The State of Opportunity

"No-Match" No Fair

Last week the Bush administration announced a renewed push to clamp down on undocumented workers.  Specifically, the rule would ask a federal judge to lift an injunction on the "no-match" rule.

The rule protects businesses from failing to respond to so-called "no match" letters sent out by the Social Security Administration stating that the number provided by an employee does not match the information in their database.  This may indicate the worker is undocumented but many are the result of clerical errors including, for example, women not updating last names after marriage.

Judge Charles R. Breyer last year warned that the plan would have "staggering" and "sever" effects on workers and businesses.  It's reasons such as this that have brought together not just traditional groups working for immigrant rights, such as the ACLU, but also the AFL-CIO, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Particularly amidst the recent sharp economic downturn, business leaders are concerned about the Bush administration's plan.  If this effort to lift the injunction against the "no-match" rule is successful, the government would ask up to 140,000 employers to check the social security numbers of 8.7 million workers.  Businesses must resolve discrepancies within 90 days or fire the workers.

Angela Amador, the Chamber's director of immigration policy is concerned about the costs of complying with this rule.  The Chamber's objections "[have] been about the cost of a badly thought out rule and the cost on legitimate businesses following all the rules and complying with it."

Groups such as the ACLU and the National Immigration Law Center are concerned that the plan would lead to racial profiling, discrimination, and the firing of people based on clerical errors.  They argue the Bush administration should work instead towards fixing the flawed database.

Thursday Immigration Blog Round-Up

This week's Thursday Immigration Blog Round-Up is more of an immigration blog reflection. It's in no way because of a shortage of news around the pro-immigrant movement: talk of declining support of leading anti-immigrant on-line voices; talk show radio hosts blasting away at one woman who showed compassion toward immigrants, seeing the value in human dignity rise above her own experience of being victimized by one individual; more reports of government forces flexing its muscle in factories around the country. Rather, brought on by an overdose of C-SPAN the past week, there's been a real call in America this week for real solutions that hopefully can fix the real problems that many in our country face.

Those in the trenches of the pro-imigrant movement know first hand that real solutions are needed to overcome the gross disregard of human life and dignity. Throughout American history, there have been those who take advantage of people newly arrived from foreign lands, struggling to make a new life with dreams of hope and opportunity, only to be greeted with false promises and desception. I saw it years ago while a seminarian for the Diocese of Savannah, where immigrants would labor in the hot onion fields of Georgia all day, only to find that their employer made arrangements to have INS waiting for them when they came to collect their payment for their work. I thought of those onion farmers this past week when reading about the recent raid of a sweat shop in Queens, New York, thinking of the abuses against those working in conditions that most Americans would think came out of a 19th century novel from industrial Britain.

In the growing need to find real solutions that can move our country forward, Gov. Chet Culver of Iowa sites the growing failure in current federal immigration policy in a guest column published this Sunday in the Des Moines Register. He sites the meat packing company involved in the northeast Iowa raids last May as taking advantage of employees' situations, treating them with great neglect, while harkening their actions to those Sinclair Lewis uncovered in The Jungle. You can dig it here.

Gov Culver's column was encouraging, in that it showed that there is leadership in America that still values the dignity of human life and believes that all people are equal, regardless of where they were born. For many, the fields of Iowa are seen as the place where the seeds of America's political future are planted, where the rich soil allows for change to take root.

In calling for real solutions that move us forward together as a nation, we become the wind that scatters the seeds of change throughout our country, from the dry red clay of Georgia, to the rain soaked slopes of the Cascades. Let, then, our action not be silence when we hear of the anti-immigrant movement argue where the hand of justice lay. Justice should always protect the value of life over the value of profit. It might sound idealistic. but, when posting comments on blogs, or writing a letter to our local paper, it's that seed of idealism in each of us where our values grow.

Thursday Immigration Roundup

• Congress has passed a few bills targeting immigration: E-Verify, a voluntary government program for employers to verify whether or not employees are legally able to work, was re-authorized by the House for only five years.  This suggests that the House feels E-Verify may be a flawed system.  The House Immigration Subcommittee passed a bill recapturing employment and family-based immigrant visas that had not been allocated under existing ceilings due to bureaucratic inefficiencies. It also passed a bill that could make it easier for military personnel and their families to be naturalized.

• ICE conducted its latest raids in Lowell, MA in the form of home arrests with warrants. Targets were green card holders with criminal records. Sweeps have been going on throughout the country under various types of programs, such as Operation Community Shield and Fugitive operations teams.

• The Center for Immigration Studies, "an independent research institute which examines the impact of immigration on the United States," published a report documenting the impact of immigration on global CO2 emissions. The report is titled "Immigration to the United States and World-Wide Greenhouse Gas Emissions." According to the study, immigration to the US significantly increases global CO2 emissions in that immigrants move from a lower-polluting region of the world to a higher-polluting country.  While the estimated CO2 emissions of the average immigrant are 18% lower than those of native-born Americans, their emissions are estimated to be four times what they would be in their home countries.

• The New York Times published a story responding to the release of the legal blueprint in the Postville hearings.  The blueprint, made available online by the ACLU, is a 117 page compilation of scripts that laid out step by step how the hearings should proceed.  While these documents were not binding and were framed as providing assistance to defense lawyers, many critics argue that the scripts indicate that the court endorsed the prosecutors' push to secure guilty pleas before the hearings even began. The scripts went so far as to include a sample statement the judge could make after accepting a guilty plea.  According to Lucas Guttentag, director of the Immigrants' Rights Project of the A.C.L.U, "this was the Postville prosecution guilty-plea machine. The entire process seemed to presume and be designed for fast-track guilty pleas."

• The Times also covered the story of Hiu Lui Ng, a 34 year old immigrant who died in US custody after being systematically denied medical care in the previous months.  Mr. Ng had overstayed a visa years earlier and had been sent a letter ordering him to appear in court.  This letter was mistakenly sent to a nonexistent address and due to his inevitable failure to appear in court, ICE arrested him last summer when he went to immigration headquarters in Manhattan to apply for a green card.  Since then he has been held in various jails in three New England states.  In April Mr. Ng began to complain of debilitating back pain, however these complaints were written off as "faking it" and it was not until a judge order he be taken to the hospital in early August that he received medical attention.  This exam revealed that his spine was fractured and he had terminal cancer that had been undiagnosed and untreated for months.  He died in the custody of ICE five days after arriving at the hospital. Mr. Ng's case is not isolated, it is situated in a series of cases that have "drawn Congressional scrutiny to complaints of inadequate medical care, human rights violations, and a lack of oversight in immigration detention." Mr. Ng's case and others call for real solutions to a very real problem. Presently before the House Judiciary Committee is legislation to set mandatory standards for care in immigartion detention.

Thursday Immigration Blog Roundup

•    An article titled “Immigrants Facing Deportation by U.S. Hospitals” appeared in the magazine section of The New York Times on Sunday.  By telling the story of Luis Alberto Jiménez, it documents the disastrous consequences that are the result of inherent failures in the American immigration and health care systems. Below is an excerpt from the article:

Many American hospitals are taking it upon themselves to repatriate seriously injured or ill immigrants because they cannot find nursing homes willing to accept them without insurance. Medicaid does not cover long-term care for illegal immigrants, or for newly arrived legal immigrants, creating a quandary for hospitals, which are obligated by federal regulation to arrange post-hospital care for patients who need it.

American immigration authorities play no role in these private repatriations, carried out by ambulance, air ambulance and commercial plane. Most hospitals say that they do not conduct cross-border transfers until patients are medically stable and that they arrange to deliver them into a physician’s care in their homeland. But the hospitals are operating in a void, without governmental assistance or oversight, leaving ample room for legal and ethical transgressions on both sides of the border.

•    Various ICE policies have been scrutinized in a number of news articles this week.  A DMI Blog posting discusses the ICE policy of neglecting to inform local police of its decision to conduct a raid in an area.  This ICE policy is carried out completely inconsistently – sometimes ICE notifies local law enforcement, sometimes it does not.  ICE conducted its recent raid in Sante Fe, New Mexico (where it took 30 undocumented immigrants into custody) without notifying Sante Fe Mayor Cross beforehand.  According to the posting, Cross was completely opposed to the raid.  He said:

“We know what the right thing to do is. We have political leadership that wants to keep us from doing [the right thing] because the division works for them. But it doesn’t work for us. And most people know that.”

ICE's notification policy is not its only inconsistent policy.  According to the Associated Press, ICE's distribution of border patrol agents is a completely political process.  The article says that many people have suggested that ICE rewards friendly Congressmen with more border patrol agents in their district:

The 60-mile San Diego sector is at the southern end of a county with roughly 3 million people…

But the sector is already heavily reinforced: Two-thirds of the border is blocked by fences or vehicle barriers. The most populous part of the boundary has nearly 10 miles of double-layer fences with stadium lights…

San Diego is represented by Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican who has been among the most outspoken proponents of increased border security and fences.

The Huffington Post has also criticized ICE for supporting the discredited Center for Immigration Studies report that says border patrol has been the main reason immigration to the U.S. has fallen.  Many researchers have shown that the failing economy is the main reason immigration has been decreasing:

The US needs a practical, fair, and reasonable solution to immigration that includes smart enforcement measures. Political theater and gimmicks won't constrict the supply or demand for immigrant labor.

In addition, The Sanctuary is reporting that the ACLU has obtained a copy of the manual that the government distributes to attorneys who defend those who are arrested in immigration raids: 

The manual contains prepackaged scripts for plea and sentencing hearings as well as documents providing for guilty pleas and waivers of rights to be used by both the judges and attorneys in expediting procedures as quickly as possible with little regard for due process.

The ACLU has made the manual publicly available.

•    Postville update: Standing FIRM has linked to a Chicago Tribune story on the allegations of child labor law violations at the Agriprocessors plant.  The government has finally begun cracking down on the company for the horrific abuse of its employees:

State officials say the types of child labor violations at the plant included minors working in prohibited occupations, exceeding allowable hours for youth to work, failure to obtain work permits, exposure to hazardous chemicals and working with prohibited tools.

•    The National Center for Lesbian Rights has become involved in a case involving a gay HIV-positive Pakistani man who is seeking asylum in the U.S. on the grounds that he will be persecuted if he returns to his country of origin.  The Center filed an amicus brief in support of the plaintiff to the Board of Immigration Appeals:

Under Pakistani law, being gay is punishable by death and LGBT people are forced to live in secrecy and constant fear of exposure. The Immigration Judge ignored the serious risk of persecution that S.K. faces and denied his application for asylum.

•    ABC News has called attention to a recently released report on the human rights abuses that immigrants are subject to at detention centers run by private companies.  The report, conducted by the human rights group OneAmerica and the Seattle University School of Law, concludes that people held at these detention facilities, specifically one that GEO Group, Inc. runs, are routinely harassed, verbally and physically abused and subjected to poor to non-existent health care.

This is not the first time GEO has been accused of violating the rights of inmates in its care.  In 2000, when the company was known as Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, the U.S. Department of Justice sued them over "excessive abuse and neglect" of inmates at the Jena Juvenile Justice Center in Jena, Louisiana.

Thursday Immigration Blog Roundup

•    Department of Homeland Security officials have come out in support of a Center for Immigration Studies report that claims that border control measures are the cause of a decrease in immigration to the U.S.  However, the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at University of California, San Diego has rebutted those claims and determined that the border patrol apprehends fewer than half of the undocumented immigrants that come into the country through the Mexico/U.S. border.  According to The Huffington Post, the Center for Immigration Studies (an anti-immigrant advocacy group) and the Department of Homeland Security failed to consider reasons other than border control measures that explain why immigration to the U.S. would naturally decline:

When citing the decrease in both apprehensions at the border and remittances sent by workers in the United States to family members in Mexico, Chertoff also failed to consider the fact that undocumented immigration naturally decreases when the U.S. economy is in recession. [Director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies Dr. Wayne] Cornelius' report shows that undocumented migration clearly responds to changing U.S. economic conditions, with significant decreases during economic downturns such as the one we are in now.

Moreover, Chertoff’s border control measures are completely inconsistent with the fundamentally positive effect immigration has on American communities.  Providing opportunity for immigrants has been a core value in the U.S. since its founding.  To see more immigration myths dispelled, read The Opportunity Agenda fact sheet, Immigrants and Opportunity.

•    In one of last month’s blog roundups on The State of Opportunity, a story about a sheriff in Maricopa County, Arizona appeared.  That same sheriff, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, is in the news once again.  An editorial in The Washington Post discusses how  “Sheriff Joe” and his officers have been continuing the “policing strategy” of locking up all Hispanic people they encounter, regardless of if they have any evidence that they are undocumented immigrants or have committed any crime.  According to Arizona Central, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon has had to resort to calling for a media mobilization against Arpaio:

"He (Arpaio) has become the false messiah," Gordon said. "But when the light is shined on him, people will see that he isn't helping to fight illegal immigration and he's just making the situation worse. You've got an individual with a badge and a gun who's breaking the law and abusing his authority."

We need real solutions, ones that are brought about by comprehensive immigration reform and promote opportunity for all, not a gross miscarriage of justice carried out by a rogue officer like Arpaio.

•    Thankfully, not all police officers feel the same way Arpaio does - George Gascón, a former assistant chief in the Los Angeles Police Department, has written this op-ed for The New York Times.  In it he argues that using local police officers as a means to enforce federal immigration policy will ultimately lead to the public, particularly in communities of color, distrusting the police department:

Here in Arizona, a wedge is being driven between the local police and some immigrant groups. Some law enforcement agencies are wasting limited resources in operations to appease the public’s thirst for action against illegal immigration regardless of the legal or social consequences…

If we become a nation in which the local police are the default enforcers of a failing federal immigration policy, the years of trust that police departments have built up in immigrant communities will vanish. Some minority groups may once again view police officers as armed instruments of government oppression.

•    The effects from the ICE raid in Postville are still being felt, reminding us just how detrimental this raid was to the Iowa community and America as a whole.  The Des Moines Register is reporting that the new employees at the Agriprocessors plant have had a significant, negative effect on the local community:

The impact is evident: New laborers are changing Postville. The Agriprocessors Inc. meatpacking plant, the site of the immigration raid, once employed men and women with families. Now, its workers are mostly young, single people with no stake in the community and nothing to lose…

The rise in crime has strained Postville's tiny police department. One night in June, the calls were so numerous that police asked the local bar to close early.

A protest rally also took place in Postville last weekend – it was documented in a video, which is now available on YouTube.

Thursday Immigration Blog Roundup

•    On Tuesday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed a ground breaking executive order requiring all city agencies to provide language assistance services for people who speak Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Korean, Italian or French Creole.  According to The New York Times, this is the first time that all New York City agencies will be forced to follow the same standard in providing translation and language interpretation services to people who do not speak English:

Immigrant advocates and city officials say it is the most comprehensive order of its kind in the country. The mayor refused to be specific about how much the services will cost, saying only that it was a “relatively small” amount given the size of the city’s budget. He added: “This executive order will make our city more accessible, while helping us become the most inclusive municipal government in the nation.”

The Opportunity Agenda fact sheet Immigration Reform: Promoting Opportunity for All details the need for immigrants to have access to language assistance services in order to achieve their full potential. In providing immigrant groups with this access, Mayor Bloomberg has taken the entire city forward and empowered communities throughout New York.

•     Politicians have also been busy down in Washington, D.C. working to provide language assistance for immigrant families across the United States.  At noon today, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Congressman Mike Honda are introducing the “Strengthening Communities through Education and Integration Act of 2008.” In addition to providing English language literacy and civics education to immigrant families who are in the process of becoming citizens, the bill:

will help immigrant communities become a more integral part of the American fabric and maximize their social and economic contributions.

Legislation like this is crucial to aiding immigrants on their way to becoming U.S. citizens, and is a necessary part of treating immigrants like full and equal members of our community.

•    The aftermath of the ICE raids in Postville, Houston, and most recently Rhode Island, is still being felt in communities across America.  However, a Washington Post article describes how it is not only workers and their families feeling this strife – now, it is employers as well:

The crackdown's relatively high costs and limited results are also fueling criticism. In an economy with more than 6 million companies and 8 million unauthorized workers, the corporate enforcement effort is still dwarfed by the high-profile raids that have sentenced thousands of illegal immigrants to prison time and deportation.

•    A story in the MetroWest Daily News calls attention to a local organization in Massachusetts, the MetroWest Immigrant Worker Center, that is defending the rights of immigrant workers in the U.S.  Immigrant workers are routinely subject to labor law violations, including the denial of compensation and overtime, as well as unnecessary injuries on job sites.  In addition, the article points out that all immigrants, including undocumented ones, have worker rights:

Contrary to what many people think, illegal workers have rights. Although in the country illegally, those who work are entitled to be paid for their labor and overtime. If they are injured on the job, they are eligible for workers' compensation coverage, said [Diego] Low, [director of the MetroWest Immigrant Worker Center] who has been advocating for immigrant workers' rights for the last 25 years.

•    A DMI Blog posting points to an extremely upsetting Associated Press report of a beating in a Pennsylvania town that left a 25 year old Mexican immigrant named Luis Ramirez dead.   

Hate crime or not, the killing has exposed long-simmering tensions in Shenandoah, a blue-collar town of 5,000 about 80 miles northwest of Philadelphia that has a growing number of Hispanic residents drawn by jobs in factories and farm fields.

Thursday Immigration Blog Roundup

•    “The Shame of Postville, Iowa,” an editorial in Sunday’s New York Times, calls attention to an essay written by Erik Camayd-Freixas.  Mr. Camayd-Freixas is a professor and court interpreter who witnessed the aftermath of last month’s ICE raid on the Postville community.  He was disgusted when he saw the injustice in the legal system that the workers were subjected to; instead of being deported immediately, over 260 workers were charged with serious identity fraud crimes and sentenced to 6 months in prison:

What is worse, Dr. Camayd-Freixas wrote, is that the system was clearly rigged for the wholesale imposition of mass guilt. He said the court-appointed lawyers had little time in the raids’ hectic aftermath to meet with the workers, many of whom ended up waiving their rights and seemed not to understand the complicated charges against them.

The editorial also added:

No one is denying that the workers were on the wrong side of the law. But there is a profound difference between stealing people’s identities to rob them of money and property, and using false papers to merely get a job. It is a distinction that the Bush administration, goaded by immigration extremists, has willfully ignored. Deporting unauthorized workers is one thing; sending desperate breadwinners to prison, and their families deeper into poverty, is another.

•    Following the allegations of Guantanamo Bay-like treatment at ICE facilities, the Seattle Times has an article detailing numerous stories of abuse at an ICE facility in Tacoma, Washington.  The stories are part of a 65-page Seattle University Law School report titled "Voices From Detention".  Detainees claim that they are routinely subjected to physical and verbal abuse, strip searches and manipulation:

The report's authors said conditions are consistent with those at detention centers across the country. They are calling on Congress to pass laws that protect the rights of detainees…

Detainees in the study say they were pressured to sign documents or asked to sign paperwork they didn't understand, a practice their attorneys say often leads to their unwitting deportation…

The report said one woman, after an attorney's visit, was strip-searched and told to open her legs while a female guard peeped into her private parts.

To learn more about detainee treatment at ICE facilities, see this posting on The State of Opportunity.

•    Even after weeks of people discussing the horrific effects of the Postville and Houston raids, ICE has done it again – according to The Providence Journal, ICE agents arrested dozens of maintenance workers in a raid of Rhode Island court houses on Tuesday:

The raid led to a noisy demonstration by at least 100 people outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office at 200 Dyer St. last night. Police officers arrived as the crowd grew; at one point the police pushed a line of demonstrators across the parking lot.

For a full summary of the stories on the Rhode Island ICE raid, go to the Citizen Orange Pro-Migrant Sanctuary Sphere posting.

•    The New York Times is also reporting that many immigrants in New York City, most of them Latino, face being disenfranchised in the November election because the federal government is taking so long to fully process their citizenship applications:

At stake are the applications of at least 55,000 people in the New York City area who have been waiting at least six months — and as long as four years — for their documents to be processed, the lawyers said.

Thursday Immigration Blog Roundup

•    Detention Watch Network has created a new interactive map that is now accessible on their website.  The map is a comprehensive tracking system that allows users to view the locations of detention centers, community organizations, ICE offices and immigration courts across the United States.

•    A T Don Hutto Blog posting discusses the recent American Immigration Lawyers Association position paper on alternatives to detention for immigrants.  The paper, which argues that the Department of Homeland Security should shift its focus from raids and electronic monitoring of immigrant populations to community-based, non-restrictive measures, can be accessed here.

•    Some updates on recent ICE raids: a posting on Standing FIRM links to a New York Times report that two Agriprocessor employers have been arrested.  Their arrests were connected to last month’s ICE raid in Postville, Iowa; they were the first non “rank and file” workers to be targeted. Scott Frotman, a spokesman for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, pointed out that the arrest of these supervisors does not show the full extent of the company’s violations of workers rights:

What about the allegations of worker abuse? Does anyone really believe that these low-level supervisors acted alone without the knowledge, or even the direction, of the Rubashkins and other senior management?

In addition, the same Times story is reporting that last week five senior managers at Action Rags USA were arrested.  Their arrests are connected to the ICE raid on the Houston Plant in late June. 

•    In response to these recent government crackdowns on employers of illegal immigrants, business owners have begun to speak out in opposition to tough anti-immigration measures.  A July 6 article that appeared in the New York Times claims that employers have begun fighting the government policies in state and local courts:

Business groups have resisted measures that would revoke the licenses of employers of illegal immigrants. They are proposing alternatives that would revise federal rules for verifying the identity documents of new hires and would expand programs to bring legal immigrant laborers.

•    A story that appeared in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle discusses the positive results of the city’s 1989 immigration sanctuary law.  The law bars local officials, including police officers, from questioning residents about their immigration status.  The Chronicle also points out that San Francisco is not alone in enacting sanctuary measures:

San Francisco is among scores of cities in California and around the country with sanctuary laws, according to the National Immigration Law Center. Several states also have such policies.

A recent posting on The State of Opportunity also called attention to a California superior court decision upholding the Los Angeles Police Department’s of neither arresting people based on their immigration status nor asking about one’s immigration status during interviews. 

A Business Voice for Immigration Reform

On Sunday, the New York Times reported on employer opposition to immigration raids and other measures punishing the hiring of undocumented immigrants.  According to the Times, "business groups have resisted measures that would revoke the licenses of employers of illegal immigrants. They are proposing alternatives that would revise federal rules for verifying the identity documents of new hires and would expand programs to bring legal immigrant laborers."

This is a potentially positive development, as business leaders are well placed to make the argument for real solutions to the immigration challenge that uphold our nation's ideals and move us forward together.  In particular, they speak to the contribution of undocumented immigrants to our economy and the need for commonsense approaches rather than vindictive, unworkable ones.  And they have the ear of politicians of both parties.

It's essential, though, that we complement business voices with those of faith leaders, civic leaders, immigrant leaders, and others committed to the protection of human rights in the workplace, communities, and beyond.  Failing to do so could result in an immigration "fix" that serves business interests and provides cheap labor, but fails to protect workers' rights and depresses wages for all.

We should welcome the voices of business leaders, while making sure that we tell the whole story to the American people.

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...