(I've been meaning to write about this for some time. It's one of Obama's numerous "unforced errors" where there's no plausible way to blame Republicans for his continuation of hideous Republican policies. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
by Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger
For the past several months, the Obama administration has relentlessly professed its commitment to targeting only the most dangerous "criminal aliens." But a new report released this week by the Immigration Policy Center suggests that misguided Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) polices render the administration virtually powerless to fulfill its promise.
As Braden Goyette at Campus Progress reports, ICE's practice of outsourcing immigration enforcement to local police through the 287(g) and Secure Communities programs undermines the administration's stated priority of deporting "the worst of the worst." She writes:
By using these partnerships to increase its deportation figures, the federal government gives up control over front-line enforcement to local police, opening up the door to subjective judgment calls-essentially, all of the problems that plague everyday policing.
Law enforcement charged with enforcing immigration laws-particularly in areas where heavy enforcement is politically popular-routinely make discretionary arrests in direct defiance of the Obama administration's stated priorities. As a result, tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants have been deported because of minor crimes, such as traffic offenses.
A bigger issue, though, is that ICE's enforcement programs are fundamentally out of line with the Obama administration's avowed commitment to targeting criminals. The Secure Communities program, which requires local law enforcement agencies to share fingerprints with ICE, is a key example of this disconnect. The program routinely nets even the victims of violent crime. Secure Communities is expanding rapidly, despite its deviance from the agency's stated objective of pursuing criminals.
We are already well into September, the President is back in the White House, and Congress is in session. As we are re-engaging in the heated public discourse, it's important to know where public opinion stands today, and how it's shifted, if at all, in the past few months. Below is a rundown of important findings on health care reform and from a pioneering survey of immigrants in the US, which were released during the summer. The focus is primarily on data, which can inform advocates' communications, and strategy.
Vast majority of Americans support ensuring that all children are covered as part of health care reform, even if it increases their taxes. By a margin of 87%-11%, nearly 8-to-1, Americans favor ensuring all children have health care coverage, including by a 68%-28% margin even if it increases their taxes. By more than a 3-to-1 ratio (78%-21%), voters believe that it is extremely/very important that “all children in America are provided health care coverage as part of health reform.”
A 3-to-1 majority (62%-21%) of Americans would oppose the elimination of CHIP if they learned that the Health Insurance Exchange “may be more costly for families and provide fewer benefits for children.” By a 54-14% margin or almost 4-to-1, Americans would be less likely to vote for a candidate who supported a health care reform plan that reduced the level of health care coverage for children in such a manner.
National telephone survey (n=1000) conducted by Lake Research Partners for First Focus; Released on 8.13.09
The Wire will be brief this week, as I'm attending New America Media's Expo and Awards at the University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. I'll be speaking about New Media and accepting an award on the behalf of the Sanctuary group at ProMigrant.Org.
This week's immigration blog round-up covers a new report on low-wage Latino workers and some state immigration news.
A new Southern Poverty Law Center report finds that low-wage Latino workers in the South are "are cheated out of wages, subjected to inhumane conditions, subjected to wide-spread racial profiling and are regularly harassed by law enforcement." The report also found that:
-Eighty-eight percent of Georgia respondents believed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials targeted and treated Latinos differently, including immigrants of other backgrounds;
-41 percent of responders reported that they had personally experienced wage theft, meaning they had not been paid for work they completed; and
-Although only 44 percent of survey participants were women, 77 percent of them reported that sexual harassment was a major problem on the job.
Last weekend in Baltimore, a coalition of organizations and people of African descent come together to form the Black Immigration Network to address immigration and racial equity issues surrounding African Americans and immigrants of African descent. The convening included participants from the Center for New Community and the NAACP.
The Center for New Community has more on their initiative to address race and immigration here. They reject the notion that immigrants and African Americans compete for jobs and argue that proof of citizenship legislation disenfranchises African Americans.
Representative Michael Honda, Chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, has joined Rep. Luis Gutierrez on the Family Unity tour. Asians make up 12 percent of the undocumented population.
The Latino Coalition is working to ensure that Latino entrepreneurs secure their share of government small business contracts and procurement opportunities. They will be holding an Economic Summit in DC on May 6th.
For more from The Opportunity Agenda, visit our blog.
The Immigration Prof Blog points us to the just released report on "Immigrant Integration in Los Angeles: Strategic Directions for Funders". The report focuses on Los Angeles where "one third of our residents are immigrants, nearly half of our workforce is foreign-born, and two-thirds of those under 18 are the children of immigrants." The report explores potential avenues to immigrant integration that reflects "fundamental American values: opportunity in the case of economic mobility, democracy in the area of engagement, and openness reflected by host society attitudes and policies."
by Zach Carter, Media Consortium MediaWire blogger
UPDATE: Friday afternoon, President-Elect Barack Obama confirmed the nomination of Rep. Hilda (D-Calif) for Secretary of Labor.
President-elect Barack Obama named Rep. Hilda Solis, D-Calif., as the next administration's Secretary of Labor this morning. To put it simply, progressives are ecstatic about the pick.
Only a few election cycles ago, the trend in the Muslim American community (at least the 2/3rds of it that come from an immigrant background) was to vote Republican. The argument was that the combination of socially conservative personal values and free-market economic views (many immigrants came to the US as entrepreneurs) made Muslims and the GOP, at least in the eyes of the first generation immigrants, a natural fit. This movement culminated in the ill-conceived idea to create a Muslim "block vote" that would back George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election. About 80% of the Muslim electorate went with the prevailing logic, and nearly 50,000 of them cast their vote for Bush in Florida alone, arguably making our community responsible for many of the ills to befall it in the coming 8 years. (On behalf of my community, I apologize to America for this profound error in judgement.)
Given that profile, one might reasonably conclude that immigrant Muslims would be alienated and antagonistic toward unions. That's why this story today may be important:
Workers at the Tyson Foods poultry processing plant in Shelbyville will no longer have a paid day off on Labor Day but will instead be granted the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr.
According to a news release from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, a new 5-year contract at the plant included the change to accommodate Muslim workers at the plant.
Tyson's director of media relations Gary Mickelson said the contract includes eight paid holidays, the same number as the old contract.
Eid al-Fitr, which falls on Oct. 1 this year, marks the end of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting. Union leaders say implementing the holiday was important for the nearly 700 Muslims, many of them Somalis, who work at the plant that employs a total of 1,200 people.
Now pickup again with Amanullah, who goes on to explain that the Muslim community rapidly found a new political home:
Fast forward four years, and Muslim voters backpedaled considerably, voting nearly 90% with Bush's Democratic rival John Kerry and creating what is most likely the greatest demographic shift in US political history. This, of course, begs the questions - where will Muslim voter sensibilities eventually settle along the political spectrum?
Recoiling from conservative excesses won't be enough to make a coalition that lasts. Like all of the communities that vote majority progressive, Muslims must have affirmative reasons to identify as progressives if they are to build their permanent political home in our camp. Even among the entreprenuers, good works on behalf of Muslims by powerful players in progressive politics such as the Labor Movement will reinforce the coalition. Affinity for and identification with a strong labor movement can be one enduring reason (among many) for Muslims to continue voting progressive after the current conservative movement collapses and the memory of its excesses recedes.
I've written so much about injustice, lately, that I thought I would focus on something positive, for once. "Las Mujeres de La Patrona" are more than positive. They are humanity's hope. They stand up for all of us with their goodness.
As Central American migrants cling to rickety old trains with the hopes of making it North the are exploited by police, corrupt officials, and gang members. But a small town on the outskirts of Cordoba in the state of Veracruz, Mexico, offers a welcome respite. The Ladies of La Patrona, who have very little means, give all that they can to the migrants passing on the trains. Why? Just because it's right.
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