Portside

The migrant crisis in the Mediterranean has captured the global spotlight. The EU response has focused on enforcement and a crackdown on traffickers. Some European political leaders propose using their navies to stop boats, returning the refuge-seekers to their points of origin, and then sinking the craft. This enforcement-based approach ignores the primary drives of migration but also jeopardizes millions of people who are seeking refuge from repressive regimes.

Justice for Janitors posting response: Many of the janitors and leaders who fought in Century City were the Central American immigrants coming into LA from the wars. Their experience in their home countries was very important in their willingness to fight, and the use of the tactics of mass demonstrations and even CD in the street. They’re one of the best examples of the way migration, for all the pain it causes migrants, has benefited our labor movement enormously.

Many of the janitors and leaders who fought in Century City were the Central American immigrants coming into LA from the wars. Their experience in their home countries was very important in their willingness to fight, and the use of the tactics of mass demonstrations and even CD in the street. They're one of the best examples of the way migration, for all the pain it causes migrants, has benefited our labor movement enormously.

Hundreds marched to the Los Angeles City Council last October, to support a resolution supporting a farm worker union fight. Hardly anyone had heard of the company involved. Gerawan Farming, one of the country's largest growers, with 5,000 people picking grapes and peaches, is challenging the California law that makes farm workers' union rights enforceable. Lining up behind Gerawan are national anti-union think tanks. A local struggle now has much higher stakes.

In an escalating dispute with President Obama, Republican in the United States House of Representatives passed a bill to cut any funding to the Department of Homeland Security for suspending the deportation of undocumented people. This bill rescinds Obama's 2014 orders for DHS to defer the deportation of undocumented immigrants with US-born children (who are US citizens) as well as suspend the deportation of undocumented young people brought to US as children.

U.S. trade and immigration policy are linked. They are part of a single system, not separate and independent policies. Since NAFTA’s passage in 1993, the U.S. Congress has debated and passed several new trade agreements—with Peru, Jordan, Chile, and the Central American Free Trade Agreement. At the same time, Congress has debated immigration policy as though those trade agreements bore no relationship to the waves of displaced people migrating to the U.S.,...

A Book Review of Unsettled/Desasosiego: Children in a World of Gangs, Photographs by Donna De Cesare; University of Texas Press, 2013 Donna De Cesare spent two decades taking photographs of Salvadoran young people, documenting the impact of violence on their lives. Her work is as far from media stereotype as one can get. She clearly loves the Salvadoran people whose lives have intersected her own, and her involvement with and commitment to them extends over many years.

The Great Recession may be over, but every night people are sleeping on benches or in makeshift shelters. Here are a few of their stories.

‘Lax enforcement’ is not the culprit—U.S. trade and immigration policies are. The failure of Central America's economies is largely due to the North American and Central American Free Trade Agreements and their accompanying economic changes.

Under the Fourth Amendment, the people of the United States are not supposed to be subject to random and arbitrary stops and searches. But within 100 miles of a U.S. border, these rules don't apply.