My Insights into USA's Immigration and Guest Worker Policy with Mexico
American Retroworks Inc. has a sister company in Mexico, retroworks de mexico, nicknamed "Las Chicas Bravas". It has been profiled on NPR Marketplace, Living On Earth, Associated Press, Sacramento Bee, and many other media. My wife and children come with me to visit the ladies at the TV maquila in northern Mexico. While our attorney was shot and killed, we never see any drugs or violence in the rural town of Fronteras, a few dozen kilometers from the mines and smelter of Nacozari.
We regularly cross-train workers from Mexico, like Mariano, Dolores, Vicki, Lydia, Panchito, Dominita, Don Chuco, etc. at our plant in Middlebury, and they cross-train our staff during regular visits to Arizona. We recently sent Nate Hutnak, our collection partner in Rhode Island, to Arizona to help establish collections. My business partner and his wife visit us, and host us, and my kids are close with their godson Oscar, who spent a year with us in Vermont and Arizona.
Mariano from Mexico tests and inspects and sells fully functional TVs, and occasionally brokers them to buyers in Peru, Venezuela, or Guatemala. He cross trains Vermont staff, some of whom were born in El Salvador or Honduras or Guatemala. In short, our fair trade company has partners in many countries, from Burkina Faso to Indonesia to Egypt and Senegal - but Mexico is family.
Our key policy is that manual disassembly creates more value in parts, and more jobs, than automated recycling. We do manual disassembly in Vermont... but if you are going to create low wage demanufacturing jobs for Mexicans, it's wiser to make those jobs in Mexico. Our competitors try to chop TVs up with machines, but believe me, running electronics and e-waste through hammermills and shredders is literally not all it is cracked up to be.
Having established my personal bias and credentials, what can I say about national USA policy on border enforcement, illegals, green cards, work visas, and immigration? Here goes...
American Retroworks Inc. has a sister company in Mexico, retroworks de mexico, nicknamed "Las Chicas Bravas". It has been profiled on NPR Marketplace, Living On Earth, Associated Press, Sacramento Bee, and many other media. My wife and children come with me to visit the ladies at the TV maquila in northern Mexico. While our attorney was shot and killed, we never see any drugs or violence in the rural town of Fronteras, a few dozen kilometers from the mines and smelter of Nacozari.
We regularly cross-train workers from Mexico, like Mariano, Dolores, Vicki, Lydia, Panchito, Dominita, Don Chuco, etc. at our plant in Middlebury, and they cross-train our staff during regular visits to Arizona. We recently sent Nate Hutnak, our collection partner in Rhode Island, to Arizona to help establish collections. My business partner and his wife visit us, and host us, and my kids are close with their godson Oscar, who spent a year with us in Vermont and Arizona.
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| Mexico is our Family |
Our key policy is that manual disassembly creates more value in parts, and more jobs, than automated recycling. We do manual disassembly in Vermont... but if you are going to create low wage demanufacturing jobs for Mexicans, it's wiser to make those jobs in Mexico. Our competitors try to chop TVs up with machines, but believe me, running electronics and e-waste through hammermills and shredders is literally not all it is cracked up to be.
Having established my personal bias and credentials, what can I say about national USA policy on border enforcement, illegals, green cards, work visas, and immigration? Here goes...
