Miami Herald : Two countries cope with globalization - by Trudy Rubin

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Two countries cope with globalization - by Trudy Rubin

Huge demonstrations have taken place last week in both France and in America that highlight the very different ways the two countries cope with globalization. Whether you are Francophile or -phobe, the French demos should make you nervous. On the other hand, the American protests add a bit of brightness to a gloomy month. First to France. Hundreds of thousands of students and workers have taken to the streets and shut down schools, trains, air service, and even the Eiffel Tower. Bands of masked youths, apparently from suburban slums, have burst into downtown Paris, smashing windows and setting cars alight. The demonstrators' grievance? They are protesting a new labor law that would make it easier to hire unemployed youth, including alienated Muslim immigrants who set slums ablaze in days of violent demonstrations last fall. The demonstrators in Paris have no answer for this dangerous problem, which also concerns us.

This brings me to the contrasting demonstrations that have sent hundreds of thousands into the streets of more than 10 American cities. Around 500,000 U.S. immigrants, both legal and illegal and mostly Hispanic, marched in downtown Los Angeles. Unlike their counterparts in France, the Angelenos were demanding the right to keep on working -- many at low-level jobs for low pay. Specifically, they were protesting the passage by the House of Representatives of a tough immigration bill that would make it a criminal offense to live here as an illegal immigrant. The Senate Judiciary Committee has just passed a very different bill that would create a guest-worker system and allow illegal immigrants a path toward legitimate work status.

In France, the students are marching to keep privileges that the country can't afford and keep the labor system rigid, while immigrant youth are lashing out at a system they despise. Down that path lies danger. In America, workers are concerned but realistic about globalization's challenges, while immigrants want to join the system. Such realism doesn't eliminate problems, but offers some chance to resolve them.