Pregnant and Shackled: Hard Labor for Arizona's Immigrants
New America Media, News Feature, Valeria Fernández , Posted: Jan 26, 2010
PHOENIX, Ariz.— Miriam Mendiola-Martinez, an undocumented immigrant charged with using someone else’s identity to work, gave birth to a boy on Dec. 21 at Maricopa Medical Center. After her C-section, she was shackled for two days to her hospital bed. She was not allowed to nurse her baby. And when guards walked her out of the hospital in shackles, she had no idea what officials had done with her child.
1.23.2010
'Illegal Me'
In the wake of 911, after my return home from the Americorps, I met my future husband who was and is an "illegal immigrant". He invited me to go salsa dancing - I declined secretly hoping he would ask me to do something else, less daunting for a near 6’ gal. He was relentless and I finally accepted.
Raul and I got married on a beautiful day in June of 2006. We knew going into our marriage that there would be no way for us to legally stay in the states. I ask myself all the time, especially now with two little innocent baby girls, why I got us into this, knowing the repercussions of Raul’s trek across the Arizona desert. In my better moments I thank God for the wonderful man I share my life with and for the people I have come to know because of him.
Our story burns inside me because I know we are not alone. I hope this blog will create awareness, however small, of undocumented immigrants in the U.S and families just like mine.
1.22.2010
The Prospects for Comprehensive Immigration Reform
January 21, 2010
Senate Democrats Press Advocates to Embrace Expanded Enforcement
The Prospects for Comprehensive Immigration Reform
By STEWART J. LAWRENCE
After months of procedural delay and understandable preoccupation with the economy and health care, the White House has quietly announced plans to introduce a comprehensive immigration reform bill in the Senate next month. The move surprised many political observers who have watched the Obama administration constantly postpone action on immigration reform in order to address a host of other policy issues.
Senate Democrats Press Advocates to Embrace Expanded Enforcement
The Prospects for Comprehensive Immigration Reform
By STEWART J. LAWRENCE
After months of procedural delay and understandable preoccupation with the economy and health care, the White House has quietly announced plans to introduce a comprehensive immigration reform bill in the Senate next month. The move surprised many political observers who have watched the Obama administration constantly postpone action on immigration reform in order to address a host of other policy issues.
1.19.2010
What King's Civil Rights Legacy Means for Immigration Reform
What King's Civil Rights Legacy Means for Immigration Reform
By Seth Hoy, Immigration Impact
Posted on January 18, 2010, Printed on March 9, 2010
Today, we celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a man whose dream of equality and human rights changed the course of history. His legacy will be remembered this week by people of all colors and creeds who still believe in the American dream and who continue to fight for equality, civil rights and the basic human dignity they deserve. Over the weekend, thousands of human rights activists took to the street in Phoenix, Arizona, to march for civil rights and for "long-overdue federal action on immigration."
So how is immigration a civil rights issue? In a recent editorial, Rev. Harvey Clemons Jr., the pastor of Pleasant Hill Baptist Church in Houston, connects Dr. King’s fight for equality with the struggle many immigrants face today.
Immigration is about human dignity and the nobility of parents of different tribes and nations facing the risk of coming to a foreign land, a land of opportunity, to work for a better tomorrow for their children…Dr. King invoked the truth, the truth being that all humans ought to be treated with a certain dignity. It would be natural for us to look to him as an example for fighting for a just cause.
By Seth Hoy, Immigration Impact
Posted on January 18, 2010, Printed on March 9, 2010
Today, we celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a man whose dream of equality and human rights changed the course of history. His legacy will be remembered this week by people of all colors and creeds who still believe in the American dream and who continue to fight for equality, civil rights and the basic human dignity they deserve. Over the weekend, thousands of human rights activists took to the street in Phoenix, Arizona, to march for civil rights and for "long-overdue federal action on immigration."
So how is immigration a civil rights issue? In a recent editorial, Rev. Harvey Clemons Jr., the pastor of Pleasant Hill Baptist Church in Houston, connects Dr. King’s fight for equality with the struggle many immigrants face today.
Immigration is about human dignity and the nobility of parents of different tribes and nations facing the risk of coming to a foreign land, a land of opportunity, to work for a better tomorrow for their children…Dr. King invoked the truth, the truth being that all humans ought to be treated with a certain dignity. It would be natural for us to look to him as an example for fighting for a just cause.
1.18.2010
Follow MLK's guidance on immigration reform
Follow MLK's guidance on immigration reform
By THE REV. HARVEY CLEMONS JR.
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Dec. 3, 2009, 7:41PM
It is nothing new for an African-American minister like me to look at Scripture and perceive that something is amiss in our society. That was Martin Luther King Jr.'s story. King dared to read Scripture and proclaim God gave all people the dignity and intelligence to choose which bus seat was right for them, even in Alabama. King's vision included more than justice for black folk. His vision included all God's children, red and yellow, black and white.
King's vision and struggles are important to remember as serious conversations about immigration reform are again beginning to brew, as indicated by the remarks last month of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano at the Center for American Progress. Though the conversation concerning immigration in America is more ancient than King, King's vision provides a helpful tool with which to view the immigration struggle today. Immigration is about human dignity and the nobility of parents of different tribes and nations facing the risk of coming to a foreign land, a land of opportunity, to work for a better tomorrow for their children.
Nearly 18 months ago, a conversation with a Latino brother demanded that I move my understanding of the immigration issue past propaganda and common perception. Spurred by his passion, friends and I gathered with prominent immigration lawyers, leaders from the Greater Houston Partnership and the Latino community to learn how the immigration system was affecting the daily lives of people in our community and the well-being of our community itself.
The perception garnered from the media is often that undocumented immigrants simply go around the open door of the legal immigration system, but that morning I learned how an unworkable immigration system closes the vast majority of legal avenues for those who desire to immigrate legally. The perception from the media is often that immigrants do not pay taxes; that morning I learned undocumented workers pay taxes and to a much greater degree than what they consume in our state, with an estimated $400 million surplus. Also, I did not know undocumented immigrants contributed more than $17 billion to our state's economy, how an enforcement-only policy would cost our economy $651 billion in annual output, or how immigrant parents lived continually under the threat of being separated from their children. For too long, advocates who fear immigrants have acted as the primary molders of our perception concerning immigration, convincing us all too easily that their fears fall in line with reality.
To many, it seems strange that I, an African-American minister from the Fifth Ward, would focus much of my energy and resources to work along with other leaders in our city for immigration reform. Yet I am a Christian and a disciple with the call to see Christ in the humanity of all who suffer. This was the remarkable passion of King. Today, many others and I share this same passion. King saw the world from the perspective of God's love. God's love gave King the courage to work with all God's children so that the foolishness of fear-mongers would not cut the country off from its pursuit of a more perfect union.
Listen not to false prophets who wrap their politics around the fear of the immigrant. It is not a new song they sing. In fact, it is eerily similar to the songs sung not too long ago. They sang that slavery was God's way until that song sounded ridiculous. They altered the song and sang segregation was God's way until that too sounded ridiculous. Now the song of the false prophets paints the immigrant as a threat to, rather than a pillar of, American society; paints undocumented fathers and mothers working from sunrise to sundown as a drain of our nation's resources rather than a reminder of our heroic beginnings; and paints immigrant children as a national burden rather than our nation's blessing.
Napolitano closed her remarks on immigration by stating that immigration is “ingrained in our national character …. But we must modernize our laws for the 21st century so that this vision can endure. This is a task that is critical, that is attainable, and that we are fully committed to fulfilling.” Like in the days of King, we know much of what we need to do. The only question is whether or not we have the courage to continue the noble legacy with which we have been entrusted by working to be the land of opportunity for all people in all positions of life. Please join us at www.houstonimmigrationreform.org.
In Quake Aftermath, U.S. Suspends Deportations to Haiti
The New York Times
January 14, 2010
In Quake Aftermath, U.S. Suspends Deportations to Haiti
By JULIA PRESTON
Responding to the devastation from the Haiti earthquake, Obama administration officials on Wednesday temporarily suspended deportations of illegal immigrants from that country.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Haitian deportations would be halted “for the time being,” without specifying a time period. Immigration officials said it was clear they could be putting Haitians’ safety at risk by sending them back to a country staggering from the vast destruction of the quake. About 30,000 Haitians in the United States are facing deportation orders, immigration officials said.
Lawmakers and immigrant advocacy groups renewed calls for the administration to grant Haiti a special status that would shield Haitian immigrants in this country from deportation for an extended period and allow them to work legally. The Haitian government and advocates here have been asking Washington to grant the status, known as temporary protected status, since late 2008.
1.09.2010
To Overhaul Immigration, Advocates Alter Tactics
1.04.2010
Fight on Immigration Reform Looms for Obama in '10
TIME
Fight on Immigration Reform Looms for Obama in '10
By Michael Scherer / WASHINGTON Sunday, Jan. 04, 2009
In the fall of 2007, federal agents raided 11 McDonald's restaurants in the Reno area, rounding up 56 employees on suspicion of working in the country illegally. A couple of weeks later, Barack Obama, then a long-shot candidate for President stumping through Nevada, got asked about the Bush Administration's policy of sporadic workplace immigration raids.
The candidate was unimpressed. "We are not going to solve the problem of 12 million immigrants here, 50 immigrants at a time," Obama said in October of that year. "I think this is much more for show than having a practical effect. We need comprehensive immigration reform."
(See pictures of immigrants in America.)
Two years later, that need is still unaddressed, and it's Obama's Administration that is the target of criticism. President Obama has eliminated the regular workplace roundups of illegal immigrants, but the crackdown on employers of illegal immigrants has, by contrast, increased. In November, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) announced 1,000 new audits of employers who were suspected of employing illegal immigrants. This followed the July announcement of audits of 654 companies, which included reviews of more than 85,000 employee records and the discovery of more than 14,000 suspect documents. As a result of the crackdown, thousands of undocumented workers were fired from their jobs.
(Read a report card on Obama's first year in office.)
"On the enforcement side, we are really stepping up our efforts to audit employers, to investigate employers for knowing violations, to fine them and to prosecute them when appropriate," says John Morton, Obama's choice as director of ICE. "We are doing it on a much larger scale than it was done before."
According to government records, 1,897 workplace enforcement cases were initiated between April 30 and Nov. 19 of 2009, compared to 605 cases during the same period a year earlier under the Bush Administration. In Los Angeles, the designer clothing company American Apparel fired about 1,800 employees in September following an ICE audit of employee records. In Minneapolis and St. Paul, the contract company ABM fired about 1,200 unionized janitors after a similar investigation.
The scope of the crackdown has raised objections from many of Obama's labor and civil rights supporters, who are demanding a more targeted enforcement effort focused on employers that provide poor work conditions or substandard wages. "These seemingly arbitrary audits represent a version of the flawed thinking that went into the Bush Administration's work-site raids," wrote Service Employees International Union president Andy Stern in a Dec. 11 letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. "Forcing the dismissal of such a tiny percentage of the hardworking men and women who work long days mopping floors, sewing our clothes, or handling meat on a factory line does not make us any stronger as a nation."
Morton says that the ICE audits, which involve individual checks of employee citizenship documentation, are intentionally broad and part of an effort to get companies to self-regulate. At the same time, the Department of Homeland Security has been marketing the voluntary use of the E-Verify program, an Internet-based system that allows employers to check the citizenship status of new hires. "We have to enforce the law, and the law isn't restricted to people who employ unlawful labor and have abusive working conditions," says ICE's Morton. "The law is that employers must hire people with work authorization."
The crackdown helps set the stage for a major legislative push for immigration reform in 2010, an effort that is supported by unions and the Department of Homeland Security. In a speech at the liberal Center for American Progress in November, Napolitano argued that the stronger enforcement efforts, combined with a more robust border-protection effort in the past year, set the stage for the passage of reform, which would provide a path to citizenship for many of the 12 million illegal immigrants in America. "Over the past year, as this Administration has pursued more effective strategies within the current laws, the picture of how exactly those laws need to be changed has become clearer than ever before," Napolitano said. "If we are truly going to fix a broken system, Congress will have to act."
Both Democratic and Republican strategists express hope and concern about a battle over immigration reform this year, which could yield legislation for the President to sign as soon as the summer. For Republicans, the concern is that a divisive battle could motivate Hispanic turnout for Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections. For Democrats, the concern is that independent voters, who are deeply concerned about high unemployment and a still sluggish economy, will see a major fight over citizenship for undocumented immigrants as an unwelcome distraction from other priorities. Democrats have already introduced an immigration bill in the House, and one is expected in the Senate early next year.
Groups opposed to Obama's immigration-reform effort have taken little solace in the stepped-up enforcement efforts, in part because the Obama Administration is not aggressively seeking to deport those workers who are fired for fraudulent paperwork. "Effective enforcement is pretty much past tense," says Bob Dane, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a conservative group that opposes giving a path to legalization for current undocumented residents. "The illegal workers are clearly allowed to remain in the country."
That said, few doubt that Obama will have an easier time selling the idea of reform that legalizes current undocumented immigrants if he can argue that the reforms would be accompanied by serious enforcement, something that never happened after the last legalization effort. "We know that one-sided reform, as we saw in 1986, cannot succeed," Napolitano said in November. "During that reform effort, the enforcement part of the equation was promised, but it didn't materialize."
All this suggests that 2010 is sure to see even more crackdowns on employers around the country for employing undocumented workers. The President who once dismissed immigration enforcement "for show" is now clearly trying to make a show of his own enforcement chops.
Fight on Immigration Reform Looms for Obama in '10
By Michael Scherer / WASHINGTON Sunday, Jan. 04, 2009
In the fall of 2007, federal agents raided 11 McDonald's restaurants in the Reno area, rounding up 56 employees on suspicion of working in the country illegally. A couple of weeks later, Barack Obama, then a long-shot candidate for President stumping through Nevada, got asked about the Bush Administration's policy of sporadic workplace immigration raids.
The candidate was unimpressed. "We are not going to solve the problem of 12 million immigrants here, 50 immigrants at a time," Obama said in October of that year. "I think this is much more for show than having a practical effect. We need comprehensive immigration reform."
(See pictures of immigrants in America.)
Two years later, that need is still unaddressed, and it's Obama's Administration that is the target of criticism. President Obama has eliminated the regular workplace roundups of illegal immigrants, but the crackdown on employers of illegal immigrants has, by contrast, increased. In November, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) announced 1,000 new audits of employers who were suspected of employing illegal immigrants. This followed the July announcement of audits of 654 companies, which included reviews of more than 85,000 employee records and the discovery of more than 14,000 suspect documents. As a result of the crackdown, thousands of undocumented workers were fired from their jobs.
(Read a report card on Obama's first year in office.)
"On the enforcement side, we are really stepping up our efforts to audit employers, to investigate employers for knowing violations, to fine them and to prosecute them when appropriate," says John Morton, Obama's choice as director of ICE. "We are doing it on a much larger scale than it was done before."
According to government records, 1,897 workplace enforcement cases were initiated between April 30 and Nov. 19 of 2009, compared to 605 cases during the same period a year earlier under the Bush Administration. In Los Angeles, the designer clothing company American Apparel fired about 1,800 employees in September following an ICE audit of employee records. In Minneapolis and St. Paul, the contract company ABM fired about 1,200 unionized janitors after a similar investigation.
The scope of the crackdown has raised objections from many of Obama's labor and civil rights supporters, who are demanding a more targeted enforcement effort focused on employers that provide poor work conditions or substandard wages. "These seemingly arbitrary audits represent a version of the flawed thinking that went into the Bush Administration's work-site raids," wrote Service Employees International Union president Andy Stern in a Dec. 11 letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. "Forcing the dismissal of such a tiny percentage of the hardworking men and women who work long days mopping floors, sewing our clothes, or handling meat on a factory line does not make us any stronger as a nation."
Morton says that the ICE audits, which involve individual checks of employee citizenship documentation, are intentionally broad and part of an effort to get companies to self-regulate. At the same time, the Department of Homeland Security has been marketing the voluntary use of the E-Verify program, an Internet-based system that allows employers to check the citizenship status of new hires. "We have to enforce the law, and the law isn't restricted to people who employ unlawful labor and have abusive working conditions," says ICE's Morton. "The law is that employers must hire people with work authorization."
The crackdown helps set the stage for a major legislative push for immigration reform in 2010, an effort that is supported by unions and the Department of Homeland Security. In a speech at the liberal Center for American Progress in November, Napolitano argued that the stronger enforcement efforts, combined with a more robust border-protection effort in the past year, set the stage for the passage of reform, which would provide a path to citizenship for many of the 12 million illegal immigrants in America. "Over the past year, as this Administration has pursued more effective strategies within the current laws, the picture of how exactly those laws need to be changed has become clearer than ever before," Napolitano said. "If we are truly going to fix a broken system, Congress will have to act."
Both Democratic and Republican strategists express hope and concern about a battle over immigration reform this year, which could yield legislation for the President to sign as soon as the summer. For Republicans, the concern is that a divisive battle could motivate Hispanic turnout for Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections. For Democrats, the concern is that independent voters, who are deeply concerned about high unemployment and a still sluggish economy, will see a major fight over citizenship for undocumented immigrants as an unwelcome distraction from other priorities. Democrats have already introduced an immigration bill in the House, and one is expected in the Senate early next year.
Groups opposed to Obama's immigration-reform effort have taken little solace in the stepped-up enforcement efforts, in part because the Obama Administration is not aggressively seeking to deport those workers who are fired for fraudulent paperwork. "Effective enforcement is pretty much past tense," says Bob Dane, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a conservative group that opposes giving a path to legalization for current undocumented residents. "The illegal workers are clearly allowed to remain in the country."
That said, few doubt that Obama will have an easier time selling the idea of reform that legalizes current undocumented immigrants if he can argue that the reforms would be accompanied by serious enforcement, something that never happened after the last legalization effort. "We know that one-sided reform, as we saw in 1986, cannot succeed," Napolitano said in November. "During that reform effort, the enforcement part of the equation was promised, but it didn't materialize."
All this suggests that 2010 is sure to see even more crackdowns on employers around the country for employing undocumented workers. The President who once dismissed immigration enforcement "for show" is now clearly trying to make a show of his own enforcement chops.
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