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SF Labor Council Calls for Just & Comprehensive Immigration Reform
Source El Organizador
Date 10/01/28/12:11

[forwarded by El Organizador from a posting by the Social and Economic Justice Committee of the San Francisco Labor Council]

Mexican Electrical Workers Union mobilized on Jan. 20 at U.S. Embassy in Mexico City to demand "Stop the Raids! Stop the Deportations! Stop the Separation of Families! For Full Rights for Undocumented Immigrants in the United States!"

Dear Sisters and Brothers:

On January 20, 2010, the one-year anniversary of the election of Barack Obama, the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) and a broad coalition of labor and activist groups in Mexico organized a "Human Chain in Solidarity With Our Migrant Sisters and Brothers in the United States" around the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City.

The event organizers urged the Obama administration to enact a just and comprehensive immigration reform in the United States, as was promised by Obama in his election campaign. Their main demands were "Stop the ICE Raids, Stop the Deportations, Stop the Separation of Families! Full Rights for all Undocumented Immigrants in the United States!"

Humberto Montes de Oca, a central leader of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), is currently in Northern California on a 10-day tour sponsored by the San Francisco Labor Council, the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement-San Francisco chapter, and many other organizations.

Montes de Oca explained that his union's support for the struggle for full labor and legal rights for undocumented immigrants in the United States is inseparable from the fight that his union's members are waging against privatization and union-busting in Mexico. Forty-four thousand electrical workers in Central Mexico have been locked out of their jobs since October 10, 2009, when the government of Felipe Calderon closed the public utility co. Luz y Fuerza del Centro with the aim of privatizing this nationalized corporation and destroying the powerful and militant SME union.

The Social and Economic Justice Committee of the San Francisco Labor Council urges all unionists and activists to support the struggle of the SME for the reinstatement of all locked-out workers and the recognition and implementation of the union's collective-bargaining agreement. Our committee also thanks and applauds the SME's support for a just and comprehensive immigration reform in the U.S. -- a reform that would provide full legal and labor rights to all undocumented workers in the U.S. and would put an end to the ICE raids, deportations and separation of families.

-- San Francisco Labor Council Social and Economic Justice Committee

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