The State of Opportunity

Labor Day Health Blog

In lieu of the regular Monday Health Blog Round-Up, I'd like to take a moment to reflect on our observation of Labor Day yesterday, and how the history of the holiday reflects upon our current health care crisis.

Labor Day was first conceived of in 1882 by the Central Labor Union of New York City, a coalition of trade unionists who later joined with the American Federation of Labor.  But it was not until twelve years later, on June 28, 1894, that Congress made Labor Day a national holiday, eventually adopted by all 50 states.  What was the catalyst for the "day off for the working man," and how is all of this related to our current health care crisis?  What follows below is a discussion of the key national values mobility, security, opportunity, and how government can (but sometimes fails to) defend the American Dream.

The catalyst, it turns out, may sound somewhat familiar.  Irresponsible speculation by banks encouraged over-development by speculators, creating an economic bubble.  When the bubble burst, thousands of businesses and hundreds of banks lost everything, resulting in a massive recession where unemployment skyrocketed and many American families wondered about how to make ends meet for the most basic of necessities.  After massive protests (some ending violently) subsumed the industrial centers of the Midwest, Congress felt a need to act, and Labor Day, in recognition of the contributions of working families, was what they came up with.

Now, Labor Day is a fine holiday; I enjoyed it myself by making a chuck roast that turned out wonderfully.  But the history that bears some worrying parallels to our current economic conditions (a downturn as result of over-speculation by banks and developers, though housing in our case rather than railroads) brings up some questions about how we view labor (with a small "l") in this country.  America is based in the core ideal that when folks work hard, not only should they be able to barely make ends meet, they should have the opportunity to advance and fully participate in the social, economic and political.  Put another way, this is the promise of Mobility, the element of the American Dream that says not only should we ensure that the lives of the next generation is better than our own, but we must make sure that our institutions allow for all of us in our own lifetimes to pursue a better life for ourselves, our families, and our community.  A poor economic environment should not be an excuse for the government to fail to stand up and protect this right; the government has, at its best moments in history, defended the American value of mobility, by creating more jobs, by helping those who have fallen on the hardest times get back on their feet, by helping communities to find new paths in new economies through government-aided infrastructure and supportive programs.

The role of the government is to appease unrest with another national holiday; it is to provide Security.  I don't mean security in the sense of having a strong national defense and valuable alliances and partners abroad, though that is important as well; this sense of security is that we, our families, and our communities are entitled, as part of the social contract of the United States, to be secure in our health, our homes, our most basic human needs that afford us our most invaluable human dignity.  And here we find the roots of the answer to the second part of my question above, as to how the history of Labor Day relates to health care.

By any measure, Congress's response to the labor protests of May 1894 was inadequate.  A holiday didn't change the fundamental inequities of the new economy; it didn't reduce unemployment (the highest estimate being 18.4%), create new jobs, or protect Americans struggling to survive despite working hard to build the new infrastructure of our country.  "The Panic of 1893" that had precipitated the events of 1894 had been preceded two decades earlier by "The Panic of 1873," and would be followed by The Great Depression of the 1930s.  In these cases, the government had seen the problem before, knew that Americans required their assistance to fulfill the dream of opportunity, security, and mobility, but failed to act.  It was only after a government that recognized the American promise to aid our neighbors and to strengthen our national community acted to create jobs and programs to assist those hardest hit to recover that the nation once again began moving in the right direction.

And so, we finally come to health care.  There is a crisis in America, only partly due to the recent bursting of the housing and real estate bubble, but a problem that has been underlying for quite some time.  Almost 46 million Americans are uninsured, and 25 million Americans are underinsured, meaning that despite having insurance policies, they don't receive the health care that they need when they need it due to insufficient coverage.  In a system where health care is tied so closely to employment, the downturn in the economy is foreboding, signaling a possible worsening of this crisis.  And yet, in some good news last week, the percentage and number of uninsured actually dropped from 2006 and 2007, from 15.8% to 15.3%, and from 47 million uninsured to 45.7 million.  The cause?

The expansion of a the federal Children's Health Insurance Program, ensuring nearly one million more children.

A government for the people is one that responds in times of need to protect our core American Values.  Now is time for Congress to defend those values not with another holiday, but with real, practical solutions to key issues such as health care.  What we need now is something much more than another day of barbecuing.

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

•    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.

Immigration Raid Nets Tenth of Local Population

The Washington Post reported on the largest raid on illegal workers by the Bush administration to date.

One week ago, helicopters, buses, and vans filled with hundreds of agents surrounded the small town of Postville, Iowa to conduct a raid on an Agriprocessors plant, the largest employer in the northeast of the state.

Postville, whose motto is "Hometown to the World," saw 10 percent of its population incarcerated.  Those arrested, totaling 389, were 290 Guatemalans, 93 Mexicans, 4 Ukrainians, and 2 Israelis.  The day after, Tuesday, 600 students were absent because their parents were arrested or in hiding.

Local school superintendent, David Strudthoff, described the event as "a natural disaster -- only this one manmade."  He went on to complain that employers are not targeted.  "They don't put CEOs in jail."

Democratic Congressman Bruce Braley echoed this argument, complaining that the Bush administration was lax in its enforcement efforts against corporations that commit immigration violations.  "Until we enforce our immigration laws equally against both employers and employees who break the law, we will continue to have a problem."

No officials at Agriprocessors have yet been charged.

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. 

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.

President Bush Vetoes SCHIP, Again

• The Huffington Post has linked to an article noting that President Bush has used the seventh veto of his administration in order to reject the revised version of a bill seeking to expand health insurance coverage for children.

• Meanwhile, the New York state assembly is considering a plan to extend health care to all New Yorkers. The DMI Blog summarizes the proposed legislation:

In New York State, Child Health Plus and Family Health Plus are pretty good programs. They allow participants to choose from a variety of managed care plans that contract with the state to provide coverage. Families making up to 150 percent of the poverty line pay no premiums and there are no deductibles and few co-payments. Despite the fact that people enrolled in these programs tend to be less healthy than those enrolled in commercial plans, the premiums the state pays are much lower and have remained virtually flat even as the cost of private insurance has skyrocketed.

So why don’t we open these successful state program to every New Yorker, regardless of income?

That simple idea is the basis of New York Health Plus, a new universal health care proposal from Dick Gottfried, Chair of the NYS Assembly Health Committee.

Under Gottfried’s plan, any New Yorker could get free health coverage from the state, and have their pick of the plans contracting with the state. Everyone would also be free to opt out and keep paying for their own private health care coverage. Businesses would no longer have the burden of employee health care costs. The more than 2 million uninsured New Yorkers would face no barriers to coverage. Gottfried also argues that plans under New York Health Plus would have incentives to offer higher quality care more preventive services, providing a better choice for New Yorkers who already have insurance too.

• The ImmigrationProf Blog has posted a piece entitled 'Another Slavery Report: Yawn?' which begins: "We have reported so much on slavery lately (here and here) that  we may have to give up on such reports as newsworthy." However, the Naples Daily News has just reported that a Florida family has been charged with forcibly holding 15 undocumented workers on their property and charging them for basic needs such as food and showers.  That these cases are increasingly reported on is further indication of the need for comprehensive immigration reform. Our broken immigration system is fostering abusive work situations that contradict the values of mobility, equality and security for which our nation stands.

• The 'Just News' blog has posted another article on the University of Texas Law School Immigration Clinic. Advocates from the clinic have just filed complaints with the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the Department of Homeland Security as well as the Texas Department of Protective Services in the case of an eight-year-old girl held at nearby Hutto detention center who was separated from her pregnant mother for four days. While keeping immigrant children in detention centers is a human rights violation in and of itself, removing the child from her mother went against ICE guildelines, according to the Houston Chronicle:

"ICE officials have previously said detaining families at the facility is meant to help "children remain with parents, their best caregivers" while they are processed for deportation. They also told the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services that parents would be at the facility with their children and would be responsible for their care, so state regulation wasn't needed."

 

Framing the Immigration Debate

• The ImmigrationProf Blog has revisited a 2006 essay by George Lakoff and Sam Ferguson about the language we use when discussing immigration.  Here's the abstract on the Rockridge Institute's website:

"Framing is at the center of the recent immigration debate. Simply framing it as about “immigration” has shaped its politics, defining what count as “problems” and constraining the debate to a narrow set of issues. The language is telling. The linguistic framing is remarkable: frames for illegal immigrant, illegal alien, illegals, undocumented workers, undocumented immigrants, guest workers, temporary workers, amnesty, and border security. These linguistic expressions are anything but neutral. Each framing defines the problem in its own way, and hence constrains the solutions needed to address that problem. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we will analyze the framing used in the public debate. Second, we suggest some alternative framing to highlight important concerns left out of the current debate. Our point is to show that the relevant issues go far beyond what is being discussed, and that acceptance of the current framing impoverishes the discussion."

• In other immigration news, Burger King is under fire for its refusal to join McDonald's and Taco Bell in an agreement to pay historically-underpaid migrant workers in Florida an extra penny per pound of tomatoes picked. Also, a federal court in Canada ruled in favor of a lawsuit challenging the Safe Third Country Agreement, which had designated the US as a "safe third country" for asylum-seekers, meaning "if they make it to the U.S. before entering Canada can be returned there."  The court found that "the United States fails to comply with Convention on Torture or Article 33 of the Refugee Convention and [therefore] the U.S./Canada safe third country agreement was flawed as there was no ongoing meaningful review mechanism."

• The DMI Blog points to this week's New York Times coverage of the successes of a re-entry program in Brooklyn which offers counseling, drug testing, and work and training programs to former inmates.  Re-entry programs not only support the value of redemption, or the right to a second chance, but they are also effective in helping people reintegrate into the community and remain there.  According to a recent study of the comAlert program,

"ComAlert graduates are less likely be re-arrested after leaving prison and much more likely to be employed than either program dropouts or members of the control group. Participants who complete the Doe Fund work-training component do even better. They have an employment rate of about 90 percent, somewhat higher than the ComAlert graduates generally and several times higher than the control group."

• Finally, Jack and Jill Politics offers further analysis of inequities in Wednesday's CNN/YouTube Republican debate, as compared with its Democratic counterpart:

Of 34 total questions aired, 24 were from white men (including 2 cartoon versions) in the GOP debate. That's 71%. For the Dem debate, counting was a little more challenging since one video aired combined video submissions from several people. Still I'd estimate 22 of 38 questions aired were from white men (I did not count the snowman as white because snow does not have an ethnicity) or 58%.

Further, there were 8 questions shown that featured African-Americans during the Democratic debate and a measly 2 in the GOP debate. Hmm.

Also, strikingly -- astonishingly, no questions whatsoever during the GOP debate on:

Healthcare in America
Katrina
Climate Change or Environment
Darfur
Iraq Troop Withdrawal
Afghanistan and Pakistan -- Resurgence of the Taliban
Racial Profiling
Voting Machines and Voting Rights
The Failure to Capture Osama bin Laden

UN Declares Tasering a Form of Torture

• Following a series of related deaths in North America, Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake has advised us that the United Nations has declared tasering to be a form of torture.  Portugal has been urged to forgo use of its newly purchased tasers as the intense pain they inflict is in violation of the UN Convention Against Torture. We hope that this statement will encourage universal reconsideration of taser usage.

• The 'Just News' blog has cited a New York Times article reporting that the Bush administration has elected to revise its controversial 'no-match' policy on verifying the identities of American workers.  Given that the new rules were suspended indefinitely by a federal judge in San Francisco, for their potential undue harm to citizens whose records are incorrect in the social security database, Bush and Homeland Security are working to issue new standards that will not provoke legal challenges.  In the meantime, Homeland Security has begun training firemen to search for 'hostility to Americans' while fighting housefires.

• In criminal justice news, the ACSBlog has posted on a New York Times article on about the challenges faced by those newly-released prisoners who have been exonerated of criminal charges after DNA testing proved their innocence.  Inteligenta Indiĝena Indigenismo Novaĵoservo reports that the US leads the world in condemning juveniles to life sentences.

• We've seen some uses of the community frame in the blogosphere of late: That "We" Feeling on the DMI Blog and Diversity Makes Our Home Much Sweeter on Immigration News Daily are two good examples.

• With respect to last week's celebration of Thanksgiving, a number of blogs questioned the historical construction of the holiday. Latina Lista notes that the Spanish had a feast with the Timucua Indians in Florida fifty-six years before the arrival of the Pilgrims.  The Native American Netroots blog argues that the holiday has more to do with violence than cooperation.  And Rachel's Tavern posted a piece on alternative ways of teaching children about the Thanksgiving story.

• Finally, the ImmigrationProf blog tells the story of an undocumented man who came to the aid of a 9-year-old boy who was the lone survivor of a car accident in the Arizona desert on Thanksgiving day.  According to a local sheriff:

"He stayed with [the boy], told him that everything was going to be all right." As temperatures dropped, he gave him a jacket, built a bonfire and stayed with him until about 8 a.m. Friday, when a group of hunters passed by and called authorities.

After the boy was rescued by local authorities, 26-year-old Jesus Manuel Cordova was taken into custody by the border patrol.  In a related article, the same blog notes that Hispanic journalists are urging the media to stop talking about immigration in a way that dehumanizes undocumented immigrants.  As Cordova's story shows, undocumented immigrants cannot simply be written off as criminals. Rather, they are also compassionate, generous and helpful people who are willing to make sacrifices in order to protect those in need.