Crossborder Human Rights Conference to Consider Effects of NAFTA

 
To coincide with International Human Rights Day, groups from both sides of the Rio Grande are sponsoring a high-level conference on immigration in Tucson, Arizona on December 8 through 10. The keynote speaker will be the Democratic Representative from Illinois, Luis Gutiérrez, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus's Task Force on Immigration. The American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker-based humanitarian service and advocacy organization with a long commitment to the rights of migrants, has pledged its financial support.

The objective of the conference, "De Frontera a Frontera: Construyendo un Movimiento de Derechos Humanos/From Border to Border: Building a Human Rights Movement," is to reframe the immigration debate by facilitating the creation of a grass-roots, human rights-based movement centered on the right of human mobility and the principle of just and peaceful borders. The discussion will include immigration policy, including amnesty proposals; border militarization and vigilantism; and globalization as it affects human mobility and international borders. Those expected to attend include progressive organizations, organizers, advocates, activists and representatives of immigrant, faith-based, labor, environmental, youth, cultural, academic and civil rights groups.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has increased pressure on the United States to open its borders in more ways than the free transit of goods. Tension over immigration, or in reality "labor services," is a long-standing problem between the two countries. Mexican President Elect Vicente Fox touched on this controversial issue when he discussed his interest in an open border this summer during his first visit to the US after his election victory. An immediate manifestation of this trend is the controversy over Mexican trucks, which at its core concerns Mexican truck drivers bringing cargo over the border in direct competition with US drivers.

The conference will take place at the end of a year characterized by heightened international and national attention on the Arizona border and the Immigration and Naturalization Service's lethal policy of forcing migrants into the deadly territory of the Sonora desert. It will also be a time when the both the Mexican and US governments are in transition. The organizers believe this is the right moment to develop a crossborder challenge to global corporate interests' influence on immigration and border policy and to articulate an international voice advocating the right of human mobility.

For more information, see http://my.treeway.com/AZBRP