Recently, I had the good fortune to publish a brief letter to the Editor in the National Catholic Register. For those of you who are not subscribers, the letter reads:
"I was encouraged to read in the Feb. 17 issue your article 'Mexican Bishops: NAFTA is Leading to Country's Cultural Death.'
I recently spent a weekend in Juarez, Mexico, experiencing up-close the cultural and economic dynamics of the border region. I was shocked to find that even when both parents and several children work full-time in foreign-owned factories, they still struggle to obtain sufficient food and shelter, let alone education and time for cultural growth.
The factories so blatantly consider their workers as mere extensions of machinery that many force women to take birth control and fire them if they get pregnant.
Overcrowded, violent, immigrant-producing Juarez will continue to worsen if Southern Mexican farmers cannot make a living from their crops, which flounder unprotected against subsidized U.S. agribusiness.
The immigration debate in the United States is incomplete if it ignores the tenuous condition of countless Mexican farmers and workers, conditions often induced by our own trade policies.
I hope that the Mexican bishops find U.S. Catholic legislators willing to put the needs of their Mexican brethren ahead of large corporations' profit when renegotiating trade treaties."
No comments:
Post a Comment