Structural Violence in Employment Based Legal Immigration

The word violence conjures up images of physical or mental assault on a person. Violence is normally seen as harm inflicted upon a person by another individual or group of individuals. However, there is another form of violence known as structural violence where individuals are clearly harmed by the rules or procedures laid out by the system. We live in a society embedded with well-defined systems like the school system for educating our kids, the road traffic system for proper movement of vehicles or immigration system to help people immigrate to the USA. In the current day and age, the topic of immigration brings into limelight the discussion of illegal immigration. The mere mention of the word illegal immigration incites passionate debate among people from both sides of the aisle. On the contrary, very little is mentioned about legal immigration in the news media. Employment based immigration is one form of legal immigration to the USA. The applicants for employment based immigration have to endure severe hardship with regards to delays in the process, restriction on job changes and difficulty with work authorization for spouses. A candidate for employment based immigration is clearly disadvantaged by the immigration process hence that individual falls within the realm of structural violence.


The term structural violence was originally created by Johan Galtung, to highlight all the disadvantages faced by humans due to economic and political structures (Winter and Leighton 1). In their article, Winter and Leighton mentions that “structural violence occurs whenever people are disadvantaged by political, legal, economic or cultural traditions. Because they are longstanding, structural inequities usually seem ordinary, the way things are and always have been” (1). On a similar note, the authors of the article “Structural Violence and Clinical Medicine” explicitly bring out the meaning of the term structural violence. They specify that in a social setting “the arrangements are structural because they are embedded in the political and economic organization of our social world; they are violent because they cause injury to people” (Farmer, et al. 1). The system in order to restrain an individual will use legal framework, political ideology or social and cultural traditions. It harms the individuals in the long run by curbing their growth. One such system that needs further analysis is the employment based legal immigration process.


A candidate for employment based immigration has to follow several steps to obtain permanent residency. The state travel department website points out that the first step in this process is labor certification which is filed by the employer of the candidate. The date of labor certification sets the priority date for employment based immigration. After the approval of labor certification, the “employer then files an Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker, Form I-140, with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for the appropriate employment-based preference category” (“Employment Based Immigrant Visas”). The I-140 procedure forms the second stage. The subsequent approval of I-140, leads to the third stage, where the candidate is assigned a visa number if his priority date matches the qualifying date (“Employment Based Immigrant Visas”). Since there are numerical limitations each year for the number of visas for each country, the qualifying dates are retrogressed for candidates from heavily subscribed countries (“Visa Bulletin”).



The numerical visa limitation per country makes several candidates from retrogressed countries wait for decades to obtain their green cards. Cyrus D. Mehta in his article “Adjustment of Status Interview After Decades,” clearly highlights the briefing by Jeff Gorsky of the State Department Visa Office to an Indian interest group, stating that employment based immigration wait period for some categories can easily extend beyond 40 years. Mehta emphasizes the fact that candidates from India and China will be most affected with delay, since they are from heavily over-subscribed countries. The State Department officials have openly accepted the fact that there are delays that extend beyond several decades. This reflects how deep rooted the problem persists for employment based immigrations. Thus the system’s failure places the person’s immigration status in a limbo for decades.


Another issue that stands out among employment based immigrant community is the inherent restriction imposed by the process on job movement. The labor certification process is tied to the job. Vivek Wadhwa in his article “America’s Other Immigration Crisis” pin points the fact that once a candidate starts the process, he has to remain in that same job and would have to deny any upward job movement or else he would lose his slot in the immigration queue (Wadhwa). This definitely places the candidates in a quandary, since they have to remain in the same jobs for years, if not decades. These restrictions on individuals which does not allow them to grow to their full capability for no fault of their own, clearly depicts the faults in the immigration system.


The immigration system also imposes impediments on the spouses of these immigration applicants by not allowing them to seek employment. Wadhwa exemplifies the issues faced by spouses in his paper by drawing attention to the story of Sanjay Mavinkurve. Wadhwa notes that Sanjay had a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Harvard University. He was involved with companies like Facebook and employed with Google. However his work visa restricted his highly educated investment banker wife from obtaining employment in the USA. Thus Sanjay had to leave the USA and seek employment in Canada. Wadhwa also adds that the spouses of the candidates cannot get social security numbers. Hence it becomes much harder for them to open a bank account or obtain driver’s license (Wadhwa). It becomes clear that the immigration system has rules and regulations that restrict the spouse’s developments with regards to their careers and other financial freedom.


The opponents of employment based immigration argue that this type of immigration suppresses labor wages and reduces the demand for that field. Wadhwa in his article emphasizes that employment based immigration bring foreign workers at reduced wages. As per the law, these workers are supposed to be paid wages determined by the Department of Labor. In the field of technology a person’s salary is determined by his skills and competence. So employers misuse the system by paying average salaries to highly competent foreign born workers. This suppresses the wages for all the workers in that field (Wadhwa 37). Alan Tonelson, a research fellow of The U.S Business and Industry Council Education Foundation, testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, that suppressing wages in the technology sector might provide short term benefits to those industries but it will make those sectors less attractive to American students. Hence very few students would pursue careers in those fields. This will affect research and development in the long run for the technology sector (Tonelson). Both Wadhwa and Tonelson have explicitly stated the ill-effects of employment based immigration but these disadvantages are perpetuated by the corporations and not by the applicants of the immigration process. These candidates of the employment based immigration system have followed the law and yet the system unfairly restricts these individuals and their family members from growing to their full potentials. Any restriction that needs to be implemented should be more focused on preventing the corporations from misusing the system for their own profits.


The immigration system is laid out in such a way that candidates of employment based immigrations are unfairly made to wait for decades. They are not allowed to make upward job movements during that period and also their spouses are restricted from seeking any form of employment. The waiting period of several decades keeps the immigration status of the person in an uncertainty which prevents the person from fully integrating with the American society. Also the inability to accept promotions at work in order to maintain their slot in the immigration queue definitely hampers the growth of the person professionally. Employment restriction on the spouses hinders them from providing financial support to the family. Thus employment based immigration system is structured in such a way that it limits its applicants from growing to their full potential. For no fault of their own, they have to suffer the hardship at different levels due to the fallacy of the immigration system. These hardships can distinctly be viewed as a form of violence due to the way immigration system is structured. Hence candidates of employment based immigration system clearly undergo structural violence. The employment based immigrants are at the mercy of the immigration system and thus have to suffer the violence inflicted by the system. An easy fix to the structural inadequacies of the immigration system involves implementing changes in the law. A onetime visa number increase needs to be adhered to clear all the applicants from the backlogs. This will remove the decade long waits needed for immigrants from certain retrogressed countries. There should be no upward job movement restriction on the candidates. The spouses of the candidates must be allowed to seek employment if they are eligible to be employed. Loop holes with regards to wage determination must be closed to prevent corporations from taking undue advantage of the system. These few changes will go a long way in alleviating the misery caused due to structural violence in the employment based immigration system in the USA.


Works sited

"Employment-Based Immigrant Visas." Welcome to Travel.State.Gov. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Apr. 2011. .

Farmer, Paul E., Bruce Nizeye, Sara Stulac, and Salmaan Keshavjee. "Structural Violence and Clinical Medicine." PLoS Medicine 3.10 (2006): 1686-691. Print.

Mehta, Cyrus D. "Adjustment of Status Interview after Decades." Cyrus D. Mehta & Associates, PLLC ~ US Immigration & Nationality Law. N.p., 15 June 2009. Web. 04 Apr. 2011. .

Tonelson, Alan, "Employment Based Permanent Immigration." FDCH Congressional Testimony (n.d.):Military & Government Collection. EBSCO. Web. 17 Apr. 2011.

"Visa Bulletin for April 2011." Welcome to Travel.State.Gov. N.p., 08 Mar. 2011. Web. 04 Apr. 2011. .

Wadhwa, Vivek. "America's Other Immigration Crisis." SiliconIndia: India's Largest Professional Network. N.p., Sept. 2008. Web. 04 Apr. 2011. .


Winter, Deborah Du Nann., and Dana C. Leighton. "Structural Violence." Ed. D. D. Winter. Peace, Conflict, and Violence: Peace Psychology for the 21st Century. Ed. Daniel J. Christie and Richard V. Wagner. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001. 1-5. Print.

Structural Violence the Unseen Violence

The term violence brings to memory an image of physical or emotional assault on a person. In most circumstances, the person affected due to violence is aware that a violent action has been performed on that person. There is another form of violence where the affected individual, in most cases are unaware of the violence inflicted upon them. These types of violence are termed as structural violence. Structural violence is a form of invisible violence setup by a well-defined system, to limit an individual’s development to his full potential, by using legal, political, social or cultural traditions (Winter and Leighton, 1).

The term structural violence was originally phrased by Johan Galtung, to highlight all the disadvantages faced by humans due to economic and political structures (Winter and Leighton, 1). Human beings lives within the boundaries of accepted norms, setup by society. Sometimes the society lays out the structure for living, in such a way that it hinders the person from growing to their full ability. This form of hindrances which stops the person from fully utilizing his potential due to intentional layout of a system or structure, by the society, can correctly be termed as structural violence. The authors of the article Structural Violence and Clinical Medicine explicitly brings out the meaning of the term structural violence. They specify that in a social setting “the arrangements are structural because they are embedded in the political and economic organization of our social world; they are violent because they cause injury to people” (Farmer et al. 1). The system in order to restrain an individual will use legal framework, political ideology or social and cultural traditions.

According to 2006 PLoS medical journal on the study of ethno graphics in context of migrants in USA, structural racism and anti-immigration policies have led to poorer health and living conditions. The research clearly shows how ethnicity and citizenship status is directly tied to an individual’s health status and health care experiences (Holmes, 1787-88). We know that immigration to USA is regulated by law. The political hierarchy has framed the legal law in such a way that immigrants do not enjoy the same privileges as citizens. The apparent differences between people who are citizens and non-citizens is so inherent, that the disadvantaged non-citizens accept it with little outlet for protest. Since it is the law of the land, non-citizens willingly accepts the structural violence inflicted upon them due to immigration related issues.

In recent months we have seen political unrest in Tunisia, Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries. In each of these countries the political leadership had amassed immense power and was using these powers to restrain and limit their countrymen from development. The ruling class clearly had formed a political structure with a clear agenda to inhibit the growth of their fellow citizens. In the past few decades, people from these countries have endured structural violence due to political hegemony. Exposure to western media has made the people realize the advantage of distributed power. Hence these countries are witnessing a surge of protest, with people fighting against the system. Parsons emphasizes on the distribution of political power and its effects throughout his article.
If a society then equalizes the distribution of power, all will possess equal amounts of it and hereby equally be objects of either structural violence or structural peace. As a result, structural violence could be collectively reduced because all have the power to end such avoidable needs deprivations. Presumably such a collective choice to end suffering would be in their immediate interest. (Parsons, 177).
So a proper distribution of political power can reduce structural violence and orient it towards structural peace.


Social and cultural traditions have been used to restrain women for generations. In most South Asian cultures, women have been raised to believe that they are inferior to men. These women have been brought up with the mind frame to accept these repressive customs and beliefs. They do not realize that the system has been setup to obstruct their growth. These women have to bear this seemingly invisible form of structural violence, since they are trained by the society to embrace the systemic violence.

We can clearly see that structural violence is omnipresent in different forms among human kind. It harms the individual in the long run by curbing their growth. Structural violence is not visible, yet inflicts a systematic form of violence. The endemic system is built to induce a hidden violence by setting up legal barriers, disproportionate distribution of political powers and by enforcing restrictive social and cultural rules. Identifying and acknowledging the fact that certain systems are built to hinder a person’s development will go a long way in curbing the impact of structural violence.


 
Works sited

Winter, DuNann Deborah and Dana C. Leighton “Structural violence.” Peace, conflict, and violence: Peace psychology in the 21st century. Ed. D. J. Christie, R. V. Wagner, D. D. Winter , New York: Prentice-Hall, 2001. Print.

Farmer , Paul, Bruce Nizeye, Sara Stulac, Salmaan Keshavjee. “Structural Violence and Clinical Medicine.” PLoS Medicine, 1686-91. October 2006. Print

Holmes, Seth. “An Ethnographic Study of the Social Context of Migrant Health in the United States.” PLoS Medicine, 1776-93. October 2006. Print.

Parsons, Kenneth. “Structural Violence and Power.” Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, 173–181, print.

Rhetorical Analysis on “The Wal-mart You Don’t Know”

Please read this article published by Charles Fishman before you dig into my rhetorical analysis of his Article.


http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html

Here is my analysis to the article.

Charles Fishman, a senior staff of Fast Company, published the article “The Wal-mart You Don’t Know” on 1st December 2003. This article has received the Best Business Magazine Story of 2004 award from the New York Press Club (Fishman 532). As specified in the website for Fast Company, they cater to an audience whose median age is at 45.6 years with an average house hold income at around $162,825. Also the male to female ratio is at 65%to 35%, with most of the readers being key decision makers in the industry ("Audience/Print"). This indicates that the primary audiences for this article were mostly high end business personals from various industries. The article discusses how Wal-Mart uses its sheer buying power to dictate terms to their vendors, in a way pressurizing them and thus affecting their survivability and impacting the economy of the USA as a whole. The article is best summarized by the thesis sentence which states that “it’s the story of what that pressure does to the companies Wal-Mart does business with, to U.S. manufacturing, and to the economy as a whole” (533). By using cause and effect rhetorical strategy the author in his article provides a persuasive argument about Wal-mart’s imposing ways of performing business with other organizations and its overall impact to economy.

Fishman brings out the interaction between Wal-mart and its suppliers. The introduction of the article starts with story of Vlasic’s one gallon jar of pickle at a price of $2.97. Vlasic in order to increase their sales numbers agreed to Wal-Mart’s pricing for one gallon jar of pickles. Even though the profit margin at that pricing level was too low, the larger sales numbers from Wal-Mart formed the incentive for that business decision. However, Fishman specifies that accordingly to Steve Young, a former vice president of grocery marketing at Vlasic, the one gallon jar of pickle deal with Wal-Mart “accounted for 30% of Vlasic’s business. But the company’s profits from pickles had shriveled 25% or more” (535). Fishman delves further into the relationship of Wal-Mart and the organizations that it does business with by narrating the story of Huffy the bicycle manufacturing company. According to John Mariotti who was the president of Huffy Bicycle Co., one time in order to meet the delivery demands with Wal-Mart, Mariotti “gave the designs for four of his higher-end, higher margin products to rival manufacturers” (537). Thus Fishman emphasizes that fierce standards laid out by Wal-Mart has resulted in Huffy’s shut down of their manufacturing unit in 1999 (537). Fishman elaborates on similar stories of other business organizations like Lovable Company, the bra and lingerie manufacturer, MasterBrand industries who were the manufacturers of Master Locks and Levi Strauss the clothing manufacturer. In each of these cases the companies, after conducting business with Wal-Mart had, to counter the stiff competition from Chinese, Mexican and Taiwanese manufacturers which led closing of their manufacturing units in the USA (537-541). On a positive note, Fishman credits Wal-Mart for invoking a sense of discipline and commitment to delivery in all the firms that does business with them. Fishman finally concludes that the consumer that shops for cheaper price is responsible for the jobs leaving the USA (541).

Clearly in this article, Fishman provides a persuasive argument about how Wal-Mart as a corporation is responsible for closure of several manufacturing units in the USA and thus affecting the economy as a whole. The argument’s strength is based on several accounts of business heads explanations of what pursued after their liaison with Wal-Mart. Fishman has clearly followed a cause and effect analysis to bring out this relationship and its eventual impact to the manufacturing sector. Right from the beginning of the article with the story of Vlasic’s one gallon jar of pickles, Fishman explains that each organization, driven by the anticipation of high sales number from Wal-Mart align themselves to meet their delivery standards. These changes in the end result in loss of profitability due to aggressive pricing and finally closure of their manufacturing plants in the USA. Thus for every story in the article, Fishman guides the readers through a simple order of how each of the client organizations partners with Wal-Mart to its eventual complex or ironical conclusion that is their downfall or shutdown of manufacturing units in the USA.

Charles Fishman has targeted his article for the more educated business class community with higher educational level and better understanding of business structures. This is clearly reflected in statistical numbers with regards to prices and sales figures being used throughout the article. Also the tone of the writer seems expository and more business oriented. There is a tinge of ironic sarcasm embedded in the article, since every story begins with a positive outlook and ends with a calamitous result.

Throughout the article, Fishman has reached out to former business leaders that had worked with Wal-Mart to get their opinions and views about what transpired between Wal-Mart and their organizations. All the narrations are quoted in-text to bring out the unbiased nature of the article. This demonstrates a higher degree of ethos for Charles Fishman. However, some readers would be interested to know Wal-Mart’s perspective for each of the events explained in the article.

The article “The Wal-Mart You Don’t Know” is an eye opener for most of the American society that heavily indulges in consumerism. The constant pressure imparted by consumers to seek the cheapest products has led to the destruction of manufacturing units in the USA. Charles Fishman has not presented Wal-Mart’s point of view for each of the stories. But he has convincingly persuaded us to accept the negative impact of Wal-Mart’s quest to drive prices lower. This article opens up a serious debate on how far the American consumers can push their retailer to seek cheaper prices which eventually would lead to their job losses.

Works Cited

"Audience / Print." FAST COMPANY :: Progressive | Creative | Innovative. Web. 08 May 2011. .

Fishman Charles. “The Wal-Mart You Don’t Know.” Perspectives on Contemporary Issues: Readings Across the Disciplines. By Katherine Anne Ackley. 5th ed. Boston: Wadsworth, 2009.532-541.