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Migrants
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Written by New York Times
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Sunday, 05 September 2010 12:08 |
(Below is also the statement of the International Migrants Alliance)
(From The New York Times)
August 29, 2010
Massacre in Tamaulipas
The full story of the massacre in Tamaulipas, in northeast Mexico, awaits telling by its one survivor. The early news accounts are horrifying: 72 people, said to be migrants from Central and South America on their way to the United States, are waylaid and imprisoned by drug smugglers on a ranch 100 miles south of Texas. They refuse to pay extortion fees and are executed. The survivor, shot in the neck, hears their screams for mercy as he flees. After a gun battle with the authorities, the killers escape in S.U.V.’s. The dead, 58 men and 14 women, are found piled in a room, discarded contraband.
The temptation may be to write this atrocity off as another ugly footnote in Mexico’s vicious drug war. But such things do not exist in isolation. Mexico’s drug cartels are nourished from outside, by American cash, heavy weapons and addiction; the northward pull of immigrants is fueled by our demand for low-wage labor.
Drug cartels, opportunistic capitalists, have leaped into the business of smuggling people. Illegal immigrants, known as pollos, or chickens, are in some ways better than cocaine bricks because they can be forced to pay ransom and be drug mules.
The American response to Mexico’s agonies has mostly been a heightened fixation on militarizing the border — most recently, a $600 million bill offered by Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, and signed by President Obama. Enforcement without any overhaul of legal migration creates only the illusion of control. Without a system tied to labor demand, illegality, disorder and death proliferate.
Current temporary-worker programs are so cumbersome and bureaucratic they are almost unusable by employers. Unable to enter legally, and locked out of Texas and California by stringent border security, immigrants skirt the fence ever farther into the remote Arizona desert. Illegal crossings are down in the bad economy, but deaths this brutal summer are up. The pull of opportunity still beckons.
We have delegated to drug lords the job of managing our immigrant supply, just as they manage our supply of narcotics. The results are clear.
August 25, 2010
Victims of Massacre in Mexico Said to Be Migrants
MEXICO CITY — The bullet-pocked bodies of 72 people, believed to be migrants heading to the United States who resisted demands for money, have been found in a large room on a ranch in an area of northeast Mexico with surging violence, the authorities said Wednesday. Initial reports after the victims were found Tuesday suggested that the mass of bodies was the largest of several dumping grounds, often with dozens of dead, discovered in recent months and attributed to the violence of the drug business.
But if the victims, found after a raid on a ranch in Tamaulipas State by Mexican naval units, are confirmed as migrants, their killings would provide a sharp reminder of the violence in human smuggling as well.
It was not clear if the victims, from Central and South America, were shot all at once. The police were relying on a harrowing but sketchy account from a wounded survivor, published by the newspaper Reforma and confirmed by government officials, who said several people were killed in short order after the migrants refused to pay or cooperate with the gunmen.
A law enforcement official said all were found in a large room, some sitting, some piled atop one another.
Alejandro Poiré, the government’s spokesman for security issues, said that though the investigation was just beginning, the killings seemed to be an outgrowth of pressure on drug gangs by a government crackdown.
“This act confirms that criminal organizations are looking to kidnapping and extortion because they are going through a difficult time obtaining resources and recruiting people willingly,” Mr. Poiré told reporters here.
United States law enforcement officials have warned that drug trafficking groups have increasingly moved into the lucrative business of human smuggling, extorting fees from migrants for safe passage across the border and sometimes forcing them to carry bundles of drugs. Smugglers are also known to rob, kidnap and sometimes kill migrants on both sides of the border.
The unidentified survivor, an Ecuadorean traveling with people from Ecuador, Brazil, Honduras and El Salvador, told investigators that the migrants had entered Mexico from the south and that they were making their way to Texas when they were confronted by the gunmen in San Fernando, about 100 miles south of Brownsville, Tex.
In a statement to the police, he said the leaders of the armed group had tried to extort fees from them and, when the migrants resisted, ordered their gunmen to open fire.
Wounded in the neck by the gunfire, the survivor heard screams and pleas for mercy. Once the men retreated, the witness said, he ran from the ranch where they were being held Monday and found a military checkpoint.
The military units reached the ranch on Tuesday and engaged in a firefight in which one marine and three suspects were killed. One Mexican, a minor, was taken into custody.
The authorities said 58 men and 14 women had been killed in the room by the gunmen. It was unclear how long they had been dead or detained.
The discovery of the bodies was the largest of at least three such finds this year. In May, 55 bodies were pulled from an abandoned mine south of Mexico City, and in July, 51 bodies were discovered in a field near Monterrey, an industrial and commercial hub in northeast Mexico that had been relatively quiet until this year. A shootout last week in Monterrey outside the American School Foundation, a private school popular with American expatriates and Mexican business executives, prompted the United States Consulate to advise families to keep their children home pending an assessment of security at the school.
More than 28,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderón began a crackdown on organized crime in 2006. In a meeting with mayors on Wednesday, Mr. Calderón said, “We’re in the middle of a criminal spiral that we have to cut.”
“I don’t know of any crime that isn’t organized,” Mr. Calderón said. “They are all very organized, and much more than the police.”
Antonio Betancourt contributed reporting.
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Justice for the 72 Murdered Migrants in Mexico!
Statement of the International Migrants Alliance on the August 24, 2010 Massacre of 72 Undocumented Migrants in Tamaulipas, Mexico
August 31, 2010
The International Migrants Alliance condemns in the strongest possible terms the massacre of 72 undocumented migrants in Mexico last August 24, 2010.
We demand that justice should be given to them with the perpetrators prosecuted and punished.
Found with hands bound behind their backs and shot in the head in the Gulf coast state of Tamaulipas, these 72 migrants from Honduras, Ecuador, El Salvador and Brazil were rounded up, intimidated and being extorted from by drug traffickers before they were all summarily executed.
The fate of the 72 undocumented migrants, 14 of whom were women, is just one of the many cases of abuses committed against migrants, especially the undocumented. Already, the National Human Rights Commission of the Mexican Government has reportedly received 10,000 cases of migrant kidnappings in the first half of 2010 in Mexico.
Despite these reports, not a single case has been resolved by the Mexican government as thousands of migrants are subjected to physical and sexual abuse, torture, trafficking and prostitution, harassment and intimidation, and enforced disappearance. Until now, not a single case has been resolved as the Mexican police, military and some government officials are allegedly involved in many of these cases.
This epidemic of abuse and violence that the migrants are subjected to is brought about and further aggravated by the Mexican government’s policy to criminalize the undocumented migrants in the name of national security and campaign against drug trafficking.
The migrants’ ordeal does not stop even if they have gone past the highly-militarized US-Mexico border. The U.S. government’s campaign to criminalize and crack down on undocumented migrants is as rabid if not more vicious than that of the Mexico government’s.
We cannot help but ask: is this how the Mexican government paves the way for the 4th Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) happening in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico this November? Is this how the Mexican government and the GFMD aim to address the growing international call to stop criminalization of undocumented migrants? The GFMD has proven in its past three assemblies to be a forum that is detrimental to the interests of migrants. It and its policies should be exposed and opposed at all times.
What happened to the 72 undocumented migrants should not happen again.
The IMA demands the Mexican government to uphold justice for the 72 victims by launching an immediate and thorough investigation of this gruesome crime and punishing the main culprits. We likewise call on the governments of Honduras, Ecuador, El Salvador and Brazil in not only closely monitoring the investigation but help in resolving the case. All these governments should likewise compensate the families of the victims.
We also call on the Mexican government to renege on its oppressive anti-migrant campaign and instead institute programs that will concretely resolve the urgent issues of migrants in the country.
As we demand to answer the root causes of why these migrants are forced to leave their families and home countries, the criminalization and crackdown of undocumented migrants should be immediately stopped.
Reference:
Eni Lestari, chairperson (852-9608-1475)
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Statements
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Written by MIGRANTE Europe
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Friday, 06 August 2010 18:35 |
Regardless of who sits in government in the Philippines, the continuing migration of Filipinos abroad is the best proof that hunger, poverty, unemployment and social insecurity remain unsolved and continue to worsen and ravage the Philippine population.
The progressive movement of Filipinos overseas has always upheld that genuine land reform and national industrialization are the essential solutions to stop the exodus of Filipinos overseas.
More than 10 percent of the more than 100 million Filipinos have been forced to look for means of survival in other countries because their own government cannot provide them basic job opportunities. They leave their families behind, gamble with their small savings to government-sanctioned illegal recruiters and human traffickers to be able to go abroad by hook or by crook, and once abroad, they are abused and exploited, neglected, heavily taxed and made “milking cows” by their own government.
They have been proclaimed the “new heroes” simply because of the remittances they bring into the country paid for literally by their blood, sweat and tears. These remittances fuel the bankrupt Philippine economy, pay the salaries of government bureaucrats, line the pockets of foreign big business, and used to finance the Philippine government's war against its own people.
This state of the Filipino migrants has not changed since the Marcos government, and several Philippine presidents after. In fact, their situation has worsened. You can now find desperate Filipinos working for slave-like wages and conditions in almost 126 countries, including war-torn Iraq and Aghanistan.
Filipino migrants and their families left behind are tired of political rhetorics. Ninety nine percent of them want to go back home and be reunited with their families. But until any sitting government implements genuine land reform and national industrialization, no amount of public relations rhetorics could spark any single hope for any meaningful change.
In the short term, we strongly urge the Aquino administration to address the 10-point 'Migrants Challenge' :
1) Scrap the OWWA Omnibus Policies
2) Scrap the ban on direct hiring
3) Scrap the POEA (Philippine Overseas Employment Administration) Guidelines
4) Reduce the cost of passports overseas to the amount similar to the cost in the Philippines
5) OECs (Overseas Employment Certificate) should be given free of charge
6) Reduce the cost of employment contract processing, remove the authentication fee
7) Provide free medical and legal services on site
8) Release the COMELEC (Commission on Elections) Voter’s ID
9) Stop overcharging/illegal collection of recruitment agencies
10) No examination fee for teachers, nurses and midwives abroad
This is our message today on President Nonoy Aquino's first state of the nation.
MIGRANTE- Europe
26 July 2010
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Postbus 15687, 1001 ND Amsterdam |
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Migrants
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Written by JANESS ANN J. ELLAO
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Friday, 26 June 2009 00:00 |
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MANILA – Merlinda Aquino, 40, has been contacting the Philippine embassy in Riyadh for help. She wanted to escape from her project manager who has been verbally abusing her and return home to the Philippines. But instead of a rescue plan, Welfare Officer Nestor Burayag gave Aquino a choice between enduring her oppressive situation or risking her life.
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Migrants
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Written by JANESS ANN J. ELLAO
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Saturday, 03 July 2010 00:00 |
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MANILA – President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III promised, during his campaign, he would make sure that overseas Filipino workers (OFWs)would no longer need to work abroad by generating enough local jobs. In the meantime, Aquino said during his inaugural address, “inaatasan ko ang mga kawani ng DFA, POEA, OWWA at iba pang mga kinauukulang ahensiya na mas lalo pang paigtingin ang pagtugon sa mga hinaing at pangangailangan ng ating mga overseas Filipino workers.” (I am ordering the officials of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, Overseas Workers Welfare Administration and other pertinent agencies to intensify its response to the needs of our overseas Filipino workers.)
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Migrants
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Written by JANESS ANN J. ELLAO
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Saturday, 17 July 2010 00:00 |
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MANILA — The Khandera Bridge in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has provided shelter to many stranded overseas Filipino workers. But since Saudi police barricaded it from migrant workers, OFWs have found a new home in the Philippine Consulate General in Saudi Arabia — but only outside its building.
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Homefront
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Written by Dr. Romulo A. Virola, Philippine Daily Inquirer
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Sunday, 11 July 2010 15:54 |
MANILA, Philippines—Who are the rich? Are they the ones who go to Belo for specialized services? Driving a Lexus, BMW and the like? How rich is rich? Do they also eat galunggong (round scad) and NFA rice like most of us? And do they pay taxes? How much?
In 2010, to be counted in the high-income class, a family should earn at least P 2,393,126 a year or P199,927 a month compared to P2,000,073 a year or P166,673 a month in 2006! (See Table 1.)
Dwindling
In 2006, the rich numbered 19,738 families or 0.1 percent of the estimated 17,403,483 families in the country. Just like the middle-income class, the rich in our society have been dwindling, from 0.3 percent in 2000 (51,160 families) and 0.2 percent in 2003 (25,849 families). Kawawa naman sila! (See Table 2.)
It would have not been so bad if the decrease in the share of the high-income class families actually translated to an expansion of the middle-income class. However, as pointed out in the past, only the share of the low-income class families, consistently expanded between 2000 and 2006! (See Table 2.) Bakit ganon?
In current prices, the average monthly income of high-income class families was P194,965 in 2006 up by seven percent from P181,504 in 2003 but still lower by eight percent than the level of P211,579 in 2000.
President won’t qualify
Assuming the income of the rich grows at the same rate as the CPI inflation, their average monthly income in 2010 would amount to about P235,155. Based on salary alone, even the President of the Philippines would not qualify!
On the other hand, the average monthly expenditures of the rich consistently increased from P78,475 in 2000 to P96,807 in 2003 and P114,035 in 2006. In fact, from 2000 to 2006 the average monthly spending of all families, regardless of income class, increased faster than their average income.
It may be noticed, however, that the increase in spending of the rich decelerated from 23 percent during the period 2000 to 2003 to 18 percent between 2003 and 2006, while that of the middle-income and the low-income classes accelerated. So after their income went down between 2000 and 2003, natuto ring magtipid pati mga mayayaman!
Income gap narrowing
The income difference between the high-income class and the rest of society has been narrowing! In 2006, the average income of the rich was about 6.4 times that of the middle-income class and about 26.0 times that of the low-income class, down from 9.4 times and 36.7 times, respectively, in 2000 and 7.2 times and 28.6 times, respectively, in 2003!
It may be noted that this is in consonance with the findings of my earlier article that growth had been propoor between 2000 and 2003!
In terms of difference in expenditure, the situation has not changed much, and as may be expected, is lower than in the case for income. In 2006, the rich spent about 4.6 times and 16.5 times the amount spent by the middle-income class and the low-income class, respectively.
Are the rich getting richer?
The savings ratio of the high-income families decreased from 50 percent in 2003 to 47 percent in 2006. For the middle-income class, the savings ratio remained at 20 percent from 2003 to 2006 while for the low-income class families, it went down from 4 percent to 2 percent.
We do not know how it feels to save close to 50 percent of our income, but let us try to look more closely on how rich families spend. Saan ba napupunta ang limpak limpak na salapi ng mga rich?
From 2000 to 2006, the high-income families spent about 75 percent of their total expenditures on basic needs compared to about 85 percent among the middle-income class and 90 percent among the low-income class.
And how do the rich spend on “basic” expenditures?
It may be expected that the biggest share of expenditures would go to food. Indeed this was so in 2006 when the high-income families spent close to 30 percent on food while the middle-income spent at least 40 percent and the low-income close to 60 percent.
Rental
In 2000 and 2003, while the middle-income class and the low-income class also spent the most on food, the high-income families spent relatively more for rental (imputed value when owned) of their occupied dwelling units.
Could this be because in the earlier years, the rental cost of living in mansions and first-class condominiums was higher compared to 2006 after real estate had boomed with double-digit growth in gross value added resulting in the decline of rental values?
Across all income groups, the Top 4 basic expenditure items in 2006 were food, rent/rental value of occupied dwelling units, transportation and communication, and fuel, light and water.
For all families combined, education ranked sixth, but for the low-income class, education only ranked seventh. Indeed, if we are to inject new vigor to our human capital, subsidy for the education of our poor is a must!
B-day, wedding, baptism
For the nonbasic expenditures, high on the list across all families in 2006 were expenditures on special family occasions like birthday, wedding and baptismal parties, other expenditures, which include life insurance and retirement premiums as well as interest payments on loans and durable furnishings.
But of course! Studies by the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) have shown that the most important source of happiness for many Pinoys is the family!
Rounding up the Top 4 among the high-income and middle-income classes were taxes (isn’t that nice to know?) while for the low-income class, unfortunately, it was tobacco!
In terms of levels of expenditures by expenditure item:
In 2006, the average monthly food expenditure of a high-income class family was P21,184; this was 2.4 and 5.7 times the amount spent by middle-income (P 8,702) and low-income class families (P3,687), respectively! Ano kayang kakaiba sa mga kinakain ng mga high-income families?
For transportation and communication, high-income class families were spending, on the average, P12,694 per month while middle-and low-income families spent P2,212 and P305, respectively, in 2006! Malaki siguro ang matitipid nila kung matututo silang mag MRT o pedicab!
For fuel, light and water, high-income families were spending P6,175 monthly, which is 3.3 times and 12.7 times more than what were spent by middle-income (P1,865) and low-income families (P485), respectively, in 2006!
And do the rich engage in conspicuous consumption of non-basic commodities? Do they pay taxes? The Family Income and Expenditures Survey (FIES) data available to the public may not be able to provide all the answers but here are some.
In 2006, the high-income families spent, on the average, P9,583 monthly on durable furnishing, which is 9.6 and 33.8 times what the middle-income (P1,000) and low-income (P283) families spent!
Low tax payments
But while the proportionate share of expenditures of the high-income class that goes to taxes is relatively high, the median amount of taxes paid by these families is low! The amount of monthly taxes paid by the rich amounted to only P1,803 in 2006, P6,269 in 2003 and P4,682 in 2000.
On an annual basis the tax payments amounted to P21,634 in 2006, P75,226 in 2003 and P56,182 in 2000. This low median amount of taxes paid indicates a low level of tax collection from the high-income class! Indeed, managing the budget deficit may be better addressed through more effective implementation of existing tax laws than by imposing new ones!
Gifts
However, it is also worth noting that in 2006, our high-income families spent P2,800 monthly on gifts and contributions, up from P767 in 2000 and more than double the P1,300 in 2003.
This includes gifts and assistance to private individuals outside the family, contributions to church and religious institutions, and contributions and donations to other institutions.
The grouchy may consider this a pittance, but it must indicate the growing conscientization of the rich! Don’t you agree Doña Buding? Kc, d lhat ng myaman ay k2lad ni Wuwa!
Talking about conscientization, if the rich families sampled in the FIES would tithe their savings toward poverty reduction, the family with median savings among the rich would be able to deliver five families from poverty.
As mentioned earlier, not only will we look at the income and expenditure of high-income class families, we shall also try to describe their socioeconomic characteristics.
Predictors of income
Three predictors of income were found to be consistently significant for the high-income class for 2000, 2003 and 2006:
o Household head working as corporate executives, managers, managing proprietors, supervisors, officials of government and special interest organizations;
o Owns at least three air conditioning units; and
o Owns at least three cars/vehicles.
Sa mga naghahangad na maging “June bride” or “June bridegroom” with a “good catch,” dapat alam nyo na kung sino ang hahanapin!
Six other variables had positive effect on income in some but not for all three years:
Household head is a college graduate;
Household head has a postgraduate degree;
Number of employed household members is greater than three;
Ownership of a house;
Household head is an employer in his own family-operated farm or business; and
Household living in an urban area.
We are almost sure that aside from the NSCB, many are now waiting for the results of the 2009 FIES not only so that the NSCB can release updated statistics on the country’s low-, middle- and high-income families, but also for us to know what happened to the poverty situation in 2009—after the global financial crisis!
Meantime, we are currently undertaking a study to improve the methodology on the identification of the low-, middle- and high-income class families which will be presented in the 11th National Convention on Statistics on Oct. 4 and 5.
Hopefully, our efforts will be useful in designing programs that will better target the marginalized ... and narrow the gap between the poor and the rich! (07/03/2010)
(Dr. Romulo A. Virola is the secretary general of the National Statistical Coordination Board [NSCB]. He holds a Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, USA. This article, which appeared in Virola’s column “Statistically Speaking” on the NSCB website, was cowritten by Jessamyn O. Encarnacion and Mechelle Viernes, OIC-director and statistical coordination officer II of the NSCB, respectively.) |
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