From Mexico to Morocco: People Failed by the Globalized Economy

I was struck today by two glimpses into migrant life I encountered online: the first on the other side of the border, and the second on this side.

First, via Dan Kowalski, a new collaborative book from writer Charles Bowden and photojournalist Julián Cardona titled Exodus/Éxodo aims to "put a human face on the issue of illegal immigration." (I think one step in that direction would be to use the term "undocumented" instead of the Dobbs-approved "illegal" moniker.  We'll chalk this up to the publicist ...)

The photos, one of which I've grabbed for this post, are gripping.  From the book's introduction:

People ask, why do they come here? People say México has such low unemployment, so what is the problem? Consider this: you get up at 5 a.m. You live in a one-room shack and pay $59 a month in rent. Your address is on the outskirts of the world's second largest megalopolis, México City. You share this shack with your woman, a niece and your child. At 5:30 a.m. you're on the bus, a ninety-minute ride for $2.45 a day roundtrip. You work in a tortilla shop for $1.64 an hour, eleven hours a day, six days a week. A gallon of milk at the store, the electricity that lights your shack, the fuel running the bus, all these things cost more than in the United States. Basically, everything costs more than in the United States-except labor.

And there are other expenses. The water in the tap, should you even have running water, is not safe, so you must buy other water or drink soda. You never save a cent, and when someone in your family becomes ill, you cannot afford medicine. You have essentially no education because after junior high you must pay for books and schooling and so, depending upon your circumstances, you quit school sometime between age twelve and fifteen. You will earn in a year less than six grand and almost everyone in your country lives the same way-or not as well. You will never take a vacation. Or see any future that is different from all the days you have known. But someone, a brother, a cousin, a friend will go to the United States and you will hear of life there.

Mexican civilization existed before the American people were even a thought. Americans have come to the game very recently, and like so many new arrivals believe they possess all the answers. At the moment, human beings are moving all over the planet to save their hides. Things have been upended, the moon rises at a strange hour, it is blood red, and dripping with hunger.

I like this imagery.  The thing is, though, humans have always moved to save their hides.  That is how Mexico was likely populated all those millennia back, before the Anglos migrated to the Eastern Seaboard to save their hides.

$6,000 a year doesn't sound like much when you're paying higher-than-U.S. prices for goods and services.

Our second vignette comes from the Tavis Smiley show, by way of Juli at Dream Act Texas.  Tavis introduces his guests:

Rinku Sen is president and executive director of the Applied Research Center and the publisher of "Color Lines" magazine. Fekkak Mamdouh is a restaurant union organizer who this year co-founded the country's first national restaurant workers' organization. The group is called Restaurant Opportunities Center United. The two of them have teamed up for the new book, "The Accidental American: Immigration and Citizenship in the Age of Globalization." I'm glad to have you both here.

. . .

Sen: Well, one of the things that happens is that we make immigration policy as though we're trying to preserve some kind of pure or natural American identity - something that got set up in 1776 and hasn't been changed in the 200-some years since then. And we argue that there is no such thing; that American culture has been changed many times through its history, often from people inside of the culture, and also by people who are outside of the culture to whom Americans became exposed and who influenced the way that we listen to music or the foot that we eat or even the way we do our politics.

Tavis: With regard to how the book is written, the storyline here, the narrative, weaves in discussion of policy with Mamdouh's personal story. You got these two things that are being woven together from the front to the back of the book. Why was that important, and how does his personal immigrant story augment the kind of narrative that you think it's important for us as Americans to understand in this debate - does that make sense?

Sen: Yeah. I think that people are pretty confused by the immigration debate. They don't really know what the laws are and how they actually affect human beings. And what you got to see in Mamdouh's story is how he starts out organizing immigrants who are of color, working in kitchens and at the back of the house in restaurants, and gradually in six years how that community grows and grows and grows until it includes everybody.

It includes U.S.-born workers who are working at the front of the house, it includes employers who are trying to do the right thing, and it includes diners who want to get a decent meal in New York without exploiting anyone. And at the same time, we track what happens to immigration reform in Congress in that same period, and in contrast to this beautifully expanding community that Mamdouh is building, in Congress the idea of who belongs in America gets narrower and narrower in that six years, and meaner.

. . .

Mamdouh: . . . I come from Morocco, and why I come here, because I was really poor and I cannot afford to live the life that everybody living in Third World country, so I managed to come here. And when I come here, like every immigrant, we start in low jobs.

So I start working as a delivery boy, even I have a degree in physic and chemical. And all immigrant, they come, they're driving taxi and they are doctors in New York, because where we come from. We don't get the help that other people get when they come here. So start working in restaurant and very quick I was moved from delivery boy to busboy to waiter, and they moved me very fast because I speak French.

Other immigrants and people of color does work as busers and dishwashers stay for life there because nobody help them and because of the look. They want pretty face - blue eyes, white skin - to be serving, and all the rest doing the hot job in the back.

And the difference between the back of the house and the front, the back will make up, like, $25,000, $30,000, and the front, in good places, you make $60,000 up to 80, to 100, to $120,000 where it's a livable job, but it's not given to people of color and immigrants.

This wasn't working for Mamdouh, so he decided to do something about it.

ROC-United is helping to start ROC branches around the country based on the experience of the ROC-NY model. Since its founding after 9/11, ROC-NY has successfully conducted restaurant workplace justice campaigns, provided job training and placement, opened its own cooperative restaurant, and conducted research and policy work. Although initially founded after September 11th, 2001 to provide support to restaurant workers displaced as a result of the World Trade Center tragedy, ROC-NY has grown to support restaurant workers all over New York City and advocate for improved working conditions. Over the last five years, we have won eight workplace justice campaigns against exploitative high-profile restaurant companies, obtaining $580,000 and improvements in workplace policies for restaurant workers. We have also trained more than 1000 restaurant workers to find good jobs and advance within the industry, published two ground-breaking reports on the restaurant industry, played an instrumental role in winning a statewide minimum wage increase for tipped workers, organized 40 restaurant workers to open their own cooperatively-owned restaurant, and grown to include 2300 restaurant workers in our membership.

. . .

The ROC model involves ‘surrounding the industry' - a tri-pronged approach to building power for restaurant workers. ROC simultaneously 1) conducts comprehensive research and policy work to raise consciousness and lift standards for workers in the industry; 2) organizes workers through our '11-step' method to combine litigation, organizing, clergy involvement, and consumer boycotts to win workplace policy improvements in ‘low-road' restaurant companies; and 3) promotes ‘high-road' restaurant owners that pay and treat their workers well.

Exodus/Éxodo and The Accidental American: two books that are going on my "to-read" list!

More on Mamdouh's story here.