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Teacher Pay Is So Low in Some U.S. School Districts That They’re Recruiting Overseas

Like many who migrate to other nations looking for work to support their families back home, educators are doing the same. Many teachers from different parts of the world are recruited to teach at a very low salary, but it is better than what they were receiving back home. They not only gain more money to send back home, but also new knowledge and culture.

This is relevant to the article, “Beyond Remittances” by Kingetal. It talks about not only money being gain from foreigners traveling to another nation, but also the knowledge and culture gained that is transmitted back home.

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Donato Soberano, center, and his seventh-grade science students at Sunset Ridge Elementary School in Arizona. Budget cuts and stagnant salaries have prompted his district and others to recruit educators in his native Philippines to fill core teaching jobs. Credit Credit Deanna Alejandra Dent for The New York Times

GLENDALE, Ariz. - The latest wave of foreign workers sweeping into American jobs brought Donato Soberano from the Philippines to Arizona two years ago. He had to pay thousands of dollars to a job broker and lived for a time in an apartment with five other Filipino workers. The lure is the pay - 10 times more than what he made doing the same work back home.

But Mr. Soberano is not a hospitality worker or a home health aide. He is in another line of work that increasingly pays too little to attract enough Americans: Mr. Soberano is a public school teacher.

As walkouts by teachers protesting low pay and education funding shortfalls spread across the country, the small but growing movement to recruit teachers from overseas is another sign of the difficulty some districts are having providing the basics to public school students.

Among the latest states hit by the protests is Arizona, where teacher pay is more than $10,000 below the national average of $59,000 per year. The Pendergast Elementary School District, where Mr. Soberano works, has recruited more than 50 teachers from the Philippines since 2015. They hold J-1 visas, which allow them to work temporarily in the United States, like au pairs or camp counselors, but offer no path to citizenship. More than 2,800 foreign teachers arrived on American soil last year through the J-1, according to the State Department, up from about 1,200 in 2010.

"In these times, you have to be innovative and creative in recruiting," said Patricia Davis-Tussey, Pendergast's head of human resources. "We embrace diversity and really gain a lot from the cultural exchange experience. Our students do as well."

The district, which covers parts of Glendale, Avondale and north Phoenix, is a hotbed of activism in the teacher walkout movement, known as #RedforEd. Picketing educators say they have had to move in with their parents, apply for food stamps and pay out of pocket for classroom essentials like graph paper and science supplies. They argue that taxes are too low to adequately fund schools, or for teachers to secure a middle-class lifestyle.

In response to the teacher walkout, Republican lawmakers introduced a budget that provides new funding for salaries and classrooms. But leaders of the #RedForEd movement said the bill fell far short of their demands, and would restore only about a quarter of the $1.1 billion in annual cuts that they say schools have weathered since the last recession.

[Read: Teacher strikes are illegal in many of the walkout states. That hasn't stopped educators.]

In Pendergast, where salaries of around $40,000 are a source of pain and protest for the district's American educators, Mr. Soberano is thankful for the pay.

Much like other foreign workers, he went into debt to find a job in the United States. He said he used savings and a bank loan to pay $12,500, about three years' worth of his salary in the Philippines, to Petro-Fil Manpower Services. That is a Filipino company of Ligaya Avenida, a California-based consultant who recruits and screens teachers for the J-1.

The payment covered Mr. Soberano's airfare and rent for his first few months in Arizona, as well as a $2,500 fee for Ms. Avenida and a fee of several thousand dollars to Alliance Abroad Group, a Texas-based company that is an official State Department sponsor for J-1 visa holders. The J-1 lasts three years, with the option for two one-year extensions. For each year he works in the United States, Mr. Soberano will owe Alliance Abroad an additional $1,000 visa renewal fee.

"You have to make some sacrifices to leave your family way back home," Mr. Soberano said. Every night, he prepares lessons for his seventh- and eighth-grade science students, and every morning, he wakes up at 4 a.m. to video chat with his wife and two teenage daughters, who are ending their day in Manila. Despite their separation, he said the experience has been rewarding, "teaching in a different culture, but also, financially."

The school districts that recruit teachers like Mr. Soberano say that they have few other options, because they can't find enough American educators willing to work for the pay that's offered. They say that the foreign teachers are being given valuable opportunities, and that American students are enriched by learning from them. But critics argue the teachers are being taken advantage of in a practice that helps keep wages low and perpetuates yearslong austerity policies.

[Read: Why are teachers walking out? What's the difference between a walkout and a strike?]

Though J-1 teachers account for only a tiny share of Arizona's 60,000 public schoolteachers, international recruitment has spread quickly in recent years, as sponsor companies market themselves to districts facing shortages and word spreads among administrators. According to the State Department, 183 Arizona teachers were granted new J-1 visas last year, up from 17 in 2010.

"Rather than increase salaries, districts may once again resort to recruiting internationally as a way to solve the teacher shortage," Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, a national teachers' union, said in a statement. She added that while her union "will fight for everyone working in our communities and educating our kids to have fair wages, rights and workplace protections regardless of where they're from, the use of the J-1 visa program to fill long-term shortages is an abuse of an exchange program."

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Teachers and their supporters marched last week in Phoenix as part of a statewide walkout over education funding. Credit Caitlin O'Hara for The New York Times

Administrators and researchers say experienced foreign educators can be a better option for students than the substitutes who would otherwise fill these positions. But research is clear that teacher churn negatively impacts academic achievement. J-1 teachers are, because of the visa's limitations, temporary; and without higher pay and regular raises, administrators in these districts say it will be impossible to attract enough American teachers and keep them in the classroom.

During the recession, districts found it easier to hire American workers, since more of them were looking to teach. But as the economy picked back up, hiring became difficult in states like Arizona, which have pursued years of tax cuts that have dampened school budgets and teacher pay. The Pendergast district has lost $1.6 million over the past five years because of state and local cuts, according to administrators.

The superintendent, Lily Matos DeBlieux, has sought private donations to fund a Spanish-English dual-language program, a monthly lunch discussion to help parents navigate their children's education and many other efforts. "With the little we have, we have done an incredible job," she said.

But hiring remains a challenge. Even with 48 J-1 visa-holders teaching this year, Pendergast has still had to rely on 20 long-term substitutes, said Ms. Davis-Tussey, the chief of human resources.

In addition to interviewing international candidates via Skype, district staff members have traveled to Manila several times since 2015 to interview teachers. Mr. Soberano met with the district there in June 2016, and just two months later, arrived in Arizona to teach at Sunset Ridge Elementary School in Glendale. The Philippines was the top sender of J-1 teachers to the United States in 2017, followed by Jamaica and China.

The 15,000-mile round-trips made sense, Ms. Davis-Tussey said. Many short-staffed schools turn to Teach for America, which recruits recent college graduates and career-changers for two-year stints in the classroom. But to hire a Teach for America recruit, who may have no teaching experience or coursework in education, the district must pay $5,000 per teacher, in addition to salaries.

For a similar amount, a single trip to the Philippines can net dozens of candidates, all of whom, as required by the J-1 program, have degrees in education or the subjects they teach, and at least two years of experience in a Filipino school.

Mr. Soberano holds one bachelor's degree in education, with a focus on physics, and another in philosophy. He has also studied theology. He has over 20 years of classroom experience.

Mukul Bakhshi, director of the Alliance for Ethical International Recruitment Practices, in Philadelphia, said the Philippines purposefully trains teachers, nurses and other workers "in a way that it's easy for them to pass muster from licensing authorities here. They obviously speak English, and they are willing to work." Remittances from foreign workers account for about 10 percent of the Philippines' gross domestic product.

The Pendergast district did not owe any money to the companies that connected it with recruits in Manila. Those costs were borne by the Filipino teachers.

James Bell, president of Alliance Abroad, the visa sponsor, said a financial arrangement like Mr. Soberano's is just one of several models the company uses, and that in some cases, school districts pay visa3,5 renewal fees. Alliance Abroad sponsors several hundred J-1 visa holders each year, according to Mr. Bell, working primarily in Arizona, California, Nevada, Texas and Utah. He said the biggest demand was for special-education teachers, though districts also looked to hire in science, math and foreign languages.

In Gila Bend, a small town 70 miles southwest of Phoenix, 11 Filipino teachers who room together in several shared apartments commute to work by van 100 miles round-trip each day, according to Peggy Perry, a secretary in the district's central office. In Casa Grande, halfway between Phoenix and Tucson, about 25 Filipino teachers with J-1 visas are teaching science, math, special education and English, said Mary Ann Amerson, head of human resources for the Casa Grande Union High School District.

The district works with Ms. Avenida, the California-based consultant, to find the teachers and interview them via Skype. "We don't pay any money for it," Ms. Amerson said. The recruits pay the fees.

Ms. Avenida said her company, which uses the name Avenida International Consultants in the United States, recruited 250 Filipino teachers with J-1 visas in 2017. According to State Department data, that would account for more than half the total number of J-1 visa holders who arrived from the Philippines last year.

Ms. Avenida joined union representatives in a working group, assembled by the Alliance for Ethical International Recruitment Practices, that drafted a 2015 code of conduct for international teacher recruitment. The code calls for districts to bear all recruitment and legal costs, and for foreign educators not to be charged more than a nominal application processing fee, under $150. It has not been widely adopted, and Ms. Avenida said she disagreed with the group's conclusions.

Mr. Soberano said that despite the fees he paid to private companies for his teaching arrangement in the United States, he was grateful for the opportunity. Credit Deanna Alejandra Dent for The New York Times

"Somebody has to foot the bill," she said - and in a climate of tight school budgets, that somebody is the teacher.

[Read: How will the protests against education cuts affect the midterm elections?]

In Mr. Soberano's case, it was not until his second year on the job that he had paid back the money he owed and was able to begin sending some home to his family. He has had to live austerely. In his first year in Arizona, he shared an apartment with five other Filipino teachers, and he now rents a room in the home of a Filipino-American family.

Still, he said he was nothing but grateful for the opportunity. "The district is very supportive," he said. Pendergast created a welcome committee to assist the Filipino teachers, and colleagues pitched in by buying groceries and driving the newcomers to work.

In addition to financial challenges, foreign educators face instructional ones. Administrators across the country who work with J-1 visa holders say the teachers must learn the federal requirement for inclusion, which requires that disabled children be taught alongside nondisabled peers, in the least restrictive environment possible.

And classroom management techniques differ across cultures. "In the Philippines, the teacher there is really an authority figure," Mr. Soberano said. "Once I stood in front of the class, everybody kept quiet." That wasn't the case in Arizona.

"One thing I also learned is to be friends with the students," Mr. Soberano added, "to know more about each one and especially their family. How are they doing? When you understand them, I remove that kind of problem."

State Department regulations require J-1 teachers to engage in cultural exchange activities with their students. The J-1 program was created by the 1961 Fulbright-Hayes Act, with the purpose of fostering understanding between nations. Mr. Soberano said that once a month, he teaches a lesson on Filipino culture, and that his students have been most interested in discussing the differences between the Filipino and American education systems. In the Philippines, Mr. Soberano tells them, school is stricter and more academically challenging.

New regulations from the State Department, which went into effect in 2016, require J-1 holders to return to their home countries for at least two years after their visas expire before reapplying. Mr. Soberano said he may do that. But his wish is to reside legally in the United States and work long-term as a teacher. "I would love to bring my family here," he said.

Ms. Weingarten, the union president, suggested that the H-1B visa for high-skilled immigrants, which offers a pathway toward permanent residence, would be a more appropriate visa for a teacher like Mr. Soberano. But Pendergast and other school districts say long wait times and high legal costs can make the H-1B prohibitive. The Trump administration has also tightened oversight of that program.

In Denver public schools, 20 bilingual education teachers hold H-1Bs and about three hold J-1s. But in the future, the district said, it may expand its use of the J-1.

"We still don't have enough people to fill the openings," said Bart Muller, the managing director of employee and labor relations for the system. "The political environment has been a little challenging over the last year and a half. The bottom line is there are a lot more hoops to jump through with H-1B, while J-1 is fairly simple. You can do it expeditiously."

Lora Bartlett, an education professor who has written a book about migrant teachers, argued that there should be a new visa category that meets the needs of public schools while allowing effective teachers to achieve legal residency. But, she added, "there are people who have a vested interest in not finding a long-term solution. There is a whole industry that makes money every time a new teacher comes into the country. They don't make money when a teacher stays."

[Read: How our reporter came across this story.]

And in Arizona, where many teachers are expected to improve test scores using aging textbooks inside buildings in need of repair, districts worry that a modest increase in teacher salaries and school funding won't be enough to persuade more local candidates to enter the profession.

"Quite frankly, for a lot of the teachers, some of the fun and creativity has been taken out of it with mandates," said Ms. Amerson, the head of human resources in Casa Grande. "It seems like we spend the whole entire second semester testing kids."

In Pendergast, Ms. Davis-Tussey agreed that higher pay alone would not be enough to fill the empty jobs that have forced her to look to the Philippines.

"That respect for the profession is just as important as the money," she said. "And for a long time, teachers have felt, not only did they not have money, but what they were doing was being brushed aside and not respected."

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Schools Fill Low-Pay Jobs From Abroad. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Teacher Pay Is So Low in Some U.S. School Districts That They're Recruiting Overseas

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GLENDALE, Ariz. - The latest wave of foreign workers sweeping into American jobs brought Donato Soberano from the Philippines to Arizona two years ago. He had to pay thousands of dollars to a job broker and lived for a time in an apartment with five other Filipino workers.

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Regulators Worry as Banks Step Back From International Money Transfers

There is a worry of banks stepping back from international money transfers due to new laws and money being sent underground. Many developing countries depend on families who are working in core countries to send money back home. Remittance service is a major key for developing countries in house funds.

It’s relevant to the article of “From Russia with love,” by The Economist. It talks about families needing these remittances for them to survive back home. Without the international money transfers, developing countries can face their GDP to lower, as money is not being sent back home for people to spend.

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LONDON - Banks are increasingly stepping back from helping one another with international money transfers due to tougher money laundering checks, dealing a blow to countries that rely on remittances and potentially driving some payments underground.

The Financial Stability Board (FSB), which coordinates financial rules across the Group of 20 economies (G20), said on Friday that so-called correspondent banking continued to shrink last year, despite attempts by regulators to halt the decline.

Correspondent banking refers to a bank relying on a bank in another country to carry out checks on customers transferring money, such as remittances.

Banks are being put off from such tasks by the burden of stricter checks on customers, and tougher punishments on money laundering and terrorist financing. This creates a headache for regulators, because banks' checks are a key part of cracking down on such offences.

The FSB said 2017 saw a 4.1 percent decline in correspondent banking, based on the flow of payment messages on the global SWIFT interbank messaging network.

It said the decline remained a source of concern because it could affect the ability in some countries to send and receive payments, or drive some payments underground, hitting economic growth and international trade.

Between January 2011 and the end of 2017, the cumulative drop in correspondent banking totalled 15.5 percent.

Small economies with a gross domestic product of less than $10 billion (7.7 billion pounds) have seen a much larger decline in the number of foreign counterparties per local bank, compared with bigger economies, the FSB said.

The FSB put forward measures in 2015 aimed at halting the decline, such as more streamlined customer checks, and clarifying to banks what regulators expect of them - lenders had complained of having to check the customers of customers.

"To be effective, these need to be implemented in practice by national authorities and banks," said Alexander Karrer, chair of the FSB's correspondent banking group.

Although payments are still flowing, they have become concentrated at fewer banks.

Remittances from people working abroad to relatives back home rose 7 percent in 2017 to $613 billion, the FSB said.

"Nevertheless, access of remittance service providers to banking services remains a source of concern, which is particularly acute in those developing countries where remittance flows are a key source of funds for households," the FSB said.

If the decline in correspondent banking continues, the FSB said it and other international regulators would consider if further, unspecified, action should be taken.

(Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Mark Potter)

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Regulators Worry as Banks Step Back From International Money Transfers

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LONDON - Banks are increasingly stepping back from helping one another with international money transfers due to tougher money laundering checks, dealing a blow to countries that rely on remittances and potentially driving some payments underground.

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Confederate Flag Sales Soar as Retailers Pull Stock

The selling of items related to the confederate battle flag are rising in small businesses while big businesses pull them off their shelves. To many this symbol brings racism towards certain cultures, but to others it brings pride. With many stores getting rid of these items, small businesses are profiting.

This is relevant to the article “Creating and Controlling Symbolic value,” by Ponte and Daviron. It talks about business creating symbolic value in items that will boost their sales. With the confederate flag being one of the biggest symbolic items to many people, it is sky rocking sales for small businesses.

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Confederate symbols at Dent Myer's business, Wildman's Shop, in downtown Kennesaw, Ga. Several retailers have decided they will no longer sell such merchandise because of the church killings in Charleston, S.C. Credit Credit Kevin Liles for The New York Times

Entering a debate that has played out for years mostly in the political realm, many of the nation's largest retailers abruptly decided this week to stop selling merchandise tied to the Confederate battle flag.

One by one, beginning with Walmart on Monday night, companies including Sears/Kmart, eBay, Amazon, Etsy and Google Shopping disavowed, sometimes in strong moral terms, merchandise that has been sold quietly for decades.

"We have decided to prohibit Confederate flags and many items containing this image because we believe it has become a contemporary symbol of divisiveness and racism," eBay said in a statement, echoing the sentiments of others in the aftermath of the fatal shooting last week of nine black parishioners in a South Carolina church and the arrest of a white suspect.

The killings have renewed a focus on the Confederate flag, which had been displayed in a photograph of the accused gunman. Large segments of the public have demanded that it be removed from its perch at the State House grounds in Columbia. On Tuesday, as the flag continued to be held up as a symbol of hatred and slavery, South Carolina lawmakers were considering whether to have it taken down.

The retailers' actions have illuminated a patchwork industry of T-shirts, mugs, beach towels and hundreds of other items bearing the Confederate symbol that are made everywhere from factories in China to tiny craft shops.

More than 29,000 such offerings could be found on the Amazon website Tuesday morning, including bikinis, shower curtains, ceramic coasters, cupcake toppers and even a tongue ring.

The company had remained silent as other retailers made their announcements. But by midafternoon, after emotional posts poured onto the company's Facebook page, a company official confirmed that it would take down all Confederate merchandise.

Yet even as companies were vowing to discontinue the items, sales of them were soaring. Confederate flags jumped to the top of Amazon's Patio, Lawn & Garden category, with purchases of some items spiking by more than 5,000 percent.

By midafternoon Tuesday, the Dixie Flag Company in San Antonio had sold 25 Confederate flags in 24 hours, according to the company's president, Pete Van de Putte. Usually, the company has no more than three orders a week for the flags and sometimes only three in a month, he said.

The reasons for the purchases varied significantly. One customer at a small Georgia shop told the owner she wanted to line her front yard with Confederate flags. Mr. Van de Putte said a black man had come into Dixie Flags on Monday with his young daughter seeking to buy the biggest Confederate flag in the store. He said he was buying it to burn it.

While large retailers were feeling public pressure to pull the items from their shelves and websites, a number of smaller companies refused to stop selling Confederate-related merchandise, no matter how controversial.

At Wildman's, a jumble of a shop in Kennesaw, Ga., about 40 miles from Atlanta, that sells numerous sizes of Confederate flags, along with magnets, license plates and barbecue aprons, the 84-year-old owner, Dent Myers, said of Walmart and others: "They are chicken. Kowtowing to the herds."

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Mr. Myers in his store. Credit Kevin Liles for The New York Times

Walmart's action had even brought him some new business. Jack Hicklin, a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who had a knife holster and a handgun in his pocket, came in looking for Confederate flag tank tops after learning that Walmart would no longer carry them.

"We got all these killings and people are worried about the damn flag?" he said.

In a midafternoon interview, Mr. Van de Putte of the Dixie Flag Company said his company was committed to continuing to sell the flag.

"There are many flags that we sell that somebody could find offensive," he said. "We sell gay pride flags. We sell Jewish flags. We sell Arab-country flags. When you're in the business of selling flags and symbols, I think you have a responsibility to offer everything and not make those value judgments because someone might find something objectionable politically."

But a few hours later, Vanessa Van de Putte, his daughter and the vice president of the company, called to say that the business had changed its mind after some major suppliers, including a venerable manufacturer, Annin Flagmakers, had said they would no longer make Confederate flags. "Based on the consensus in the industry and the current situation, as of this time we are not going to sell the Confederate battle flag," she said.

Correction:

An article on Wednesday about the decision by several major retailers to stop selling merchandise containing the Confederate battle flag misidentified the city that is home to the South Carolina State House. It is Columbia, not Charleston.

Mike Tierney and Mike Soraghan contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: As Retailers Move to Halt Sales of Divisive Symbol, Some Buyers Stock Up . Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Confederate Flag Sales Soar as Retailers Pull Stock

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Entering a debate that has played out for years mostly in the political realm, many of the nation's largest retailers abruptly decided this week to stop selling merchandise tied to the Confederate battle flag. One by one, beginning with Walmart on Monday night, companies including Sears/Kmart, eBay, Amazon, Etsy and Google Shopping disavowed, sometimes in strong moral terms, merchandise that has been sold quietly for decades.

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Short of Their Destination, Caravan Migrants Wrestle With Next Steps

With the Caravan Migrants reaching Mexico, they now face the next steps of either staying in Tijuana or continuing their journey to the United States. Many have found jobs in Mexico, but believe that’s not where they will have a better life, they believe their better lives await in the U.S.

This is relevant to the wiki article of Human Migration. It demonstrates reasons of people fleeing their home country and traveling to find a better life for their families. They flee from danger and underprivileged life. These migrants are striving to reach a life without fear and threats.

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Buses and trucks filled with migrants arrived Tuesday in Tijuana. All were housed at a sports center that the government set up as a shelter. Credit Credit Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

TIJUANA, Mexico - One job opening was in a garment factory, another was with a cleaning company. Still, María Norma López hesitated. When she left Honduras six weeks ago with a migrant caravan, she hoped to pass through Mexico, not to remain there.

"I want to go to the United States because I want to have a better life," Ms. López, 39, said. "And in Mexico - I don't know."

In a first step toward fashioning a long-term solution for caravan members, officials in this city of humming export plants got down to business: They set up a job fair complete with a mobile migration office.

It was a practical response to the challenge of housing and feeding the migrants, an effort that is swamping Tijuana's resources. But even as Ms. López and dozens of other migrants milled around the basement room filling out forms, it was clear much more was needed.

The city government has said that it will take six months for all the migrants who decide to seek asylum in the United States to be called for a first interview with an asylum officer at the border. Having relied on collective action to reach the California border, the migrants must now navigate the next steps on their own.

Tijuana officials prepared Wednesday for the caravan to double to more than 6,000 people, as migrants who had been waiting in rudimentary shelters two and a half hours to the east gradually found rides to Tijuana aboard buses and trailers.

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Migrants filling out applications at a job fair in Tijuana, Mexico. Credit Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

The migrants, who have insisted on remaining together, are being dropped off at a rundown community sports center where officials set up a makeshift shelter last week. If the final population reaches 6,000 or so, as expected, the shelter will be packed with almost twice as many people as its estimated capacity.

The head of Tijuana's social development agency, Mario Osuna, watched wearily Tuesday evening as hundreds of migrants, carrying rolled blankets and frayed backpacks, lined up to give their names and receive the orange bracelets that gave them access to the shelter.

"We're waiting for them because they're already on their way," Mr. Osuna said of the migrants coming from the east. "But we can't have people on top of one another."

The new arrivals will raise tensions in Tijuana, where the United States - following President Trump's portrayal of the caravan as an "invasion" - has made a show of strengthening the border.

Concertina wire spiraled over the American side of the border crossing leading from downtown Tijuana to San Ysidro, Calif. At the Otay Mesa crossing on the city's east side, United States Customs and Border Protection officers emerged in full anti-riot gear during the afternoon earlier this week to stand guard on either side of traffic inching over the border.

United States Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen called the show of force a response to intelligence suggesting that a large number of migrants were going to rush the border, although Pueblo Sin Fronteras, a binational activist group accompanying the migrants, has said repeatedly that no such plan exists.

United States officials also said, without providing evidence, that they had identified 500 criminals in the caravan, but could not explain why the Mexican police had not arrested them.

The effort to house and feed the migrants is swamping Tijuana's resources. Credit Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

For the migrants, who had willed themselves to believe that Mr. Trump could somehow be softened by their presence at the border, the message was clear.

"Once we got here, we realized that they weren't going to let us cross," Leticia Ramírez, 35, who said she worked on banana plantations in Honduras, complained as she walked out of the shelter one morning this week with two friends. She was on her way to look for "any job" in Tijuana.

"The president of the United States treats us like garbage, like some kind of animal," Ms. Ramírez said, her arms wrapped around her sleeping bag.

American lawyers have held workshops to explain to the migrants here the intricacies of applying for asylum in the United States - almost the only way most of them might qualify to enter legally.

Chelsea Strautman, a lawyer from Oregon, stood on an overturned bucket before a crowd clustered on the sports center's baseball diamond on Tuesday night.

Approval rates for Central American applicants were grim, she told them; currently, less than 20 percent win their asylum cases. "They've put thousands of migrants in jails," she said. "If you don't qualify for asylum, you're going to be detained for months and then deported."

Some migrants refused to give up hope. "We're only a few steps away from seeing what God will say," said Emerson Martínez Amador, 19, from Honduras, who arrived in Tijuana on Tuesday with the second half of the caravan.

Mexico provides a humanitarian visa that allows foreigners to work, as well as an opportunity to seek asylum in Mexico. Credit Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

"If it takes time to reach my destiny, I'll wait," he declared. "Even if it takes one month, or two. We've got to wait, you understand?"

The wait has just begun and Tijuana is feeling the strain. With Mexico's new federal government preparing to take office on Dec. 1, the city has received the barest minimum of help and cannot set up a new shelter, said César Palencia Chávez, who is in charge of migrants' affairs for the city of Tijuana.

"We would all like for them to have a dignified space for the children, the women, the men, but the reality is that what has been humanely possible up to now is this," he said, referring to the sports center. "There are no resources."

And since the migrants won't separate, he said, he cannot place some of them with the city's network of largely church-run shelters.

Most of those shelters, he said, will take only women and children because publicity about the way the caravan pushed through Mexico's southern border with Guatemala a month ago and the arrests of nearly 60 men in Tijuana during the past week - almost all for nonviolent misdemeanors - have begun to rattle citizens.

On Wednesday Mexican authorities detained a caravan of some 180 Central American migrants north of the Guatemalan border who were traveling without the proper documents, the National Migration Institute said. The migrants were given an opportunity to seek asylum in Mexico or be returned to their countries.

At the sports center shelter, supplies were stretched even before the second half of the migrant caravan arrived, despite donations from volunteer and church groups, said Delia Ávila Suárez, who heads Tijuana's family services agency. Toilet paper, diapers, sanitary pads and cough medicine often ran out before a new delivery arrived.

A United States Custom and Border Patrol agent inspects cars at the San Ysidro border crossing. Credit Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

"In general, Tijuana is a land of immigrants," to which the city has adapted, she said, "but we've never seen anything like this."

In 2016 and 2017, thousands of Haitians arrived after traveling all the way from Brazil. At one point, the city placed 6,000 Haitians in 32 different shelters, Mr. Palencia said.

Since then, some 3,500 Haitians have settled in Tijuana, and migration officials have been quick to cite their integration as a model for the caravan.

But some wonder how long it will be before the patience of the caravan migrants runs out and they try to cross the border illegally.

"Many people have stayed here for half a year, and they adapt to life in the community, but then they've crossed over," said José María García Lara, the founder of the shelter Juventud 2000. "They'll end up going, because we're on the border."

Mexico provides a humanitarian visa that allows foreigners to work, as well as an opportunity to seek asylum in Mexico.

"We are going to be here for a good long time," said Héctor Rodríguez, 40, who fled his job as a bus driver in the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula because of extortion threats. Waiting for his turn to speak to a Mexican immigration official at the job fair, he said he planned to earn enough money to send for his wife and two children.

"This is a good option," he said, rising from his chair. It was time to have his ID photo taken.

Ron Nixon contributed reporting from Washington.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Stranded in Tijuana, Near an Ever More Distant Destination. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Short of Their Destination, Caravan Migrants Wrestle With Next Steps

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TIJUANA, Mexico - One job opening was in a garment factory, another was with a cleaning company. Still, María Norma López hesitated. When she left Honduras six weeks ago with a migrant caravan, she hoped to pass through Mexico, not to remain there.

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As Slums Teeter in Marseille, a Poverty Crisis Turns Deadly

Europe brings in millions of tourists exploring the historical buildings and museums. Marseille, France is the second largest city and the poorest in Europe. More than 40,000 housing were marked unsafe, but officials have not paid interest in renovating these buildings. More than 1,000 families are becoming homeless due to crumbling buildings.

This article is relevant to the “Converting (or not) Cultural Wealth into Tourism Profits’” by Regnault because, it talks about officials not wanting to renovate these building because it fits with the expectations of tourist. These old buildings bring history to the cities and that’s what people pay to see.

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Marseille Dispatch

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A resident in the stairwell of a building in Marseille's city center, where a 2015 expert report found that 40,000 dwellings were unsafe. Credit Credit Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times

MARSEILLE, France - The red-helmeted marine firefighter was firm. "Right," he told the anxious families gathered around him, "we're closing up the building."

Bewildered and frightened, they climbed the darkened, rickety staircase of their building on the Rue Jean Roque, past the chunks of missing plaster and thick lines of cracks, some big enough to put an arm into. On the firefighter's orders, they gathered their belongings and then left, for the last time.

Their decrepit five-story apartment building, long ignored by city officials, was now deemed unsafe. Marseille city leaders, on the defensive after ignoring expert warnings, were racing to respond to a public outcry after two buildings collapsed this month, killing eight people.

Nervous officials have since evacuated 1,054 people, and counting, from 111 crumbling apartments in the heart of the ancient and dingy Mediterranean port. But a 2015 report written for France's minister of housing found that 40,000 dwellings in Marseille were unsafe - which is 10 percent of all unsafe buildings in France, and affects 100,000 of the city's inhabitants.

Marseille, France's second-largest city and one of Europe's poorest, is facing a housing crisis that, more deeply, is a crisis of poverty. More than a quarter of the population is officially poor.

Many are asking why it has taken officials so long to address the dire conditions and what Marseille's persistent poverty says about the neglect of "the other France" - in part immigrant and poor - whose decline long preceded President Emmanuel Macron's pro-market changes, and easily threatens to outlast them.

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As the city has poured millions into sports facilities and dazzling museums for tourists, little has gone to shore up the hundreds of buildings in the city center, some dating to the 18th century and earlier, which house the poor. Inspections have been haphazard and cursory, alarming reports have been ignored and official efforts understaffed.

Despite the 2015 report's determination that 40,000 buildings were unsafe, only a tiny fraction were officially declared unsafe by the city in all of 2016, according to an activist group.

On Oct. 18, two and a half weeks before the buildings collapsed on the Rue d'Aubagne, an expert sent by the city declared the first floor of No. 65 unsafe. Not the rest of the building, though.

Those who were killed - including an immigrant mother of eight, a student, a painter and an out-of-work African migrant with no papers - reflected the gap between those who have housing, clean water, education and job opportunities, and the rest, even in a country with an extensive social safety net.

In response, thousands of people have poured into the city's streets to protest the authorities' perceived negligence.

"Gaudin, Murderer!" they shouted last Wednesday night, referring to the city's powerful longtime mayor, Jean-Claude Gaudin. "The street's justice will condemn you!" they yelled, 10,000 strong in a noisy march on the Baroque City Hall building facing the water.

The people of Marseille, both the smartly dressed and the ragged, have trooped day after day to the makeshift memorial of flowers and candles erected near the disaster site. "It wasn't the rain!" - an ironic reference to City Hall's initial explanation, and already an icon of the protest - was scribbled on the wall.

"Who died there?" said Rabah Ramdani, a shopkeeper who had come to pay tribute. "Only the poor. And it isn't over."

Down long and narrow Rue Jean Roque, shady in the autumn sunshine, Bintou Cissé stood outside her tiny alterations shop around the corner from the collapsed buildings, refusing to go inside.

"Because I'm afraid," she said. "Everything is rotten here. It's nothing but slums."

"You can see it," she added, looking up at the facade's cracks.

In the dilapidated old buildings of the Noailles neighborhood in the city center, where the poor live, fear has taken over. Children say they are afraid to come home from school, working mothers say they wake at night at the slightest vibration, university students sleep somewhere else.

"Up until now we've been ashamed to bring people here," said Laura Spica, a musician who lives on the street. "Now, we're not only ashamed, we're afraid."

Dazzling and pastel-hued, Marseille is a concentration of France's postindustrial urban pathologies - "a sort of French Detroit," said the sociologist Michel Peraldi.

It has never recovered from the double blows of deindustrialization and decolonization, Mr. Peraldi said. The industries that transformed cheap raw materials no longer exist, and neither do the once closely linked colonies that supplied them. The biggest contemporary employer is the public hospital administration.

Unemployment is nearly 50 percent higher than the national average. Immigrants have come in waves since the 1950s from North Africa.

"There are three generations of unemployed," Mr. Peraldi said. "There has never been any clear policy to reintegrate these classes into society."

Of the two buildings that fell on the Rue d'Aubagne, No. 63 was vacant, boarded up and missing much of its roof, and had been taken over by the city. It is thought that the collapse of that structure, feebly supporting the already weakened and inhabited No. 65, brought down No. 65, like a house of cards.

"What this has revealed is a state of total decadence, and a total insouciance on the part of the elected officials," said Patrick Lacoste, head of an activist group, Center-City for Everybody.

"This is a political catastrophe," Mr. Lacoste added, "because for 23 years City Hall has let the neighborhood die."

Enter any building, at random, in the Noailles neighborhood and the staircases tilt queasily downward. It is advisable to hold the handrail.

"When the neighbor goes up the stairs, the whole place shakes," said Khedidja Dhamani, a middle-aged woman who lives on the Rue d'Aubagne down the street from the collapsed buildings.

Ceilings are missing expanses of plaster, and old wooden beams are often exposed and rotten. In Ms. Dhamani's kitchen, water from the neighbor's bath streamed through a large crack.

Elsewhere in Noailles, fabled for generations as a food-shopping district, it is common to see rusty steel girders propping up staircases. Stephanie Rose, a young mother of two, tells her children to wear tennis shoes when it rains; the water comes right into the apartment.

Nearby on the Rue de l'Arc, Saida Ouaheb's downstairs neighbor asks her not to use her washing machine, because it makes the ceiling shake. Ms. Ouaheb's three young daughters are now scared to be in their small two-bedroom apartment. Her 9-year-old refused to leave school one day this week.

"We're not sleeping well here," said Ms. Ouaheb, who works as a cleaner in a restaurant and whose monthly rent of 640 euros, or about $730, is heavily subsidized by the state.

Her Moroccan husband speaks no French, doesn't have the right papers, and doesn't work. "Since Monday I am afraid," she said. "I would like to leave."

At the week's protest marches, immigrants who live in the downtown slums were largely outnumbered by white, bourgeois residents of Marseille, mostly unaffected by the grim housing conditions. Many nonetheless expressed shame over the deadly disaster.

"It's incredible that something like this could have happened, here, in France," said Elise Sut, a musician who joined one march.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Slums Teeter in Marseille, Exposing A Crisis of Poverty in Their Cracks. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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As Slums Teeter in Marseille, a Poverty Crisis Turns Deadly

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Marseille Dispatch MARSEILLE, France - The red-helmeted marine firefighter was firm. "Right," he told the anxious families gathered around him, "we're closing up the building." Bewildered and frightened, they climbed the darkened, rickety staircase of their building on the Rue Jean Roque, past the chunks of missing plaster and thick lines of cracks, some big enough to put an arm into.

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Delayed Obama For-Profit Fraud Protection Ordered Into Force

Students who were cheated by for-profit colleges got victory over Education Secretary Betsy DeVos who is against the student loan forgiveness, mentioning it was given to students very easy and was not fair for taxpayers. The court rules against her and students are now waiting for schools to accept their applications for student loan forgiveness.
This article is relevant to the “We can kick-start poor economies by writing off debt…” because, it talks about improving the life of the student in a way to help them move past this debt crisis and start their growth in spending their money towards taxable goods that will help the country.

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WASHINGTON - Students defrauded by for-profit colleges scored an important victory on Tuesday, when a court cleared the way for an Obama-era policy that will make it easier for them to get their student loans forgiven.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos had said the regulation, known as borrower defense, made discharging loans too easy and was unfair to taxpayers. The rule was due to take effect in July 2017, but DeVos froze it until she issued a new policy in its place.

But U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss ruled last month that DeVos' delay was unlawful. On Tuesday, he denied a request by an organization representing for-profit colleges in California, to further postpone the rule, thus paving the way for borrower defense to enter into force.

"The rule is finally in effect. No more excuses. No more delays," said Julie Murray, an attorney with Public Citizen, who is representing the defrauded students in their suit against DeVos.

The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

Department press secretary Liz Hill said last week that the agency respects the court's decision and will not try to further delay the rule, but will keep working on revising the policy.

"Regardless of what the court decides, many provisions of the 2016 regulations are bad policy and the Department will continue the work of finalizing a new rule that protects both borrowers and taxpayers," Hill said in a statement on Friday.

The group, whose motion to delay the rule was denied, the California Association of Private Postsecondary Schools, did not immediately return a request for comment.

The ruling marks a significant setback for DeVos, who has made deregulating the for-profit college industry a top priority. The decision means that the Obama rule, which DeVos has fought hard to scrap, could be in effect until July 2020, when any new rule written by DeVos would enter into force.

Under the Obama rule, students whose school closed mid-program or shortly after completion, will become eligible for automatic loan discharge. The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, estimates that Tuesday's decision will affect tens of thousands of students at over 1,400 schools who will now be eligible for $400 million in automatic debt relief across the nation.

Other provisions in the rule allow students to apply for loan discharge as a group. It also prevents schools from forcing students to sign away their rights to sue the program and makes sure that the schools, not just tax payers, bear financial responsibility in case the schools end up shutting down.

"This is a major victory for students across this country in the ongoing battle against the Department of Education and the for-profit college industry," said Toby Merrill, director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending at Harvard University that also took part in the lawsuit.

But Steve Gunderson, president of Career Education Colleges and Universities, the industry lobbying group, described Judge Moss' ruling as "disappointing as it will only create further confusion for students and schools" and urged the Education Department to provide as much as guidance as possible while it finishes writing the new rule.

Gunderson added, "Many will look at this ruling where a Judge appointed by President Obama upholds a rule created by the Obama Department of Education and see further evidence of the politicization of our court system."

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Delayed Obama For-Profit Fraud Protection Ordered Into Force

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WASHINGTON - Students defrauded by for-profit colleges scored an important victory on Tuesday, when a court cleared the way for an Obama-era policy that will make it easier for them to get their student loans forgiven. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos had said the regulation, known as borrower defense, made discharging loans too easy and was unfair to taxpayers.

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Amazon India Say Services Boosting Large Appliance Sales

Amazon’s offers boosted sales in small towns in India. During India’s festivities on October through December large amounts of orders such as cell phones, are shipped to small cities and towns located in India. This outcome of sales is reported to boost Amazon as one of the fastest growing market globally

This article is relevant to the lecture of foreign direct investment. Amazon has spread globally giving their consumer’s e-commerce market to be able to buy any product and be delivered the same day. Which is relevant to big multinational companies spreading to other countries to boost their numbers in sales.

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MUMBAI - Amazon's investment in an extensive delivery network, and offering installation services and monthly payment plans, helped make large appliances a major category during its annual festive sale, the head of its Indian business said on Monday.

The bulk of orders for goods such as washing machines and refrigerators came from India's smaller towns and cities, said Amit Agarwal, adding offerings like extended warranties and same day installation paid off.

"Removing the worry from shopping works," said Agarwal in a telephone interview, as Amazon wound down its five-day annual festive season sale on Monday.

India's October-December festive season is the time most households buy big-ticket items.

Smartphones were the largest selling category in terms of value, while fashion was the biggest by units sold, he said.

Amazon's private label brands - that include everything from dry fruits to backpacks - sold 10 times more than during the e-tailer's festive sale last year.

Almost 80 percent of Amazon's new customers and half its new Prime members are from smaller towns too, Agarwal said.

Prime, Amazon's loyalty program that offers faster delivery, and free music and video streaming services, has helped Amazon attract tens of millions in India, making it Amazon's fastest-growing Prime market globally.

Sales of new sellers participating in Amazon's festive event also grew, with over 7,000 sellers clocking upward of a million rupees each, Agarwal said.

"For us we are seeing very broad based success across all our sellers," he said.

Amazon vies with homegrown Flipkart in India's burgeoning e-commerce market, tipped in a few years to be worth $200 billion annually. The rivalry has increased this year after U.S. retail giant Walmart bought a majority stake in Flipkart, whose festive season sale ended on Sunday.

(Reporting by Sankalp Phartiyal; Editing by Euan Rocha and Mark Potter)

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Amazon India Say Services Boosting Large Appliance Sales

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MUMBAI - Amazon's investment in an extensive delivery network, and offering installation services and monthly payment plans, helped make large appliances a major category during its annual festive sale, the head of its Indian business said on Monday.

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How Sears Was the Amazon of Its Day

Sears was once the biggest franchise of clothing to electronics and tools, but now it has filed for bankruptcy. The once loved store by many cannot compete with the new advance technology of e-commerce that other companies offer such as Amazon.

This article is relevant to the reading by James Ranch in the section of Trade as the engine of growth. It talks about core countries productivities in growth by technological progress in the market. We can see Sears as a less developed country that cannot keep up with technological knowledge to meet demand of development countries.

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It was a technological wonder - until the retail landscape changed and new innovation, and greedy owners, arrived.

By The Editorial Board

The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed section.

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A view from around 1900 of the freight packing room of Sears in Chicago. Twenty million Americans, out of a population of 76 million, got Sears catalogs that year. Credit Credit Interim Archives/Getty Images

The orders poured in from everywhere - 105,000 a day at one point - so much so that the company became an economic force. It could make or break suppliers by promoting their products. It could dictate terms on manufacturing. Its headquarters city boomed as this tech-driven retailer built huge warehouses and factories and attracted other businesses and rivals. State and local governments complained that the company was harming small-town retailers.

That was Sears, Roebuck & Company in the early 20th century in Chicago. But at various times in the history of retailing you could apply like descriptions of retail might to Walmart, Kmart, Safeway, A.&P., and F.W. Woolworth, whose Downtown Manhattan headquarters building was christened the "Cathedral of Commerce" when it opened in 1913. Today the Woolworth Building is a luxury condo whose young residents are probably unaware of the extraordinary entrepreneur who built it.

Which is to say that becoming the nation's leading retailer does not guarantee immortality, at least not beyond architecture. Sears, once America's dominant retailer, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after 132 years in business.

Sears became the Amazon of its day because its co-founder Richard Warren Sears harnessed two great networks to serve his enterprise - the railroads and the United States Postal Service. When the Postal Service commenced rural free delivery in 1896 (the "last mile" in today's jargon) every homestead in America became within reach.

And Richard Sears reached them. He used his genius for advertising and promotion to put a catalog in the hands of 20 million Americans in 1900, when the population was 76 million. The Wish Book or Big Book or Dream Book, as the catalog was variously called, could run a staggering 1,500 pages and offer more than 100,000 items. And when one of his pants suppliers, the manufacturing wizard Julius Rosenwald, became his partner, in 1886, Sears was on the way to becoming a vertically integrated juggernaut. Whether you needed a cream separator or a catcher's mitt, a plow or a dress, or an entire house, Sears had it. "No matter where you go or how long you look, you'll not find values approaching those this book presents," the spring 1922 catalog declared.

Sears would carve up the catalog landscape with a local rival, Montgomery Ward. Remember it? Probably not. The e-sales promotion company Groupon, itself once mighty and now clinging to life, occupies part of Ward's former headquarters in Chicago. Sears, Montgomery Ward and another Midwestern-born general merchandise retailer, J.C. Penney, dominated postwar American retailing, controlling 43 percent of department store sales by 1975. But even by then, Sears was beginning to falter under waves of new competition.

The company was not alone. A.&P., which introduced the first cut-rate grocery store in 1912, was also sliding into a long decline that would last through decades of ownership and management changes. Great A.&P. went through the final checkout lane in 2016 following its second bankruptcy. (Or was that the third?) A.&P. once operated 15,819 stores and ran the world's largest food packaging plant, in Horseheads, N.Y. The company was so powerful that in 1949 trustbusters tried to slice it into seven independent companies. Even before that, states passed "chain laws" that required minimum markups, so small stores couldn't be undermined by the loss leaders that A.&P. would offer to attract shoppers. A.&P., a vicious competitor, buried local retailers anyway.

By the inflation-racked 1970s, though, A.&P. was struggling against nimbler chains such as Safeway, which became the country's top grocer, and Kroger, as well as new models of retailing such as big-box stores. Walmart's eventual move into groceries would help seal A.&P.'s fate, and, at the same time, make the Arkansas company the nation's top retailer, where it remains. For now.

A.&P. would later show some dubious creativity when in the early 1980s management scrapped and replaced the "overfunded" pension plan, plundering it for operating capital. This piece of sliminess was copied all over corporate America, signaling the end of the pension plans that so many workers depended on for retirement income.

In its earlier days, with strong leaders such as Robert E. Wood, Sears was able to negotiate huge shifts in the economic and demographic landscape. By 1925, more Americans were living in the cities than in rural areas. Sears followed them by opening retail stores. The postwar boom would give rise to the suburban shopping mall, and Sears could easily finance and grab what were then (but not necessarily now) the best locations across the country.

By the mid-1980s, after a restructuring, the company briefly blossomed anew, in part by becoming a more full-blown conglomerate that owned Allstate Insurance and the Dean Witter brokerage. Sears also tried to crack the credit card market with its Discover card. The rationale was that Americans trusted Sears on the spending side of family finance, so why wouldn't they do the same on the savings side? The proposal was framed this way: "Would you buy stocks where you buy socks?" Answer: Not really.

High up in the Sears Tower, management couldn't see that the retail landscape was changing. Sears couldn't compete effectively with Walmart and the growth of big box merchandisers such as Toys "R" Us. But more important, the company could not summon the vision to anticipate the internet. By 1993, Sears had closed its national network of warehouses and exited the catalog business - which is basically e-retailing without the "e." Amazon shipped its first book in 1995.

The Cost to Transform Retailing

Which brings us to Eddie Lampert, the chief executive of ESL Investments, who bought Sears in 2005 figuring, wrongly, that he could reinvigorate it. Mr. Lampert recently blamed Sears' retirees for some of the company's problems, complaining that paying them the money they were owed was holding the company back. He's spent a decade shrinking Sears (and Kmart, which is part of the parent company, Sears Holdings) and then blamed the economy, the weather, Walmart, Amazon and everything else when his plan foundered. Saddled with debt it can't afford, Sears is filing for Chapter 11 to keep itself afloat through the Christmas holidays. No one wants to buy into Mr. Lampert's latest restructuring plan, which would sell ESL's control of some of Sears' best remaining assets, including the Kenmore appliance brand.

Amazon, the world's leading e-tailer, is now one of the biggest clients of the . Postal Service. As Sears did in 1925, Amazon has moved into brick-and-mortar retail, buying Whole Foods and opening its own stores as it tries to close the store gap with Walmart. And the company has gone well beyond any retailer in terms of diversification, including web and cloud hosting, original content, fashion, hardware, even an airline fleet. Amazon certainly has the government's attention, or at least the president's, and its recent announcement of a minimum wage of $15 an hour for all United States employees will stave off some of the withering criticism about its employment practices. Amazon's goal is to be less disliked than Walmart, apparently.

Certainly, Amazon looks unassailable in its current form. So did every retailer that became the biggest dog on retail's porch. They were all innovative. They all pushed the boundaries on pricing, sourcing, marketing, regulation, employment, expansion and tax breaks. They all ultimately lost their way. Sears is the latest chapter in that story. And probably not the last.
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Opinion | How Sears Was the Amazon of Its Day

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It was a technological wonder - until the retail landscape changed and new innovation, and greedy owners, arrived. By The Editorial Board The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed section.

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Zimbabwe Rebases Data, Boosting GDP Numbers by 40 Percent

Zimbabwe established a new base level data that boost their GDP numbers by 40% and announced to cut their civil services which accounts about 90% of their public spending and source of friction with donors and investors. Also, to decrease spending, theirs plans of selling state owned companies and reducing government perks.

This article relates to the reading of “Measuring Growth and Development” by Peet Hartwick by presenting the idea of how to reduce spending and focus on the development of their GDP and its people. It talks about what areas are not needed to help grow the economy within their borders.

https://nyti.ms/2BXt4Tr

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HARARE - Zimbabwe's statistics agency has rebased some of its economic statistics, in an unexpected move that the finance minister said on Friday had increased the nominal size of the struggling economy by more than 40 percent.

Also announcing plans to cut the civil service, privatise key firms and repay part of arrears to foreign lenders, Mthuli Ncube said the data adjustment had boosted annual gross domestic product to $25.8 billion (20 billion pounds) from around $18 billion.

Ncube said the new calculations took into account the large informal sector for the first time and had turned Zimbabwe into a lower-middle income nation. "Our economy is bigger than we think," Ncube told reporters in Harare.

Harare-based consultant economist John Robertson called the rebasing "an exercise in deception."

"...They are trying to factor in the informal sector but it's misleading because people in Zimbabwe are poorer than before," he said.

The country has an official unemployment rate of more than 80 percent and most of its citizens survive through informal trading, including hawking wares on the street - a legacy of decades of economic mismanagement under Robert Mugabe, who was ousted in a bloodless coup in November.

Most governments overhaul GDP calculations every few years to reflect changes in output and consumption, such as mobile phones and Internet-related activity. Zimbabwe last adjusted its figures in 2009, the year it dropped its hyperinflation-hit currency in favour of the dollar.

Also launching an economic recovery programme, Ncube said Zimbabwe was ready to cut its bloated civil service, which accounts for more than 90 percent of public spending and is a major source of friction with donors and investors.

"Trying to restructure your workforce is never easy... but (it's) still necessary," he said.

Ncube will present the programme, along with plans to clear more than $2 billion in arrears to foreign lenders, at meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Indonesia next week.

Zimbabwe is facing acute shortages of dollars, which has affected supplies of medicines, Ncube said, while long queues of fuel were seen in the capital Harare this week.

Bidding to reduce spending, the government also plans to sell off state-owned companies, including the telecoms operator, in the next six months, and is debating downsizing government perks.

Zimbabwe's budget deficit swelled in the first half of this year after government spending spiralled ahead of an election in July. Ncube said he was working to stop the "bleeding."

The government was "fine-tuning" a 2 percent tax on all electronic payments announced on Monday, Ncube said, after citizens condemned the move that has led to increases in prices of some goods.

Ncube said the government would also reform laws restricting media freedoms and anti-government protests, a key demand by the United States which has yet to drop sanctions that were imposed during Mugabe's authoritarian rule.

(Editing by John Stonestreet)

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Zimbabwe Rebases Data, Boosting GDP Numbers by 40 Percent

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HARARE - Zimbabwe's statistics agency has rebased some of its economic statistics, in an unexpected move that the finance minister said on Friday had increased the nominal size of the struggling economy by more than 40 percent.

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Post#1 Oct. 1,2018 Mexico’s New Leader, Once a Nafta Foe, Welcomes New Deal

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Post#1 Oct. 1,2018 Mexico’s New Leader, Once a Nafta Foe, Welcomes New Deal

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The incoming president for Mexico Andres Obrador did a last-minute negotiation on the improvement for the 24 year trade deal with Canada and the U.S that highlighted Mexico’s concessions, mainly being the auto industry. Although, president Trump calls it the worst deal, it will benefit Mexico in the creations of jobs and market investments.

This article is relevant to the lecture of Foreign Direct Investments, because it talks about the growth of trade for Mexico with a core country being the United Sates. This deal being negotiated between Canada and the U.S will benefit Mexico to grow its market and create jobs for its people.
https://nyti.ms/2NeHssr

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Mexico's president-elect, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, arriving at a meeting at the Palace of Mines in Mexico City. Credit Credit Henry Romero/Reuters

MEXICO CITY - Mexico's incoming president, the leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador, once railed against free-market policies and harbored deep misgivings about the North American Free Trade Agreement.

But hours after Canada joined an agreement between Mexico and the United States to revamp the 24-year-old trade deal, the president-elect and his aides on Monday hailed the last-minute negotiations that salvaged the trilateral accord.

"To us, the agreement looks to be very good for Mexico," said Jesús Seade, who represented Mr. López Obrador on the Mexican negotiating team.

Both Mr. López Obrador, Mexico's president-elect, and the center-right Enrique Peña Nieto, its president, welcomed news of the agreement, glossing over the fact that it included Mexican concessions - particularly in the auto industry, a key concern for President Trump.

Instead they pointed to the stability the deal ensured and to the removal of a burden that had been hanging over the country's economy since Mr. Trump's election.

The American president had called Nafta the worst trade deal in history and threatened to renegotiate it or withdraw. As the talks dragged on for months and stalled earlier this year, the risk that the accord could fall apart cast deep uncertainty over Mexico's economic outlook.

"The culmination of this negotiation process promotes certainty in the financial markets and investment and job creation in our country," Marcelo Ebrard, who will be Mr. López Obrador's foreign minister, said in a statement Monday morning.

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President Enrique Peña Nieto preparing to give his final State of the Nation address in Mexico City in September. Credit Ronaldo Schemidt/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

The three leaders have 60 days to sign the deal, whose timing was welcome for both the incoming and the outgoing presidents of Mexico.

For Mr. Peña Nieto, it is a win he can claim as part of his legacy. For Mr. López Obrador, it means the process will close before his Dec. 1 inauguration. That frees him from messy negotiations at the start of his administration and allows him to turn his attention to Mexico's limping economy.

Since Nafta went into effect almost a quarter century ago, it has created a booming export economy driven by foreign investors who built factories across central and northern Mexico to supply the North American market. Last year, Mexico exported almost $410 billion worth of goods, more than 80 percent of that to the United States and Canada.
[Alan Rappeport, a Times reporter, answered questions about the new trade deal between the U.S., Mexico and Canada.]
But at the same time, Nafta displaced millions of small farmers and local manufacturers. Successive governments have failed to come up with development policies to reincorporate them and stimulate the rest of Mexico's economy.

The result is that overall poverty rates have barely budged in Mexico under Nafta and economic growth per capita has lagged behind almost every other country in Latin America - just 1.2 percent on average from 1996 to 2015, according to Santiago Levy, a Mexican economist who is vice president at the Inter-American Development Bank.

Mr. López Obrador, a former mayor of Mexico City, campaigned on restoring the forgotten sectors of the economy, particularly in Mexico's underdeveloped south. Although he was once a fiery opponent of Mexico's market reforms, he has changed his rhetoric against free trade, arguing instead that Nafta should be improved to benefit Mexicans, rather than overturned.

Tony Payan, director of the Mexico Center of the Baker Institute at Rice University, said the president-elect's embrace of the trade deal revealed his realistic approach to governing.

The Port of Veracruz in Mexico. Auto production was part of the agreement made between the United States and Mexico. Credit Victoria Razo/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

"I think that most of us were always aware that there were two personalities to Mr. López Obrador," Mr. Payan said. "One was an ideologue, a populist, thunder-and-lightning politician that was a critic of neoliberalism and the mafia in power."

"But when you look at his record as mayor," Mr. Payan said, "he was quite pragmatic."

Mexico's Senate, which fell under the control of Mr. López Obrador's party in this year's elections, must still approve the revamped deal, which is being called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or U.S.M.C.A. That vote is likely to move smoothly.

"Already there is a sign that he will instruct his political party to vote for this agreement," Mr. Payan said of Mexico's president-elect. "That is the pragmatic López Obrador that understands that Mexico is dependent on the economic relationship with the United States."

The prudent approach to the new trade deal can help Mr. López Obrador's economic team make the case to investors, who are wary of his populist promises that they will be good economic managers, said Christopher Wilson, the deputy director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington.

Still, Mr. López Obrador clearly prefers for Mr. Peña Nieto to sign the deal before he leaves office, avoiding the appearance of owning a deal that many of his supporters dislike.

"The next administration wants to turn the page on this," said Antonio Ortiz-Mena, a former Mexican trade official who is a senior vice president at Albright Stonebridge Group in Washington.

For the deeply unpopular Mr. Peña Nieto, whose party was so soundly rejected by voters that it has little more than 10 percent of the seats in Congress, signing the accord allows him to leave behind a signature achievement.

"It means that he leaves office having resolved the big threats that came from Trump," Mr. Wilson said.

Mr. López Obrador shaking hands with Jared Kushner in Mexico City in July as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin looked on. Credit Carlos Jasso/Reuters

It also provides Mr. Peña Nieto with vindication for what many considered an unforgivable foreign policy decision: inviting Mr. Trump to Mexico in August 2016 during the campaign despite the invectives the Republican candidate hurled at Mexicans during his rallies.

"They made the bet that building a strong personal relationship with Trump and his team would pay off," Mr. Wilson said. "This in some way vindicates that bet."

Analysts are still parsing the details of the 500-page accord, but Mexico made important concessions. These include a requirement that to qualify for tariff reduction, a car must have 30 percent of the work done on it by workers earning at least $16 an hour beginning in 2020. That's considerably higher than what a typical Mexican autoworker earns. That requirement will gradually move up to 40 percent by 2023.

Mexico also won an exemption on any future tariffs the Trump administration is threatening against auto imports of up to 2.6 million cars - well above the number that Mexico currently sends to the United States.

"The existing industry is protected," said Luis de la Calle, a former Mexican trade negotiator, adding that trade deals with Europe, South America and parts of Asia under the Trans-Pacific Partnership mean that "Mexico is still an attractive place to invest."

For its part, the United States dropped a demand for restrictions on Mexican fresh produce exports and agreed to a rolling review of the accord, rather than its earlier insistence that the agreement expire after five years unless the three countries agreed to renew it.

Mexico also managed to preserve parts of a dispute settlement provision that the United States had tried to eliminate, arguing that it amounted to an assurance for investors who were taking jobs to Mexico.

Mr. Payan said the final accord produced an unwieldy set of compromises among the three countries.

"I think Trump thought that Canada and Mexico would be pushovers and they dug in their heels on certain things," he said.

Correction:

An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to Canada's leadership. Canada has a prime minister, not a president.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: Never a Fan of the Old Trade Pact, Mexico's New Leader Embraces Accord. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Mexico's New Leader, Once a Nafta Foe, Welcomes New Deal

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MEXICO CITY - Mexico's incoming president, the leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador, once railed against free-market policies and harbored deep misgivings about the North American Free Trade Agreement. But hours after Canada joined an agreement between Mexico and the United States to revamp the 24-year-old trade deal, the president-elect and his aides on Monday hailed the last-minute negotiations that salvaged the trilateral accord.