra income. Once the migrants reach Sasabe, they set out for various points east and west, obscure desert outposts where the U.S. Border Patrol has a light presence. They wait for the sun to set and begin their march into the United States with the arrival of a cool night breeze.

“You have to be very, very careful on that road and in Sasabe,” Enriquez warns. “They do not mess around there. They will shoot you.” He proceeds to lift up his shirt, showing me numerous healed gunshot wounds. They are strange souvenirs from a career spent trying to help people. He rolls up a pant leg and knocks on his shin, creating a loud, hollow sound.

“They stabbed me in Sasabe. I’m just warning you.”

“Sasabe, Sasabe, Sasabe! Two for one, two for one, two for one! Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” I climb into the passenger seat as the driver does his best to fill his van before leaving Altar. It’s the off-season for human smuggling, and he has to offer a discount—two humans smuggled for the price of one—in an attempt to fill up his van. He is very enthusiastic to have a gringo along for the ride—it’s a new twist on a usually boring workday. He drives this route dozens of times a week, bringing migrants to the border while also serving as the middleman between the migrants and the cartels. Before leaving Altar, he must report the number of migrants traveling in his van and pay the corresponding tax. A driver who underreports his passenger manifest can face deadly consequences.

Soon the van starts to fill up with five, 10, 15 migrants. They keep their eyes cast down to the ground and are reluctant to answer my questions. One man accuses me of being an undercover Border Patrol agent. He is unconvinced by my protestations that I am simply a journalist interested in collecting migrants’ stories.

The van is crowded now; people start to sweat and shift uneasily on the long metal benches that pass for seating. A short, gaunt man wearing crudely stitched sneakers and a baseball cap that features two fighting gamecocks climbs into the passenger seat next to me. He is the group’s guide. I introduce myself, though he is just as shy as his clients. The driver takes his seat behind the wheel, and we’re off. Less than five minutes after we leave town, we turn off a well-paved highway, and start down “the route of death” for Sasabe. The driver and the guide—once the driver empties his van at the border, the guide will take them into Arizona—both cross themselves.

Gradually, the guide starts to open up to me. He tells me that his name is Martin, that he is 23, and that this is his sixth time leading a group of migrants into the United States.

“I led my first group when I was 15. It was very easy. I didn’t have any problems. But in the last two to three years, there have been fewer customers, less money,” he tells me. “I’ve been doing this for eight years, and it used to be much easier. Today there is more Border Patrol in the area, which makes it harder, and more violence in the desert, which makes it more dangerous. Each year, we have to pay a higher tax to the narcos and be more careful about the routes we move through. You have to be very smart to be a guide these days. You have to know your routes, or you can get killed.”

As we talk, the van speeds through the desert, taking sharp turns at breakneck speed, flying over small sand dunes. The worn-out shocks make the ride very uncomfortable, though the driver grins with pleasure each time we bounce around. Maybe he is an adrenaline junkie, or maybe he is just trying to make his job interesting.

While chain-smoking a pack of Marlboro Reds, Martin continues to open up to me. He claims that he will earn only $1,000 for leading his group into the States.

“No one does this job because they can; they only do it because they have to. My dad taught me how to navigate the desert, but he died when I was 16. I have seven younger siblings, and it was my duty to try and help the family. I work in the U.S. to earn dollars, and I try to return to visit my family once a year. Every time I go back to the United States, I try and lead a group to make a little extra money.”

By now, we are deep in the desert, more than halfway to Sasabe. Vans returning to Altar pass us, their drivers flashing a series of hand signals. Our driver sits up straight in his seat, slowing the car. He turns to Martin and demands 70 pesos, a little more than $5. We’ve reached an army checkpoint, and a bribe is in order.

Our van stops next to a camouflaged Hummer. The driver leaves, disappearing for a few minutes with an army sergeant. A second soldier with a buzz cut, aviator glasses, and an automatic weapon slung across his shoulder climbs halfway into the driver’s seat and gives me a quizzical look.

“Where are you from?” he barks.

“Arizona,” I reply.

He isn’t quite sure what to make of my answer, and he stares at me for what seems significantly longer than the minute it probably was. Finally the sergeant reappears. The driver climbs back into the van, and we’re off again.

“He thought you were the guide,” chuckles Martin. “He couldn’t figure out what the fuck a white boy would be doing taking a bunch of Mexicans across the line. They are going to be trying to figure that out for a month.”

As Sasabe gets closer, signs of civilization start to materialize. We’ve been driving for just under two hours. Burned-out shells of cars litter the sides of the road. Stray dogs and pigs wander in front of our van. We pull out of the desert and back onto the highway. A few minutes more and we can see the border, the fence, and the bright lights that are the unmistakable sign of the U.S. Border Patrol. The driver pulls up next to a small bodega and unloads his cargo. It’s early afternoon, and the desert sun is still high. The migrants squat in what little shade is available, waiting for night to fall, for the temperature to drop, making movement possible.

The van turns around, and the driver and I stop at a liquor store to buy a case of beer for the road. We head back to Altar to load up again. Another day on the job, and a successful one at that.

Sacha Feinman is a freelance journalist born and raised in southern Arizona. This story was researched and reported under a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

(From Slate, daily magazine http://www.slate.com/)