World Hunger and Poverty Blog

Karen Nakamura explains in a recent article how poverty and starvation cause the so-called immigration crisis the United States:

CNN’s Larry King interviewed James Edward Olmos during last summer’s Latino workers’ demonstrations. King was discussing illegal immigration when Olmos suggested that maybe people were flooding across the border because there were few jobs at home, small farms were going under and people were starving.

Besides Mexico’s financial dependence on the United States, economists are concerned about low wages, underemployment for a large segment of the population and inequitable income distribution. Again, according to Wikipedia, few opportunities exist for the largely impoverished “Amerindian” population. In 2005, unemployment stood at 9.6% and worker’s rights were basically non-existent.

Ralph Nader said when CAFTA was debated: “…the corporate globalization model has caused the ‘race to the bottom’ in labor and environmental standards and promotes privatization and deregulation of key public services.” His group, Public Citizen, claimed “independent farmers in the US, Canada and Mexico have been hit particularly hard by NAFTA, with thousands wiped out and farmland shifting into the hands of huge agribusiness concerns such as Tyson Foods and Cargill.”

Those rural sectors already riddled by poverty have been the most adversely affected by CAFTA. There are 224 million people living in poverty in Central America and 96 million in extreme poverty. Mexican wages have fallen in real terms by 36% since 1994, although workers have increased their productivity by 53%.

Read entire article by Karen Nakamura.

So, it seems in the name of bloody profits the powerful corporations of the United States contribute to the Mexican poverty which causes the so-called immigration crisis. Mexico also has the same disturbing socioeconomic inequality in their own country.

In fact, I see it as a global problem. International megacorporations swindle the wealth out of working-class both in America and abroad, using their dirty money to manipulate governments.

Additionally, corporate interests explain why the immigration problem in the United States continues. Corporations and businesses, such as Walmart, like the cheap labor of illegal immigrants. If the legal authorities targeted these businesses that employ illegal immigrants, rather than the immigrants, than that would eliminate the illegal immigration problem by eliminating the job opportunities.

The allowance of illegal immigration undermines national security. Terrorists and criminals can sneak into the unchecked flow of illegal working immigrants.

The government could also significantly reduce the problem by increasing legal immigration. Given the choice, most immigrants would prefer to work legally. Unfortunately, corporate interests won’t allow this to happen, because illegal immigrants work cheaper. I’ve never heard of an illegal workers union.

Alas, it appears poverty and the illegal immigration problem will continue until the international working-class stands up to these selfishly greedy international corporate interests who have no qualms about using the violent and coercive powers of government to make their bloody profits and rob the working-class.

(Granted, in theory I disagree with the whole concept of illegal immigration. I support freedom, including the freedom of innocent people to move and live in whatever general area they want. I don’t think people can own an entire country the size of the United States.)

The city’s food bank has created a program that will try to help alleviate hunger by bringing healthy habits back to the classroom and hopefully, back home with students as well. NY1’s Roger Clark filed the following report.

It’s a twist on the Food Bank for New York’s BackPack Program, which provides kids at this after school program with fresh produce and healthy foods for the weekend and holidays, when reduced price school lunches and breakfasts are not available. Here the children get to pick their own groceries, learning how to shop for food that’s good for them.

“Provide children with choices, and do it in a way that’s constructive, in a way that also emphasizes nutrition education, fitness, and ties it all together as part of what we need to really combat childhood hunger,” says Carlos Rodriguez of Food Bank for NYC.

Which remains a big problem in the five boroughs. The Food Bank says almost one third of the children in the city live below the federal poverty level – about one in five rely on emergency food programs.

Read entire report by Roger Clark.

The above story makes me very happy. I like the way they mix nutrition education with food assistance at the schools.

The poverty trap creates a devastating cycle in which children born into poverty never receive the necessities to develop into self-sufficient adults, leaving them destined for a life of poverty. The following statistic demonstrates it: 50% of United States children born into poverty remain in poverty for their entire lives.

On the upside, programs and initiatives such as the one mentioned in the story above help break the poverty cycle. I hope to see many more of them.

The People’s Daily Online reports about about the 4th World Congress of Rural Women:

Illiteracy, hunger, abuse and other challenges confronting rural women around the world will become focal issues at an international conference late next month in South Africa, a South African official said on Thursday.

About 2,000 delegates from around the world will also discuss the development of rural women during the 4th World Congress of Rural Women in Durban in the last week of April, said Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana.

Xingwana said the congress would focus on solutions and strategies to enable sustainable rural development, the official BuaNews reported.

The minister said the congress would bring together rural women of the world from different backgrounds to share with each other and learn from each other’s experiences.

South Africa was chosen because of the country’s leading role in issues of gender, transformation and the recognition of human rights, Xingwana said.

Read entire article.

A global collection of people coming together as such strikes the perfect collaboration of their differences and similarities. These rural women can use their differing experiences to share ideas, and come up with collaborative ways to fix their common problems.

David Cronin writes about a delaration to drive back poverty:

The 50th anniversary of the European Union has been marked by a declaration committing the 27-country bloc to “drive back poverty, hunger and disease” throughout the world.

“While the 50th anniversary is surely a time for celebration, it is also a time to reflect on one of the underlying reasons for the formation of the EU: the commitment of the nations of Europe to the prevention of genocide and crimes against humanity,” said Lotte Leicht, the EU director with Human Rights Watch.

“After the horrific crimes of the Holocaust, the world vowed ‘never again’. But that vow seems terribly empty in view of what is happening today in Darfur.”

Read entire article by David Cronin.

As the title of Cronin’s article says, the poor need more than a declaration. Sadly, it appears that they won’t get that.

Hitherto, most policies of most western European nations have fostered neo-liberal colonialism and exploitation. For example, the Common Agricultural Policy undermines the food markets in poor countries by flooding them with cheap imports.

Instead of pushing poverty back, the West pushes it forward. Despite their claims otherwise, I doubt the EU actually plans to fight poverty, especially since their economic structure makes their success dependent on the exploitation of poor countries.