Latino activists press Hillary Clinton on major Pacific trade pact
When Hillary Clinton travels to Southern California Thursday evening to attend a $2700-a-plate fundraiser in the Beverly Hills-area home of billionaire media mogul Haim Saban, a small group of Latino activists will be waiting to greet her.
On the heels of the presidential candidate's recent remarks on immigration — in which she went embraced a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, and vowed to uphold and expand upon President Barack Obama’s executive actions — protesters with Presente.org, a Latino advocacy organization, will press Clinton to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a major trade agreement being negotiated between the United States and Pacific nations.
As far as some advocates are concerned, supporting immigration reform without opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership is counterproductive. And as much as the Clinton campaign seems to be working to court the crucial Hispanic vote in 2016 — a key part of Obama’s winning coalition in 2008 and 2016 — for some Latino activists, it falls short.
They argue that past trade pacts, and the economic devastation they precipitated in parts of Mexico, Central america and Latin America, played roles in propelling the wave of migration to the U.S. in the 1990s and early 2000s — a major factor in the present-day immigration crisis that Congress has left unaddressed.
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http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/5/7/immigration-activists-press-clinton-on-trans-pacific-partnership.html
