A Perfect Storm for Immigration Reform

Thanks for the pep talk. We sometimes get sidetracked and loose sight of the goal post. Let's hope this will turn into something positive.

I have three points about what should be a proper solution:

1) Straigten out the jury-rigged system for immigration and make it simple-even make it mostly online until the time it's necessary to present papers.

2) Fully fund the immigration side of immigration-put it under the supervision of the state department.

3) Have some sort of a guest worker program for those who want to temporarily work in the United States.

I'm with you, Al, but with one question. You write "the Courts will eventually upturn the Arizona law": if a challenge goes as far as the Supremes, will Chief Justice Roberts be able to pull off more of his 5-4 shenanigans and uphold Juan Crow? (Reason enough to pay very close attention to the upcoming nominee to replace Justice Stevens.)

Just got a call from the OFA crew in Charlotte, NC about a meeting this weekend. Alas, I've moved, but this is the first I've heard from them since they started working Health Care. And i strongly suspect that call wasn't about Financial Reform...

It's time to open the borders; most immigrants have heritage going back 1000 generations -- that's more than the average American. Next -- six month in the country and your a citizen; allows for migration to Mexico from US; should include Canada. All three countries benefit from the demographic mélange -- US benefits from Mexican family values and Canadian knowledge on Health care; Mexico and Canada benefit from .....must be something there ... actually the flip side of American beligerancy is a generous and compassionate population -- needs oportunity for expression -- remember Obama's victory and the hope? I have a friend who walks around downtown carrying his belongings in a towable suitcase -- people bestow money on him, thinking he's homeless.

Just to anticipate one likely reaction of some of our nativist brothers and sisters to the May 1st rallies:  "They're a bunch of communists."

Sigh.

Actually, they're a bunch of Catholics for whom May 1 is the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, and the kickoff for the "month of Mary", celebrating the Blessed Virgin.  (Note:  Our Lady of Guadelupe is the patroness of all the Americas, and her feast day is celebrated in Catholic parishes---Anglo, Latino and other---across the hemisphere, including the good old US of A.)

And those marchers who observe May 1 as International Workers' Day are more likely to connect to its 1886 US origins with the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago (anyone want to lay odds that our president knows that bit of local history too?), than to its appropriation by the Soviets.

"Atheists, heretics and infidels" (in the pre-Vatican II Catholic formulation) will be marching in large numbers too.

However, much to Glenn Beck's dismay, most marchers will be people who belong to a church, synagogue, mosque or temple that has the words "social justice" on its website---as well as other words like "solidarity", "welcoming the stranger",  and "preferential option for the poor".

Labor and Delivery.  Keep your eyes on the prize.  We are the change that we seek.

Thanks, Al, for the post and links.

Here's how We the People do it.  Looking forward to May.

http://www.barackobama.com/2010/?source=feature

Quite frankly Al, the powers that be have been using mass immigration as a weapon to suppress wages and create social dissolution since the United States was first formed.  Tons of the Ford Foundation's activities are related to promoting mass immigration (much of the rest go to suppressing labor unions; do the math).  Ford is the creator of MALDEF and La Raza.

The powers that be (by which I mean the network of Foundations--Ford, Carnagie, Rockefeller, et al and the interests they represent) are well aware that in the absence of social cohesion and competetive wages, the people will turn to the Total State as the only source of order.  They are aware that the Leviathain needs clients to thrive and that a people who intend upon making their own way make bad clients for the welfare state.  So they intend to swamp them with peasants from the third world.

You should also note that the political class wants amnesty badly.  You are currently pulling for the same amnesty that Goldman Sachs wants.  The only reason Arizona passes such measures is because of MASSIVE popular sentiment against illegal aliens is forcing them to.  The VAST majority of the US population would support strict immigration policies and the gradual withdrawal of current illegal aliens through strict enforcement policies.  G. W. Bush was an amnesty fanatic.  If you get your amnesty, you will have to be rooting for the most entrenched and corrupt special interest group in the history of the United States (at least) to get its way against massive popular opposition.

Immigration is just the domestic policy side of globalization.  An adult should be able to understand this; but the fact that you equate the integrity of national borders with Jim Crow makes me question whether you indeed have these adult capacities.

Rex - Right. It's real "adult" to challenge the maturity of someone because he happens to have a different political opinion or interpretation of events. But, whatever...

What we have, at the core, are two very different and opposite visions of the United States of America.

My USA is a nation of immigrants. My ancestors were immigrants and unless "Allen" is an ancient indigenous name, so were at least some of yours. The US has never been a country in which "integrity of national borders" was a desirable goal. It has been the immigrants of every new generation that have refreshed and replenished the American spirit of innovation and kept the country from atrophying into a stale Old World-style nation-state.

The best I can tell from your conspiracy laden rant is that avoiding a "welfare state" (heh, just like those Old World countries you want to selectively imitate!) is so paramount for you that you are willing to have the "state as the only source of social order" to hunt, repress, imprison and expel what are now 12 million undocumented Americans.

That reveals you to be pro totalitarian state in the name of supposedly opposing one.

You are no friend of liberty, and no friend of mine. See you at the barricades.

Those that think there are two kinds of people in the world, and those that don't.

@Rex Allen, you have a point.  Immigrants have often been used to break unions.

For example, young women from rural New England were the first American union organizers in places like Lowell, MA in the 1830s.  They had strong social cohesion (Protestant and English ancestry).  They had economic options (they could always go home to their parents' farms).  They had an organizing tradition to draw on (their grandfathers started the Revolution).

The millowners broke their unions in the 1840s when new immigrants came---Irish, Catholic and desperately poor.  If they didn't work, they didn't earn money.  If they didn't earn money to send home, their relatives would die of famine.

But you also miss a point.  Immigrants have always come to America for a better life---and to join the better life that many/most Americans have.  (Better than the war, famine, pogrom, discrimination the immigrants left behind.)

The 1912 "Bread & Roses" strike in Lawrence, MA (10 miles down the Merrimack River from Lowell) was one of the great victories in the history of the US labor movement.  The millowners by now had decades of experience of using religion, language and ethnicity to divide workers.

The workers responded by printing all strike literature in 11 languages, and by ensuring representation on the strike committee by all factions and ethnicities within the mills.

One of the lessons of the Bread & Roses strike is that we are brothers and sisters.  (Come to think of it, that's the same lesson from Genesis.)

It's a lesson the US labor movement has learned---which is why the AFL-CIO and Change to Win support comprehensive immigration reform.

It's a New York operation that picked the name to induce thirst.

Democrat for US Senate (Wisconsin 2012)

So I had to clear a stack of clipboards from Saturday's canvass off of my dining room table tonight to make room for a phone bank to recruit volunteers for our next canvass when I will again drag out the clipboards...

I heard a rumor today that a bill similar to the Juan Crow law in Arizona will be introduced in the Texas legislature and that they are already gathering co-sponsors.  I'll let you know when I have something definite to report.

I wonder if you think there is any merit to the Greg Palast piece that truthout.org ran.  Could it be that the Juan Crow law is also meant to suppress the latino vote in November?

Here is a link to the truthout.org piece

http://www.gregpalast.com/behind-the-arizona-immigration-lawgop-game-to-...

Mark Fiore, Pulitzer prize winning liberal cartoonist's latest animated cartoon, Police State Pete, 04/28/10 addesses Arizona's "Juan Crow" law.  Click on the first of the 5 cartoons.

http://www.markfiore.com/

When I made my entry above, I, too, had read the Palst article.  I am convinced that it has merit.  Why?  The response from our Organizer-in-Chief, and his supporters is why.

http://www.barackobama.com/2010/?source=feature

We are in campaign mode.  New volunteers, never involved with OFA in either of its incarnations, are showing up.  I am convinced that "the waiting" is over.  We are the ones who are working now!

You, dear Clipboard Mom, are one of millions of women who are taking charge of change.  The training I am receiving now through OFA, is deepening in scope and commitment.  I want to thank you, Clipboard Mom, for your service to US.

Quick Edit:  President Obama has over 8 million people connected to him on Facebook.  How many do you think are actively involved in OFA?

On the Greg Palast article mentioned above, there's an interesting take that I hadn't seen yet. If anybody noticed this aspect of the Arizona law on Daily Kos, it passed me by in my couple-times-a-day perusal. It may be too obvious to some, dunno.

Palast says that the real object of the Arizona Juan Crow law is to disenfranchise voters. The Republicans want Latino voters to stay home, and are trying any intimidation tricks they can.

Here's a quote from the article, talking about a time when current Governor Brewer was Secretary of State:

But Secretary of State Brewer followed the Rove plan to a T. The weapon she used to slice the Arizona voter rolls was a 2004 law, known as "Prop 200," which required proof of citizenship to register. It is important to see the Republicans' latest legislative horror show, sanctioning cops to stop residents and prove citizenship, as just one more step in the party's desperate plan to impede Mexican-Americans from marching to the ballot box.

State Senator Russell Pearce, the Republican sponsor of the latest ID law, gave away his real intent, blocking the vote, when he said, "There is a massive effort under way to register illegal aliens in this country."

How many? Pearce's PR flak told me, five million. All Democrats, too. Again, I asked Pearce's office to give me their the names and addresses from their phony registration forms. I'd happily make a citizens arrest of each one, on camera. Pearce didn't have five million names. He didn't have five. He didn't have one.

A year or two ago I applied for (state) Family Health Insurance Assistance Program and was told they had been de-funded. Last week I got a packet saying I may now apply.  I called my House Representative De Fazio's office and his aide told me the influx of money to FHIAP is a direct result of HRC passing; states get money to put into their programs as they see fit (states rights?) from the fed. gov't.

Now I'm not believin' electoral politics is THE answer, by a long shot, but this is the second time in a year I've seen a direct benifit of voting. (The first was when, on a post-inaugural wave of participatory democracy, I did a little office work for the local campaign to end field burning, cough cough. The bill passed.  This summer there'll be a lot less people having asthma attacks and swollen throats in the Willamette Valley here in Oregon).

Thanks for this site, Al and all the participants!  Keeping the organizing spirit alive...and kickin.

Lorie, thank you so much for your kind words.  I have been following your organizing adventures here at the Field for some time now so this means a lot to me coming from you.  Without the chance to organize and to be part of the OFA community I would be miserablemom.

The quality of OFA training is improving and I appreciate the greater access that volunteer organizers now have to data, trainings, and to staff.

Ann, those were the paragraphs in the article that jumped out at me as well and I think that those of us doing voter registration work will need to prepare ourselves to become the new, scary ACORN on steroids.

The President's 2010 campaign message must be terrifying to the right as he is talking about a never before seen coalition of voters.  I can tell you that where I live in Texas the OFA meetings are the only truly multicultural, multiracial gatherings.  Al is right to warn us about the torrential storm ahead.  But hey, clipboards make an excellent shield or rain shelter in a pinch--so I'm all set!

I can confirm that an Arizona like Juan Crow law will be introduced in the Texas legislature.  Here is the link.  http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/politics/Texas-Rep-to-propose-Arizona-like-law

And here is a link to another reason why the 2010 vote is so important--redistricting following the census.

http://www.lonestarproject.net/

My old plan from Daily Kos:

I've read stories of people waiting years for an Immigration Hearing, let alone green cards, of ICE being outdated and underfunded. Many of the undocumented are undocumented because of the interminable wait for papers and the sheer expensiveness and arbitrariness of the system-where one judge or official can make essentially life or death decisions with no appeal.

We need also, special arrangements for Mexico and Canada that allow people to be temporary workers for a while and then return. We need relaxed visa and other requirements that take into account our border relationships and travel arrangements between the two.

My suggestion would be "special status" visas that allow for a 30-90 day visit, with papers (automated, even online) for renewal filed with ICE if people want to stay longer for people from Canada and Mexico. These would not, unless approved, allow for employment, but would allow family visits and shopping. A certain percentage of the border crossing is ironically the result of harder immigration rules, where people who simply want to visit relatives find barriers so great that they have to stay.

Demilitarize the border. That is, take off the attitude that Al Queda is going to sneak across the border. Groups like that have the money to pay someone to go through the front door, and are better handled with surveillance and cooperative law enforcement anyway. Building a moat does little except disrupt cross-border commerce.
I would add academics and perhaps, on a secondary consultative kind of Board (maybe work with the UN on this one) representatives of nearby nations who fit the main board's requirements. Input from nearby nations would be one way to get cooperation on the other end.

Another proposal of mine would be a commission for immigration like we had for base closings. Such a commission could study the situation in depth with hearings, investigations, scanning current laws, so forth. The undocumented and the documented, impacted communities and so forth could testify with immunity and at full length about the situation. It could commission data gathering, studies and so forth.

I would also move ICE out of Homeland Security and make it a part of HUD or Labor. Immigrants aren't terrorists, and the mindset of such a place is to treat all foreigners as potential criminals. In HUD or Labor, the mindset would be to treat them as potential citizens. Also putting them in an agency that understands the U.S on the work, education, side might help get some more realistic policies-policies that encourage volutary compliance.
When the Commission

Does its findings, I would then sunset the current laws, grandfather those currently in line, and then have a new system starting from scratch with the new laws coming out of the Commission findings. All persons coming into the United States after a certain date would be covered by the new laws and under new conditions.

All undocumented would be given amnesty provided they are not felons. They would have to have a minimum residency requirement too, three months or six months notice and residency, which allows family to finally reunite and settle in before the new rules take effect. Non-violent felons (drug possession and some such) would have conditional stay after release for 5 years before qualifying for a conditional amnesty provided they stay clean and sober and law-abiding. Violent felons would be deported after finishing their sentences-if undocumented and came too early to set up tie elsewhere, we would have a prearranged place for them to be sent. Perhaps Russia could use a few workers on the wild frontier
As for those who worry that it is unconditional
Unconditional would depend upon age. Children under 18 would be unconditional. Those who were brought here as children under 15 would be unconditional. Adults could be required to do the following in reciprocity:

Pay back taxes either lump sum or as part of extra withholding-those who have fallen on hard times and cannot pay could be required to do some sort of workfare or community service until they find a job that allows for withholding

Take the citizenship test like every other immigrant

Get and complete their education and train for a job if they have the ability

Register to vote as soon as they qualify for same

Those over 65 would be unconditional unless they are hardened criminals on the run, convicted of "crimes against humanity" or fall under the violent felon category. They would have to follow the citizenship test and the community service test, although they may not be required to find paid employment.

Legal immigrants who may feel cheated, I have a few provisions for you too:

Anyone who's citizenship has been put in "pending status for 7 years or more-straight to green card, with similar conditions for family members as the amnesteess. You would also have to qualify as far as taxes, lawabiding behavior, citizenship and so forth.

@ momformerlyinMaine

It's more than a rumor about an Az.-style law being introduced in Texas. But it's happened in the past, and failed, and is equally doomed now.

Here's a good analysis of some of the reason why from the conservative Dallas Morning News:

.... Perry already has hard-line Republicans in his corner. And he would prefer that Democrat Bill White, who speaks fluent Spanish and has campaigned hard in South Texas, not have a potent racial issue for their fall battle.

And as far as Palast's conspiracy theory, I'm quite dubious that such an intent is in play, since the blowback seems to clearly override any prospects of success.

And from where I sit in South Texas, all the Az. law has succeeded in doing among the Latino population is provide its quite capable organizers with a finely honed get-out-the-vote weapon.

For Palast's theory to hold water, we have to assume Latino voters are wimps and absent any recourse via the power structure. That just ain't the case in my neck of the woods. For one, the mayor of San Antonio, and much of the City Council, is Latino. And they didn't get there by sitting on their hands.

My two cents.

Al, your analysis is spot on. I just wonder when we'll see immigration reform in Mexico too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGINtCDXJno

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/04/28/1603019/6-out-of-10-migrant-women-...

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i44ftsxpMxwUMHw62FJDvT...

Thank you for your imput on the negative prospects for a Texas Juan Crow law passing.  I agree with your comments on Greg Palast.  In my opinion much of his work is so relentlessly negative, it ends up paralyzing the left.

Rex Allen's arguments would be very intertaining if they weren't so insidious. It truly is a multilayered mix of strawman fallacies that they automatically crash of their own bizarre weight.

So, according to Rex Allen, it is the oooh big bad conspiracy crafting foundations and companies that use amnesty and immigration to destroy American social cohesion, depress wages, create faux advocacy groupsetc, which in effect means that "Immigration is just the domestic policy side of globalization."

The twisted logic is so glaring on so many fronts. First of all, Globalization is about paying the least on the cost of labor that can be lobbied for, exploit said labor wherever it may be found around the globe cheaply. Thus multinational corporations actually thrive in the neverland of the undocumented worker. They can pay said worker anything they choose, without fear of political ramification (as the undocumented workers don't vote). So tell me again why the corporations would want immigration reform that brings these workers out of the shadows? No htey won't htey like the darkness.

But above all I find the philosophical basis for Rex's argument to be downright offensive. I fail to see exactly why being an undocumented worker in and of itself automatically means one is a criminal. The Arizona law is OFFENSIVE to those who will direactly bear its brunt of living constantly under suspicion. Why are white Americans, a subset of whom commit the most egregious crimes not subject so similar ethnic/racial profiling on the basis of crimes prior white men committed - murder, fraud, racketeering,  etc..Why must the discourse be about "those" people. rather than us?

The bright side of all this that come 2050 the demographic shift to a majority Hispanic population will have happened and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

Eyes on the Prize.!!

I know I am not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I know I am useful "out here in the field".  For me, Palast's article/theory shines the light on voter registration and getting out the vote.  Some of the Obama voters, who aren't following "the news", may read a story such as this and have a "holy shit!" moment".

As OFA's Vote 2010 rolls out, we (OFA) are in such a different place than we were in 2007.  The importance of the vote in November is critical and we are already doing the work necessary, because we've done it before and we'll do it again.  I, like momformerlyinMaine, would be "miserablemom" without the OFA community and my people here in the Sphere.

I appreciate the informed comments from my fellow co-publishers. I come here to learn, be motivated and grounded.  Thanks for the 2 cents.  Those pennies add up.

See this huffingtonpost article about the under the table movement in education that this racist law has put in march:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/30/arizona-ethnic-studies-cl_n_558...

Best,

Alex

 Frantically posting this article everywhere they can to justify their new Juan Crowe law.

Seems fishy that the news reports over 30 shots were fired at the deputy with an AK-47 yet he only had a flesh wound.

Thank you Al for chiming in. I was hoping you would do so. The one good thing to come of this law is the national attention so we can finally deal with this issue.

On my way to Chicano Park in San Diego to march for reform today.

@ Alex Christi

 WoW!!  I am blown away at the moment. I have to re-read every link one more time to really get a grasp of this debacle.   I have been ignorant (shielded or a sheep?) to the war on drugs from the beginning.  I had a couple of friends read it too so we can discuss  more tomorrow.  I would like to have your permission to post this entire comment with links to my discussion page on the American Progressive Party page on facebook. I believe it deserves so more exposure. It really hit home how much the immigration debate and the war on drugs are intertwined.

___

May Day March was very inspiring and upbeat. Thousands turned out from all walks of life. I was interviewed on the local news channel KUSI (more right wing than local Fox affiliate). I hope I made a small impact.

Post away....

 Here are two links I wanted to make sure you saw. Would love to hear opinions as to what will come next.

http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/bastard/2010/03/joe_arpaio_on_false_mcdonalds.php

http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/bastard/2010/04/phoenix_police_chief_jack_harr.php

It's time to drop all borders. No more border patrol! If people have jobs they come, if not they go. What's wrong with that? How would anyones life change if there was no more border?

It be no differnt at all!