1) Call your representative and Senators now and say: "No deal on trade and immigration. We demand justice for workers, immigrants and the environment in the U.S. and Latin America."

· Tell your elected officials that we demand trade and immigration legislation that:
- respects workers, immigrants, human rights and the environment.
- supports Latin American farmers, workers, and other impoverished sectors of society

· We will not accept trade deals that:
- allow companies to sue states (Chapter 11 provisions) over labor and environmental protections.
- lead to dumping of U.S. subsidized agricultural products in Latin America.

· We will not accept immigration bills that:
- include a guest worker program - "No" to indentured servitude.
- militarizes the border - "No" to a border fence.
- further divides immigrant families No to a point system for eligibility

Call your representative and Senators by dialing the capital switchboard: (202) 224-3121

2) join CISPES, the Quixote Center, the Alliance for Responsible Trade and others in signing on to an ad to be printed in the New York Times against Fast Track authority, which would help Bush pass more bad trade agreements: http://www.notofasttrack.org/

Background:

Leading congressional Democrats and White House Join Hands and Agree to Exploit Immigrants and Working People

The Democratic Party recently signaled that it interpreted its November 2006 congressional victories as a mandate to sell out to big business on trade and immigrant rights.

The guest worker based immigration bill and the capital friendly trade deals are part of a shared vision--held by business, Republicans and most congressional Democrats--of a global economy that allows corporations to scour the globe in search for low wages while immigrant workers are forced into the indentured servitude of guest worker programs. The Democratic leadership's vision of trade and immigration represent the central contradictions and hypocrisies of corporate globalization.

Not that we should be terribly surprised, but the speed with which Democrats have dropped populist campaign rhetoric and gotten busy making big-biz friendly deals with the White House is enough to make the most hardened cynic dizzy. Today they even agreed to drop troop withdrawal deadlines from Iraq war funding legislation!

While some significant labor and environmental provisions were agreed to, this is no way changes the fact that there are some things fundamentally wrong with these "free trade" deals. As labor activist Jonathan Tasini notes, we need to "get to a place where trade relationships are focused on bettering the lives of communities, not primarily protecting capital and investment at the expense of decent living standards and a safe environment."

The deal on the Panama and Peru Free Trade Agreements that Speaker Pelosi and House Waynes and Means Chairman Rep. Charles Rangel reached with the White House fails to fix nearly all of whats wrong with the current NAFTA model.

Importantly from our perspective, Latin American labor and social movements continue to reject these trade deals.

Why the trade deal is bad a bad idea:

- According to the National Coordinator of Struggle Against the Free Trade Agreement in Peru-- a coalition of unions, campesinos and other popular organizations--an estimated 2,857,000 agricultural jobs will be lost if the trade deal passes. The Rangel/Pelosi/Bush deal changes none of this.

- The deal still bans anti-offshoring policies. Many states have lost thousands of jobs to NAFTA style trade deals.

- Still includes NAFTA Chapter 11-style foreign investor rights, which allow corporations to sue states if they think a health, safety, labor or environmental law is "an unfair barrier to trade." Chapter 11 provisions will undermine the democratic process in the U.S., Peru and Panama.

- The deal threatens prevailing wage laws in the U.S.

As a recent editorial in The Nation put it: "That the US Chamber of Commerce is delighted with Pelosi ought to tell you something."

Why the immigration legislation is a bad idea:

Senator Kennedy and the White House's "compromise proposal" is inspired by the corporate vision of immigration. The corporate ideal envisions the existing two-tiered labor market--within which immigrants are treated as second class workers--signed into law. Under the current system, where undocumented immigrants are second class workers, corporations win by driving everyones wages down and pitting documented and undocumented workers against each other. The downside for business is that, occasionally, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can get them in trouble for hiring "illegal" workers.

The new proposal enshrines the two-tiered worker system into law making it easier and legal for corporations to exploit immigrant workers.

Under the Senate deal negotiated by Senator Kennedy and the White House, immigrants' labor will be allowed to cross the border, but their humanity will have to stay in Mexico.

The fatally flawed immigration deal is bad for immigrant and U.S. workers:

- Changes the premise of our immigration system from family reunification to letting corporations cherry pick "desirable workers." This deal makes it much harder for legal residents and citizens to bring family members to the U.S. While many of the 12 million-plus undocumented immigrants currently in the U.S. would earn a "path to citizenship", that path could take 8-13 years, a ridiculous and costly "touchback" trip to their country of origin, and around 6 months worth of wages.

- Establishes a guest worker program that the New York Times Editorial Board referred to as a "system of modern peonage within our borders." Guest workers would be allowed to work in the U.S. on two-year visas, for a total of six years and be required to return to their home country for at least one year between each two-year period.

- Increases the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border. The legalization provisions of the bill will only be triggered once the government has hired an addition 18,000 Border Patrol agents and constructed 370 miles of a U.S.-Mexico border wall.

For more information on the trade "deal", see http://davidsirota.com/ and http://www.citizen.org/trade/
For more information on the immigration "deal", see http://www.afsc.org/immigrants-rights/