The State of Opportunity

A Guaranteed Right to Health: The Key to Presidential Greatness

President-elect Barack Obama has renewed our hope as Americans that the promise of opportunity is revitalized, alive and well. But in order to secure his own legacy as the first great president of the 21st Century, and one of the greats in American history, he will need a grand undertaking equivalent to Abraham Lincoln's saving of the Union or Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Amidst the current economic downturn, it would appear clear what the momentous challenge and chance for long-lived admiration will be for an Obama Administration, and it is health care.  Not small bore reforms of existing programs or expansions around the margins of the popular State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) or Medicare, but a truly revolutionary sea change in the compact that the American government and their people share in relation to the health of the populace. As Steve Coll of The New Yorker comments:

The next Presidency has within its reach at least two generation-spanning causes: the need to jump-start a new energy economy, and, in so doing, help to contain climate change; and the need to enact a plan to provide quality health care to all Americans, and, in so doing, complete the project of social insurance that Roosevelt described in 1935. Each of these projects is urgent, but it is health-care reform that speaks more directly to the economic and human dimensions of the present downturn.

The accumulating failures in the country’s health-care system are a cause of profound weakness in the American economy; unaddressed, this weakness will exacerbate the coming recession and crimp its aftermath. A large number of the country’s housing foreclosures in recent years appear to be related to medical problems and health-care expenses. American businesses often can’t afford to hire as many employees as they would like because of rising health-insurance costs; employees often can’t afford to quit to chase their better-mousetrap dreams because they can’t risk going without coverage. Add to this the system’s moral failings: about twenty-two thousand people die in this country annually because they lack health insurance. That is more than the number of Americans who are murdered in a year.

As my health law professor once said, it is inaccurate to call what we have in the United States currently a "health care system," as there is nothing systematic or logically organized about it; it is, rather, more accurate to call what we have the "health care industry." And therein lies a core, fundamental problem with the way that many Americans are pushed into thinking and talking about their health care; it is common in the advocacy, policy, and newsmaker worlds to hear about "health care consumers." Health care, as one participant in the presidential town hall debate commented, is often thought of as a commodity in this country. But this is not a cheeseburger or a new raincoat that we are talking about; this is our health, the key to our economic security and ability to access the American Dream of boundless opportunity that President-elect Obama represents. Health, as President-elect Obama and the great lion of the Senate, Ted Kennedy, have both stated, is a fundamental right of Americans.

Without a guarantee to our right to health care, and the opportunity for good health that follows, many Americans are in danger of losing their jobs, and as Coll points out and as I have pointed out here before, their homes (up to 7 out of 10 foreclosures are caused in part by medical crises). Surely, if human rights apply as much here in the United States as much as it does abroad, the human right to the opportunity to meet the most basic needs for ourselves and our families--housing, feeding, and clothing ourselves--must be guaranteed. This is not only about 46 million uninsured Americans who cannot afford to purchase health care as "consumers," or about the 25 million underinsured Americans who, despite paying premiums, are at constant risk of bankruptcy should catastrophe or tragedy strike. This is about health writ large: the health of our American community, the health of the American economy, and, not the least of all, the health of the American Dream.

And, as it turns out, this is also about the health of the Obama legacy, and whether in that pantheon of the great American presidents, his name and memory will join the likes of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt.

Framing to Win: Health Care is "a Right for Every American"

Are we "consuming" health care or realizing our "rights?"  The American public is ready for a new conversation; in fact, the conversation has already begun.  Are you speaking the right language to be a part of this new discussion?

In the second presidential debate last evening, Tom Brokaw asked of the two candidates a follow-up question, stemming from one woman's question of whether health care should be treated as a commodity.  Both candidates demurred from the initial inquiry, but Brokaw pressed them on his own follow-up: "Is health care in America a privilege, a right, or a responsibility?"  What caused many of us who have been following both campaigns and their proposed health care policies to sit up in our seats was Sen. Obama's answer, "Well, I think it should be a right for every American."  The reason to take notice isn't that a politician answered a question directly, impressive though that is, but the much more important reason is the re-framing of an issue long discussed on both sides as a consumer good.

Talking about health care and the opportunity for good health as a right, rather than a commodity, privilege, or responsibility, is something that advocates have shied away from, for a myriad of reasons.  But poll after poll, we find that most Americans far and near all believe that health care is a right, with a majority holding health care to be a human right.  Nationally, 72 percent of Americans strongly believe that health care "should be considered a human right.”  In New York state, fully 89 percent of New Yorkers believe that health care should be a right for all New Yorkers, with 70 percent believing that the government (federal, 41%; state and local, 28%) “mainly responsible for ensuring that everyone in New York gets the health care that they need.”  Likewise, over 90 percent of Connecticut residents believe that everyone in the state deserves a right to health care.

And now, in the midst of both a presidential election and a financial crisis, we have yet more evidence that the "right to health care" language works.  During the debate, the now-infamous CNN focus group armed with real-time dial rating tools found that the line describing health care as "a right for every American" was one of his strongest of the evening.  As reported by Alternet, “When Obama discussed health care as a right for all Americans, his numbers were through the roof. At one point, female respondents were dialing in at 100 percent approval.”

If that, along with all of the previous polling, is not enough to convince you that now is the time to start talking about health care as a right, consider that the financial crisis, and the loss of Americans' economic security, itself stems from health care concerns, something I wrote about last week.  But this week I give you a fresh example: a new article in Health Matrix, a scholarly health journal, reports that medical crises (and the resulting bills) are a cause of up to 7 out of 10 of all home foreclosures:

Our evidence suggests that medical disruptions are a major contributor to mortgage default, often striking in combination with other factors. Half of all respondents (49%) indicated that their foreclosure was caused in part by a medical problem, including illness or injuries (32%), unmanageable medical bills (23%), lost work due to a medical problem (27%), or caring for sick family members (14%). We also examined objective indicia of medical disruptions in the previous two years, including those respondents paying more than $2,000 of medical bills out of pocket (37%), those losing two or more weeks of work because of injury or illness (30%), those currently disabled and unable to work (8%), and those who used their home equity to pay medical bills (13%). Altogether, we found that about 7 in 10 of our respondents either self-reported a medical cause of foreclosure, or experienced one of these indicia of medical disruptions in the years before foreclosure.

Approaching health as a human right is powerful because it reflects our, and the American public’s values.  It is also preferable to using a consumer approach for a number of reasons.  When health is framed as a consumer good that each of us must purchase at market rates, we reinforce a competitive, individualistic mindset, and suggest that people who lack quality health care are simply poor economic competitors.  In terms of the current home foreclosure crisis, this plays into the right-wing frame that the crisis is the fault of irresponsible borrowers, a far cry from the reality where most homeowners facing foreclosure have been struck by family medical misfortune or catastrophe.   Building broad, winning support for equal access to quality health care and for addressing health disparities requires a new frame of health care as a common resource that’s stronger and fairer when we’re all in it together:  a system that works for everyone when everyone’s included and that is our right to expect and demand.

60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Yesterday was the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a ground-breaking document initiated and championed by the United States and Eleanor Roosevelt.  Frank Knaack of the ACLU Human Rights Program writes about the significance of the Universal Declaration in the United States and where we are today in fulfilling the promise of "the foundation of the modern human rights system":

The UDHR laid the foundation for a system of rights which are universal, indivisible, and interdependent. The UDHR does not differentiate between civil and political rights on one side and economic, social, and cultural rights on the other. It realizes that in order to properly enjoy one set of rights, you must also be able to enjoy the other. As is often noted, one cannot properly exercise their right to vote, think, or live if they have no food, housing, or basic health services. It is from these principles that the modern human rights treaty system (international human rights law) was born.

[...]

While much of the focus on the human rights record of the U.S. government is in the context of foreign policy and the so called “war on terror,” including the rendition, torture, and indefinite detention of foreign nationals, and vis-à-vis its high rhetoric on spreading freedom and democracy throughout the globe, it is of equal importance to look at the state of human rights at home. From the government’s inadequate response in the wake of hurricanes  Katrina and Rita; to pervasive discrimination against racial minorities in the areas of education, housing, and criminal justice, including death penalty; to imposing life sentences without the possibility of parole on juveniles; to abhorrent conditions in immigration detention facilities, it is clear that the U.S. government has failed to abide by its international obligations.

While the struggle for universal human rights is far from over, there has been great improvement in the fight to bring human rights home. More and more non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and individual activists in the U.S. are utilizing the human rights framework in the domestic advocacy and litigation. At the latest session of the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial  Discrimination (the treaty body that monitors state compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination), there were more than 120 representatives from U.S.-based nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Geneva, Switzerland, who briefed the Committee members and provided additional information to counter the misrepresentations and omissions of the official U.S. government report on the state of racial discrimination in the U.S. This information, in turn, led the Committee to conclude that the U.S. should make sweeping reforms to policies affecting racial and ethnic minorities, women, indigenous people, and immigrants. The Committee’s recommendations garnered domestic and international media attention, and were followed by a three week official visit to the U.S. by the U.N.  Special Rapporteur on Racism. This visit by the Special Rapporteur further opened up opportunities for domestic NGOs to utilize the international human rights framework, as was evidenced by the successful public education and media outreach campaigns conducted by local NGOs throughout the US during this visit. As this shows, human rights advocacy has become an effective tool for social justice advocates in the U.S. to use to press for change and enhance the protection of basic human rights.

The Opportunity Agenda is dedicated to bringing human rights home.  We are proud to work with coalitions such as the U.S. Human Rights Network and the Human Right to Health Capacity Building Collaborative to build the national, state, and local will to make human rights a real and effective tool for realizing American opportunity.

U.S. Human Rights Reports and Tools from The Opportunity Agenda:

• Human Rights in the U.S.: Opinion Research with Advocates, Journalists, and the General Public
• Unequal Health Outcomes in the United States: A Report to the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
• Policy Brief: Healthcare, Opportunity, and Human Rights at Home

From the USHR-Network Conference in Chicago

Writing from the U.S. Human Rights Network's national conference in Chicago, The Opportunity Agenda has been one of a great number of social justice organizations here working to secure and expand those fundamental rights that all humans deserve. Amidst the more than 400 registered participants, there are advocates, students, social justice leaders and consultants exchanging ideas on how the human rights frame can be strengthened and mobilized.

Most interesting, for me, has been the demand for sessions that focus on using new media as an advocacy tool. Yesterday, I attended a session on video advocacy, presented by Witness, a nonprofit group out of Brooklyn who empowers human rights groups around the world by teaching them how to be citizen video journalists. Their HUB is an excellent on-line video advocacy tool, where user generated materials can be uploaded and shared.

Everyone loves moving images with fancy graphics and sound. But, as compared to previous years, there seems to be a shift from gazing at the bells and whistles, to seeking out a greater depth on how these tools can truly further the human rights initiatives here in the U.S.

I'll be attending two more sessions over the remaining two days, both of which focusing on this new media as a tool for informing and mobilizing audiences. It's reassuring to see such a high interest in social media, which is still undergoing adolescent growth across the board. and the more human rights advocates can stay ahead of the curve, the stronger offense they can have in challenging opposition rhetoric.

Chicago is a great town for a conference such as this, the city having a long history in domestic human rights work. Over 120 years ago, during the Columbian Exhibition of 1893--where Chicago got the title of the "Windy City" after its unprecedented public relations campaign to win the bid for the World's Fair marking the 400th anniversary of Columbus landing in the New World, this expanding frontier town was forced to deal with the gross human rights violations that came as a result of the fair, itself. Things like labor, immigration, healthcare, housing, homeless and racial justice issues came to a head in just a couple of years. The event placed Chicago on the map as a world class city, with world class problems, forcing it to come up with new solutions. Those solutions made Chicago a leading town for labor and advocacy.

Let's hope the innovations presented at this years conference help change the direction the wind has been blowing for many years now, in regards to the work that needs to be done to overcome current problems in labor, immigration, housing, poverty, healthcare, race and gender issues, to name a few.

You're Invited to a Hill Briefing on CERD and Health Inequality

Here's an event that folks interested in health equity and human rights might want to attend ...

Congressional Briefing on Health Inequality and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD)

The U.S. government recently filed a required periodic report to the United Nations on the nation's progress toward the elimination of racial discrimination. The report cited progress in many areas, including health and health care. The U.N. CERD Committee agreed with some aspects of the report but noted that the United States has failed to recognize and remedy instances where facially-neutral policies contribute to inequality in health and health care.

To address these issues, several dozen non-governmental organizations and individual scholars, under the leadership of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, prepared a "shadow" report, Unequal Health Outcomes in the United States (available at http://www.prrac.org/pdf/CERDhealthEnvironmentReport.pdf), that illustrates instances of non-compliance with CERD in the right to health, health care access, and treatment, and outlines steps to correct them.

You are invited to a special briefing with some of the collaborators on this report to learn of the extent of racial inequality in health and environmental health, their causes, and actions that government can take to address them. This panel discussion, moderated by Brian Smedley of The Opportunity Agenda, will feature presentations from Katrina Anderson of the Center for Reproductive Rights, Steve Hitov of the National Health Law Program, Rea Pañares of Families USA, and Philip Tegeler of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, and will take place on April 24 from 1:30pm - 3:00pm in room HC-8 of the Capitol. To RSVP for the briefing, please call or email Kara Forsyth of the Raben Group at (202) 223-2848 or KForsyth@rabengroup.com. All are invited, but seating is limited and priority will be giving to Congressional staff and members.

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. 

The Return of Redemption

• Alan Jenkins' newest opinion piece is live on TomPaine.com. Entitled 'The Return of Redemption,' the piece contextualizes the recent crack sentencing ruling as well as the end of the death penalty in New Jersey as part of a larger shift in American values:

Together, these decisions reflect decades of difficult lessons: about the folly of locking away people convicted of low-level, non-violent offenses for decades; about how seemingly neutral policies can have gravely discriminatory effects; and about the ineffectual, discriminatory and dangerously inaccurate nature of the death penalty.

But information alone rarely leads to policy change, especially when it comes to criminal justice policy. That political leaders could even consider these changes in an election year speaks to a shift in public values as well as public understanding. Each reform reflects a return to the values of redemption and equality that are essential to a fair and effective criminal justice system, and that polls and politics show are on the rise in our country.

• RaceWire has shared a LA Times article on California's new plan for universal health care, a measure negotiated by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles). On Monday the state Assembly approved the first phase of a $14.4-billion plan to extend medical insurance to nearly all residents by 2010. The legislation will provide subsidies and tax credits for people who have trouble paying their health insurance premiums.

• Pam's House Blend has posted about a student at Southern Utah University who was denied housing because he is transgender. The university, which offers separate housing for men and women, demanded that Kourt Osborn provide the following in order to live in male housing:

• a letter from the doctor that monitors his hormone treatment;
• a letter from his therapist saying that he has gender identity disorder, or gender dysphoria; and
• official documentation that he has had sexual reassignment surgery.

Like many transgender people, Osborn isn't interested in surgery or a clinical diagnosis of his 'disorder.' The post compares Osborn's situation with that of people of mixed racial backgrounds in decades past:

"When people do not fit into a structured, discriminatory and binary system, the chances of discrimination against that person goes up."

Such is the case with Kourt. He is a person who does not fit into society’s tidy binary system on gender. Because he has transgressed society’s gender rules, the discrimination he faces on a daily basis — including the denial of housing at a public university — is very real and hardly ever subtle.

• Finally, Firedoglake published a piece on media reporting (or lack thereof) on torture  in the United States. Blogger PhoenixWoman received a story in her email entitled CIA photos 'show UK Guantanamo detainee was tortured' from Britain's The Independent, which details the existence of photographic evidence proving that British citizen Binyam Mohammed has been abused while in American custody.  Mohammed's lawyers in the UK have expressed their worry that the photos will be destroyed, given the CIA's recent destruction of "hundreds of hours of videotapes showing the torture of detainees held by the US." Interestingly, while US-based CommonDreams.org has also picked up this story, Google News did not provide any matches for the article.

Speaking English: A Benefit, Not a Mandate

• Immigration News Daily has posted a couple articles related to the US as an English-speaking country. In Philadelphia, a well-known cheese steak restaurant is under review by the city's human rights commission for a sign that says "This is America - when ordering, please speak English." City officials are alleging that the sign violates the ban on national origin discrimination. On the other end, the blog has reported on an opinion in Newsday which argues that Immigrants would thrive with more English classes. The piece talks about the shortage of English classes on Long Island while also explaining how poor language skills have prevented immigrants from continuing to work in their previous professional careers:

Plenty of anecdotal evidence shows that these programs work. Two years ago, for example, a Peruvian-born former computer programmer was stuck on the assembly line at Love and Quiches Desserts, a Freeport-based manufacturer. After he completed Freeport Adult Education's ESOL program, he was promoted to supervisor.

In the Long Beach school district, several women from Central America who were dentists in their home countries but worked in dead-end jobs here boosted their English and found jobs as dental hygienists.

Author Tara Colton makes a case for government investment in the productivity of immigrants via language classes, noting that this strategy enjoys bipartisan support:  

This is a crucial problem, because the more fluent immigrants are in English, the more they can contribute positively to society. This is a point that all sides of the immigration debate agree on. Making this improvement in the lives of millions of people living and working here has got to be as vital as deciding whether to punish them for how they arrived.    

For business and government, it's also a matter of economic development. Boosting workers' English skills improves productivity, reduces turnover and helps growth.

• Immigration Orange posted about the 'widow penalty' which ends the permanent residency process for immigrants whose citizen spouse dies within two years of marriage. The blog recommends contacting your public officials in order to end this "obscure interpretation of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA)," examples of which are quoted in the post:

Marlin Coats didn't hesitate to jump in the water to try to save two drowning teens caught in a riptide at San Francisco Beach Park. He lost his life that Mother's Day in 2006, but because of his heroism those two teenagers survived.  So why is the U.S. now responding to Coats' ultimate sacrifice by deporting his wife Jacqueline Coats?

U.S. Army contractor Todd Engstrom of Illinois gave his life for his country when he was killed in Iraq, and now the federal government is telling his wife Diana she too must go. And so must Dahianna Heard of Florida, whose husband Jeffrey Heard was shot in the head by insurgents in Iraq. What will happen to their children?

• The 'Just News' blog reposted an article from the Omaha World-Herald about a family divided by US immigration policy. Joe Wood of Nebraska had decided it was time to 'do the right thing' and legalize his wife Laura Roldan's immigration status, so he, Roldan and their two daughters traveled to a US Consulate in Mexico to begin the process.  However, Roldan has been accused of fraud for giving a false name upon her entry in 2001, and barred from ever returning to the US.

• Last up, it has recently come to the ImmigrationProf blog's attention that all four grandparents of Republican Presidential Candidate Tom Tancredo were immigrants from Italy. Author KJ links to a great article in Reason Magazine about the discrimination faced by Italian immigrants in the early 20th Century, along with how, in two generations, the American Dream has brought Tancredo to a place where he has internalized the same distaste for foreigners.

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.