If you’ve watched a news show, listened to the radio, picked up a newspaper or even just watched The Daily Show this week, you know that Wall Street is in trouble. Years of irresponsible speculation and reckless lending policies–including the targeting of subprime mortgages in America’s most vulnerable communities–have contributed to the threat of bankruptcy of some of the biggest names in banking and insurance. Bear Sterns. Fannie Mae. Freddie Mac. Lehman Brothers. Merrill Lynch. AIG. You may not have heard of all of them before, but chances are that you’ve heard of one of them, and the chances are even bigger that they have, somewhere along the road, been involved in your own financial situation, whether it is as an investor in the bank that lent you your mortgage or as the manager of your 401(k) or pension. Long story short, this is really big news with potentially huge impacts on every sector of American life and the economy. And as big news, the reporters are covering it, just as they’re also covering the fact that the Federal Reserve, an independent government agency entrusted with managing America’s monetary policy (mainly through deciding interest rates), has bailed out a few of these large investment banks to the tune of over $300 billion.
I’m no economist, but the economists who are talking about these bailouts right now generally appear to believe that they are necessary. The fabric of the American economy is so interwoven that we cannot simply allow major segments of our community to fail without repercussions for the rest of us. Undoubtedly, there should be reprecussions for bad behavior, and the current critiques of the lack of accountability for these banks and their managers are very persuasive. Just as America cannot succeed without broad support of the common good, it cannot succeed without accountability, transparency, or justice. Responsibility in America cannot just be to ourselves (or our stockholders), it must be to each other as well.
Of course, this interconnectedness isn’t only true for large investment banks; this is true for all of us, from the largest to the smallest. That’s why it’s disappointing to see that as the Federal Reserve takes action to keep our financial sector in one piece, our elected official in Congress and the Administration are not providing parallel support to American families and children. Apparently frozen until next year is consideration of expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provides access to health care for about 7 million children. One of the most successful government programs, the Children’s Health Insurance Program has reduced the number of uninsured children by around 3 million, and, as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, is credited for helping with the reduction of the number and percentage of uninsured from 2006 to 2007. Similarly, we’ve yet to see a federal response to the
So my question is, what’s AIG got that your child doesn’t? True, this isn’t exactly comparing apples to apples; the Federal Reserve’s independence allows it to act in ways that are more difficult for Congress and the Administration. Nonetheless, the social contract of America which has made this country strong is one of mutual security, the guarantee that our elected officials will work to insure our ability to provide for the health, food, education and other basic needs of our families, neighborhoods, and communities. Almost a century ago, when financial crisis also created hardship for Americans across the country, the government responded not with bailouts, but with a program of hope and support, a set of policies that did not seek to provide for American’s basic needs, but rather to assist us all, as families and as a national community, to get back on our feet. Legacies of those policies live on today, responding to high fuel prices with the Low Income Home Energy Assistance program and to skyrocketing food prices with the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program for mothers and their children, the Commodity Supplemental Food Program for senior citizens, and the Emergency Food Assistance Program that supports food banks. At only a fraction of the cost of the recent investment bank bailouts, there is an opportunity for our elected representatives to not only guarantee and uphold the core American value of economic and community security, but to help stimulate the economy as well.
A year and a half ago, The Opportunity Agenda embarked on an ambitious effort to elevate social justice values, problems, and solutions in the 2008 presidential election cycle. In particular, we sought to make two crucial ideals, Opportunity and Community, front and center in public and political discourse around the campaign. Opportunity is the idea that everyone should have a fair chance to achieve his or her full potential; it is an idea inextricably linked with the American Dream. Community is the notion that we share a sense of responsibility for each other; that we’re all in it together and strongest when we leave no one behind. Community values are the essence of our national motto, e pluribus unum, “from many, one.”
The Opportunity Agenda has promoted those values across social issues, from education to living wages to the integration of immigrants to health care to family farming, identifying the practical solutions that uphold our core ideals. We have worked in collaboration with hundreds of social justice leaders, organizations, and everyday folks, and in a particularly strong partnership with the Center for Community Change and its network around community values.
Our effort has included research on American values, public opinion, framing, and media discourse; communications tools and training for hundreds of advocates, organizers, faith, and political leaders around the country; outreach to mainstream and ethnic media; new media advocacy, from blogs to YouTube, to MySpace and Facebook; and message support to the Heartland Presidential Forum: Community Values in Action, co-sponsored by the Center for Community Change in Des Moines, Iowa, ahead of the caucuses.
Our effort is strictly non-partisan and does not embrace any candidate or either party. We believe that a long-term campaign to move hearts, minds, and policy must cross partisan boundaries.
As the Democratic National Convention came to a close, we were able to see real progress in moving the political discourse. Opportunity and Community were very much “in the house” at the Democratic convention. Indeed, the theme of the convention-renewing America’s promise-had deep roots in the narratives of Opportunity and Community. We’ll be analyzing the Republican convention shortly.
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The New York times ran a story on economic inequalities in access to treatment for obese children, of which there are nine million in the United States. While this figure has tripled since 1980, there is a dearth of comprehensive, effective, or affordable programs to address the issue. Summer weight loss programs are generally costly (some cost over $1,000 a week) as most seek to turn a profit. Furthermore, most insurance providers do not cover this cost. Dr. Walter J. Pories, a gastric bypass surgeon, calls the lack of insurance and government financing for such programs "the single most frustrating problem in dealing with childhood obesity."
The Kaiser Health Disparities Report included three interesting developments:
The TriCaucus, comprised of the Congressional Asian Pacific American caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, sent House Speaker Pelosi a letter urging the inclusion of two provisions in the SCHIP reauthorization bill to improve health care access for immigrant children: one eliminating a five-year waiting period for documented immigrants to receive government benefits and another eliminating proof of citizenship as a requirement to receive these benefits. According to the TriCaucus, the proof of citizenship requirement has led to hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens to be denied coverage because parents could not find the required documentation. The TriCaucus wrote to Pelosi, "We urge you to include provisions in this bill which address the needs of children in communities of color and respectfully request a meeting with you to discuss this critical issue."
A study released last Wednesday by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation reported that 27% of Hispanic adults in the U.S. do not have regular health care providers, although many spoke English and 45% had health insurance. Hispanic men, younger adults, and those with little education or without health insurance were found most likely to not have regular health care providers, as reported in the Newark Star-Ledger. 41% of Hispanic adults without regular providers identified "seldom [being] sick" as the primary reason. Given that Hispanic adults actually have disproportionate rates of diabetes and obesity, this presents a unique challenge to providing Hispanics with access to health care that demands real solutions. The authors of the article wrote that the results of the study indicate a "need for providers to encourage Hispanic adults to seek routine health care."
According to a recent study published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention and reported in Reuters Health, members of minority groups who have felt discriminated against by their health care providers are less likely to be screened for breast or colon cancers. Of the 11,245 black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American adults aged 40-75 surveyed, 9% of women and 6% of men said they experienced discrimination from their health care providers in the last 5 years. These women were approximately half as likely to have had a mammogram and only two-thirds as likely to have a colorectal cancer screening. Men who had perceived discrimination were 70% less likely to have had a colorectal cancer screening.
Congress has passed a few bills targeting immigration: E-Verify, a voluntary government program for employers to verify whether or not employees are legally able to work, was re-authorized by the House for only five years. This suggests that the House feels E-Verify may be a flawed system. The House Immigration Subcommittee passed a bill recapturing employment and family-based immigrant visas that had not been allocated under existing ceilings due to bureaucratic inefficiencies. It also passed a bill that could make it easier for military personnel and their families to be naturalized.
ICE conducted its latest raids in Lowell, MA in the form of home arrests with warrants. Targets were green card holders with criminal records. Sweeps have been going on throughout the country under various types of programs, such as Operation Community Shield and Fugitive operations teams.
The Center for Immigration Studies, "an independent research institute which examines the impact of immigration on the United States," published a report documenting the impact of immigration on global CO2 emissions. The report is titled "Immigration to the United States and World-Wide Greenhouse Gas Emissions." According to the study, immigration to the US significantly increases global CO2 emissions in that immigrants move from a lower-polluting region of the world to a higher-polluting country. While the estimated CO2 emissions of the average immigrant are 18% lower than those of native-born Americans, their emissions are estimated to be four times what they would be in their home countries.
The New York Times published a story responding to the release of the legal blueprint in the Postville hearings. The blueprint, made available online by the ACLU, is a 117 page compilation of scripts that laid out step by step how the hearings should proceed. While these documents were not binding and were framed as providing assistance to defense lawyers, many critics argue that the scripts indicate that the court endorsed the prosecutors’ push to secure guilty pleas before the hearings even began. The scripts went so far as to include a sample statement the judge could make after accepting a guilty plea. According to Lucas Guttentag, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project of the A.C.L.U, "this was the Postville prosecution guilty-plea machine. The entire process seemed to presume and be designed for fast-track guilty pleas."
The Times also covered the story of Hiu Lui Ng, a 34 year old immigrant who died in US custody after being systematically denied medical care in the previous months. Mr. Ng had overstayed a visa years earlier and had been sent a letter ordering him to appear in court. This letter was mistakenly sent to a nonexistent address and due to his inevitable failure to appear in court, ICE arrested him last summer when he went to immigration headquarters in Manhattan to apply for a green card. Since then he has been held in various jails in three New England states. In April Mr. Ng began to complain of debilitating back pain, however these complaints were written off as "faking it" and it was not until a judge order he be taken to the hospital in early August that he received medical attention. This exam revealed that his spine was fractured and he had terminal cancer that had been undiagnosed and untreated for months. He died in the custody of ICE five days after arriving at the hospital. Mr. Ng’s case is not isolated, it is situated in a series of cases that have "drawn Congressional scrutiny to complaints of inadequate medical care, human rights violations, and a lack of oversight in immigration detention." Mr. Ng’s case and others call for real solutions to a very real problem. Presently before the House Judiciary Committee is legislation to set mandatory standards for care in immigartion detention.
This past week, two Kaiser Health Disparities Reports documented the effects of language and cultural barriers on medical outreach and diagnosis. The first report, on HIV/AIDS in the Texas Hispanic community, referenced a Dallas Morning News story which documented that HIV is being detected later in Texas Hispanics than in other ethnic groups. This increases the risk of spreading the virus and decreases possibilities for treatment. While 24% of the state’s HIV-positive blacks and whites are diagnosed with AIDS within a month of testing positive for HIV, this number is 8% higher for Hispanics. Language barriers, limited access to health care, legal issues, and cultural differences are noted among the challenges at the root of this disparity. The second report points to language and cultural barriers as a reason many elderly Hispanics with Alzheimer’s disease remain undiagnosed and untreated. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, an estimated 200,000 Hispanics in the U.S have the disease, a figure expected to grow to 1.3 million by 2050. Experts point to a perception in the Hispanic community that symptoms of Alzheimer’s are normal signs of aging, as well as a lack of health insurance and access to care as important factors in late diagnosis of the disease in Hispanics. Solutions include earlier screening, improved access, and "targeted awareness and treatment efforts."
The Health Care Blog reports that Howard County, Maryland will launch the "most ambitious local effort at universal coverage" since San Francisco in April 2007. The plan, known as the Healthy Howard Plan, will offer primary, specialty, and hospital care as well as prescription drugs to 2,200 of the county’s 20,000 uninsured residents beginning next month, all for $85 or less a month. According to its designers, Healthy Howard is "built on the philosophy that health care is a right and a responsibility." This language of a human right to healthcare is echoed in the Opportunity Agenda’s policy brief, Healthcare, Opportunity and Human Rights at Home. Each enrollee will have to complete a health assessment and work with an assigned health coach to reach specified goals. While the financing for the program, much of which comes from charity care from the local hospital, is not sustainable, the program will offer unprecedented insight into what does and doesn’t work, valuable information for future health reformers. An initial evaluation of the program will be available within 6 months to a year.
An opinion piece in The New York Times evaluated the probability of universal health care reform in the upcoming years. It listed three hurdles to reform: the swing of political power in the upcoming election, the public’s fear of change, and a loss of focus on the health care given such issues as a weak economy and foreign policy crises in the spotlight.
The Washington Post reported that health care costs are expected to rise 10% in 2009. Despite being the smallest increase in six years, the increase will make quality health care even more difficult to access. Particularly hard hit will be poor communities in the U.S. already struggling to pay steep premiums.
Our friends at the American News Project have posted a video on the usage of tax shelters by the super-rich. “Super-Rich Tax Cheats” shines a spotlight on the $1.5 trillion currently estimated to be hidden off-shore from the IRS by the very wealthiest of Americans.
Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) estimates the resulting lost tax revenue at approximately $100 billion. The video puts this number into context by showing what the government spends on other programs. This is more than the federal government spends on education and training ($89.9 billion). It’s triple what is spent on the environment and natural resources ($33.1 billion) and almost five times more than what we spend on temporary assistance for needy families, or TANF ($20.9). Besides looking simply at people clearly breaking the law, the video also has a short segment with Warren Buffet, one of the world’s wealthiest men, arguing for tax fairness. This is key if our nation is to be stronger and we are to truly come together as a community.
• An article titled “Immigrants Facing Deportation by U.S. Hospitals” appeared in the magazine section of The New York Times on Sunday. By telling the story of Luis Alberto Jiménez, it documents the disastrous consequences that are the result of inherent failures in the American immigration and health care systems. Below is an excerpt from the article:
Many American hospitals are taking it upon themselves to repatriate seriously injured or ill immigrants because they cannot find nursing homes willing to accept them without insurance. Medicaid does not cover long-term care for illegal immigrants, or for newly arrived legal immigrants, creating a quandary for hospitals, which are obligated by federal regulation to arrange post-hospital care for patients who need it.
American immigration authorities play no role in these private repatriations, carried out by ambulance, air ambulance and commercial plane. Most hospitals say that they do not conduct cross-border transfers until patients are medically stable and that they arrange to deliver them into a physician’s care in their homeland. But the hospitals are operating in a void, without governmental assistance or oversight, leaving ample room for legal and ethical transgressions on both sides of the border.
• Various ICE policies have been scrutinized in a number of news articles this week. A DMI Blog posting discusses the ICE policy of neglecting to inform local police of its decision to conduct a raid in an area. This ICE policy is carried out completely inconsistently – sometimes ICE notifies local law enforcement, sometimes it does not. ICE conducted its recent raid in Sante Fe, New Mexico (where it took 30 undocumented immigrants into custody) without notifying Sante Fe Mayor Cross beforehand. According to the posting, Cross was completely opposed to the raid. He said:
“We know what the right thing to do is. We have political leadership that wants to keep us from doing [the right thing] because the division works for them. But it doesn’t work for us. And most people know that.”
ICE’s notification policy is not its only inconsistent policy. According to the Associated Press, ICE’s distribution of border patrol agents is a completely political process. The article says that many people have suggested that ICE rewards friendly Congressmen with more border patrol agents in their district:
The 60-mile San Diego sector is at the southern end of a county with roughly 3 million people…
But the sector is already heavily reinforced: Two-thirds of the border is blocked by fences or vehicle barriers. The most populous part of the boundary has nearly 10 miles of double-layer fences with stadium lights…
San Diego is represented by Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican who has been among the most outspoken proponents of increased border security and fences.
The Huffington Post has also criticized ICE for supporting the discredited Center for Immigration Studies report that says border patrol has been the main reason immigration to the U.S. has fallen. Many researchers have shown that the failing economy is the main reason immigration has been decreasing:
The US needs a practical, fair, and reasonable solution to immigration that includes smart enforcement measures. Political theater and gimmicks won’t constrict the supply or demand for immigrant labor.
In addition, The Sanctuary is reporting that the ACLU has obtained a copy of the manual that the government distributes to attorneys who defend those who are arrested in immigration raids:
The manual contains prepackaged scripts for plea and sentencing hearings as well as documents providing for guilty pleas and waivers of rights to be used by both the judges and attorneys in expediting procedures as quickly as possible with little regard for due process.
• Postville update: Standing FIRM has linked to a Chicago Tribune story on the allegations of child labor law violations at the Agriprocessors plant. The government has finally begun cracking down on the company for the horrific abuse of its employees:
State officials say the types of child labor violations at the plant included minors working in prohibited occupations, exceeding allowable hours for youth to work, failure to obtain work permits, exposure to hazardous chemicals and working with prohibited tools.
• The National Center for Lesbian Rights has become involved in a case involving a gay HIV-positive Pakistani man who is seeking asylum in the U.S. on the grounds that he will be persecuted if he returns to his country of origin. The Center filed an amicus brief in support of the plaintiff to the Board of Immigration Appeals:
Under Pakistani law, being gay is punishable by death and LGBT people are forced to live in secrecy and constant fear of exposure. The Immigration Judge ignored the serious risk of persecution that S.K. faces and denied his application for asylum.
• ABC News has called attention to a recently released report on the human rights abuses that immigrants are subject to at detention centers run by private companies. The report, conducted by the human rights group OneAmerica and the Seattle University School of Law, concludes that people held at these detention facilities, specifically one that GEO Group, Inc. runs, are routinely harassed, verbally and physically abused and subjected to poor to non-existent health care.
This is not the first time GEO has been accused of violating the rights of inmates in its care. In 2000, when the company was known as Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, the U.S. Department of Justice sued them over “excessive abuse and neglect” of inmates at the Jena Juvenile Justice Center in Jena, Louisiana.
The public recently witnessed the lack of basic care that people are subjected to at Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn, New York. A woman was left for dead in the middle of the hospital’s psychiatric ward waiting room as staff did nothing but walk away. The evidence in the New York Civil Liberties Union’s lawsuit against the city proved that this was not an isolated incident (it just happened to be one of the only ones caught on tape). Unfortunately, New York City’s government is not learning from this catastrophe and taking sufficient steps forward to examine their hospitals – Women’s eNews is reporting that the city is refusing to participate in a state review of maternal deaths and racial disparities, despite the fact that New York City has the highest number of maternal deaths and one of the largest populations of African-American patients in the country.
The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (the same agency that is named in the NYCLU lawsuit as the agency that is responsible for the negligence at Kings County Hospital Center), has refused to participate in the review the Safe Motherhood Initiative is conducting. Pamela McDonnell, a spokesperson for Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) said:
We chose not to participate in the Safe Motherhood Initiative simply because we already participate in a number of established monitoring and review processes, measures and collaboratives.
However, one of the main points in the NYCLU’s complaint was that the city had insufficient monitoring and oversight measures at its hospitals – it was this lack of oversight that led to last month’s death at Kings County, and it could be part of the cause of numerous maternal deaths at city hospitals.
New York’s American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, in conjunction with the New York State Department of Health, launched the Safe Motherhood Initiative in 2001. The Initiative was established to conduct reviews that facilitate responses to pregnancy-related deaths and eliminate racial disparities in maternal mortality in New York State. However, HHC’s refusal to participate will lead to a great deal of information, particularly information on racial disparities among pregnant women in the hospitals, being left out of the review.
The first Safe Motherhood Initiative review that came out in 2005 interpreted 33 deaths over the course of 2 years – it found that 60% of those women who died were African American. The review examined the deaths of these women in detail and sought to determine what the cause of the racial disparity was. According to Women’s eNews:
In 2004, black women were nearly four times as likely to die in childbirth as white women nationwide, and had a maternal death rate of 34.7 per 100,000 live births compared to 9.3 deaths per 100,000 live births for white women…
Designed to discover and interpret major risk factors, [director of New York’s American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Donna] Montalto’s State Maternal Mortality Review surveys–among many data–the deceased woman’s occupation, primary language, education, insurance coverage, prenatal care, method of delivery and history of sexually transmitted diseases. It asks if the pregnancy was intended or unintended. It might also help explain why African American women represent a disproportionate amount of maternal deaths.
The Opportunity Agenda’s report on New York City’s health care system, Dangerous and Unlawful: Why Our Health Care System Is Failing New York Communities and How To Fix It, showed the unequal and inadequate access to health care that many communities, particularly communities of color, are faced with. This lack of access and poor quality was most evident in the absence of primary care for many New Yorkers. Incidentally, the last Safe Motherhood Initiative review found that inadequate prenatal care was one of the main causes of the racial disparity in maternal deaths in New York State. Prenatal care is something that many women get through their gynecologist as part of their primary care; thus, the lack of decent primary care can lead to many women in communities of color having at-risk pregnancies.
The problems in the city’s health care system was exemplified by last month’s disaster at Kings County Hospital. It is to the detriment of all New Yorkers that HHC is refusing to participate in the Safe Motherhood Initiative’s review – it is crucial that we address health disparities and find real solutions to the problems in the state’s health care system, but the city has to play a role in doing this. HHC says its mission is:
To extend equally to all New Yorkers, regardless of their ability to pay, comprehensive health services of the highest quality in an atmosphere of humane care, dignity and respect.
The death of Esmin Green last month showed that HHC is not succeeding in its mission. Its decision not to participate in the Safe Motherhood Initiative review is another one that could lead to an unnecessary, preventable death at a city hospital. The city needs to work to address these problems – until it does, our communities will suffer.
• This past week there have been a number of news articles about the Black AIDS Institute study on the racial disparities among those living with HIV/AIDS in the United States. The New York Times pointed to the part of the study that said that if one only counted the African American population in the U.S., the country would have the 16th highest rate of people with AIDS:
Nearly 600,000 African-Americans are living with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, and up to 30,000 are becoming infected each year. When adjusted for age, their death rate is two and a half times that of infected whites, the report said. Partly as a result, the hypothetical nation of black America would rank below 104 other countries in life expectancy.
The Washington Post’s coverage of the study focused on the Institute’s criticism of the federal government’s approach to addressing the AIDS crisis in black communities:
African Americans with HIV — at least 500,000 — are more numerous than in seven of the 15 “target countries” in the Bush administration’s global AIDS initiative, which has spent about $19 billion overseas in the past five years.
A DMI Blog posting last Thursday also discussed the study and questioned whether the next President would choose to focus on tackling racial disparities in the American HIV/AIDS population, or would continue to ignore the issue:
The bottom line is that the HIV epidemic in the US continues to spread, and at a rate greater than was previously thought. The real measure of political leaders and the American people is if this bad news spurs good action – the establishment of a comprehensive and accountable national AIDS strategy that will eliminate barriers to effective prevention, generate adequate resources, and hold the government accountable for ending this epidemic.
The Black AIDS Institute study can be accessed here. To learn more about the general prevalence of health disparities in the U.S., read The Opportunity Agenda fact sheet Healthcare and Opportunity.
• The Kaiser Health Disparities Report has pointed out that new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows the presence of racial disparities in the current U.S. infant mortality rates. According to the new data, black infants are 2.4 times more likely to die before they turn one year old than white infants are:
CDC officials say the higher rates in large part can be attributed to low birthweights, shorter gestation periods and premature births. Experts say that it is difficult to identify a link between race and higher infant mortality but noted that higher rates of poverty, limited access to health care and dietary differences are possible contributors.
• An editorial in last week’s Los Angeles Times discusses how rising food prices are actually likely to increase obesity rates in the U.S., not decrease them. In many other parts of the world, an increase in food prices leads to an increase in rates of hunger (not obesity). However, the article points out that obesity has a lot to do with the type of food people consume, not just the amount:
Obesity isn’t simply about too much food. It’s about the type of food, how it’s prepared and the balance of calorie intake with physical activity. Stress and social conditions can also play a role.
Obesity rates have long been more prevalent in poor communities in the U.S. – the article also points out that the states that have the highest rates of obesity also have the highest proportion of families living in poverty. People living in poor communities, particularly poor communities of color, must have access to healthy food in order to prevent these health disparities from becoming more extreme. To learn more about inadequate health care access in communities of color, read the CERD report to the UN, Unequal Health Outcomes in the United States.
• An essay in The New York Times discusses how the American Medical Association’s apology for its past racism towards black physicians and patients brought to light the historical split between the AMA and the National Medical Association, a group that represents black physicians. The essay pointed out that while last month’s apology was an important step in bridging the gap between the two organizations, more needs to be done to overcome the inadequate representation of black physicians in the medical profession:
Yet reminders of this rancorous history persist, and the A.M.A.’s apology remains pertinent, if long overdue. Consider this statistic: In 1910, when Abraham Flexner published his report on medical education, African-Americans made up 2.5 percent of the number of physicians in the United States. Today, they make up 2.2 percent.
• Department of Homeland Security officials have come out in support of a Center for Immigration Studies report that claims that border control measures are the cause of a decrease in immigration to the U.S. However, the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at University of California, San Diego has rebutted those claims and determined that the border patrol apprehends fewer than half of the undocumented immigrants that come into the country through the Mexico/U.S. border. According to The Huffington Post, the Center for Immigration Studies (an anti-immigrant advocacy group) and the Department of Homeland Security failed to consider reasons other than border control measures that explain why immigration to the U.S. would naturally decline:
When citing the decrease in both apprehensions at the border and remittances sent by workers in the United States to family members in Mexico, Chertoff also failed to consider the fact that undocumented immigration naturally decreases when the U.S. economy is in recession. [Director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies Dr. Wayne] Cornelius’ report shows that undocumented migration clearly responds to changing U.S. economic conditions, with significant decreases during economic downturns such as the one we are in now.
Moreover, Chertoff’s border control measures are completely inconsistent with the fundamentally positive effect immigration has on American communities. Providing opportunity for immigrants has been a core value in the U.S. since its founding. To see more immigration myths dispelled, read The Opportunity Agenda fact sheet, Immigrants and Opportunity.
• In one of last month’s blog roundups on The State of Opportunity, a story about a sheriff in Maricopa County, Arizona appeared. That same sheriff, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, is in the news once again. An editorial in The Washington Post discusses how “Sheriff Joe” and his officers have been continuing the “policing strategy” of locking up all Hispanic people they encounter, regardless of if they have any evidence that they are undocumented immigrants or have committed any crime. According to Arizona Central, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon has had to resort to calling for a media mobilization against Arpaio:
“He (Arpaio) has become the false messiah,” Gordon said. “But when the light is shined on him, people will see that he isn’t helping to fight illegal immigration and he’s just making the situation worse. You’ve got an individual with a badge and a gun who’s breaking the law and abusing his authority.”
We need real solutions, ones that are brought about by comprehensive immigration reform and promote opportunity for all, not a gross miscarriage of justice carried out by a rogue officer like Arpaio.
• Thankfully, not all police officers feel the same way Arpaio does – George Gascón, a former assistant chief in the Los Angeles Police Department, has written this op-ed for The New York Times. In it he argues that using local police officers as a means to enforce federal immigration policy will ultimately lead to the public, particularly in communities of color, distrusting the police department:
Here in Arizona, a wedge is being driven between the local police and some immigrant groups. Some law enforcement agencies are wasting limited resources in operations to appease the public’s thirst for action against illegal immigration regardless of the legal or social consequences…
If we become a nation in which the local police are the default enforcers of a failing federal immigration policy, the years of trust that police departments have built up in immigrant communities will vanish. Some minority groups may once again view police officers as armed instruments of government oppression.
• The effects from the ICE raid in Postville are still being felt, reminding us just how detrimental this raid was to the Iowa community and America as a whole. The Des Moines Register is reporting that the new employees at the Agriprocessors plant have had a significant, negative effect on the local community:
The impact is evident: New laborers are changing Postville. The Agriprocessors Inc. meatpacking plant, the site of the immigration raid, once employed men and women with families. Now, its workers are mostly young, single people with no stake in the community and nothing to lose…
The rise in crime has strained Postville’s tiny police department. One night in June, the calls were so numerous that police asked the local bar to close early.
A protest rally also took place in Postville last weekend – it was documented in a video, which is now available on YouTube.
• In the past week, there have been numerous reports that call attention to the disparities among those living with HIV/AIDS in the U.S. The Kaiser Health Disparities Report has linked to a CBS Evening News story on the disproportionate number of African Americans that have HIV or AIDS. According to the story, blacks account for 49% of new HIV diagnoses, 69% of AIDS cases among ages 13 to 19 and 56% of AIDS cases among ages 20-24. Despite these high percentages, blacks only make up 13% of the population:
“No matter how you look at it through the lens of gender or sexual orientation or age or socioeconomic class or level of education or region of the country where you live, black folks bear the brunt of the AIDS epidemic in this country,” Phill Wilson, founder of the Black AIDS Institute, said. Wilson added that early HIV/AIDS advocates did not send the right HIV prevention and education messages to the black community. “The mischaracterization of the epidemic in the early days … made black folks think we didn’t have to pay attention to the disease,” Wilson said.
• Rates of HIV/AIDS are not only disproportionate in African American communities – The Washington Post is reporting that Hispanics represent 22% of new HIV/AIDS diagnoses, despite only making up 14% of the population. While the Post notes that HIV rates are highest among blacks, it also claims it is harder to target enough resources towards Latinos, particularly those who are immigrants, who have been diagnosed with HIV:
Blacks still have the highest HIV rates in the country, but language difficulties, cultural barriers and, in many cases, issues of legal status make the threat in the Hispanic community unique. For those who arrived illegally, in particular, fear of arrest and deportation presents a daunting obstacle to seeking diagnosis and treatment.
• On a more positive note, the Senate passed a bill that calls for a reauthorization of federal funding for a program that supports community health centers, the Deseret News reported last Tuesday. The bill, sponsored by Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), allows for continued support for health centers that provide affordable and quality care for many Americans, particularly those with low income:
Hatch said that since 2001, increased funding has enabled community health centers to treat 4 million new patients in more than 750 communities across the nation. His bill reauthorizes funding for the program for five more years.
• State governments were also discussing implementing health care measures this past week – in Massachusetts, the Council on Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, chaired by State Senator Dianne Wilkerson and State Representative Byron Rushing, met on July 21 to discuss the recommendations of the Special Legislative Commission on Health Disparities. According to A Healthy Blog, the Council discussed various successes and failures in the state’s health care reform:
The presenters all pointed to the success of health care access expansion in Massachusetts as an important step in disparities elimination efforts, but also noted the need to continue working to address quality, cultural competence, and social context problems.
• According to The Health Care Blog, The Century Foundation has announced that it is creating a working group to establish a blueprint for Medicare reform. Maggie Mehar, author of HealthBeat Blog, will direct the group and plans to review issues such as:
Revising Medicare’s physician fee schedule to pay more for primary care, palliative care, and co-ordination and management of chronic diseases.
Rethinking Medicare’s fee-for-service system to reward doctors for quality, not volume.
Creating an independent Comparative Effectiveness Institute that reviews head-to-head testing of drugs, devices, and procedures to ensure that they are effective.
Identifying and rewarding hospitals that provide better outcomes and higher patient satisfaction at a lower cost while helping other hospitals meet benchmarks.
On Tuesday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed a ground breaking executive order requiring all city agencies to provide language assistance services for people who speak Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Korean, Italian or French Creole. According to The New York Times, this is the first time that all New York City agencies will be forced to follow the same standard in providing translation and language interpretation services to people who do not speak English:
Immigrant advocates and city officials say it is the most comprehensive order of its kind in the country. The mayor refused to be specific about how much the services will cost, saying only that it was a “relatively small” amount given the size of the city’s budget. He added: “This executive order will make our city more accessible, while helping us become the most inclusive municipal government in the nation.”
The Opportunity Agenda fact sheet Immigration Reform: Promoting Opportunity for All details the need for immigrants to have access to language assistance services in order to achieve their full potential. In providing immigrant groups with this access, Mayor Bloomberg has taken the entire city forward and empowered communities throughout New York.
• Politicians have also been busy down in Washington, D.C. working to provide language assistance for immigrant families across the United States. At noon today, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Congressman Mike Honda are introducing the “Strengthening Communities through Education and Integration Act of 2008.” In addition to providing English language literacy and civics education to immigrant families who are in the process of becoming citizens, the bill:
will help immigrant communities become a more integral part of the American fabric and maximize their social and economic contributions.
Legislation like this is crucial to aiding immigrants on their way to becoming U.S. citizens, and is a necessary part of treating immigrants like full and equal members of our community.
• The aftermath of the ICE raids in Postville, Houston, and most recently Rhode Island, is still being felt in communities across America. However, a Washington Post article describes how it is not only workers and their families feeling this strife – now, it is employers as well:
The crackdown’s relatively high costs and limited results are also fueling criticism. In an economy with more than 6 million companies and 8 million unauthorized workers, the corporate enforcement effort is still dwarfed by the high-profile raids that have sentenced thousands of illegal immigrants to prison time and deportation.
• A story in the MetroWest Daily News calls attention to a local organization in Massachusetts, the MetroWest Immigrant Worker Center, that is defending the rights of immigrant workers in the U.S. Immigrant workers are routinely subject to labor law violations, including the denial of compensation and overtime, as well as unnecessary injuries on job sites. In addition, the article points out that all immigrants, including undocumented ones, have worker rights:
Contrary to what many people think, illegal workers have rights. Although in the country illegally, those who work are entitled to be paid for their labor and overtime. If they are injured on the job, they are eligible for workers’ compensation coverage, said [Diego] Low, [director of the MetroWest Immigrant Worker Center] who has been advocating for immigrant workers’ rights for the last 25 years.
• A DMI Blog posting points to an extremely upsetting Associated Press report of a beating in a Pennsylvania town that left a 25 year old Mexican immigrant named Luis Ramirez dead.
Hate crime or not, the killing has exposed long-simmering tensions in Shenandoah, a blue-collar town of 5,000 about 80 miles northwest of Philadelphia that has a growing number of Hispanic residents drawn by jobs in factories and farm fields.
Last month the Appeals Court of Massachusetts issued two decisions regarding prisoner access to health care, both of which have vast implications for prisoner rights. Through their rulings, the court affirmed two critical American values: redemption, the belief that humans are evolving beings who warrant the chance for rehabilitation when they falter, and healthcare as a human right. The cases, Sullivan v. Correctional Medical Servs. et al. No. 07-P-964 72, 2008 WL 2552982 (Mass. App. Jun. 27, 2008) and Kilburn v. Dept. of Corrections et al., No. 07-P-987, 2008 WL 2566382 (Mass. App. Jun. 30, 2008) concerned claims of negligence due to poor dental care provided to prisoners by private health care contractors hired by the state. Part of the case for the prisoners’ claims rested on an appeal to third-party beneficiary rights. Third parties in contracts have the right to sue if they can prove that they are the intended beneficiaries of the contract and are reliant on the contract. Through their rulings, Massachusetts courts suggest that prisoners have standing as third party beneficiaries and can thus sue private health care providers despite their exclusion from the contract between the state and these private contractors.
In Kilburn v. Dept. of Corrections the Court ruled that the state cannot simultaneously deny responsibility for those healthcare duties delegated to its contractors and claim that those contracts were not meant to benefit the prisoners. The fact that the state would make this argument to begin with is reflective of the larger shortcomings of the prison-industrial complex. By contracting out the care of prisoners to private entities, the state claims that it is not liable for inadequate care provided by these groups. The Appeals Court of Massachusetts took a stand for the right of prisoners to proper healthcare, and more generally to fair treatment, by stressing the state’s responsibility in prisoner care. It went further to argue that inmates’ lack of standing to sue as a third party beneficiary of the contract does not make the state immune from liability or free from responsibility. Simply because prisoners do not have the means to raise claims does not absolve the state of its duties.
While the decisions do not explicitly grant prisoners third-party beneficiary rights, they mark an important
step in this direction. They document the receptiveness of the court third-party claims in government contracts on the part of prisoners. Moreover the rulings affirm that the state cannot divorce itself from its responsibility to prisoners. Practicing redemption means providing the conditions that allow people to develop, to rebuild, and to take full responsibility for their lives after misfortune or mistakes. Through its decisions, the court asserted the state’s own responsibility in providing these conditions for prisoners. This particular case concerns dental care, but it opens the door for an invigorated conversation about the fundamental human rights of those people behind bars, and the responsibility of the state in caring for those prisoners such that they may one day reenter society and have the opportunity to achieve their own, full potentials.
A piece in the Sunday New York Times reports that conservative think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation are engaged in hot internal discussions about self-transformation. With support for a conservative president and a conservative Republican party at all-time lows, the Times reports, “policy cooks have returned to the kitchen to whip up a menu of new solutions for conservatives disaffected with the party.” Some, like A.E.I. fellow and Bush alum David Frum, are even taking a fresh look at conservative heresies, like the idea that it’s in all of our interest to offer people in prison education, mentoring, and support for their children.
Those of us in the progressive ideas sector could also benefit from some self reflection. Few if any transformative progressive ideas emerged from the crowded, marathon primary season, and few are on display in the current debate. And that’s especially true when it comes to the concerns of the voters who are bringing the most progressive energy to the race: new African-American, Latino, and young voters. Those voters are struggling with broken systems of education, health care, credit, immigration, housing, and criminal justice, among others. And they are ready for a reinvented, positive role for the public structures that expand opportunity.
Progressive think tanks and advocacy groups have to step up to that challenge. For decades, we’ve been seeking incremental change and, more often, fighting off harmful proposals. As the Bill Clinton years proved, that dynamic won’t magically change just because a more left-leaning Administration or Congress is in office. It will be up to us, and to the new generation of organizers, activists, bloggers, and thinkers, to bring the big ideas and to push them forward in a form and language that resonates with everyday Americans.
While holding tight to our values, we’ll need to reexamine some core assumptions. And, perhaps most importantly, we’ll have to really listen to the hopes, dreams and concerns of our nation’s diverse communities–not just through polls and focus groups, but through tough and honest conversations and the interactive power of Web 2.0. Now is the time to ask ourselves some tough questions, and to change what we do in response.
• The New York Times is reporting that a recent study of the American health care system, conducted by the Commonwealth Fund, has found that while the U.S. has the most expensive health system in the world, the quality it delivers is grossly inferior to other industrialized nations’ health care. The report highlighted the fact that many of the improvements made in the U.S. health care system over the years, such as decreasing the number of preventable deaths, dwarfed in comparison to the greater achievements other countries made:
Other countries worked hard to improve, according to the Commonwealth Fund researchers. Britain, for example, focused on steps like improving the performance of individual hospitals that had been the least successful in treating heart disease. The success is related to “really making a government priority to get top-quality care,” [Karen] Davis, [president of the Commonwealth Fund] said.
The report also emphasized the inefficiencies in the U.S. health care system and the role they play in diminishing quality:
The administrative costs of the medical insurance system consume much more of the current health care dollar, about 7.5 percent, than in other countries…
Bringing those administrative costs down to the level of 5 percent or so as in Germany and Switzerland, where private insurers play a significant role, would save an estimated $50 billion a year in the United States, Ms. Davis said.
• An article in Friday’s Washington Post discusses the potential that community health providers have to save states millions of dollars in health care costs by shifting some of their health programs’ emphasis to preventing illness. A recent Trust for America’s Health report found that nonprofit community programs could have an enormous role in developing health initiatives such as anti-smoking laws, healthy eating and physical activity programs. However, despite the fact that many of these programs target at risk groups in impoverished areas, they face a serious lack of funding:
The researchers found that many such programs lack funding, a chronic problem for many preventive health initiatives.
“People think preventive health care pays off 20 or 30 years from now, but this shows you get the money back almost immediately, and then the savings grow bigger and bigger,” [Senator Tom] Harkin [D-Iowa] said.
To learn more about the importance of community health programs, please see the previous posting on The State of Opportunity titled Local Progress in Tackling Health Disparities.
• An opinion piece in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune calls attention to the health disparities among women with HIV. Black women have higher rates of HIV, despite the fact that studies have shown that they do not engage in “risky sex” any more than white women do:
A black woman in a poor neighborhood, for example, who engages in the lowest levels of risky behavior is dramatically more likely to acquire a sexually transmitted disease than higher-risk women in communities with low rates of infection, according to public health experts…
In short, who you are, and where you live and, consequently, the sexual partners you choose, matters when it comes to HIV prevention.
• “The Shame of Postville, Iowa,” an editorial in Sunday’s New York Times, calls attention to an essay written by Erik Camayd-Freixas. Mr. Camayd-Freixas is a professor and court interpreter who witnessed the aftermath of last month’s ICE raid on the Postville community. He was disgusted when he saw the injustice in the legal system that the workers were subjected to; instead of being deported immediately, over 260 workers were charged with serious identity fraud crimes and sentenced to 6 months in prison:
What is worse, Dr. Camayd-Freixas wrote, is that the system was clearly rigged for the wholesale imposition of mass guilt. He said the court-appointed lawyers had little time in the raids’ hectic aftermath to meet with the workers, many of whom ended up waiving their rights and seemed not to understand the complicated charges against them.
The editorial also added:
No one is denying that the workers were on the wrong side of the law. But there is a profound difference between stealing people’s identities to rob them of money and property, and using false papers to merely get a job. It is a distinction that the Bush administration, goaded by immigration extremists, has willfully ignored. Deporting unauthorized workers is one thing; sending desperate breadwinners to prison, and their families deeper into poverty, is another.
• Following the allegations of Guantanamo Bay-like treatment at ICE facilities, the Seattle Times has an article detailing numerous stories of abuse at an ICE facility in Tacoma, Washington. The stories are part of a 65-page Seattle University Law School report titled “Voices From Detention”. Detainees claim that they are routinely subjected to physical and verbal abuse, strip searches and manipulation:
The report’s authors said conditions are consistent with those at detention centers across the country. They are calling on Congress to pass laws that protect the rights of detainees…
Detainees in the study say they were pressured to sign documents or asked to sign paperwork they didn’t understand, a practice their attorneys say often leads to their unwitting deportation…
The report said one woman, after an attorney’s visit, was strip-searched and told to open her legs while a female guard peeped into her private parts.
To learn more about detainee treatment at ICE facilities, see this posting on The State of Opportunity.
• Even after weeks of people discussing the horrific effects of the Postville and Houston raids, ICE has done it again – according to The Providence Journal, ICE agents arrested dozens of maintenance workers in a raid of Rhode Island court houses on Tuesday:
The raid led to a noisy demonstration by at least 100 people outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office at 200 Dyer St. last night. Police officers arrived as the crowd grew; at one point the police pushed a line of demonstrators across the parking lot.
For a full summary of the stories on the Rhode Island ICE raid, go to the Citizen Orange Pro-Migrant Sanctuary Sphere posting.
• The New York Times is also reporting that many immigrants in New York City, most of them Latino, face being disenfranchised in the November election because the federal government is taking so long to fully process their citizenship applications:
At stake are the applications of at least 55,000 people in the New York City area who have been waiting at least six months – and as long as four years – for their documents to be processed, the lawyers said.
On June 18, 49-year-old Esmin Green was admitted to the Kings County Hospital Center psychiatric ward. After waiting to be seen for 24 hours, she fell to the floor, began to convulse and then passed out. Two security guards and one doctor walked into the waiting room, looked at her and then walked away. After one hour, a nurse finally came over, kicked Ms. Green, and then proceeded to get a stretcher. Shortly afterwards, Ms. Green was pronounced dead. The entire incident was documented on a security camera, and is now on YouTube, thanks to the Associated Press.
Hospital officials said they fired three of the workers and suspended another three, the New York Times reported on July 7. However, it is clear that Ms. Greene’s death is far from an isolated incident at Kings County Hospital. The New York Civil Liberties Union, in conjunction with Mental Hygiene Legal Service and the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis LLP, filed suit against the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (the agency that runs Kings County Hospital) in May 2007. The plaintiffs claimed that patients at the hospital’s psychiatric facilities were subject to conditions of squalor and filth, as well as abuse by hospital employees. A summary of the case can be found on the NYCLU website.
The evidence displayed in the lawsuit shows that Ms. Green’s death is not solely the fault of the hospital employees who watched her die. The conditions in the hospital, particularly the psychiatric ward, and the treatment of the patients are the responsibility of the city agency that runs the hospital. It was not until over one year into the litigation, and after Ms. Green’s death, that the city finally agreed to adopt a series of basic stop-gap measures, including:
* That every patient be checked every 15 minutes.
* That there be no more than 25 patients at any time in the psychiatric emergency ward.
* That detailed records on the ward be turned over every week to the advocates involved in the lawsuit.
* And that the advocates be active participants in the search for a new deputy executive director and emergency room director for Kings County Hospital’s Behavioral Health department.
It is shocking that it took a lawsuit and the very public death of a woman to get New York City to agree to such basic levels of care for mental health patients. Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU, said:
What’s happening in Kings County Hospital is an affront to human dignity…In 2008 in New York City, nobody should be subjected to this kind of treatment. It should not take the death of a patient to get the city to make changes that everyone knows are long overdue.
What is even more distressing about Ms. Green’s death and the allegations of gross negligence of patients at Kings County Hospital is that many residents in Central Brooklyn do not have access to other hospitals. This is mainly due to the fact that the predominantly black, low-income areas of Central Brooklyn, particularly the neighborhoods Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brownsville, Canarsie, Crown Heights, East New York, and Flatbush have seen numerous hospital closures in the last few years.
The Opportunity Agenda has documented these hospital closures on its website Health Care That Works. Since 1985, Central Brooklyn has seen five local hospitals close their doors. Because of these closures, people in these minority communities have been forced to rely on Kings County Hospital even more. Local residents also begged the city to keep local clinics open – their requests can be seen in a video on The Opportunity Agenda’s YouTube channel. At the same time all of these facilities were closing, allegations of mistreatment at Kings County were surfacing.
The fact that people of color have inferior access to health care in New York contributes greatly to the health disparities in the city. The Opportunity Agenda report Dangerous and Unlawful: Why Our Health Care System Is Failing New Yorkers and How to Fix It documents how areas with high concentrations of African Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans are more likely to have shortages of primary care physicians than predominantly white communities are. The distribution of hospitals and other health care services has a significant discriminatory effect on these communities of color – their health care access is simply inadequate.
Ms. Green’s death should do more than signify the need for improvement of existing hospitals like Kings County. It should also remind us that many people in New York, and across the country, lack basic primary care and access to emergency services. Changing this reality needs to be a part of health care reform discussions. If it isn’t, we will continue to see needless deaths like Ms. Green’s occur.
Last Thursday, the American Medical Association issued an official apology for its past racism toward African American patients and physicians. Along with the apology were the findings of a study conducted by the Commission to End Health Care Disparities, a group that the AMA and the National Medical Association (an organization representing black physicians) co-chair. The study has found that between 1846 and the 1960s, the AMA’s past transgressions included:
substandard care for black patients or segregated them to black hospitals; a lack of support for black physicians and for the Civil Rights Act; and exclusion of blacks from medical schools, hospital staffs and residency programs.
The apology can be found here, and the study is available in the online version of the Journal of the American Medical Association. To learn more about the work of the Commission to End Health Care Disparities, go to the AMA website.
It is also worth noting that a number of doctors were opposed to the AMA’s discriminatory policies in the 1960s. A group of physicians picketed the AMA convention in Atlantic City in 1963 in order to call attention to the AMA’s racist acts. Among these physicians was Dr. Robert Smith, a leader of the Medical Committee for Human Rights in Mississippi (MCHR). The MCHR grew out of the Medical Committee for Civil Rights, and organized a number of volunteers to come down to Mississippi to provide care to black patients who were not being treated in their communities:
Though MCHR volunteers were not licensed to practice professionally in Mississippi, they could offer emergency first-aid anywhere and anytime to civil rights workers, community activists, and summer volunteers. Working without pay, they cared for wounded protesters and victims of police and Klan violence, assisted the ill, visited jailed demonstrators, and provided a medical presence in Black communities, some of which had never seen a doctor. They established and staffed health information and pre-natal programs in many Black communities. Appalled at the separate and unequal care provided to Blacks by Mississippi’s segregated system, they soon involved themselves in political struggles to open up and improve Mississippi’s health care system for all.
The Health Care Blog has a posting that discusses My Health Direct, the web-based solution to overcrowding in emergency departments. The idea of My Health Direct is for hospitals to use an online appointment system to re-route their Medicaid and uninsured patients to community and safety-net clinics. According to the blog posting, the program has been successful in increasing patients’ access to primary care and improving the quality of care and treatment outcomes for those patients:
More than 12,000 health appointments have been made with the vast majority of these appointments for patients who are uninsured or enrolled in a Medicaid managed care plan. These appointments were made for patients who either presented for care with a non-emergent condition, or needed follow-up care in a primary care setting.
A utilization review of My Health Directs impact demonstrated that more than 92% of patients who received an appointment did not present to the ED again. Patients who obtained appointments were more than 4 times more likely to actually attend their appointment compared to previous referral efforts from the ED. Lastly, there was a 25% reduction in repeat non-emergent visits of those patients assisted by My Health Direct.
A recent Health Beat blog posting titled “The Realities of Rural Medicine” discusses the unequal access to health care for people who live in rural areas. The study on rural health care, conducted by the Center for Studying Health System Change, found that both patients and doctors feel significant strain in living in communities that do not have enough primary care options.
The Washington Post is reporting that Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Perry is trying to limit the prevalence of fast food restaurants in South Central Los Angeles by placing a moratorium on new fast food locations in the area. Perry is a representative for District 9, an overwhelmingly African American and Latino constituency that has significant health disparities in comparison to the wealthier West L.A. area:
Perry quoted research showing that although 16 percent of restaurants in prosperous West L.A. serve fast food, they account for 45 percent in South L.A. Experts see an obvious link to a health department study that found that 29 percent of South-Central children are obese, compared with 23 percent county-wide.
• Detention Watch Network has created a new interactive map that is now accessible on their website. The map is a comprehensive tracking system that allows users to view the locations of detention centers, community organizations, ICE offices and immigration courts across the United States.
• A T Don Hutto Blog posting discusses the recent American Immigration Lawyers Association position paper on alternatives to detention for immigrants. The paper, which argues that the Department of Homeland Security should shift its focus from raids and electronic monitoring of immigrant populations to community-based, non-restrictive measures, can be accessed here.
• Some updates on recent ICE raids: a posting on Standing FIRM links to a New York Times report that two Agriprocessor employers have been arrested. Their arrests were connected to last month’s ICE raid in Postville, Iowa; they were the first non “rank and file” workers to be targeted. Scott Frotman, a spokesman for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, pointed out that the arrest of these supervisors does not show the full extent of the company’s violations of workers rights:
What about the allegations of worker abuse? Does anyone really believe that these low-level supervisors acted alone without the knowledge, or even the direction, of the Rubashkins and other senior management?
In addition, the same Times story is reporting that last week five senior managers at Action Rags USA were arrested. Their arrests are connected to the ICE raid on the Houston Plant in late June.
• In response to these recent government crackdowns on employers of illegal immigrants, business owners have begun to speak out in opposition to tough anti-immigration measures. A July 6 article that appeared in the New York Times claims that employers have begun fighting the government policies in state and local courts:
Business groups have resisted measures that would revoke the licenses of employers of illegal immigrants. They are proposing alternatives that would revise federal rules for verifying the identity documents of new hires and would expand programs to bring legal immigrant laborers.
• A story that appeared in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle discusses the positive results of the city’s 1989 immigration sanctuary law. The law bars local officials, including police officers, from questioning residents about their immigration status. The Chronicle also points out that San Francisco is not alone in enacting sanctuary measures:
San Francisco is among scores of cities in California and around the country with sanctuary laws, according to the National Immigration Law Center. Several states also have such policies.
A recent posting on The State of Opportunity also called attention to a California superior court decision upholding the Los Angeles Police Department’s of neither arresting people based on their immigration status nor asking about one’s immigration status during interviews.
• A recent study has found that black men are more likely than white men and women to be unaware that they are suffering from high blood pressure, according to an article in Wednesday’s Reuters Health. The researchers claim that this disparity stems from the fact that men are less likely than women to believe that they need to see a doctor. Moreover, men, particularly African American men, are less likely to have access to a primary care physician:
What is not good, the researchers say, is that men were less likely than women to have a regular doctor, and they were four to five times more likely to say they had no doctor because they did not need one.
Study participants who did have a regular doctor were nearly four times more likely to know they had high blood pressure, and more than eight times more likely to be taking medication for it.
• The Kaiser Health Disparities Report has linked to a study on the prevalence of asthma that appeared in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior. By looking at 10 different racial and ethnic groups in New York City, researchers examined how housing and neighborhood conditions might contribute to disparities among asthma patients:
Researchers found that Puerto Rican-Americans, other Hispanics and blacks had the highest levels of asthma, while Mexican-Americans, Chinese-Americans and Asian/Indians had the lowest levels. They also found that reducing minorities’ exposure to deteriorated housing conditions and increasing levels of community unity, as well making improvements in other household factors, reduce asthma rates among blacks and Puerto Rican-Americans.
• An article in Saturday’s New York Times discusses how rising gas prices have led to cuts in various services for the elderly. Agencies have been forced to cut back on many programs, such as Meals on Wheels, because of the rising costs of transportation. Elderly people, particularly those who are homebound, are among those most affected by these cuts, since they rely not only on the programs but on at-home volunteers as well:
Val J. Halamandaris, president of the National Association for Home Care and Hospice, said that rising fuel prices had become a significant burden for the 7,000 agencies represented by his group, with some forced to close and others compelled to shrink their service areas or reduce face-to-face visits with patients. A recent survey by the group concluded that home health and hospice workers drove 4.8 billion miles in 2006 to serve 12 million clients. “If we lose these agencies in rural areas, we’ll never get them back,” Mr. Halamandaris said.
• The Washington Post is reporting that New Jersey is one of the states facing the harshest effects of the health care crisis – hospital closures. New Jersey’s state hospitals are required to treat any person that walks through their doors, and in turn the state is supposed to reimburse the hospitals. However, the state’s budget crisis has led to cuts in reimbursements, and ultimately to hospital closures:
Six [hospitals] have closed in the past 18 months, and half of those remaining are operating in the red…
The situation has come to a head in this city [Plainfield, NJ] of 48,000 people — majority black, largely poor and with many new immigrants moving in. The city’s hospital of 130 years, Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center, is slated to become the latest casualty of this faltering system, closing its acute-care facility later this year. The obstetrics and pediatrics wards have already shut, and equipment is being packed up and wheeled out.
New Jersey is not the only state that has a problem of hospital closures. To learn about the extent of the problem of hospital closures in New York, visit The Opportunity Agenda’s GoogleMaps mashup site, Health Care That Works.
On Sunday, the New York Times reported on employer opposition to immigration raids and other measures punishing the hiring of undocumented immigrants. According to the Times, “business groups have resisted measures that would revoke the licenses of employers of illegal immigrants. They are proposing alternatives that would revise federal rules for verifying the identity documents of new hires and would expand programs to bring legal immigrant laborers.”
This is a potentially positive development, as business leaders are well placed to make the argument for real solutions to the immigration challenge that uphold our nation’s ideals and move us forward together. In particular, they speak to the contribution of undocumented immigrants to our economy and the need for commonsense approaches rather than vindictive, unworkable ones. And they have the ear of politicians of both parties.
It’s essential, though, that we complement business voices with those of faith leaders, civic leaders, immigrant leaders, and others committed to the protection of human rights in the workplace, communities, and beyond. Failing to do so could result in an immigration “fix” that serves business interests and provides cheap labor, but fails to protect workers’ rights and depresses wages for all.
We should welcome the voices of business leaders, while making sure that we tell the whole story to the American people.
Fireworks on the 4th of July always make me cry. I’m not affraid to say it. There’s something about it, all the senses are activated as an idea–what once was the dream of a few revolutionaires–plays itself out in vivid colors and exsplosive bursts right before you. This year, my wife and I planted ourselves on the stone path between Pier 17 and Pier 11, right in front of one of the Macy’s barges, lucking out that this year they decided to move them further down the East River, making the end of Wall Street a perfect location to watch the fireworks. What made the event more impressive was the rich diversity that surrounded us, reminding me why New York City is such a special place to experience the 4th of July. For many of the families around us, America was as new as it was for Abigail Adams and her family, as she watched the cannon balls fly over Boston Harbor while her husband was away. Opportunity and freedom were new on the horizon, like the flash of powder ignited in the distance seconds before the sky explodes with life. Hearing families share their excitement in Korean, Russian, French, Spanish and Mandarin seemed fitting, as we all huddled along the Manhattan shoreline between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of liberty. The 4th of July is full of traditions, and I think I’ve found a new place to celebrate for years to come. Another great thing I gravitated toward this weekend was the new web site, 1,000 Voices Archive a project of the Creative Council. This web site is a perfect mirror into the american experience, presenting videos of Americans who have been touched by communities. It’s a wonderful snapshot into the diversity of our nation, both in ethnicity and experience. Strongly recommend it for those looking to continue celebrating this holiday weekend. It gives a real feel of America and has a bunch of engaging tools that allow us to become involved in the America that is more than ideas and fire works.
• The Kentucky Post has reported on the status of the case where the federal government prosecuted a landlord for renting apartments to illegal immigrants. The jury found in favor of the defendant, whom the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund represented, and agreed with his argument that he did not intentionally harbor undocumented immigrants. Immigration News Daily also reported on the case and claimed:
The case is thought to be the first time that the government has prosecuted a landlord merely for renting to illegal immigrants.
• The DMI Blog posting titled, “Immigration Raids Tend to Spare Employers,” questions why employers are so rarely arrested during ICE raids:
Even though Department of Homeland Security talks big about cracking down on employers who hire undocumented immigrants, federal officials explain that is easier to prove that an immigrant is here illegally than it is to build a case against the employer. According to ICE, that it is tougher to build a criminal case proving that an employer knowingly hired an undocumented than to prove that an immigrant is here illegally.
The ICE policy of not arresting employers is somewhat ironic in the context of many federal government methods of enforcing immigration laws, and represents a striking contrast to the government’s decision to prosecute the landlord in Kentucky. • In the past weeks, there have been a number of YouTube videos showing the effects of the ICE raid on Postville, Iowa. One video, shown in a New America Media posting, depicts the struggles that families in the community are having in the aftermath of the raid. • Standing FIRM has posted a video clip of a story on the June 28 protest in Houston, Texas. The protest was a response to the recent ICE raid on a plant called Action Rags USA. Another Standing FIRM posting offers numerous details about the raid:
…agents arrested 166 of the 186 employees. ICE released 73 people who had medical problems or were sole care providers. Another 20 were released by cause they either were here legally or were born here… [Of] the remain[ing] 73 who are detained, 70 of them are women, so only 3 of them are men.
• Citizen Orange has posted a hilarious YouTube video, courtesy of “Capitol Hill Gangsta.” Capital Hill Gangsta (aka Ray William Johnson, a college student in New York and YouTube video commentator) uses the video to dispel a number of myths about immigrants in the United States. • According to Monday’s New York Sun, New York City Mayor Bloomberg has reinforced his pro-immigration stance by claiming that America is “committing mass suicide” by restricting immigration into the country. According to The Sun, Bloomberg said:
There are people around the world who want to come and create here and add jobs and excitement and innovation, and we’re keeping them in Canada and in Europe and Asia and not letting them here…
Last Thursday, June 26th a California Superior court upheld the LAPD’s 29-year-old policy of neither arresting people based on immigration status nor asking about immigration status during interviews. This policy, described by Police Chief William Bratton as “an essential crime-fighting tool for us,” is meant to avoid discouraging the undocumented population in many LA communities from communicating with police officers and reporting crimes. Proponents of the policy’s abandonment, who filed suit in April 2007, argue that it conflicts with federal and state law. While under the policy officers do alert immigration officials in the case of a suspect who has either previously been deported or is arrested for a felony/multiple misdemeanors, plaintiffs argue that illegal immigrants are repeatedly arrested rather than appropriately deported.
The judge’s decision affirms that immigration law is to be applied on the federal, and not the local level. Local law enforcement officials cannot and will not be asked to act as federal immigration agents. The defendants argued, and the court agreed, that this conflation of positions is not warranted on legal grounds and is detrimental to the goals of local law enforcement.
The overturning of this lawsuit averts several troubling implications that elimination the disputed policy would have had. The role of a local police officer and that of an federal immigration agent have vastly different objectives; while the former exists “to protect and serve” residents, the latter aims to “effectively enforce our immigration and customs laws… by targeting illegal immigrants.” In an area with a significant undocumented population, these roles are often at odds with each other. To ask that police officers assume the duties of immigration agents is to cast them into a confused role that ineffectively pursues conflicting goals. Furthermore, incorporating these duties into local law enforcement greatly increases the risk of racial profiling in pursuit of undocumented residents.
The court’s decision to uphold the LAPD’s longstanding policy marks a victory for security in these communities. As one of its six core values, the Opportunity Agenda holds security to be vital to our human dignity. Without safe and healthy living conditions, it becomes overwhelmingly difficult for residents to access any of the other opportunity that society has to offer. To put local police officers in a position that undermines their ability to serve their communities as a whole would be to betray a fundamental commitment to equality, security, and community. With its policy on immigrants intact, the LAPD can go forth in its goal to “build safer communities throughout the City of Los Angeles.”
Earlier this month the Atlas Project at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice released a report documenting the state of health inequalities in the United States. The report (which was previously mentioned in a post on The State of Opportunity blog) titled “Disparities in Health and Health Care among Medicare Beneficiaries” can be accessed here.
The report calls attention to the fact that health care reform is not only about expanding insurance coverage and improving efficiency standards for health spending – it is also about addressing the unequal access to and the quality of health care in the U.S. As the Dartmouth report articulates, health disparities are widespread and extensive. There are higher rates of obesity and smoking among African Americans than there are among whites; this leads to blacks experiencing higher rates of diabetes and cardiovascular disease than whites do. Blacks have poorer access to primary and specialty care, and this limits their ability to manage any chronic illnesses they might have. Blacks also have poorer access to advanced surgical solutions, and are more likely to face unfavorable, last resort treatments like leg amputation for diabetes.
Dr. Nancy Bennett, director of the Center for Community Health at the University of Rochester, and Dr. Wade Norwood, director of community engagement at Finger Lakes Health Systems Agency, recently wrote an op-ed addressing what local communities are doing to address health disparities in their areas. They describe the problem as follows:
Although these [disparities] may be related to the adequacy of insurance, studies have shown that differences remain even when coverage is equal. We need to understand, through public health and health services research, the complexities of this pathway so that we can eliminate inequalities.
If the federal government is unable to address problems of unequal access and quality of health care in the U.S., local community organizations must take it upon themselves to deal with these issues. The Finger Lakes Health Systems Agency has established a number of African American and Latino health coalitions to prioritize improving health equity in New York. They have already made significant progress:
More people had access to primary care in 2006 compared with 2000, more received annual mammograms and fewer were admitted to the hospital for complications of chronic disease. We know from our own local health data that we have almost eliminated racial and ethnic disparities in immunization rates for both children and adults, and in mammography and cervical cancer screening. Much of this success can be attributed to specific, targeted programs that improve our overall measures while reducing racial disparities.
The Opportunity Agenda has written numerous reports on the prevalence of health disparities in the U.S., as well as how these inequalities inhibit people’s ability to achieve their full potential. In New York, The Opportunity Agenda has been part of various efforts to improve health equality through empowering communities. The Coalition for Community Health Planning, a group that The Opportunity Agenda is an active member of, has been pushing the state and city governments to commit to investing in community health planning programs and to facilitating community involvement in health care.
To learn more about health inequalities in New York, read our report: Dangerous and Unlawful: Why Our Health Care System is Failing New York Communities and How To Fix It. Also, visit our Google Maps mashup Health Care That Works to see how recent hospital closures have had a disproportionate impact on communities of color.
The 8th Amendment of the Constitution, in its prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, holds at its core the fundamental American values of fairness, dignity, and justice. Last week’s Supreme Court decision on Kennedy v. Louisiana reaffirmed these values by once again finding the death penalty as not only an ineffective deterrent against crime, but also incongruous with the nation’s “evolving standards of decency and redemption that mark the progress of a maturing society.” (Trop v. Dulles). The court appealed to the “precept of justice” in holding that punishment is to be proportioned to the crime, and in the case of capital punishment this is indeed “a narrow category.”
In delivering its opinion, the court held that the application of the death penalty had to rest on a “national consensus” that a death sentence was an inappropriate punishment to the crime of child rape. The decision of the court also made significant reference to Roper v. Simmons, a 2005 ruling that appealed to international norms in ruling the death penalty an inappropriate punishment. While the Supreme Court did not explicitly cite international human rights law in its decision, the values of decency, fairness, and dignity upon which it relies are shared universally. Moreover, the language of international law pervades the friend-of-the-court brief submitted by Leading British Law Associations, Scholars, Queen’s Counsel and Former Law Lords. The brief, heavily referencing the UN Commission on Human Rights, hinges its argument on a “well-established global consensus” that “nations that retain the death penalty must progressively narrow the class of offenses punishable by death.” This amicus brief, and the Supreme Court ruling that upheld its conclusion, affirms an internationally held respect for the value of human life within the American court system.
By “repeatedly taking note of other nations’ practices in considering the application of the death penalty,” and by simultaneously holding itself to the standard of national consensus, the Supreme Court expressed the implicit view that international norms are compatible with and even complementary to our national values. (See Redemption). This view underlies the Opportunity Agenda’s commitment to engaging the discourse of human rights here in the US. As affirmed by the Supreme Court in their approach to Kennedy v. Louisiana, universal rights are fundamentally in sync with core American values.
• This past week there have been a number of news articles on HIV and the racial disparities among those who are infected. The Washington Post reported that the number of young homosexual men diagnosed with HIV has risen 12%. The largest increase of 15% was among young African American men (compared to a 9% increase among young white men):
Previous studies have found that gay black men on average have fewer sex partners, are less likely to use drugs and are no more likely to have unprotected intercourse than gay white men. Consequently, their higher rate of infection does not appear to arise from riskier behavior.
Instead, it reflects the higher prevalence of HIV — as well as syphilis and gonorrhea, which increase a person’s susceptibility to HIV — in the black population.
Despite this negative news of increasing health disparities between whites and African Americans, there was also a positive step in the battle against HIV. According to the New York Times, the New York City Health Department has announced a three year plan to give an HIV test to everyone living in the Bronx:
While Manhattan has long been the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic in New York, with the highest incidence of both AIDS and H.I.V., the virus that causes it, the Bronx, with its poorer population, has far more deaths from the disease. Public health officials attribute this to people not getting tested until it is too late to treat the virus effectively, thus turning a disease that can now be managed with medication into a death sentence.
Though the story does not mention the demographic population of the Bronx, 35.6% of Bronx residents are African American, a much larger percentage than the percentage of African American Manhattanites (who make up only 17.4% of the borough’s population). Expanding HIV testing in the Bronx is an important part of combating the racial disparities among those with HIV and helping end the upward trend of HIV rates among young African Americans.
• The Kaiser Health Disparities Report has a story on a House bill to reduce allowable lead levels in paint. The bill, which just unanimously passed the House Financial Services Committee, aims to lower the number of children exposed to lead-based paint (many of whom are poor, minority children who live in older homes):
According to bill sponsor Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and other lawmakers, despite a 1992 law that restricted the use of lead-based paint in houses, hundreds of thousands of children are exposed to excessive levels of lead, which can cause brain damage and other serious health problems.
• The HealthBeat blog has a posting on how progressives should incorporate cost control into their discussion of health care reform. Without cost control on the agenda of health care reform, it will be difficult to bring Americans who are most concerned with rising costs of health care on board:
That is why I believe that progressives must begin talking about the high cost of care, and how we need to wring the waste out of the system to make truly effective, high quality care affordable for everyone. Don’t let the conservatives dominate the debate about spending. If they do, they’ll take the conversation in the wrong direction.
The Opportunity Agenda believes that addressing the issue of cost is crucial to a fruitful, productive discussion on health care reform. For example, 52% of American workers do not enroll in employer insurance plans because they are too costly. Premiums for family coverage have increased by 59% since 2000. Decreasing these costs, in addition to addressing the problems of unequal access and unequal quality, is absolutely necessary in order to reform the health care system in the U.S. To learn more, take a look at The Opportunity Agenda fact sheet, Health Care and Opportunity.
• For a touch of humor, check out a recent posting on Disease Management Care Blog. Along with a YouTube video of Canned Heat’s “Let’s Work Together” there are new lyrics encouraging all to work together to reform health care in the U.S.:
Together we’ll stand
Divided we’ll fall
we need more data
the… cash flows will stall
let’s work together
Come on, come on
let’s work together
Now now people….
Because together we will stand
Every doc, all the vendors and Plans!…
• Last week, The Opportunity Agenda’s Immigration Blog Roundup linked to an Of América posting about the Guantanamo-like treatment of individuals held at ICE detention facilities. The latest Breakthrough video titled “Death by Detention” documents individuals’ stories of their horrific experiences at these facilities. The video has been posted on numerous pro-migrant blogs, including Standing FIRM.
• Immigration News Daily has posted an editorial titled “No Getting Around the Wall.” The editorial, which originally appeared in La Opinión, condemns the Supreme Court for refusing to hear a challenge to the Department of Homeland Security decision to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Numerous Arizona environmental organizations have claimed that the DHS ignored 36 environmental protection laws in deciding to construct the wall:
Once again, as in the case of the “mismatch letters” and other similar actions, the Bush Administration is trying to improvise an immigration policy without taking into account the consequences triggered, the rights violated, or the injustices committed.
Building a wall along the border is bad policy. As long as it continues, the courts have the responsibility to stop the abuse of authority that stems from its implementation.
• Wednesday’s Immigration Equality Blog posting calls attention to a USA Today story describing how U.S. citizens are suing the DHS after they were detained and interrogated by ICE workers. The plaintiffs in the suit claim that they were subject to racial profiling and that ICE officials violated workers rights in the process of detaining people. One immigrant worker, Jesus Garcia, was thrown in jail because of the ICE agents’ “mistake”:
ICE agents went to Jesus Garcia’s home on April 16 in conjunction with a raid on a nearby Pilgrim’s Pride poultry processing plant, where he worked marinating chicken meat. Garcia, from Mexico, has been a legal permanent resident for a year and a half. When about 10 ICE agents and local sheriff’s deputies knocked on his door, they told him he was using the wrong Social Security number, says his wife, Olivia Garcia, a U.S. citizen.
Though Garcia showed the agents his green card, they handcuffed him and jailed him. He was released a day and a half later after agents told him he wasn’t the person they wanted, he says. He had spent the night in jail. “He said it was pretty bad,” Olivia says. “People were crying and screaming.”
• A story that appeared in Medical News Today and was initially reported by the Ventura County Star examines California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s decision to save $87 million in the state’s Medicaid program (“Medi-Cal”) by cutting funding for health care services to approximately 91,000 immigrants each month:
Immigration advocates say the cuts would prevent patients from obtaining preventive care, thus increasing emergency department visits and costs. State Assembly and Senate budget committees have voted against the proposals and other Medi-Cal changes, but state officials say they will continue to push for the cuts.
A Washington Post/ABC News poll released this week includes some interesting findings, as Americans contemplate the possibility of the nation’s first African-American president. The survey finds, for example, that 3 in 10 Americans admit to having at least some feelings of racial prejudice. There was little difference between whites, blacks, and “others,” in their response to the question. While social science research shows that virtually all of us carry around subconscious or implicit biases, it is surprising to see so many Americans consciously owning up to their prejudices and confessing them in a telephone survey.
As in other surveys, African Americans were more likely than whites to believe that discrimination persists as a problem, but the numbers were closer than in other recent polls. When asked “Do you think blacks who live in your community experience racial discrimination, or not?” 54% of blacks said “yes,” while 46% of whites agreed. African-American perceptions of discrimination were lower here than in similar recent polls, but may reflect the fact that people of all races typically perceive greater mistreatment in the larger society than they do in their own community. Interestingly, people from racial groups other than Caucasian and African American–lumped together as “others” in the survey analysis–were most likely to answer yes to this question, at 59%.
These poll results, along with other research and events on the ground, suggest that Americans may be ready for a conversation about race that goes beyond the traditional model of discrimination as violent bigotry and recognizes bias as something we must identify and overcome as a nation–through policy as well as personal behavior. And unlike the Washington Post/ABC poll, that conversation will expand from the familiar black/white paradigm to acknowledge the full diversity of our communities.
In the weeks to come, The Opportunity Agenda will be sharing new research, as well as new tools, that can help to move that conversation forward through Election Day and beyond.
In a victory for immigrants’ rights, the Supreme Court handed down a decision allowing immigrants to file motions without fear of being deported for not voluntarily departing within a specific time period. The case, Dada v. Mukasey addressed two conflicting sections of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Section 1229c allows judges to grant immigrants who are told to deport the country permission to leave voluntarily within a specific period of time. However, Section 1229a allows individuals to challenge a deportation order (in the event of any changed circumstances) but requires them to remain in the country while legal motions are pending.
The petitioner, Samson T. Dada, an immigrant from Nigeria, was married to an American citizen in 1999. However, without adequate proof of marriage, the Department of Homeland Security alleged that he had overstayed his temporary immigrant visa and ordered his deportation. An Immigration Judge granted Dada’s request to voluntarily leave the country within 30 days, a decision that the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) affirmed. However, two days before he was supposed to leave, Dada found conclusive proof of his marriage, withdrew his request for voluntary departure and filed a motion to reopen his removal proceedings. The BIA denied his request, claiming that Dada had failed to depart the U.S. within the allotted time period (while ignoring Dada’s withdrawal of his request to voluntarily leave). The Fifth Circuit affirmed the BIA’s decision.
Dada filed a writ of certiorari in the Supreme Court on the grounds that the Fifth Circuit Court decision contradicted other Circuit Courts that found immigrants should be able to file motions to reopen their cases, and found that their decisions to file should override their previous decision to voluntarily leave the U.S.
The Supreme Court ultimately ruled in favor of Dada, finding that immigrants must be allowed an opportunity to withdraw their request for voluntary departure (as long as they do so before the end of their allotted departure period).
In addition, the Court articulated the inefficiencies and complications in the immigration process – Justice Kennedy said in his majority opinion:
A more expeditious solution to the untenable conflict between the voluntary departure scheme and the motion to reopen might be to permit an alien who has departed the United States to pursue a motion to reopen post departure, much as Congress has permitted with respect to judicial review of a removal order.
Much of The Opportunity Agenda’s work to promote opportunity for all has been related to immigration reform. Immigration Reform: Promoting Opportunity for All discusses the discrimination that immigrants face every day as they are treated as unequal members of society:
True opportunity requires that we all have equal access to the benefits, burdens, and responsibilities of our society. In order to fully contribute and participate in society, immigrants and the native born alike should be treated equally regardless of race, gender, religion, country of origin, and other aspects of what they look like and where they come from. But too often immigrants are treated unfairly.
The document also emphasizes the importance of immigrants’ roles in strengthening communities across America:
American communities are strengthened by immigrants from all over the world. Newcomers’ economic contributions are immense, while their cultural and personal contributions improve all aspects of American life.
The Dada case addresses the importance of allowing immigrants to be full and equal members of American society. Without having access to proper legal services, and with relentless discrimination from Courts, immigrants will continue to face barriers to achieving their full potential.
Many people have joined The Opportunity Agenda in calling for reform of the immigration process. One of these individuals is the Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner – he described the U.S. immigration court system as “inadequate” and “ill-trained” in an article in The National Law Journal.
If even an established and admired judge in the U.S. is making such harsh criticisms of the immigration court system and the extent of legal remedies immigrants can seek, then it is clear it is time for the system to be reformed. This reform cannot come fast enough; until it does, there will be more and more individuals trying to fight their way through an unjust system.
Any reform might be too late for Dada – while the Supreme Court ruled that Dada was able to withdraw his request for voluntary departure, the Court did not grant his request to reopen his removal proceedings (it remanded the case back to the lower court). The BIA could still choose to deport him. While Dada’s case brought a victory for many U.S. immigrants, it has not yet brought him the legal right to remain in the U.S.
