Border patrol proposal draws support, criticism
KONP Radio News – August 20th, 2010 – 6:09 am
(Port Angeles) — A proposal that would move the local border patrol headquarters into what is now the Eagles Building has drawn support and ire in the community.
Earlier this week members of “Stop the Checkpoints” a group critical of the U-S Border Patrol took picket signs to the street in front of the Eagles Building at First and Penn. Read more
Lawsuit Points to Guest Worker Program Flaws
Suit Points to Guest Worker Program Flaws
By JULIA PRESTON February 2, 2010 New York Times
Immigration authorities worked closely with a marine oil-rig company in Mississippi to discourage protests by temporary guest workers from India over their job conditions, including advising managers to send some workers back to India, according to Read more
Current Immigration Reform Legislation – links to info
Resources on Current Legislation in 111th Congress Comprehensive Immigration Reform Legislation
The Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity Act (CIR ASAP Act), H.R. 4321, creates an earned legalization program for undocumented immigrants; Read more
Feb. 13, 2010 Meeting in Forks, WA
AFL-CIO immig. reform helps labor
AFL-CIO Report: Immigration Reform Would Boost Economy
Posted By James Parks On January 11, 2010 (4:27 pm) In Legislation & Politics
A new report shows that comprehensive immigration reform would help American workers and the U.S. economy. Reform that offers a path to citizenship for currently unauthorized workers and enforces workers’ rights would raise the “wage floor” for the entire U.S. economy and increase the total gross domestic product (GDP) by at least $1.5 trillion over the next decade, the report says.
“Raising the Floor for American Workers,” by the Center for American Progress and the Immigration Policy Center, says finding a pathway to citizenship for the millions of undocumented workers is a much better alternative in this economic crisis than expanding guest worker programs or mass deportation.
The temporary worker program only generates an annual increase of 0.44 percent in the nation’s GDP or $792 billion over 10…
Article taken from AFL-CIO NOW BLOG – http://blog.aflcio.org
URL to article: http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/01/11/report-immigration-reform-would-boost-economy/
New Report Documents Trail of Human Rights Violations Against Immigrants
Oakland, CA , October 6, 2009: A new report reveals that immigration policing is causing a disturbing pattern of abuses and human rights violations that threaten the livelihood and safety of entire families, workers and communities. Guilty by Immigration Status: A report on U.S. violations of the rights of immigrant families, workers and communities in 2008 calls for restoring due process and suspending detentions and deportations, and urges a thorough investigation into immigration enforcement practices.
The report was produced by HURRICANE, the Human Rights Immigrant Community Action Network, an initiative of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR).
Guilty by Immigration Status details how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has built up over the last eight years an “immigration control regime,” whose goal is to deport everyone who can be deported. According to the report, DHS is almost exclusively promoting the criminalization of immigration status to detain and deport persons, often for minor offenses.
Catherine Tactaquin, NNIRR director, spoke to the urgent need to address the numerous problems revealed in the report: “Senator Charles Schumer and Congressman Luis Gutierrez have each said they will soon announce their proposals for key immigration reforms. But unless the components of this regime are halted and dismantled, the long-held promise of immigration reform — the lifting of millions of immigrant workers and their families out of a life of fear and exploitation — will be severely undermined.”
Record Number Jailed Solely for Immigration Status
Guilty by Immigration Status describes how DHS, along with other police, public officials and agencies, routinely trumped the civil rights and constitutional protections of a person in order to question, detain and/or jail them solely based on their actual or perceived immigration status. The report also shows that such DHS detentions are taking place in record numbers, along with the relentless militarizing and policing of the immigrant and border communities.
Laura Rivas, coordinator of the HURRICANE initiative, said, “ICE police is unaccountable for the brutal treatment they exact on people for alleged immigration offenses. We have the case of Mr. Rebhy Abdel-Malak, an Egyptian; ICE agents beat him in an Atlanta cell and forced him to sign away his rights in order to deport him. ICE agents forced a pen into his hands and made him sign a document as they sat on him!
“In Sacramento, California, ICE stormed into the home of the Sarabia family, arresting a mother and, without a warrant, her son. ICE deported them literally overnight and dumped them in the streets of Tijuana like so much refuse, without letting the family know of there whereabouts.” She added, “Hundreds of persons are dying on the border, where the border control strategy deliberately funnels migrants into the desert and puts border communities under siege. It’s a deadly crossing for migrants because of the extreme weather and being hunted by vigilantes.”
Guilty by Immigration Status is the second annual report of HURRICANE. The findings are drawn from 141 stories of human rights abuse reported and documented by HURRICANE members and partners, including 25 interviews offering first-hand testimony from immigrant workers, families and community members directly affected by immigration enforcement policies and practices in 2008. The HURRICANE report also tracked 118 incidents of ICE immigration enforcement operations or high profile raids through extensive documentation from newspaper articles, scholarly journals, advocate reports, and interviews with affected persons, along with reporting by community groups and other institutions. [See links below to read the report and the chronologies of human rights abuses and ICE raids.]
According to Ms. Rivas, “The Sarabia and Abdel-Malak families are not isolated cases. We believe the Department of Homeland Security must be held accountable and the abuses investigated. DHS is putting the rights and lives of immigrant and refugee members of our communities at risk.
“The first step to ending this crisis is restoring due process rights and other constitutional protections. President Obama must suspend all detentions and deportations so that those who have violated rights and committed abuses are held accountable. Fair and humane immigration reforms can be achieved, but only by revitalizing our country’s commitment to justice and equality for all persons, regardless of their immigration or citizenship status.”
Read Guilty by Immigration Status at www.nnirr.org/hurricane/GuiltybyImmigrationStatus2008.pdf
Read the 2008 100 Stories Chronology of Abuses at www.nnirr.org/hurricane/100StoriesChronology.pdf
Read the 2008 chronology of ICE enforcement operations, or raids, at www.nnirr.org/hurricane/RaidsChronology.pdf
Anti-immigration forces prep for Town Halls on reform?
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Groups mobilize for the next immigration battle
BY CINDY CARCAMO
The Orange County Register
Former schoolteacher Evelyn Miller doesn’t plan to retire from the anti-illegal immigration movement any time soon.
She’s too busy organizing petitions, blasting e-mails, faxes and letters, and threatening politicians who are up for re-election.
The 76-year-old member of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform says she is driven by her belief that those in the country illegally are taking jobs and taxpayer services from Americans.
“We’re soldiers in the foxhole,” Miller said from her dining room in Irvine, which doubles as a home office.
Groups like Miller’s have proven so effective in mobilizing and delivering their message that they have halted two attempts at comprehensive immigration reform. In 2007 the groups literally shut down the Senate’s phone system at the height of discussion on changes that would have given millions without legal status a pathway to citizenship.
Now, with President Barack Obama’s most recent announcement of possible reform in the upcoming year, groups on both sides of the issue in Orange County and across the nation say they are energized and ready to gear up for the next battle. Some immigrant advocates say they’ve learned from the last round in the ring.
“We’ve had several years of the anti-immigration side making a lot of noise and able to organize themselves very effectively and contacting members of Congress,” said National Immigration Forum spokesman Douglas Rivlin.
Groups that promote immigration reform are now more organized and building stronger alliances, he said. They are mobilizing young people, labor unions and even church leaders to carry their message, and utilizing social-networking tools more than before.
The message? Immigration reform, they say, is the only way to fix a broken system. The only reasonable solutions are to legalize the millions who are in the country illegally and provide a guest worker program, they add.
Matias, an activist from Placentia who is in the country illegally, said he and other activists are encouraging young people to reach out to lawmakers.
“A lot of times youth become active and they are more worried about putting a rally together or getting media attention and they don’t necessarily think about contacting their legislator, and now they are making sure we have all our bases covered,” he said.
The Register is withholding Matias’ full name at his request and under newspaper policy that recognizes the potential for retaliation against him.
In Orange County, the birthplace of Jim Gilchrist’s Minuteman Project and ballot initiative Proposition 187, those who would like to restrict illegal immigration are already skilled in the art of getting out their message.
“Our direct e-mail list is well over 500 people but beyond that a good many of our direct e-mail lists are group leaders of other groups throughout the nation. It could get up to the thousands,” said Barbara Coe, founder of California Coalition for Immigration Reform.
The anti-illegal immigration group based in Huntington Beach co-authored Proposition 187 nearly 15 years ago. The initiative would have denied public services such as education to people in the country illegally. Voters passed the proposition, but a federal court eventually overturned it.
Still, some of the same people who pushed the initiative are still at it.
“That was what helped us defeat the amnesty of 2007. It was just a constant barrage of messages: ‘If you vote yes on this you’ll lose my vote and financial support.’ That was nonstop,” Coe said. “And we’re making the effort to do exactly the same thing. You betcha.”
TAKING A CUE FROM FOES
Some in the immigrant advocacy movement say the political dynamic helped defeat immigration overhaul. By the time President George W. Bush got around to pushing the bill, he was pretty unpopular and didn’t even have the political sway within his own party, they say.
Now, Obama is promising the legalization of millions of people who are in the country illegally. In addition he’s expressed the need for some type of temporary work program for people to come to the country legally and the enforcement of immigration laws already on the books.
Finding ways to mobilize supporters is now a priority for the pro-immigration reform groups, Rivlin said.
On June 1, activists kicked off The Reform Immigration For American campaign, which serves as an umbrella for various organizations — from labor unions to law enforcement and religious groups.
Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, which is heading the campaign’s efforts, said the various groups were simply unprepared the last time around. Now, he said they have a database list of about 75,000.
Reaching out to youth is an important component in the push for immigration reform, Matias said.
He and his allies are promoting the DREAM Act, which would give students in the country illegally a pathway to citizenship. They use social networking tools, such as Facebook, twitter and their Web sites to organize rallies throughout the nation. On June 23 they held mock graduations in Orange County and about a dozen other sites throughout the country, the largest in Washington, D.C.
“I’m here in California … but I can contact people all over the country who are coming together,” he said. “We all have a shared experience… coming up with immigration reform. It affects us a lot and personally.”
RELIGION’S ROLE
The Rev. Alexia Salvatierra, a Lutheran pastor in Los Angeles, travels to Orange County regularly, setting up meetings with religious leaders from immigrant and non-immigrant congregations.
She’s serving as a liaison to help create understanding between both groups.
Orange County immigration advocates who were active in 2007 reached out to religious leaders in immigrant communities, said Salvatierra, who oversees the Orange County chapter of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice.
“It was very clear that was not effective by itself,” said Salvatierra, who is also executive director for the organization’s California chapter.
She said it’s her hope that a common Biblical belief in compassion will give non-immigrant religious leaders and congregation members a new perspective on immigrants — especially those who are in the country illegally.
In Orange County, 10 congregations, including mega-church The Crossing Church in Costa Mesa, have already committed to informal meetings with pastors who lead immigrant churches, such as Templo Calvario in Santa Ana.
“Orange County has a very rich county of people of faith who are serious about their faith,” Salvatierra said. “If your faith is Biblically based it’s not easy to ignore the scripture about welcoming they neighbor, loving thy enemy.”
TOWNHALLS ON IMMIGRATION REFORM?
Some anti-illegal immigration activists have been watching the heated town halls on health care reform and see the future.
“I think that what you’re seeing at the health care town halls may be a template for the immigration debate,” said Tara Setmayer, who handles immigration policy for Congressman Dana Rohrabacher. “I think it may be a template for the grassroots advocates who have been so involved and vocal in the past.”
But Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist said he doesn’t hold much hope for the movement, especially from what’s left of his group after years of infighting.
“The Minuteman movement has lost its mojo because of all this delusional mentality that has gotten into the movement… In our side of the argument they are all attacking each other,” Gilchrist said, alluding to his legal wrangling with Coe and other former allies — some who have formed new groups.
The slow disintegration of the Minutemen, he says mirrors the movement in general.
“I think amnesty will pass,” he said
Town Cut in Half by Border Gates
US: Towns at Vermont-Quebec Border Installing Security Gates
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Border authorities say the five-foot-tall steel gates
across two residential streets are necessary to stem
smuggling of and crossings by illegal immigrants.
Full Story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/us/04border.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
For posterity:
LINE, Vt. (AP) — For decades, Derby Line, Vt., and Stanstead, Quebec, have functioned as one community.
They share a sewer system, emergency services, snowplowing duties and the border-straddling Haskell Free Library and Opera House, where a skinny black line across the hardwood floor of the reading room marks the international border.
But work began on Thursday to erect a pair of five-foot-tall steel gates across two previously unguarded residential streets — a project that will divide the towns physically but has united them in displeasure.
Border authorities say the gates are necessary to stem crossings by illegal immigrants. Residents say there is enough security as it is, with surveillance cameras and patrols by United States Customs and Border Protection.
“I’ve always considered Derby and Stanstead like brother and sister,” said Mary O’Donnell, 57, of Stanstead, walking into the library on Friday. “We’ve always been on friendly terms. Now, suddenly, 9/11 hits and everybody in the U.S. freaks out. So we’re now going to get some really ugly things at the end of the streets that I don’t think is going to serve much of a purpose.”
“Anti-Terror” Patrol Planes in Bellingham
The boys are bragging about their new technology! Check it out:
Bellingham (WA) among sites that will get anti-terror patrol planes
From the article from the AP, some of the rationale used to justify this military buildup:
“Someone who could fly a plane full of narcotics in could also fly a plane full of terrorists in, could also fly a plane full of explosive’ in,” Boyd said
And any plane carrying border patrol agents . . .
Military Buildup for Vancouver Olympics?
Check out Alex’s new page with links about lots of military activity here in Western Washington state including aerial surveillance, army helicopters and fighter jets over Port Angeles, and more information on the Olympic Security Coordination Center which “will coordinate the security efforts for over 40 federal, state and local agencies on the U.S. side of the U.S. – Canadian border.”