Immigration reform marches steadily toward Obama's front burner
By David Neiwert Saturday Jun 06, 2009 5:45am
I've spent the past three days participating in the Reform Immigration for America summit in Washington, D.C. I've experienced more than my share of disappointments over the past few years in watching advocates come up short in the fight to bring sanity to the nation's misbegotten immigration laws.
Many of those wounds have been somewhat self-inflicted, largely because of the disparate nature of the many different organizations and interests who have made up the coalition of interests seeking comprehensive immigration reform.
And what was so encouraging about this summit is that it was clear that they are all coming together with a remarkable focus and ferocity. They will need it for the fight ahead.
The summit preceded President Obama's meeting 10 days hence with members of Congress on how to proceed on immigration. So the attendees fanned out after a rally Thursday to speak with their congressional delegations.
Eric Ward at Imagine 2050 has a terrific rundown:
Among cheers of “Sí se puede!” and “Time is now!” hundreds packed into the Church of the Reformation for a National Town Hall meeting on Capitol Hill. Their calls were clear - we can’t wait, we need comprehensive immigration reform now.
... Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) said 80,000 faxes were sent to Congress in the last 24 hours, and freshman representatives from swing districts are willing to put their seats on the line for comprehensive immigration reform. Let’s hope many more members of congress are willing to go out on a limb for the millions of people suffering in limbo.
There's plenty of reason to feel optimistic this time out as well. America's Voice has done some recent polling (details in the PDF here) showing that the public, by a large margin, favors fixing the mess that is our current set of laws:
A poll of 1,000 likely voters throughout the country finds widespread support for a comprehensive immigration reform across demographics. The majority of participants perceive an economic and fiscal benefit to immigration reform and want Congress to address the economy and immigration reform simultaneously. While approximately 2/3 of voters support reform prior to hearing key components of the legislation, a detailed description of a comprehensive reform proposal receives support from nearly 9 in 10 voters.
And on Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that he wanted to see an immigration-reform package pass by the end of the year:
“As far as I’m concerned we have three major issues we have to do this year, if at all possible: No. 1 is healthcare; No. 2 is energy, global warming; No. 3 is immigration reform.
“It’s going to happen this session, but I want it this year, if at all possible.”
As Albor Ruiz at the NY Daily News reported:
"The reality is that the President wants immigration reform, the American people want immigration reform, and we are launching the Reform Immigration for America campaign to make it happen," said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a nonpartisan group in Washington.
However, there are still plenty of challenges ahead -- some of them, again, internally inflicted. For instance, The Hill report notes that Reid is pushing for a "guest worker" program -- which typically means creating a system of indentured servitude that undermines the goals of bringing immigrants onto the path of citizenship and ensuring that employers cannot exploit the cheap labor of immigrants:
Reid added another challenge to the mix Thursday by saying he wants a guest-worker program included in the legislation, a move that may win him some Republican votes and support from business groups but alienate liberal Democrats and organized labor.
And some of them, as the New York Times on its editorial page noted yesterday, are a product of the Obama White House as well:
The Department of Homeland Security has been pressing ahead with the old Bush administration playbook of tightening the screws on the 12 million undocumented, particularly by lengthening the long arm of local law enforcement. Make no mistake: Stronger and more effective immigration enforcement should be a pillar of any reform plan. But stricter enforcement must be coupled with a path to legalization. And poorly designed enforcement without stringent checks on errors and abuse is a remedy worse than the disease.
The homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, is sticking with the 287(g) program, which deputizes local police departments to enforce immigration law, despite all-too-frequent errors and abuses. Despite community outrage over racial profiling and indiscriminate “crime sweeps” in Maricopa County, Ariz., by the notorious sheriff, Joe Arpaio, he remains a member in good standing of Ms. Napolitano’s enforcement team.
Immigration and Custoto ms Enforcement is expanding its Secure Communities program, which automatically checks the immigration status of everyone booked in jail. That sounds benign, but advocates have raised legitimate concerns over its lack of oversight and internal controls. Any blanket checks of arrestees, both innocent and guilty, could easily provide cover to police departments that use neighborhood sweeps and mass arrests as a pretext to “cleanse” communities of unwanted immigrants — not just violent criminals, but harmless housekeepers, day laborers and gardeners.
There could be no quicker way than this to erode the hard-won advances in community policing, through which law enforcement agencies rely on the trust and cooperation of the people they protect.
Still, there's little doubt that the chief obstacle to immigration reform is the raging opposition that will come from the Right, just as it did in 2007. Boss Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck and the rest of the right-wing eliminationist media crew will once again join forces with the rabid nativists of the Republican right, like Tom Tancredo -- as well as the even more rabid forces of the extremist right, such as the Minutemen and the white supremacists who have been building their recruitment for the past 10 years around immigration.
It's going to be ugly, and we'll need to be fully prepared for the very serious fight ahead. The past week, though, has been an immensely encouraging start.
Because when we join arms on this, we will form a formidable force.
Login or Register to post comments.
Again
If they organized as well as the immigration-reform folks, that would not be the case.
ouch! Margaret, he means well. ALL of us here want LBGTQ (the Q
is new to me, what is that?)to have full citizenship. But "teh
gays" aren't quite as threatening as "teh wetbacks" from the
establishment's point of view. I personally think it is a MUCH
bigger issue!!
I'm not mad at what David Neiwert said, in fact, I agree with part of it. The community needs to be better organized, without the drama and formation of cliques, which has plagued us from the word go. However, I do disagree that would have made a material difference and I base that on the fact that fully better than two thirds of the people in this country, gay straight and otherwise, according to Gallup, would support ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell. The White House response has so far been, (despite campaign promises), crickets.
I would prefer to have 100 hard working lefty Mexican neighbors with
or without green cards, than one country club Republican with an
Escalade, a $50000 kitchen, and no one cooks. That's what I do, I
sell custom kitchen cabinets and counter tops to people who don't
cook. They visit a friends house and they see that "Marge" has a
granite counter tops and chocolate maple slab door cabinets.
You can just see the woman's face turn white.
is a 'Native American'?? Who knew?
But, I do agree we need to 'reform' those pesky immigrants, just not sure what we should turn them into....
And despite what one might think due to having more than our share of wingnuts in office, Tancredo could have never been elected dog catcher here. I've lived with and among Latinos my whole life and I would miss that if it changed. For one thing, taking my Tex Mex would be like taking away my air.
A poll of 1,000 likely voters throughout the country finds widespread support for a comprehensive immigration reform across demographics. The majority of participants perceive an economic and fiscal benefit to immigration reform and want Congress to address the economy and immigration reform simultaneously. While approximately 2/3 of voters support reform prior to hearing key components of the legislation, a detailed description of a comprehensive reform proposal receives support from nearly 9 in 10 voters.
The bold leads me to believe that the people polled are actually in favor of just stopping the "dirty mexicans" as they were in favor of reform before reform. And its likely that even when told what the reforms were, they were still in favor, only because reforming immigration, to them, means stopping the brown people from coming in. America is no where near progressive enough for real immigration reform.
I think you are right. I'd like to see a poll that addresses future illegal immigration. All the polling seems to roll right on past what is to be done about future immigration from Mexico. I think most of the support for 'reform' from the right comes tied to the belief that along with changing the status of current illegal immigrants, comes a change in the way we deal with the border and future immigration.
Frankly, I see this issue as a bomb waiting to go off in the progressives' faces. They'll be very surprised at how quickly the debate turns rightward once actual legislation is on the table. IMO.
this is a tough topic on this blog. people can go to the race card rather quickly. i want immigration reform. undocumented people/workers are taken advantage of. i also believe in certain regions of the country they undercut labor. i also wonder if there is a liability cost shift taxes paid vs. services used: schools,prisons and healthcare. although this issue is country wide it's very much an issue out west.
this "cheap labor"/demographic is very much subsidized. many are well below poverty level due to low wages. schools for this demographic require bi-lingual instruction and food provided is paid by tax dollars. this has been a u.s. corporation/financial elite strategy to weaken the organized labor and reduce the cost of foodstuffs. for me it's NO free lunch. it's about space NOT race.
you can't have any legitimate concerns, because it's been established that there's only one acceptable point of view on how to handle immigration, and that's the uber-lib, hyper-progressive point of view. If you dare suggest that there are any downsides to wide open borders, you're a racist, or rather a wingnut racist, since one must be 100 percent in compliance with uber-lib ideals at all times, or be labeled a neocon, or a wingnut, or a DINO, or whatever.
The label of racist is the trump card that ends debate here on the left. I can't count the number of times I've been forced to give up debate because I've been shouted down, or even threatened with banning because I don't tow the line on every subject.
The hard left can be just as inflexible as the hard right in my experience.
i try my hardest to talk about this issue. in my opinion some people get into a black and white thinking process rather quickly. they don't realize these people are being used. the race card does play in some instances but it's also a strategy to push/allow more undocumented immigrants. this was a strategy by corporations that don't want regulation(s) and work comp. they say legal citizens won't work these
jobs i say NONsense. i also say play by the rules like the rest of us. can't get workers then close
down or PAY more. people at times are being blind/foolish. corporations will get as close to a
asia working environment as they're allowed. foodstuffs are said to be less expensive MAYbe that's why we have child obesity/metabolic syndrome/diabetes/HTN......no free lunch.
Doesn't that factor in here? Talk about cheap labor, talk about ALL cheap labor.
the guest workers are paid exactly the same as the citizen workers. After all, the taxes taken out of the paychecks should be the same in order not to screw the government. And it would boost the economy for all if they are making more. It might affect the profits at the top a tiny bit.
But, we need to reform the enforcement techniques. Rounding people up and shipping them across the border or locking them up, splitting up their families, is brutal. If the kids of the rounded-up immigrants are born in the USA, then we are violating the kids' rights to have a family.
I am ready for comprehensive immigration reform. It's called open borders.
The right to move about freely is a fundamental right that existed before the advent of nation states. Nation states are artificial constructs.
Let's live up to our lofty values, you know, the tired, poor and huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
Our immigration laws are immoral. We can solve the problem by opening the borders.
Open borders for the entire world? WWOWMD? What old white men do? Without borders, it would be like the Bloods invading a Crips neighborhood. We don't need open borders. We need open minds.
to immigrate America. A dangerous, expensive vaccine for a virus the body will typically clear on it's own. The side effects can be crippling.
http://www.feministing.com/archives/011052.html
You cannot have an "open mind" with closed borders.
Broaden your perspective. Open the borders, open your mind.
but I think the biggest hurdle in immigration reform is the dept. of immigration.
Trying to obtain a green card for my Japanese wife has been next to impossible. What's really maddening is that because of the Dept. of Immigration is so screwed up, they have taken an inordinate amount of time (and have admitted it was their error) to process my wife's application. So much, that we had to change her visa status, which incidentally, costs $1100.
Also, try navigating their phone tree some time. Their "help" line can take you through as much as 30 minutes worth of "for ___________ press 1; for ____________ press 2" and only offers English and Spanish for language choices. Unless you speak those two languages, you're f*cked if you want live assistance.
Overall, as an educated, well-read, white collar American, I've found the immigration process to be next to impossible. How a non-English (or Spanish) speaking person navigates the sea of red tape is beyond me. It has definitely helped me to understand why so many people are here illegally.
Hell, my wife is here illegally, despite our best efforts to make her legal, and that's with an American husband.
If President Obama does not keep his promise of Immigration Reform this year, he either lied knowingly in the campaign or he is incompetent. I say incompetent because he knew back then of all the problems he would face: bad economy, healthcare…besides immigration, and yet, he promised he would make immigration a priority. Since then, nothing unpredictable happened so that his plan would be veered off course. If a disaster that nobody could predict happened, I would understand how this new pressing matter could interfere with his promises, but otherwise, all the other problems were well known, so I suppose he had some sort of idea of what was to happen, at least if he were competent he would.
Login or Register to post comments.