Undocumented Immigration
ICE Partners With San Diego County, Seeks Presence in 3,100 Jails
San Diego County recently announced that it would soon be partnering with ICE and dedicating its energy to identifying immigrants in jail for deportation.ICE unveiled its new program – The Secure Communities Program – in March 2008.It gives jails access to ICE and FBI databases so that they can identify inmates who lack legal status or have a criminal history and then turn them over to ICE for deportation. Through this new initiative, ICE plans to eventually have a presence in every one of the 3,100 local jails throughout the U.S. While removing dangerous criminals from the U.S. is an understandable goal, Secure Communities appears to be the latest in ICE’s attempts to get states and localities to do their jobs for them.The best known of these is the 287(g) program, through which local police are trained by ICE, and agree to jointly enforce immigration laws. Read More
Steve Levy’s “I’m Sorry” Is Not Enough
Known for his harsh immigration policies and anti-immigrant rhetoric, Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy responded to the brutal murder of Ecuadorian immigrant, Marcelo Lucero, by saying that it was a “one-day story” and that the hate crime received excessive attention due to his own stance on immigration. Steve Levy has since apologized for his comments, but Suffolk County Democratic chairman Richard Schaffer is calling on Levy to serve as a “unifier” to “calm things down.” Yet, as stated in a New York Times editorial, “The High Cost of Harsh Words,” Mr. Levy’s past harsh words and actions against undocumented workers have now left him cornered with a tragically limited ability to lead the county in confronting a brutal act that surely pains him as much as anyone. Read More
GOP Senator Admits Immigration Debate Tarnished Republican Brand
This past Sunday, on Meet The Press, RNC Chair Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) acknowledged that the current climate of undeterred public immigrant-bashing along with an immigration policy of "attrition through enforcement" has put Republican candidates at a disadvantage when it comes to the Latino vote. Sen Martinez urged all of his fellow GOP colleagues to take a rational stance on immigration reform and to cease all anti-immigrant, anti-Latino rhetoric. MR. BROKAW: Senator Martinez, as you know, politics is about keeping score. I know this is tough for you to hear, probably, but you were 0-for-3 last Tuesday. You're a Republican; you are from Florida, that went to the Democrats; and you're Hispanic, or Latino in some parts of this country, and the Hispanics went overwhelmingly for the Democrats this time. Jill Lawrence wrote in USA TODAY: "`If the Republicans don't make their peace with Hispanic voters, they're not going to win presidential elections anymore. The math just isn't there.'" That's according to Simon Rosenberg, head of the NDN, a Democratic group that studies Hispanic voters." How do you get back to the Hispanics? SEN. MARTINEZ: Governor Jeb Bush--former Governor Jeb Bush last week made a comment that if Republicans don't figure it out and do the math that we're going to be relegated to minority status. I've been preaching this for a long time to my colleagues within my party. I think that the very divisive rhetoric of the immigration debate set a very bad tone for our brand as Republicans. The fact of the matter is I think in Florida there was not a great ideological shift, but I think there was plenty of room for improvement in how that state was looked upon. Read More
Reports Confirm: The Sleeping Giant is AWAKE
Video by America's Voice. Interviews conducted in Los Angeles and Miami between October 23 and November 4 by Bendixen & Associates [for America’s Voice] confirm what immigration experts were predicting all along: the "giant" is awake. Andy Hernandez, a Texas pollster commented, "Latinos are flipping red states to blue...in this election, Latinos contributed to Virginia flipping. They were responsible for Nevada flipping. They contributed to Colorado flipping. And New Mexico went overwhelmingly Democratic, and Latinos were responsible for that." The votes of Latinos, particularly those Latinos who are “New Americans,” tipped the scale for President-elect Barack Obama’s electoral victory on November 4. Of the record-breaking 10 million Latinos who voted, 66-67% voted for Obama. In fact, if not for the support of these voters, Obama would have lost the battleground states of Indiana, Colorado, and New Mexico. Read More
NC Candidate for Governor Trashes Immigrant Voting Bloc
Last week, North Carolina's candidate for governor, Pat McCrory, potentially isolated upwards of 83,000 New American voters in his state when his emails viciously attacking immigrants were leaked online. According to the Daily Kos, McCrory--citing the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)--a fiercely anti-immigrant hate group that is known for its direct ties to John Tanton, a pioneer of the anti-immigrant movement and avid supporter of eugenics--wrote, How would you like to be one of these kids who doesn't get pregnant, works hard in school, doesn't join a gang, goes to church on Sunday, but when they go down to the fast food restaurant, they are told we can't hire you because we need bi-lingual employees. Read More
Immigrant-Friendly American Apparel Demands Immigration Reform
American Apparel--the U.S.' biggest garment manufacturer--is sick of losing good workers to a broken immigration system. That's why the company is raging its "Legalize LA" campaign and standing up for the legalization of the hard-working, but undocumented immigrants living in our country today. Most recently, American Apparel released a memo as part of a voter registration drive challenging the silence of Barack Obama and John McCain on the issue of immigration stating, "It is essential that we do not idly stand by in this next election." Like many businesses, American Apparel is arguing that there is a definite economic benefit to immigrant labor that could be amplified by comprehensive immigration reform. Currently, federal regulations easily ensnare employers who unwittingly find themselves with undocumented workers, despite their best attempts to comply with confusing and often contradictory rules. Read More
DHS No-Match Rule is Another Nail in Economy’s Coffin
At a time when the financial markets are in crisis, unemployment rates are rising, Americans are losing their homes, and the future of small businesses is uncertain, the federal government persists in pushing for implementation of the DHS no-match rule—another nail in the U.S. economy's coffin. While this new rule cannot be immediately implemented because it has been blocked by a court injunction, the government continues its efforts to dissolve the court order and move forward. However, in their rush to implement before their term expires, they are ignoring the fact that U.S. citizens and other lawful workers could lose their jobs due to database errors and employer mistakes and misuse. Last year the New York Times called this program "A Foolish Immigration Purge" and an economic analysis by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that the new rule could result in 165,000 lawful U.S. workers possibly losing their jobs, at a cost to employers of about $1 billion per year. Read More
NC Sheriff Steve Bizzell Trashes Immigrants
It's no surprise that half of all Latinos, immigrant and non-immigrant, are saying that their situation in this country is deteriorating when highly-regarded and powerful officials like Sheriff Steve Bizzell of Johnston County in North Carolina say such denegrating things as "Mexicans are trashy" and that "All they do is work and make love." Jennifer Rudinger of the ACLU told the Associated Press: "[Bizzell's comments] go from simply stating opinion to constituting illegal racial profiling if these opinions are reflected in practice...It's one thing to think something and say something. It's another to have that kind of bias carried out and enforced." North Carolina has put into action a federal program known as the ill-fated 287(g) program which gives specially trained police officers to enforce federal immigration law. The program has had a startling price tag--both financial and social--in communities like Maricopa County, Arizona where the The Sheriff’s Office created a $1.3 million deficit in just three months as a result of its 287(g) agreement. Read More
Presidential Debates Ignore 12 Million Elephants in the Room, Bypass Immigration
What do the economy, health care, and foreign policy have in common? They are all topics that are related to a critical issue that was not discussed in the election 2008 debates: immigration. Everyone from the Latino community to immigration advocates to probing journalists have been eagerly awaiting to hear more about what the two candidates plan to do about the 12 million undocumented people living in the United States. To date, they've heard very little. Our immigration problem isn't going to disappear just by not talking about it. As Barack Obama and John McCain were preparing for their debate last night, 300 workers were rounded up in an immigration raid at a chicken processing plant in South Carolina. In fact, as the two candidates were taking shots at one another, we can guess about 100 children in South Carolina--both citizens and non-citizens--were still left stranded, not knowing where their parents were or when they would see them again. Read More
Immigration: The Elephant in the Presidential Debates
After two presidential debates and one vice-presidential showdown, the American public is still waiting to hear what John McCain and Barack Obama have to say about the elephant in the room: immigration. Everyone from the Latino community to immigration advocates to probing journalists have been eagerly awaiting the immigration topic to be addressed by both candidates. Obama and McCain have been more than willing to address immigration in their conflicting Spanish-language ad campaigns. The debate is an opportunity for both candidates to set their records straight once and for all, including: Who really was responsible for the fall of 2007's immigration bill? What should be done about the 12 million immigrants here in the U.S. without papers? How will Obama and McCain address the problem of unscrupulous employers who hire workers, take advantage of them, and undercut their competitors? Opponents to a path to citizenship say anything that provides legal status to those here illegally is amnesty: how do Obama and McCain define amnesty? Do they support amnesty? If not, what do they support? How can Obama and McCain promise they will actually fix our immigration system rather than pass reforms that perpetuate the problem and lead to another 12 million coming in illegally in the future? Read More
All gifts are matched dollar for dollar
No one should face the immigration system alone
