Immigration to USA: Does It Benefit El Salvador?

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Excellent feature on immigrants, "Crossing Into The Void" [11/20/08].

Especially appreciated is that legal and illegal immigrants are mixed together.

Omar from El Salvador should have been a legal immigrant since he came in 1991, but a year later he would have been illegal. This shows how arbitrary it is! There is another perspective, that of the progressive community in the countries of origin of the immigrants. When I was in Central America last year I met with FMLN, FSLN, labor and community leaders about immigration and other concerns as a member of a Veterans For Peace delegacion. The leaders and community members think immigration is damaging thier communities and electoral process in several ways. Firstly it divides families. Whether it is an individual or a couple that leave to work in the USA, the Latino family is larger than that. Also of concern is that it is sometimes the activist who leaves, leaving the community without his or her energy. Secondly when the immigrant sends remittances home, the family often moves out of the cooperative community because the usual agreement in the FMLN and FSLN cooperatives is that people share resources -- from each according to ability to each according to need. If the family does not want to share the new wealth they move into the suburbs of San Salvador. I lived there awhile and met some. Thirdly, the peasants that leave for the USA cannot vote in the elections and so it reduces the electorate for the peasants or underclass if you prefer that term.

Labor and cooperative leaders made it clear that NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT in combination with US farm subsidies and US foreign aid had damaged the small agriculture culture and accelerated immigration. They would like to see a renegotiation of those trade pacts and an end to subsidized product so that their citizens do not have to immigrate to the USA.

I will return to El Salvador next month as an election observer and will stay January through March....see http://www.cis-elsalvador.org/election_observers.htm

Written in Nicaragua on Semana Santa 2007:

Today there was a procession in Totogalpa, led by the figure of Jesus with Mary and several hundred of the faithful. There was dirt art....like sidewalk art but they don´t have sidewalks so they use moistened colored sawdust and make elaborate figures on top of the dust. I am not religious but a genuine display of devotion by the humbly faithful is always impressive. I have just two days left in Totogalpa and I have been spending some time in the kitchen here....good practice for Spanish. The kitchen is all wood burning, with adobe stove and a large adobe oven of the round sort. Water is piped into the houses but they have no sewer system...don´t have the water for it. The family here boils the city water instead of buying bottled water. I have learned that there are good things about latrines (pit toilets). With only one latrine for the family of a dozen, it is seldom occupied. Noone primps in front of the mirror (there is none) and noone reads or smokes in a latrine...business only.

In the republican plan to solve the illegal immigration problem, Bechtel makes millions and in the democratic plan, Tyson and other corporate predators continue to profit. How about a real solution to immigration and global warming as well? I have been an eyewitness to communities organizing in El Salvador and Nicaragua that are making the transition from export economy and remittances to sustainable communities for the future....from a hand to mouth existance to long term stewardship of the land. Former guerilla and present FMLN leader Rene in Cinquera, El Salvador, stressed the importance of planting the corn fields with fruit trees and shrubs and inteplanting with beans. He and his comrades also showed us the effort to restore a local watershed where the FMLN radio station had been located to its natural state and begin ecotourism there.

Nicaragua is focused on natural preserves and ecotourism. The true record will show that they have preserved much more than has Costa Rica. The preserves are nearly unaccessable now, but that may be a good thing. Coffee cooperatives like Cecofafen and Soppexcca (www.soppexcca.org) interplant coffee and trees in small plots in cooperation. They offer ecotourism trips and stays with small farmers (where you, too, can learn about latrines and chickens). Coffee may not be ideal, but it thrives in marginal soil on steep slopes in the shade of trees without chemical input. Maybe it will be replaced eventually by an oil biodiesel plant, but for the time being it is helping to sustain some communities that are working toward permaculture ideals.

Export economies and remittances are not the ideal that the Sandinistas or FMLÑ had fought for, but the World Bank, IMF, GATT and CAFTA push them that way. The USA threatened to cut off remittances to El Salvador if the FMLN won the last election, and it worked. We should all consider dropping the term developing nation, since it is only used in the context of developing countries into export economies. Can you think of a term that would express the hope that they would develop in localized communities, with what Aristide referred to as poverty with dignity?

An intelligent reader responded to a previous posting about illegal immigration saying that she had believed that anyone who wanted to better their life should be able to. I submit that most of the illegal immigrants do not have a better life in the USA. Here in Nicaragua it is seen as a real sacrifice to go to the USA and send remittances back to the family. They live in crowded circumstances estranged from their friends and families and spend very little of what they earn. The remittances, El Salvador´s number one national product and Mexico´s number two after oil, create a two tier system among the poor and divide them. Families that recieve remittances do not join the cooperatives and often vote for the right (as they did in El Salvador).

I have heard this from several sources, including Rene and an economist who addressed us in San Salvador.

Cooperatives like Coop Nuevo Vida in Managua are the ultimate organized union. They are locally owned by the workers and have relationships with the farming cooperatives. They can buy their fibers directly from the small farmers and they make the rolls of cloth and the shirts and hats. I will find out more next week about thier capacity to affix graphics. Since CAFTA took effect last year, central america has lost tens of thousands of garment worker jobs in the maquilidores, and many of those workers now work in sweatshops in the USA.

We can address the problem of illegal immigration while we build unions and communities by buying from the cooperatives and supporting mindful development in central america and elsewhere!

By localizing, this will also help alleviate global warming. Lane Anderson

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