\n| \n Every night, after the sun goes down and an army of tired office
\n workers and business people leave downtown Boston in a mass exodus to
\n the nearby towns and suburbs, another army invades the center of the
\n city. Thousands upon thousands of humble janitors, cleaning personnel,
\n trash collectors and maintenance workers flood into the area and work
\n through the night, starting at the highest floors of the urban skyscrapers
\n and working their way down to street level, cleaning as they go. They
\n remain invisible and anonymous to the members of the mainstream economy,
\n who arrive each morning to find their offices clean, their wastebaskets
\n empty and their floors waxed and shiny.<\/em><\/p>\nOne of the poignant ironies of US Immigration Policy is that a great
\n number, perhaps the majority of the these workers, are undocumented illegal
\n aliens, often working two or three jobs and sending home monthly payments
\n to relatives in economic disaster areas. These payments, in some countries,
\n represent the second or third largest source of national income, outstripping
\n exports, loans and tourism, and keeping millions of people from starvation,
\n if not poverty.<\/em><\/p>\nThis week, however, many of these phantom night-workers are shaking
\n in their boots, afraid that the incredibly intense police presence on
\n the streets of Boston represents a serious threat of detention, arrest
\n and deportation. In many cases these people have scarring memories
\n of the the traditional treatment of powerless peasants at the hands of
\n third world police forces…<\/em><\/p>\n\n For many immigrant workers in Boston, the security checkpoints, subway
\n searches, and beefed-up police presence for the Democratic National
\n Convention are more than just pesky commuter inconveniences. They’re
\n cause for alarm and anxiety.<\/p>\n Many undocumented workers fear they will be detained or
\n even deported if they are stopped by police checking for identification.
\n Even immigrants here legally, especially those who fled countries with
\n repressive governments, are shaken by the prospect of random stops and
\n searches.<\/p>\n from the Boston Globe<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every night, after the sun goes down and an army of tired office workers and business people leave downtown Boston in a mass exodus to the nearby towns and suburbs, another army invades the center of the city. Thousands upon … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1443],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-esl-links"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2471\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} |