Category: immigration

When Will the U.S. Stop Taking the Easy Route on Immigration?

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By Victoria Frayre*

Newly released statistics by the U.S. Sentencing Commission reveal that almost half of all people sentenced for federal felony crimes are Latino. Why is this so? Although most Latino federal offenders are being imprisoned for immigration offenses (about 48% in 2007) does it really make sense to throw illegal immigrants in prison? With prisons already busting at the seams it is absolutely mind-boggling to me why anyone would think that adding to the overwhelming prison population is a good idea. Ironically, this is exactly what is happening. (more…)

Majority of recent federal inmates are Latino

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By Alec Goodwin

On May 7, The United States Sentencing Commission released some surprisingly unsurprising statistics. According to the commission, we’re locking up far too many Latinos because of immigration crimes. Almost half of all federal felony convictions come from Latinos now, with 16% of the prison population being Latino. Many would argue that the convictions would be drug or violence related, but studies show now that that’s not the case. In 1991, 60% of Latinos convicted of federal offenses were put away for drug related crimes and 20% were put away for immigration related crimes. Now, that number is nearly reversed, with 37% being drug crimes and 48% being immigration crimes.

There are so many convictions because of speedy hearings where immigrants are tried and convicted en masse. They simply plead guilty and are immediately placed in prison. Thousands are being placed in prison each year because of this process. (more…)

The slow death of the 14th amendment

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Richard Beeman

On May 4, amateur historian David Barton appeared on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show.  Barton’s central argument was that, constitutionally, the first amendment applies to the federal government but not to the states.  Therefore, if individual states and municipalities see fit to make the Bible the sole standard for criminal and civil law, to reinstate chattel slavery or to make Christianity an official and protected religion, the federal government can do nothing about it.

Barton didn’t suggest that non-federal governments should do these things, merely that they can if they want to.

On May 14th, Jon Stewart invited Richard Beeman, an actual constitutional scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, to respond to Barton’s theory. (more…)

“Only a movement built on love”: Michelle Alexander at Riverside Church

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“Now I want to be clear that when I’m talking about love, I’m not just talking about love for people who have committed crimes like we may have committed, crimes that we think are not so bad; I’m talking about the kind of care and love that keeps on loving no matter who you are or what you have done. It’s that kind of love that is needed to build this movement.”  (Michelle Alexander)

In the 1920s, with the fundamentalist-modernist controversy raging within his own Northern Baptist Convention, John D. Rockefeller built an architecturally imposing church in the heart of one of New York’s most prestigious neighborhoods, opened it to people of all Christian denominations and called an American Baptist preacher named Harry Emerson Fosdick to be his pastor.  Through the years, Riverside Church has become associated with prophetic preaching, dramatic worship and ecumenical mission.

In 1992, Riverside Church adopted a statement of faith proclaiming:  “the worship of God, known in Jesus, the Christ, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit … to serve God through word and witness, to treat all human beings as sisters and brothers; and to foster responsible stewardship of God’s creation … The church pledges itself to education, reflection, and action for peace and justice and the realization of the vision of the heavenly banquet where all are loved and blessed.”

This statement of faith nicely captures the conclusion of Michelle Alexander’s address at Riverside this past weekend.  Calling for “A great awakening” Alexander re-stated her firm belief that only a new social movement can end mass incarceration in America.  As her closing remarks make clear, this movement must be built on a solid moral foundation and, for those of us who follow Jesus, that means taking our Savior at his word.  (more…)

Caring for the stranger

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By Alan Bean

Deuteronomy 10: 12-19

“So now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you? Only to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the LORD your God and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your own well-being.  Although heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the LORD your God, the earth with all that is in it, yet the LORD set his heart in love on your ancestors alone and chose you, their descendants after them, out of all the peoples, as it is today.

Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer. For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

Why must we love strangers?  Because we are all strange in one way or another.  With the exception of Native Americans, there are no homegrown Americans; we all came here from somewhere else. (more…)

They built it, but nobody came: private prisons face bleak future

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Prison outside Jena, Louisiana

For decades now, private prisons have been thrown up across America, often at the expense of the taxpayer, on the assumption that the policy of mass incarceration would eventually supply the needed bodies. 

As I relate in Taking out the Trash in Tulia, Texas, the prison west of Tulia was built on this basis.  One scam offered to Swisher County residents was so flimsy it disintegrated before construction could begin.  The second wave of con artists used junk bonds to finance a building that sat empty for years before being picked by the state for half of its original construction cost. 

The prison outside Jena, Louisiana was built on the same basis, this time with the larcenous cooperation of then-Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards.  The same Houston outfit was responsible for the speculative private prisons built in Tulia, Jena and a dozen other little towns.

If we built it, folks reasoned, they will come.  And come they did.  For a time.

The Tulia prison was eventually filled to capacity.  The Jena prison filled up tool, but was closed on two separate occasions in response to racially-tinged allegations of inmate abuse (it now serves as a massive ICE lock-up). 

But as the rate of incarceration has slowed in response to low crime rates and the financial crisis currently afflicting state and federal governments, more and more communities are paying the bills for superfluous prisons.  (more…)

Probing the roots of political violence

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By Alan Bean

“The rise in homicide [in the mid-nineteenth century] coincided . . . with a loss of faith in government and in moderate, mainstream political parties . . . Parties that were more aggressive ideologically took their place. The leaders of these parties questioned the legitimacy of national institutions and challenged other Americans’ morality, patriotism, and right to citizenship. They used extreme rhetoric to generate partisan enthusiasm, and they encouraged righteous and retributive violence, especially in defense of property and rights.”

Randolph Roth, American Homicide, p. 301

As a nation comes to grips with yet another senseless killing spree, leading lights on the left and right are making accusations and counter-accusations.  Did Tea Party rhetoric encourage Jared Loughner to open fire on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and a long list of innocent bystanders?  Was Loughner indirectly influenced by a poisonous political environment?  Or, as Sarah Palin suggests, is Loughner solely responsible for his actions? (more…)

Bob Moser: Can Texas Democrats Stop Chasing Ghosts?

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Back in July, when the governor’s race still looked like a race

This article originally appeared in the Texas Observer.

By Bob Moser

“The only thing worse than standing for something unpopular is standing for nothing at all.”

Back in July, when the governor’s race still looked like a race, Wayne Slater of The Dallas Morning News bird-dogged Democrat Bill White for a week as he hunted for votes among the Anglo conservatives of East Texas. In one especially vivid account, datelined Palestine, Slater showed White answering litmus-test gun-rights questions at the local Starbucks. The candidate answered satisfactorily, citing a B+ score from the National Rifle Association and artfully dodging a question about the right to pack heat in church. A couple of East Texans admitted to Slater that they were considering voting for this strange, surprising Democrat. But there was just one problem, Jerry Harrison of the Farm Bureau said: “The only holdback I can see is that he’s a Democrat and he’s going to be with Obama.” (more…)

David Duke Woos the Tea Party

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By Alan Bean

David Duke has changed his hairstyle–quite flattering, don’t you think?  He is also reaching out to Tea Party enthusiasts with a nifty new video.

Duke says the Zionist media hates and fears the Tea Party for the same reason they hate and fear a well-intentioned White Nationalist like David Duke.  The media know the Framers of the US Constitution, heroes like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, envisioned America as a European nation and were distressed by the prospect of non-European immigration. (more…)

Prison profits drove Arizona’s immigration law

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By Alan Bean

“NPR spent the past several months analyzing hundreds of pages of campaign finance reports, lobbying documents and corporate records. What they show is a quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help draft and pass Arizona Senate Bill 1070 by an industry that stands to benefit from it: the private prison industry.”

Since the prison building boom of the 1990s, the gifted entrepreneurs in the prison-industrial complex have practiced a “if-we-build-it-they-will-come” approach.  When America is already locking up six times as many of her citizens as most western democracies, how can you keep the flow of prisoners coming?  First, you keep stoking the drug war.  Secondly, you demagogue the immigration debate, order police officers to arrest undocumented aliens and your supply problem is solved.

Among other things, mass incarceration is a big-government mechanism for transfering money from urban centers to struggling communities in the hinterland.  Rarely has the cynical machinery been so easy to trace.  Thanks to NPR for doing the leg work on this story.  It almost makes up for all those fund raisers.

Read the NPR story (replete with terrific photography) here.  The text is reproduced below. (more…)