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Group URL: http://groups.myspace.com/NAIR
| National Alliance for Immigrant Rights |
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Immigrant's rights activists are welcomed to join the National Alliance for Immigrant Rights. This group has been created in order to centralize the different struggles for immigrant rights in the United States in order to better equip our side against the attacks on undocumented workers and students.
"The May first actions highlighted the economic importance of immigrant labor. Undocumented workers deserve legal status because of that labor - their inherent contribution to society. The value they create is never called illegal, and no one dreams of taking it away from the employers who profit from it. Yet the people who produce that value are called exactly that - illegal. All workers create value through their labor, but immigrant workers is especially profitable, because they are so often denied many of the union-won benefits accorded to native-born workers. The average undocumented worker has been in the US for five years. By that time, he or she has paid a high price for their lack of legal status, through low wages and lost benefits. The Senate compromises would have them pay even more fines for legalization, as though they were criminals. These compromises would then have them wait over a decade to gain real legal status, not even considering the millions who would not qualify, and would then be deported.
Undocumented workers deserve immediate legal status, and have already paid for it. On May 1st immigrant workers demonstrated their power in the national immigration debate. Their absence from workplaces, schools and stores sent a powerful message that that they will not be shut out of this discussion, and that corporate-funded national organizations do not speak for them. They are rescuing from anonymity the struggle for the 8-hour day, begun in Chicago over a century ago by the immigrants of yesteryear. They are recovering the traditions of all working people." Nativo Lopez (President, Mexican American Political Association and the Hermandad Nacional Mexicana) |
| National Alliance for Immigrant Rights (102 Members) |
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