Posts tagged with 'immigration reform'
Weekly Diaspora: Immigration Opponents Take a Turn for the Worse
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By Erin Rosa, Media Consortium blogger
As grassroots support for the pro-immigration reform March for America grows, anti-immigration groups and their allies are trying to use racial tension to stop the momentum. Opposition groups like NumbersUSA and the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC announced plans this week to partner with Tea Party activists in response to the event, which is expected to draw as many as 100,000 people to the National Mall on March 21.
Their hope? To scare the public into opposing a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States.
NumbersUSA, a mainstream group that was instrumental in defeating reform in 2007, has discussed the idea of calling immigrant women from Mexico “the new welfare queens,” while others are spreading paranoia that immigrants are trying to “steal the next election.” The White House is holding a bipartisan meeting on immigration legislation this week and the possibility of reform is worrying opponents. They are now desperately attempting to block reform by appealing to frustration and fear.
Amplifying hate
Along with actions to flood Congress with phone calls and faxes, anti-immigration forces are also spreading misinformation and proposing ways to dehumanize immigrant communities. As Stephanie Mencimer notes in Mother Jones, operatives on the far right are pushing a conspiracy theory that the Obama administration is using immigration to steal the 2012 election.
The magazine reports that the WorldNet Daily, a publication which bills itself as “conservative news website,” has come up with an elaborate scheme in which a secret “illegal immigrant registration” will “open the floodgates to fraud.” That’s despite the fact that undocumented immigrants are legally barred from voting in the first place.
On top of that, in a conference call organized by anti-immigration group NumbersUSA, an organization that is routinely quoted by the mainstream media to oppose reform, participants suggested calling immigrant mothers with Mexican heritage “the new welfare queens.” As I report for Campus Progress, NumbersUSA, which worked to kill immigration reform in 2007, held the call this week to coordinate actions against the immigration march.
“I feel the new welfare queen in America today is women coming from Mexico with a bunch of babies,” said one caller.In response, NumbersUSA conference moderator Chad MacDonald said “Thank you very much. I appreciate that.”
Right after that, another caller suggested that anti-immigration activists not use the word “babies,” because it was “emotional.” Said the conference participant, “They aren’t babies. They’re dependents. … They have dependents. We have babies.” While NumbersUSA claims to be against “immigrant bashing,” they made no efforts to stop the hateful statements that their supporters spewed over the phone.
Smart politics
While incendiary rhetoric from immigration opponents is alarming, Kai Wright writes in The Nation that such radicalism could be a good impetus for Democrats to embrace immigration reform. “The great thing about racists is they’ll always take the bait,” claims Wright. “You won’t get far into an immigration-reform debate, for instance, before the GOP’s more zealous legislators start doing things like criminalizing priests and calling Miami a ‘third world country.’”
Politically, most Americans will probably be turned off by hateful and racist language used during the immigration debate, much like they were during the lead up to the confirmation of Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor. In the end, the disgust factor could end up helping Democrats—if they let it.
“Immigration reform is an issue where Democrats are served better politically by picking a fight with the GOP than running from one,” Wright explains. “The long-term politics are plain: Latino communities nationwide are young, growing and increasingly ready to show up at the polls. And the certain-to-be xenophobic reaction of the GOP’s loudest voices today will not only motive Latinos this November, it will alienate independent voters as well.”
Out of patience
This week, pro-reform grassroots groups held a press conference on Monday to denounce what they said was increased enforcement under the Obama administration, as the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency reported at least a 5% increase in deportations for 2009. New America Media reports that advocates at the press meeting pointed out that “livelihoods were lost, local economies affected, and families split apart.”
“These are the same enforcement practices that we marched against during the Bush administration,” said Angelica Salas, director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, who was quoted by New America Media. The outlet also notes that advocacy groups “contended that the immigration audits or ‘paper raids’ that have replaced workplace raids under Obama are just as damaging to immigrant communities and the businesses that depend on them.”
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse . This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Weekly Diaspora: Rallying the Grassroots
By Erin Rosa, Media Consortium blogger
Ed. Note: After a brief hiatus, the Diaspora is back! We’re very excited to have Erin Rosa on board for this project. Please stay tuned for the latest developments around immigration reform every Thursday morning.
Fed up with Congress and frustrated with President Barack Obama’s brief mention of immigration reform in the State of the Union address, immigrant rights supporters are now organizing around the clock to push legislators to move on reform in 2010. It will not be an easy feat.
Congress is already bogged down with health care reform and a lingering economic crisis. While Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) has proposed a bill in the House of Representatives to provide a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, immigration reform could be doomed for 2010 if it’s not introduced in the Senate by this Spring. Otherwise, it’s very unlikely that Congress will get around to debating the issue by the end of the year. (more…)
Weekly Diaspora: Does Coakley’s Loss Spell Trouble for Immigration Reform?
By Nezua, Media Consortium Blogger
Professional pundits and Democratic politicians are in a frenzy over what Martha Coakley’s senate seat loss to Republican Scott Brown might mean for American politics.
Immigration reform in jeopardy
As Harold Meyerson of the American Prospect reports, the loss of one seat probably won’t derail heath care reform, but it does make the chances of passing immigration reform slimmer. Meyerson writes that immigration reform is “necessary to restore our economic vitality and political equality,” and actually passing reform would benefit the Democratic faction. Unfortunately, that means that immigration reform will require 60 votes in order to pass the senate. (more…)
Weekly Diaspora: Protecting Haitian Refugees Through Immigration Reform
By Nezua, Media Consortium Blogger
On Tuesday, the worst earthquake in 200 years struck just off the coast of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, as The Nation reports. Bringing “catastrophic destruction” to the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, the disaster has spurred relief efforts worldwide. Crises like this are important reminders of how the treatment and protection of refugees must be a part of immigration reform.
Temporary protected status for Haitian refugees
In September of 2009—just one year after Haiti was decimated by four successive hurricanes and tropical storms that affected at least 3 million people—New America Media (NAM) made a prescient call to halt all deportation to Haiti, and grant Haitians temporary protected status (TPS) status in the U.S. “before more Haitians die or are impacted by natural disasters.” (more…)
Weekly Diaspora: Real Immigration Reform in 2010
By Nezua, Media Consortium Blogger
“Is it ever ‘the right time’ to pass immigration reform and a path to legalization?” asks Maribel Hastings at New America Media. The short answer? Yes. Our national economic situation dictates that we are smart about the resources available to us all. It’s also a moral imperative to adjust our laws to protect the most vulnerable of us.
Hastings runs through the complications, campaign promises, and opportunities facing the Obama administration in regards to immigration reform. While acknowledging the nature of our government as “a complex organism,” Hastings nonetheless signs off with a warning: There are many awaiting action today, people “who voted for Democrats with the expectation that they would make comprehensive immigration reform a reality.” (more…)
Weekly Diaspora: Working Together for Reform
By Nezua, Media Consortium Blogger
As we usher the last decade into the realm of memory, it’s time to stop viewing immigration reform as an Us vs. Them issue. The metaphors and language we use are key to framing a debate because they can communicate broader truths via association. For example, a scientist might mention the porous nature of all membranes and boundaries found in nature to describe the ineffectiveness of the militarized U.S.-Mexico border.
Reporting for New America Media, Marcelo Ballvé defines two emerging policy terms—“complementarity” and “circularity”—that are being used to describe the seasonal ebb and flow of migrant labor and argue for progressive reform. The terms effectively render concepts impenetrable borders and zero sum supply of resources, which are key fighting points for those who oppose progressive immigration reform, rigid and backward in contrast. (more…)
Weekly Diaspora: CIR ASAP the First Step to Reform
By Nezua, Media Consortium Blogger
On Tuesday, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) introduced the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity Act of 2009 (CIR-ASAP). Rep. Gutierrez said that the bill represents “the final push for comprehensive immigration reform,” as Khalil Abdullah reports for New America Media. Seth Hoy at AlterNet breaks down some of the bill’s key points, which include a border security provisions, family unification, a legalization component, and improved detention conditions.
The legislation is an encouraging first step forward on the path to immigration reform. But many hurdles must be overcome before an immigration bill from the House or Senate becomes law, especially in today’s tense political environment. Outright antagonism from the nativist lobby or the far Right will be no small part of the challenge, no matter how concessionary the legislation is to Republicans.
In the absence of nationally legislated reform, many border states like Texas are attempting to fill in the gap. One of these cases is a town called Del Rio, as Melissa del Bosque reports for the Texas Observer. Del Rio’s new school superintendent, Kelt Cooper, has “an overarching concern about Mexican nonresidents attending [U.S.] public schools.” U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents, acting under Cooper’s request, recently took a headcount of children crossing the bridge that connects Ciudad Acuña in México to Del Rio, Texas. No other border to the county was inspected similarly.
At Cooper’s order, Del Rio school district employees handed out fliers to drivers with students who crossed the bridge that morning, informing parents that their children were being withdrawn from school unless they could prove U.S. citizenship. If Cooper truly cared about his student body, he’d take a lesson from another school with a large immigrant population and harness the energy available to him, rather than sowing fear and division amongst the student body.
In AlterNet, David Bacon writes about the impact of President Barack Obama’s brand of immigration enforcement, which has been sold as hard on employers, but not on workers. A key part of this approach has hinged on phasing out the aggressive and visibly disruptive SWAT-style raids that were common in the Bush era and instead warning companies that their employment rolls would be inspected. But these employee audits are just another proxy move in the absence of sound legislative that guides how this country treats immigrants.
The “softer” raids are not, in fact, harder on employers. The audits that result in the loss of hundreds of jobs at a time often take place during or close to attempts to organize a union. The workers are let go and the companies—recent examples include American Apparel and ADM Janitorial—are given immunity. These selective raids and probes cannot drive every undocumented worker away. Furthermore, if the flow of cheap labor were to dry up, the U.S. economy would collapse. These audits are but “a means for managing the flow of migrants, and making their labor available to employers at a price they want to pay.”
Daphne Eviatar reports on Thursday morning’s House Homeland Security Committee hearing for The New Mexico Independent. The hearing, “ostensibly about how [Immigrations and Customs Enforcement] should improve its immigrant detention system” revealed deeply divided convictions among attendees. Immigrants today are either “dangerous criminals” who need to be locked up and deported, or “hapless men and women” who only broke the law in their pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. These divisions need to be settled, as the incarcerated population has doubled in the last ten years.
Even if prisons were built in every state and were designed only to hold undocumented people, the problem is not solved. The flow of migrants from South of the border must not be viewed as a vacuum. It is a symptom of the economic imbalances between the U.S. and Mexico.
So is the case with climate change, as Michelle Chen reports for RaceWire. Today, immigrants flee toward healthier economies and are demonized as the cause of the economic storm that howls behind them. It is no different for those displaced by “environmental destruction,” which is “reshaping the flow of labor and people as they move from one endangered livelihood to another.”
Chen advises us to accept the “fluidity of human movement,” as the consequences of remaining stuck in today’s limited immigration dialogue are dire. “Migration stems from the convergence of environmental destruction and social inequality,” writes Chen. There’s not a fence in the world that can address those forces.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse . This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Weekly Diaspora: Immigration Impacts Everything
By Nezua, Media Consortium Blogger
While many pundits and political analysts are musing about what Tuesday’s mixed bag election results mean for Obama administration, New America Media reports that “there’s another trend to watch; the surprising prominence of immigration politics.”
Even in states where other concerns “like small farms and forestry management” are far more immediate, “immigration has become a litmus test issue for the conservative movement,” and the expectation is, oddly, a “lockstep” goal toward opposing legalization. One has to wonder how the self-destructive choice to oppose immigration at any cost came about.
ColorLines‘ Leticia Miranda asks “What’s next?” now that the infamous Hutto immigration detention center, notorious for myriad human rights violations such as keeping children in prison-like conditions, is closing. Detainees are simply being moved to another detention center in Pennsylvania. So how will we know that substandard conditions and alleged sexual abuse will not be repeated? The problem is not location. The problem is that a class of people have been isolated and assigned lesser worth. making it easy to exploit them. Still, the closing of Hutto is an accomplishment for the ACLU and other activists that worked so hard to make it happen. It’s also a sign that our nation will not tolerate such conditions.
Another positive sign of progress is the reversal of what the Washington Monthly dubbed “a senseless ban” that prohibited HIV-positive individuals from migrating or traveling to the US. Author Steve Benen notes that progress in overturning the ban, which was imposed by the Reagan administration 22 years ago, began with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and then-Sen. Gordon H. Smith (R-OR) in 2008.
In negative news, the anti-immigration group Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC) have released a bizarrely antagonistic press release calling Rep. Gutierrez (D-IL) a “traitor,” as The Washington Independent reports. The full press release is here. In it, William Gheen, President of ALIPAC, happily warns that ALIPAC is “ready to organize and channel the backlash wave of anger that is coming into peaceful civic action” and for no apparent reason, employing a Dirty Harry quote beseeching an unnamed person to “Make my day, punk!” People like Gheen and Lou Dobbs are forever talking about a culture war and are obviously not interested in human beings.
It is far too easy to get the same impression about the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Reporting on an Associated Press analysis of previously undisclosed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Wiretap declares ICE to be “critically flawed, replete with agents who have badly bungled ongoing cases.” This includes “covering up crimes and even interfering in a police investigation into whether one informant killed another.” The list of ICE’s violations of the public trust include “soliciting sex from witnesses, letting informants smuggle undocumented folks, sexual relationships with informants” and using their position improperly to accrue “personal gain.”
As author M. Junaid Levesque-Alam makes clear, any agency will develop some degree of corruption that must be rooted out. But the dangers increase when you empower an agency “specifically created to target the vulnerable” with federal authority and weapons, all the while calling this population “illegal aliens.”
Also in Wiretap, Jamila King reports on San Francisco’s ongoing battle with Mayor Gavin Newsom regarding when deportation proceedings should be initiated against youth that have bee arrested but not tried for a crime. The city recently voted that juveniles accused of crimes must actually be convicted before they are deported.
Oddly, even in the face of “crowds of people gathered at city hall to celebrate the board’s decision to overturn” the “draconian mandate,” Newsom vetoed the change last Wednesday. Supervisor David Campos responded to the veto by saying it was a “sad day for San Francisco” and that Newsom had “chosen to be on the wrong side of history on this issue.” King reminds us, however, that Newsom’s move is toothless. The Board of Supervisors had enough votes to override his veto.
Deportation is a serious issue. Last week the Diaspora featured “Torn Apart” ColorLines‘ web-only series on deportation’s effects on families of color. Free Speech TV has posted an alert to protect families from deportation. It includes a link with actions you can take to help.
Finally, as The Real News reports, Mexico is offering amnesty to all undocumented immigrants within its borders, be they from the US or other nations (video below). Juan Ignacio Pedroza, Migratory Regulations Official for Mexico, makes clear why the country is making such a move. The government of Mexico sees immigrants as an economic boon, and wants to offer them a path to citizenship so that they can contribute and be part of the social fabric.
Mexico is an older nation and surely imperfect. But this decision demonstrates wisdom about how a people can come together that we might learn from here in the US.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Weekly Diaspora: Legislating Hate
By Nezua, Media Consortium Blogger
Anti-immigration groups and pundits cling to phrases like “Illegal Alien” because they only focus on foreignness and danger. These extreme factions are all about casting immigrants as what ails our society, conjuring up demons upon which to focus national ire, and perpetuating a subhuman category of being. It’s a convenient distraction from things that are actually endangering our nation. A new web-only series from ColorLines called “Torn Apart by Deportation“ is the perfect antidote to people like CNN’s Lou Dobbs. (more…)
Weekly Diaspora: Moving Immigration Reform Forward
By Nezua, Media Consortium Blogger
A crowd of thousands gathered on Capitol Hill Tuesday, to lobby for and support immigration reform, as Debayani Kar writes for RaceWire. Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus “presented his key principles for comprehensive immigration reform” at the rally. (more…)