IT IS ONE of the bitterest ironies of globalization: immigrant workers, having come to this country in search of a better life, left unemployed as their coveted American jobs are relocated to the countries from which they fled.

At the Power-One International electronics factory in Allston, hundreds of assembly-line workers — most of them Chinese immigrants earning between $7 and $10 per hour — face this very reality. Last May, Power-One — a California-based conglomerate that ranks as the world’s sixth-largest manufacturer of power-conversion equipment — announced plans to close the Allston shop in September and send its 265 manufacturing jobs overseas. Some positions will go to the company’s factory in San Luis, Mexico; most will move to China. Another 125 technical and professional positions will be transferred to an engineering site in Andover, Massachusetts. Power-One’s reorganization plan exemplifies a textbook global strategy. According to an April 25 company statement, as part of an “aggressive cost-reduction program,” the multinational firm is shifting production from “high cost manufacturing locations such as North America and Europe to more cost-effective areas such as Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Asia.” The program, the statement continues, “will result in annualized expense reductions in the range of $30 to $40 million” — serious money.

Thus these Chinese immigrants, who will officially be laid off July 9, have become casualties of “corporate globalization” — a buzzword that refers to moving capital, goods, and services across borders. This strategy can save companies millions, and consumers can reap benefits such as access to other countries’ products. But as employers seek cheaper labor overseas, low-wage workers like those at Power-One wind up unemployed, with no support beyond several weeks’ worth of severance pay.

For the Power-One workers, the issue of severance pay has galvanized an organized and visible protest. “It’s already devastating for us to hear that we’ll be laid off,” says Pui Ying, an assembly worker of 13 years, speaking through an interpreter. “But then we find out how little severance the company pays us. It feels [as if] we’re exploited.” Ying was one of some 200 immigrant workers who spent June on the picket line outside the Linden Street plant where they have produced high-density power converters for years. Flanked by dozens of labor activists and college students, and carrying signs reading power-one: unfair and power-one: respect workers, the Power-One employees have been demanding what they describe as a “fair and decent” severance package, one that would take into account their years of dedicated service and offer more pay.

But as these workers protest, tens of thousands of other low-wage workers in this country’s textile, computer, and electronics factories are becoming unsung victims of globalization. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI), in Washington, DC, recently examined the impact of one contributor to the globalization process: the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which frees up the flow of goods and services between the United States, Mexico, and Canada. The EPI’s April report, “NAFTA at Seven,” says that between 1993 and 2000, NAFTA claimed 766,030 American jobs; California suffered the biggest hit, with 82,354 jobs lost. Traditionally industrial states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana also took a pounding, each losing more than 20,000 jobs. Massachusetts, meanwhile, fared only slightly better with a loss of 17,000, of which 12,000 were in manufacturing. According to the EPI, in the seven years since NAFTA went into effect, one factory after another — making such diverse products as garments in Fall River, electrical appliances in Lawrence, and medical devices in Woburn — has packed up and relocated to Mexico and Canada. Because of NAFTA, as many as 43 plants employing nearly 4000 people have left the state. And that number does not take into account the jobs shifted to China, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, and the rest of the world beyond the NAFTA zone.

What the story of these Power-One workers shows, says worker-rights advocate Lydia Lowe, is that “big corporations have the freedom to go wherever they want in pursuit of higher and better profits while their workers have virtually no protection.” As more and more US manufacturing goes abroad, Lowe notes, “it is immigrant workers like these who will be vulnerable to the low-cost competition.” Immigrants, many of whom risked their lives just to get here, often rely on manufacturing jobs because they have limited English and professional skills. Immigrants also tend to be the ones most willing to accept low-wage factory positions. Says Lowe, “They will be hurt most.”