The Political Complexity of Immigration

The Tribune/WGN commissioned a poll of the Chicago area that shows that voters understand that immigration is something that must be handled with nuance and compassion

The telephone poll of 800 heads of households across the six-county Chicago region July 8-14 found that 57 percent of the respondents did not want police to seek illegal immigrants for deportation.

Almost half of those polled, 48 percent, said they believed that illegal immigrants snatched jobs and resources, taking away from society and the economy.

Nearly all of those who responded, 87 percent, believed that some sort of legal status should be offered to the nearly 11 million people in the country illegally, provided that the immigrants aren’t dangerous felons, that they learn English and that they pay fines and back taxes.

ChicagoTribune.com

I’ve been blogging immigration for over five years now. Earned blisters from marches, protests and vigils close to home and across the country. Voted and advocated for promigrant/prohumanity candidates. Networked to help relief find the random email from a scared brother or sister without documents.

To be honest, it feels unsettling to talk about immigration as a political issue, because it has been used a weapon to destroy the lives of migrant workers, youth, and the communities that give our neighborhoods the vibrant sense of home that we love and cherish.

On the national level, both parties have bought into the notion that there is such a thing as having enough border security – the mirage of satiating the bloodlust of nativists who would rather see a fence hundreds of miles along a desert homeland that has experienced the migration of human beings for as long as the species walked the earth.

We have to be willing to change the way we think about immigration.

We must have the courage to look in the mirror for the reasons that the Summer of 2010 will go down as the deadliest in Arizona. 214 as of July 31st.

We should challenge politicians who are trying to save their careers by offering soundbites that are reckless and unconstitutional.

We must – because it will be the only thing that slows down this march to extremism by the United States. We must remember who we are as human beings.

We must.

Which is why The Sanctuary is back.

 

The Democrat’s Arbitrary Immigration Framework

This afternoon, Democratic Senators Reid, Schumer and Menendez will stage a press conference in Washington, D.C. to lay out their go-it-alone framework for an overhaul of the country’s immigration system. The 26-page plan (.pdf warning) is heavy on what I would describe as arbitrary enforcement mechanisms to appease…someone. Not sure who, exactly, because no matter what gets laid out on the table it will be met with howling screeches of “AAAAAAAAMNESTY!!!!!!!!!111!!!!!!!!!!ELEVEN!!!!!!!!!”

I’ve been blogging this issue for over five years now. I know the drill.

Between now and some future date that will undoubtedly be after the 2010 midterm elections, members of Congress will dream up new ways for undocumented workers and students to perform the Cupid Shuffle while balancing themselves on an exercise ball amidst the “they did it legal crowd” of mostly-white people.

There will be no recourse for undocumented workers who have been exploited as slaves. There will be no mea culpas as to how federal border policy is directly responsible for the crisis situation along la frontera with dead bodies found in increasing numbers every year. And there certainly won’t be any attention given to the economic/trade policies that keep the United States’ boot at the throat of sender nations.

It’s all arbitrary. And creepy:

Not later than 18 months after the date of enactment of this proposal, the Social Security Administration will begin issuing biometric social security cards. These cards will be fraud-resistant, tamper-resistant, wear resistant, and machine-readable social security cards containing a photograph and an electronically coded micro-processing chip which possesses a unique biometric identifier for the authorized card-bearer.

The card will also possess the following characteristics: (1) biometric identifiers, in the form of templates, that definitively tie the individual user to the identity credential; (2) electronic authentication capability; (3) ability to verify the individual locally without requiring every employer to access a biometric database; (4) offline verification capability (eliminating the need for 24-hour, 7-days-per-week online databases); (5) security features that protect the information stored on the card; (6) privacy protections that allow the user to control who is able to access the data on the card; (7) compliance with authentication and biometric standards recognized by domestic and international standards organizations. The new biometric social security card shall enable the following outcomes: (1) permit the individual cardholder to control who can access their information; (2) allow electronic authentication of the credential to determine work authorization; and (3) possession of scalability of authentication capability depending on the requirement of the application.

The libertarians have been largely silent on the government expansion involved with SB1070 in Arizona. I don’t expect them to speak out against this either. After all, we have to sacrifice for the greater good to get them, don’t we?

This latest mierda burger is not something I was willing to accept when the Bush Administration tried to serve it and I’m certainly not going to do so from a Democratic chef. The entire document is akin to getting kicked in the teeth after the AZGOP just finished whipping us for daring to disobey our masters.

No Gracias.

 

Another Deadly Summer

If you peruse the archives of this site, you’ll see many posts from me agonizing about the constant drumbeat of death that occurs in the desert as the summer heat blazes and economic policies continue to pull humanity to El Norte. This summer has been particularly deadly:

The bodies of six illegal immigrants have been found in the past three days along Arizona’s stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border, continuing a deadly summer in the desert.

Law enforcement officials recovered two bodies each on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday as the scorching summer heat continued. Temperatures have reached 100 degrees or higher in Southern Arizona each of the past 13 days, said National Weather Service meteorologist Gary Zell.

From Oct. 1 through July 31, Border Patrol agents in the Tucson Sector had recovered the bodies of 161 illegal immigrants, an 18 percent increase from the 137 bodies found during the same time last year, said Mike Lee, Border Patrol Tucson Sector spokesman. The sector stretches from New Mexico to Yuma County.

Arizona Daily Star (emphasis mine)

Where’s Obama? Where’s Janet? This human rights catastrophe is happening in a jurisdiction that she has overseen since 2002; first as Arizona’s governor, now as the Secretary of Homeland Security.

They are no better than George W. Bush on border policy.

Rhetoric-wise there is a difference, but that doesn’t muster any clout when you have people stripping off their clothes out of desperation to escape the scorching sun. The American people find it easy to blame border crossers for their own deaths. “They had it coming.”

Yet they ignore the maquilas that sit conveniently on one side of an imaginary line so that brown skinned workers can produce goods for pennies on the dollar. Mujeres being raped and disappeared by the thousands in Juarez. Pollution that infects the workers and those living along watersheds – all in the name of economic stability for those privileged enough to be on the benefitting side of the T-account.

Where is the change, Mr. President? Secretary Salazar recently gave positive signals to humanitarian groups, but how will that translate to a shift in paradigm and treatment of our brothers and sisters south of the line?

Even as this shell game continued, Ed McCullough and several other No More Deaths volunteers were invited to meet with Jane Lyder, assistant secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks. The message they toted back to Washington, D.C., was simple, says McCullough, a retired dean of the UA College of Science, and the group’s official cartographer: “We told them there were people dying in the desert, and the primary cause of death was heat-related problems related to the lack of water. And we told them that we wanted to put water out.

“Secretary Salazar came in about 15 minutes after the meeting started and talked about his concern with what’s happening to the migrants in the desert,” McCullough recalls. “He said he’s had a general concern about immigration problems for a very long time. He also said there were laws among the various government agencies, and anyone proposing what we’re proposing would have to work within the law.”

McCullough says he and the other volunteers left the meeting with a sense “that they wanted to work something out with the humanitarian groups.”

If that’s the case, it does signal a mood for compromise. But this is precisely where the rubber hits the road.

Hawkes was out of town and unavailable for comment. But in a recent interview with the Tucson Weekly, he made his position clear. When asked whether No More Deaths will be allowed to put out water, he replied: “Not the way they want to do it. But they can drive around the refuge and hand out cups of water all they want.”

Tucson Weekly (emphasis mine)

Unfortunately, that is the situation we face as long as Washington does nothing to end the funnel of death along la frontera and the economic instability that keeps currency in Latin América dependent upon the whims of the greenback.

 

6th Annual Migrant Trail Announced

Crossposted from The Sanctuary

The Migrant Trail:
We Walk for Life
May 25-31, 2009

Our Vision:

The precarious reality of our borderlands calls us to walk. We walk together on a journey of peace to remember people, friends and family who have died, others who have crossed, and people who continue to come. We walk to bear witness to the tragedy of death and of the inhumanity in our midst. Lastly, we walk as a community, in defiance of the borders that attempt to divide us, committed to working together for the human dignity of all peoples.

In 1994, the U.S. government under the direction of President Bill Clinton, instituted Operation Gatekeeper that provided funds and personnel to militarize the border between Baja California and California. The campaign was specifically designed to divert the wave of humanity inland:

The purpose of the new plan was to stem the tide of illegal immigrants crossing the border from Mexico into the United States and to shift the remaining traffic eastward, where the Border Patrol believed it enjoyed a strategic advantage over would-be crossers. This new approach to patrolling the border was named “Operation Gatekeeper.” Since the plan’s launch in 1994 at Imperial Beach, the same operational concepts have been implemented at the remaining stations in the San Diego Sector, beginning with Chula Vista – the station immediately east of Imperial Beach – and continuing in an easterly progression station by station to the San Diego Sector’s eastern border.

USDOJ.gov (emphasis mine)

Eastward.

Triple-digit heat. Non-existent sources of water. Desolation. Death.

“Strategic advantage” indeed.

The above graph comes from a 2007 policy brief and study, authored by Raquel Rubio-Goldsmith, M. Melissa McCormick, Daniel Martinez, and Inez Magdalena Duarte, through the University of Arizona’s Binational Migration Institute. It shows the explosion of death wrought in the Tucson Sector – part of that “eastward” mentioned by the Department of Justice – in the aftermath of Operation Gatekeeper.

Those of us who call la frontera home have not remained silent in the face of this humanitarian crisis. Grassroots organizations have mobilized to build coalitions of neighborhoods, church congregations, elected officials, student groups, and others to raise awareness of the disastrous end many of these economic refugees suffer in the desert.

From May 25-31st the 6th Annual Migrant Trail will bear witness to the humanitarian crisis that marches unimpeded, even under a new President. This 75-mile trek spans the distance between the communities of Sasabe, Sonora, México and Tucson, Arizona. Details on how to support this endeavor below the fold.

Monday, May 25th, 2:00pm:
Sásabe, Sonora:
Join us for the sending forth ceremony and the 4.8 mile walk to our first campsite on the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge

Sunday, May 31, 11:30am:
Tucson, Arizona:
Join us for the welcoming celebration as participants complete the 75-mile journey, bearing witness to the gauntlet of death that has claimed more than 5,000 men, women and children on the U.S.-México border.

For more information, please contact: migrant_trail@yahoo.com or call 520.770.1373

The Migrant Trail is sponsored by the following groups: Migrant Trail Walk Committee, Coalición de Derechos Humanos, BorderLinks, Mennonite Central Committee US, Catholic Relief Services – Mexico Program, No More Deaths – Phoenix and Tucson, 8th Day Center for Justice, Coloradans for Immigrants Rights, Frontera de Cristo, Humane Borders, American Friends Service Committee, JPIC Office of the St. Barbara Province Franciscans, Shalom Mennonite Fellowship, Casa Maria, and Church of the Good Shepherd.

“The Migrant Trail is an important spiritual witness to the challenging reality of our borderlands today,” says Brother David Buer, a Franciscan brother serving in Tucson. “It is a moral imperative that we embrace our desperate migrant brothers and sisters with more humane policies and action.”

Amen.

 

Latest Example of Border Policy Hypocrisy

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano:

“I am very cognizant of the balance that must be struck between good security measures and trade and commerce. Things like having to wait in long lines to get into a port are very problematic for supply chains,” she said.

Of course, she is referring to the Canadian/U.S. Border. Can’t have any disruption there.

 

Time For Another Border Wall!

Time to start importing more Chinese steel! Washington State is going to get a shiny border wall just like my backyard. Right?

No. That would mean border policy wasn’t full of hypocrisy. And it is.

Immigration officers arrested two Canadian citizens early Friday morning while the men were allegedly trying to load cocaine onto a personal watercraft on a Whatcom County beach.

Seattle Times

 

Border Alliance Formed to Address Concerns

Border policy is just one important aspect of the need for a complete upheaval and restructuring of the overall immigration system. Unfortunately, those of us who call the FronteraLands our home in the southwest portion of the United States know that when D.C. talks about the need to secure our nation’s borders, they don’t really mean it. That’s all just wonky code for “do all we can to keep the horde of brown people heading north from Mexico and Latin America out of our land.”

Never will we see the construction of a massive wall between the U.S. and Canada as we are witnessing rise like an evil phoenix across the desert states; nor will Alaskans have to tolerate the erection of virtual sensor towers along their imaginary line with the Yukon Territory. Checkpoints with armed guards a hundred miles inland won’t be commonplace in Maine, though if they were to materialize, you can bet a sack of euros that agents would still be scanning vehicles for those suspected of crossing la frontera sur. No need to worry about every guest at a Hawaiian luau being seized by gas mask-covered ICE agents wielding demands that proof of citizenship be provided on the spot.

No, no. Those types of adventures are usually reserved for us. A second helping if our skin happens to be brown. Any yet, over the past several years, the George W. Bush misAdministration has repeatedly told residents of frontera communities that our concerns were null and void in the face of Homeland Security™. Our human rights have been repeatedly ignored and violated as the region becomes more militarized, environmental protections slashed and burned, tribal burial grounds desecrated, ancestral properties seized, minority populations targeted through profiling, etc etc etc.

In the face of such adversity and oftentimes absurdity, a sliver of light shines through the crack in the doorway to true dialog. An alliance has been formed between the National Immigration Forum, the Border Network of Human Rights and the Border Action Network to give a voice to border residents. This week, members of the three groups travel to Washington, D.C. to present their collaborative report: Effective Border Policy: Security, Responsibility and Human Rights. You can view the full report and representative listings here.

This report finally addresses border policy and immigration reform with an adult mindset, instead of with a tantrum and band-aid, as we’ve seen repeatedly during the past eightish years. Via press release, here is an excerpt of recommendations and the mindset of collaborators:

“Border policy is not a choice between enforcement or no enforcement; it is about smart enforcement that creates national and community security,” said El Paso Sheriff-elect and Task Force member, Richard Wiles. “I came to Washington because I believe that border security and community security are not mutually exclusive. Establishing and maintaining trust between local law enforcement and the immigrant community is central to the security of my county. If we trust each other, then as Sheriff I can focus on the real dangers facing our community.”

The recommendations in the report are divided into several key areas: accountability and oversight, review of border operations, technology, and infrastructure, ports of entry, border walls and fencing, diluting law enforcement resources, military at the border, detention and deportation, community security and just and comprehensive development.

Specific proposals include:

• Communities are more secure when border enforcement policies focus on the criminal element and engage immigrants in fighting the real dangers facing our country;
• Communities are safer when we implement policies that ensure accountability and provide local oversight of enforcement activities;
• Communities flourish when Ports of Entry are treated as vital gateways to America;
• Communities are stronger and lives are saved when we replace border blockade operations with more sensible enforcement; and
• Communities are safer when local law enforcement is not pressed into immigration-enforcement roles and the military is not used to enforce civilian law.

Let’s see how much Change™ can be enacted with a new President and Congress next year. A bigger table for discussion with the people who actually live in the areas being affected is a decent start.

Crossposted from The Sanctuary

 

Día De Los Muertos Events in Tucson

Sábado, 1 de Noviembre

• 8:30AM – Día de los Muertos Pilgrimage – From St. John’s Church to San Xavier Mission – sponsored by Coalición de Derechos Humanos

This year, Derechos Humanos has documented the recovery of 183 bodies on the Arizona-Sonora border. The lives of these men, women and children should be acknowledged and honored.

It is our goal to have one person to carry each cross as we make this 8-mile journey. We need your help to do this, and we invite you to join us this Saturday to celebrate the lives lost on our border.

• 5:00PM – Community Altar Celebration – Tucson Museum of Art
  

  Enjoy a family-oriented celebration of the ancient Mexican custom known as Dia de los Muertos/Day of the Dead at the Tucson Museum of Art, Saturday November 1 at 5:00 pm in the courtyards and galleries at 140 North Main Avenue in historic downtown. This event is free and open to the public.

  Enjoy the festive atmosphere of traditional Mexican light displays, music, and food. Join in the parade around the courtyard and over to El Presidio Park with Big Head Puppets. Marvel at the special altar created by students of St. Ambrose School and the Museum School for the Visual Arts. Bring photos or other small items to add to the Community Altar (any items that are not retrieved by the following day, Sunday, November 2 will be burned in a giant urn at the end of the All Souls Procession).

  This special celebration in honor of our loved ones and ancestors who’ve passed is a collaborative effort between the Tucson Museum of Art, Many Mouths One Stomach, St. Ambrose School, and the Museum School for the Visual Arts.

Domingo, 9 de Noviembre

• 6:00PM – All Souls Procession, 4th Avenue to Downtown (full route here)
  

  Mark your calendars! The 19th Annual All Souls Procession is on Sunday, November 9, 2008. Many of you have expressed concern and puzzlement with our choice of this years’ date for the Procession. Usually we pick the first Sunday in November, and this year that Sunday is on the same weekend as Halloween. In past years, we have held the Procession close to Halloween and the Procession suffered because of it. We had crowds of drunk, rowdy people who were not at all mindful of the intention of the “ All Souls…” . They were in the spirit of Halloween revelry, which -though similar- was more about shock value, partying and raising a ruckus.

  As organizers of the Procession, our priority is always quality of experience over quantity of participants, and though the Procession has grown exponentially, we will always strive to propagate an “ALL SOULS PROCESSION” that is a grassroots, non-commercial, hyper-inclusive, sacred event dedicated to honoring our ancestors and loved ones who have passed on.

 

Jorge Ramos Interview with Obama/Biden

Somehow I missed this.

Jorge Ramos interviewed the Democratic candidates for President and Vice President the day after the first debate between Senators Obama and McCain. Since there have now been three debates and not one question asked about immigration reform or border policy, I think it’s important to note that these are still pressing issues for many of us.

Here’s how Obama answered a question on the Great Wall of America:

Jorge Ramos
SENATOR THE LAST TIME THAT WE SPOKE YOU TOLD ME THAT YOU DIDN’T KNOW IF A FENCE WOULD WORK TO STOP UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS FROM CROSSING FROM MEXICO TO UNITED STATES. NOW IF WERE YOU STILL UNSURE, WHY DID YOU VOTE ALONG WITH SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN TO AUTHORIZE THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE FENCE?

Barack Obama
Well, here is what I said that I’m skeptical that…you can’t build a fence along a border like the one between the United States and Mexico. There maybe areas were having barriers could actually prevent the kinds of flows into the United States, some of which really dangerous for the potential undocumented worker as well. But what I do think we have to do is to get serious about border security in combination with cracking down on employers like the ones in Iowa that were hiring 13 and 14 year olds to engage in some of the most dangerous work there is, meat packaging and we got to have a system to lift undocumented workers out of the shadows and provide a pathway to citizenship. Now, what we are seeing is because the decline in the construction industry in particular but the economy slowing down generally, that the flow of undocumented workers is slowing and that remind us once again that to the extent we are working with Mexico to relieve poverty there and provide jobs and opportunity. That is going to be the best recipe for us to be able to deal with this thing long term.

Blog de Obama

For a more comprehensive look at how an Obama administration would tackle an overhaul of the immigration system, you can always look at how he answered the Sanctuary’s questionnaire.

Senator McCain, it seems, will be able to slide through the next few weeks without revealing that he is a minuteman, not a maverick.

 

More Than Soundbites on Immigration Reform

Over the past few years and beyond, political leaders of all levels – local, county, state and federal – licked their chops as they calculated which issues to focus on in order to win an election and gain power. Ideology and party registration often has little to do with their decisions, because if they or any of their advisors get a whiff that a certain topic would be political danger from them, the item either gets conveniently ignored, spin-dried and sanitized, or in the case of supposed allies, entire communities get stabbed in the back.

Regarding an overhaul of the immigration system in the United States, it’s been written many times here that it is not a latino/latina issue; yet it is an undeniable truth that our communities are feeling the brunt of hardliner policies. When you have pundits and legislators equating our diverse culture with a citizenship test, or interchanging the terms hispanic/latino/illegal/criminal/invader/terrorist/gang-banger/etc., you can bet that groups and leaders advocating for our equal place in society will be demanding an end to such institutionalized bigotry and fear-mongering.

With the 2008 Presidential Election in full swing, the Editorial Board of The Sanctuary developed and distributed a candidate questionnaire to the campaigns that would give us some substance on how a White House under their direction would overhaul the immigration system, handle border policies, and collaborate with other countries on trade and economics. It has been nearly three weeks since we made contact with the Barack Obama and John McCain camps, and we have yet to hear an answer to any of our queries. We’ve also reached out to third party candidates because the U.S. is a democracy and they will appear on many ballots, whether the two parties that have the most money like it or not.

To any campaign operatives reading here or at the various Sanctuarysphere sites that are sponsoring the questionnaire, know that we want more than just promises and soundbites from our next President on what they will do with respect to immigration reform. This questionnaire covers a wide range of topics related to it, and it would be to your advantage to educate your candidate and staff on the implications of many of these decisions and how they disproportionately affect latino/latina communities across the United States. I recommend a perusal of our blog archives if you need a crash course on what that has looked like in the past.

This is all the more pressing as both McCain and Obama take the time to speak to conventions such as the League of United Latin American Citizens, National Council de la Raza, and Unity ’08 where immigration will most certainly come up in their speeches and conversations this month. These groups and initiatives represent a part of “hispanic” and other POC communities that has suddenly become so sought after for votes, and we represent another. Your campaigns may not be getting millions of dollars from our sites, but many of us do march in the streets and cast our ballots in elections regularly.

Immigration reform is one of those topics that should be a human rights issue, but often gets treated like the next coming of Osama bin Laden. It conveniently fattens the military- and prison-industrial complexes and further racializes United States society. There are many of us who would like to know how you will be dealing with it all come January 20, 2009, after yet another string of failures by the Bush regime.

Gracias.

Más Información:

• SanctuarySphere Sites that developed the questionnaire and are promoting it:

• American Humanity
• CrossLeft
• Culture Kitchen
• Citizen Orange
• DREAM Act Texas
• Latina Lista
• Latino Político
• Migra Matters
• ¡Para Justicia y Libertad!
• Problem Chylde
• The Unapologetic Mexican
• Vivir Latino
• Zuky

• A small sample of the questions:

• 7. Do you support the “touchback” requirements of previous comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) legislation that would require undocumented immigrants to return to their countries of origin in order to normalize their status?

• 17. Do you support the Detainee Basic Medical Care Act, the bill that would require the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to develop procedures to ensure adequate medical care for all detainees held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)?

• 23. Would you support the incorporation of requirements that would tie
  both future economic aid and trade agreements to substantive benchmarks
  in sender nations that would alleviate some of the economic and
  humanitarian conditions that foster continued migration?

• 36. How do you address the overwhelming amount of money the U.S. federal
  government spends on defense and military expenditures, at home and
  abroad, and would you see to it that less money is spent on
  militarization and more money is spent on social programs?

• Link to full questionnaire