Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico February 7, 2008
Global Workers is excited to announce that it will conduct its first sending-country advocate training April 27-30 in Tapachula. We traveled to Tapachula to coordinate logistics for the training with a local NGO advocate partner, the Friar Matias Center for Human Rights. 25 lawyers and legal assistants from southern Mexico (Chiapas and Oaxaca) will be invited to attend this inaugural training. After years of laying the ground work, Global Workers is in the position to officially launch the Transnational Migrant Defender Network. After the training, these organizations will be committed to: cooperating with USA organizations defending migrant workers in employment-related claims; identifying new cases of migrants who have returned to Mexico and Guatemala but were exploited while working in the USA; and educating migrants and other organizations about migrant labor rights in the USA. Once the network is launched, migrant workers will have increased portable justice, that is the right and ability to access justice in the country of employment even after they have gone home.