Immigration News: October, 2005 - Volume 12

Cafta, Ecuador, Caribbean

Cafta. The House approved the Central American Free Trade Agreement on a 217-215 vote in June 2005, following the Senate's 54-45 approval, after logrolling and arm-twisting by President Bush. Cafta removes most trade barriers between the US and El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic over 18 years, and is expected to boost foreign investment in the region to produce for the US market.

However, the closeness of the Cafta vote- Nafta was approved by 34 votes in the House in 1993- may make it hard to enact further trade liberalization. Presidential fast-track trade-negotiating authority, under which Congress must accept or reject trade deals without amendment, was approved in 2002 and is up for renewal in 2007, and groups opposing Cafta announced they were targeting the "Cafta 15" Democrats who supported the trade agreement in 2006 elections.

It may be more difficult to persuade especially House Democrats to support future trade agreements; only 15 supported Cafta. More than 100 House Democrats supported Nafta in 1993, while fewer than 20 backed President Bush on Cafta.

Cafta countries are small. The US imported goods worth $18 billion from Cafta countries in 2004, and exported goods worth $16 billion to them. By contrast, imports from Mexico totaled $156 billion, and exports to Mexico $111 billion; imports from China were $197 billion, and exports to China were $35 billion.

Farm leaders predicted faster rural-urban migration in Cafta countries, as occurred in Mexico after Nafta went into effect in 1994. Costa Rican economist Ott˘n Solˇs, running for president in the Citizen Action Party, says that Cafta is "going to create more poverty and Central America will expel more people toward the USA. The law of the jungle benefits the big beast. We are a very small beast." Many commentators emphasized that Cafta protects the US sugar and textile industries, but Cafta does not protect small Central American farmers.

Ecuador. About 12 percent of the 14 million persons born in Ecuador have emigrated, and the 1.5 million Ecuadorians abroad remit almost $2 billion a year. Perhaps a third are in Spain, most of whom were legalized via regularization exercises that gave work and residence permits to those with regular jobs. There may be 600,000 Ecuadorians in the US, most in the New York City area and many from Azuay and Canar provinces.

Ecuador suffered from political and economic instability in the late 1990s, and adopted the dollar as its currency in 2000. Per capita GDP is $3,400, only half the $6,400 level of Mexico, and growth in per capita GDP has been very slow. Many of the Ecuadorians who used to travel between New York City and often elaborate homes they were building in Ecuador have settled in New York City, leaving some of the homes they built to decay or to be rented out to Peruvians attracted to Ecuador by wages fixed in dollars.

In August 2005, almost 94 Ecuadorians were believed to have drowned when an overloaded fishing boat sank en route to Guatemala, a 1,000-mile or seven-day journey. The migrants, most from Ecuador's central Andean highlands, had paid smugglers $10,000 each to travel via Guatemala and Mexico to the US.

Ecuador's oil industry was virtually shut down in mid-August 2005 when protestors in the Amazon region invaded oil fields and demanded more funds for roads and social programs. Petroecuador normally pumps 210,000 barrels a day, and the government that came to power in April 2005 promised more funds to oil regions for jobs.

Representative Howard Berman (D-CA) introduced a bill that would allow an estimated 200,000 nationals of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in the US before December 1, 1995, to apply for immigrant status.

Costa Rica is considering a legalization program and tougher measures to combat unauthorized migration. Under the proposal, unauthorized foreigners must legalize their status within eight months, and police will have the power to enter businesses without notice to check on the legal status of employees.

Caribbean. The Dominican Republic plans a census of Haitians to determine how many there are in the country and how many "illegally" obtained Dominican ID cards. Estimates of the number of Haitians in the Dominican Republic in 2005 range from 300,000 to 1.6 million, and some Dominicans are advocating a Dominican Republic-Haiti migration agreement similar to that between the Dominican Republic and Spain.

Meanwhile, the Dominican Republic plans to begin issuing identity cards to the 300,000 Dominicans living illegally in Puerto Rico.

Haiti scheduled elections for November 13, 2005, and areas such as Cit‚ Soleil, controlled by pro-Aristide gangs, could determine the outcome. However, registration to vote ends September 15, 2005, and the UN peacekeeping force has been slow to set up registration stations in Cit‚ Soleil. Aristide won elections in 1991 and 2004; he was removed by a coup in 1991, and by the US in 2004, and now lives in South Africa.

More Cubans are setting out in boats for Florida. Under the US wet-foot, dry-foot policy, Cubans who reach the US can stay, while those intercepted at sea are returned to Cuba. The Coast Guard intercepted 1,225 Cubans at sea in FY04, and 2,700 in FY05. The number of at-sea interceptions peaked at 37,000 in 2004, and led to an agreement that allows 20,000 Cubans a year to immigrate legally.

Jamaica, the most populous English-speaking island in the Caribbean, has up to 40,000 workers in its sugar sector who may be displaced if the EU reduces its sugar prices to only twice the world price in response to a Brazilian challenge at the WTO (the EU offers high prices to 18 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries and islands). Brazil can produce sugar for about $0.07 a pound, compared to up to $0.40 a pound in Jamaica.

The WTO in August 2005 ruled that the EU may no longer give preference to the Caribbean banana industry.

In anticipation of reduced prices for farm exports, many Caribbean countries are focused on three alternatives: offshore finance, tourism and remittances. The demise of sugar has historic significance, since independence movements in countries such as Jamaica were supported by sugar workers' trades unions. Sugar estates and mills, private and public, are more than employers; they also provide housing, health clinics, schools and sports facilities. Without sugar, some governments fear an upsurge in crime that could fuel emigration and hurt tourism.

Bermuda, a fishhook-shaped island constellation with 65,000 residents, many offshore corporations and a stop for cruise ships, is booming, pushing median home prices to $1.3 million and threatening to create a Manhattan in the sea. Bermuda is 21-square-miles, giving it one of the world's highest population densities, 3,100 people per square mile. GDP per capita is $36,000. As in Hong Kong and Singapore, affluence has enabled most natives to shun local service jobs, and a quarter of residents are guest workers.

The Cayman Islands has tightened its immigration laws so that if visitors who find a job on the Island must remain off-island until a work permit is processed. There is limited free movement, but brokers often charge workers for non-existent jobs, which results in unemployed workers seeking jobs.

Trinidad and Tobago say they will introduce machine-readable passports in 2006 to reduce the number of fake passports.

What are the obligations of multinationals to migrants from one country who are placed in another? Dominican Republic national Rub‚n Darˇo Angustia was hired for $40,000 a year by Houston-based Hanover Compressor and sent to a power plant in Venezuela, where he was kidnapped in October 2002 by Colombians and presumably killed, but his body was never found. Hanover collected $383,000 from AIG insurance for efforts to ransom Angustia and death benefits, but Cigna did not pay $104,000 in death benefits because investigators it hired said that Angustia may have been partially complicit in his kidnapping.

The family is suing Hanover, Cigna and AIG, and the case may break new ground in triangular arrangements, as when a company based on one country hires migrants from another to work in a third country. Foreign employees of American companies doing work in conflict zones are frequently hired through offshore entities; Angustia was hired via a Swiss subsidiary of Hanover.

Brazil. Brazilians continue to leave for work in the US; some 27,000 were apprehended between October 2004 and July 2005. Perhaps 40,000 have left Governador Valadares, a city of 250,000, paying $10,000 to $15,000 to fly to Mexico City and then slip across the Mexico-US border. Remittances top $1.5 billion a year.

Bolivia and Brazil signed an agreement to give the legal migrants among the 100,000 Bolivians working in Brazil labor rights equal to those of Brazilians.

Simon Romero, "Worker's Abduction Brings Heartbreak and Legal Fight," New York Times, September 11, 2005. James C. Mckinley Jr., "U.S. Trade Pact Divides the Central Americans, With Farmers and Others Fearful," New York Times, August 21, 2005. "Immigration Clamp-Down," Cayman New News, August 12, 2005. Ana-Lisa Paul, "New immigration chief aims to beat passport crooks," Trinidad and Tobago Express, August 12, 2005.