Immigration reform need not be a triple-headed hydra

This week the Obama administration finally announced a long overdue revamping of its immigration detention system.

The system, comprised of a hodgepodge network of 350 unregulated local jails, privately owned prisons, and federal correction facilities run by DHS has come under attack for it's failure to adhere to even the most basic civil and human rights standards. Numerous groups including Amnesty International and the government's own Accountability Office have documented the inadequacies in the system.

The failures include; inadequate or absent medical care leading to the preventable deaths of 90 detainees since 2003, young children held for long periods without access to education or recreation, detainees denied access to legal representation or family members, and the list goes on.

Yet, despite the overwhelming evidence of the failure of the system, the Obama administration until now refused to address the situation, even after having been ordered to do so by the Federal Courts.

So this weeks announcement that DHS will begin to finally take some control over the situation by reviewing the contracts with it's detention providers, establishing oversight, and ending some of the most grievous practices, is a welcome change.

But it is far from the sweeping kind of CHANGE™ we were led to believe to expect from this new administration.



Candidate Obama, time and time again on the stump promised sweeping, almost revolutionary change.

He challenged the nation to think outside the box and start to look at old problems through new eyes.

Where Bill Clinton claimed to feel our pain, Obama promised that working together we could end it… sí se puede

But now we find that from healthcare reform to immigration policy, Obama does not so much offer real change… but rather, promises to more competently and effectively administer the same failed policies of the past.

As DHS announced its "sweeping" new changes to the immigrant detention system , there was an underlying message of …"don’t get your hopes up folks …we ain't changing things that much."

Assistant Secretary of DHS, John Morton, while touting the move to a "truly civil detention system" made sure to add in that large scale detention would remain to be the norm…it would just be done "more humanely." He added that the new system would move from one focused on incarceration to one focused on deportation.

DHS head, Janet Napolitano, added that she actually foresaw an increase in the number of detianees held in the government's new "humane" prisons.

But this should come as no surprise coming from an administration that has voiced support for expanding the 287G system that gives local honchos like Arizona's Joe Arpaio carte blanche to terrorize whole communities. Or that looks to expand the failed e-verify system. Or worse yet, embraces Chuck Schumer's Orwellian national biometric identification system.

But this is all because rather than thinking outside the box . .. Obama seems firmly encased in it.

He and his brain trust simply can't separate themselves from the failed paradigm of viewing immigration policy as a matter of regulation of a criminal activity.

This is the same thinking that has produced every piece of failed immigration policy since 1986.

Rather than addressing the underlying social and economic realities both here and abroad that drive global migration, and working on a system that rationally an effectively works within those realities, this thinking has produced a system that relies upon punitive deterrents to attempt to regulate the flow of immigration.

This becomes evident when viewing actual legislation. Hundreds of pages are usually dedicated to various aspects of how best to punish those who enter the country without permission …and scant few pages dedicated to how the decisions as to whom, and under what circumstances, that permission should be granted.

This had led to the idea that reform of the system simply must contain three key components:

1. a method to allow businesses to get needed workers
2. a method to keep everyone else out
3. a method to deal with those who came anyway…now that they've become needed workers.

This has led to the three-headed hydra of Comprehensive Immigration Reform that mandates guest workers, increased enforcement and a path to legalization

In the minds of policy makers these three components seem to be inseparable.

Business interests can't envision an immigration system that doesn't supply them with needed workers, especially if they can be sent home and exchanged for fresh cheap replacements periodically

Advocacy groups can't imagine a system that doesn't normalize the status of the millions already here without permission.

And both are willing to view criminalization and punishment as a means of regulating immigrant flow.

But here is where that CHANGE™ Obama had promised so eloquently during his campaign should translate into a new mindset in DC.

Perhaps he and all those working behind the scenes to enact a new version of Comprehensive Immigration Reform should take a fresh view of the situation and finally start to look at the problems in the current system in a truly COMPREHENSIVE manner…. "Comprehensive" as in encompassing ALL the various push and pull mechanisms in play that foster migration and the system's current inability to deal with them.

If reform were enacted properly, all the interested parties would be able to get basically what they need or want from the legislation, and there would be little need to worry about enforcement and punishments. A truly functioning immigration system would not create millions of undocumented immigrants and hundreds of thousands of detainees in prisons …It's that simple. The hard part is figuring out how to reform the system to reach that goal.

Instead of worrying about how best to build walls along our borders, or punish workers or employers, our leaders should figure out a better way to allow immigrants to enter the country legally, or better yet…have the kind of opportunities in their home countries that would allow them to stay if they wish.

But this would take big thinking … grand vision … and relentless political will.

Something we saw from candidate Obama …but sadly, not yet from President Obama.

As I've said before:

We will judge future legislation and policy not by how successful it's been at apprehending, deporting, or incarcerating migrants ... but rather in how little apprehension, deportation and incarceration is necessary

Our leaders should keep that in mind as they work to reform a dismally failed system.

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NYT on The Great Immigration Panic

While I would argue with the Times characterization of last year's failed "Grand Compromise" legislation as a "sensible" "fix" for the myriad of problems in the current immigration system, their assessment of the current anti-immigrant frenzy, with it's abuses of civil and human rights, as a source of national shame, is right on target.

Someday, the country will recognize the true cost of its war on illegal immigration. We don’t mean dollars, though those are being squandered by the billions. The true cost is to the national identity: the sense of who we are and what we value. It will hit us once the enforcement fever breaks, when we look at what has been done and no longer recognize the country that did it.

A nation of immigrants is holding another nation of immigrants in bondage, exploiting its labor while ignoring its suffering, condemning its lawlessness while sealing off a path to living lawfully. The evidence is all around that something pragmatic and welcoming at the American core has been eclipsed, or is slipping away.

…This is not about forcing people to go home and come back the right way. Ellis Island is closed. Legal paths are clogged or do not exist. Some backlogs are so long that they are measured in decades or generations. A bill to fix the system died a year ago this month. The current strategy, dreamed up by restrictionists and embraced by Republicans and some Democrats, is to force millions into fear and poverty.

…The restrictionist message is brutally simple — that illegal immigrants deserve no rights, mercy or hope. It refuses to recognize that illegality is not an identity; it is a status that can be mended by making reparations and resuming a lawful life. Unless the nation contains its enforcement compulsion, illegal immigrants will remain forever Them and never Us, subject to whatever abusive regimes the powers of the moment may devise.

Every time this country has singled out a group of newly arrived immigrants for unjust punishment, the shame has echoed through history. Think of the Chinese and Irish, Catholics and Americans of Japanese ancestry. Children someday will study the Great Immigration Panic of the early 2000s, which harmed countless lives, wasted billions of dollars and mocked the nation’s most deeply held values.

NYT

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Dems sin cojones – how about you just take baby steps

For the first six years of the Bush presidency the Democratic leadership continually stepped away from the hard fights. At each impasse, whether it was war funding, judicial appointments, or oversight, they acquiesced to the ruling majority out of fear that they would be even further marginalized. Yet, even after regaining control of the Congress, they still behave as if they are the minority party. With a President whose approval ratings are in the toilet, and a Congress where Republicans would rather "retire" than face the electorate, one would think that Democrats would be emboldened. But to the contrary, the mere thought of being called "weak" on any given issue by the Republican noise machine drives them to abandon all principle, and grab hold of the right-wing bandwagon for dear life.

Nowhere is this truer than with the Republican formulated wedge issue of immigration reform.

Despite consistent polling that shows the vast majority of the American people prefer a comprehensive policy that is firm but fair, an accusation of supporting "amnesty" or being "weak" on border enforcement, leaves the Democratic leadership quivering and looking for "middle ground" that's been defined more by the fringes of the Republican Right than the American people.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the advice doled out by Democratic strategists like Rahm Emanuel and the beltway boys at Democracy Corps and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner. Emanuel has advised Democratic candidates to avoid the "third rail of American politics" and shift to the right on immigration issues, while James Carville and other DLC/centrists are advising that despite the fact that much of the current anti-immigrant sentiment is based on "improbable" beliefs, and "impressions (that) conflict with the facts", Democrats would be wise to pander to the misinformed and ignorant and play it safe with a triangulated "Republican lite" strategy.

Of course for a nation that has been fed on a daily diet of right-wing coolaid about this issue for over two years, no "third way" is to be found on this issue. If the last Republican debate taught us nothing else, it is quite evident that the immigration wedge will be played to its fullest extent in the coming election. Additionally evident is the fact that for those who have formulated the wedge, no "middle ground" is acceptable. With Republican front runners falling over each other to "out Tancredo, Tancredo", ironically leaving ultra conservative, John McCain and evolution denier, Mike Huckabee as the apparent voices of reason, "triangulation" appears to be a losing strategy at present.

The only way to start to shift this debate from its increasingly right-wing bent is for the Democratic leadership to move away from a defensive position to an offensive one and present a reasonable and rational alternative to mass deportation and "elimination through attrition". Unlike other issues from the war to judicial nominees, where they have consistently played a reactive role trying to insulate themselves from right-wing attack, rather than a proactive role of formulating policy and strategies to institute needed change, on this issue they must start to take the lead.

But how can a party that has spent 25 years cowering in the shadow of the Gipper, willingly proclaiming that the "era of big government is over", while searching out a "third way" to undo the ravages of the a Southern Strategy that realigned the political base, suddenly rediscover it's moral compass and to take a leadership role in what is quickly becoming a defining social issue of the 21st century? How can they regain the mantel of social consciousness that defined the party for nearly 50 years starting with FDR?

Simple – grow a spine.

Ok. I realize that's a tall order… One that has little chance of actually happening.

How about they just take baby steps and start to diffuse the right-wing talking points one by one.

Now I realize that figuring out a way to counter the well thought-out policies of the right, like expulsion through attrition, mass incarceration in detention camps, elimination of judicial review, warrant-less arrests and revoking the 14th amendment, might seem difficult. After all, they might be tarred as "pro-amnesty", or worse yet, asked about their position on allowing unauthorized immigrants to drive legally with insurance. …So let's not go to those "sticky issues" right away, and deal with one that most people can agree on: enforcing labor laws and regulations.

Whether one has drunk hardily of the Lou Dobbs cool-aid and totally accepts the premise that unauthorized immigrants "destroy good-paying American jobs" by willingly working for sub-standard wages in conditions better suited animals than humans, or is more enlightened and sees the larger picture of both the global economic realities of unregulated capitalism, and the systematic destruction of the working and middle-classes to the benefit of the elite classes both here and abroad, most can agree that the exploitation of immigrant workers has not been beneficial for anyone.

So why not build on that simple idea as a starting point.

The problem with the exploitation of workers is at its core not a problem of lack of enforcement of immigration laws in the workplace, but rather the lack of enforcement of labor laws in the workplace. Unfair labor practices, failures to adhere to wage and hour regulations, unsafe working conditions, lack of employee protections, harassment or obstruction of efforts to organize ...these are not IMMIGRATION problems, but rather LABOR problems.

link

A simple and illustrative example of this can be seen in the case of Michael Bianco Inc, the New Bedford Mass. textile manufacturing company raided by immigration enforcement officers last March resulting in the arrest and deportation of over 350 immigrant workers.

The raid followed an 11-month undercover criminal investigation, according to statements from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Boston.

The plant’s owner, Francesco Insolia, and managers “knowingly and actively” recruited increasing numbers of illegal workers to meet demands of multiple Department of Defense contracts since 2001. In 2004, the company received an $82-million defense contract, according to allegations in the affidavits filed in support of search warrants executed yesterday. More than 500 people work at the Bianco plant.

Workers who waited outside after proving their legal status said Bianco textiles manufactures backpacks, ammunition pouches and other gear for U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and that government inspectors often visit the plant. Bianco textiles also specializes in the manufacture of handbags and other fine leather goods.

The affidavits allege that Insolia, 50, of Pembroke, Mass., “intentionally seeks out illegal aliens because they are more desperate to find employment and are thus more likely to endure severe workplace conditions he has imposed.”

Those conditions allegedly include “docking of pay by 15 minutes for every minute an employee is late; fining employees $20 for spending more than 2 minutes in the restroom and firing for a subsequent infraction; providing one roll of toilet paper per restroom stall per day, typically resulting in the absence of toilet paper after only 40 minutes per day; fining employees $20 for leaving (the) work area before break bell sounds; and fining employees $20 for talking while working and firing for a subsequent infraction.”

Link

But Insolia's violations of the most basic labor protections and laws went far beyond illegally fining employees.

Five former employees and one current employee of Michael Bianco Inc., filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Boston, charging the company with setting up a fake corporation, Front Line Defense Inc., to avoid paying time-and-a-half wages for overtime shifts.

The workers said that they were routinely ordered to clock out after working a full day shift and then to clock back in for evening shifts. Then they were paid with two separate checks, one from Michael Bianco for day shifts and another from Front Line Defense for evening shifts, to make it appear they had not exceeded the 40 hours a week that would trigger overtime pay, the workers said.

Lawyers for the workers described Front Line Defense as a phantom company, whose principal officers were relatives of Michael Bianco's owner, Francesco Insolia. … Front Line Defense's business address was in the same brick building that housed the Michael Bianco factory, according to the lawsuit. …

The lawsuit seeks back wages for all 500 current and former employees, including 360 immigrants, mostly Central American women, who were detained in a March 6 raid, which was the largest local sweep of allegedly illegal immigrants. Even those who have been deported are due back wages because fair wage laws do not distinguish between legal and illegal workers….

Link

And all this went on under the watchful eyes of Pentagon inspectors who regularly scrutinized the plant.

Pentagon inspectors didn't report on alleged illegal hiring practices and wretched working conditions at a New Bedford sweatshop because it wasn't their job, a spokesman said yesterday.

"It's not our responsibility," said Dick Cole, a spokesman for the Defense Contractors Management Agency, which monitors federal contractors as they perform work for the Pentagon.

…

Cole acknowledged that Pentagon inspectors regularly visited New Bedford's Michael Bianco Inc. before last week's massive raid by Homeland Security agents, who found hundreds of illegal immigrants toiling in "deplorable" conditions as they made backpacks for U.S. troops.

But he said inspectors, who visited Bianco two to four times a week, were focused on ensuring that the firm was making quality products and meeting Pentagon deadlines for deliveries, not on making sure Bianco was complying with federal wage, safety and hiring laws.

Boston Herald, March, 14, 2007, pg.7

Additionally, the Department of Defense maintained an office inside the plant, staffed by full-time inspectors charged with overseeing the operation.

A spokesman for the U.S. Army Soldiers System Center in Natick, Mass., which oversees the work, said that a Department of Defense inspector maintains an office at the plant, but was unaware that any of the workers were undocumented.

….

According to a spokesman for the U.S. Army Soldiers System Center in Natick, Mass., a representative from the Department of Defense has an “on-site” office at the plant, where he is charged with inspecting all of the gear that is shipped to the military.
Link

While the owners and managers of Michael Bianco Inc faced charges for "conspiring to encourage or induce illegal aliens to reside in the United States", their only punishment for all the labor infractions so far has been limited to an Occupational Safety and Health Administration fine of $45,000 after identifying 15 violations, including chemical, mechanical, and electrical hazards.

Bianco is not alone in this lenient treatment for gross violations of labor standards and laws. Smithfield Foods, and Con-Agra subsidiary, Swift & Co., both targets of previous large-scale immigration raids, and serial labor abusers, have seen no ramifications for their exploitive practices.

It should be clear to the Democratic leadership that this situation leaves them with the perfect opportunity to shift the immigration debate in their favor while allowing them to regain their position as the party of workers rights.

In order to raise the standards for all workers, both US-born and immigrant, the labor and employment laws of this country need to be more strictly enforced.

Currently "workplace enforcement" revolves around the government rooting out unauthorized workers and deporting them. The businesses rarely receive any punishments and when they do they quickly pass those costs on to consumers through higher prices as part of the cost of doing business. But the terrible working conditions that have relegated those jobs to ones that only undocumented immigrants will accept remain the same.

This paradigm needs to shift. The government needs to shift its focus from attacking the symptom of unfair labor practices, to attacking those practices themselves.

Instead of swat teams of ICE agents storming factories and meatpacking plants looking for undocumented immigrants, we need armies of inspectors from the Department of Labor, OSHA, and other agencies, looking for labor violations and evidence unfair labor practices. This is how you raise the standards for all US workers.

link

This seems to be a no-brainer.

While the right-wing can try to obfuscate and twist reality to suit their reactionary agenda, refocusing the debate to worker protections and raising the standards for all workers, whether they are US-born, naturalized, legal residents, or unauthorized immigrants, is not only a progressive idea that has been a basis of Democratic principles, but a position that no right-thinking American would oppose.

Perhaps once the Democrats learn to take these simple baby-steps back towards their roots as a party, we can discuss some of those other "scarier" aspects of the debate like reforming the quota system, normalizing the status of the current unauthorized population, addressing the free-trade policies that drive migration, and maybe even sometime in the future …..those troublesome drivers licenses. ….who knows, somewhere along the line they my actually grow a backbone.

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Losing the war of words

Last week when speaking on the immigration, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said that "For the American people, and therefore all of us, it's emerged as the third rail of American politics, and anyone who doesn't realize that isn't with the American people."

For many in the migrant-rights movement these words mark a crucial turning point. As a leading voice in the DLC/centrist wing of the Democratic Party, Emanuel's comments telegraph a message that in order to further cement an almost guaranteed Democratic victory next November, the Democratic establishment is more than willing to pander to the right and throw immigrants under the bus.

Today, Democracy Corps, the Democratic centrist think tank published a full statement on their recommendations for handling the immigration issue going forward. Needless to say the group founded by James Carville, Robert Shrum and Stanley Greenberg, not only echoes Emanuel's sentiments, but expands upon them.

Having completed their polling and focus groups, they found that much of the misinformation and propaganda propagated by the Right over the last two years has found its place in popular opinion, particularly with those who identify as the all important independent swing-voters.

Although admitting that many of these opinions are "improbable" beliefs, and "impressions (that) conflict with the facts", these Democratic strategists advise that candidates take positions that pander to them.

As much as this says about the cynical and self-serving nature of the Democratic centrists, it also speaks volumes to our own inability to control this debate. We, as advocates for migrant-rights and meaningful reform of our immigration system, have allowed two years of a constant barrage of lies, distortions, misinformation and bigotry, to essentially go unchecked.

Where is our counter to Lou Dobbs, who daily spouts out "facts" that have little basis in fact? Where is our FAIR or Center for Immigration Studies, who publish reams of dubious research and studies to further their cause? Where are all our talking-heads to fan out across the airwaves to counter right-wing spin? ….all these things don't exist, and as such the American people have been fed a daily dose of xenophobia and misinformation for over two years now. And now we ask, "How come we're losing this battle for hearts and minds"

According to polling sponsored by Democracy Corps, pollsters Greenberg Quinlan Rosner found that Democratic voters are most concerned about war and health care … but for independents it was "illegal immigration" and dependence on foreign oil.

For Democratic voters, being bogged down and spending billions in Iraq is the top issue (38 percent), followed closely by leaders having done nothing about health care (34 percent) and the loss of American jobs to China and India (29 percent).

For independents, the top issue underlying the discontent is ‘our borders’ having been ‘left unprotected and illegal immigration’ growing – cited by 40 percent, with no other issue a close second. The second most mentioned issue is ‘America doing nothing about our dependence on foreign oil and about global warming’ (31 percent).

Democrats: Finding Their Voices As Agents Of Change, Democracy Corps, Stan Greenberg ,Al Quinlan, and James Carville

And it is these independents that the strategists are most concerned with. Willingly pandering to their greatest fears and misconceptions.

Immigration and Welfare Reform

Critical to the success of the ‘New Democrats’ in 1992 was Bill Clinton’s pledge in his presidential announcement a year earlier to “end welfare as we know it.” It featured centrally in his campaign…

The centrality of illegal immigration to the current discontent about the direction of the country may be taking us back again to a welfare moment. Just as many workers with moderate incomes, uncertain employment and health insurance could not understand why they were being taxed to subsidize the long-term idleness of those on welfare, many Americans are just perplexed that this country has lost control of the borders and winks at illegal employment, taxing the resources of local schools and hospitals and much more. Many of the voter responses to welfare were racist to be sure, as now with the response to illegal immigration, but many are not.

How can George Bush, they ask have us on a “terror alert,” and yet he is “not really interested in doing anything about a barrier between Mexico and the United States”? “Isn’t it amazing?” “We’re under a big threat, but he won’t do anything about the borders.” Voters think this is just a first responsibility of leaders who are supposed to be protecting the country. Based on their votes on ‘homeland security,’ ports and the 9-11 Commission, Democrats agree with that first principle.

How can we be paying out government benefits and all this money when we are so financially strapped? Here, responses range from just sheer amount of money the country is paying for their support – “it taxes everything … twenty fold” – to the improbable belief that many are on welfare or food stamps and induced to say here. Some of these impressions conflict with the facts, but many speak concretely about hospitals that can’t deny health care and schools that must cope with the children and special language needs. For others it is more basic: “I’m self-employed “and couldn’t afford health insurance for a year. “We can’t afford to do anything because we’re paying for health insurance. They just go in and get it free.” The discussion of benefits leads to some pretty ugly responses, “Send the people back that don’t have [papers]. Our country has been too kind. I’m sorry.”

And with all the problems with jobs and the economy, how can you give over sectors of the American economy? Some do say that “tons of illegal immigrants in this country” are “doing a lot of jobs that nobody else wants to do.” But that is almost always contested in the groups: “I got boys that can’t find jobs, and I know high school kids that can’t find jobs because” the immigrants are willing to work many more hours for less. “Where is our jobs program for kids in [town] to dig those things out?” They think, not implausibly in some cases, “Let’s get control of what’s coming in and then there are jobs for our people.” With underlying worries about being forced to work at Wal-Mart, they think the illegal immigrants who work hard and for less “are driving the service industry out of our country.”

The voters most angry about the issue are those with a high school education, African Americans and those in rural areas, both black and white. This is also the top frustration for voters who want to vote Democratic for president but hold back from supporting our leading candidates. For all these target groups, their second frustration is ‘losing American jobs to China and India’ – part of a more general and poignant critique, why are our country’s business and political leaders not standing up for American workers and employees and more broadly, America.

Voters want control of the borders and workplace and recreating an immigration system that works and oppose driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants – positions supported by about two-thirds of the country. For them, that is the starting point, the common sense of the issue. If political leaders do not start there, they are not likely to be heard on other steps. But it is possible to build on those points to a progressive direction and comprehensive reform because people hold other views related to the issue.

• Many people talk about the impracticality of expelling the current ‘illegals’ and indeed, their importance to the economy: “The thing is that you can’t necessarily ship all of them out of here.”

• Despite comments about welfare and benefits, most talk about the immigrants as workers, indeed, hard workers with good values. They talk about business owners who describe them as “the hardest workers that my brothers have hired.” One woman in Colorado observed, “I had that honor, and I will actually say, it’s an honor because these people outworked every American citizen at this sweatshop that I worked at, except me.”

• Some recognize that you have to help the children: “The children shouldn’t have to suffer.”

• People are looking for a system not that excludes immigrants but regularizes the system to put people on a lawful basis. Instead of wasting money building a fence – “It’s just stupid. If we had a reasonable immigration policy we wouldn’t have the illegal immigration problem.” Others recognize the economy needs them but “we need some system in place” to make sure we are dealing with lawful people, not terrorists. While opposed to the impact on the service industry, one woman acknowledges: “People that come to this country have the right to come for a better life.” A majority of the country – unlike many in the world – believe legal immigration is positive for the country.

When we tested a comprehensive proposal in a bi-partisan poll for NPR, we got (44) percent support for a plan to increase enforcement on the borders and work place and deny most government benefits but recognizing we cannot expel 12 million, creates a path for citizenship for the law abiding – a big change in status with opportunities for fuller integration into America. That is likely a presidential issue that could gain further support with public debate. When we tested a plan earlier without the reassurance on benefits, the plan got only 39 percent, suggesting how challenging this issue will be for ordinary candidates without the full platform available at a presidential level. Even with the reassurance on control and benefits, 40 percent
of Democrats and a majority of African Americans favored the tougher Republican alternative that provided no path to legalization. This is a real wedge issue that Democrats need to get right.

But Democrats can get this right – genuinely attacking Bush for losing control of immigration, specifically, failing to manage the borders and no longer enforcing laws at the workplace. Democrats favor greater control and enforcement at the borders and restored penalties on employers for employing illegal workers. They would deny most government benefits, which is current law in almost all cases. Recognizing we can’t expel 12 million workers, Democrats accept some kind of legal status for those who are working, pay taxes
And are law-abiding – putting our values at the heart of the reforms that will further open up our society.

Voters are determined to vote for change and they want leaders who will work for the middle class, putting the interests of the public and country first, after the Bush years when leaders did not see the average person, when greed of executives and the self-interest of politicians determined our unfortunate course. That is the framework for Democrats to articulate their critique and progressive vision. The country wants to vote for change.

As anyone even vaguely familiar with the studies and research on immigration and its effects on both the economy and society can see, most of the "concerns" voiced in the focus groups are based upon misinformation and in some cases ignorance. From "welfare" and taxes to health costs and job loss, most if not all the opinions voiced by the focus group subjects were either blatantly false, or badly misinformed. But that really doesn't matter. People believe what they hear, and when they hear these "facts" spouted off day after day they become as good as real. It's the "big lie" theory of propaganda played out daily by right-wing politicians and their media allies.

As long as we, as immigration reform advocates, continue to fail at the crucial mission of shaping public opinion, we will continue to open the door for the kind of deception and self-serving pandering we now see coming from the DLC Democrats. We can rile against them all we want on matters of principle, but we know we are fooling ourselves if we actually believe that politics is currently moved by principle. It's moved by opportunity and power. And until we harness our own power to move this debate in a more positive direction we will continue to face defeat in the realm of public opinion, and with that abandonment by those who should be our allies.

There is one other important factor that needs to be taken into account when discussing the Democratic abandonment of meaningful immigration policy. Study after study shows that the Latino population will become the most important electoral demographic within the next few years. In states like New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Colorado, and Florida they may hold the key to 2008 victory.

But this power also seems to be going untapped. With the vicious Republican attacks on immigration issues, common wisdom has it that the Democratic Party will naturally be the beneficiaries of the Latino abandonment of that party. But should Latinos accept the DLC version of "Republican- lite" immigration policies? If this move to the right by the Democrats goes unchecked, what option does that leave? Latinos, and all other groups that contain large immigrant populations, need to come together and send a strong message that they will not be taken for granted. Their votes will not be won so cheaply. The Rahm Emanuels and James Carvilles of the world need to know that they should not be so quick to paint red states blue if in fact they expound views that are no different from their red state opponents.

We need to start to fight more effectively, we need to start to harness our power and direct it at countering the years of lies and propaganda promoted by the Republican Right. We need to let our Democratic "friends" know that they must hold true to the principles of equality, justice, and human-rights on which their modern party was founded …and if they fail that task…they are no better than their opponents....and should be given the same electoral consideration.

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The Word

An anonymous poster left a comment in one of my recent posts on immigration reform meta issues that has left me grappling for an answer. He/she raised a point that in some ways goes to the heart of the pro-immigrant movement's current inability to break the apparent right-wing stranglehold on the "immigration debate."

Having brought this issue to the national forefront for use as a possible electoral wedge, the restrictionist forces behind the immigration debate have had the opportunity frame the issue from the start in a way that has left the pro-immigrant movement struggling to find its voice in opposition to their policies. They quite frankly seem to be shouting us down at every turn.

They have managed to deflect criticisms of bigotry and racism by simply denying them and claiming instead their concern for "the rule of law", they brush off claims of xenophobia by stating opposition not to immigration, but rather "illegal" immigration.

This has left those of us in the pro-immigrant movement to try to come up with an effective counter. And it seems that thus far we have not been able to find the words or phrases that can neutralize their carefully crafted spin.

As my anonymous friend said:

The word for what abolitionists fought was "slavery." The word for what South Africans fought was "apartheid." Words for what the civil rights movement fought (and fights) include "racism" and "discrimination." Those words convey a clear, one-word enemy. A wrong that needs correction.

In one word, can you say what the wrong is that needs correction in our fight for immigrants?

We all agree that calling the problem "immigration," or the "immigration problem," or even "the illegal immigration problem" misses the point. There is a problem from our point of view, but we have not distilled it down to one word. We have not offered a substitute for the framing of this issue as the "immigration" issue.

Immigration is what people do to come here. The problem is really what we do to people who come here.

What is the word for that?

The word for what abolitionists fought was "slavery." The word for what South Africans fought was "apartheid." Words for what the civil rights movement fought (and fights) include "racism" and "discrimination." Those words convey a clear, one-word enemy. A wrong that needs correction.

In one word, can you say what the wrong is that needs correction in our fight for immigrants? What if we could invoke that word when we speak on this subject? Would it make it more clear where we are coming from?

To move in this direction, I have at least tried to stop referring to this issue as the "immigration" issue. I try to use the word "immigrant" and not "immigration" where possible when talking about the issue in general - because the "immigrant" word personalizes the people we are fighting for. I also use the phrase "immigration bureaucracy" when I'm talking about the problem. But if I'm really looking for a one-word enemy to call out by name, "immigration bureaucracy" fails the test by being two words, and the phrase is not as crisp or to the point as "slavery," "apartheid," "racism," or "discrimination."

I have heard our friends and allies use the words "isolationism," "xenophobia," or other words. Are these the words, then? Are these the one-word enemies?

If so, between the two, I'd pick "isolationism," because it describes the policy instead of just the emotion behind the policy. But I wonder whether it's exact enough. Lots of policies fit under the isolationism umbrella, however, many of them applicable to how we interact with people outside this country. We are fighting primarily for people in this country. Maybe "xenophobia" is the better of the two after all.

Is there an even more compelling noun that describes the policies we fight, on behalf of our immigrant neighbors? Is there one noun that truly isolates what it is that we are really against - or for?

While neither a noun nor what we are fighting, "welcoming" is a word that has been used with a measure of success, and the word still reverberates today. Just by using the word in public, I think we have pushed the boundaries of the debate in our direction. And we also gave people the courage (or at least a common vocabulary) to express with one voice what some in the city were already feeling and saying in other ways. But "welcoming" is not the enemy.

"Invisibility" is a word that I saw Univision use once, and that word conveys the idea of being physically present but nonetheless outside of society. Or to say it another way, with apologies to Shakespeare, "to be here but not to be - estar pero no ser - that is the question."

"Excommunication" is a word that seems to capture the spirit of unjust exclusion, and it has the added benefit of calling religion to mind, which is a frame that favors our position.

But I suspect that you think these words fall short. We may truly be at a lack for words, or more accurately, at a lack for the one word.

Please tell me I'm wrong. In one word, tell me what we're fighting. And then tell everyone.

As much as we all recoil at the notion of engaging in "framing" and "spin" when it comes to an issue that effect the lives of so many, sometimes when engaged in a war of words for hearts and minds, he who can present his case in the simplest and most easily digested terms holds the advantage .... perhaps it's time for us to search for "that one word"

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More Movement Meta

I believe the last round of negotiations on Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR), the so-called "Grand Compromise", provided a huge wake-up call for the immigrant-rights community. We found out just how badly the right-wing had out flanked us both in Washington and in the media and that any hope for meaningful CIR was now in the distant future.

Crafted in hopes to find a "sweet spot" that would calm the far-right, give business interests what they wanted, and appease those concerned with immigrant rights, the Compromise ended up to be nothing more than a gumbo of concessions to business and the restrictionst wing of the Republican party.

Despite the fact that a majority of Americans believe that the immigration system is severely broken and that those who have come here improperly deserve to be given the opportunity to stay and continue leading productive lives, a vocal and influential minority within the Republican Party managed to hold CIR hostage. They garnered concession after concession until the bill presented was an unworkable mess of restrictions, punishments and business concessions. All these concessions made in a vane attempt to appease this minority so that they would allow the "amnesty" that the vast majority of the American people want anyway.

As has happened time and again, when the closed doors were finally opened, and the super-secret compromise legislation revealed, many in the immigrant-rights community decided to play it safe with a "wait and see" strategy before endorsing or opposing the bill. This, in the hope that they might "work to make it better" through the amendment process.

And just as in the past, the amendment process was not meant for them, but rather those demanding greater and greater restrictions, and in the end, the bill received tepid support from a few organizations and outright opposition from others, and was killed.

Yet, this didn't stop the far-right for taking sole credit for its demise.

Lou Dobbs crowed about how "we the people have stopped the illegal alien amnesty bill", restrictionist Republicans gloated over the bill's failure, and Rush thanked his listeners for killing "shamnesty".

Yet, even though the bill was a train wreck from the start and probably never had any real chance of passing despite all the bravado from the Whitehouse, the grassroots campaign launched by the restrictionist movement was impressive to say the least. Over 700K e-mails and faxes flooded the Capitol in opposition to the legislation.

An effort like this is only possible because the ant-immigrant movement has a firm grip on much of the traditional and emerging new media.

Along with their legion of talk radio propagandists, they have Lou Dobbs' daily hour long cavalcade of hate on CNN, Pat Buchanan posturing as NBC's resident immigration expert, and a full roster of immigrant bashers occupying the seats over at FOX News to dominate the traditional media.

On the Web the ant-immigration movement is broad and far-reaching also.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and its affiliate organizations, The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and Numbers USA dominate. CIS, through its "studies and research", and Numbers USA, through their legislative "analysis," provide talking points and misinformation spread throughout the web and the main stream media. Numbers USA alone has a membership of 447,000 and played a large roll in orchestrating the restrictionist grassroots effort last spring. This web presence is magnified by the hundreds of blogs and other web sites that take their cues from FAIR and the other more traditional lobbying efforts.

So where does that leave the immigrant-rights movement?

Right now … in the dark.

We have no true counter to this restrictionist effort.

In the traditional media, print journalism does manage to get to the truth sometimes, and there is the occasional positive piece on TV. On the web there is a disjointed community of web sites and blogs trying to reach an audience, but in general nothing comes close to the coordinated effort put on by the right.

In my last post I discussed the lack of a coordinated message and unified goals as one chief stumbling block for the movement. But there are others.

Even if a set of goals and messages were formulated, we have no effective means to disseminate them. Sending a lone representative from the NCLR off to face Lou Dobbs on his home turf, or writing op-eds in hopes that they sway public opinion don't constitute an effective media strategy.

Along with a unified message we need a strategy.

We need infrastructure.

We need tools.

We need coordination.

We need to reach the point where not only is our message getting heard, but the opposition's message is being debunked or vilified. We need to be able to ensure that every time a CIS "study" is quoted as fact, it can be countered. We need to make it possible that when a restrictionist pundit or expert quotes the same old Borjas study on the adverse effects of immigration on those at the bottom of the economic ladder, it can be countered with the newer Peri study that debunked it. But that kind of information needs to be not only readily available, but but people need to know it's out there. But most of all, we need to be willing to confront some of the uglier aspects of this debate and not let the underlying racism and xenophobia that motivates some, receive a free pass out of fear WE will look too confrontational.

I'm not an "old media" guy so I can't really make too many suggestions as to how to crack that nut.

I do know that as much as I give credit to anyone willing to face down Dobbs or Buchanan, our official spokespeople have not done too effective a job when dealing with them. We need spokespeople willing to be as confrontational as our opponents, who won't be bullied or badgered, and are willing to call our opponents out when they mislead or misrepresent the truth or rely on jingoistic rhetoric or fear mongering. And most of all; They can't be afraid to call a minuteman a racist …because he is one.

But that said, much of the work to be done is in the new media and the web.

The web is where much of the misinformation used by our opponents emanates. Google up "immigrant taxes", "immigrant crime" "immigrant disease" or any of a myriad of other hot-button topics and I guarantee the CIS or some other restrictionist think tank or web site will come up to supply an endless stream of bogus studies and talking points. Those "facts" then swirl around the right-wing echo chamber from the blogs to talk radio to the MSM…. Eventually becoming accepted fact by the public.

The web is also where restrictionist advocacy and organizing takes place. Number USA being the most prominent site. Between its legislative analysis, candidate rankings, and on-line lobbying efforts, it’s a one stop shop for restrictionist action. But there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other websites and blogs raising money, influencing elections, lobbying legislation.

We need to do much better in this respect if we are to ever move our cause forward.

We have no strong "think tank" web presence like CIS or the Heritage Foundation etc.

We have no centralized or organized lobbying effort on the web.

We have no new media echo-chamber to magnify and disseminate information.

The broader Progressive blogosphere IS building those kinds of tools. But as of yet the immigrant-rights community has not reaped any benefit from it.

A few things could be done to rectify this situation in a relatively short span of time.

One would be to set up a central "think tank" type website that could aggregate the academic studies, reports, papers, demographic data, and everything pertaining to immigration and immigration reform. Then make sure that all advocacy groups, lobbyists, media people, bloggers, and anyone else who addresses this issue knows not only about the site, but how to easily find what they need.

Another thing that could easily be done would be to start to tie all the various pro-immigrant websites and bloggers together with a centralized set of tools for such things as contacting representatives, e-mail campaigns, voter registration, etc. Then start coordinating efforts and campaigns across the web to lobby for reform through these tools.

Out-reach to the already existing Progressive blogosphere is a must. They already have an existing infrastructure. But as of yet, most traditional immigrant-rights advocacy groups and organizations have virtually ignored this rapidly expanding movement. And quite frankly, in their ambivalence, have lost ground rather than gained in the last year as more and more reactionary populist ideas have made there way into Progressive discourse. From the Daily Kos to the Huffington Post, the pro-immigrat message is just not getting through.

Start a coordinated effort to use as much New Media as possible. Create viral videos through You-Tube, tap into social networking sites like Myspace, start reaching out to the blogoshere, all of this would be a good start.

Last year, through an uncoordinated effort of Spanish language radio, Myspace, websites, posters and flyers, the movement managed to put millions in the streets. With coordination one can only imagine what could be accomplished in the future.

But as I posted in my previous post, none of this can happen until all the hundreds of organizations and advocacy groups, large and small, start to work together and truly become a unified front.

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The immigration issue: two years out.

This October will mark the second anniversary of the publication of "Respect for the Law & Economic Fairness: Illegal Immigration Prevention", by Republican spinmeister, Frank Luntz.

Intended as a blueprint for winning the 2006 midterm elections, the 25-page memo laid out a strategy to provide cover for Republican candidates hampered by waning poll numbers. Luntz'a plan was to blame "illegal aliens" for all the nations social and economic ills, enabling a shift of attention from an unpopular war, unpopular economic policies, and an unpopular President.

Cleverly framing the issue in reactionary populism, Luntz's strategy pitted hard-working, tax-paying, "real Americans" against shiftless "illegals" looking for a free ride at the nations expense.

Of course with hindsight, we now know this strategy failed politically, polarizing and fracturing the Republican party. But Luntz's handiwork has had a lasting effect on national discourse and led to a level of societal toxicity that could have lasting effects well beyond his political machinations.

By December 2005, Congress passed the first in a series of "immigration reform" measures aimed at whipping up the electorate… the punitive, enforcement-only, Sensenbrenner Bill (HR4437). … a bill so vile it brought millions into the streets the following spring to oppose it.

In the following two years, three other major pieces "immigration reform" legislation have been proposed, two in the Senate, last years Kennedy-McCain Bill (s. 2611), and this years "Grand Compromise" (s.1639). With the reintroduction of the STRIVE ACT about to take place in the House, a third now joins them.

But each of these legislative efforts has been highly flawed. This in large part due to the work first done by Luntz in 2005. Having set the tone and timbre of the debate early on, every successive piece of immigration legislation in the last two years has moved further and further to the right.

In an attempt to find the "sweet spot" in Republican politics that would appease the restrictionist wing of the party and their followers, who have been the subjected to an unprecedented propaganda campaign, while still leaving enough concessions to make the business wing happy, every imaginable kind of "compromise" and concession has been put forward..

The list of compromise proposals is long. Touchbacks, triggers, more guestworkers, heavy fines, English-only, Z Visas, Y Visas, more walls, conditional status, the merit system, are but a few. All of them having no real purpose except to reconcile the two opposing factions within the Republican Party.

The Democrats have faired no better on this issue.

While almost universally accepting the notion of "comprehensive reform", what is meant by that catch-all term seems to vary greatly from one Democratic politician to the next. Very few have been willing to step beyond the confines of the debate as currently framed and propose the sweeping kind of reform called for.

Nothing is mentioned addressing the neo-liberal free-trade policies that have been the root cause of much of the inter-hemispheric migration taking place today.

None seems willing to counter the talking points of the extreme far-right that are clearly based on xenophobia and ethnocentrism.

None will step up and tie immigration reform to a broader policy of workers rights for all US workers, whether native or foreign-born.

None seem willing to close the loopholes in immigration policy that have allowed unscrupulous employers to game the system in regards to work visas and manipulate US labor markets to the detriment of both foreign and native-born workers in certain sectors.

They have forgotten the very roots of their party… A party built on the sweat and sacrifice of working people of all nation origins, races and creeds.

Now content to triangulate positions based upon some misguided belief of where the "magic middle" exists on any given issue, the Democrats have conceded the field to the opposition on immigration reform as just they have on many other important issues.


This lack of strong Progressive and Liberal voices has allowed for national polarization. As the debate has unfolded over the past few years, the bulk of the discussion has been dominated by voices from an increasingly unfriendly traditional media. From right-wing talk radio personalities to TV news commentators and pundits, a constant flow of anti-immigrant rhetoric has proliferated. The list of prominent anti-immigrant voices is long and a daily barrage of misinformation and propaganda from Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and FOX news has managed to poison any meaningful national discussion.

Even in the "New Media," which has increasingly become dominated by a rapidly growing Progressive internet presence, strong pro-reform voices have not come to the forefront.

While Progressive bloggers have had exponential growth in both numbers and political influence over the past few years, the immigration reform community has not benefited from this explosive growth.

This in part is due to the very lack of cohesive message that plagues the movement in general.

Like the broader Democratic Party, Progressives and Reformers have been all too willing to accept an ever moving target, determined by those opposed to any sort of reform, when considering what immigration reform should and shouldn't look like.

Thus far the reform movement has yet to become any more than a loose confederation of groups and advocates, often with agendas at opposition to one another. The movement is yet to put forth a cohesive set of goals and expectations beyond the vague concept of "comprehensive reform".

In order for any large scale movement demanding reform to be effective, a firm set of unified goals and expectations must be set.

Rather than always reacting to what legislation has been presented to us, the movement must define a firm set of goals as to what true immigration reform should be, then take those goals and march with them. These goals, once set, should become the cornerstone on which meaningful reform is built and should be presented to our political leadership to become the bedrock on which policy is crafted.

The time is now for those who truly want to advance the cause of immigration reform to come together and begin the hard work of crafting just such policy.

Policies that will address what future immigration should encompass.

Policies that will ensure that not only the immediate concerns of those here today are addressed, but also the concerns of those who will follow in the future.

Policies that look at the global realities of how US economic and foreign policy decisions effect and contribution to worldwide migration.

Policies that will ensure that all workers, both US and foreign-born are treated with dignity and economic justice.

Unless we, as Progressives and reformers, begin this needed dialogue amongst ourselves and start the hard work of reaching consensus, will forever be playing catch-up behind the likes of Lou Dobbs and Pat Buchanan as they continue to frame the national debate with the words of Frank Luntz and the Republican spin machine.

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The disingenuous benevolence of nativist rhetoric

This past Sunday, as is my usual weekend routine, I sat through the weekly carnival of double-talk and spin that make up the Sunday morning TV gab-fest.

At the top of the list of this week's topics was the compromise immigration reform measure announced last Thursday.

Demonstrating the fact that opinions really are like buttholes – and everybody's got one, I watched as one pundit or politician after the next took a whack at reducing this complex issue down to a 15 second sound bite.

But what was most revealing about these gaseous exchanges was not what they exposed about the speakers limited knowledge of the intricacies of the issue or detialed facts, but rather how willing they were to play fast and loose with them to make a point.

Perhaps nowhere was art of obfuscation brought to such a masterful level then during the rants of America's favorite crotchety old racist, Pat Buchanan, during his weekly stint of on John McLauglin's shouting match.

Buchanan has never failed to demonstrate why he's been a national embarrassment for over forty years. Yet, given a forum to discuss his views on the non-white population under the guise of the immigration reform was like listening to a barrage of off-color, racists jokes from a drunken relative at a wedding …you can't believe this stuff is coming out of his mouth and you just wish he'd pass out already.

MR. BUCHANAN: -- a complete sellout of working America. The vast majority of these 12 million folks are uneducated and unschooled. They compete directly against African-Americans, single moms, people who didn't get out of high school….

…snip…

MR. ZUCKERMAN: High school graduates do not want to take these menial jobs. We have a shortage of employees at the low end of the employment spectrum and at the high end. And this bill is going to help us in both areas. It's exactly what we need.

MR. BUCHANAN: All right, let me tell you --

MR. ZUCKERMAN: It's the first rational bill we have, instead of pandering to all the people who just want to condemn immigration, which has been the DNA of this country.

MR. BUCHANAN: You made your point. You made your point, Mort. Half the African-Americans in this country and half the Mexican- Americans don't graduate from high school. And the ones that do have got eighth-grade educations. You're taking their jobs away and you're bringing in millions of workers to compete with them. You're betraying these people.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Also, to add to what Pat's saying, teenage unemployment is at its highest level ever. Do we really need to bring in unskilled workers to take the jobs right out of the hands of those teenagers?

McLaughlin
Group

Before we look at what Pat was really saying during his little tirade, lets look at some facts:

First off, half of all Black and Hispanic kids are not high school dropouts. While dropout rates are higher for minority students…it's far from 50%.

Black and Hispanic youth are more likely than non-Hispanic whites to drop out of high school. In 2004, 7 percent of non-Hispanic whites ages 16 to 24 were not enrolled in school and had not completed high school, compared with 12 percent of blacks and 24 percent of Hispanics. The high rate for Hispanics is in part the result of the high proportion of immigrants in this age group who never attended school in the U.S. Asian youth, with a dropout rate of 4 percent, had the lowest dropout rate among all racial and ethnic groups in 2004.
link

Secondly, the most recent study on the effects of immigrant labor on the wages of native workers with lower educational levels shows it to be negligible.

Using individual data on the task intensity of occupations across US states from 1960-2000, however, we find that foreign and native-born workers with low levels of education supply very different occupational skills. Immigrants specialize in manual tasks such as cleaning, cooking, and building. Native-born workers — who have a better understanding of local networks, rules, customs, and language — respond to immigration by specializing in interactive tasks such as coordinating, organizing, and communicating. This increased specialization in tasks complementary to those performed by immigrants implied that wages paid to native workers — even those with little formal education — experienced little decline both in the aggregate and in states with large immigration.
…snip…

Since native-born workers respond to inflows of immigrant labor by specializing in interactive tasks, wage losses associated with immigration are minimal. Immigration caused wages paid to native-born workers with less than a high school degree to drop by just 0.7% between 1990 and 2000.

Comparative Advantages and Gains from Immigration Giovanni Peri (University of California, Davis and NBER), Chad Sparber (Colgate University)
April, 2007

So basically, Pat was only doing what he's been doing for the past forty years …talking out of an orifice not located on his head.


But that's really neither here nor there, because he wasn't really talking about immigration, job loss or his ideas on protecting US workers.

What he was talking about was his belief that people of color are inherently inferior and unable to perform educationally, so they need his protection in order to keep the social status quo.

If in fact the majority of minority children weren't graduating from high school, and those that did only mastered the skills of an eight grader, as Pat believes, why wouldn’t he be outraged by that? Instead he's trying to make sure they have menial, dead end jobs awaiting them.

If 50% of white children failed to graduate from high school rather than the current 7%, Pat would be calling it a national crisis and demand the heads of the educators and government leaders who had failed to do their job.

Yet, in Pat's world, due to their obvious inferiority, people of color cannot be expected to excel academically and it's best off if they just stick to jobs more suited their limited intellects. The jobs he believes that "12 million uneducated and unschooled" immigrants are threatening to steal.

It’s amazing to see the confluence of all of Pat's warped visions about race come together in one neat little package.

And let's not forget McLaughlin's final remark on teenage unemployment. Because if the uneducable Blacks and Latinos don't want those menial jobs meant for them, surely some white children would be capable of doing them... at least after school or during the summer.

Jeez

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One problem with local immigration enforcement.

One of the more ominous results of the current lack of leadership coming from Washington regarding immigration reform has been the growing numbers of states, and municipalities that have taken it upon themselves to usurp federal powers and jurisdiction regarding immigration matters. While those in Washington jockey for political advantage rather than doing the real work of enacting meaningful reform, the feverish rhetoric and shrill voices of those hoping to push an agenda based solely upon punitive measures has grown louder.

This situation has created conditions that have led some to believe that local governments should start doing "the job the federal government won't."

But this transference of power is already beginning to show signs of the inevitable abuses and parochial prejudices that are bound to occur when too much power is transferred to the local level. There are good reasons why the Founding Fathers assured that certain powers should remain in the exclusive realm of the federal government.

This past week provided two glaring examples of exactly why we don't want Barney Fife enforcing US immigration law.

Authorities in South Georgia forced a young Canadian tourist to strip naked, shower and spend the night in jail last weekend for minor traffic violations. This, while they confirmed her immigration status…in spite of the fact that they had no real authority to do so.

Carleton University student Cheryl Kuehn is outraged about the way she was treated by police in the state of Georgia. She says she was strip-searched and locked up for 12 hours, all for running a stop sign and speeding.

Kuehn, 23, who has just completed her master's in social work, was traveling to Florida with her husband, brother-in-law and a friend.

They had just pulled out of a restaurant parking lot along the I-95 in New Brunswick, Georgia, when Kuehn was pulled over for speeding and failing to stop at a stop sign.

When the officers learned Kuehn was a Canadian, they decided to take her into custody until she could post bail and until they could confirm with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency that she was legally allowed to be in the country.

…snip…

When she arrived at the detention centre, Kuehn was fingerprinted and ordered to strip and shower.

"They wanted me to shower and I kept trying to avoid it because I was really scared and I don't like getting undressed in front of people. But eventually, it was inevitable and I had to go and have a shower in front of someone and get this lice treatment put all over me and -- it was very humiliating,"

Kuehn was told to put on a navy blue jail outfit and sent to sleep in a cell with two other women while other inmates jeered and leered at her from adjoining cells.

"They were trying to intimidate me. And it worked," she says.

Kuehn says she was never given a proper explanation about what was happening to her and says she still doesn't quite understand why she had to endure what she did.

Ontario woman angry over Georgia strip-search, CTV

She waited several hours in a freezing common holding room until she was moved to a shared cell, where she was greeted with jeers and stares from inmates banging on the walls of surrounding cells, she said.

“When I went in there, it was the scariest thing ever,” she said.

Paranoid, she said she laid awake the entire night until her release.

Even though Kuehn had a valid passport, and her husband, Scott, gathered the $222 US to post a bond for her release within three hours of her arrest, Kuehn was told she couldn’t be set free until officials with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency conducted an immigration check to ensure she was legally in the country.

But Kuehn was not charged with either offence, and the investigation has already revealed that the jail received the information needed for her release by about 7:30 p.m. — long before she was released the following day at around 5 a.m.
Carleton student spends 'terrifying' night in Georgia jail for minor traffic offence , The Charlatan

The treatment of Cheryl Kuehn, a graduate student from Ottawa, has sparked outrage in Canada and investigations in Georgia. And Friday, immigrant advocates said it raises new questions about how local authorities are interpreting Georgia's sweeping new immigration law.

…snip…

A Glynn County Jail official initially told the Ottawa Citizen that the immigration review was done in response to SB 529, a wide-ranging immigration law signed by Gov. Sonny Perdue a year ago. But the law isn't set to take effect until July. And it only requires authorities to check the immigration status of foreign nationals jailed for a felony or drunken driving

Immigration law cited as Canadian jailed over minor traffic violations , Atlanta Journal Constitution

Of course state officials have called for a full investigation and eventually the whole affair will be chalked up to "a bad apple", or "a lack of training and communications," or any one of a myriad of excuses usually given when civil or human right are violated.

But, while blame for the incident must be taken be the officers who detained Kuehn, the real fault lies in the fact that these officers were given the authority, whether real or perceived, to enforce US immigration laws that they obviously had no understanding of.

While Ms. Kuehn's case appears to have no obvious racial motivations behind it, the same can't be said for an incident that occurred last week in Maine where an unpaid $6 bill at a local gas station brought out the police, local sheriff, state troopers, drug –sniffing dogs, and eventually immigration officials.

What kind of criminals could have warranted such a response? Drug dealers? Escaped felons? Murders? Rapists? Child molesters?

Nope… Just three Latinos from the Bronx with a lack of funds and an expired plate on their car. Unfortunately for one passenger, his friend's lack of monetary foresight will cost him his freedom and result in a flight back to Honduras.

PITTSFIELD -- A Honduran man faces deportation and two men were left without a vehicle following an unpaid gasoline bill Tuesday afternoon.

A man who identified himself as Franklin Barcelona, 24, of Bronx, N.Y., was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Pittsfield police station on suspicion of being in the United States illegally, according to Officer Michael Cote of the Pittsfield Police. Franklin was taken to Bangor for an extradition hearing, Cote said.

Avel Caballero, 23, of Bronx, N.Y., the driver of the vehicle in which Barcelona was a passenger, was issued a summons on a charge of attaching a false license plate to his vehicle, Cote said.

A third man in the vehicle, Rudy Gutierrezlino, 35, of Lubec, was not charged.

A manager at Robinson Mobile Mart on Somerset Avenue called police shortly before 3 p. m. Tuesday when the men said they did not have enough money to pay for $6 in gasoline, Cote said.

Gutierrezlino initially offered to take a summons to go to court to pay the gasoline bill, Cote said.

"He was quite agreeable," Cote said.

When Cote inspected the green Jeep Cherokee Caballero was driving, Cote said, he observed Barcelona slumped over in an attempt to hide in the back seat of the Jeep.

The officer also discovered the temporary dealer license plates had expired in 2002.

…snip…

Deputy Wilfred Dodge of the Somerset County Sheriff's Department and Sgt. Timothy Roussin of the Pittsfield police assisted Cote in questioning the three men outside the Mobil station. State Police responded with a drug sniffing dog but found no evidence of illegal substances, Cote said.

Police believe Caballero is a U.S. born citizen, Cote said.

…snip…

Caballero could have faced a slew of other charges, Cote said.

"I didn't feel, with their cooperation, any other charges were necessary," he said. "These guys were very cooperative, as best they could be."


Unpaid gas bill reveals immigration violation , The Morning Sentinel

Now I won't get into whether or not Mr. Barcelona had the "right" to be in this country. Or whether his apprehension is a just "punishment" for his being here without proper documentation.

But I will argue that the ends in this case surely don't justify the means.

I personally have a long history with the kinds of businesses that deal with the kind of "theft of services" infractions that initiated this whole case.

As a kid I worked in a gas station and at one point as an adult, a restaurant. On more than one occasion I've witnessed that classic moment where the waiter brings back a customer's credit card to say, "I'm sorry sir, but there seems to be a problem," only to have the customer realize that they didn't bring any cash. Or a person fills their tank to find out that they left their wallet home. And unlike what you might have seen on I Love Lucy, the unpaid bill does not result in being whisked into the kitchen to a huge pile of dirty dishes just waiting to be washed by vagrant patrons.

And it most certainly doesn't end with every law enforcement agent within a ten-mile radius converging on the premises.

Usually a plan is worked out whereby restitution can be made. Either one person stays behind while another gets some cash. Or some item such as a driver's license, jewelry, or some other item of value is left behind as collateral until the patron returns. Even on the rarest of rare occasions where law enforcement might be called (usually reserved only for blithering drunks, or the blatantly belligerent), a compromise is always worked out…the cops just don't need the extra paperwork.

Except of course if you're in Maine and your name is Barcelona, Caballero, or Gutierrezlino.

In that case, the local authorities are immediately called, and even after expressing your willingness to accept a summons and pay restitution in court, the drug-sniffing dogs are brought in for good measure. Because even though by the police's own admission, you've been "quite agreeable" and "very cooperative," everybody knows that three Latinos in a car from the Bronx with a bad plate can mean only one thing….drug dealers.

I'm sorry, but if it were three white guys named Smith, Jones, and Johnson, on a moose hunting trip or some such, who told that gas station attendant they were short $6, I find it hard to believe it would have ended with drug-sniffing dogs and State Troopers…..Experience tells me so.

But I digress.

Both these cases have one thing in common. Local law enforcement overstepping their authority or misusing it.

Herein lies the problem with granting broader powers to local law enforcement agencies. They simply are not equipped or trained to do the job of the federal government and are more prone to abusing their power. That appears to clearly be the case with Ms. Kuehn, and while the Maine case did end with the arrest of one undocumented immigrant, it was done through racial profiling and haphazard investigation. Certainly neither of these cases demonstrate any effective means of enforcing immigration laws or curtailing undocumented immigration.

If we must have our local authorities degrading and detaining Canadian tourists for traffic violations or sicking the drug-dogs on every carload of Latinos with an expired plate or registration in order to "secure our borders' something is very wrong here.


tags: immigration, local enforcement , local laws, GA, Cheryl Kuehn

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It's time to call it what it is: a policy of mass deportation

With aircraft circling overhead and the building surrounded, an army of three hundred armed government agents stormed through the doors of the three-story red brick factory. Blocking the exits, some with guns drawn, they ordered the mostly female workers to remain at their sewing stations as they began to check their paperwork. "When we realized what was going on, a lot of people were screaming and crying," a witness said. "They told citizens to stand in one area and the people without papers to stand in another area. It was terrible, they were crying and didn't know what was going to happen." Some ran for the doors only to be met by guards who grabbed the panicked workers, ordering them to the floor. Those few who did manage to make it outside were quickly rounded up by encircling troops.

At the end of the early morning blitz, 350 workers were loaded onto busses and taken to detention centers to await deportation, leaving friends, neighbors and relatives to make arrangements for the hundreds of children left behind. Five owners and managers of the factory, which specializes in materials for the war effort, were also taken into custody for employing workers without proper documentation.*

This scene has become commonplace as the government steps up raids to remove the undocumented

The question now raised by this and the hundreds of other raids that have taken place over the last year is - At what point will those advocating for such actions finally admit the truth and tell the American people that their ultimate goal is to forcibly deport the over 12mil undocumented immigrants currently living in the US.

A few years ago, when people like Tom Tancredo first started attracting attention to their campaign to curb the flow of immigration and eliminate the undocumented population of the US, calling for the mass deportation was a standard part of their rhetoric. But after gaining notoriety and moving the agenda into mainstream political discourse, they started toning down their language. Polling and spin-meisters dictated that the word "deportation" had too many negative connotations for the American people and should be avoided…. So the policy of "enforcement" was born.

Today immigration hawks go to great lengths to avoid the whole topic of deportation. Media mouthpieces such as Lou Dobbs, acting like verbal contortionists, twist and turn their language to stay away from the word. They're not against "immigration or immigrants…only illegal immigrants." They don't favor of mass deportations but rather "the enforcement of the laws already on the books." Tancredo and his fellow anti-immigration Republicans when faced with this conundrum revert to vague inferences to immigrants "leaving of their own accord" once the strict enforcement of laws cause "attrition" of the population due to lack of access to jobs, food and shelter.

But no matter how much they wish to candy-coat their objectives to make them more palatable to an American public that generally opposes the rounding up of their neighbors and the separation of families, the current facts cannot be ignored. The current wave of raids and deportations are illustrative of how they wish to proceed.

This past fiscal year the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System's airline service, tasked with transporting immigrants to be deported, transported a record 116,000 passengers. 51,300 non-Mexican deportees were flown to Central and South America, and 64,700 other undocumented immigrants were flown from the interior of the U.S. to centers on the southern border to be sent back to Mexico. Additionally, nearly one hundred thousand more who were captured closer to the border were transported by busses and other means and returned to Mexico. Over the course of 2006, stepped-up immigration enforcement efforts nationally led to record total of 189,924 arrests and subsequent deportations according to ICE figures. This represented a seven-fold increase since 2002.

While media reports of large-scale raids make national headlines, the vast majority of the raids have been small and garnered little attention outside of the local area. On any given day a quick Google news search of the term "immigration raid" will turn up numerous accounts from small local papers and local TV stations from all over the country. At the current rate, ICE is well on its way to far surpassing last year's deportation numbers and again setting a new record.

With this in mind it's time for the American people to recognize exactly what "enforcement" of our current immigration laws really means in this current situation. It means deportation.

Some like to rationalize this reality by claiming that the raids are intended to "go after employers" who hire "illegals"….but this is simply untrue. Only in a very few high profile cases have any charges been filed against employers. In almost all cases the only people being punished in these raids are those working in terrible conditions for minimum pay.

If in fact, as has become quite evident, the real purpose of the this policy is to eliminate 12 million undocumented immigrants from the American landscape, it's time for those advocating for it to admit the situation and just come out and tell the American people the truth. They don't care if US citizen children are left without parents or placed in detention centers indefinitely. They don't care that workers, some of whom have been here twenty years or more contributing to society, are ripped from their families and friends without warning to be returned to countries they no longer know. They don't care that rather than enforcing workplace, safety and wage regulations they have chosen instead to target the weakest members of society who cannot defend themselves.

But they will never admit this … because they know that even as they work to foster an atmosphere of ethnic intolerance that would tolerate this kind of misguided backlash against immigrant workers through a campaign of misinformation and lies, the American people would never tolerate the idea of mass deportation and incarceration…if they were aware of it….but that it the key. They need to become aware.

Since those who have advocated this agenda will never tell the truth, it is time for those who oppose them to do it for them. We can no longer allow them to hide behind carefully crafted rhetoric intended to inflame populist sentiments while masking the true consequences of their actions. "Enforcement" is merely a euphemism for mass deportation. Lou Dobbs advocates mass deportation. Tom Tancredo advocates mass deportation. FOX news advocates mass deportation. FAIR advocates mass deportation. The House Republicans advocate mass deportation.

Anyone who advocates that the only thing needed to solve the complicated issue of immigration reform is to simply increase enforcement at the border and workplace is advocating for mass deportation….it's as simple as that.


*More on New Bedford Immigration Raid:

Boston Herald
Boston Globe
Providence Journal
Boston Globe
Boston Globe
Boston Globe
Photos of raid


tags: immigration, immigration raid , New Bedford, deportation

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Bush's Brain lets the cat out of the bag

One of the biggest debates among advocates of progressive immigration reform has been whether or not to embrace the idea of a temporary guest worker program. Some such as Cecilia Munoz, vice president for policy of the National Council of La Raza, argue that such a program is needed to provide future immigrants a legal path to entry. Others, myself included, see the program as an unnecessary component of any meaningful reform policy. We believe that it would eventually lead to the creation of permanent underclass of rotating workers who would never be able to fully reap the benefits of their labor or become full-fledged members of society.

The arguments are heated and varied. My opinion can be viewed here, here, and here for those interested, but that is not the point.

Yesterday at a Republican women's luncheon, Karl Rove finally said what those of us who oppose a guest worker program have suspected all along…. Bush and his elitist buddies advocate for a temporary worker program only because want a never ending supply of workers to do the kinds of jobs they view as menial and meaningless.

According to a congressman's wife who attended a Republican women's luncheon yesterday, Karl Rove explained the rationale behind the president's amnesty/open-borders proposal this way: "I don't want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas."

National Review

While the rest of the National Review article is a mix of the usual right-wing malarkey about immigrants taking jobs from US workers and "there's no job Americans won't do", I have no reason to question the veracity of Rove's quote.

This administration and its friends have a long history of viewing those who do an honest days work as being somehow below them.

It's no small coincidence that Ann Richards said of Bush Sr., "He was born with a silver foot in his mouth."

Yet Americans turn a blind eye to the Bushites obvious elitist attitudes.

We know what the jokes about "my base" mean, and we recognize the true intent behind Barbara Bush's remarks that "so many of the (Katrina victims) … were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them".

We have stood by idly as the administration shifts the burden of taxation from the wealthiest 1% of the nation and passes it on to working people. We watch as needed social programs go unfunded while the largest corporations in the nation make record profits while benefiting from the lowest tax rates ever paid.

Somehow when the administration assures us that they have only the best of intentions in regards to "matching willing workers in other countries, with willing employers here" we take them at their word. We rationalize away the enormous potential for abuse inherent in any guest worker program by saying that at least it will be better than it is now. But will it?

When crafted by those who view immigrants as nothing more than nameless, faceless servants who pick tomatoes, or make their beds, how can we expect any sort of fair and equitable plan? Will such people make sure that labor laws and workers rights are respected? Will they allow unions to organize and protect immigrant workers from abuse? Will they enforce workplace safety regulations and guarantee fair and equitable wages?

I think we know in our hearts the answer to these questions is no.

Rove only said in public what has been said in the private offices and drawing rooms of the Bush's and their ilk for ions. And it's time for those of us concerned with real immigration reform to face these facts. They are not our friends. They are not our allies. Their plans are not our plans. Their hopes and dreams are not our hopes and dreams.

We look at immigrants and see the future. A future full of hope and aspirations for a brighter tommorow ….. They look at immigrants and see menial laborers whose sole purpose is to serve them as maids or gardeners, dishwashers or tomato pickers. These two conflicting world views can never be reconciled.


tags: immigration, Karl Rove , guest workers, Bush

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On immigration, multiculturalism and the threat to western civilization

As someone who devotes a lot of time and effort to the issue of immigration and its ancillary components, be they social justice, free trade, racism or economics, I like to think that over time I've acquired a working understanding of the various positions on the issue. Although I might not agree with some of these positions for various reasons, I can, for the most part, understand how or why one might hold them. For example, an unemployed tech worker who argues there should be more restrictions on the admission of foreign workers makes sense to me, even if I don't see eye to eye with his solution. This is true of many of the positions of those who advocate for a more restrictive and sometimes punitive solution to the "immigration problem."

Yet for the life of me I can't seem to wrap my mind around the "Death of the West", "immigrants are destroying American culture" "why don't they speak English" mentality that sometimes permeates the debate.

But maybe that's because I'm from New York and we've had more experience than any other group in the world when it comes to dealing with "invading hordes of immigrants."

Yeah, Yeah, I know… it's not about immigration …it's about "illegal immigration"

I hear that all the time. And in the same breath I hear "and I don't want to have to dial 1 for English."

If it were really about "illegal" immigration we wouldn't see English-only bills floating around state legislatures and Pat Buchanan wouldn't have a second best selling book about Mexicans taking over "White America."

We wouldn't see the processing fees for legal immigration skyrocketing with the cost for naturalization rising 80 percent for applicants. The fee for lawful permanent residence wouldn't be rising 178 percent from $325 to $905, and the fee for fingerprinting wouldn't be going up 14 percent effective June 2007. There wouldn't be a movement to eliminate the allocation of thousands of green cards and temporary work visas from the current program.

I could argue statistics and figures all day. There's the fact that the majority of congressional immigration hawks come from districts with the lowest percentage of foreign born in the country, or that only 5000 green cards are issued annually to unskilled workers out of over 140,000. Or that in 2004 only two employment-based green cards were issued to Mexican unskilled workers, or that it takes over six years for the spouse of a Legal Permanent Resident to receive an immigrant visa. The list goes on, but the fact remains that despite all the protestations and denials, one of the driving forces behind this whole issue is a fear that immigrants somehow make America ... "less American"

But, But, But … I can hear it now. "What about the costs, what about the jobs they take, what about the taxes, then there's crime and healthcare and education … immigrants, and particularly the "illegal" ones have an adverse effect on our lives."

Really … How do you know that?

Currently there are a boatload of studies available that conclude that most of these "known facts" are either false or at the very least reside an area gray enough to leave a lot for room for interpretation. The same can be said of the studies that show the tremendous burden immigrant's place on society. Those who are honest on both sides of the debate admit that the documentation on the benefits and costs of immigration is a work in progress and no one can definitively state a case either way. The best we can do is look at the most current data, from the most reputable sources, and go from there.

Yet, that doesn't stop those who "know" how immigrants cause rising crime rates, force hospitals to shutter their doors because they can no longer afford to give immigrants "free health care," or collect welfare benefits and didn't pay taxes, from spouting off their "facts."

But I digress.

You see, one of the most common defenses of the "immigrants are wrecking this country" crowd is to tell people that unless they live on the border or an area "overrun" with immigrants, they have absolutely no idea what's going on, and by extension have no right to have an opinion. You hear it all the time in debates over the issue. "You don't know what it's like to walk into an emergency room, and wait for hours because it's filled with "illegals," or " I went into a store and the workers didn't speak English, what's happening to this country."

Here is where the New Yorker in me comes out.

Every year New York is in the top three states for the number of foreign born residents both legal and illegal. As anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the state can figure out, the bulk of those immigrants live in and around the NYC area. In fact in some areas the foreign born far out number native residents. My particular area has one of the largest and fastest growing immigrant populations in the nation. But the chief difference between here and the rest of the country is, this is not a new situation for us. It's been going on for the last 383 years.

I dare say that except for those kidnapped and forcibly brought to this country in the belly of a slave ship to be sold in a port such as Charleston, or who whose roots go back to a time before Columbus, vast numbers of Americans could trace their steps back to a point where family tread the same streets New Yorkers walk today.

We have a long history with "invading hordes of immigrants."

While it has certainly not always been some sort of multicultural heaven, a great rainbow of humanity all hand in hand singing kumbaya, over the years we've learned to deal …adapt … and accept.

When I hear talk about English-only and complaints about foreign languages being spoken I just can't fathom why this is even an issue. Walk the streets of Manhattan or Brooklyn, what do you hear? To those from the heartland what sounds like a cacophony of languages is actually a symphony. It's the sound of the future… and the past.

Neighborhoods that once were the home of Yiddish theaters and pushcart merchants now bounce to the beat of West Indian rhythms, while Koreans arrange meticulously manicured fruits on sidewalk stands. To this day, signs on the stores and newspapers in the stands come in almost every language in the world. This is nothing new … it's the way it's always been.

When some speak of the destruction of "American Culture" one must ask what exactly is "American" culture. Is it the music we listen to that’s and amalgam of African rhythms and traditional Irish and Scotch folk music? Is it the foods we eat like hot dogs or pizza that come from our immigrant past? Is it the movies we watch, or the books we read whose influences cross the boundaries of cultures and time? Is it our form of government and our institutions that are uniquely "American?" For they too did not arise in a vacuum, but sprung from ions of human societal development.

Maybe because I come from a place that has always been diverse, I see American culture as a more fluid proposition.

To me American culture is when you go to the Thanksgiving Day Parade or the fireworks at the river on the Fourth of July and stand shoulder to shoulder with those who speak languages from around the world, some dressed in their native garb, some looking American as apple pie. Yet we are all gathered to celebrate the same thing … we celebrate America. For me it's just the way it's always been since I was a kid.

For most Americans September 11th is a somber day, a day to remember. But for those of us here it means a little more. Each year the local TV stations still cover the memorial services from beginning to end. Every year they read the names of the fallen again in order that we never forget. And we never will. But one thing that is always striking as the bells toll and the bereaved struggle as they try to read the list. So many of the names are not "American." For every Jones or Smith whose name is read there is an equal if not greater number of Garcias, Kims, Nguyens or Lopez's. Names whose origins are Arabic and African, Chinese and Chilean, Romanian and Russian. That day drew no line between the "real Americans" and those who recently arrived to toil in the parking garage or the kitchen at Windows on the World. That day, for those fateful moments, they were all simply Americans.

I know that away from the bubble that is my East Coast, Blue State, Liberal world, many view us with disdain. We're loud and pushy, sometimes rude and smart-aleky, Often accused of being "out of touch" with the great expanse that is this nation. But when it comes to immigration and living in Americas version of a multicultural word we have some considerable experience. …. And ya know wat…it ain't so bad.

tags: immigration, multiculturalism , NYC

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