Path to Nowhere

It's been a month since we left the conventions behind, and it's been nothing if not eventful. Bank failures, government bailouts, a plummeting Dow Jones average, a vice-presidential debate generating record tv-turnout--and a vp candidate eliciting either the kind of excitement or the morbid curiosity/horrified fascination usually reserved, respectively, for teen idols on the one hand or celebrities in the midst of very public nervous breakdowns on the other.

And immigration remains the issue that dares not speak its name. 

Except in the occasional op-ed or editorial by those determined folks who believe that it's an issue that needs to be addressed. Just saw one on the Times website titled "Ellis Island is Closed" that provides a link to a fantastic graphic explanation of how difficult our "legal" immigration system is, a compelling counterargument to those who ask "What part of illegal don't you understand?"

As the debate is played out in too many towns and on too many airwaves across the nation, the part of illegal that people don't understand is the extent to which the legal immigration system is simply out of step with our nation's needs; the extent to which this disconnect is the reason we have an "illegal" problem; and the extent to which enforcement of the law as it currently stands is an exercise in futility, cruelty, and squandered resources.

But the discussion seldom goes there; it highlights the most visible "problem"--the large undocumented population here--and ascribes it to individual malfeasance on the part of impatient, opportunistic, lawless immigrants, rather than to the root cause--a path to legal status that is so narrow, labyrinthine, and studded with roadblocks along the way that it virtually doesn't exist. Check out the visual depiction of the system from Reason magazine, which brings much-needed clarity to the debate.

When we were on the road, talking to people on the street in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and Iowa and Denver and St. Paul and other points in between, most people told us they had no problems with immigrants, but they did have a problem with those who come illegally. Which is understandable, because if you don't know what the immigration process entails, of course you'd look askance at folks who don't seem to play by the rules. But it would have been great to show them the chart from Reason; it might help focus their concern not so much on those who come or stay without status, but on the phenomenon of illegal immigration as a result of the insufficient framework we have for legal immigration. Maybe then they would see that it's the system that needs fixing, not the people.

Messages to the Candidates

Every place that we went on this trip, we asked people if they had a message for the candidates. The responses we got ranged from the silly to knowledgeable to profound, these are some of the better ones:

Kica Matos



Rocky



Pat Young



Barbara from Riverside



Ryan



John Jairo Lugo



Paul Sonnenberg



Omar



and finally, Father Paul Ouderkirk. We put up his message before, but I thought it was the most profound and incisive of all the messages and needs to be seen again.



Thanks for watching and following the blog!

Alan

A Deafening Silence

Back in New York again: the road trip behind us, the Democratic Convention behind us, the Republican Convention behind us, the election still ahead of us, and the immigration debate…sort of on hiatus, as far as being a focus of national discussion.

I guess it’s refreshing, in some respects, that there’s this interregnum of silence on the issue; the crowd at the RNC, for instance, got whipped up into a real frenzy—to the point of attaining what I can only think of as The Most Surreal Moment in a Political Event of Many Surreal Moments: the absurdity of “Drill, baby, drill” (how did that ever become a rallying cry for the masses????). Given the incendiary tone at the RNC (for which our former mayor can take due credit), I guess in some ways it’s a blessing that immigration received scant attention there.

Immigration gets some play in both party platforms, however. The Democratic platform acknowledges that immigration contributes to our nation’s economy, culture, and spirit; and that the system is broken and requires comprehensive reform—including enforcement and a path to legal status for the undocumented. But in an effort to keep Blue Dog Democrats in the fold, there was no substantive—or even passing—discussion of this part of the platform at the convention.

The Republican platform views immigration exclusively as a national security matter and leads with concerns about keeping out criminals, terrorists, and drug cartels, and sees enhanced enforcement of existing laws as sufficient to addressing our broken system. Unsurprisingly, the platform outright rejects “amnesty,” and throws in a range of other recommendations for good measure—an English only proposal, increased resources for enforcement, punishing “sanctuary cities” and so forth. But in an attempt not to scare away Latino voters, the Republicans sidestepped the issue of immigration in St. Paul as adroitly as the Democrats did in Denver. (They also sidestepped the fact that, until recently, their candidate espoused a position on immigration that was more or less what was in the Democratic party platform.)

But there was something deafening in the silence. While the respective candidates at their respective conventions said nothing, immigration agents took Laurel, MS, by storm, detaining 600 apparently undocumented workers—surpassing their previous record haul, in Postville, IA, back in May. While the candidates stood silent, the town of Postville was dealing, three months later, with the loss of a large part of its population —the very people who helped to revive a town that for years has been losing its native-born population as the young people move away—and with the shuttering of storefronts on its main street. While the candidates stood silent, Hazleton, PA, saw its opportunistic mayor continue to malign the very community his economic development strategy hinges on—the immigrant workers who fill the jobs in Hazleton’s industrial park that there aren’t sufficient local workers to fill. While the candidates stood silent, Riverside, NJ, still hasn’t recovered from the divisive immigration battle that took place there and that left Riverside, in the words of one native-born business owner, a “ghost town.”

Something is seriously askew. If immigration and the current broken system are so tangential that they warrant not an iota of attention at the conventions, how can they be so important that the government marshals all its resources to conduct raids that bring down workers, families, communities, and local economies in one fell swoop?

From 1985 to 2002, spending for detention and removal increased 750%; since 2002, it’s doubled again. And now the combined 2008 budgets of Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement are nearly $4 billion more than the State Department's.

Last year, the government detained 280,000 immigrants, and deported about the same number.

And none of this warrants discussion?

It could be that in the current climate, we’ve all got battle fatigue; how else to explain that Postville, where 400 workers were taken in a raid in May, garnered significant media coverage, but just three months later, the arrest of 600 workers in Mississippi warranted just a day or two of coverage? We’ve all just become too accustomed to immigration laws that are so out of step with reality that they give rise to the very lawlessness they attempt to enforce against. We've come to accommodate an immigration framework that fails to meet the needs of business, labor, and families, and that ultimately creates the very conditions that we all decry.

Both party platforms put forth their commitment to the rule of law. But if Aristotle said, “Law is order, and good law is good order,” then clearly the reverse is also true; bad law is disorder. And that is where we are right now. You cannot have 12 million people living in the shadows, acknowledged with a wink and a nod and trotted out as red meat when it’s politically expedient to do so, and pretend that we are a nation of laws.

But the candidates stood silent.

Dispatch from Hazleton, Post-Road Trip, Post-Convention

The conventions may have sidestepped the immigration issue, but someone's paying attention! Another article by Kent Jackson, in the Hazlet0n Standard-Speaker. Check it out!


Conventions oddly quiet about immigration
Travelers heard more about immigration on their way to the national conventions than they did after arriving.
BY KENT JACKSON
STAFF WRITER
Published: Friday, September 5, 2008 4:32 AM EDT

Travelers heard more about immigration on their way to the national conventions than they did after arriving.

A group from the New York Immigration Coalition, which stopped in Hazleton on Aug. 21, visited other places that made news for immigration events on the way to the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

In Denver, they met Mario Castellon, who bicycled from El Salvador to highlight the plight of immigrants in America. Also they joined thousands of others on Aug. 28 in a pro-immigration march, which passed an empty sports stadium and followed a highway rather than residential streets.

“It was important to march and show solidarity, but the effect of the march is questionable. Nobody inside the convention is talking about immigration, no one is addressing the raids happening right now, nobody seems to feel the need to address this now,” one of the coalition members wrote in a blog that the group kept during their trip.

A raid searching for immigrant workers occurred on Aug. 25, the day the convention started, when federal officials detained nearly 600 people in Laurel, Miss. A platform that the Democratic Party approved before the convention called such raids ineffective and said that they divide families. Both the Democratic and Republican platforms, however, called for a method in which employers could learn whether job applicants had legal status to work in the United States. The system, now known as E-Verify, was part of Hazleton’s proposed Illegal Immigration Reform Act, which is under appeal after a federal judge ruled it unconstitutional.

Another raid took in nearly 400 workers in May in Postville, Iowa, where the coalition’s group stopped on the way to Denver. The Rev. Paul Ouderkirk told them that when he arrived at St. Bridget’s R.C. Church after the raid he found perhaps 400 people staying in the church, office and rectory. They were children and other relatives of the factory workers who had been taken in raid, and they feared that they would be apprehended too if they went home. For a week, they stayed at the church while volunteers from the congregation and other local churches fed them.

The raid “took one-sixth of the town, one-third of the school and half of this parish. You don’t recover from that very fast,” Ouderkirk said in an interview that is videotaped and available on the blog.

“Postville somehow brought everything to a head for us,” another blog entry said. “Throughout this road trip, we’ve been moving along on a kind of undercurrent of sorrow and discomfort — a feeling I hadn’t quite yet articulated but could feel nagging at me. But I came out of so many of our stops on this road trip with an uneasy sense of regret, and Postville was where the cumulative impact of that sentiment unfolded into what I can only call grief.”

The blog said that people in Hazleton and Riverside, N.J., on both sides of battles that were fought in their towns about immigration laws seemed bruised. Karen Kaminsky, the communications director for the New York Immigration Coalition and one of the group that drove to Denver, said the battles bring up legitimate concerns.“But it stirs it up in a way that’s well beyond. There’s no doubt there are concerns. There’s no doubt it’s a broken system. There’s no doubt there are stresses communities go through as the population shifts. But I don’t think there needs to be this level of vindictiveness and this punitive approach. That doesn’t get to the real issue,” Kaminsky said.

Milan Bhatt, the coalition’s coordinator for worker’s rights, said the Denver march was a high point for him. “It was a few hours of the whole week where we really saw attention we need focused on the issue,” Bhatt said. In Denver, however, he learned that voters OK’d a ballot initiative aimed at illegal immigrants that impounded the cars of unlicensed drivers who could not prove citizenship. He wished both conventions focused more attention on immigration. “Both candidates need to step it up,” Bhatt said.

Norman Eng, the media director for the coalition, went to St. Paul, Minn., where the Republicans held their convention.His first blog entry after landing at the airport in Minneapolis on Wednesday, described a heavy police presence at intersections and hotels. He also noted the businesses run by immigrants, mostly Somalis who came as refugees from civil war and Hmong from Laos and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

Rick Morelli, an alternate delegate to the convention from Sugarloaf, said Tuesday that delegates were eager to talk about vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the economy and national security. No one mentioned immigration unless he brought up the topic.

The Republican platform links immigration to security and said unidentified people can’t remain in the country in an age of drug cartels, terrorism and criminal gangs. More immigration agents should be hired, illegal immigrants who commit other crimes should serve time in prison and then be sent to immigration authorities, the platform says.The platform champions the rule of law and suggests withholding federal funds from sanctuary cities and opposing driver’s licenses or amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Republican nominee John McCain favors deporting illegal immigrants who commit crimes and said he would strengthen the border before trying to implement a plan that he supported in 2006 to offer illegal immigrants a path to become legal residents.

Likewise Democratic nominee Barack Obama favors more security on the border and wants to help Mexico develop jobs and retain workers who otherwise might seek to enter the United States illegally. Deporting 12 million illegal immigrants is impossible, Obama believes, so he proposes offering them a way to become legal residents.

The Democratic platform reflects those views by proposing that illegal immigrants receive a path toward citizenship and promoting economic development in nations that send immigrants. Also, the Democrats call for more border guards and crackdowns on smuggling.

Both the Republican and Democratic platforms recognize that immigrants helped build America. “America has always been a nation of immigrants ... who have contributed to “our country’s rich culture, economy and spirt,” the Democrats say. The Republican platform says, “Today’s immigrants are walking in the steps of most other Americans’ ancestors, seeking the American dream and contributing culturally and economically to our nation."

kjackson@standardspeaker.com

Farewell Twin Cities! (And Where to Stay in Minneapolis on a Shoestring)

As I force myself to stay up late so that I don't oversleep and miss my ridiculously early morning flight, please allow me to indulge in telling you about the international hostel where I stayed in Minneapolis for only $60 a night!

It's a beautiful Victorian house with comfy common areas, where you can meet travelers from all over.

I grew fond of these kinds of places when I used to backpack around Asia in my youth. The only catch: you may have to share your room with up to four other people (and some of them will snore).

Some of them may also be odd. One of the hostel staffers told me that a bunch of Ron Paul conventioneers were staying here, and that "there was weirdness around." Who knew Ron Paul was even holding a convention?

At least they didn't pilfer my stuff.

McCain's Reference to Immigrants in Speech

What should we make of Senator McCain's brief but surprising reference to immigrants in his speech Thursday night?

"In this country, we believe everyone has something to contribute and deserves the opportunity to reach their God-given potential, from the boy whose descendents arrived on the Mayflower to the Latina daughter of migrant workers. We're all God's children and we're all Americans," said McCain.

At the most basic level, it's an effort to appeal to coveted Latino voters who could make the difference between victory and defeat this year. But should we read more into it than that?

Is it coded language that signals that, if elected, Maverick McCain would make immigration reform a priority, even though the issue has basically been swept under the rug this election season and is unpopular in his party? The McCain team may be hoping that Latino voters interpret it that way, although when you parse the language, it says and promises nothing concrete.

What seems certain is that any immigration proposal from a President McCain would likely entail an enforcement-first approach, and not the comprehensive approach he earlier championed but has since distanced himself from.

On a rhetorical level, it's notable that he invokes the first European settlers as well as God (twice) in speaking about immigrants. Are these the most effective ways to frame immigration for the RNC crowd?

Scenes from Outside the Convention

These images were taken on Thursday night outside the perimeter fence and checkpoint that guards entry into the Xcel Energy Center complex, site of the Republican convention.

Other than these hilarious street performers, I saw no other protesters anywhere near the perimeter checkpoint.

Security throughout the city was extremely tight. Helicopters hovered overhead. In the late afternoon, there were reports of a tense standoff between police and protesters who sought to march to the convention site. The protesters were persuaded to turn back, according to news reports, though it was unclear where they would end up.

Dispatch: Who's Afraid of Community Organizing?

At the convention last night, speaker after speaker--from former governor George Pataki to former mayor Rudy Giuliani to vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin--heaped scorn on community organizers.

One can understand why: community organizers actually bring the voice of community members into public policy discussions, and then elected officials actually have to be accountable and responsive to the communities they are meant to serve. It means that elected officials and policymakers aren't only hearing from defense contractors, oil company executives, and insurance companies; they're also hearing from families living in substandard housing, community residents wanting to combat crime in their neighborhoods, workers seeking to get a day's pay for a day's work, and parents wanting to get a decent education for their children.

Oh, weird--didn't Sarah Palin say that she started on her trajectory to the governor's house by joining the PTA to improve her kids' education? Whether through the PTA or community organizing, both Palin and Obama sought to inform decisionmaking by engaging communities in the issues that affect them. But last night, according to Palin, Giuliani et al, providing a platform for everyday folks to have their concerns heard and addressed was something worthy only of condescension.

Dispatch from a Friend Back Home: Allison

Immigrant rights ARE human rights.

The US government is quick to criticize the human rights records of other countries (one of which just hosted a show-stopping Olympic Games) and while there is merit to such accusations, it is slow to realize that the way it treats its own immigrants are often equally abhorrent.

Listening to Father Ouderkirk recount the story of Pedro, a 13 year old whose mother was detained during the factory raid in Postville, was particularly striking to me. When his mother simply asked her detention officer where she was being transferred in order to tell her family she was told to “shut up”, and that is was none of her business. Now Pedro and his father don’t know where she is.

As an advocate for human rights in developing and third world countries, I can’t help but see the similarities between US government tactics and those of totalitarian regimes abroad. When these foreign governments perceive someone as a threat to their power, they intimidate, harass, arrest, and in some cases disappear their own citizens. These events often begin with an office or home raid with the intent to scare others in the community.

Clearly intimidating and imprisoning individuals is not the answer to “maintaining stability” in other countries, just as intimidating and imprisoning immigrants is not the solution to our country’s broken immigration policy. These are only temporary fixes that spread fear and avoid the fundamental issues.

The presidential candidates need to speak about reform and emphasize that immigration is not a bipartisan issue but rather an American one. The US and the West likes to tout the universality of human rights and democracy, but if we are to have any credibility abroad we must apply these concepts at home.

Dispatch from a Friend Back Home: Amanda

“Mr. Ruiz bemoans the fact that these poor people are rounded up like cattle and taken from their homes and put into detention camps! I beg to differ, Their homes are in Mexico and points south, They have invaded my country and are living here illegally, We are just trying to level the playing field. Mr Ruiz conveniently forgets to mention that they don't pay any taxes but use all the services the taxpayers pay for, Schools, Hospitals, Police etc.etc.. Mr. Ruiz's solution? None! He is just another liberal with a Latino surname who wants them to do whatever they want! There are an estimated 20 million scum here, We can't let them do what they want! …They have worn out their welcome and it's time for them to go HOME!”

This is a comment made on an article written by Albor Ruiz in the Daily News. Whether or not you agree with this comment, what I want to address is something different.

The comment above blames the liberal Latino author for allowing this “scum” to stay in his country and for his excessively compassionate and naïve knowledge. Pro-, anti- and neutral ideals, with their different agendas, all have something to say on this incident – whether in favor, opposing or somewhere in-between. Either with anger or in gratitude, we point fingers of accusation: at the media, radicals, the government, the anti-terrorist agenda, and immigrants themselves. Whatever we find wrong with America’s immigration issue – we all look to solve the problem outside.

But, sometimes, you need only look in a mirror.

As an intern at the New York Immigration Coalition, a white liberal humanist living in a Latino part of Brooklyn and who spent time living in India, you can guess that I am pro-immigrant rights. My heart cringes at the words in comments such as these and I sit here, boiling with rage at this heartless ignorance.

Ignorance grows from the roots of fear. It is relatively common knowledge, though most don’t recognize it. Fear is what leads to these ignorant comments of hate – fear of something different. In essence, racism. Different skin, different eyes, different tongue. A fear that “they” will “take over” – completely alienating yourselves from “them”, to protect yourself.

However, while it pains me to admit it, my deepest fear that I have not caught up with my pro-immigrant attitude. Swimming in my own disappointment, I have my own anti-immigrant sentiments. I have ignored these feelings, knowing they are wrong, but deep down I know my apartment door has extra locks in fear of intruders who, in my nightmare, have the identity of poor immigrants. I loathe myself for keeping quiet around immigrants (or those who I assume to be) in fear of unwanted attention drawn from racist stereotypes.

I know I am not alone in this fear. Latino-immigrants can find themselves hating Chinese-immigrants. Eastern-European immigrants fear African immigrants and all examples in-between. Our nightmares are private but are connected with universal generalizations fed to us through different avenues of media, peers family and campaigns.

The immigration issue has been an ignored topic by both presidential campaigns, just has it has been ignored within ourselves. I ask for all to look within, honestly discover the root of your beliefs. If your anti-immigrant hate is stemmed from a selfish fear – address it. If you discover that your pro-immigrant agenda hides your anti-immigrant fear – acknowledge it. When you discover a belief or characteristic you don’t like, how you are afraid of something you shouldn’t – change it. Self-awareness creates self-change, and you must be the change you want to see in the world.

In the end, I hope you will realize that spewing words dripping with anti-immigrant disdain without knowing all the facts is not the way you want the world to be.

Greetings from Minneapolis! First Impressions

The second leg of the NYIC's journey to the 2008 Democratic and Republican conventions is officially underway!

My flight arrived in Minneapolis earlier this afternoon, and I've since made my way to the international traveler's hostel where I'll be staying these next few days. Later this evening, I'll be heading to downtown St. Paul to check out the scene outside the Xcel Energy Center, where the Republican convention is taking place.

Signs of the Republican convention were readily apparent in downtown Minneapolis, even though it is many miles away from the center of the action in St. Paul. As my shuttle bus passed by the Minneapolis Hilton, I saw a heavy police presence there, with groups of mounted police at every intersection near that hotel.

The traveler's hostel where I'm staying is located in suburban Minneapolis, about 10 minutes away from downtown Minneapolis by bus. Walking around this neighborhood, you can't help but notice that immigrants are a major part of this community. Along Nicollet Avenue -- the main thoroughfare in this part of town -- I passed by numerous immigrant businesses: Duc Loi International Supermarket, Mai Lan Video and Music, Hai Nguyen Supermarket, Le Goi Tienne Le Money Transfer, and Wattai Video Rental, to name just a few. Walking in the other direction, I passed a Somali Education Center and a number of other immigrant-owned businesses.

Coming from New York City, this is something that I'm very used to seeing. I'm slightly surprised to find such a strong immigrant presence here in the suburbs of Minneapolis, though I really shouldn't be. It turns out that Minnesota is home to the country's largest population of Somalis, most of whom came to the U.S. as refugees. And St. Paul is home to the largest urban population of Hmong in the world. The Minneapolis Foundation has a informative brochure that describes immigration trends in Minnesota -- check it out.

All right, it's time to gear up and head to downtown St. Paul to watch Governor Sarah Palin deliver her speech on the gigantic screen outside the Xcel Center. More tomorrow.

Dispatch From a Friend Back Home: Dey

Obama’s acceptance speech as the democratic nominee hit on many areas that did not resonate with my political ideologies, and many that did.

On first take, I found the need to stretch the American values of hard work and underdog achievement as opportunistic and “selling out” of the social justice movement, where in inequities have excluded the vast majority of “Americans” from achieving the American Dream.

While I strongly believe that this has been the case and that Obama could have gone a lot further in pointing out the social inequities in our society, I do have to admit that many of the undertones in his speech sounded extremely familiar to me.

See, I’m a Mexican immigrant whose parents’ main reason for immigrating to the United States was the believe that their children would have better opportunities in this country than they did themselves. And that by working hard, their children would have a better a life. So, they packed everything they had, sacrificed leaving their families and everything they knew, and made the treacherous journey to the USA.

I strongly believe that like my family, 98% of immigrants believe that with hard work they and/or their children will succeed in this country. And if they are the lucky ones, like I was, these children will only reinforce this myth within their families and their communities.

The reality is that only a few of us make it. Many people in this country would look like at my story, immigrant Latina that had to overcome language and cultural barriers at the young age of 13 and still made it to Harvard’s Graduate School of Education while graduating top honors in a Masters in Education Policy Program, as a success story. I am proud to say that it was. Like Obama, I’m proud to say that my parent’s credo in hard work paid off.

But, what is often missing from the conversations in immigrant and non-immigrant communities is the fact that TOO MANY OF US DO NOT MAKE IT.

When I look at the fact that my mother has not seen her mother in nearly twenty years, it breaks my heart. When I remember that my mother lost her work as a seamstress due to manufacturing work being shipped abroad, or that my aunt died in the desert along with my baby cousin in her arms while in search of a better of life, or that my three other siblings are stuck in low-paying jobs because they could not continue their education or because they cannot exercise their career due to their immigration status, or that 475 plant workers in Mississippi were detained this week without due process because of their immigration status, it breaks my spirit.

And yet, neither Obama nor McCain have renewed their commitment to neither Comprehensive Immigration Reform nor the Dream Act.

I agree with Obama that we can do better! I believe that America can do better!! I believe that local and national immigrant rights organizations can do a better job of pushing for Comprehensive and Humane Immigration Reform. I believe that politicians and Presidential candidates can do better by tackling head-on the though issues, like immigration.

I believe that past and current immigrant communities can do better by demanding concrete immigration policy solutions from their local and national political and non-profit representatives. Only than, can we have a full discussion about democracy and America’s values.
-Dey