Conference on the Americas

As part of the Latin American Studies program at Grand Valley, the Conference on the America "Creating Agents of Change: Facing Challenges in our Community " was an opportunity to engage with others about various issues related to the Americas. I was particularly interested in a presentation by an Argentinean woman about democracy and the women's movement in Argentina. However, afterwards, I went to the Labor and Immigration panel, which I thought would be interesting for the purpose of this project. A student at Grand Valley gave a presentation about his investigation of the treatment of Mexican Labor in the U.S. Most of the information he presented I had already known, but he raised several points that I would like to mention here. The treatment of migrant workers is connected to immigration and reflects the way the United States views others, specifically Mexicans and people from Latin America. The United States has the ability to hire workers from other countries, such as Mexico during a "time of need" and then make them leave when they no longer need them anymore (See post about the Bracero Program!). In other words, the government has the ability to control  when they want workers and when the don't.  Although they are not U.S. citizens, they essentially have no rights in this country, yet they can be punished and deported when the government chooses to do so. This raises questions about who is and who is not a part of a community, which sheds light on the Immigration debate and who the United States allows into this country. Even more, who they allow into the country and for what reasons.

Something the United States needs to realize is that they stole this land from the Native Americans and Mexican peoples who resided here before they immigrated. They were the aliens of this land.