By Suzy Khimm
Mother Jones
Tue Mar. 15, 2011
A Republican candidate running for Rep. Chris "Craigslist" Lee's seat in upstate New York isn't doing his scandalized party any favors. Jack Davis, a local businessman vying for the seat, shocked local GOP leaders by suggesting that the area's Hispanic farmworkers should be deported, and that inner city blacks should be bused in to pick the crops instead, as The Buffalo News reports.
Davis made the comments during a February 20 endorsement interview with local Republican Party leaders—and it's not the first time he's floated the idea. In 2008, Davis told another local paper: "We have a huge unemployment problem with black youth in our cities. Put them on buses, take them out there [to the farms] and pay them a decent wage; they will work."
Local Republicans leaders have quickly distanced themselves from Davis' inflammatory comments. "Maybe in 1860 that might have been seen by some as an appropriate comment, but not now," Amherst GOP Chairman Marshall Wood told the Buffalo News. But Davis—who's previously run for the seat as a Democrat—seems determined to continue his bid for the special election in May, casting himself as an anti-trade populist with tea party appeal.
What's next? A state Republican arguing that the physically and mentally disabled should be euthanized or just sent to Siberia? Or that illegal immigrants should be shot from helicopters like "feral hogs"? Oh no—both of those things have already happened.
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/03/gop-candidate-deport-latino-farmworkers-replace-inner-city-blacks
Showing posts with label Race Relations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Race Relations. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Sunday, October 25, 2009
In Dallas, Tickets for Not Speaking English
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 25, 2009
DALLAS (AP) — Dallas police officers have improperly cited drivers for not being able to speak English 38 times in the past three years, Chief David Kunkle said Friday.
The discovery came after a woman was pulled over earlier this month for making an illegal U-turn and was given a ticket for being a “non-English-speaking driver.”
Chief Kunkle said the citations were disappointing for Dallas, a city where Hispanics make up 44 percent of the more than one million residents and where many other residents are Southeast Asian refugees.
“I was, I guess, surprised and stunned,” the chief said of the ticketing. “We are a very diverse community.”
Chief Kunkle said his department’s computer system for citations had a pull-down menu that included a law requiring drivers of commercial vehicles to speak English. He said he believed that federal law had been misapplied to local drivers of private vehicles.
At least six officers wrote the citations, including one who wrote five of them, Chief Kunkle said at a news conference. The officers and their commanders are under investigation, and the Dallas police also plan to look beyond the last three years to see whether other citations turn up, he said.
On Oct. 2, Ernestina Mondragon was pulled over by Officer Gary Bromley, a rookie who was still under supervised training. Officer Bromley gave Ms. Mondragon a ticket for not speaking English, along with a citation for making an illegal U-turn and failing to carry her driver’s license.
“I wanted to tell him,” Ms. Mondragon said in Spanish on Friday. “I couldn’t talk back to him out of respect.”
Ms. Mondragon was driving her 11-year-old daughter to school when Officer Bromley stopped her. She had forgotten her purse with her license in it while darting out the door that morning after her daughter missed the school bus.
“I felt humiliated, sad,” she said. “I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. The anger wouldn’t let me.”
During the exchange between her and the officer, Ms. Mondragon said, she had used the limited English words and phrases she knew.
“He asked me if I spoke English,” she said. “I said I speak a little and understand it.”
Ms. Mondragon said court staff members had seemed puzzled by the charge. The court ultimately dismissed the “non-English-speaking” ticket and driver’s license citation after Ms. Mondragon presented her license.
Chief Kunkle said the outcome of the other 37 citations for not speaking English was unclear.
Ms. Mondragon said that she had been surprised to hear that others were also cited and that she was glad she said something so the ticketing could stop. She said she and her family were considering a lawsuit.
From now on, the Dallas police will not give commercial drivers tickets for being unable to speak English, Chief Kunkle said, adding that was a job for other law enforcement agencies.
As part of their training, Dallas police recruits hear from various minorities in the city, Chief Kunkle said.
Texas offers the written part of its driver’s license test in Spanish, said Tom Vinger, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/us/25dallas.html?_r=1&ref=us
October 25, 2009
DALLAS (AP) — Dallas police officers have improperly cited drivers for not being able to speak English 38 times in the past three years, Chief David Kunkle said Friday.
The discovery came after a woman was pulled over earlier this month for making an illegal U-turn and was given a ticket for being a “non-English-speaking driver.”
Chief Kunkle said the citations were disappointing for Dallas, a city where Hispanics make up 44 percent of the more than one million residents and where many other residents are Southeast Asian refugees.
“I was, I guess, surprised and stunned,” the chief said of the ticketing. “We are a very diverse community.”
Chief Kunkle said his department’s computer system for citations had a pull-down menu that included a law requiring drivers of commercial vehicles to speak English. He said he believed that federal law had been misapplied to local drivers of private vehicles.
At least six officers wrote the citations, including one who wrote five of them, Chief Kunkle said at a news conference. The officers and their commanders are under investigation, and the Dallas police also plan to look beyond the last three years to see whether other citations turn up, he said.
On Oct. 2, Ernestina Mondragon was pulled over by Officer Gary Bromley, a rookie who was still under supervised training. Officer Bromley gave Ms. Mondragon a ticket for not speaking English, along with a citation for making an illegal U-turn and failing to carry her driver’s license.
“I wanted to tell him,” Ms. Mondragon said in Spanish on Friday. “I couldn’t talk back to him out of respect.”
Ms. Mondragon was driving her 11-year-old daughter to school when Officer Bromley stopped her. She had forgotten her purse with her license in it while darting out the door that morning after her daughter missed the school bus.
“I felt humiliated, sad,” she said. “I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. The anger wouldn’t let me.”
During the exchange between her and the officer, Ms. Mondragon said, she had used the limited English words and phrases she knew.
“He asked me if I spoke English,” she said. “I said I speak a little and understand it.”
Ms. Mondragon said court staff members had seemed puzzled by the charge. The court ultimately dismissed the “non-English-speaking” ticket and driver’s license citation after Ms. Mondragon presented her license.
Chief Kunkle said the outcome of the other 37 citations for not speaking English was unclear.
Ms. Mondragon said that she had been surprised to hear that others were also cited and that she was glad she said something so the ticketing could stop. She said she and her family were considering a lawsuit.
From now on, the Dallas police will not give commercial drivers tickets for being unable to speak English, Chief Kunkle said, adding that was a job for other law enforcement agencies.
As part of their training, Dallas police recruits hear from various minorities in the city, Chief Kunkle said.
Texas offers the written part of its driver’s license test in Spanish, said Tom Vinger, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/us/25dallas.html?_r=1&ref=us
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Jailed immigrants buoy budgets
US pays sheriffs $90 per day to hold those awaiting deportation
By Maria Sacchetti
Globe Staff
February 9, 2009
NORTH DARTMOUTH - In the newest wing of Bristol County jail, exclusively for immigrants facing deportation, inmates in sunshine-yellow uniforms pass the time in a stuffy dormitory playing cards, flipping through magazines, and chatting in Spanish, Portuguese, and Hebrew.
Anxiety and boredom fill the room. "It's been 10 months," one desperate-looking man told Sheriff Thomas Hodgson in Spanish during a recent tour of the only freestanding immigrant detention center in Massachusetts. "How long do I have to wait?"
The answer isn't clear. But Hodgson, and other sheriffs across the state, are glad to have them: For each immigrant, they receive an average of $90 a day.
Bristol and other cash-strapped county jails are increasingly embracing the immigration business, capitalizing on the soaring number of foreign-born detainees and the millions of federal dollars a year paid to incarcerate them. Bristol County alone has raked in $33 million since 2001, and has used the money to transform itself into a sprawling campus with a commissary, an ambulance communications center, and a "management accountability building" for regular meetings on jail operations.
"That money is a tremendous boost for us," said Plymouth County Sheriff Joseph D. McDonald Jr., whose jail houses 324 immigrants, up from 44 a decade ago, bringing in $15.6 million last year. "We aggressively try to market ourselves to get as many of those inmates into our doors as we can."
But advocates for immigrants say the government should dramatically reduce the number of detainees, by releasing them pending deportation. They complain about the burden on taxpayers - this year, the federal government budgeted $1.7 billion nationwide and $42.8 million in New England for detainees - and the risks to immigrants.
Last year, Hiu Lui Ng, 34, a native of China who overstayed his visa, died of cancer after being detained at the Wyatt Detention Facility in Rhode Island. A federal inquiry found that jail officials denied his requests for medical care and other services, and that has accelerated calls to release detainees such as Ng who do not have criminal records. In Massachusetts, a majority of detainees are being held for immigration violations, not crimes, and are kept apart from the general jail population.
"The man who died at Wyatt shouldn't have been in detention at all," said Sara Ignatius, executive director of the Boston-based Political Asylum/Immigration Representation Project. "Eighty to 90 dollars a day to lock up somebody who's just overstayed their visa? It just seems like a very inappropriate way to spend federal money."
Nationwide, federal statistics show that 30,000 immigrant detainees are held on any given day, almost four times as many as in 1995. New England has an average of 1,365 detainees a day. Local federal officials did not have figures before 2003, but the Political Asylum/Immigration Representation Project said the tally is triple the number of detainees a decade ago.
Immigration lawyers and federal officials attribute the spike to a variety of circumstances: tougher immigration laws; heightened scrutiny of immigrants after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks; and intensified immigration raids around the country under the Bush administration.
Bruce Chadbourne, field office director for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said detaining immigrants ensures they are deported, but he cautioned that the process is not always swift. Nationally, detainees spend an average of 30 days in jail.
"It's not an easy process of just getting an order on a person, buying him a plane ticket, getting them a passport, and putting them on a plane and letting them go," he said.
The vast majority of immigrant detainees in New England are held at four Massachusetts jails, in Plymouth, Bristol, Suffolk, and Franklin counties. And they are transforming law enforcement in ways those sheriffs never envisioned.
In Franklin County, which houses 75 immigrants a day on average, triple the number 10 years ago, the sheriff just installed equipment so that immigrant detainees can have "video hearings" to save on transportation costs to court. In Plymouth, the sheriff's department often backs up federal immigration agents on sweeps. In Bristol County, officials transport immigrants as far away as Pennsylvania, and drive immigrants daily to immigration court in Boston, where the officers double as court security.
In the Suffolk County jail, 269 immigrants now fill Building 8, which was empty before 2003 because its open floor plan made it a security risk for the general prison population. Instead of having to remodel the new $20 million building, Sheriff Andrea Cabral began housing immigrants there, bringing in $10 million a year.
"The revenue that is generated from this has been a lifesaver for my budget," Cabral said. "Otherwise the building would be empty, and I'd be struggling a lot more with some of the issues that we've had."
County officials say the additional federal funding also benefits detainees themselves, by allowing them to stay near their families and lawyers instead of being spirited to a detention center in another region.
The extra funding, meanwhile, injects cash into communities that are struggling during the economic downturn. By expanding the number of immigrants, Bristol jail managed to build five buildings on the campus and expand services that help the entire county, such as a communications unit that patches ambulance drivers through to hospitals, the sheriff said.
"I could just sit here and be lazy and say that's somebody else's problem," Hodgson said of the decision to house immigrant detainees. "This is an opportunity for us to solve a lot of problems and benefit the people of our community."
One recent day, Hodgson led a Globe reporter on a tour of the cinder block-gray Bristol County campus - perhaps the jail that has been most transformed by immigration in Massachusetts. A cost-conscious Republican, he is not known for coddling inmates - he recently switched all inmates to Tang because it is cheaper than orange juice. He also believes illegal immigrants should be deported, in most cases.
But the son of an English immigrant has also lobbied Congress for reforms and worked with foreign officials to smooth the deportation process. He owns a vacation home in the Azores now because he has made so many consulting trips there.
During the tour, immigrants peppered him with questions, asking him when they can leave or complaining about healthcare, the food, or the stuffy air.
In the gymnasium, where immigrants sleep on bunk beds arranged in neat rows on the basketball court, an Iraqi national pointed to his misshapen elbow and said he needed medical care. After they chatted, the sheriff said the man was getting treatment.
Up the road, immigrants in the new $4.2 million immigration building begged the sheriff for information about their cases. But he said their fate is in the hands of federal officials and immigration judges.
The detainees, who do not have the right to grant interviews without the permission of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, expressed frustration that the reporter was not allowed to interview them.
"We don't know anything," an immigrant told Hodgson in Spanish. "Nothing, nothing, nothing."
Before he left, Hodgson stopped to chat with a young immigrant who said he had been in the United States almost 10 years. Sitting on the bunk, the man smiled as he told the sheriff about a picturesque little island off Portugal where he is from.
"I'll probably be going very soon," the man said in English.
Unlike regular inmates, immigrants do not know when their jail time will end and are not entitled to free lawyers to plead their case before a judge.
"It's not fair," complained one immigrant wearing a wedding ring.
"Nothing is fair," another man said, and made his way back to his bunk.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/02/09/jailed_immigrants_buoy_budgets?mode=PF
By Maria Sacchetti
Globe Staff
February 9, 2009
NORTH DARTMOUTH - In the newest wing of Bristol County jail, exclusively for immigrants facing deportation, inmates in sunshine-yellow uniforms pass the time in a stuffy dormitory playing cards, flipping through magazines, and chatting in Spanish, Portuguese, and Hebrew.
Anxiety and boredom fill the room. "It's been 10 months," one desperate-looking man told Sheriff Thomas Hodgson in Spanish during a recent tour of the only freestanding immigrant detention center in Massachusetts. "How long do I have to wait?"
The answer isn't clear. But Hodgson, and other sheriffs across the state, are glad to have them: For each immigrant, they receive an average of $90 a day.
Bristol and other cash-strapped county jails are increasingly embracing the immigration business, capitalizing on the soaring number of foreign-born detainees and the millions of federal dollars a year paid to incarcerate them. Bristol County alone has raked in $33 million since 2001, and has used the money to transform itself into a sprawling campus with a commissary, an ambulance communications center, and a "management accountability building" for regular meetings on jail operations.
"That money is a tremendous boost for us," said Plymouth County Sheriff Joseph D. McDonald Jr., whose jail houses 324 immigrants, up from 44 a decade ago, bringing in $15.6 million last year. "We aggressively try to market ourselves to get as many of those inmates into our doors as we can."
But advocates for immigrants say the government should dramatically reduce the number of detainees, by releasing them pending deportation. They complain about the burden on taxpayers - this year, the federal government budgeted $1.7 billion nationwide and $42.8 million in New England for detainees - and the risks to immigrants.
Last year, Hiu Lui Ng, 34, a native of China who overstayed his visa, died of cancer after being detained at the Wyatt Detention Facility in Rhode Island. A federal inquiry found that jail officials denied his requests for medical care and other services, and that has accelerated calls to release detainees such as Ng who do not have criminal records. In Massachusetts, a majority of detainees are being held for immigration violations, not crimes, and are kept apart from the general jail population.
"The man who died at Wyatt shouldn't have been in detention at all," said Sara Ignatius, executive director of the Boston-based Political Asylum/Immigration Representation Project. "Eighty to 90 dollars a day to lock up somebody who's just overstayed their visa? It just seems like a very inappropriate way to spend federal money."
Nationwide, federal statistics show that 30,000 immigrant detainees are held on any given day, almost four times as many as in 1995. New England has an average of 1,365 detainees a day. Local federal officials did not have figures before 2003, but the Political Asylum/Immigration Representation Project said the tally is triple the number of detainees a decade ago.
Immigration lawyers and federal officials attribute the spike to a variety of circumstances: tougher immigration laws; heightened scrutiny of immigrants after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks; and intensified immigration raids around the country under the Bush administration.
Bruce Chadbourne, field office director for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said detaining immigrants ensures they are deported, but he cautioned that the process is not always swift. Nationally, detainees spend an average of 30 days in jail.
"It's not an easy process of just getting an order on a person, buying him a plane ticket, getting them a passport, and putting them on a plane and letting them go," he said.
The vast majority of immigrant detainees in New England are held at four Massachusetts jails, in Plymouth, Bristol, Suffolk, and Franklin counties. And they are transforming law enforcement in ways those sheriffs never envisioned.
In Franklin County, which houses 75 immigrants a day on average, triple the number 10 years ago, the sheriff just installed equipment so that immigrant detainees can have "video hearings" to save on transportation costs to court. In Plymouth, the sheriff's department often backs up federal immigration agents on sweeps. In Bristol County, officials transport immigrants as far away as Pennsylvania, and drive immigrants daily to immigration court in Boston, where the officers double as court security.
In the Suffolk County jail, 269 immigrants now fill Building 8, which was empty before 2003 because its open floor plan made it a security risk for the general prison population. Instead of having to remodel the new $20 million building, Sheriff Andrea Cabral began housing immigrants there, bringing in $10 million a year.
"The revenue that is generated from this has been a lifesaver for my budget," Cabral said. "Otherwise the building would be empty, and I'd be struggling a lot more with some of the issues that we've had."
County officials say the additional federal funding also benefits detainees themselves, by allowing them to stay near their families and lawyers instead of being spirited to a detention center in another region.
The extra funding, meanwhile, injects cash into communities that are struggling during the economic downturn. By expanding the number of immigrants, Bristol jail managed to build five buildings on the campus and expand services that help the entire county, such as a communications unit that patches ambulance drivers through to hospitals, the sheriff said.
"I could just sit here and be lazy and say that's somebody else's problem," Hodgson said of the decision to house immigrant detainees. "This is an opportunity for us to solve a lot of problems and benefit the people of our community."
One recent day, Hodgson led a Globe reporter on a tour of the cinder block-gray Bristol County campus - perhaps the jail that has been most transformed by immigration in Massachusetts. A cost-conscious Republican, he is not known for coddling inmates - he recently switched all inmates to Tang because it is cheaper than orange juice. He also believes illegal immigrants should be deported, in most cases.
But the son of an English immigrant has also lobbied Congress for reforms and worked with foreign officials to smooth the deportation process. He owns a vacation home in the Azores now because he has made so many consulting trips there.
During the tour, immigrants peppered him with questions, asking him when they can leave or complaining about healthcare, the food, or the stuffy air.
In the gymnasium, where immigrants sleep on bunk beds arranged in neat rows on the basketball court, an Iraqi national pointed to his misshapen elbow and said he needed medical care. After they chatted, the sheriff said the man was getting treatment.
Up the road, immigrants in the new $4.2 million immigration building begged the sheriff for information about their cases. But he said their fate is in the hands of federal officials and immigration judges.
The detainees, who do not have the right to grant interviews without the permission of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, expressed frustration that the reporter was not allowed to interview them.
"We don't know anything," an immigrant told Hodgson in Spanish. "Nothing, nothing, nothing."
Before he left, Hodgson stopped to chat with a young immigrant who said he had been in the United States almost 10 years. Sitting on the bunk, the man smiled as he told the sheriff about a picturesque little island off Portugal where he is from.
"I'll probably be going very soon," the man said in English.
Unlike regular inmates, immigrants do not know when their jail time will end and are not entitled to free lawyers to plead their case before a judge.
"It's not fair," complained one immigrant wearing a wedding ring.
"Nothing is fair," another man said, and made his way back to his bunk.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/02/09/jailed_immigrants_buoy_budgets?mode=PF
Sunday, May 24, 2009
A Nation of Laws?
By Daniel Cubias
The Huffington Post
May 23, 2009
Just like President Obama, Dick Cheney, and many other Americans, I've been thinking a lot about torture lately. I've been thinking how bad it is... unless it's, like, you know, really needed and stuff... to stop bad people... right?
In any case, we've all heard the wobbly rationales justifying the waterboarding of terrorists (thanks for making us fall in love with you all over again, Mr. Cheney!). We've also heard the yowls of people upset that President Obama won't release the latest batch of torture pictures. Let's not go over those issues here.
What interests me - the guy who deals with Latino issues - is how this latest debate over illegal activity relates to immigration.
You see, conservatives who want to arrest every undocumented worker in sight often make the following argument: "They broke the law, so they can't be integrated into American society. That would be rewarding illegal behavior. It's the principle of law and order."
Of course, I'm sure these statements are uttered only by virtuous souls who never steal office supplies, cheat on their taxes, or speed on the freeway (that would be illegal!).
The implication is that many Americans would be only too happy to accept millions of Mexicans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and so on - if only the newcomers followed the rules.
"I'm most dreadfully sorry," the right-winger says. "But you didn't fill out the correct paperwork and stand in line. So I'm going to have to demonize you, force you into the shadows, and kick you out of the country if I can. It's the law, you know."
Now, as I've stated before, I'm not in favor of throwing open the border and letting anyone who's interested just climb aboard. Having millions of undocumented workers in the country is not good for the nation or for them. Furthermore, immigration reform will require a combination of liberal and conservative ideas to pull off.
But let's stop with the self-righteousness.
For many Americans, this isn't about respecting the law. This isn't some principled stance for fairness.
It's about lots of dark-skinned people speaking a funny language while crowding them at the grocery store.
The irony bludgeons me. Many conservative commentators identify jumping a fence as a heinous crime that must be punished. We can't talk about issuing amnesty or making the undocumented pay a penalty or taking a creative approach to the problem. It's zero-tolerance time.
However, many of these same commentators - in a truly astounding display of having it both ways - then turn around and say, "But torturing someone until they talk, that's ok. Sometimes, you have to break the law, you know."
Yes, there is a difference. For starters, crossing into America illegally is a federal offense. Torturing someone, however, is against the laws of the nation, prohibited by the Constitution, banned under international treaties, forbidden under the rules of war, and both ethically and morally repugnant.
So it's clear which one is worse. Hey, it's right there in the term: illegal immigrant.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-cubias/a-nation-of-laws_b_207053.html
The Huffington Post
May 23, 2009
Just like President Obama, Dick Cheney, and many other Americans, I've been thinking a lot about torture lately. I've been thinking how bad it is... unless it's, like, you know, really needed and stuff... to stop bad people... right?
In any case, we've all heard the wobbly rationales justifying the waterboarding of terrorists (thanks for making us fall in love with you all over again, Mr. Cheney!). We've also heard the yowls of people upset that President Obama won't release the latest batch of torture pictures. Let's not go over those issues here.
What interests me - the guy who deals with Latino issues - is how this latest debate over illegal activity relates to immigration.
You see, conservatives who want to arrest every undocumented worker in sight often make the following argument: "They broke the law, so they can't be integrated into American society. That would be rewarding illegal behavior. It's the principle of law and order."
Of course, I'm sure these statements are uttered only by virtuous souls who never steal office supplies, cheat on their taxes, or speed on the freeway (that would be illegal!).
The implication is that many Americans would be only too happy to accept millions of Mexicans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and so on - if only the newcomers followed the rules.
"I'm most dreadfully sorry," the right-winger says. "But you didn't fill out the correct paperwork and stand in line. So I'm going to have to demonize you, force you into the shadows, and kick you out of the country if I can. It's the law, you know."
Now, as I've stated before, I'm not in favor of throwing open the border and letting anyone who's interested just climb aboard. Having millions of undocumented workers in the country is not good for the nation or for them. Furthermore, immigration reform will require a combination of liberal and conservative ideas to pull off.
But let's stop with the self-righteousness.
For many Americans, this isn't about respecting the law. This isn't some principled stance for fairness.
It's about lots of dark-skinned people speaking a funny language while crowding them at the grocery store.
The irony bludgeons me. Many conservative commentators identify jumping a fence as a heinous crime that must be punished. We can't talk about issuing amnesty or making the undocumented pay a penalty or taking a creative approach to the problem. It's zero-tolerance time.
However, many of these same commentators - in a truly astounding display of having it both ways - then turn around and say, "But torturing someone until they talk, that's ok. Sometimes, you have to break the law, you know."
Yes, there is a difference. For starters, crossing into America illegally is a federal offense. Torturing someone, however, is against the laws of the nation, prohibited by the Constitution, banned under international treaties, forbidden under the rules of war, and both ethically and morally repugnant.
So it's clear which one is worse. Hey, it's right there in the term: illegal immigrant.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-cubias/a-nation-of-laws_b_207053.html
Monday, April 20, 2009
As Long as 'Latino' Is Synonymous With 'Immigrant,' We Will Remain a Class Apart
By Michelle Garcia and Julissa Reynoso
AlterNet
April 20, 2009
Here we go, once more, into the political battlefield that is "immigration reform."
As the respective armies assemble to hash out who deserves citizenship and at what cost, we question whether true citizenship can be won by Latinos, whether the citizenship of Latinos will transcend immigration status and reach the very heart of what it means to be an American.
In a recent installment of its "Remade in America" series on immigration, the New York Times sets its sights on Irving, Texas, a Dallas suburb, and its Mayor Herbert Gears, whose political survival has depended on the support of Latino voters and his yielding to the prevailing political winds regarding immigration by agreeing to run immigration-status checks on criminal suspects. To illustrate just how emotionally charged the immigration issue is in Irving, readers get this glimpse of recent events at a City Council meeting.
Gears asked a woman testifying about the public harm wrought by immigrants, crime, overcrowding, even disease: "Were you at a meeting, a club meeting, where applause was given to the comment that 'anyone who comes over the border should be shot?' "
"I don't remember if there was applause or not," she said, taken aback.
As a nation we have arrived at a time when to admit in public, before friends and neighbors, support for the use of lethal force on suspected border crossers raises nary an eyebrow.
This is all perfectly reasonable, goes the argument, because presumably we are speaking about illegal border crossers, folks who break the law.
But the article, reflecting current political discourse, lumps together immigrant and "Hispanic;" citizenship status, therefore, is rendered irrelevant.
But distinctions must be made. The focus on immigration obfuscates the very real way Latinos, U.S. citizens, are upsetting some folks by challenging the status quo.
Irving happens to be the site of a lawsuit filed in federal court, Benavidez v. Irving, challenging the at-large voting system that opponents say deprives Latinos of electoral representation, and has resulted in an all-white City Council and mayor governing Irving.
At-large systems allow voters to elect citywide representatives rather than pols representing a district. A similar voting model in Dallas was defeated in Dallas in courts.
The Irving situation illustrates a significant and enduring struggle for Latinos -- that of being a "class apart." Such was the argument by three Latino attorneys when they won a pivotal civil rights case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
It was 1954, and the case, Hernandez v. Texas, was brought before the high court to challenge the all-white juries that were pervasive in Texas and was rooted in the argument that although Latinos were "white," they were "a class apart." This civil rights milestone was recently examined in the PBS documentary, A Class Apart.
But now, some 50 years later, the argument that Latinos are a class apart still holds true, but not in the way the Texas attorneys intended.
Race alone is not the issue, but citizenship itself. Indeed, rigid racial binaries in this country obfuscate a glaring reality that endures for Latinos today that goes beyond race. In the eyes of the nation, in national discourse, Latinos of all races and backgrounds lack a true claim to national citizenship.
One only needs to read the news from New Jersey where immigration agents stormed the home of Dominicans to nab undocumented immigrants.
The "Dominicans" were actually U.S. citizens. One only needs to follow the string of anti-Latino attacks -- over 800 in one year -- to see that Latinos exist beyond the racial construct of this nation; and on that frontier our citizenship evaporates.
One only needs to follow the incidents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents, most of whom are of Central American and Mexican descent, swept up in immigration raids from Long Island, N.Y., to Arizona.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/136929/as_long_as_'latino'_is_synonymous_with_'immigrant,'_we_will_remain_a_class_apart/
AlterNet
April 20, 2009
Here we go, once more, into the political battlefield that is "immigration reform."
As the respective armies assemble to hash out who deserves citizenship and at what cost, we question whether true citizenship can be won by Latinos, whether the citizenship of Latinos will transcend immigration status and reach the very heart of what it means to be an American.
In a recent installment of its "Remade in America" series on immigration, the New York Times sets its sights on Irving, Texas, a Dallas suburb, and its Mayor Herbert Gears, whose political survival has depended on the support of Latino voters and his yielding to the prevailing political winds regarding immigration by agreeing to run immigration-status checks on criminal suspects. To illustrate just how emotionally charged the immigration issue is in Irving, readers get this glimpse of recent events at a City Council meeting.
Gears asked a woman testifying about the public harm wrought by immigrants, crime, overcrowding, even disease: "Were you at a meeting, a club meeting, where applause was given to the comment that 'anyone who comes over the border should be shot?' "
"I don't remember if there was applause or not," she said, taken aback.
As a nation we have arrived at a time when to admit in public, before friends and neighbors, support for the use of lethal force on suspected border crossers raises nary an eyebrow.
This is all perfectly reasonable, goes the argument, because presumably we are speaking about illegal border crossers, folks who break the law.
But the article, reflecting current political discourse, lumps together immigrant and "Hispanic;" citizenship status, therefore, is rendered irrelevant.
But distinctions must be made. The focus on immigration obfuscates the very real way Latinos, U.S. citizens, are upsetting some folks by challenging the status quo.
Irving happens to be the site of a lawsuit filed in federal court, Benavidez v. Irving, challenging the at-large voting system that opponents say deprives Latinos of electoral representation, and has resulted in an all-white City Council and mayor governing Irving.
At-large systems allow voters to elect citywide representatives rather than pols representing a district. A similar voting model in Dallas was defeated in Dallas in courts.
The Irving situation illustrates a significant and enduring struggle for Latinos -- that of being a "class apart." Such was the argument by three Latino attorneys when they won a pivotal civil rights case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
It was 1954, and the case, Hernandez v. Texas, was brought before the high court to challenge the all-white juries that were pervasive in Texas and was rooted in the argument that although Latinos were "white," they were "a class apart." This civil rights milestone was recently examined in the PBS documentary, A Class Apart.
But now, some 50 years later, the argument that Latinos are a class apart still holds true, but not in the way the Texas attorneys intended.
Race alone is not the issue, but citizenship itself. Indeed, rigid racial binaries in this country obfuscate a glaring reality that endures for Latinos today that goes beyond race. In the eyes of the nation, in national discourse, Latinos of all races and backgrounds lack a true claim to national citizenship.
One only needs to read the news from New Jersey where immigration agents stormed the home of Dominicans to nab undocumented immigrants.
The "Dominicans" were actually U.S. citizens. One only needs to follow the string of anti-Latino attacks -- over 800 in one year -- to see that Latinos exist beyond the racial construct of this nation; and on that frontier our citizenship evaporates.
One only needs to follow the incidents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents, most of whom are of Central American and Mexican descent, swept up in immigration raids from Long Island, N.Y., to Arizona.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/136929/as_long_as_'latino'_is_synonymous_with_'immigrant,'_we_will_remain_a_class_apart/
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Latinos face a rising tide of hostility
Latinos face a rising tide of hostility
by Jessica Chandler
Socialist Worker Online
March 3, 2009
Immigrant Latinos in the US are facing a tough and worrying future.
There is a rising tide of hostility along the US-Mexico border. Visa and immigration policies are breaking up families, and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency is increasingly raiding businesses and manufacturing plants to detain immigrants.
This latest shift represents the increasing criminalisation of immigration. It is a backward step in Latino immigrants’ battle to win legitimacy and come “out of the shadows”.
Government policies such as Operation Streamline bring low-level criminal charges against virtually all migrants caught crossing parts of the border.
A Pew Research Centre report has said that a sharp rise in Latino prisoners mean they are now the largest ethnic population in federal prisons.
The study reveals that nearly half of the Latino offenders, about 48 percent, were convicted of “immigration crimes”.
Many of the Latinos convicted were sentenced in courts from one of the four states that border Mexico.
There has been another major disappointment for the Latino community with the collapse of government talks to overhaul the US’s immigration policy.
Republicans voted down a plan in June 2007 that would have included a “guest worker programme” and a way for workers with “clean” records to gain US citizenship.
Since then any significant progress has stalled. President Barack Obama is unlikely to start working on immigration policies while he faces major issues such as Iraq, Afghanistan and the failing economy.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be for the 11 million people living illegally in the US – 57 percent of them from Mexico.
Hundreds of thousands of immigrants struck and took to the streets across the US in May 2006 to fight for their rights.
The strike had the slogan, “A day without immigrants”, and it showed the political clout of the Latino population.
George Bush said that his biggest regret when he left office was his failure to pass a comprehensive plan to effectively deal with illegal people working and living in the US.
In 2003, Bush set out to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws, which had not been changed since the mid-1980s.
Jobs
His proposal focused on creating a programme that would allow immigrants to legally enter the country for a temporary period of three years to take jobs that employers say would otherwise go unfilled.
Another proposed major step forward for immigrants was the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (Dream) Act, which was not endorsed by Bush.
This would have allowed undocumented young immigrants to get financial aid and scholarships for college. They would also have legal status while they were at college. But the Senate narrowly voted this down.
Bush’s proposal for immigration reform went before the House of Representatives in 2005.
But the “war on terror”, and growing mistrust of foreigners had changed the situation.
The Republican majority rejected the reform bill in December of that year. They instead called for the deportation of all illegal immigrants, as well as insisting on a making it a felony for anyone to give assistance, including medical aid, to illegal immigrants.
It was this turn of events that prompted Latino organisations and labour groups to stage the large demonstrations.
When the Democrats gained a slight majority in the house in 2007 the issue was revisited.
Senators took up the call for the guest worker programme and to find a way for illegal immigrants to gain legalised status. This was once again defeated by the right.
This has left the Latino community with little possibility of a fair and just immigration reform plan that would provide them with the means to take care of their families.
Latinos are left to deal with the effects of a country battling deep recession, the Minutemen vigilantes and the ICE raids.
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=17254
by Jessica Chandler
Socialist Worker Online
March 3, 2009
Immigrant Latinos in the US are facing a tough and worrying future.
There is a rising tide of hostility along the US-Mexico border. Visa and immigration policies are breaking up families, and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency is increasingly raiding businesses and manufacturing plants to detain immigrants.
This latest shift represents the increasing criminalisation of immigration. It is a backward step in Latino immigrants’ battle to win legitimacy and come “out of the shadows”.
Government policies such as Operation Streamline bring low-level criminal charges against virtually all migrants caught crossing parts of the border.
A Pew Research Centre report has said that a sharp rise in Latino prisoners mean they are now the largest ethnic population in federal prisons.
The study reveals that nearly half of the Latino offenders, about 48 percent, were convicted of “immigration crimes”.
Many of the Latinos convicted were sentenced in courts from one of the four states that border Mexico.
There has been another major disappointment for the Latino community with the collapse of government talks to overhaul the US’s immigration policy.
Republicans voted down a plan in June 2007 that would have included a “guest worker programme” and a way for workers with “clean” records to gain US citizenship.
Since then any significant progress has stalled. President Barack Obama is unlikely to start working on immigration policies while he faces major issues such as Iraq, Afghanistan and the failing economy.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be for the 11 million people living illegally in the US – 57 percent of them from Mexico.
Hundreds of thousands of immigrants struck and took to the streets across the US in May 2006 to fight for their rights.
The strike had the slogan, “A day without immigrants”, and it showed the political clout of the Latino population.
George Bush said that his biggest regret when he left office was his failure to pass a comprehensive plan to effectively deal with illegal people working and living in the US.
In 2003, Bush set out to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws, which had not been changed since the mid-1980s.
Jobs
His proposal focused on creating a programme that would allow immigrants to legally enter the country for a temporary period of three years to take jobs that employers say would otherwise go unfilled.
Another proposed major step forward for immigrants was the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (Dream) Act, which was not endorsed by Bush.
This would have allowed undocumented young immigrants to get financial aid and scholarships for college. They would also have legal status while they were at college. But the Senate narrowly voted this down.
Bush’s proposal for immigration reform went before the House of Representatives in 2005.
But the “war on terror”, and growing mistrust of foreigners had changed the situation.
The Republican majority rejected the reform bill in December of that year. They instead called for the deportation of all illegal immigrants, as well as insisting on a making it a felony for anyone to give assistance, including medical aid, to illegal immigrants.
It was this turn of events that prompted Latino organisations and labour groups to stage the large demonstrations.
When the Democrats gained a slight majority in the house in 2007 the issue was revisited.
Senators took up the call for the guest worker programme and to find a way for illegal immigrants to gain legalised status. This was once again defeated by the right.
This has left the Latino community with little possibility of a fair and just immigration reform plan that would provide them with the means to take care of their families.
Latinos are left to deal with the effects of a country battling deep recession, the Minutemen vigilantes and the ICE raids.
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=17254
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
A bitter struggle for the last jobs anybody wants
A bitter struggle for the last jobs anybody wants
By DEBORAH HASTINGS
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 24, 2009
LAUREL, Miss.
The work has always been stupefying and hard. Hour after hour standing on the line, soldering or welding or drilling in screws until tears join streaming sweat and hands cramp in pain.
Even in today's nightmare economy, most people would not want this daily grind that steals the soul in 12-hour shifts paying as little as $280 a week, before taxes.
Here in mostly rural Jones County, the area's biggest employer, Howard Industries, maintains a sprawling factory that builds electrical transformers and other big equipment behind a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. For a long time, Howard workers were poor blacks and whites in this town of 18,000. But in the past few years, immigrants poured across the Mexican border, eagerly applying for work on the Howard line and not complaining about long hours or menial labor.
Resentment began to take root in the hearts of some black and white residents, producing an odd alliance in a place that has seen racial hatred. Many blacks and whites claimed Hispanics were taking over their city and taking away jobs by not complaining about safety issues in a factory that faced $193,000 in federal fines last year for dangerous working conditions.
A disgruntled union member allegedly tipped the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, whose agents swept in last summer and staged the largest single workplace raid. As nearly 600 Hispanics were herded past black and white Howard employees, jeers and applause and wide grins erupted.
"Bye-bye," some trilled in falsetto, fingers wagging. "Go back where you came from."
And the assembly line rattles on. But now mostly blacks work it, with a smattering of whites, for the same wages paid to Hispanics. The plant, which has been working without a union contract since August, is mired in bitter negotiations over higher pay and safety issues.
Of the 592 people arrested, mostly for the crime of illegally entering this country -- more than 100, mostly women with children, were released pending the outcome of their cases. They wade through a long, confusing current of immigration hearings that will determine their futures. Many fear venturing out, lest they receive withering glances in the Wal-Mart aimed at the electronic monitoring devices on their ankles.
"We do the jobs no one else wants to do," says Ismael Cabrera, a 37-year-old father of two. "We just want to work."
He paid a smuggler $2,000 to walk him across the desert into Arizona. He paid $1,000 more to get a ride to Laurel, where he first worked in a poultry plant, wielding a small knife to slash the wings off dead chickens as they blurred past. His all-time high: 39 birds per minute.
"It's not that we took the jobs from other people," he says in Spanish. "It's that they don't want to work them."
He waits on deportation hearings that he does not understand. He weeps at the prospect of going back to his hometown near Mexico City.
"Sometimes I ask myself if it was worth it to come here," he says in a voice just above a whisper. "To gain insults and to be humiliated."
Blacks in Mississippi know plenty about humiliation. Laurel itself had long been Klan territory, where hooded, robed men carrying burning torches marched proudly down the main thoroughfare before the civil rights movement.
White Knights Imperial Wizard Sam H. Bowers, suspected in hundreds of attacks including the infamous "Mississippi Burning" murders of three voter registration workers, lived in Laurel.
These days, hate has a new target. "Time for Mexico and Mexicans to get the hell out!!!" blasts a recruiting message on a Klan Web site. In rallies staged in recent years in Laurel, Tupelo and other Mississippi cities, Klan members gathered to accuse Hispanic immigrants of being child molesters, job stealers and destroyers of the American way of life.
Angelica Olmedo, a 32-year-old single mother, has already decided what to do. She will volunteer for deportation to Vera Cruz, where her parents grow sugar cane. She hopes that decision will ease the way for her to someday legally return to this country.
Immigration officials have held out that hope to those willing to go quietly, she said.
Her 13-year-old son, who was 5 when she paid for him to be smuggled to Mississippi, will return with her. After she was swept up in the Howard raid, where she repaired forklifts for $10.25 an hour, she said immigration officials released her on "humanitarian" grounds because she was a single mom.
She was outfitted with an electronic ankle bracelet and told not to leave the state. It took about two months for Olmedo to realize that apparently no one was monitoring the devices. In time, the clumsy plastic device slipped off her foot. No one from ICE has said a word to her since.
"It's to shame me," she said. "That's all it was, to shame me. To make me look like a criminal. But I am not a criminal; I was only working."
Olmedo regrets she can no longer work and contribute to her sister's household. She baby-sits her two small nieces during the day as partial payment for rent and food. "I don't even like to go out," she says. "I feel like everyone is watching me and knows I was in the raid.
Yet Olmedo has met kindness from some former co-workers. "I had friends. African-American and white. They come and ask if I need money for food. I don't take it. They brought shoes."
At Howard Industries, where the day crew is just getting off, a freezing rain pelts workers walking to their cars, heads bowed to shield their faces.
They are mostly black and mostly male. Some carry the stooped shoulders of the bone-weary. Others bound toward the employee parking lot with the glee of the newly freed.
Larry Jones, 24, sits in his car with the heater blasting, sucking the life out of a Swisher Sweets cigarillo. He has been on the job as a coil winder for two months.
The African-American man had tried to get hired before the raid, he said. "I filled out an application and took the test, but they never called me back."
Now he makes $8.20 an hour. And he is thankful for the raid.
"In a way, I feel like it ain't right because these people are trying to better themselves. But on the other hand, we need jobs, too," he says softly. "A lot of folks 'round here were pretty happy about it, to tell you the truth. It was pretty much of a blessing for a lot of folks."
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20090124/ARTICLE/901240336?Title=A_bitter_struggle_for_the_last_jobs_anybody_wants
By DEBORAH HASTINGS
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 24, 2009
LAUREL, Miss.
The work has always been stupefying and hard. Hour after hour standing on the line, soldering or welding or drilling in screws until tears join streaming sweat and hands cramp in pain.
Even in today's nightmare economy, most people would not want this daily grind that steals the soul in 12-hour shifts paying as little as $280 a week, before taxes.
Here in mostly rural Jones County, the area's biggest employer, Howard Industries, maintains a sprawling factory that builds electrical transformers and other big equipment behind a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. For a long time, Howard workers were poor blacks and whites in this town of 18,000. But in the past few years, immigrants poured across the Mexican border, eagerly applying for work on the Howard line and not complaining about long hours or menial labor.
Resentment began to take root in the hearts of some black and white residents, producing an odd alliance in a place that has seen racial hatred. Many blacks and whites claimed Hispanics were taking over their city and taking away jobs by not complaining about safety issues in a factory that faced $193,000 in federal fines last year for dangerous working conditions.
A disgruntled union member allegedly tipped the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, whose agents swept in last summer and staged the largest single workplace raid. As nearly 600 Hispanics were herded past black and white Howard employees, jeers and applause and wide grins erupted.
"Bye-bye," some trilled in falsetto, fingers wagging. "Go back where you came from."
And the assembly line rattles on. But now mostly blacks work it, with a smattering of whites, for the same wages paid to Hispanics. The plant, which has been working without a union contract since August, is mired in bitter negotiations over higher pay and safety issues.
Of the 592 people arrested, mostly for the crime of illegally entering this country -- more than 100, mostly women with children, were released pending the outcome of their cases. They wade through a long, confusing current of immigration hearings that will determine their futures. Many fear venturing out, lest they receive withering glances in the Wal-Mart aimed at the electronic monitoring devices on their ankles.
"We do the jobs no one else wants to do," says Ismael Cabrera, a 37-year-old father of two. "We just want to work."
He paid a smuggler $2,000 to walk him across the desert into Arizona. He paid $1,000 more to get a ride to Laurel, where he first worked in a poultry plant, wielding a small knife to slash the wings off dead chickens as they blurred past. His all-time high: 39 birds per minute.
"It's not that we took the jobs from other people," he says in Spanish. "It's that they don't want to work them."
He waits on deportation hearings that he does not understand. He weeps at the prospect of going back to his hometown near Mexico City.
"Sometimes I ask myself if it was worth it to come here," he says in a voice just above a whisper. "To gain insults and to be humiliated."
Blacks in Mississippi know plenty about humiliation. Laurel itself had long been Klan territory, where hooded, robed men carrying burning torches marched proudly down the main thoroughfare before the civil rights movement.
White Knights Imperial Wizard Sam H. Bowers, suspected in hundreds of attacks including the infamous "Mississippi Burning" murders of three voter registration workers, lived in Laurel.
These days, hate has a new target. "Time for Mexico and Mexicans to get the hell out!!!" blasts a recruiting message on a Klan Web site. In rallies staged in recent years in Laurel, Tupelo and other Mississippi cities, Klan members gathered to accuse Hispanic immigrants of being child molesters, job stealers and destroyers of the American way of life.
Angelica Olmedo, a 32-year-old single mother, has already decided what to do. She will volunteer for deportation to Vera Cruz, where her parents grow sugar cane. She hopes that decision will ease the way for her to someday legally return to this country.
Immigration officials have held out that hope to those willing to go quietly, she said.
Her 13-year-old son, who was 5 when she paid for him to be smuggled to Mississippi, will return with her. After she was swept up in the Howard raid, where she repaired forklifts for $10.25 an hour, she said immigration officials released her on "humanitarian" grounds because she was a single mom.
She was outfitted with an electronic ankle bracelet and told not to leave the state. It took about two months for Olmedo to realize that apparently no one was monitoring the devices. In time, the clumsy plastic device slipped off her foot. No one from ICE has said a word to her since.
"It's to shame me," she said. "That's all it was, to shame me. To make me look like a criminal. But I am not a criminal; I was only working."
Olmedo regrets she can no longer work and contribute to her sister's household. She baby-sits her two small nieces during the day as partial payment for rent and food. "I don't even like to go out," she says. "I feel like everyone is watching me and knows I was in the raid.
Yet Olmedo has met kindness from some former co-workers. "I had friends. African-American and white. They come and ask if I need money for food. I don't take it. They brought shoes."
At Howard Industries, where the day crew is just getting off, a freezing rain pelts workers walking to their cars, heads bowed to shield their faces.
They are mostly black and mostly male. Some carry the stooped shoulders of the bone-weary. Others bound toward the employee parking lot with the glee of the newly freed.
Larry Jones, 24, sits in his car with the heater blasting, sucking the life out of a Swisher Sweets cigarillo. He has been on the job as a coil winder for two months.
The African-American man had tried to get hired before the raid, he said. "I filled out an application and took the test, but they never called me back."
Now he makes $8.20 an hour. And he is thankful for the raid.
"In a way, I feel like it ain't right because these people are trying to better themselves. But on the other hand, we need jobs, too," he says softly. "A lot of folks 'round here were pretty happy about it, to tell you the truth. It was pretty much of a blessing for a lot of folks."
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20090124/ARTICLE/901240336?Title=A_bitter_struggle_for_the_last_jobs_anybody_wants
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Backlash in the heartland
Backlash in the heartland
Tougher enforcement turns up heat on illegal immigrants
Sunday, September 7, 2008 1:32 AM
By Jill Riepenhoff and Stephanie Czekalinski
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Maria, who lives here illegally, works double shifts at a restaurant, earning $3.50 an hour before taxes.
The young woman climbed into a van with a man she had paid $6,500 to take her out of El Salvador and smuggle her into the United States.
Destination? Columbus, where her brothers settled a few years ago to work.
Maria's journey began just after immigration reform imploded in Congress.
She crossed undetected in July 2007 and quickly learned that her new way of life is full of contradictions.
She and others working here illegally can pay into Social Security but can't collect benefits if they are disabled, retire or die.
They can collect workers' compensation benefits if they are injured on the job but can't legally work.
They can play the lottery but can't collect jackpots.
They can open a bank account but can't take out a home mortgage without valid identification.
They can buy a car and register it but can't have a driver's license.
"I knew it would be that way before I came," Maria said. "But one comes with the hope that she can find a way to enter the world of opportunities."
http://dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/09/07/divide_backlash.html?sid=101
Tougher enforcement turns up heat on illegal immigrants
Sunday, September 7, 2008 1:32 AM
By Jill Riepenhoff and Stephanie Czekalinski
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Maria, who lives here illegally, works double shifts at a restaurant, earning $3.50 an hour before taxes.
The young woman climbed into a van with a man she had paid $6,500 to take her out of El Salvador and smuggle her into the United States.
Destination? Columbus, where her brothers settled a few years ago to work.
Maria's journey began just after immigration reform imploded in Congress.
She crossed undetected in July 2007 and quickly learned that her new way of life is full of contradictions.
She and others working here illegally can pay into Social Security but can't collect benefits if they are disabled, retire or die.
They can collect workers' compensation benefits if they are injured on the job but can't legally work.
They can play the lottery but can't collect jackpots.
They can open a bank account but can't take out a home mortgage without valid identification.
They can buy a car and register it but can't have a driver's license.
"I knew it would be that way before I came," Maria said. "But one comes with the hope that she can find a way to enter the world of opportunities."
http://dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/09/07/divide_backlash.html?sid=101
Monday, September 1, 2008
Raids sharpen divisions over immigration
Raids sharpen divisions over immigration
In Miss. town, some residents cheer crackdown
By Miguel Bustillo and Richard Fausset
Los Angeles Times, September 1, 2008
LAUREL, Miss. - Fabiola Pena considered running away from her factory job when she realized that she was being targeted in a federal immigration raid. She was deterred when she noticed the helicopters hovering overhead.
But helicopters were not what shocked Pena the most on her last, fateful day at Howard Industries, the largest employer in this small Southern city. It was the black co-workers who clapped and cheered as Pena and hundreds of other Hispanic immigrant laborers were arrested.
"They said we took their jobs, but I was working from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.," said Pena, 21, a day after the raid last week that resulted in the arrest of 595 illegal immigration suspects. "I didn't see them working like us."
The raid at Howard Industries, an electronic transformer manufacturer, was the largest of its kind in many years, and it exposed some of the rawest emotions that fuel the illegal immigration debate.
It was also carried out during an odd period of political limbo: Polls suggest that for voters, the immigration issue has been eclipsed by the sputtering economy, and neither of the two major presidential candidates has made much of the topic during the election season.
As the Bush administration winds down its tenure in Washington, it has made efforts to step up immigration enforcement, especially after Congress failed last year to pass a sweeping overhaul of the nation's immigration laws.
Since then, thousands of people have been arrested in raids at dozens of facilities, generating considerable controversy: Immigrant advocates have howled over the coarse treatment of suspects and the breakup of families, while anti-immigrant groups say the raids allow for the long-overdue enforcement of existing laws.
But the raids might not have much of a future after the swearing in of Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama, both of whom have staked out moderate-to-liberal stances on immigration reform.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/09/01/raids_sharpen_divisions_over_immigration/
In Miss. town, some residents cheer crackdown
By Miguel Bustillo and Richard Fausset
Los Angeles Times, September 1, 2008
LAUREL, Miss. - Fabiola Pena considered running away from her factory job when she realized that she was being targeted in a federal immigration raid. She was deterred when she noticed the helicopters hovering overhead.
But helicopters were not what shocked Pena the most on her last, fateful day at Howard Industries, the largest employer in this small Southern city. It was the black co-workers who clapped and cheered as Pena and hundreds of other Hispanic immigrant laborers were arrested.
"They said we took their jobs, but I was working from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.," said Pena, 21, a day after the raid last week that resulted in the arrest of 595 illegal immigration suspects. "I didn't see them working like us."
The raid at Howard Industries, an electronic transformer manufacturer, was the largest of its kind in many years, and it exposed some of the rawest emotions that fuel the illegal immigration debate.
It was also carried out during an odd period of political limbo: Polls suggest that for voters, the immigration issue has been eclipsed by the sputtering economy, and neither of the two major presidential candidates has made much of the topic during the election season.
As the Bush administration winds down its tenure in Washington, it has made efforts to step up immigration enforcement, especially after Congress failed last year to pass a sweeping overhaul of the nation's immigration laws.
Since then, thousands of people have been arrested in raids at dozens of facilities, generating considerable controversy: Immigrant advocates have howled over the coarse treatment of suspects and the breakup of families, while anti-immigrant groups say the raids allow for the long-overdue enforcement of existing laws.
But the raids might not have much of a future after the swearing in of Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama, both of whom have staked out moderate-to-liberal stances on immigration reform.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/09/01/raids_sharpen_divisions_over_immigration/
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