Recently in Nativism Category
Towards the end of an article is a nonsenical paragraph from Somashekhar that plays on the fears of nativists that unauthorized migrants are somehow purposely having babies in the U.S. to benefit themselves.
More troubling to some is that illegal immigrants often further root themselves in U.S. society by having American children, their plight often winning the sympathy of the public. In one widely publicized case in 2007, a Mexican woman barricaded herself and her 8-year-old son, who was a U.S. citizen, inside a Chicago church in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid deportation.Somashekhar contradicts herself in her own paragraph, here. She appeals to an anonymous "some" here to suggest that unauthorized migrants are rooting themselves in U.S. society through having "American children" and then cites the case of Elvira Arellano who was deported away to Mexico despite having a U.S. citizen child. How could Arellano have further "rooted" herself in the U.S. through a child when she was deported?Sandhya Somashekhar - Washington Post (8 August 2010)
It's just a small paragraph at the end of an article but it nonetheless legitimizes false fears that unauthorized migrants are coming to the U.S. specifically to have babies in order to benefit themselves. Anyone who is intellectually honest knows that this is not true.
A lot has happened as we complete the third week of the DREAM Now Series. The DREAM Act picked up two new co-sponsors in the U.S. House: Mike Thompson (D-CA-1) and Chellie Pingree (D-ME-1). Two extremely important and influential organizations have also come out strongly in support of passing the DREAM Act as a downpayment on comprehensive immigration reform: the Center for American Progress and the AFL-CIO. Finally, a major victory was won in Arizona where the deportation of Marlen Moreno was deferred. Please express support for the above in anyway possible. It has all helped build a lot of momentum for passing the DREAM Act, this year.
Just was we have been busy moving the DREAM Act forward, though, nativists have been busy undermining it.
During the 2008 Presidential campaign Barack Obama promised us he would make comprehensive immigration reform a "top priority" in his first year as President:
Well, I don't know about you, but I think it's time for a President who won't walk away from something as important as comprehensive reform when it becomes politically unpopular. And that's the commitment I'm making to you. I marched with you in the streets of Chicago. I fought with you in the Senate for comprehensive immigration reform. And I will make it a top priority in my first year as President. Not just because we need to secure our borders and get control of who comes into our country. And not just because we have to crack down on employers abusing undocumented immigrants. But because we have to finally bring those 12 million people out of the shadows.After hearing promises like that, pro-migrant voters, specifically Latino voters, turned out for Obama in record numbers and helped get him elected.Barack Obama - Citizen Orange (13 July 2008)
It's been two years since Obama made those promises to us. Not only has policy failed to change under the Obama administration, but the war on migrants has actually gotten worse. Barack Obama promised to make immigration a "top priority" in his first year as President. Now, a year and a half into his Presidency, all we have is a speech.
Obama pro-migrant Fail: President George W. Bush's second term began with 246,000 deportations a year. Under Obama, the number is closer to 400,000.
Obama honesty Fail: "I think it's time for a President who won't walk away from something as important as comprehensive reform when it becomes politically unpopular."
DHS use of tax dollars Fail: Boston CBP official employs undocumented housekeeper, neighbor rats her out, DHS puts a wire on the housekeeper and records official telling her "You can't leave. Don't leave . . . 'Cause once you leave, you will never come back,'' official gets felony conviction for "encouraging or enticing" housekeeper to stay in U.S.
Dream Act Win: AFL-CIO, USSA, NEA, AFT, MALDEF sponsor press conference in support of the Dream Act.
Pass the Dream Act. Pass it now!
Tomorrow, Harvard Law School's Latino Law and Policy Conference will hold a panel on "The Future of Immigration Reform" that will address the role of guest worker programs. Listed as one of the speakers is Mark Krikorian, head of Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigrant group with strong ties to hate groups.
Krikorian is an odd choice for as respected an institution as HLS. The group he heads was established by the racist founder of the modern nativist movement, John Tanton, who has worried about the "educability" of Latinos. "I've come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that," Tanton wrote in 1993.
Since I work as an immigration attorney at a nonprofit, it is only natural that ICE is not my favorite government agency. Regular readers of the blog probably know that by now. If I worked at the Public Defender's Office, I would regularly (as opposed to occasionally) blog about the perfidy of the Assistant District Attorneys. If I were a cop, I would blog about those weaselly public defenders or the DFHs at the ACLU.
But once in a while I read a story about ICE that surprises me, and I'd like to think I've developed a thick skin about these things over the last few years.
Helen O'Neill writes for the AP about a brother and sister who became confidential informants (CIs) for ICE. Emilio and Analia Maya were introduced to ICE by a friend of Analia's, a police officer named Sydney Mills.
According to Mills, the deal was straightforward: In exchange for working as informants, ICE would help the brother and sister get coveted S visas, which, in rare instances, are awarded to immigrants who help law enforcement.
After working for ICE without pay from 2005 to 2009, sometimes in dangerous undercover situations, ICE turned on the Mayas, arresting and detaining Emilio and putting both siblings into removal proceedings. Officer Mills doesn't know what to make of this:
A 10-year veteran of the police department, Mills had long worked undercover narcotics operations, sometimes with the FBI. He knows how deals are stuck with informants. And though he had never dealt with ICE before, "I assumed it was just another law enforcement agency and the rules would be the same."The golden rule: "You protect your sources, and you never renege on a deal."
At first, I concluded from this story that ICE is just not very good at law enforcement. ICE's stated mission is to "protect the security of the American people and homeland by vigilantly enforcing the nation's immigration and customs laws." Wouldn't that goal be better served by cultivating trustworthy CIs to help ICE target violent offenders, human traffickers, and transnational crime syndicates?
Then I remembered what I've learned from my daily experience dealing with ICE and the immigration bureaucracy: preventing crime is hard, deporting the nearest undocumented gardener, cook, or nanny is easy. When politicians and the press give DHS a free pass, the stated goal of protecting the security of the American people often takes a back seat to the unstated goal of deporting as many brown people as possible.
ICE spokespersons talk up its Criminal Alien Program and Fugitive Operations teams, but don't mention the fact that 73% of people apprehended by the Fugitive Ops teams in recent years had no criminal records, or that the Criminal Alien Program targets people after an arrest, not a conviction, leading to racial profiling by local police who know an arrest on any pretext may lead to deportation.
ICE's shameful treatment of its CIs sends a clear message about its true priorities: Deport the easiest targets first, then combat crime if we get around to it. That's not something I'm happy about supporting with my earnings this tax season, and I won't be voting this fall for any politician who shovels money at ICE's "law enforcement" operations without asking what the agency is doing with it.
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Dear Mr. Santa Claus,
This is an open letter from William Gheen, president of the Americans for Legal Immigration Political Action Committee, Jim Gilchrist founder of The Minuteman Project, Peter Brimelow, founder of VDARE, Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Pat Buchanan, the members of the House Immigration Reform Caucus, and most Republicans, along with some Democrats, in the U.S. Senate.
We have just received word from the North Pole that you have been delivering presents to the United States all of these years without adhering to the proper legal immigration procedures. We ask you, Mr. Claus, the same question we ask of all illegal aliens in America, "What part of ILLEGAL don't you understand?" We ask that you cease and desist delivering presents to Americans this very Christmas Eve, or we will be forced to report you to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. You are infringing upon America's sovereignty and encouraging law-breaking by flouting a complex immigration system that few people understand.
It does not matter to us that there is, in actuality, no legal way for anyone to migrate to America from the North Pole. There is no way for most illegal aliens to migrate to America. That is the way we like it and we call any attempt to change it: AMNESTY. Yes, we enjoy writing both the words, AMNESTY, and ILLEGAL, in capital letters. They make more sense when we write them that way. We also believe it is important to tell you on this Christian holiday, Mr. Claus, that we do not believe in the Christian values of forgiveness, compassion, and mercy.
More importantly, though, drop us a line at Citizen Orange if you're interested in getting more involved in migrant rights, or subscribe to the Citizen Orange feed to stay connected to the online pro-migrant movement.
Andrea Nill over at Think Progress' Wonk Room picked up one of the most entertaining developments in the U.S. migration policy debate that I've had the pleasure of coming across in some time. Chuck Norris is pro-migrant!
Just in case you haven't been on the planet Earth in the last five years, Chuck Norris has become an Internet phenomenon for satirical "facts" invoking his name. Chuck Norris himself seems to have an ambivalent relationship with these "facts", but there is one new "fact" Chuck Norris might be proud to claim. Taking Rachel LaBruyere's lead at the Standing FIRM Blog, here is a new "Chuck Norris fact": Chuck Norris can fix the broken U.S. migration system in 1 minute on Fox News.
This new "Chuck Norris fact" got me thinking. What kind of Chuck Norris facts could folks come up with in the U.S. migration policy debate? Even better, what if Chuck Norris were a migrant? Here's what I came up with.
It's almost as though this strain of conservatism doesn't want to see any nonwhites in the GOP, or anyone who thinks racism has no place in political discourse.
We're two months away from a new decade (the "teens") and people are still saying this crap? And believing it?
I hope that these people are not the reason Schumer and Obama keep delaying introduction of immigration legislation, or the reason Janet Napolitano keeps locking up Dream Act-eligible students and splitting up families. Because no one should be taking these racists seriously.
Nearly one year ago, on November 8, 2008, Long Island resident Marcelo Lucero was beaten and stabbed to death by a group of local teens who had decided to go "beaner hopping." They had already assaulted other Latinos earlier that day. The group appears to me to have viewed racial attacks as a way to stave off boredom, regularly going after those they viewed as the most vulnerable and despised in their community: Latino immigrants.
Long Island Wins is sponsoring a campaign to remember Marcelo. Remembering Marcelo's life and his death is important to me because there have been too many racial attacks in Philadelphia as well. Some incidents date back years, like the attack against Julio Maldonado and Denis Calderon in 1996, where law enforcement sided with the persecutors instead of the victims. Immigrants are still being attacked today in our community, and for the same reasons that Marcelo was killed: they are viewed as enemies or threats by many in the community and also seen as easy targets. Local law enforcement here facilitates those kinds of crimes by targeting immigrants themselves, usually for minor traffic violations, and turning them over to ICE, ensuring that immigrant victims of crimes will be less willing to call the police for protection. This problem is not limited to Philly--Luis Ramirez was killed in Pottsville, PA, just months before Marcelo's death.
Long Island Wins and Marcelo's family have very effectively pushed back against the hate in their community, and I hope that other communities around the country can follow their example.
And as Ted Hesson of Long Island Wins pointed out, Congress could do a lot to solve the problem of hate crimes by passing immigration reform to bring people out of the shadows and into the scope of the protections that others in the community enjoy. Right now, too many people are invisible to all but those who wish them harm.
