December 18

An international campaign by Canadian labour activists has persuaded the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and a major Canadian employer association to stop demanding a $400 deposit from more than 4,000 temporary Guatemalan farm workers employed mainly in Quebec.

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Activists in Latin America have been galvanised by atrocities like the recent massacre of 72 migrants near the U.S. border to step up their efforts on behalf of migrant rights.

"We want to create a common front among non-governmental organisations (NGOs), migrant shelters, and rights defenders to create a system that helps migrants identify the most dangerous areas and understand the way organised crime groups operate, so they can avoid them," Mexican activist Rubén Figueroa told IPS.

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ENAR and anti-racist NGOs are organising an EU-wide protest against France's xenophobic policies on 4 September 2010 in several European cities.

Read the press release here

Click here for more information about demonstrations organised across Europe

Relations Referenced contacts:  ENAR - European Network Against Racism Files

Domestic workers gathered at the foot of the Harriet Tubman memorial in Harlem today to celebrate New York’s groundbreaking domestic workers legislation, which the governor signed into law at a nearby community center. Deloris Wright told the crowd of fellow domestic workers, supporters, and reporters, “Today is about generations of domestic workers that came before and those who are still to come.”

Wright is a member of Domestic Workers United (DWU), the organization that spearheaded the legislation.

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Employment statistics released last week in the United Kingdom have provided an immigration bonanza for the rightwing press. This short paper attempts to disentangle the statistics from the interpretation, and to explore how this story came to take the shape it has. By doing so, it aims to draw a few lessons for policy.

Relations Referenced contacts:  IPPR - Institute for Public Policy Research Files ImmigrationandemploymentAug10.pdf

Over recent weeks, France has pushed forward with implementing a policy that targets Roma and travellers, both migrants and citizens, consisting of shutting down Roma and travellers' camps and deporting migrants.

Relations Referenced contacts:  UNITED - UNITED for Intercultural Action Files

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GENEVA -- The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Friday strongly condemned the killing of 72 migrants in the North of Mexico. “I am deeply shocked about these killings, which highlight the critical situation of migrants in the country,” she said.

According to government reports, on 24 August the Mexican Navy discovered a site which contained 72 corpses, including 14 women, who had apparently been executed by members of organized crime.  The victims were reported to be undocumented migrants from Central and South America.    

Relations Referenced contacts:  OHCHR - Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights Files

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Chicago, IL – On Wednesday August 24, 2010, news began to come out about one of the worst massacres ever occurred in Mexico, near the border with Brownsville, TX. According to news reports, the 72 bodies discovered were all Latin American migrants, mostly from El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador and Brazil. In response to this abhorrent and sad news, leaders of the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities (NALACC), the largest umbrella organization of Latin American and Caribbean immigrants in the U.S., issued the following statement

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BANGKOK, Aug 25, 2010 (IPS) - "My male employer was a womaniser and he liked to touch me and told me not to tell his wife. I felt so uncomfortable," says Chompoo, who was just 15 years old when she served – and suffered abuse – as a domestic worker here in the Thai capital.

"So I told my mom that I don’t want to work in this house anymore and I quit without salary," says Chompoo, who originates from Tavoy, a south- eastern city in Burma.

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Canada’s largest private-sector union, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW Canada), has launched – in collaboration with the Agriculture Workers Alliance (AWA) – a major campaign to denounce the systematic abuse and violation of the rights of Guatemalan farm workers who come to Canada through the Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP).

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Two persons senseless attacked on the first day of Ramadan, a month normally of solidarity and tolerance

 

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EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Paris has invited a handful of member states to an 'immigration' summit next month, amid strong controversy stirred by its high-profile deportation of scores of Roma back to Romania and Bulgaria.

The meeting is to take place in Paris on 6 September and is supposed to deal with the "general topic of immigration", EUobserver has learned.

The list of invitees includes interior ministers from Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK and Greece. The Canadians have also been invited, while the Belgian EU presidency was added to the list as an afterthought.

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In close collaboration with partners within International and Mexican Working Groups, MRI is honored once again to co-organize the People's Global Action on Migration, Development and Human Rights (PGA) -- an independent civil society response and alternative space which seeks to foster more inclusive, transparent and autonomous forms of participation from key sectors of civil society, in particular migrant organizations, trade unions, human rights advocates, trade and development networks, progressive academia, media etc.

Relations Referenced contacts:  Migrants Rights International Files

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In March 2010, Costa Rica passed new legislation providing greater protection for migrant workers. Much remains to be done, however, to ensure full respect for the exercise of their trade union rights. The ITUC-backed Trade Union Centre for Migrants, linked to the bilateral trade union cooperation agreement with Nicaragua, provides training and legal assistance. Progress is being made with the unionisation of migrant workers, especially in the retail, agricultural and domestic work sectors.

Relations Referenced contacts:  ITUC - International Trade Union Confederation Files

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President Obama today signed a bill authorizing an additional $600 million to increase border security, strengthening a deadly border militarization strategy. It is a move that pro-migrant groups say will undoubtedly increase the number of migrants who die at the U.S.-Mexico border. They critique the bill which, they say, "contributes nothing to ensuring the safety and rights of migrants and border communities."

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