Word: copa
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...limited economy, combined with the political control exercised by Portugal, stifled economic mobility in the Azores and prompted a steady emigration from the islands. Consequently, economic reasons account for roughly 98 per cent of Portuguese immigration to Cambridge, according to the Cambridge Organization of Portuguese Americans (COPA). The remaining 2 per cent have left Portugal because of political pressures, most notably a desire to escape conscription into the Portuguese army...
Ruben Cabral, acting executive director of COPA, estimates that the Portuguese supply 80 per cent of the cheap labor in Cambridge. Often, the Portuguese work in jobs far below their capabilities...
...underemployment of Portuguese immigrants has more than economic implications. According to Aurelio Torres, a former director of COPA: "There is resentment [among the Portuguese] of the switching around of social classes in this country...
...desire to achieve even slight economic gains, however, has hindered efforts to mobilize Cambridge's Portuguese workers. While the Congress of the Portuguese in America (sponsored by COPA and held at Harvard last spring) could declare that "because the immigrants in their homelands are accustomed to the absence of decision-making power in their places of employment, the helpless situation of the worker is perpetuated in the United States [and that] it is necessary to arouse the consciousness of the workers," grass roots efforts in organizing Cambridge's Portuguese have yielded little response...
Organizers of the Congress had hoped that about 300 delegates would attend. However, Aurelio Torres, director of COPA--which organized the Congress--said yesterday that he was disappointed at the turnout of only...