The State of Opportunity

Thursday Immigration Blog Roundup

•     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 American 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...

Court Upholds LAPD's Policy of Not Asking Immigration Status

Last Thursday, June 26^th 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.”

Thursday Immigration Blog Roundup

•    Alan Jenkins, Executive Director of The Opportunity Agenda, has written an op-ed for OurFuture.org.  The piece, titled “Challenge and Community in the Heartland,” discusses the horrific effects of the recent immigration raid on the community of Postville, Iowa:

After the Postville raid, half of the local school system’s 600 students were absent. Many businesses were shuttered and churches left empty. And many families and friends were separated. But, unlike this month’s terrible storms and twisters, the Postville raid could have happened differently, or not at all.

The raid is an example of the U.S. government officials using quick, destructive tactics to shift attention away from the fact that the federal legislature has been incapable of passing meaningful immigration reform.  Moreover, the government did not arrest any of the managers from Agriprocessors, the company that was responsible for the Postville plant, even though the Iowa Department of Labor found numerous workplace safety violations there:

A federal enforcement strategy concerned with public safety and accountability would have focused on these alleged practices which, if true, pose a real threat to economic opportunity within the state. And it would fix our broken immigration system so that immigrant workers can be realistically and fairly held accountable.

•    The Night of 1000 Conversations is taking place tonight, June 19.  The event consists of thousands of individuals across the U.S. getting together in their local communities and discussing the detrimental effects of the anti-immigration actions of the Department of Homeland Security.

•    A June 19 article that appeared in The Washington Post details how a local sheriff in Maricopa County, Arizona dispatched his deputies into predominantly Hispanic communities and told them to arrest anyone who could not immediately prove he or she was a legal U.S. resident.  Mary Rose Wilcox, a local supervisor and longtime Hispanic activist said:

All he is doing is going after everybody with a brown face.  There's no doubt in my mind that this is racial profiling. None.

The inability of the federal government to enact meaningful immigration reform has forced state and local governments to address the issue.  According to the Post article, more than 240 immigration reform measures have been passed in the last year.  However, the inaction of the federal government has also allowed anti-immigrant officials like the Maricopa County sheriff to enact their own extremist policies of racial profiling without any regulation from political leaders.

To learn more about the importance of protecting immigrants’ rights, take a look at The Opportunity Agenda fact sheet, Immigrants and Opportunity.

•    A posting on Of América addresses the increasingly cruel treatment of immigrants held at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities.  The treatment of people detained at these facilities is being compared to the treatment of people detained at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay:

In the case of both the military and immigrant detention facilities, says [Amrit] Singh, [staff attorney at the ACLU,] the Bush Administration has used national security imperatives to deny many of the Freedom of Information Act requests she and her colleagues have filed in their efforts to find out things like how people are being treated in detention, under what conditions did detainees die and what kind of medical treatment they are receiving.

Six Years Later, Health Disparities by Race and Ethnicity Persist

Amidst the energy and momentum for health care reform in the United States, it is important to remember that getting an insurance card into everyone's wallet is not the same as guaranteeing equal access to quality health care.  Recent studies have shown that, in America, health is not just about having insurance or paying bills: it's also, unfortunately, about the color of your skin.

The Lancet, a journal of global medicine, published an article this last Saturday (free registration required) on persisting racial and ethnic disparities in health, six years following the groundbreaking Institute of Medicine study, Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care.  The Opportunity Agenda Research Director and primary editor of the 2002 IOM study, Brian Smedley, is quoted in the Lancet article:

“As the report's study director, I was pleased to see that Unequal Treatment prompted a sober discussion in health policy, academic, and political circles”, Brian Smedley, former senior programme officer at the US Institute of Medicine, wrote in a blog to mark the latest issue of the journal Health Affairs, which includes research on health disparities. “But ultimately the report failed to prompt passage of significant new federal legislation or spur the Department of Health and Human Services to adopt its core recommendations. As a result, little has been done, in my view, to systematically address the problem.”

Citing some of the papers in the latest issue of Health Affairs, called Disparities: Expanding the Focus [paid subscription required], he said that some of the most shocking health care gaps that were not documented when Unequal Treatment was published, were found in mental and oral health care. Meanwhile, the biggest gains in life expectancy occurred among the best-educated Americans.

Because of the failure of HHS to adopt recommendations to reduce disparities, and the stalling of major legislation in Congress to address disparities, many of the inequities identified half a dozen years ago are still prevalent.  In very real terms, this means that communities that often have the most need for quality health care are the ones that receive the least of such care. 

"Brave New Laws" by Alan Jenkins at OurFuture.org

Check out The Opportunity Agenda Executive Director Alan Jenkins' new column, "Brave New Laws," at the Campaign for America's Future blog, Blog for Our Future.  Jenkins discusses the need for new, proactive laws that recognize what technological advances and scientific research have clearly demonstrated--that many Americans are still at risk of discrimination:

A growing body of research shows that, while old fashioned bigotry has declined, subconscious stereotypes and implicit biases continue to pose daunting barriers to equal treatment in health care, education, and the criminal justice system, among other sectors. Particularly compelling is the work of Harvard’s Project Implicit (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/), which shows that we all carry around subconscious biases based on race, gender, religion, and other human characteristics that often influence our decisionmaking. The Institute of Medicine at the National Academies, among others, has found that such biases can influence health care and other decisions, including by professionals who have no conscious intention to discriminate.

Despite this established research, the courts have interpreted the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, as well as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which bars racial discrimination in federally funded programs), to address only intentional efforts to harm people of a particular group. Because that reading fails to respond to the realities of modern exclusion, Congress should amend Title VI, and the next Administration should advocate a reading of the Constitution that embodies the Framers’ intention to eradicate discrimination, in its evolving forms, from our nation’s institutions.

Read the full column here.

Most Connecticut Residents Agree That Undocumented Immigrants Should Have a Path to Citizenship

A Quinnipiac Poll released today shows that a plurality, and almost majority, of Connecticut residents believe that undocumented immigrants should be offered a chance to apply for citizenship, preferring this policy option over either deportation or offering temporary worker status by a rate of 2-to-1.

The poll asked, among many other questions ranging from opinions on the current presidential candidates to the state of the economy:

38. What do you think should happen to most illegal immigrants working in the United States - Should they be offered a chance to apply for citizenship, OR Should they be allowed to stay as temporary workers, OR Should they be deported to the country they came from?

47% of all respondents selected "citizenship," while only 27% and 22% selected "temporary workers" and "deported," respectively.  51% of all women and 59% of all African American residents agreed that a path to citizenship was the sound solution to addressing the status issue of undocumented immigrants.

These Connecticut residents are recognizing the importance of community, the American value of expanding opportunity for all members of our society and extending to newcomers both the rights and responsibilities that tie us together, as embodied in our national motto, E Pluribus Unum, "from many, one."  Connecticuters (yes, that's what someone from Connecticut is called; either that, or "Yankee," as of King Arthur's Court) also hold strong the fundamental American value of mobility, the central concept of the American Dream which states that the economic, educational, and personal achievement should not be limited or determined by the circumstances of a person's birth.

Lakota Secede from the US, Claiming Human Rights Violations

• The Unapologetic Mexican has posted on the decision of the Lakota to secede from the United States. The Lakota Nation, which includes portions of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming, has informed the State Department that it is withdrawing from all thirty-three treaties it has signed with the federal government, which it claims the US has not honored.  According to an article on The Raw Story:

Oppression at the hands of the US government has taken its toll on the Lakota, whose men have one of the shortest life expectancies -- less than 44 years -- in the world.

Lakota teen suicides are 150 percent above the norm for the United States; infant mortality is five times higher than the US average; and unemployment is rife, according to the Lakota freedom movement's website.

The Lakota were active leaders in the process of the UN's adoption of a declaration on the rights of indigenous people this past September.

• Yesterday's protests outside New Orleans city hall saw residents attacked by the police with pepper spray -- and the council voted unanimously to demolish 4500 affordable housing units in spite of public opinion to the contrary.  Feministe and Too Sense have both reported on the day's events.

• A family in California made a recent decision to take their seventeen-year-old daughter off of life support after CIGNA health insurance refused to pay for a liver transplant, claiming it was an experimental procedure.  A protest outside of CIGNA's office caused the insurance company to relent at the last minute, but the window of opportunity had already passed for Natalee Sarkisian and her health deteriorated further, impelling her family to let go.  Stories like Natalee's illustrate how imperative it is that we replace our broken health care system with an equitable system that will support the community rather than capital gain.

• Tennessee Guerilla Women also linked to a story about a young Icelandic woman who was detained and imprisoned while entering the US on a recent vacation with friends.  Immigration agents claimed that Eva Ósk Arnardóttir had overstayed a visa by three weeks on her last visit to the US in 1995. Agents detained and then imprisoned her without sleep or food, denied her contact with the outside world, and shuttled her around chained up in public before finally sending her back to Iceland.

• And wrapping up, the upcoming holiday has inspired a few interesting pieces that contrast the Christmas spirit with modern immigration crackdowns.  Immigration News Daily has posted 'Three Wise Men' Interrogated by CIA, deported as well as Santa Claus in legal trouble?, which begins:

To begin with, because of the recent increase in border security, he will not be able to land anywhere in the U.S. unless he would comply with the Department of Homeland Security rule on advance passenger manifests for flying private airplanes (and sleighs) (72 FR 53394, 9/18/07). Next, he will have to declare the value of all the gifts that he is giving to the kids on the "nice list." That is in addition to the strict search and X-ray of the bags in which he is carrying the gifts. Because of the holidays, it may take U.S. Customs and Border Protection a while to do all of this, so he can expect a few days before getting the gifts back to be able to deliver them. Santa will have to obtain a visa before entry into the U.S. Because we do not have a consular post at the North Pole, he will have to go to a third country post for his visa. He will have to have a valid passport before he can apply for a visa. At the consulate he will be fingerprinted and photographed. Then he will need to go through a security background check, which may take a long time, sometimes up to a few years, to clear.

A Debate on Housing, Live from the New Orleans City Council

• Louisiana news station WDSU is offering a live video feed from the New Orleans City Council meeting on the impending demolition of public housing.  In addition to those speaking at the meeting, hundreds of people are standing outside City Hall in protest of the lack of affordable housing in the region since the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina two years ago. Present-day inequities in New Orleans are often framed with respect to human rights; the demand for affordable housing is just one aspect of ensuring that residents have the social and economic security needed to provide for their families with dignity.

• Bloggernista has reported that Congress has lifted a nine-year ban on using public funding to support needle exchange programs in Washington, DC.  Despite the fact that syringe exchange programs have proven effective in reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS, this ban had held firm while the capital city has the developed the highest rate of HIV infection in the nation, a true modern epidemic noted for its immense racial disparities.

• The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog reposted an Associated Press article entitled 'State supreme court rules counties are liable for inmates' care,' including conditions that existed prior to imprisonment. It's great to see a court ruling in favor of the responsibility of the community to provide a basis level of health care for those in custody without other options -- this is a good step towards the recognition that all Americans deserve access to health care.
  

Justices voted 8-0 on Tuesday in favor of HCA Health Services of Oklahoma, the parent company of OU Medical Center. The hospital sued Oklahoma County commissioners and Sheriff John Whetsel over $2.2 million in medical payments for treating prisoners in the jail from February 2003 through September 2006.

The county's argument was that much of the expense was to treat conditions that predated the prisoners' arrests, Justice Marian Opala wrote in the court opinion.

• The DMI Blog analyzed a recent New York Times editorial on Arizona's new law intended to crack down on undocumented immigrants, offering praise for what it refers to as an 'example of smart immigration policy.' Author Suman Raghunathan expounds:

I am, in fact, waxing poetic on a stellar editorial in yesterday’s  Times.  This gem of a piece outlines in plain, centrist-liberal-speak why going after employers who employ undocumented immigrants instead of enforcing existing labor law makes for poor immigration policy.

What’s more, Arizona’s law (and believe me, there are many more in the works across the country) will do nothing to address our nation’s desperate need for smart and fair policies that welcome immigrant contributions into our economy. Worse yet, it does nothing to bring undocumented workers out of the shadows with a legalization program to level the playing field on wages and labor conditions for all workers – documented and undocumented, green card holders and US citizens.

Meanwhile, the Presidential election campaigns continue to work themselves into a fevered state, trying to say as little as possible on immigration policy (pick a party, any party) while sounding tough on undocumented immigrants (again, pick a punching bag, any punching bag). 

Here’s to hoping those high-falutin’ political operatives take a page from the Times’ editorial board’s playbook when they think about immigration. 

From Homeless to Harvard

• The Angry Asian Man blog has posted a series of inspiring articles about a woman who is working towards a degree from Harvard University. Kimberly S.M. Woo is a single mother who was once a homeless drug addict. In the process of turning her life around she sought an education as a means of escaping poverty and creating a better life for her five-year-old daughter. Woo is a stellar example of the power of redemption as well as our potential for social mobility. Like thousands of Americans, Woo was given a second chance and has excelled; after a year working for Americorp she attended a community college in Boston for her Associate's Degree, where she earned a 4.0 GPA before transferring to Harvard.

• This weekend saw a couple interesting articles about the politics behind skiing. Immigration News Daily has written about an Aspen Ski resort's efforts to find workers:

The Aspen Skiing Co.'s quest to find enough workers this winter led recruiters to Puerto Rico, among other places. The company hired about 20 workers from the Caribbean island this fall to work in various positions at its two lodging properties, The Little Nell hotel and Snowmass Lodge and Club, according to Skico spokesman Jeff Hanle. The Skico was forced to get creative this year when there was a snafu at the national level with the H-2B visa program for temporary guest workers. An exemption to the program expired Sept. 30, after Congress failed to address comprehensive immigration reform.

And the Immigrants in USA blog did a feature called Niños on the slopes about a new Park City, Utah programs to provide local Latino children with access to the sport:

The Niños program, sponsored by St. Mary's Catholic Church, exists to bridge the cultural divide between, generally speaking, the affluent whites of Park City and the Latino immigrants who work in the posh community's service industry.

"Here, in this town, skiing is the great equalizer," explained the Rev. Bob Bussen, known as "Father Bob," who tears down the mountain wearing his clerical collar. "If you can ski, you're as good as anyone."

• The All About Race blog has reported on an upsetting development in the Jena 6 case. It seems that the plea bargain the Mychal Bell accepted also included a promise to testify against the other five students facing charges:

With Bell being placed in the position of serving as the star witness against the other teens, they are more likely to be convicted if they refuse to follow Bell’s example and cop a plea. This is the underbelly of an unfair judicial system. Upon entering his guilty plea, Bell admitted that he hit the White student, knocking him unconscious, and joining others in kicking him after he fell to the floor. Therefore, the D.A. will be using the most culpable of the six teens to obtain convictions against those who were less involved. That’s the way the judicial system works – or doesn’t work.

• The Happening Here blog has posted about a nurses' strike at St. Luke's Hospital in San Francisco's Mission District. We've previously mentioned the hospital's plans to close down in order to shift its services to a more affluent neighborhood.  The hospital has refused for months to negotiate a contract with the nurses union, who began striking last Thursday.

• Lastly, the Inteligenta Indiĝena Indigenismo Novaĵoservo blog has advised us of a Washington Post article stating that the federal government has paid $1.3 billion in farm subsidies since 2000 to people who do not farm. While our government policies are never devoid of irony, these subsidies are a particularly painful instance of unequal treatment given the "go-it-alone" narrative of individualism that conservatives use to justify cutting back on social services. In reality, however, great societies are built by investing in the well-being of the community, which was understood well by the authors of the New Deal legislation, the GI bill and the HeadStart program.

 

New Jersey Set to Abolish the Death Penalty

• The Sentencing Law and Policy blog has reported that the New Jersey legislature has voted to outlaw the death penalty in the state. The governor has already indicated his support for the measure, so it will likely be signed into law soon. New Jersey will be the first state in more than 40 years to abolish capital punishment. While human rights law has called for a ban on the death penalty under certain circumstances (concerning juvenile offenders, for example), the UN has yet to impose a blanket ban. However, the practice is frowned upon internationally -- it is mandated that all nations seeking to join the European Union or the Council of Europe either abolish capital punishment or institute an official moratorium on executions.

• RaceWire has provided us with another update on the struggle to preserve affordable housing in New Orleans, quoting an AP article:

Protesters wielding bullhorns and shouting “housing is a human right” stopped demolition at a massive public housing complex Wednesday in this hurricane-ravaged city in dire need of homes for the poor.

More than 30 protesters blocked an excavator from entering the fenced-off area of the B.W. Cooper complex. It was the first of what likely will be many standoffs between protesters and demolition crews that are tearing down hundreds of barracks-style buildings so they can be replaced with mixed-income neighborhoods.

• The ImmigrationProf Blog has posted about the recent case of a security officer at a New Mexico high school who has been dismissed for reporting a pregnant 18-year-old student to immigration authorities. The Roswell school district has a policy preventing school officials from concerning themselves with the immigration status of their students. However, officer Charlie Corn decided to take matters into his own hands when he realized that Karina Acosta was unable to produce a driver's license. Acosta has been deported to Mexico in her final year of school, denying her the opportunity to complete her education.

• The Latina Lista blog has covered another story about New Mexico, a recent raid of the Proper Foods, Inc tamale plant.  This raid was exceptional in some ways:

What's pleasantly surprising is that for the first time that we've heard, ICE made sure that all the 21 undocumented immigrants apprehended, as they shuffled out of the kitchens from making the tamales that will be sold by the dozens for Christmas dinners, received their full paychecks before being bused off for deportation.

However, the piece goes on to request an end to work-site raids this year, in the spirit of compassion, good will, and community, a set of values that seem closer to our hearts and minds during the winter holidays:

Because it is the Holiday season, the last thing ICE wants to be caricatured as is the "Grinch Who Stole Christmas." Maybe that explains the sudden change of heart in advocating for these workers' wages.

Yet, with only 12 days left before Christmas, there is one thing more that the Department of Homeland Security can do to exemplify that it is in the "Spirit of the Season" — declare a moratorium on further raids and deportations for the month of December.

For every adult taken into custody and deported, who knows how many children are left behind?

Critics yell that these parents should take their children with them but if there is no home to go back to, no relatives who can take you in, no money to rent someplace, no clothes other than what's on your back, then what kind of parent would rip their children from the comforts, no matter how meager, of their lives here to take them where they literally will have nothing?

To separate parents from their children, especially at Christmastime, is perhaps more cruel than any kind of trauma, aside from sexual and physical abuse, afflicted on a child.

We hope Operation Tamale is the last work-site raid for 2007.