By TRIP GABRIEL
The New York Times
October 19, 2011
Today, Republican candidates are competing over who can talk the toughest about illegal immigration — who will erect the most impenetrable border defense; who will turn off “magnets” like college tuition benefits.
But after such pointed proposals heated up yet another Republican debate, on Tuesday night, some party officials see a yellow light signaling danger in battleground states with large Hispanic populations in November 2012. Will Hispanic voters remember and punish the eventual Republican nominee?
“The discussion of creating electrified fences from sea to sea is neither prudent nor helpful,” said Ryan Call, chairman of the Republican Party of Colorado, where Hispanics cast 13 percent of votes in 2008 and helped President Obama flip the state to blue. “They’re throwing red meat around in an attempt to mollify a particular aspect of the Republican base.”
Besides Colorado, Mr. Obama cemented his victory in part by carrying three other swing states with large Hispanic voting populations: Florida, Nevada and New Mexico.
Republican strategists have hoped to win many of these voters back by appealing to their discontent over the economy and to their social conservatism, issues that helped George W. Bush win a historically high 44 percent of Hispanic voters in 2004.
Now, however, that pitch may be thwarted, according to some Republican strategists.
Both Herman Cain, the former business executive, and Representative Michele Bachmann are proposing a 1,200-mile border fence — electrified, in Mr. Cain’s case, double-walled in Mrs. Bachmann’s.
Mitt Romney has attacked Gov. Rick Perry of Texas as soft on illegal immigration. Mr. Perry punched back in the debate on Tuesday in Las Vegas, accusing Mr. Romney of “hypocrisy” because, Mr. Perry said, “you had illegals working on your property.”
Robert Ramirez, a Republican state representative from Colorado who attended the debate, said Hispanic voters in his state “are sick and tired of empty promises from the Democratic Party.”
Nevertheless, Mr. Ramirez was concerned about the nominees’ lack of sensitivity. “We can’t pretend the Latino vote doesn’t exist,” he said. “It’s time we became the party of inclusion.”
Even Mr. Romney, who has been more measured in his remarks, may have lost Hispanic support over his criticism of a Texas law that allows some children of illegal immigrants to attend state colleges on in-state tuition.
“He can make as many trips to Florida and New Mexico and Colorado and other swing states that have a large Latino population, but he can write off the Latino vote,” said Lionel Sosa, a strategist in Texas who advised Mr. Bush and Senator John McCain on appealing to Hispanics. “He’s not going to gain it again.”
In each of those states, plus Nevada, Hispanics are a growing share of eligible voters, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Although these voters have traditionally favored Democrats, Mr. Obama’s 67 percent share of the Hispanic vote in 2008 dipped to 60 percent who voted Democratic during the 2010 Republican wave that swept the midterm elections, said Mark Hugo Lopez, associate director of the Pew center.
In a Pew survey that year, Hispanic voters ranked education and the economy as their top issues. But there was strong support for state-level “Dream” acts allowing children of illegal immigrants to attend colleges on in-state tuition, and 61 percent disapproved of more border fencing.
Many analysts credit the Democratic victories that year of Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate majority leader, and Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado to get-out-the-vote efforts by Latinos.
“Sharron Angle got destroyed in the election because of her anti-immigration stand,” said Andres Ramirez, a Democratic strategist in Nevada, referring to Mr. Reid’s opponent, a Tea Party darling. Mr. Ramirez predicted that Hispanic participation in the 2012 election in Nevada would surpass the 15 percent from 2008, and he said that Republicans missed an opportunity in holding a debate in Las Vegas to showcase more moderate immigration views.
“Their rhetoric on illegal immigration was very over the top,” he said. “It will cost them in the future.”
Heidi Smith, the Republican national committeewoman from Nevada, said the focus on illegal immigration was a distraction. “It’s taking time off of the big issue, and that is we don’t have any jobs,” she said.
In Florida, where the Hispanic vote has traditionally leaned Republican because of large numbers of conservative Cuban-Americans, immigration issues may be especially divisive in 2012. The state’s favorite son Republican senator, Marco Rubio, seems only too happy to duck immigration issues, and the Republican-controlled State Senate refused to pass a bill this spring with a tough requirement on employers to check workers’ immigration status.
Joe Gruters, chairman of the Republican Party of Sarasota County in Florida, said that showing toughness against illegal immigration was an “electrifying” issue and could bump a Republican candidate many points in primary polls. He is disappointed by the moderation of candidates’ proposals so far. “Nobody said, ‘We have to repeal the 14th Amendment,’ ” he said, referring to the constitutional guarantee of citizenship to a child born in the United States. Critics of illegal immigrant mothers who supposedly enter the country to have “anchor babies” sometimes propose repealing the Reconstruction-era amendment.
Mr. Gruters was quick to concede that such positions would cost an eventual Republican nominee.
“In case they’re the nominee, it could be a deal-breaker where they take themselves out as a serious contender,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/us/politics/immigration-talk-turns-off-some-hispanics.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
Showing posts with label Deportations and Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Deportations and Politics. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Obama set to outpace Bush on deportations
Rhetoric vs. reality: President says he backs immigration reform
Reuters
9/20/2011
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama says he backs immigration reform, announcing last month an initiative to ease deportation policies, but he has sent home more than 1 million illegal immigrants in 2 1/2 years — on pace to deport more in one term than George W. Bush did in two.
The Obama administration had deported about 1.06 million as of Sept. 12, against 1.57 million in Bush's two full presidential terms.
This seeming contradiction between rhetoric and reality is a key element of debate over U.S. immigration policy, and stakes are high for 2012's presidential election as Obama faces criticism from both conservatives and liberals.
In 2008, 67 percent of Hispanics voted for Obama over Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin.
But Obama fell short on his promise to have a comprehensive reform bill in Congress in his first year. And despite his push of the DREAM Act in 2010, that bill failed in the Senate at the end of the Democrat-run 111th Congress.
Clarissa Martinez de Castro, Director of Immigration and National Campaigns for the National Council of La Raza, said because Congress is unlikely to consider immigration reform any time soon, "It has to stay there front and center and in the face of folks that are allowing this issue to fester."
The Administration announced its initiative August 18, a step some analysts say gave up on an uncooperative Congress and aimed to appease advocates of more liberal immigration laws.
Some 11.2 million illegal immigrants live and work in the United States today, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. The initiative is expected to help an estimated two million young people who under the stalled DREAM could have achieved citizenship by pursuing higher education or military service.
Clearing the backlog
Under the move, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice will review and clear out low-priority cases from 300,000 backlogged deportation proceedings.
Continued focus of immigration enforcement on those with criminal records would effectively leave alone those who came at a young age and have spent years in the United States.
Republican critics say directing immigration authorities to use prosecutorial discretion to administratively implement such changes ignores Congress and existing federal law.
A June 17 memo by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director John Morton defined prosecutorial discretion as an agency's authority "to decide to what degree to enforce the law against a particular individual."
The memo "reiterated and clarified" the priorities on which the new initiative is based, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano wrote August 18 on behalf of Obama in a letter to 21 senators.
An ICE official who declined to be named said, "We have limited resources and if their best use in protecting the American public means exercising discretion, then that's what we're going to do."
House Judiciary Committee Chair Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, calls it a "plot."
"The writers of the U.S. Constitution put Congress in charge of setting our immigration policy ... (President Obama) does not get to pick and choose," Smith said in an email.
Democratic Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, however, said: "The Administration has used its discretion very sparingly ... No one should forget that immigration is critically important to Latinos, a community whose power at the polls continues to grow."
Fastest-growing minority
Hispanics, the largest and fastest-growing U.S. minority group, now number over 50.5 million — 16.3 percent of the population, according to the 2010 Census.
They also face higher unemployment and foreclosure rates, according to the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda and NCLR, the largest Hispanic advocacy organization in the country.
It remains to be seen if Hispanic groups pushing for immigration reform will be satisfied by the August initiative, even as Republican critics say it has gone too far.
On September 12, Smith and House Homeland Security Subcommittee Chairman Robert Aderholt sent a letter to Napolitano.
"In addition to our concerns about the administration's apparent abandonment of immigration enforcement, we also have significant concerns about how this new policy was developed."
Martinez said, "(Obama) support was dropping among Latinos ... If at the end of the day what you have is an announcement that is sound from a policy perspective and it is actually good politically -- we should be so lucky to have more of those."
But Martinez said they will watch implementation closely.
"Obviously, you've heard the caveats," she said. "It's a very important announcement -- and just as important (is) that it's implemented robustly and appropriately."
The administration's past deportation policies are a reason some reformers are not yet convinced of Obama's commitment.
Immigration authorities are funded to remove 400,000 people a year, according to the unnamed ICE official.
In fiscal year 2010, the last full year of data, ICE removed nearly 393,000 undocumented immigrants — a record, and almost 24,000 more than in FY2008, Bush's last full fiscal year in office.
Over two-thirds of the non-criminals removed in FY2010 were caught as they crossed the border, were recent arrivals, or were repeat violators previously deported, the White House says.
Criminals are larger chunk of deportees
In FY2010, convicted criminals numbered about 196,000 of those removed, an increase of 71 percent from Bush in FY2008.
Of the the 1.06 million removed so far under Obama, 46 percent have been convicted criminals and 54 percent non-criminals. Bush's removals were 41 percent criminal and 59 non-criminal, according to data provided by ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen.
ICE credits the increased removal of those with criminal records to expansion of the Secure Communities Program, where local authorities automatically send fingerprints of those arrested to ICE. Secure Communities has grown under Obama from 14 jurisdictions to more than 1,300, and to all border areas.
Critics say that despite the administration's rhetorical stress on targeting those with criminal records and a level-off in illegal immigration, programs such as Secure Communities are in practice leading to unjust deportations.
Democratic Illinois Representative Luis Gutierrez was arrested at a pro-reform rally at the White House on July 27.
"(Obama's) been arguing that he can't simply go around Congress, that he's not a president who governs by fiat, right?" Gutierrez said later. "It's a little contradiction between 1 million deportations and claiming they use it less than Bush."
With under a month left in FY2011, ICE has reported 368,920 removals -- about half criminals and half non-criminals.
Last week, Gutierrez traveled to Chicago to explain the initiative to constituents after a policy briefing by DHS.
After the DREAM failed, Gutierrez and others have pushed Obama on an immigration initiative like that of August 18 — a "critical foundation," but, he said, "There's more to be done."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44599016/ns/politics-more_politics/
Reuters
9/20/2011
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama says he backs immigration reform, announcing last month an initiative to ease deportation policies, but he has sent home more than 1 million illegal immigrants in 2 1/2 years — on pace to deport more in one term than George W. Bush did in two.
The Obama administration had deported about 1.06 million as of Sept. 12, against 1.57 million in Bush's two full presidential terms.
This seeming contradiction between rhetoric and reality is a key element of debate over U.S. immigration policy, and stakes are high for 2012's presidential election as Obama faces criticism from both conservatives and liberals.
In 2008, 67 percent of Hispanics voted for Obama over Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin.
But Obama fell short on his promise to have a comprehensive reform bill in Congress in his first year. And despite his push of the DREAM Act in 2010, that bill failed in the Senate at the end of the Democrat-run 111th Congress.
Clarissa Martinez de Castro, Director of Immigration and National Campaigns for the National Council of La Raza, said because Congress is unlikely to consider immigration reform any time soon, "It has to stay there front and center and in the face of folks that are allowing this issue to fester."
The Administration announced its initiative August 18, a step some analysts say gave up on an uncooperative Congress and aimed to appease advocates of more liberal immigration laws.
Some 11.2 million illegal immigrants live and work in the United States today, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. The initiative is expected to help an estimated two million young people who under the stalled DREAM could have achieved citizenship by pursuing higher education or military service.
Clearing the backlog
Under the move, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice will review and clear out low-priority cases from 300,000 backlogged deportation proceedings.
Continued focus of immigration enforcement on those with criminal records would effectively leave alone those who came at a young age and have spent years in the United States.
Republican critics say directing immigration authorities to use prosecutorial discretion to administratively implement such changes ignores Congress and existing federal law.
A June 17 memo by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director John Morton defined prosecutorial discretion as an agency's authority "to decide to what degree to enforce the law against a particular individual."
The memo "reiterated and clarified" the priorities on which the new initiative is based, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano wrote August 18 on behalf of Obama in a letter to 21 senators.
An ICE official who declined to be named said, "We have limited resources and if their best use in protecting the American public means exercising discretion, then that's what we're going to do."
House Judiciary Committee Chair Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, calls it a "plot."
"The writers of the U.S. Constitution put Congress in charge of setting our immigration policy ... (President Obama) does not get to pick and choose," Smith said in an email.
Democratic Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, however, said: "The Administration has used its discretion very sparingly ... No one should forget that immigration is critically important to Latinos, a community whose power at the polls continues to grow."
Fastest-growing minority
Hispanics, the largest and fastest-growing U.S. minority group, now number over 50.5 million — 16.3 percent of the population, according to the 2010 Census.
They also face higher unemployment and foreclosure rates, according to the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda and NCLR, the largest Hispanic advocacy organization in the country.
It remains to be seen if Hispanic groups pushing for immigration reform will be satisfied by the August initiative, even as Republican critics say it has gone too far.
On September 12, Smith and House Homeland Security Subcommittee Chairman Robert Aderholt sent a letter to Napolitano.
"In addition to our concerns about the administration's apparent abandonment of immigration enforcement, we also have significant concerns about how this new policy was developed."
Martinez said, "(Obama) support was dropping among Latinos ... If at the end of the day what you have is an announcement that is sound from a policy perspective and it is actually good politically -- we should be so lucky to have more of those."
But Martinez said they will watch implementation closely.
"Obviously, you've heard the caveats," she said. "It's a very important announcement -- and just as important (is) that it's implemented robustly and appropriately."
The administration's past deportation policies are a reason some reformers are not yet convinced of Obama's commitment.
Immigration authorities are funded to remove 400,000 people a year, according to the unnamed ICE official.
In fiscal year 2010, the last full year of data, ICE removed nearly 393,000 undocumented immigrants — a record, and almost 24,000 more than in FY2008, Bush's last full fiscal year in office.
Over two-thirds of the non-criminals removed in FY2010 were caught as they crossed the border, were recent arrivals, or were repeat violators previously deported, the White House says.
Criminals are larger chunk of deportees
In FY2010, convicted criminals numbered about 196,000 of those removed, an increase of 71 percent from Bush in FY2008.
Of the the 1.06 million removed so far under Obama, 46 percent have been convicted criminals and 54 percent non-criminals. Bush's removals were 41 percent criminal and 59 non-criminal, according to data provided by ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen.
ICE credits the increased removal of those with criminal records to expansion of the Secure Communities Program, where local authorities automatically send fingerprints of those arrested to ICE. Secure Communities has grown under Obama from 14 jurisdictions to more than 1,300, and to all border areas.
Critics say that despite the administration's rhetorical stress on targeting those with criminal records and a level-off in illegal immigration, programs such as Secure Communities are in practice leading to unjust deportations.
Democratic Illinois Representative Luis Gutierrez was arrested at a pro-reform rally at the White House on July 27.
"(Obama's) been arguing that he can't simply go around Congress, that he's not a president who governs by fiat, right?" Gutierrez said later. "It's a little contradiction between 1 million deportations and claiming they use it less than Bush."
With under a month left in FY2011, ICE has reported 368,920 removals -- about half criminals and half non-criminals.
Last week, Gutierrez traveled to Chicago to explain the initiative to constituents after a policy briefing by DHS.
After the DREAM failed, Gutierrez and others have pushed Obama on an immigration initiative like that of August 18 — a "critical foundation," but, he said, "There's more to be done."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44599016/ns/politics-more_politics/
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Illegal immigrant repatriation cost, effectiveness questioned
By Daniel Gonzalez
The Arizona Republic
21 August 2011
The Department of Homeland Security continues to spend millions of dollars flying illegal immigrants caught along the Arizona border back to Mexico each summer even though government officials and humanitarian groups question whether the program is effective or worth the cost.
The agency has spent more than $85 million over the past eight years to transport Mexican illegal immigrants far beyond the border in a humanitarian effort aimed at saving lives by deterring migrants from making another dangerous border crossing.
But it has no real way to gauge the value of the program.
Though the department defends its repatriation flights, officials chose not to act on recommendations by government auditors to measure whether the program is effective.
Both DHS and Mexican officials insist it works. They say that flying thousands of apprehended migrants 1,100 miles into Mexico instead of simply dropping them off at the border makes the migrants less likely to hook up again with human smugglers and try to cross through Arizona’s rugged, remote desert, where over the years hundreds of migrants have died in the brutal summer heat.
But some humanitarian groups say it is a waste of money because migrant deaths have continued to rise, and the Government Accountability Office has been critical of the lack of accountability.
DHS officials say they don’t set specific performance targets for the program, which was created in cooperation with the Mexican government, because it would be counterproductive to try to measure its effectiveness in the same way as other border-enforcement strategies. They say its intent is humanitarian and not specifically an enforcement mechanism.
Since 2004, the government has repatriated 102,201 migrants to Mexico under the program, including 23,384 last year, the highest number of any year, according to figures released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Government data shows that migrant deaths in Arizona have gone up 75 percent in that time. But because the government maintains only partial records of what happens to people flown home, there is no way to know how many of them later die attempting to return.
The available information shows at least some do return.
Records obtained by The Arizona Republic show that within months, hundreds of the migrants flown back to Mexico – each at a cost of more than $500 – are caught crossing illegally again.
That, says one non-government humanitarian group, is evidence that the program has not been effective.
“We believe (the flights) are a wasteful use of money,” said Jaime Farrant, policy director for the Border Action Network, a Tucson-based human-rights group that advocates for immigrants.
Humanitarian groups say the program fails to address the larger reasons migrants risk their lives crossing the border.
The flights known as the Mexican Interior Repatriation Program, which operate for only a limited period in the summer, began again this year on July 11 and will continue once daily until Sept. 28. The government is expected to spend $9 million to $11 million on the program this year, ICE officials have said.
Ordinarily, illegal immigrants from Mexico apprehended by the Border Patrol are driven to the U.S. side of the border, where agents watch as they walk back to Mexico through entry ports. Once on the other side, many simply reconnect with smugglers and attempt to re-enter illegally.
The program is designed to identify migrants from states beyond the border. They are voluntarily flown deep inside Mexico and given bus tickets to their hometowns.
The entire cost of transportation is borne by the U.S. government.
Rarely mentioned
For months, President Barack Obama and members of his administration have touted statistics that demonstrate how his commitment to beefing up security and cracking down on illegal immigrants has resulted in a safer border and a sharp decrease in apprehensions along the southwestern border.
One initiative they usually don’t mention is the Mexican Interior Repatriation Program.
DHS officials say the primary intent of the program is to save lives and to break the connection between migrants and the smugglers who help lead them across the border and into Arizona.
But statistics do not show the kind of significant improvements that the administration is able to cite in other areas of border security: From fiscal 2008 to 2010, apprehensions are down 36 percent, reflecting fewer crossings, and seizures of drugs are up 31 percent, a sign of heightened patrols.
In fiscal year 2004, the year the repatriation program started, the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector tallied 142 migrant deaths. Since then, the number of deaths has fluctuated, going down occasionally but rising most years. Last year, the Border Patrol counted 249 in the Tucson Sector, a record high. The sector covers most of Arizona’s 372.5-mile border with Mexico.
So far this year, the sector has logged 132 migrant deaths, down 38 percent compared with the same period last year.
In all, a total of 1,496 migrants have perished in the Tucson Sector over the past eight fiscal years, the Border Patrol said.
Mexican officials and some immigrant groups say deaths have gone up because tighter border enforcement has pushed smugglers and migrants into more-remote and more-dangerous routes through the desert.
The program attempts to prevent illegal migrants from risking a repeat crossing, but data shows some of those flown back to Mexico on U.S.-funded flights often return to the border and try again.
Last year, more than 12 percent of the 23,384 migrants flown back to Mexico were rearrested by the Border Patrol just during the months the program was in operation. The year before, 6.5 percent of the 10,550 participants were rearrested during the summer, while the program was running, the Border Patrol said.
And in fiscal year 2008, nearly 10 percent of the 18,464 participants were rearrested during the course of the program, the Border Patrol said.
Border Patrol figures show that the program’s participants were arrested at lower rates trying to re-enter the U.S. than the Tucson Sector’s overall 30 percent recidivism rate, at least while the program was in operation.
But it is impossible to fully measure the program’s overall effectiveness because the Border Patrol would provide recidivism rates for the program only for fiscal years 2008-10, and only for the weeks the program was in operation. The Arizona Republic requested recidivism rates for all eight years of the program, not just the three provided. The Republic also asked for complete recidivism rates showing how often the program’s participants were rearrested by the Border Patrol at any time, not just during the program’s operation.
The Border Patrol turned down those requests.
Andy Adame, a spokesman for the Border Patrol in Tucson, said the agency did not formally track recidivism rates during the first five years of the program. And during the last three years, the Border Patrol tracked participants only while the program was operating. Trying to track all 102,201 participants retroactively since fiscal year 2004 would be “a logistical nightmare,” Adame said.
On average, the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector is apprehending about 220 migrants a day this summer. Of those, about 130 to 150 are being flown back to Mexico each day, he said.
The remaining 70 to 90 are prosecuted under an 8-month-old program that formally charges most migrants apprehended at the border with illegal entry. Once prosecuted, they are deported and risk jail time or being banned from the U.S. if caught re-entering.
After being apprehended by Border Patrol agents out in the desert, migrants are driven to one of eight Border Patrol stations in the Tucson Sector where their fingerprints are run through a computer database to check for criminal history or outstanding warrants.
Those without either, and who are from states other than neighboring Sonora, are given the option of being flown back to Mexico. They are interviewed by Mexican consular officials at the Border Patrol station in Nogales to ensure that they are participating voluntarily.
The migrants are then driven to the Tucson airport and flown to Mexico City on chartered flights, typically within 24 hours. Once in Mexico, they are given bus tickets to their hometowns.
“We encourage people to take the (flights) to get them out of the smuggling cycle,” Adame said. “The primary objective of the (program) is to break that smuggling cycle. We are looking at that first: Less people in the desert (means) less chance of people dying out there. Keeping people away from the border is what we are trying to do with the MIRP program.”
Results not tracked
A 2010 Government Accountability Office review of the Department of Homeland Security’s anti-smuggling operations along the Southwest border faulted ICE for failing to track how effective the program is in achieving its goals.
Without proper monitoring, “ICE does not know the effectiveness of its efforts related to MIRP at deterring individuals from illegally returning to the United States,” the report said.
According to the report, officials at the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, did not agree with the report’s recommendation to establish procedures for measuring results.
DHS officials believed that establishing such measures “would shift its focus away from the program’s original lifesaving intent,” the report said.
Vincent Picard, a spokesman for ICE in Phoenix, said in an e-mail that the agency continues to stand by that position.
The program was designed as a bilateral effort between the United States and Mexico to reduce the loss of human life and to reduce the potential for exploitation of illegal migrants by human-smuggling organizations, he said.
“The mission of MIRP is humanitarian in focus and ICE believes that assigning removal goals would undermine the spirit by which the program was conceived with Mexico,” Picard said in the e-mail. “ICE does not have separate performance measures specific to MIRP; however, MIRP returns contribute to overall ICE performance targets for removals and returns.”
Rolando Garcia-Alonso, coordinator of international relations for Mexico’s National Migration Institute in Mexico City, said he believes the program is effective because it greatly reduces the chances migrants will try to cross again.
He said at least 80 percent of migrants who are repatriated at the border simply reconnect with smugglers and turn around and try to cross again. Each time they try, they are more fatigued, and therefore the chance of dying increases.
Repatriating migrants at the border “is a complete failure,” he said.
On the other hand, though some migrants flown to the interior of Mexico try to cross again, most don’t, he said.
“For me, that is a huge success,” he said.
He attributed the increase in migrant deaths since 2004 to migrants and smuggling organizations taking more-remote and more-hazardous routes through the desert in order to evade stepped-up border security in the U.S.
Without the program, “there would be even bigger” numbers of migrant deaths, he said.
Garcia-Alonso said the Mexican government incurs some of the cost of the program. While the United States pays for the flights and bus tickets, the Mexican government covers the cost of providing staff from the Mexican consulate in Tucson to interview migrants before they board the flights. The Mexican government also incurs costs interviewing migrants when they arrive in Mexico City, and pays for public programs to help migrants find jobs or start businesses so they will be less likely to cross again.
Adam Aguirre, a spokesman for No More Deaths, a Tucson-based group that provides water and other humanitarian aid to migrants found in distress near the border, called the program a “quick fix” to a much larger problem.
Without more legal channels to enter the U.S., he said, migrants will continue to risk their lives crossing illegally as long as there are good-paying jobs available in the U.S. and a lack of them in Mexico.
“As far as quick fixes, anything like this is going to be inadequate,” Aquirre said of the flights. “The fact of the matter is there are no quick fixes.”
http://tucsoncitizen.com/arizona-news/author/daniel-gonzalez/
The Arizona Republic
21 August 2011
The Department of Homeland Security continues to spend millions of dollars flying illegal immigrants caught along the Arizona border back to Mexico each summer even though government officials and humanitarian groups question whether the program is effective or worth the cost.
The agency has spent more than $85 million over the past eight years to transport Mexican illegal immigrants far beyond the border in a humanitarian effort aimed at saving lives by deterring migrants from making another dangerous border crossing.
But it has no real way to gauge the value of the program.
Though the department defends its repatriation flights, officials chose not to act on recommendations by government auditors to measure whether the program is effective.
Both DHS and Mexican officials insist it works. They say that flying thousands of apprehended migrants 1,100 miles into Mexico instead of simply dropping them off at the border makes the migrants less likely to hook up again with human smugglers and try to cross through Arizona’s rugged, remote desert, where over the years hundreds of migrants have died in the brutal summer heat.
But some humanitarian groups say it is a waste of money because migrant deaths have continued to rise, and the Government Accountability Office has been critical of the lack of accountability.
DHS officials say they don’t set specific performance targets for the program, which was created in cooperation with the Mexican government, because it would be counterproductive to try to measure its effectiveness in the same way as other border-enforcement strategies. They say its intent is humanitarian and not specifically an enforcement mechanism.
Since 2004, the government has repatriated 102,201 migrants to Mexico under the program, including 23,384 last year, the highest number of any year, according to figures released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Government data shows that migrant deaths in Arizona have gone up 75 percent in that time. But because the government maintains only partial records of what happens to people flown home, there is no way to know how many of them later die attempting to return.
The available information shows at least some do return.
Records obtained by The Arizona Republic show that within months, hundreds of the migrants flown back to Mexico – each at a cost of more than $500 – are caught crossing illegally again.
That, says one non-government humanitarian group, is evidence that the program has not been effective.
“We believe (the flights) are a wasteful use of money,” said Jaime Farrant, policy director for the Border Action Network, a Tucson-based human-rights group that advocates for immigrants.
Humanitarian groups say the program fails to address the larger reasons migrants risk their lives crossing the border.
The flights known as the Mexican Interior Repatriation Program, which operate for only a limited period in the summer, began again this year on July 11 and will continue once daily until Sept. 28. The government is expected to spend $9 million to $11 million on the program this year, ICE officials have said.
Ordinarily, illegal immigrants from Mexico apprehended by the Border Patrol are driven to the U.S. side of the border, where agents watch as they walk back to Mexico through entry ports. Once on the other side, many simply reconnect with smugglers and attempt to re-enter illegally.
The program is designed to identify migrants from states beyond the border. They are voluntarily flown deep inside Mexico and given bus tickets to their hometowns.
The entire cost of transportation is borne by the U.S. government.
Rarely mentioned
For months, President Barack Obama and members of his administration have touted statistics that demonstrate how his commitment to beefing up security and cracking down on illegal immigrants has resulted in a safer border and a sharp decrease in apprehensions along the southwestern border.
One initiative they usually don’t mention is the Mexican Interior Repatriation Program.
DHS officials say the primary intent of the program is to save lives and to break the connection between migrants and the smugglers who help lead them across the border and into Arizona.
But statistics do not show the kind of significant improvements that the administration is able to cite in other areas of border security: From fiscal 2008 to 2010, apprehensions are down 36 percent, reflecting fewer crossings, and seizures of drugs are up 31 percent, a sign of heightened patrols.
In fiscal year 2004, the year the repatriation program started, the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector tallied 142 migrant deaths. Since then, the number of deaths has fluctuated, going down occasionally but rising most years. Last year, the Border Patrol counted 249 in the Tucson Sector, a record high. The sector covers most of Arizona’s 372.5-mile border with Mexico.
So far this year, the sector has logged 132 migrant deaths, down 38 percent compared with the same period last year.
In all, a total of 1,496 migrants have perished in the Tucson Sector over the past eight fiscal years, the Border Patrol said.
Mexican officials and some immigrant groups say deaths have gone up because tighter border enforcement has pushed smugglers and migrants into more-remote and more-dangerous routes through the desert.
The program attempts to prevent illegal migrants from risking a repeat crossing, but data shows some of those flown back to Mexico on U.S.-funded flights often return to the border and try again.
Last year, more than 12 percent of the 23,384 migrants flown back to Mexico were rearrested by the Border Patrol just during the months the program was in operation. The year before, 6.5 percent of the 10,550 participants were rearrested during the summer, while the program was running, the Border Patrol said.
And in fiscal year 2008, nearly 10 percent of the 18,464 participants were rearrested during the course of the program, the Border Patrol said.
Border Patrol figures show that the program’s participants were arrested at lower rates trying to re-enter the U.S. than the Tucson Sector’s overall 30 percent recidivism rate, at least while the program was in operation.
But it is impossible to fully measure the program’s overall effectiveness because the Border Patrol would provide recidivism rates for the program only for fiscal years 2008-10, and only for the weeks the program was in operation. The Arizona Republic requested recidivism rates for all eight years of the program, not just the three provided. The Republic also asked for complete recidivism rates showing how often the program’s participants were rearrested by the Border Patrol at any time, not just during the program’s operation.
The Border Patrol turned down those requests.
Andy Adame, a spokesman for the Border Patrol in Tucson, said the agency did not formally track recidivism rates during the first five years of the program. And during the last three years, the Border Patrol tracked participants only while the program was operating. Trying to track all 102,201 participants retroactively since fiscal year 2004 would be “a logistical nightmare,” Adame said.
On average, the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector is apprehending about 220 migrants a day this summer. Of those, about 130 to 150 are being flown back to Mexico each day, he said.
The remaining 70 to 90 are prosecuted under an 8-month-old program that formally charges most migrants apprehended at the border with illegal entry. Once prosecuted, they are deported and risk jail time or being banned from the U.S. if caught re-entering.
After being apprehended by Border Patrol agents out in the desert, migrants are driven to one of eight Border Patrol stations in the Tucson Sector where their fingerprints are run through a computer database to check for criminal history or outstanding warrants.
Those without either, and who are from states other than neighboring Sonora, are given the option of being flown back to Mexico. They are interviewed by Mexican consular officials at the Border Patrol station in Nogales to ensure that they are participating voluntarily.
The migrants are then driven to the Tucson airport and flown to Mexico City on chartered flights, typically within 24 hours. Once in Mexico, they are given bus tickets to their hometowns.
“We encourage people to take the (flights) to get them out of the smuggling cycle,” Adame said. “The primary objective of the (program) is to break that smuggling cycle. We are looking at that first: Less people in the desert (means) less chance of people dying out there. Keeping people away from the border is what we are trying to do with the MIRP program.”
Results not tracked
A 2010 Government Accountability Office review of the Department of Homeland Security’s anti-smuggling operations along the Southwest border faulted ICE for failing to track how effective the program is in achieving its goals.
Without proper monitoring, “ICE does not know the effectiveness of its efforts related to MIRP at deterring individuals from illegally returning to the United States,” the report said.
According to the report, officials at the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, did not agree with the report’s recommendation to establish procedures for measuring results.
DHS officials believed that establishing such measures “would shift its focus away from the program’s original lifesaving intent,” the report said.
Vincent Picard, a spokesman for ICE in Phoenix, said in an e-mail that the agency continues to stand by that position.
The program was designed as a bilateral effort between the United States and Mexico to reduce the loss of human life and to reduce the potential for exploitation of illegal migrants by human-smuggling organizations, he said.
“The mission of MIRP is humanitarian in focus and ICE believes that assigning removal goals would undermine the spirit by which the program was conceived with Mexico,” Picard said in the e-mail. “ICE does not have separate performance measures specific to MIRP; however, MIRP returns contribute to overall ICE performance targets for removals and returns.”
Rolando Garcia-Alonso, coordinator of international relations for Mexico’s National Migration Institute in Mexico City, said he believes the program is effective because it greatly reduces the chances migrants will try to cross again.
He said at least 80 percent of migrants who are repatriated at the border simply reconnect with smugglers and turn around and try to cross again. Each time they try, they are more fatigued, and therefore the chance of dying increases.
Repatriating migrants at the border “is a complete failure,” he said.
On the other hand, though some migrants flown to the interior of Mexico try to cross again, most don’t, he said.
“For me, that is a huge success,” he said.
He attributed the increase in migrant deaths since 2004 to migrants and smuggling organizations taking more-remote and more-hazardous routes through the desert in order to evade stepped-up border security in the U.S.
Without the program, “there would be even bigger” numbers of migrant deaths, he said.
Garcia-Alonso said the Mexican government incurs some of the cost of the program. While the United States pays for the flights and bus tickets, the Mexican government covers the cost of providing staff from the Mexican consulate in Tucson to interview migrants before they board the flights. The Mexican government also incurs costs interviewing migrants when they arrive in Mexico City, and pays for public programs to help migrants find jobs or start businesses so they will be less likely to cross again.
Adam Aguirre, a spokesman for No More Deaths, a Tucson-based group that provides water and other humanitarian aid to migrants found in distress near the border, called the program a “quick fix” to a much larger problem.
Without more legal channels to enter the U.S., he said, migrants will continue to risk their lives crossing illegally as long as there are good-paying jobs available in the U.S. and a lack of them in Mexico.
“As far as quick fixes, anything like this is going to be inadequate,” Aquirre said of the flights. “The fact of the matter is there are no quick fixes.”
http://tucsoncitizen.com/arizona-news/author/daniel-gonzalez/
Friday, August 19, 2011
Obama administration amends deportation policy
As administration amends deportation policy, critics call it back-door amnesty for those here illegally.
By Franco Ordoñez
Charlotte Observer
Posted: Friday, Aug. 19, 2011
The Obama administration announced Thursday it plans to focus its deportation efforts on more dangerous illegal immigrants, a move that gives undocumented Charlotte students like Elver Barrios hope.
As part of the policy change, the Department of Homeland Security intends to review the cases of approximately 300,000 illegal immigrants facing deportation orders.
Those without criminal records who are found to be a low priority because they are students, were brought here as children, or have long family ties to the country could be released and granted a work permit.
If Barrios were ever to be arrested, he believes this policy change could allow him to stay in the country he's lived in since he was 14.
"This could be my chance to stay here," said Barrios, 20, who graduated from West Mecklenburg High School and is originally from Guatemala. "Every day I go out, even when I go buy the groceries, I risk getting arrested."
The policy change comes at a time when President Barack Obama has come under fire from some of his greatest allies.
Latino advocates have grown increasingly frustrated with the president. Obama has promised to reform the nation's immigration laws, yet advocates say his administration has continued to allow thousands to be deported annually after being arrested for minor offenses.
The Department of Homeland Security must focus its resources on removing those who have been convicted of major crimes and are threats to national security or public safety, said Secretary Janet Napolitano.
"Doing otherwise hinders our public safety mission - clogging immigration court dockets and diverting DHS enforcement resources away from the individuals who pose a threat to public safety," she wrote in a letter to a group of senators supporting new immigration legislation.
Critics charged the Obama administration with implementing a back-door amnesty policy.
Under the guise of setting priorities for immigration enforcement, the White House is overhauling the nation's immigration policy without congressional approval, said Dan Stein, president of FAIR, which advocates for greater immigration enforcement.
Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said having a backlog and prioritizing deportations is nothing new.
"This policy goes a step further granting illegal immigrants a fast track to gaining a work permit where they will now unfairly compete with more than nine percent of Americans who are still looking for jobs," he said in a statement.
In June, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced it was encouraging agents to use "prosecutorial discretion" for undocumented immigrants who are seeking college degrees.
The authorities are now instructed to give "particular care and consideration" to individuals "present in the United States since childhood" and whether that person has a criminal record.
Erick Velazquillo, a 22-year-old Central Piedmont Community College student, was brought to the country illegally when he was 2 years old. He was placed into deportation proceedings last fall after he was arrested for driving without a valid driver's license.
Last month, just weeks before he was expecting to be deported, immigration officials dropped their deportation case.
But they didn't alter his status. With this policy change, Velazquillo is hopeful he can rest a little easier - and be able to get a work permit.
"It gives me a status that I've never had before," he said. "It will give me a work permit. It will help me to contribute more to the country than just being here. It would make things so much easier."
Lacey Williams, the youth civic engagement organizer at the Latin American Coalition, questioned how the policy will be implemented.
"At first blush it's great news, it certainly has great potential," she said. "What we're anxiously awaiting is how this announcement will trickle down. How will it affect people in deportation proceedings now? What will happen to them tomorrow, next week?"
Others said the administration is trying to dress up a problem rather than fix it.
Velazquillo and other undocumented students still will be living in the country illegally, said Domenic Powell, a spokesman for the Raleigh-based NC Dream Team, a group of students who advocate for undocumented youth.
"It's not a solution," he said. "There seems to be a benefit to it, but it's fleeting. They can work, but for how long? They need to find a permanent solution."
The Associated Press contributed
Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/08/19/2537858/us-to-ease-rules-for-deporting.html#ixzz1VTzSWZ8M
By Franco Ordoñez
Charlotte Observer
Posted: Friday, Aug. 19, 2011
The Obama administration announced Thursday it plans to focus its deportation efforts on more dangerous illegal immigrants, a move that gives undocumented Charlotte students like Elver Barrios hope.
As part of the policy change, the Department of Homeland Security intends to review the cases of approximately 300,000 illegal immigrants facing deportation orders.
Those without criminal records who are found to be a low priority because they are students, were brought here as children, or have long family ties to the country could be released and granted a work permit.
If Barrios were ever to be arrested, he believes this policy change could allow him to stay in the country he's lived in since he was 14.
"This could be my chance to stay here," said Barrios, 20, who graduated from West Mecklenburg High School and is originally from Guatemala. "Every day I go out, even when I go buy the groceries, I risk getting arrested."
The policy change comes at a time when President Barack Obama has come under fire from some of his greatest allies.
Latino advocates have grown increasingly frustrated with the president. Obama has promised to reform the nation's immigration laws, yet advocates say his administration has continued to allow thousands to be deported annually after being arrested for minor offenses.
The Department of Homeland Security must focus its resources on removing those who have been convicted of major crimes and are threats to national security or public safety, said Secretary Janet Napolitano.
"Doing otherwise hinders our public safety mission - clogging immigration court dockets and diverting DHS enforcement resources away from the individuals who pose a threat to public safety," she wrote in a letter to a group of senators supporting new immigration legislation.
Critics charged the Obama administration with implementing a back-door amnesty policy.
Under the guise of setting priorities for immigration enforcement, the White House is overhauling the nation's immigration policy without congressional approval, said Dan Stein, president of FAIR, which advocates for greater immigration enforcement.
Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said having a backlog and prioritizing deportations is nothing new.
"This policy goes a step further granting illegal immigrants a fast track to gaining a work permit where they will now unfairly compete with more than nine percent of Americans who are still looking for jobs," he said in a statement.
In June, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced it was encouraging agents to use "prosecutorial discretion" for undocumented immigrants who are seeking college degrees.
The authorities are now instructed to give "particular care and consideration" to individuals "present in the United States since childhood" and whether that person has a criminal record.
Erick Velazquillo, a 22-year-old Central Piedmont Community College student, was brought to the country illegally when he was 2 years old. He was placed into deportation proceedings last fall after he was arrested for driving without a valid driver's license.
Last month, just weeks before he was expecting to be deported, immigration officials dropped their deportation case.
But they didn't alter his status. With this policy change, Velazquillo is hopeful he can rest a little easier - and be able to get a work permit.
"It gives me a status that I've never had before," he said. "It will give me a work permit. It will help me to contribute more to the country than just being here. It would make things so much easier."
Lacey Williams, the youth civic engagement organizer at the Latin American Coalition, questioned how the policy will be implemented.
"At first blush it's great news, it certainly has great potential," she said. "What we're anxiously awaiting is how this announcement will trickle down. How will it affect people in deportation proceedings now? What will happen to them tomorrow, next week?"
Others said the administration is trying to dress up a problem rather than fix it.
Velazquillo and other undocumented students still will be living in the country illegally, said Domenic Powell, a spokesman for the Raleigh-based NC Dream Team, a group of students who advocate for undocumented youth.
"It's not a solution," he said. "There seems to be a benefit to it, but it's fleeting. They can work, but for how long? They need to find a permanent solution."
The Associated Press contributed
Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/08/19/2537858/us-to-ease-rules-for-deporting.html#ixzz1VTzSWZ8M
Sunday, August 14, 2011
¿Por qué tantas deportaciones?
Por Ana MarÃa Aragonés
La Jornada
13 Agosto 2011
El gobierno de Barack Obama ha endurecido la polÃtica migratoria en contra de los indocumentados al promover la deportación de gran cantidad de trabajadores, muchos de los cuales son mexicanos, sin importar que lleven años en Estados Unidos, que hayan pagado impuestos y tengan hijos nacidos en aquel paÃs y, por tanto, sean ciudadanos estadunidenses.
Se trata de expulsiones que por supuesto están violando los más elementales derechos humanos pues, además, muchos fueron detenidos en compañÃa de sus familiares, pero devueltos a México sin ellos. Esta estrategia se encuentra en medio de un gravÃsimo problema económico en el que los partidos Demócrata y Republicano se enfrascaron en un terrible debate, que al final llevó a la calificadora Standard & Poor’s (S&P) a rebajar la calificación crediticia de Estados Unidos de AAA a AA+, poniendo en duda su capacidad para el pago de su deuda. De acuerdo con Paul Krugman, lo que demostró es que Barack Obama se rindió y el resultado será que dañará aún más una economÃa deprimida, asà como que "la extorsión cruda de los republicanos funciona y no lleva ningún costo polÃtico".
Uno deberÃa preguntarse a qué se debe que en el contexto de tan graves problemas se añada uno más, que es la expulsión de migrantes que no han cometido ningún delito y que, tal como señala el alcalde de Nueva York, Michael Bloomberg, "esto es un suicidio nacional, estamos deliberadamente enviando a nuestro futuro fuera del paÃs" (La Jornada, 9 de agosto). Tal como señala el alcalde, "lo que el paÃs necesita en momentos de dificultades económicas son más migrantes... que crean más empleos de los que toman". Sobre todo si los flujos de migración indocumentada hacia Estados Unidos han disminuido en forma importante como resultado de la crisis en ese paÃs y de las propias dificultades que presenta México para que estos trabajadores puedan transitar de forma segura hacia la frontera. De acuerdo con el Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica y GeografÃa (Inegi) y con base en los resultados preliminares al primer trimestre de 2011, por cada 10 mil habitantes en México hay 36 que emigran al extranjero y 31 migrantes provenientes de otros paÃses. Este comportamiento, señala el Inegi, en combinación con la tendencia del monto de inmigrantes internacionales tiene como resultado en términos relativos un saldo migratorio casi nulo.
Mantener a un conjunto laboral con salarios más bajos que los de los nativos y que se encuentran en sectores necesarios para relanzar la economÃa, como es el sector agrÃcola, entre otros, tiene la ventaja de ofrecer precios más bajos y con ello incrementar el consumo, lo que es una absoluta necesidad. Por otro lado, es una falacia sostener que se trata de combatir a la migración indocumentada por estar compuesta por "criminales", lo cual se ha demostrado que no es asÃ. Las supuestas "felonÃas" que pueden presentar algunos de estos trabajadores tienen que ver con pasarse un alto o conducir en estado de ebriedad.
Por tanto, una posible explicación del incremento de las deportaciones es que Barack Obama, en su afán por buscar la relección, responde asà a criterios antinmigrantes extendidos por los ultraconservadores de la sociedad estadunidense, sector formado en gran parte por los miembros del llamado Tea Party, quienes tal parece están teniendo cada vez mayor fuerza, lo cual representa un enorme peligro.
Dar rienda suelta a este tipo de grupos lleva a tragedias como la vivida hace sólo unos dÃas en Noruega, y habrÃa que recordar el ataque a la senadora demócrata Gabrielle Giffords, acontecimientos que deberÃan ser un foco de alerta, sobre todo en momentos de crisis, pues es el contexto en el que van escalando posiciones electorales al encontrar apoyo en personas afectadas por las dificultades económicas. Y los gobiernos tendrÃan que evitar todas aquellas actitudes que promueven discursos xenófobos y racistas que favorecen la intolerancia.
Sin embargo, que Barack Obama esté incrementando las deportaciones responde a una estrategia que se aleja totalmente de las propuestas enarboladas en su campaña y se pone en juego la convivencia en una sociedad democrática. Pero parece que le interesa tener contenta a esa parte ultraconservadora de la sociedad polÃtica con un propósito: su relección.
Parafraseando a Krugman, la extorsión de los ultraconservadores funciona en este caso, aunque de ninguna manera será suficiente para asegurarle buenos resultados polÃticos.
amaragones@gmail.com
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2011/08/13/opinion/018a2pol
La Jornada
13 Agosto 2011
El gobierno de Barack Obama ha endurecido la polÃtica migratoria en contra de los indocumentados al promover la deportación de gran cantidad de trabajadores, muchos de los cuales son mexicanos, sin importar que lleven años en Estados Unidos, que hayan pagado impuestos y tengan hijos nacidos en aquel paÃs y, por tanto, sean ciudadanos estadunidenses.
Se trata de expulsiones que por supuesto están violando los más elementales derechos humanos pues, además, muchos fueron detenidos en compañÃa de sus familiares, pero devueltos a México sin ellos. Esta estrategia se encuentra en medio de un gravÃsimo problema económico en el que los partidos Demócrata y Republicano se enfrascaron en un terrible debate, que al final llevó a la calificadora Standard & Poor’s (S&P) a rebajar la calificación crediticia de Estados Unidos de AAA a AA+, poniendo en duda su capacidad para el pago de su deuda. De acuerdo con Paul Krugman, lo que demostró es que Barack Obama se rindió y el resultado será que dañará aún más una economÃa deprimida, asà como que "la extorsión cruda de los republicanos funciona y no lleva ningún costo polÃtico".
Uno deberÃa preguntarse a qué se debe que en el contexto de tan graves problemas se añada uno más, que es la expulsión de migrantes que no han cometido ningún delito y que, tal como señala el alcalde de Nueva York, Michael Bloomberg, "esto es un suicidio nacional, estamos deliberadamente enviando a nuestro futuro fuera del paÃs" (La Jornada, 9 de agosto). Tal como señala el alcalde, "lo que el paÃs necesita en momentos de dificultades económicas son más migrantes... que crean más empleos de los que toman". Sobre todo si los flujos de migración indocumentada hacia Estados Unidos han disminuido en forma importante como resultado de la crisis en ese paÃs y de las propias dificultades que presenta México para que estos trabajadores puedan transitar de forma segura hacia la frontera. De acuerdo con el Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica y GeografÃa (Inegi) y con base en los resultados preliminares al primer trimestre de 2011, por cada 10 mil habitantes en México hay 36 que emigran al extranjero y 31 migrantes provenientes de otros paÃses. Este comportamiento, señala el Inegi, en combinación con la tendencia del monto de inmigrantes internacionales tiene como resultado en términos relativos un saldo migratorio casi nulo.
Mantener a un conjunto laboral con salarios más bajos que los de los nativos y que se encuentran en sectores necesarios para relanzar la economÃa, como es el sector agrÃcola, entre otros, tiene la ventaja de ofrecer precios más bajos y con ello incrementar el consumo, lo que es una absoluta necesidad. Por otro lado, es una falacia sostener que se trata de combatir a la migración indocumentada por estar compuesta por "criminales", lo cual se ha demostrado que no es asÃ. Las supuestas "felonÃas" que pueden presentar algunos de estos trabajadores tienen que ver con pasarse un alto o conducir en estado de ebriedad.
Por tanto, una posible explicación del incremento de las deportaciones es que Barack Obama, en su afán por buscar la relección, responde asà a criterios antinmigrantes extendidos por los ultraconservadores de la sociedad estadunidense, sector formado en gran parte por los miembros del llamado Tea Party, quienes tal parece están teniendo cada vez mayor fuerza, lo cual representa un enorme peligro.
Dar rienda suelta a este tipo de grupos lleva a tragedias como la vivida hace sólo unos dÃas en Noruega, y habrÃa que recordar el ataque a la senadora demócrata Gabrielle Giffords, acontecimientos que deberÃan ser un foco de alerta, sobre todo en momentos de crisis, pues es el contexto en el que van escalando posiciones electorales al encontrar apoyo en personas afectadas por las dificultades económicas. Y los gobiernos tendrÃan que evitar todas aquellas actitudes que promueven discursos xenófobos y racistas que favorecen la intolerancia.
Sin embargo, que Barack Obama esté incrementando las deportaciones responde a una estrategia que se aleja totalmente de las propuestas enarboladas en su campaña y se pone en juego la convivencia en una sociedad democrática. Pero parece que le interesa tener contenta a esa parte ultraconservadora de la sociedad polÃtica con un propósito: su relección.
Parafraseando a Krugman, la extorsión de los ultraconservadores funciona en este caso, aunque de ninguna manera será suficiente para asegurarle buenos resultados polÃticos.
amaragones@gmail.com
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2011/08/13/opinion/018a2pol
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Rising number of illegal immigrants deported for traffic offenses
By Patrik Jonsson
The Christian Science Monitor
Jul 23, 2011
The US notched a record number of deportations of illegal immigrants in 2010, according to an analysis of government statistics, with the spike driven primarily by increased deportations of people stopped for drunken driving and other traffic violations.
Drunken driving incidents involving illegal immigrants are known to inflame public anger over border security, and the Obama administration's deportation crackdown could be seen as a practical, and potentially popular, response to a public safety issue.
But news of the traffic-related deportations also highlights a political problem for the administration. It risks loss of Hispanics' support for Democrats, even as it seems to do little to persuade those on the right, who insist that President Obama is bent on letting most illegal immigrants off the hook in anticipation of a national amnesty program, that the administration is serious about immigration enforcement.
"This is the strange world of immigration policy that we're in right now, where everyone is building their own narrative of how these things fit together," says Noah Pickus, co-director of the Brookings-Duke Immigration Policy Roundtable, in Durham, N.C. "For some, the idea that the Obama administration is taking a traffic violation, and driving immigration policy through that, is too much. On the other hand, the notion that we should use a lot more discretion and focus more on [immigrant] criminals is precisely what's too little for others."
Some 393,000 people were deported in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2010, about half of whom had committed crimes, according to an Associated Press analysis. The report, citing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data, stated that 27,635 people were deported after receiving drunken driving citations, compared with 10,851 in the last full year of the Bush administration. In addition, 13,028 people were deported for less serious traffic violations, three times the 4,527 who were deported two years earlier.
For some, especially in Democratic-leaning states including New York, Massachusetts, and Illinois, the report confirms concerns that Obama has not adhered to his promise of targeting only the "worst of the worst" for deportation. Several states are brawling with the administration over the Secure Communities program, announcing they are pulling out of it. Secure Communities uses a federal immigration database to help local police identify illegal immigrants among people charged with local crimes and misdemeanors.
Meanwhile, those who want tougher immigration enforcement point to recent ICE changes around prosecutorial discretion as evidence that the Obama administration does not intend to enforce the law aggressively.
They cite a June memo from ICE director John Morton that detailed different classes of illegal immigrants that ICE personnel should consider "sensitive" when deciding whether to prosecute for deportation. It included minors and the elderly, pregnant women, college graduates, and those who have been living in America for a long time.
In response, Rep. Lamar Smith (R) of Texas filed legislation that would curtail the administration's use of broad classifications to guide prosecutorial discretion. Representative Smith particularly pointed to a decrease in workplace immigration raids since the Bush years as an example of the Obama administration's reduced focus on broad-based immigration enforcement.
"The administration … knows the political reality that the vast majority of Americans want them to enforce the law, so they have to do the best not to enforce the law and yet convince the American people that they actually are," says Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which advocates stricter immigration laws.
Advocates for illegal immigrants say the facts – including this most recent deportation analysis – counter that argument.
Congressman Smith "forgets that President Obama deports more people – about 1,100 per day – than the last president or any president in modern history,” Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D) of Illinois told Congress Thursday in Washington. “He also forgets that we are seeing historically low levels of illegal immigration; that communities along the US-Mexico border are the most crime-free communities in our nation; and that immigration from Mexico is the lowest it has been in six decades."
Nevertheless, the contradiction between the president's "worst of the worst" promise and the fact that some immigrants have been ousted for minor traffic infractions is notable enough that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano pushed back at the Associated Press analysis of ICE statistics.
"The more serious offenders are still in prison," Secretary Napolitano told the AP on Thursday. "We're not going to see them reflected in the numbers until we can begin to remove them" after they undergo trial and serve their sentences.
Moreover, the growth in deportations linked to traffic violations is less a result of vigilance by the Department of Homeland Security than of local jurisdictions, which in increasing numbers are handing over illegal immigrants to federal authorities for prosecution, say immigration policy experts.
"There are bills across the states that are named after someone killed in an accident by someone who is here illegally, and there's enormous, up-close, personal, and hostile reactions to that, because the reaction is that if we [had] enforced our laws this never would have happened," says Mr. Pickus at Duke University.
At the same time, he adds, the emerging patchwork of state and local laws on illegal immigration is not helping to build the political trust that will be needed to build a "grand bargain" for federal immigration reform.
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/rising-number-illegal-immigrants-deported-traffic-offenses?page=full
The Christian Science Monitor
Jul 23, 2011
The US notched a record number of deportations of illegal immigrants in 2010, according to an analysis of government statistics, with the spike driven primarily by increased deportations of people stopped for drunken driving and other traffic violations.
Drunken driving incidents involving illegal immigrants are known to inflame public anger over border security, and the Obama administration's deportation crackdown could be seen as a practical, and potentially popular, response to a public safety issue.
But news of the traffic-related deportations also highlights a political problem for the administration. It risks loss of Hispanics' support for Democrats, even as it seems to do little to persuade those on the right, who insist that President Obama is bent on letting most illegal immigrants off the hook in anticipation of a national amnesty program, that the administration is serious about immigration enforcement.
"This is the strange world of immigration policy that we're in right now, where everyone is building their own narrative of how these things fit together," says Noah Pickus, co-director of the Brookings-Duke Immigration Policy Roundtable, in Durham, N.C. "For some, the idea that the Obama administration is taking a traffic violation, and driving immigration policy through that, is too much. On the other hand, the notion that we should use a lot more discretion and focus more on [immigrant] criminals is precisely what's too little for others."
Some 393,000 people were deported in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2010, about half of whom had committed crimes, according to an Associated Press analysis. The report, citing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data, stated that 27,635 people were deported after receiving drunken driving citations, compared with 10,851 in the last full year of the Bush administration. In addition, 13,028 people were deported for less serious traffic violations, three times the 4,527 who were deported two years earlier.
For some, especially in Democratic-leaning states including New York, Massachusetts, and Illinois, the report confirms concerns that Obama has not adhered to his promise of targeting only the "worst of the worst" for deportation. Several states are brawling with the administration over the Secure Communities program, announcing they are pulling out of it. Secure Communities uses a federal immigration database to help local police identify illegal immigrants among people charged with local crimes and misdemeanors.
Meanwhile, those who want tougher immigration enforcement point to recent ICE changes around prosecutorial discretion as evidence that the Obama administration does not intend to enforce the law aggressively.
They cite a June memo from ICE director John Morton that detailed different classes of illegal immigrants that ICE personnel should consider "sensitive" when deciding whether to prosecute for deportation. It included minors and the elderly, pregnant women, college graduates, and those who have been living in America for a long time.
In response, Rep. Lamar Smith (R) of Texas filed legislation that would curtail the administration's use of broad classifications to guide prosecutorial discretion. Representative Smith particularly pointed to a decrease in workplace immigration raids since the Bush years as an example of the Obama administration's reduced focus on broad-based immigration enforcement.
"The administration … knows the political reality that the vast majority of Americans want them to enforce the law, so they have to do the best not to enforce the law and yet convince the American people that they actually are," says Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which advocates stricter immigration laws.
Advocates for illegal immigrants say the facts – including this most recent deportation analysis – counter that argument.
Congressman Smith "forgets that President Obama deports more people – about 1,100 per day – than the last president or any president in modern history,” Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D) of Illinois told Congress Thursday in Washington. “He also forgets that we are seeing historically low levels of illegal immigration; that communities along the US-Mexico border are the most crime-free communities in our nation; and that immigration from Mexico is the lowest it has been in six decades."
Nevertheless, the contradiction between the president's "worst of the worst" promise and the fact that some immigrants have been ousted for minor traffic infractions is notable enough that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano pushed back at the Associated Press analysis of ICE statistics.
"The more serious offenders are still in prison," Secretary Napolitano told the AP on Thursday. "We're not going to see them reflected in the numbers until we can begin to remove them" after they undergo trial and serve their sentences.
Moreover, the growth in deportations linked to traffic violations is less a result of vigilance by the Department of Homeland Security than of local jurisdictions, which in increasing numbers are handing over illegal immigrants to federal authorities for prosecution, say immigration policy experts.
"There are bills across the states that are named after someone killed in an accident by someone who is here illegally, and there's enormous, up-close, personal, and hostile reactions to that, because the reaction is that if we [had] enforced our laws this never would have happened," says Mr. Pickus at Duke University.
At the same time, he adds, the emerging patchwork of state and local laws on illegal immigration is not helping to build the political trust that will be needed to build a "grand bargain" for federal immigration reform.
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/rising-number-illegal-immigrants-deported-traffic-offenses?page=full
Thursday, June 30, 2011
For Undocumented Immigrants, Activism Can Invite a Deportation Threat
By Courtney E. Martin
The Nation
June 28, 2011
The contentious debate over immigration was given a human face last week when Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas outed himself as an undocumented immigrant in a New York Times Magazine article. In a very personal essay, Vargas detailed his journey from boyhood in the Philippines to a prestigious journalism career in the United States. Vargas admitted to breaking a number of laws to conceal his citizenship status over more than a decade of working illegally for a range of high-profile publications, including the Washington Post, the Huffington Post and The New Yorker. The essay quickly rose to the top of the “Most e-mailed” list at the Times and landed Vargas, and his compelling story, on major media sites over the weekend.
Vargas’s personal story is vital because it complicates the usual terms of the immigration debate: outsiders vs. insiders, deserving vs. undeserving, legal vs. illegal. After all, one can’t help but see Vargas, though undocumented, as the consummate deserving insider—an American Dream hero incarnate, transcending race and class boundaries to make a real impact through his reporting. It’s nearly impossible to see a picture of the goofy adolescent, who watched “Frasier” to better his English or hear the story of his choir teacher’s admiration for him, and think “criminal.”
Publishing this piece is not the end of Vargas’s advocacy on immigration. The article coincides with the launch of new campaign Vargas co-founded, Define American. Its aim is to inspire a new conversation about immigration, particularly in unveiling the truth about what its founders call “a growing 21st century Underground Railroad” for undocumented immigrants who are helped along by teacher, pastors, friends, and employers. Vargas told his Twitter followers: “i've written hundreds of stories. very few on immigration. now, i will write solely about immigration.”
But Vargas, in writing openly about his immigration status in a climate of polarized views on the subject and increased criminalization of undocumented immigrants, is at risk of being deported. As he wrote in the article: “I…am working with legal counsel to review my options.” Jehmu Greene, co-founder of Define American and the daughter of two former undocumented immigrants herself, said of Vargas, “Of course he's afraid. But he's been living in fear for the past eighteen years. He has the support of the Filipino American Legal Defense Fund and he is taking responsibility for breaking the law.”
Vargas may have made the biggest media splash, but he is not the first undocumented immigrant to out himself for a cause. In 2010, thousands of undocumented immigrants told their stories publicly in an effort to humanize the fight for the DREAM Act—which would have created a pipeline for them all to achieve legal residency. The DREAM Act passed the House but failed in the Senate in December of last year. Marquette University student Maricela Aguilar, an immigrant from Mexico, was one of the student activists who outed herself. Despite the DREAM Act’s defeat, she didn’t feel her admission was made in vain. “I’d much rather have that out in the public than just living in fear,” she told The New York Times.
The bravery of Vargas, Aguilar and others shines a light on how dangerous this kind of transparency is for immigration reform activists—and how imperative it is that we not only celebrate their bravery, but protect them so they can continue their critical work. Their stories have the power to shift hearts and minds, not only because they humanize a contentious issue. Their stories demonstrate that there is no reasonable option for undocumented immigrants like Vargas, who don’t have an identity or a community rooted in the country of their birth, but whose only option for obtaining American citizenship was, as an immigration lawyer told him, leaving the country, accepting a 10-year ban on returning, and then applying to return legally. Their real life experiences reveal just how illogical, unsustainable, and unjust our current immigration policies really are, and how desperately we need comprehensive reform.
The threat of deportation for citizens like Vargas—young and with no criminal record—are, admittedly, slim. Spokeswoman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Cori W. Bassett, told NPR in an emailed statement: “ICE takes enforcement action on a case-by-case basis — prioritizing those who present the most significant threats to public safety as determined by their criminal history and taking into consideration the specific facts of each case, including immigration history.”
But this doesn’t mean that the undocumented immigrants who tell their stories are not at risk. A couple of high profile cases have revealed how arbitrary the deportation process has become. Steve Li, then a 20-year-old City College student became a symbol of the kind of deserving immigrant youth who the DREAM Act would help as he awaited deportation in fall of 2010, inspiring a Facebook campaign. Li’s plight inspired the attention of Senator Dianne Feinstein and other politicians and he was released from an immigration detention center in Arizona after two months. So far, he remains in the US, though he hasn’t achieved any legal status.
Mandeep Chahal, a sophomore at U.C. Davis, was also threatened with deportation this year, despite being the very model of a student the failed DREAM Act would have helped. She was voted “most likely to save the world” by her high school classmates after starting a humanitarian nonprofit. Like Li, Chahal and her mother, who also faced deportation, were saved by a robust Facebook campaign. Her lawyer, Kalpana Peddibhotla, told Patch.com that she is “fairly certain” that Chahal and her mother would have been deported without “thousands of supporters form around the country who have advocated on their behalf.”
Li and Chahal didn’t out themselves for a political cause, as so many of their peers did, but they did live very public, “normal” lives—not hiding their status, but not flaunting it either. Their stories illustrate that it doesn’t even take an activist’s bold and challenging mentality to attract the gaze of ICE. Just being a ambitious student who earns public recognition can, thanks to our backward system, get one in trouble.
The first generation of undocumented immigrants to grow up in the U.S., earn college degrees, enlist in the military, and pursue meaningful work despite incredible obstacles, is coming of age. Despite anti-immigration advocates’ best efforts, they’re not going away. And increasingly, they’re not staying silent. Their public stories point towards a political truth: it’s time that we figured out an immigration policy more sophisticated than randomly applied discretion and Facebook campaigns.
There are 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country, and many of them are young, brave, and ready for a fight. Gaby Pacheco is one such fighter. An undocumented student involved in organizing for the DREAM Act, she recently published an op-ed on CNN.com in which she argued that President Barack Obama should use his executive power to stop deportations of youths eligible for the DREAM Act. She wrote that this act with precedent (President Bush used his discretionary powers to defer the deportation of undocumented immigrant spouses of military soldiers) would keep “families together until Congress is able to put its differences aside and acknowledge that we are part of the future of our great country.”
It’s a pathway to citizenship that these young immigrants need. As Greene said, “Jose would happily pay a fine, get to the back of the line, behind everyone who has been attempting to come into this country legally to simply know that he has a path forward. He has worked hard, he has paid taxes, and he wants to continue contributing to the country he loves.”
http://www.thenation.com/article/161707/undocumented-immigrants-activism-can-invite-deportation-threat
The Nation
June 28, 2011
The contentious debate over immigration was given a human face last week when Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas outed himself as an undocumented immigrant in a New York Times Magazine article. In a very personal essay, Vargas detailed his journey from boyhood in the Philippines to a prestigious journalism career in the United States. Vargas admitted to breaking a number of laws to conceal his citizenship status over more than a decade of working illegally for a range of high-profile publications, including the Washington Post, the Huffington Post and The New Yorker. The essay quickly rose to the top of the “Most e-mailed” list at the Times and landed Vargas, and his compelling story, on major media sites over the weekend.
Vargas’s personal story is vital because it complicates the usual terms of the immigration debate: outsiders vs. insiders, deserving vs. undeserving, legal vs. illegal. After all, one can’t help but see Vargas, though undocumented, as the consummate deserving insider—an American Dream hero incarnate, transcending race and class boundaries to make a real impact through his reporting. It’s nearly impossible to see a picture of the goofy adolescent, who watched “Frasier” to better his English or hear the story of his choir teacher’s admiration for him, and think “criminal.”
Publishing this piece is not the end of Vargas’s advocacy on immigration. The article coincides with the launch of new campaign Vargas co-founded, Define American. Its aim is to inspire a new conversation about immigration, particularly in unveiling the truth about what its founders call “a growing 21st century Underground Railroad” for undocumented immigrants who are helped along by teacher, pastors, friends, and employers. Vargas told his Twitter followers: “i've written hundreds of stories. very few on immigration. now, i will write solely about immigration.”
But Vargas, in writing openly about his immigration status in a climate of polarized views on the subject and increased criminalization of undocumented immigrants, is at risk of being deported. As he wrote in the article: “I…am working with legal counsel to review my options.” Jehmu Greene, co-founder of Define American and the daughter of two former undocumented immigrants herself, said of Vargas, “Of course he's afraid. But he's been living in fear for the past eighteen years. He has the support of the Filipino American Legal Defense Fund and he is taking responsibility for breaking the law.”
Vargas may have made the biggest media splash, but he is not the first undocumented immigrant to out himself for a cause. In 2010, thousands of undocumented immigrants told their stories publicly in an effort to humanize the fight for the DREAM Act—which would have created a pipeline for them all to achieve legal residency. The DREAM Act passed the House but failed in the Senate in December of last year. Marquette University student Maricela Aguilar, an immigrant from Mexico, was one of the student activists who outed herself. Despite the DREAM Act’s defeat, she didn’t feel her admission was made in vain. “I’d much rather have that out in the public than just living in fear,” she told The New York Times.
The bravery of Vargas, Aguilar and others shines a light on how dangerous this kind of transparency is for immigration reform activists—and how imperative it is that we not only celebrate their bravery, but protect them so they can continue their critical work. Their stories have the power to shift hearts and minds, not only because they humanize a contentious issue. Their stories demonstrate that there is no reasonable option for undocumented immigrants like Vargas, who don’t have an identity or a community rooted in the country of their birth, but whose only option for obtaining American citizenship was, as an immigration lawyer told him, leaving the country, accepting a 10-year ban on returning, and then applying to return legally. Their real life experiences reveal just how illogical, unsustainable, and unjust our current immigration policies really are, and how desperately we need comprehensive reform.
The threat of deportation for citizens like Vargas—young and with no criminal record—are, admittedly, slim. Spokeswoman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Cori W. Bassett, told NPR in an emailed statement: “ICE takes enforcement action on a case-by-case basis — prioritizing those who present the most significant threats to public safety as determined by their criminal history and taking into consideration the specific facts of each case, including immigration history.”
But this doesn’t mean that the undocumented immigrants who tell their stories are not at risk. A couple of high profile cases have revealed how arbitrary the deportation process has become. Steve Li, then a 20-year-old City College student became a symbol of the kind of deserving immigrant youth who the DREAM Act would help as he awaited deportation in fall of 2010, inspiring a Facebook campaign. Li’s plight inspired the attention of Senator Dianne Feinstein and other politicians and he was released from an immigration detention center in Arizona after two months. So far, he remains in the US, though he hasn’t achieved any legal status.
Mandeep Chahal, a sophomore at U.C. Davis, was also threatened with deportation this year, despite being the very model of a student the failed DREAM Act would have helped. She was voted “most likely to save the world” by her high school classmates after starting a humanitarian nonprofit. Like Li, Chahal and her mother, who also faced deportation, were saved by a robust Facebook campaign. Her lawyer, Kalpana Peddibhotla, told Patch.com that she is “fairly certain” that Chahal and her mother would have been deported without “thousands of supporters form around the country who have advocated on their behalf.”
Li and Chahal didn’t out themselves for a political cause, as so many of their peers did, but they did live very public, “normal” lives—not hiding their status, but not flaunting it either. Their stories illustrate that it doesn’t even take an activist’s bold and challenging mentality to attract the gaze of ICE. Just being a ambitious student who earns public recognition can, thanks to our backward system, get one in trouble.
The first generation of undocumented immigrants to grow up in the U.S., earn college degrees, enlist in the military, and pursue meaningful work despite incredible obstacles, is coming of age. Despite anti-immigration advocates’ best efforts, they’re not going away. And increasingly, they’re not staying silent. Their public stories point towards a political truth: it’s time that we figured out an immigration policy more sophisticated than randomly applied discretion and Facebook campaigns.
There are 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country, and many of them are young, brave, and ready for a fight. Gaby Pacheco is one such fighter. An undocumented student involved in organizing for the DREAM Act, she recently published an op-ed on CNN.com in which she argued that President Barack Obama should use his executive power to stop deportations of youths eligible for the DREAM Act. She wrote that this act with precedent (President Bush used his discretionary powers to defer the deportation of undocumented immigrant spouses of military soldiers) would keep “families together until Congress is able to put its differences aside and acknowledge that we are part of the future of our great country.”
It’s a pathway to citizenship that these young immigrants need. As Greene said, “Jose would happily pay a fine, get to the back of the line, behind everyone who has been attempting to come into this country legally to simply know that he has a path forward. He has worked hard, he has paid taxes, and he wants to continue contributing to the country he loves.”
http://www.thenation.com/article/161707/undocumented-immigrants-activism-can-invite-deportation-threat
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Luis Gutierrez: Latinos Won't Vote For Obama In 2012 Without Deportation Relief
By Elise Foley
The Huffington Post
20 June 2011
WASHINGTON -- In a meeting with bloggers last week, longtime immigrant rights advocate Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) said President Barack Obama should not count on Latinos to vote for him in 2012 unless he takes executive action to stop some deportations.
The Obama administration has said repeatedly that it has no options for halting the deportation of either undocumented students or the family members of citizens, even though it has frequently cited its use of discretion in immigration enforcement. Although the government says it prioritizes deportation of undocumented people who are considered threats to society, young men and women who grew up in the United States, as well as the parents and spouses of citizens, are still deported.
In a frank discussion with bloggers at the progressive conference Netroots Nation, Gutierrez said he will encourage Latinos to withhold votes from Obama unless the president uses his discretion.
The main demand is to block deportation of families and young men and women who would benefit from the DREAM Act, a failed bill that would have allowed some undocumented people who entered the U.S. as children to gain legal status and attend college or join the military.
Gutierrez, who carries considerable clout among Latinos, is touring the country under the banner "Change Takes Courage" to rally support for administrative relief from deportations.
He said in order to win support, Obama should create deferred action or parole for DREAM Act-eligible young people, allowing them to live and work in the U.S. until Congress acts on immigration reform. Instead, the administration often carries deportation proceedings to nearly the last minute, then allows an immigrant to stay after public outrage.
"They stop the deportation when you do a little petition. When Change.org does a petition and gets a few hundred signatures, they stop the deportation," Gutierrez said. "Don't tell me you ain't got the power."
Advertisement
Senate Democrats, including Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), called in April for Obama to stop deporting DREAM Act students.
Gutierrez is also pushing for the president to create a new definition of "extreme hardship," a classification for men and women applying for legal status for their family members.
Separating families should be considered "extreme hardship," he said.
Gutierrez acknowledged that exercising executive power ran the risk of a legislative backlash from Republicans, but said that should not be an excuse.
"Anything that you put in to safeguard people, then they're going to take it away from you -- then why did we put you there?" he said.
Gutierrez said the first sign of Obama's triangulation strategies on immigration came in 2007, when the then-senator voted for a border fence between the U.S. and Mexico.
Latino leaders in Illinois were furious, and Gutierrez said Obama called him for an explanation.
"I should have known something then," he said. "He didn't get it, but he said to me, 'I've got to show the Republicans that I'm someone that they can work with.' It's still the same person."
The problem, Gutierrez said, is that Obama continues to court Latino votes despite failing to follow through with immigration reform, which polls consistently list as among the top five issues for Latino voters.
Obama recently spoke about immigration in El Paso, Texas, and Puerto Rico, but has said repeatedly he cannot act administratively to end deportations.
Gutierrez said he thinks Latinos should vote for Obama in 2012 -- but only if the president first takes actions to relieve deportation threats for families of citizens and would-be DREAM Act beneficiaries. He said Latino voters should put their votes in a metaphorical lock box and only let them out if and when Obama makes progress on immigration reform.
Gutierrez said Latinos are unlikely to vote for the Republican Party, which has decried what it considers "amnesty" for illegal immigrants, or for alternatives such as the Tequila Party organized to rally Hispanic voters.
"It's not about voting for the Tequila Party and it's not about voting for Republicans," he said. "I don't see Latinos doing that. What I see them doing is staying home."
A boycott by Latino voters could hurt Obama in the end, he acknowledged, but he said the issue is too important to ignore.
"It's always the same conversation: If we do too much it will hurt Obama?" he said. "Civil rights and human rights movements cannot be so closely aligned with parties because they're going to eventually have contradictions. I think of Rosa Parks and I think of her getting on that bus and saying, 'Will this upset the Speaker?' ... They didn't think about what was going to happen to a particular party. They moved."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/20/luis-gutierrez-lays-out-plans-for-deportation-relief_n_880643.html
The Huffington Post
20 June 2011
WASHINGTON -- In a meeting with bloggers last week, longtime immigrant rights advocate Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) said President Barack Obama should not count on Latinos to vote for him in 2012 unless he takes executive action to stop some deportations.
The Obama administration has said repeatedly that it has no options for halting the deportation of either undocumented students or the family members of citizens, even though it has frequently cited its use of discretion in immigration enforcement. Although the government says it prioritizes deportation of undocumented people who are considered threats to society, young men and women who grew up in the United States, as well as the parents and spouses of citizens, are still deported.
In a frank discussion with bloggers at the progressive conference Netroots Nation, Gutierrez said he will encourage Latinos to withhold votes from Obama unless the president uses his discretion.
The main demand is to block deportation of families and young men and women who would benefit from the DREAM Act, a failed bill that would have allowed some undocumented people who entered the U.S. as children to gain legal status and attend college or join the military.
Gutierrez, who carries considerable clout among Latinos, is touring the country under the banner "Change Takes Courage" to rally support for administrative relief from deportations.
He said in order to win support, Obama should create deferred action or parole for DREAM Act-eligible young people, allowing them to live and work in the U.S. until Congress acts on immigration reform. Instead, the administration often carries deportation proceedings to nearly the last minute, then allows an immigrant to stay after public outrage.
"They stop the deportation when you do a little petition. When Change.org does a petition and gets a few hundred signatures, they stop the deportation," Gutierrez said. "Don't tell me you ain't got the power."
Advertisement
Senate Democrats, including Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), called in April for Obama to stop deporting DREAM Act students.
Gutierrez is also pushing for the president to create a new definition of "extreme hardship," a classification for men and women applying for legal status for their family members.
Separating families should be considered "extreme hardship," he said.
Gutierrez acknowledged that exercising executive power ran the risk of a legislative backlash from Republicans, but said that should not be an excuse.
"Anything that you put in to safeguard people, then they're going to take it away from you -- then why did we put you there?" he said.
Gutierrez said the first sign of Obama's triangulation strategies on immigration came in 2007, when the then-senator voted for a border fence between the U.S. and Mexico.
Latino leaders in Illinois were furious, and Gutierrez said Obama called him for an explanation.
"I should have known something then," he said. "He didn't get it, but he said to me, 'I've got to show the Republicans that I'm someone that they can work with.' It's still the same person."
The problem, Gutierrez said, is that Obama continues to court Latino votes despite failing to follow through with immigration reform, which polls consistently list as among the top five issues for Latino voters.
Obama recently spoke about immigration in El Paso, Texas, and Puerto Rico, but has said repeatedly he cannot act administratively to end deportations.
Gutierrez said he thinks Latinos should vote for Obama in 2012 -- but only if the president first takes actions to relieve deportation threats for families of citizens and would-be DREAM Act beneficiaries. He said Latino voters should put their votes in a metaphorical lock box and only let them out if and when Obama makes progress on immigration reform.
Gutierrez said Latinos are unlikely to vote for the Republican Party, which has decried what it considers "amnesty" for illegal immigrants, or for alternatives such as the Tequila Party organized to rally Hispanic voters.
"It's not about voting for the Tequila Party and it's not about voting for Republicans," he said. "I don't see Latinos doing that. What I see them doing is staying home."
A boycott by Latino voters could hurt Obama in the end, he acknowledged, but he said the issue is too important to ignore.
"It's always the same conversation: If we do too much it will hurt Obama?" he said. "Civil rights and human rights movements cannot be so closely aligned with parties because they're going to eventually have contradictions. I think of Rosa Parks and I think of her getting on that bus and saying, 'Will this upset the Speaker?' ... They didn't think about what was going to happen to a particular party. They moved."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/20/luis-gutierrez-lays-out-plans-for-deportation-relief_n_880643.html
Sunday, June 19, 2011
U.S. Pledges to Raise Deportation Threshold
By JULIA PRESTON
The New York Times
June 17, 2011
Moving to repair an immigration enforcement program that has drawn rising opposition from governors and police chiefs, senior immigration officials on Friday announced steps they said would focus the program more closely on deporting immigrants convicted of serious crimes.
In unveiling the changes, John Morton, the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the deportation program would continue to expand as planned in order to be operating nationwide by 2013, despite criticism from many police chiefs and from the governors of Illinois, New York and Massachusetts, who sought to withdraw their states.
But in making course corrections to the program, known as Secure Communities, Mr. Morton acknowledged the groundswell of local resistance, including opposition from Latino and immigrant groups, to an effort that is central to President Obama’s approach to controlling illegal immigration. Critics said the program was casting too wide a net and had strayed from its goal of bolstering public safety by expelling illegal immigrants who committed the most dangerous crimes.
In a fix likely to have broad practical effect, Mr. Morton issued a memorandum that greatly expanded the factors immigration authorities can take into account in deciding to defer or cancel deportations. Agents are now formally urged to consider how long an illegal immigrant has been in the United States, or whether the immigrant was brought here illegally as a child and is studying in high school or college.
In practice, the memorandum gives immigration agents authority to postpone or cancel, on a case by case basis, deportations of illegal immigrant students who might have been eligible for legal status under a bill stalled in Congress that is known as the Dream Act.
The authorities are also instructed to give “particular care and consideration” to veterans and active duty members of the military, especially if they have been in combat, and to their close relatives.
Mr. Morton also expanded the authority of federal lawyers who handle cases in immigration courts to dismiss deportation proceedings against immigrants without serious criminal records.
Also on Friday, Mr. Obama extended the deployment of some 1,200 National Guard troops who are backing up immigration agents along the Southwest border.
Under Secure Communities, tens of thousands of immigrants who were here illegally but had not been convicted of any crime were detained by local law enforcement and swept into deportation proceedings. Until now, once immigration agents in the field had started a deportation, government lawyers had little authority to decide which cases were worth pursuing in immigration court. Many immigration violations are civil, not criminal, offenses.
In the Secure Communities program, fingerprints of everyone who is booked into jail are checked against F.B.I. criminal databases, as has long been routine, and also against Department of Homeland Security databases, which record immigration violations. Homeland Security officials report results of fingerprint checks back to the arresting police departments, and federal immigration agents determine whether to detain the immigrants for deportation.
“We believe in this program, we think it’s the right program, and we intend to continue it,” Mr. Morton said on Friday. “But obviously we are listening to the concerns raised by the governors, members of Congress and community groups.”
Mr. Morton also said he would form an advisory commission of police chiefs, sheriffs, state and local prosecutors, immigration agents, and immigrant advocates. The first task of the commission would be to assess, within 45 days, another fix Mr. Morton is considering.
Currently all immigrants who are flagged in a Secure Communities fingerprint check can be detained for deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from the time they are first booked into jail. Mr. Morton said that under his proposal, illegal immigrants who were arrested for minor traffic offenses, like driving without a license, and other minor misdemeanors, would not be detained for deportation until they were convicted of those crimes.
Mr. Morton also issued new guidelines he said would ensure that illegal immigrants detained by the police who were victims of domestic violence and witnesses to crimes would not be deported.
Immigration lawyers praised the new ground rules. “If these standards are applied consistently, it would allow ICE to focus government resources on dangerous criminals and national security risks to make America safer, a goal we all share,” said David Leopold, the outgoing president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
But several community groups rejected the changes as cosmetic tweaks that would do little to slow deportations that they said had separated immigrant families without reducing crime.
“This program is riddled with flaws and the announcement today acknowledges that,” said Chris Newman, general counsel of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. He said the program should be suspended until the Homeland Security inspector general completes a review later this year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/18/us/18immig.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha24
The New York Times
June 17, 2011
Moving to repair an immigration enforcement program that has drawn rising opposition from governors and police chiefs, senior immigration officials on Friday announced steps they said would focus the program more closely on deporting immigrants convicted of serious crimes.
In unveiling the changes, John Morton, the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the deportation program would continue to expand as planned in order to be operating nationwide by 2013, despite criticism from many police chiefs and from the governors of Illinois, New York and Massachusetts, who sought to withdraw their states.
But in making course corrections to the program, known as Secure Communities, Mr. Morton acknowledged the groundswell of local resistance, including opposition from Latino and immigrant groups, to an effort that is central to President Obama’s approach to controlling illegal immigration. Critics said the program was casting too wide a net and had strayed from its goal of bolstering public safety by expelling illegal immigrants who committed the most dangerous crimes.
In a fix likely to have broad practical effect, Mr. Morton issued a memorandum that greatly expanded the factors immigration authorities can take into account in deciding to defer or cancel deportations. Agents are now formally urged to consider how long an illegal immigrant has been in the United States, or whether the immigrant was brought here illegally as a child and is studying in high school or college.
In practice, the memorandum gives immigration agents authority to postpone or cancel, on a case by case basis, deportations of illegal immigrant students who might have been eligible for legal status under a bill stalled in Congress that is known as the Dream Act.
The authorities are also instructed to give “particular care and consideration” to veterans and active duty members of the military, especially if they have been in combat, and to their close relatives.
Mr. Morton also expanded the authority of federal lawyers who handle cases in immigration courts to dismiss deportation proceedings against immigrants without serious criminal records.
Also on Friday, Mr. Obama extended the deployment of some 1,200 National Guard troops who are backing up immigration agents along the Southwest border.
Under Secure Communities, tens of thousands of immigrants who were here illegally but had not been convicted of any crime were detained by local law enforcement and swept into deportation proceedings. Until now, once immigration agents in the field had started a deportation, government lawyers had little authority to decide which cases were worth pursuing in immigration court. Many immigration violations are civil, not criminal, offenses.
In the Secure Communities program, fingerprints of everyone who is booked into jail are checked against F.B.I. criminal databases, as has long been routine, and also against Department of Homeland Security databases, which record immigration violations. Homeland Security officials report results of fingerprint checks back to the arresting police departments, and federal immigration agents determine whether to detain the immigrants for deportation.
“We believe in this program, we think it’s the right program, and we intend to continue it,” Mr. Morton said on Friday. “But obviously we are listening to the concerns raised by the governors, members of Congress and community groups.”
Mr. Morton also said he would form an advisory commission of police chiefs, sheriffs, state and local prosecutors, immigration agents, and immigrant advocates. The first task of the commission would be to assess, within 45 days, another fix Mr. Morton is considering.
Currently all immigrants who are flagged in a Secure Communities fingerprint check can be detained for deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from the time they are first booked into jail. Mr. Morton said that under his proposal, illegal immigrants who were arrested for minor traffic offenses, like driving without a license, and other minor misdemeanors, would not be detained for deportation until they were convicted of those crimes.
Mr. Morton also issued new guidelines he said would ensure that illegal immigrants detained by the police who were victims of domestic violence and witnesses to crimes would not be deported.
Immigration lawyers praised the new ground rules. “If these standards are applied consistently, it would allow ICE to focus government resources on dangerous criminals and national security risks to make America safer, a goal we all share,” said David Leopold, the outgoing president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
But several community groups rejected the changes as cosmetic tweaks that would do little to slow deportations that they said had separated immigrant families without reducing crime.
“This program is riddled with flaws and the announcement today acknowledges that,” said Chris Newman, general counsel of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. He said the program should be suspended until the Homeland Security inspector general completes a review later this year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/18/us/18immig.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha24
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Obama Increasingly Targets Employers of Illegals
The White House is focusing on punishing those who hire illegal immigrants, rather than the workers themselves.
By Daniel Politi
Slate Magazine
May. 30, 2011
President Obama has mostly given up on the flashy, media-friendly raids on workplaces that were popular with his predecessor and often rounded up hundreds of illegal workers for deportation. Instead, he is choosing to focus more on punishing those who hire the illegal immigrants in the first place. As a result, even as the number of criminal cases against illegal immigrant workers declined, the number of employers facing problems with the law has been increasing, reports the New York Times.
The piece cites as an example the recent coordinated raid on 14 Chuy’s restaurants, where 42 illegal immigrants were caught but only one was charged with an unrelated crime while 13 were processed for immigration violations. Significantly, “the only criminal defendants were the owners … and an accountant,” details the Times.
The NYT story seems to be part of an effort by the White House to push back against those who criticize the president’s record on immigration at a time when he has launched an improbable bid for a two-pronged effort at immigration reform that includes border security as well as some sort of amnesty for those who qualify. And there have been no shortage of critics. On one side, Republicans criticize the administration for the declining number of arrests of illegal workers, insisting that should be a particular focus at a time of high unemployment. Yet the Obama administration insists it is carrying out more investigations than ever before, and issued record fines, showing how the issue is being tackled despite the lack of raids.
Republicans aren't Obama's only problem though. The president is also facing criticism from some of his closest Democratic allies on the issue, as the Miami Herald’s Andres Oppenheimer detailed in his column Saturday. Hispanic Democrats are increasingly saying that Obama hasn’t done enough on the issue, and besides his talk of fighting for comprehensive immigration reform, he hasn’t done enough to stop mass deportations. Indeed, Obama “is on track to deport more illegal immigrants than any U.S. president since Dwight D. Eisenhower and ‘Operation Wetback’ in 1954,” columnist Ruben Navarrette Jr. wrote earlier this month, noting that while 1 million people were removed from the country then, the Obama administration has “deported about 800,000 people in its first two years.” Hispanic lawmakers aren’t the only ones who have been criticizing the president on this issue. In an editorial earlier this month, the New York Times accused Obama of trying to have it both ways by talking “of supporting the hopes of the undocumented” while his “administration has been doubling down on the failed strategy of mass expulsion.”
Instead of kicking the can to Congress, which is a dead end, since the White House knows Republicans will never give him the votes for any type of comprehensive immigration reform in the House, Democrats insist Obama should use more of his discretionary powers. At the very least, they say, he could delay the deportation of those who would qualify for the Dream Act, which would allow those who were brought to the United States as children to stay if they graduate high school and want to enter college or the military.
http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/05/30/illegal_immigrants_obama_targets_employers_instead_of_workers_bu.html
By Daniel Politi
Slate Magazine
May. 30, 2011
President Obama has mostly given up on the flashy, media-friendly raids on workplaces that were popular with his predecessor and often rounded up hundreds of illegal workers for deportation. Instead, he is choosing to focus more on punishing those who hire the illegal immigrants in the first place. As a result, even as the number of criminal cases against illegal immigrant workers declined, the number of employers facing problems with the law has been increasing, reports the New York Times.
The piece cites as an example the recent coordinated raid on 14 Chuy’s restaurants, where 42 illegal immigrants were caught but only one was charged with an unrelated crime while 13 were processed for immigration violations. Significantly, “the only criminal defendants were the owners … and an accountant,” details the Times.
The NYT story seems to be part of an effort by the White House to push back against those who criticize the president’s record on immigration at a time when he has launched an improbable bid for a two-pronged effort at immigration reform that includes border security as well as some sort of amnesty for those who qualify. And there have been no shortage of critics. On one side, Republicans criticize the administration for the declining number of arrests of illegal workers, insisting that should be a particular focus at a time of high unemployment. Yet the Obama administration insists it is carrying out more investigations than ever before, and issued record fines, showing how the issue is being tackled despite the lack of raids.
Republicans aren't Obama's only problem though. The president is also facing criticism from some of his closest Democratic allies on the issue, as the Miami Herald’s Andres Oppenheimer detailed in his column Saturday. Hispanic Democrats are increasingly saying that Obama hasn’t done enough on the issue, and besides his talk of fighting for comprehensive immigration reform, he hasn’t done enough to stop mass deportations. Indeed, Obama “is on track to deport more illegal immigrants than any U.S. president since Dwight D. Eisenhower and ‘Operation Wetback’ in 1954,” columnist Ruben Navarrette Jr. wrote earlier this month, noting that while 1 million people were removed from the country then, the Obama administration has “deported about 800,000 people in its first two years.” Hispanic lawmakers aren’t the only ones who have been criticizing the president on this issue. In an editorial earlier this month, the New York Times accused Obama of trying to have it both ways by talking “of supporting the hopes of the undocumented” while his “administration has been doubling down on the failed strategy of mass expulsion.”
Instead of kicking the can to Congress, which is a dead end, since the White House knows Republicans will never give him the votes for any type of comprehensive immigration reform in the House, Democrats insist Obama should use more of his discretionary powers. At the very least, they say, he could delay the deportation of those who would qualify for the Dream Act, which would allow those who were brought to the United States as children to stay if they graduate high school and want to enter college or the military.
http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/05/30/illegal_immigrants_obama_targets_employers_instead_of_workers_bu.html
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
A Cross-Border Struggle: The Hidden History of Mexico / US Labor Solidarity
By DAVID BACON
Counterpunch Weekend Edition
May 27 - 29, 2011
In the period since the North American Free Trade Agreement has come into effect, the economies of the United States and Mexico have become more integrated than ever. Through Plan Merida and partnerships on security, the military and the drug war, the political and economic policies pursued by the U.S. and Mexican governments are more coordinated than they've ever been.
Working people on both sides of the border are not only affected by this integration. Workers and their unions in many ways are its object. These policies seek to maximize profits and push wages and benefits to the bottom, manage the flow of people displaced as a result, roll back rights and social benefits achieved over decades, and weaken working class movements in both countries.
All this makes cooperation and solidarity across the U.S./Mexico border more important than ever. After a quarter century in which the development of solidarity relationships was interrupted during the cold war, unions and workers are once again searching out their counterparts and finding effective and appropriate ways to support each other.
This paper is not a survey of all the efforts that have taken place, especially since the NAFTA debate restarted the solidarity process in the early 1990s. Instead, it seeks to set out some questions, and invite responses and contributions from people involved in this cross border movement. Among these questions are the following:
What is the history of cross-border solidarity? How can we discard the blinders forged by the cold war, and expand our vision of what is possible?
How is the political context changing on both sides of the border? Why is solidarity a necessary response to political and economic challenges?
One of our biggest advantages is the movement of people from Mexico to the U.S. and back. What part do migrants and the struggle for their rights play in solidarity between workers of both countries?
How can we develop new ways of reaching across the border?
* * *
The working class movements of the U.S. and Mexico both began in the decades after the seizure of Mexican territory in the War of 1848, its incorporation into the territory of the U.S., and the unequal relationship cemented by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
After the turn of the century, cross-border solidarity became an important political movement, as Mexicans began migrating to the U.S. as railroad workers, miners and farm laborers. The Flores Magon brothers, on the run from the regime of Porfirio Diaz, began organizing what became the uprising in Cananea and the Liberal Party in the communities of railroad workers in Los Angeles, St. Louis and elsewhere north of the border.
The two were active participants in the radical socialist and anarchist movements of the day, and were associated with the Industrial Workers of the World. After the Cananea rising, J. Edgar Hoover pursued them in his first campaign of organized anti-labor and anti-left repression. The brothers were caught, tried and sent to Leavenworth Federal Prison, where Ricardo died.
Today in Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, on the wall of the longshore union hall, hangs a banner dated 1906, declaring the union part of the Casa Obrera Mundial. The Casa Obrera Mundial was a Mexican group associated with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and the banner testifies to the links that existed between workers of the two countries at that time, and their internationalist outlook. Later, members of the IWW fought in the Mexican Revolution itself.
The roots of the cross-border solidarity movement are very deep, going back more than a century. They are part of the labor culture of workers and unions, and have been almost since the beginning of our two labor movements.
During the 1930s, strong cross border relationships developed between workers on both sides. In Mexico and the U.S., their challenge was the same – to organize the vast bulk of workers in the largest enterprises, especially the basic industries.
Through the presidency of Lazaro Cardenas, Mexican labor had a government that depended on a strong, albeit politically controlled, union movement. Communists and socialists organized the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), and began supporting the beginnings of labor movements in other countries through the Confederation of Workers of Latin America (CTAL), headed by Vicente Lombardo Toledano.
In the U.S., the New Deal was a product of the upsurge in labor organizing led by the left, and in turn it also created a favorable environment in which many industrial workers were able to organize.
From that period to the present, the relationships between workers in the U.S. and Mexico grew closer when the left was strong, both in terms of organized political parties, but also as a set of ideas that were supported by large numbers of workers. From the beginning, the strongest relationships have existed between industrial workers – miners, railroad workers, factory workers, farm workers, longshore workers and others.
During the period of the labor upsurge of the 1930s and 40s, most solidarity activity was organized by Mexican unions in support of workers in the U.S. In part, this was due to a point of view among those unions that saw Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, especially along the border, as part of their own constituency. They sought to protect and defend the interests of people they viewed as their own paisanos.
In 1937 5000 workers marched to the bridge in Laredo during an onion strike in the Rio Grande Valley. The major working class organizations of the border states were present – the Congreso de Trabajo, the railroad union and the Mexican Communist Party. Vicente Lombardo Toledano came from Mexico City to speak.
Together with grassroots unions organized by left-wing workers on the U.S. side, the groups cooperated in setting up the Asociacion de Jornaleros (the Agricultural Workers Union) in Laredo, Texas. In the following years, Mexican unions increased their organizing activity in Texas. The CTM held Conventions of Mexican Workers in Dallas in 1938, in San Antonio in 1940, and in Austin in 1941.
The program of these gatherings emphasized the fight for civil rights for Mexican Americans in the southwest. That battle goes on today in Arizona and other states. Other demands included stopping local authorities from dropping Mexicans from the relief rolls during times of high unemployment. Today immigrants, even with permanent residence visas, still can't get most kinds of Social Security and welfare benefits.
As the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) began to grow, Mexican unions and organizers cooperated in efforts to organize Mexican workers on the U.S. side. The CTM set up committees among Mexican workers in the southwest. After Lombardo Toledano and others established the Universidad Obrera in Mexico City, Mexicans living in the U.S. were sent for training. Emma Tenayuca, the young Communist who led the most famous strike of Mexican women of the time, the pecan strike in San Antonio, got her organizer training beforehand at the Universidad Obrera.
In U.S. copper mines 60% of the workers were Mexican or Mexican American. The Mine Mill and Smelter Workers Union, with roots in the Western Federation of Miners and the IWW, used border alliances to build union locals in mining towns. This was a logical and necessary step, since the same families worked in mines on both sides of the border. They shared a similar union history, in which the fight against the inferior Mexican wage as a central demand in both Mexican and U.S. mines, which belonged to the same companies.
On May Day in 1942 500 Mine Mill members marched with 10,000 Mexican workers in Ciudad Juarez. Humberto Silex, Mine Mill's leading organizer, established Local 509, which became the union's most important local. Silex addressed the rally. The following July 4, Toledano traveled from Mexico City to speak in El Paso's Independence Day celebration.
Solidarity went beyond speeches and conventions. CTM organizers coordinated with U.S. organizers during the first strikes by Mine Mill in El Paso, especially during the key battle to organize its giant smelter. In 1946 Mine Mill struck 14 ASARCO plants to gain national bargaining. The CTM donated money, and pledged to stop Mexicans from crossing the border to break the strike.
In Los Angeles, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union established Local 26 for southern California warehouse and light manufacturing workers. The union used Mexican organizers, including Jess Armenta and Bert Corona. Corona, a leftist born in Ciudad Juarez, became local president. Later Humberto Camacho, a Mexican organizer for the United Electrical Workers, helped establish UE Local 1421.
Corona and Camacho became the two most influential leaders of the immigrant rights movement through the 1970s, not just in Los Angeles, but nationally. Their labor and solidarity activity created a base for fighting for immigrant rights. That core of activists and their militant program called for defending the rights of undocumented workers. They made the modern immigrant rights movement possible.
Corona, Camacho, and their generation of solidarity and labor activists saw that unions in both countries had a common interest. Labor, they believed, should try to raise the standard of living in both countries, and stop the use of immigrants as a vulnerable labor supply for employers.
Immigration laws in the U.S. were constantly used against strikes by Mexican workers. From 1930 to 1935, 345,839 Mexicans were deported from the U.S. As the cold war started, deportations were used to try to break this cross-border movement. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (ICE's predecessor) arrested and tried to deport Humberto Silex. He became one of the most famous anti-deportation cases of the McCarthyite period.
Luisa Moreno, an organizer of garment workers in Los Angeles, was deported to Guatemala. Another political deportee of the cold war was Refugio Martinez, a leader of the United Packinghouse Workers in Chicago. Martinez helped build community organizations in Mexican barrios, including El Frente Popular Mexicano, the Toledano Club, and the Asociacion Nacional Mexicano Americano. Armando Davila, of the United Furniture Workers in L.A., was also deported. The government tried to deport Lucio Bernabe, a leader of the Food, Tobacco and Agricultural Workers who led organizing drives in San Jose canneries. His deportation was stopped. But Rosaura Revueltas, the Mexican movie actress, was deported after playing a role in Salt of the Earth, the movie written by blacklisted Hollywood screenwriters documenting the role of women in the strike by Mine Mill at the Empire Zinc mine.
Many of the deportations were fought by the Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born, a left-wing immigrant rights organization based in Los Angeles. The deportation wave marked the rise of cold war hysteria. They were not isolated, but part of the context of the repression of Mexican immigrants generally. In the 1950s, at the height of the cold war, the combination of enforcement and bracero contract labor reached a peak. In 1954 1,075,168 Mexicans were deported from the U.S. And from 1956 to 1959, between 432,491 and 445,197 braceros were brought in each year.
As a political weapon, deportations were part of a general wave of repression that included firings, and even prison for left-wing and labor activists. At the same time, the labor movements on both sides were purged of left-wing leaders. In the U.S., the CIO expelled nine unions, charged with being Communist. In Mexico, independent movements like that of the railroad workers were crushed, and its leaders, also accused of being Communists, were sent to prison.
As a result, the people who had organized the solidarity movement of the 1930s and 40s were fighting just for their survival. Unions that were its base, like the miners or farm workers, were attacked and in some cases destroyed. The labor movements in both countries became more nationalistic. In the U.S. a cold war labor leadership defended U.S. foreign policy goals, especially anti-communism. Anti-communism provided a common ground with the charro leadership of the CTM and other Mexican unions, who feared any independent movement challenging them from the left.
The American Institute for Free Labor Development, funded by the Central Intelligence Agency, had an office in Mexico City. But the office did not organize solidarity efforts to defend workers against U.S. corporations and the wars and interventions that supported them. Instead, U.S. labor/intelligence agents helped in the suppression, imprisonment and even murder of militant unionists throughout Latin America. When solidarity efforts began again years later, the distrust and suspicion engendered by that history took years to overcome, and in some areas still exists today.
Even during the worst times, however, there were still relationships among progressive activists and union locals. When miners went on strike in Cananea in the 1960s, a Mine Mill leader, Maclovio Barrajas, organized food and money for them from the U.S. side. When Mine Mill went on strike later, the Cananea miners reciprocated.
During the 60s, as the introduction of container technology transformed work on the waterfront, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) invited Mexican longshore workers to come work in the L.A. harbor and learn to drive the cranes. Today there are still retired members of the Federation of Stevedores in Mexican Pacific coast ports who remember that experience of worker-to-worker solidarity.
Corona and Camacho, and ILWU Local 26 and UE Local 1421, supported some of the first efforts in Tijuana to organize independent unions in the maquiladoras, as the industry started to mushroom. A critical strike at Solidev and Solitron in the late 1970s was supported both by Tijuana's left, including veteran Communist Blas Manriquez, and a network of activists on the U.S. side led by Camacho.
After the repression of the student movement in Tlatelolco in 1968, and especially in the years just before the Mexican Communist Party (PCM) became the Unified Socialist Party of Mexico (PSUM) and eventually the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), left-wing worker activists moved from Mexico City to Los Angeles to organize what had become a huge population of Mexican workers living there. Some became organizers for the UE, and eventually other unions as well, helping to spark the city's labor upsurge of the 1980s and 90s.
Corona helped build that same activist base through the Centro de Accion Social Autonoma (CASA). It single-mindedly fought for the rights for undocumented workers, urging workers to join unions, fighting to get unions to defend them, and organizing workers on its own when labor was unresponsive.
Today unions are often so busy just trying to survive that looking at the history of earlier solidarity efforts seems a luxury. But it is important to know that the movement for solidarity among workers and unions in the U.S. and Mexico didn't begin with NAFTA. Those earlier efforts are an important reservoir of experience. They show that solidarity is an integral and indispensable part of the history of the labor movement in both countries. Earlier worker activists and leaders have given unions today a rich, although little-known, store of knowledge of tactics, strategy, and above all, politics. They often paid heavily, so their contributions should not be lightly set aside or ignored.
One important conclusion of those earlier years is that solidarity has always been a two-way street. Mexican unions especially played a key role in the organization of US unions, some of which would not exist today without that early support, particularly in the southwest.
Those early efforts met success by concentrating on the key role of Mexican workers in the U.S. Today's circumstances are different, but the migration of people is just as important to solidarity today as it was eighty years ago.
Solidarity has always been a project of the left in each country. A strong left produced a base for developing common action. It popularized political ideas that helped workers understand that internationalism was necessary to confront transnational corporations and the governments and policies that supported them. Conversely, the cold war, nationalism, and anti-immigrant hysteria in the U.S., and repression on both sides of the border, were the tools used to break those bonds and proscribe those ideas. Today those threats are growing again. Ties between workers and unions in the U.S. and Mexico must grow stronger to defeat them.
David Bacon is a California writer and photojournalist. His latest book is Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants.
This is the first installment of a series on border solidarity by journalist and immigration activist David Bacon. This article and subsequent installments were originally published in the Institute for Transnational Social Change's report Building a Culture of Cross-Border Solidarity. The Institute for Transnational Social Change (ITSC) is a hub for cross-border collaboration among key worker-led organizations (independent unions, worker centers, NGOs, and academics) in Mexico and the United States. The institute seeks to address the needs of a low-wage workforce that is often hard-to-reach – migrant workers, women in the garment industry, farm workers, miners, and other workers in industries dominated by highly mobile transnational corporations — and to increase opportunities for cross-border collaboration. The present report is part of a series of publications sponsored by ITSC. For more information about the ITSC, contact Gaspar Rivera-Salgado at UCLA, grsalgado@irle.ucla.edu.
http://www.counterpunch.org/bacon05272011.html
Counterpunch Weekend Edition
May 27 - 29, 2011
In the period since the North American Free Trade Agreement has come into effect, the economies of the United States and Mexico have become more integrated than ever. Through Plan Merida and partnerships on security, the military and the drug war, the political and economic policies pursued by the U.S. and Mexican governments are more coordinated than they've ever been.
Working people on both sides of the border are not only affected by this integration. Workers and their unions in many ways are its object. These policies seek to maximize profits and push wages and benefits to the bottom, manage the flow of people displaced as a result, roll back rights and social benefits achieved over decades, and weaken working class movements in both countries.
All this makes cooperation and solidarity across the U.S./Mexico border more important than ever. After a quarter century in which the development of solidarity relationships was interrupted during the cold war, unions and workers are once again searching out their counterparts and finding effective and appropriate ways to support each other.
This paper is not a survey of all the efforts that have taken place, especially since the NAFTA debate restarted the solidarity process in the early 1990s. Instead, it seeks to set out some questions, and invite responses and contributions from people involved in this cross border movement. Among these questions are the following:
What is the history of cross-border solidarity? How can we discard the blinders forged by the cold war, and expand our vision of what is possible?
How is the political context changing on both sides of the border? Why is solidarity a necessary response to political and economic challenges?
One of our biggest advantages is the movement of people from Mexico to the U.S. and back. What part do migrants and the struggle for their rights play in solidarity between workers of both countries?
How can we develop new ways of reaching across the border?
* * *
The working class movements of the U.S. and Mexico both began in the decades after the seizure of Mexican territory in the War of 1848, its incorporation into the territory of the U.S., and the unequal relationship cemented by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
After the turn of the century, cross-border solidarity became an important political movement, as Mexicans began migrating to the U.S. as railroad workers, miners and farm laborers. The Flores Magon brothers, on the run from the regime of Porfirio Diaz, began organizing what became the uprising in Cananea and the Liberal Party in the communities of railroad workers in Los Angeles, St. Louis and elsewhere north of the border.
The two were active participants in the radical socialist and anarchist movements of the day, and were associated with the Industrial Workers of the World. After the Cananea rising, J. Edgar Hoover pursued them in his first campaign of organized anti-labor and anti-left repression. The brothers were caught, tried and sent to Leavenworth Federal Prison, where Ricardo died.
Today in Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, on the wall of the longshore union hall, hangs a banner dated 1906, declaring the union part of the Casa Obrera Mundial. The Casa Obrera Mundial was a Mexican group associated with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and the banner testifies to the links that existed between workers of the two countries at that time, and their internationalist outlook. Later, members of the IWW fought in the Mexican Revolution itself.
The roots of the cross-border solidarity movement are very deep, going back more than a century. They are part of the labor culture of workers and unions, and have been almost since the beginning of our two labor movements.
During the 1930s, strong cross border relationships developed between workers on both sides. In Mexico and the U.S., their challenge was the same – to organize the vast bulk of workers in the largest enterprises, especially the basic industries.
Through the presidency of Lazaro Cardenas, Mexican labor had a government that depended on a strong, albeit politically controlled, union movement. Communists and socialists organized the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), and began supporting the beginnings of labor movements in other countries through the Confederation of Workers of Latin America (CTAL), headed by Vicente Lombardo Toledano.
In the U.S., the New Deal was a product of the upsurge in labor organizing led by the left, and in turn it also created a favorable environment in which many industrial workers were able to organize.
From that period to the present, the relationships between workers in the U.S. and Mexico grew closer when the left was strong, both in terms of organized political parties, but also as a set of ideas that were supported by large numbers of workers. From the beginning, the strongest relationships have existed between industrial workers – miners, railroad workers, factory workers, farm workers, longshore workers and others.
During the period of the labor upsurge of the 1930s and 40s, most solidarity activity was organized by Mexican unions in support of workers in the U.S. In part, this was due to a point of view among those unions that saw Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, especially along the border, as part of their own constituency. They sought to protect and defend the interests of people they viewed as their own paisanos.
In 1937 5000 workers marched to the bridge in Laredo during an onion strike in the Rio Grande Valley. The major working class organizations of the border states were present – the Congreso de Trabajo, the railroad union and the Mexican Communist Party. Vicente Lombardo Toledano came from Mexico City to speak.
Together with grassroots unions organized by left-wing workers on the U.S. side, the groups cooperated in setting up the Asociacion de Jornaleros (the Agricultural Workers Union) in Laredo, Texas. In the following years, Mexican unions increased their organizing activity in Texas. The CTM held Conventions of Mexican Workers in Dallas in 1938, in San Antonio in 1940, and in Austin in 1941.
The program of these gatherings emphasized the fight for civil rights for Mexican Americans in the southwest. That battle goes on today in Arizona and other states. Other demands included stopping local authorities from dropping Mexicans from the relief rolls during times of high unemployment. Today immigrants, even with permanent residence visas, still can't get most kinds of Social Security and welfare benefits.
As the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) began to grow, Mexican unions and organizers cooperated in efforts to organize Mexican workers on the U.S. side. The CTM set up committees among Mexican workers in the southwest. After Lombardo Toledano and others established the Universidad Obrera in Mexico City, Mexicans living in the U.S. were sent for training. Emma Tenayuca, the young Communist who led the most famous strike of Mexican women of the time, the pecan strike in San Antonio, got her organizer training beforehand at the Universidad Obrera.
In U.S. copper mines 60% of the workers were Mexican or Mexican American. The Mine Mill and Smelter Workers Union, with roots in the Western Federation of Miners and the IWW, used border alliances to build union locals in mining towns. This was a logical and necessary step, since the same families worked in mines on both sides of the border. They shared a similar union history, in which the fight against the inferior Mexican wage as a central demand in both Mexican and U.S. mines, which belonged to the same companies.
On May Day in 1942 500 Mine Mill members marched with 10,000 Mexican workers in Ciudad Juarez. Humberto Silex, Mine Mill's leading organizer, established Local 509, which became the union's most important local. Silex addressed the rally. The following July 4, Toledano traveled from Mexico City to speak in El Paso's Independence Day celebration.
Solidarity went beyond speeches and conventions. CTM organizers coordinated with U.S. organizers during the first strikes by Mine Mill in El Paso, especially during the key battle to organize its giant smelter. In 1946 Mine Mill struck 14 ASARCO plants to gain national bargaining. The CTM donated money, and pledged to stop Mexicans from crossing the border to break the strike.
In Los Angeles, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union established Local 26 for southern California warehouse and light manufacturing workers. The union used Mexican organizers, including Jess Armenta and Bert Corona. Corona, a leftist born in Ciudad Juarez, became local president. Later Humberto Camacho, a Mexican organizer for the United Electrical Workers, helped establish UE Local 1421.
Corona and Camacho became the two most influential leaders of the immigrant rights movement through the 1970s, not just in Los Angeles, but nationally. Their labor and solidarity activity created a base for fighting for immigrant rights. That core of activists and their militant program called for defending the rights of undocumented workers. They made the modern immigrant rights movement possible.
Corona, Camacho, and their generation of solidarity and labor activists saw that unions in both countries had a common interest. Labor, they believed, should try to raise the standard of living in both countries, and stop the use of immigrants as a vulnerable labor supply for employers.
Immigration laws in the U.S. were constantly used against strikes by Mexican workers. From 1930 to 1935, 345,839 Mexicans were deported from the U.S. As the cold war started, deportations were used to try to break this cross-border movement. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (ICE's predecessor) arrested and tried to deport Humberto Silex. He became one of the most famous anti-deportation cases of the McCarthyite period.
Luisa Moreno, an organizer of garment workers in Los Angeles, was deported to Guatemala. Another political deportee of the cold war was Refugio Martinez, a leader of the United Packinghouse Workers in Chicago. Martinez helped build community organizations in Mexican barrios, including El Frente Popular Mexicano, the Toledano Club, and the Asociacion Nacional Mexicano Americano. Armando Davila, of the United Furniture Workers in L.A., was also deported. The government tried to deport Lucio Bernabe, a leader of the Food, Tobacco and Agricultural Workers who led organizing drives in San Jose canneries. His deportation was stopped. But Rosaura Revueltas, the Mexican movie actress, was deported after playing a role in Salt of the Earth, the movie written by blacklisted Hollywood screenwriters documenting the role of women in the strike by Mine Mill at the Empire Zinc mine.
Many of the deportations were fought by the Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born, a left-wing immigrant rights organization based in Los Angeles. The deportation wave marked the rise of cold war hysteria. They were not isolated, but part of the context of the repression of Mexican immigrants generally. In the 1950s, at the height of the cold war, the combination of enforcement and bracero contract labor reached a peak. In 1954 1,075,168 Mexicans were deported from the U.S. And from 1956 to 1959, between 432,491 and 445,197 braceros were brought in each year.
As a political weapon, deportations were part of a general wave of repression that included firings, and even prison for left-wing and labor activists. At the same time, the labor movements on both sides were purged of left-wing leaders. In the U.S., the CIO expelled nine unions, charged with being Communist. In Mexico, independent movements like that of the railroad workers were crushed, and its leaders, also accused of being Communists, were sent to prison.
As a result, the people who had organized the solidarity movement of the 1930s and 40s were fighting just for their survival. Unions that were its base, like the miners or farm workers, were attacked and in some cases destroyed. The labor movements in both countries became more nationalistic. In the U.S. a cold war labor leadership defended U.S. foreign policy goals, especially anti-communism. Anti-communism provided a common ground with the charro leadership of the CTM and other Mexican unions, who feared any independent movement challenging them from the left.
The American Institute for Free Labor Development, funded by the Central Intelligence Agency, had an office in Mexico City. But the office did not organize solidarity efforts to defend workers against U.S. corporations and the wars and interventions that supported them. Instead, U.S. labor/intelligence agents helped in the suppression, imprisonment and even murder of militant unionists throughout Latin America. When solidarity efforts began again years later, the distrust and suspicion engendered by that history took years to overcome, and in some areas still exists today.
Even during the worst times, however, there were still relationships among progressive activists and union locals. When miners went on strike in Cananea in the 1960s, a Mine Mill leader, Maclovio Barrajas, organized food and money for them from the U.S. side. When Mine Mill went on strike later, the Cananea miners reciprocated.
During the 60s, as the introduction of container technology transformed work on the waterfront, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) invited Mexican longshore workers to come work in the L.A. harbor and learn to drive the cranes. Today there are still retired members of the Federation of Stevedores in Mexican Pacific coast ports who remember that experience of worker-to-worker solidarity.
Corona and Camacho, and ILWU Local 26 and UE Local 1421, supported some of the first efforts in Tijuana to organize independent unions in the maquiladoras, as the industry started to mushroom. A critical strike at Solidev and Solitron in the late 1970s was supported both by Tijuana's left, including veteran Communist Blas Manriquez, and a network of activists on the U.S. side led by Camacho.
After the repression of the student movement in Tlatelolco in 1968, and especially in the years just before the Mexican Communist Party (PCM) became the Unified Socialist Party of Mexico (PSUM) and eventually the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), left-wing worker activists moved from Mexico City to Los Angeles to organize what had become a huge population of Mexican workers living there. Some became organizers for the UE, and eventually other unions as well, helping to spark the city's labor upsurge of the 1980s and 90s.
Corona helped build that same activist base through the Centro de Accion Social Autonoma (CASA). It single-mindedly fought for the rights for undocumented workers, urging workers to join unions, fighting to get unions to defend them, and organizing workers on its own when labor was unresponsive.
Today unions are often so busy just trying to survive that looking at the history of earlier solidarity efforts seems a luxury. But it is important to know that the movement for solidarity among workers and unions in the U.S. and Mexico didn't begin with NAFTA. Those earlier efforts are an important reservoir of experience. They show that solidarity is an integral and indispensable part of the history of the labor movement in both countries. Earlier worker activists and leaders have given unions today a rich, although little-known, store of knowledge of tactics, strategy, and above all, politics. They often paid heavily, so their contributions should not be lightly set aside or ignored.
One important conclusion of those earlier years is that solidarity has always been a two-way street. Mexican unions especially played a key role in the organization of US unions, some of which would not exist today without that early support, particularly in the southwest.
Those early efforts met success by concentrating on the key role of Mexican workers in the U.S. Today's circumstances are different, but the migration of people is just as important to solidarity today as it was eighty years ago.
Solidarity has always been a project of the left in each country. A strong left produced a base for developing common action. It popularized political ideas that helped workers understand that internationalism was necessary to confront transnational corporations and the governments and policies that supported them. Conversely, the cold war, nationalism, and anti-immigrant hysteria in the U.S., and repression on both sides of the border, were the tools used to break those bonds and proscribe those ideas. Today those threats are growing again. Ties between workers and unions in the U.S. and Mexico must grow stronger to defeat them.
David Bacon is a California writer and photojournalist. His latest book is Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants.
This is the first installment of a series on border solidarity by journalist and immigration activist David Bacon. This article and subsequent installments were originally published in the Institute for Transnational Social Change's report Building a Culture of Cross-Border Solidarity. The Institute for Transnational Social Change (ITSC) is a hub for cross-border collaboration among key worker-led organizations (independent unions, worker centers, NGOs, and academics) in Mexico and the United States. The institute seeks to address the needs of a low-wage workforce that is often hard-to-reach – migrant workers, women in the garment industry, farm workers, miners, and other workers in industries dominated by highly mobile transnational corporations — and to increase opportunities for cross-border collaboration. The present report is part of a series of publications sponsored by ITSC. For more information about the ITSC, contact Gaspar Rivera-Salgado at UCLA, grsalgado@irle.ucla.edu.
http://www.counterpunch.org/bacon05272011.html
Monday, May 23, 2011
Activists to Obama: Where’s the Executive Order for DREAMers?
by Asraa Mustufa
Colorlines
Monday, May 23 2011
While the DREAM Act was reintroduced earlier this month, advocates are pushing for President Obama to issue an executive order to halt deportations of youth that would be eligible for the bill until the act can be voted on and hopefully passed. The group Presente offers some perspective with their list for Top 6 Executive Orders in History. The list reminds us of instances when presidents have intervened during critical times of change or reform in our country. Many of the executive orders included were made to ensure compliance with the federal government on issues of civil rights.
President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Executive Order 11246 banned discrimination in federal employment.
Johnson’s executive order supplemented an earlier one by President John F. Kennedy, which affirmed equal opportunity in the government.
FDR’s creation of the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression provided millions of jobs through public works projects.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s order to dispatch federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas to ensure that nine black students could safely attend a desegregated school there.
The Emancipation Proclamation itself, which freed all slaves in states that had seceded.
Presente topped their list with the hope that Obama will halt deportations of DREAMers through an executive order. Obama has expressed strong verbal support for the DREAM Act, saying “It is not only the right thing to do for talent young people who seek to serve a country they know as their own, it is the right thing for the United States of America” and calling its failure in December “heartbreaking.” But he has not been forthright about his powers in preventing deportations, including those of youth eligible for the DREAM Act. Following the President’s speech on immigration reform earlier this month, Rinku Sen wrote for Colorlines, “Obama could take full advantage of the moment by making a range of decisions that don’t require congressional action… If he acknowledged that the bipartisan moment on this issue has largely passed us by, he might use his executive power to make regulatory and administrative changes that could, for example, ease family unification, or stop the deportations of DREAM Act eligible students, or prevent the deportations of parents of U.S. citizens.”
Twenty-two senators have also asked Obama to defer action for undocumented immigrant youth who would have qualified for the bill, outlining several options to deal with the thousands of eligible students whose futures are in limbo while the bill makes its rounds in Congress again. Presente is circulating a petition asking the President to stop deporting DREAMers.
http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/05/presente_top_executive_orders.html
Colorlines
Monday, May 23 2011
While the DREAM Act was reintroduced earlier this month, advocates are pushing for President Obama to issue an executive order to halt deportations of youth that would be eligible for the bill until the act can be voted on and hopefully passed. The group Presente offers some perspective with their list for Top 6 Executive Orders in History. The list reminds us of instances when presidents have intervened during critical times of change or reform in our country. Many of the executive orders included were made to ensure compliance with the federal government on issues of civil rights.
President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Executive Order 11246 banned discrimination in federal employment.
Johnson’s executive order supplemented an earlier one by President John F. Kennedy, which affirmed equal opportunity in the government.
FDR’s creation of the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression provided millions of jobs through public works projects.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s order to dispatch federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas to ensure that nine black students could safely attend a desegregated school there.
The Emancipation Proclamation itself, which freed all slaves in states that had seceded.
Presente topped their list with the hope that Obama will halt deportations of DREAMers through an executive order. Obama has expressed strong verbal support for the DREAM Act, saying “It is not only the right thing to do for talent young people who seek to serve a country they know as their own, it is the right thing for the United States of America” and calling its failure in December “heartbreaking.” But he has not been forthright about his powers in preventing deportations, including those of youth eligible for the DREAM Act. Following the President’s speech on immigration reform earlier this month, Rinku Sen wrote for Colorlines, “Obama could take full advantage of the moment by making a range of decisions that don’t require congressional action… If he acknowledged that the bipartisan moment on this issue has largely passed us by, he might use his executive power to make regulatory and administrative changes that could, for example, ease family unification, or stop the deportations of DREAM Act eligible students, or prevent the deportations of parents of U.S. citizens.”
Twenty-two senators have also asked Obama to defer action for undocumented immigrant youth who would have qualified for the bill, outlining several options to deal with the thousands of eligible students whose futures are in limbo while the bill makes its rounds in Congress again. Presente is circulating a petition asking the President to stop deporting DREAMers.
http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/05/presente_top_executive_orders.html
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
One Year After SB1070: Why Immigration Will Not Go Away
By Sylvia Manzano
Latino Decisions
May 10, 20111
One year after Arizona SB1070 was signed into law, immigration policy remains foremost on the minds of Latino voters. Results from the April 2011 impreMedia-Latino Decisions poll show Latino voters rank immigration the most important issue Congress and President Obama should address. Immigration has been rated a top issue by Latinos in February 2011, November 2010, May 2010, May 2009, and November 2008. It is important to note the many different subsets of the Latino electorate that view immigration as the most salient issue: U.S. and foreign born, low or high income, Republican, Democrat, and Independent, college educated or not. It would be a mistake to dismiss the extent to which the Latino electorate is vested in this issue.
Latino Decisions
May 10, 20111
One year after Arizona SB1070 was signed into law, immigration policy remains foremost on the minds of Latino voters. Results from the April 2011 impreMedia-Latino Decisions poll show Latino voters rank immigration the most important issue Congress and President Obama should address. Immigration has been rated a top issue by Latinos in February 2011, November 2010, May 2010, May 2009, and November 2008. It is important to note the many different subsets of the Latino electorate that view immigration as the most salient issue: U.S. and foreign born, low or high income, Republican, Democrat, and Independent, college educated or not. It would be a mistake to dismiss the extent to which the Latino electorate is vested in this issue.
Some may wonder why Latino priorities remain fixed, especially in light of the fact that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently struck down nearly all enforceable provisions in SB1070. Why won’t immigration go away? There are several reasons. First and foremost, immigration enforcement and state laws have escalated in the last year and Latinos absorb the brunt of these aggressive policies. Immigrant laws, particularly those dealing with enforcement, disproportionately impact Latinos, shaping experiences and perspectives in a very direct and personal manner . Online comment forums following news articles on any of these issues negate any doubt the public perceives these policies are first and foremost about Latinos. Mean-spirited political media (online, radio, television etc) can be turned off or ignored; detrimental and/or unfairly enforced policies cannot be ignored or easily dismissed.
Despite the fact that a federal court ruled against SB1070, legislatures in Georgia, Florida, Oklahoma and Utah passed legislation modeled after the unconstitutional Arizona law. In the last year 400,000 undocumented immigrants were deported and the DREAM Act famously failed when it went before Congress at the last moment. In less than three years time, the current administration has deported a record high 800,000 immigrants. Time and again Latino voters have expressed their firm support for the DREAM Act, opposition to SB1070 and strong opposition to mass deportation as a policy solution. Still, elected officials delivered the exact opposite on all of the above. Sometimes they deport college students that are DREAM advocates.
The vigorous enforcement of deportation policy has a palpable, direct, negative impact on daily life for millions of Latinos, not just unauthorized immigrants. Communities, families, businesses and schools absorb the impact when relatives, parents, customers, friends, and students are suddenly gone. Sin duda, se nota. Contrary to what some political operatives and media observers may wish to believe, Congressman Luis Gutierrez and Univision anchor Jorge Ramos did not manufacture heightened Latino passions around immigration. Latinos care deeply about deportations, SB1070 replicas, ICE raids and the failed DREAM act; these two public figures merely articulated the sentiments.
For millions of Latinos, immigration politics is a reality, not an abstraction observed in news stories. As President Obama found during his Univision Town Hall on Hispanic Education event, it is difficult to engage Latinos on other issues when immigration, and all that it implies, lingers in the political context. This is a sharp shift from prior generations with little demonstrable interest in the issue. Candidates and strategists relying on such out-dated trends, feeling confident they can win over the Latino electorate without addressing immigration because “Latino voters don’t care about immigration”, ignore the reality upon us today. In prior blog posts Latino Decisions has presented evidence showing the GOP has lost traction among Latinos because of immigration politics and diminished Latino enthusiasm for Democrats is also attributable to the issue.
In recent weeks the Obama Administration publicized a series of meetings they held with policymakers, celebrities and business leaders in an attempt to build a broad coalition supporting immigration reform. As the figure below illustrates, there is evidence that the majority of non-Latinos believe immigrants have a positive economic impact and support immigration reforms, including a pathway to citizenship and in-state tuition programs. Capitalizing on these sentiments, the official narrative around immigration reform policy seems to be shifting to emphasize non-Latino topics like education, high-tech labor, and economic contributions along with more non-Latino referents like Facebook and Microsoft. We do not know yet if a de-Latinized immigration public relations campaign will resonate with Latino voters (to the extent they are the target audience) or whether their enthusiasm will hinge on actual policy changes that the President has been clear to say are not coming any time soon.
Parties may have to get out the policy before they can get out the vote with measurable results. It could be the case that no amount of money spent on clever campaign ads and co-ethnic phone banking will compensate for the deportation of a family member(s), close friend(s) or prized student(s). Thus, 2012 GOTV efforts are already well underway. When Election Day arrives, we should expect Latinos will continue to respond to the reality of the political environment and flex their political muscle accordingly.
*Collaborative Multi-racial Political Study, 2008 (N=4,563)
Sylvia Manzano is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University and recently published the article, A New Measure of Group Influence in Presidential Elections: Assessing Latino Influence in 2008, in Political Research Quarterly.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Conn. senator, governor helped student stay in US
The Associated Press
May 2, 2011
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Two years into a fight to stay in the U.S., Mexican college student Mariano Cardoso learned of a victory last week — not from immigration authorities, but from a U.S. senator who had taken up his cause.
On a call to his cell phone, Sen. Richard Blumenthal delivered the news: Homeland Security officials had suspended Cardoso's deportation, allowing him to graduate next month and work in the United States.
"He told me we had a lot to celebrate, but I told him I had to go to class," Cardoso said. "I didn't know what he was talking about."
It was a culmination of the Democratic senator's deep personal involvement in the case. Advocates say the supporting role he played, along with that of Connecticut's Democratic governor, proved critical to winning a reprieve, but also highlights a fractured immigration policy in which decisions can turn on the influence of one's supporters.
The Obama administration is facing growing pressure from Democrats and Latino groups to protect illegal immigrants like Cardoso, 23, a community college student who has lived in the United States since his family took him here as a toddler. Legislation known as the Dream Act would give them a path to legal status as long as they enrolled in college or joined the military, but it has failed several times in Congress, most recently in December. The government does grant exemptions, but advocates say they are handed out erratically.
For Cardoso, the high-level connections resulted from a deliberate public relations strategy.
He had been targeted for deportation since August 2008, when immigration agents discovered his status after intervening in a gathering in his uncle's backyard. With his legal options dwindling, he reached out in February to a student immigrant organization, United We Dream, which coached him on seeking and handling publicity. The first step was a student-organized demonstration at Trinity College, though he said he was reluctant at first.
"I was afraid that agents were going to come out and take me again," Cardoso said.
A petition circulated on his behalf. Reporters began telling his story. Then he met in person with Blumenthal, who reached out to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Two weeks ago, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy asked the agency to let Cardoso stay and contribute to the only country he's ever known.
By all accounts, it was the politicians' involvement that made the difference.
"Fortunately you have an engaged member of Congress who was willing to stand up in this case, but what about others who don't have the same kind of access?" said Wendy Sefsaf, communications director for the nonprofit American Immigration Council in Washington. "That person is incredibly vulnerable."
In response to questions about apparent inconsistencies, an ICE spokesman said the agency has wide discretion and cases are handled on their merits.
"ICE takes extraordinary steps to ensure that humanitarian concerns and individual circumstances are given top priority among those who come before us as part of the administrative process," Chuck Jackson, a Boston-based spokesman, said in a statement.
Homeland Security officials have said their priority is to deport alien criminals, not college students. But critics say the government needs to do more to make sure that is reflected in its enforcement.
In an April 13 letter to President Barack Obama, 22 mostly Democratic senators asked him to suspend deportations for students who might have been eligible for legal status under the Dream Act — young people brought to the United States as children, who in many cases consider themselves American, speak English and have no ties to or family living in their native countries. If such blanket protection is not possible, the senators suggested streamlining the process for students to seek authorization to stay individually.
Blumenthal's office said it has not heard of a response to the letter. The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Gaby Pacheco, the United We Dream coordinator who coached Cardoso, said her organization also has been lobbying the administration for changes that she says will be critical to Obama's support among Hispanic voters.
"We've gotten to the point that giving a speech or calling for reform is not enough. He is going to have to deliver in order to satisfy the community," said Pacheco, whose group is working with about 17 other students like Cardoso who are facing deportation.
The opposition has come from Republicans and groups such as Americans for Legal Immigration, whose president, William Gheen, said Cardoso should not be taking a college seat that could be going to a student whose family did not break immigration laws.
While several other students in Cardoso's situation have gone public with their stories in hopes of staying, immigration law expert Michael A. Olivas said they could be jeopardizing parents or other relatives who are here illegally. In most cases, he said, their best strategy is to try to stay off the radar of immigration authorities and wait for a change in policy.
"If you have to a go to the press or you have to a get a member of Congress to save one of these kids ... then it's just very inefficient and dangerous and frankly undermining because if just gives more fuel to the nativists," said Olivas, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center.
Cardoso, of New Britain, Conn., said he is concerned for his father, who has helped pay his tuition with landscaping jobs. His younger brother and sister have citizenship because they were born in the United States.
He is due to graduate next month from Capital Community College in Hartford with a liberal arts degree, and he has begun exploring other degree programs since winning the yearlong, renewable stay from the government.
He initially thought he would become a civil engineer or a math teacher. In light of his successful campaign to stay, however, he has begun considering a career in communications.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j458s_6IMstMZVGj9KddQtr3rPtg?docId=217e1fb1f39d47ad974a1ba635c5dd90
May 2, 2011
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Two years into a fight to stay in the U.S., Mexican college student Mariano Cardoso learned of a victory last week — not from immigration authorities, but from a U.S. senator who had taken up his cause.
On a call to his cell phone, Sen. Richard Blumenthal delivered the news: Homeland Security officials had suspended Cardoso's deportation, allowing him to graduate next month and work in the United States.
"He told me we had a lot to celebrate, but I told him I had to go to class," Cardoso said. "I didn't know what he was talking about."
It was a culmination of the Democratic senator's deep personal involvement in the case. Advocates say the supporting role he played, along with that of Connecticut's Democratic governor, proved critical to winning a reprieve, but also highlights a fractured immigration policy in which decisions can turn on the influence of one's supporters.
The Obama administration is facing growing pressure from Democrats and Latino groups to protect illegal immigrants like Cardoso, 23, a community college student who has lived in the United States since his family took him here as a toddler. Legislation known as the Dream Act would give them a path to legal status as long as they enrolled in college or joined the military, but it has failed several times in Congress, most recently in December. The government does grant exemptions, but advocates say they are handed out erratically.
For Cardoso, the high-level connections resulted from a deliberate public relations strategy.
He had been targeted for deportation since August 2008, when immigration agents discovered his status after intervening in a gathering in his uncle's backyard. With his legal options dwindling, he reached out in February to a student immigrant organization, United We Dream, which coached him on seeking and handling publicity. The first step was a student-organized demonstration at Trinity College, though he said he was reluctant at first.
"I was afraid that agents were going to come out and take me again," Cardoso said.
A petition circulated on his behalf. Reporters began telling his story. Then he met in person with Blumenthal, who reached out to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Two weeks ago, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy asked the agency to let Cardoso stay and contribute to the only country he's ever known.
By all accounts, it was the politicians' involvement that made the difference.
"Fortunately you have an engaged member of Congress who was willing to stand up in this case, but what about others who don't have the same kind of access?" said Wendy Sefsaf, communications director for the nonprofit American Immigration Council in Washington. "That person is incredibly vulnerable."
In response to questions about apparent inconsistencies, an ICE spokesman said the agency has wide discretion and cases are handled on their merits.
"ICE takes extraordinary steps to ensure that humanitarian concerns and individual circumstances are given top priority among those who come before us as part of the administrative process," Chuck Jackson, a Boston-based spokesman, said in a statement.
Homeland Security officials have said their priority is to deport alien criminals, not college students. But critics say the government needs to do more to make sure that is reflected in its enforcement.
In an April 13 letter to President Barack Obama, 22 mostly Democratic senators asked him to suspend deportations for students who might have been eligible for legal status under the Dream Act — young people brought to the United States as children, who in many cases consider themselves American, speak English and have no ties to or family living in their native countries. If such blanket protection is not possible, the senators suggested streamlining the process for students to seek authorization to stay individually.
Blumenthal's office said it has not heard of a response to the letter. The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Gaby Pacheco, the United We Dream coordinator who coached Cardoso, said her organization also has been lobbying the administration for changes that she says will be critical to Obama's support among Hispanic voters.
"We've gotten to the point that giving a speech or calling for reform is not enough. He is going to have to deliver in order to satisfy the community," said Pacheco, whose group is working with about 17 other students like Cardoso who are facing deportation.
The opposition has come from Republicans and groups such as Americans for Legal Immigration, whose president, William Gheen, said Cardoso should not be taking a college seat that could be going to a student whose family did not break immigration laws.
While several other students in Cardoso's situation have gone public with their stories in hopes of staying, immigration law expert Michael A. Olivas said they could be jeopardizing parents or other relatives who are here illegally. In most cases, he said, their best strategy is to try to stay off the radar of immigration authorities and wait for a change in policy.
"If you have to a go to the press or you have to a get a member of Congress to save one of these kids ... then it's just very inefficient and dangerous and frankly undermining because if just gives more fuel to the nativists," said Olivas, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center.
Cardoso, of New Britain, Conn., said he is concerned for his father, who has helped pay his tuition with landscaping jobs. His younger brother and sister have citizenship because they were born in the United States.
He is due to graduate next month from Capital Community College in Hartford with a liberal arts degree, and he has begun exploring other degree programs since winning the yearlong, renewable stay from the government.
He initially thought he would become a civil engineer or a math teacher. In light of his successful campaign to stay, however, he has begun considering a career in communications.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j458s_6IMstMZVGj9KddQtr3rPtg?docId=217e1fb1f39d47ad974a1ba635c5dd90
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