Tag: immigration

Can Republicans romance Latinos?

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By Alan Bean

Like many of you, I switched to a different network on election night whenever a commercial came along (I hate commercials as much as I hate political ads).  The talking heads on every station were sounding the same message: due to changing demographics, the Republican Party must reach out to minorities if it is serious about long-term survival.

Democrats won over 90% of the African American vote and close to three-quarters of the Hispanic vote (over 80% if non-Cuban Americans are excluded from the calculation).  And this after President Obama largely ignored the criminal justice system (a major problem for black voters) while presiding over the unprecedented mass deportation of undocumented residents.

Obama wins the minority vote (including 62% of the Asian electorate) by sitting back and letting Republicans be Republicans. (more…)

The Penalty is Exile

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By Alan Bean

The criminalization of immigration, or “crimmigration” as it is sometimes known, is a recent development.  Michelle Fei lays out the basic problem,

The issue that immigrants face is that, now there is this increasing collaboration between the criminal justice system and the deportation system.  So, for basically, all kinds of immigrants, including green-card holders, undocumented immigrants, people with visas.  This means that once you enter the criminal justice system, often times you are on a fast-track to deportation, usually with no chance of ever coming back to the United States.

There is more crimmigration information packed into this radio program than I have previously discovered in any single source.

The Penalty is Exile: How Immigration and Criminalization Collide

Written by Cory Fischer-Hoffman

Under President Obama more than 1 million people have been deported from the United States. We’re told many of those people are criminals who’ve broken more than just immigration law. On this edition, producer Cory Fischer-Hoffman takes a closer look at how immigration and the criminal justice system work together, to detain and deport hundreds of thousands of people every year.

Transcript:

Cory Fischer-Hoffman: Have you ever traveled on Greyhound Bus Before?  Do you know the feeling of standing in the station, looking around to see if your bus will be full and hoping that after a smooth and uneventful journey, you will safely arrive to your destination?

In January of 2010, Alex Alvarez boarded a greyhound bus in Lawrence, Kansas and then got off his bus in Orlando to transfer to Immokalee, Florida,  but he never arrived to his final destination.

Alex:, I was entering the bus station, and I entered calmly but there was someone who detained me and asked, “where are you going?” I said “to Florida, to work.” and then they asked me for my papers.  I didn’t present any documentation and so, they immediately handcuffed me and they took me to a room, and they said, “sorry you can’t travel because you don’t have papers from here.” In this bus station, it was two of us who were detained, because we were the only ones who were immigrants. But, we didn’t commit any crime, absolutely none

Cory Fischer-Hoffman: Alex Alvarez is from Guatemala, and like so many others he left his country in search of way to provide for his family back home.  Alex worked in a bakery in Florida for four years and then traveled to Kansas.  Since he was unable to find reliable work, he decided to return to Florida and see if he could get his old job back.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement stopped him, solely based on “looking like an immigrant,” Alex said.  They handcuffed and arrested him and then took him to an immigrant detention center.

Alex: I was in an immigrant detention center.  They asked me a lot of questions, “what’s your name, what is this, what is that?” as you were a criminal, even though, I didn’t do anything.  Then they took me to another detention center, where there were more people, and throughout the whole time we were handcuffed.  It enrages me to think about how they treat people, I am not a criminal that they should treat me like that, with chains ties around my wrists, ankles and waist. (more…)

Where corporations are persons and the undocumented are not

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By Alan Bean

With the first presidential debate looming, Mitt Romney has moved to the center on the immigration issue.  He still promises to oppose the DREAM act, if elected, to veto the bill if it passes congressional muster.  But Romney now says he would honor the work visas which, at President Obama’s direction, are currently being awarded to young undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children.

As Ross Douthat (with admirable cynicism) pointed out in a recent column, when it comes to the immigration issue, presidential aspirants can win votes by exhibiting compassion (George W. Bush, Rick Perry) or by playing mean (Mitt Romney during the primary season), but there is no advantage to waffling between these two strategies.  Like most right-leaning pundits, Douthat favors using immigration as a wedge issue:

 Taking a more restrictionist position and using the issue to portray the Democrats as beholden to their party’s ethnic interest groups and out of step with blue collar Americans’ concerns.

The wise course, in other words, is to drive a wedge between hardworking Latinos and Anglos.  Nice, Ross.  A self-proclaimed “Christian” columnist advocates this sort of nastiness and no one cries “for shame!”  That’s the America we live in.  Christianity, it seems, has no moral application unless we’re talking about abortion.

Texas politicians like George W. Bush and Rick Perry are “soft on immigration” because their support base includes a lot of agribusiness people who couldn’t survive without cheap undocumented labor.  Alienating Latino voters might benefit Republicans in the short-term; but it is a long-term loser.

It is also devilish, but hey, in American politics you’ve got to give the devil his due.

Romney and Obama are both waffling on the immigration issue.  Obama claims to be working for comprehensive immigration reform (known as CIR in immigration reform circles), but he also deported a record 400,000 undocumented immigrants last year, three-quarters of them to Mexico.  To put that in context, that’s the same number of undocumented residents the United States deported between 1908 and 1980. In theory, the feds are deporting criminals, “the worst of the worst”.  In reality, half of the deportees have no criminal record and most of the “criminals” represent little threat to American public safety.

Historically, American politicians of both parties have waffled on immigration, bouncing between compassion and demagoguery.  In 1986, Ronald Reagan signed a bill that exchanged amnesty for many undocumented immigrants for assurances that the border would be closed to new arrivals.  Typically, the approach has been to privilege on group of undocumented Americans at the expense of other undocumented groups.  The DREAM act, for instance, would allow young people who came to the United States as children to obtain work permits and apply for citizenship, but their parents, and children who arrived too late, would be out of luck.

This good-immigrant-bad-immigrant approach is fundamentally unfair and utterly unworkable.  We gain nothing by kicking the immigration can down the road.

Politicians like Obama and Romney can’t be more progressive (or regressive) than the American middle.  A new poll suggests that the majority of Americans now favor providing a path to citizenship over mass deportation.  This shift occurred, I suspect, because Barack Obama found the courage to protect (albeit temporarily) DREAM act young people from immediate deportation.

Few of us think our way to an opinion.  We listen to what significant others are saying and follow suit.  We don’t all march to the same drummer, but few of us supply our own drum track.  True reform will come when both major parties realize that they can get one of their people elected president, or they can enrage the Latino electorate, but they can’t do both.

Here’s the results of the CNN poll: (more…)

Imprisoned by the walls that divide us

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By Alan Bean

The United States of America is an uncommonly religious nation.  More to the point, we are an uncommonly Christian nation, at least insofar as stated religious affiliation is concerned (whether we actually reflect the soul of Jesus Christ is another matter altogether).  In the midst of startling ethnic diversity, three great cultures dominate: Latino, African American and Anglo.  Many things divide these three segments of the human family, but religion is not one of them.  Brown, Black and White, we are all overwhelmingly Christian.  In theory, we should all moralize and vote in a distinctly Christian fashion.  We should share a common moral discourse.

But we don’t.

Latinos, Blacks and Whites are all divided by internal political and ideological disputes, of course, but valid generalizations are possible.

For instance, Latinos, as a group, are deeply concerned about mass deportation, Blacks agonize over mass incarceration, and Whites, for the most part, give little thought to either issue.

Stout walls have gone up between us. These fortifications simplify our moral worlds by ensuring that we don’t have too much worry on our plates. But the walls lock us into tiny, constricted worlds.  We are deep in denial, imprisoned by fear and self-imposed ignorance.

There is nothing surprising in this.  Humans have a limited capacity for pain and complexity.  We worry more about our dogs and cats than the plight of the poor and the prisoner because puppies and kittens rub against our legs and demand our attention.  We love our immediate families with a singular intensity because we share a common history and anticipate a shared destiny.  We don’t care so much about other people’s kids because we don’t know them and most likely will never know them. (more…)

Private prisons for immigrants attacked by advocacy groups

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By Alan Bean

This Texas Tribune article touches on a topic dear to all Friends of Justice, the use of underfunded and inept private prisons to house immigrants.  We have had long conversations with many of the people quoted below in recent weeks because they are the experts on this distressing topic.

The private prison industry notes, correctly, that the real issue here is American immigration policy.  But the assertion that companies like CCA and Geo Group have no interest in the immigration policy debate is absurd.  As a National Public Radio investigation discovered, the private prison industry leans heavily on The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).  ALEC is a shadowy organization that drafts legislation for state legislators and then hosts lavish conferences where state politicians are encouraged to back these bills.  For instance, SB 1070, the controversial Arizona anti-immigration legislation, was drafted by ALEC.  While the link between ALEC and the private prison industry is difficult to document (this is a highly secretive organization), private prisons, and the anti-immigration movement that sustains them, are central to the punitive, anti-government legislative policy of this powerful legislation-drafting organization.  ALEC is the voice of the corporate world (I was going to say “corporate America”, but that phrase is becoming an anachronism), and private prisons are just one more way for private investors to feed at the government trough.  First you foment a paranoid anti-immigration panic through the dissemination of misleading propaganda; then you sell the politicians a cheap way of getting tough on immigrants.  The private prison industry doesn’t have to lean on ALEC; the industry is ALEC’s brainchild.

Private prisons are cheap because, as Krystal Gomez argues below, they cut corners on staff, medical care, maintenance, food and every other budgetary item.  Immigration prisons are heavily privatized and the consequences for inmates have been horrendous.  Gomez has interviewed scores of inmates in these prisons so she knows whereof she speaks. (more…)

A shocking report targets Operation Streamline

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By Alan Bean

What is Operation Streamline, you ask.  A post from a couple of months ago described our heart-rending encounter with Streamline in a federal courtroom McAllen, Texas.   Until 2005, undocumented immigrants detained at the US-Mexico border were simply deported; now they are tried in federal court for the crime of illegal entry.  If they have crossed the border more than once, the undocumented can be prosecuted for illegal re-entry, a felony charge carrying a maximum sentence of twenty years in prison.

When reformers speak of “crimmigration,” Operation Streamline heads the list of abuses.

Operation Streamline cases are clogging dockets in federal courtrooms along the border, detracting prosecutors from crimes involving massive fraud and violence.  But for the poorest members of the Latino community, the consequences of this wrongheaded policy have been devastating.

Recently, Grassroots Leadership, an immigration reform organization, released a report called Operation Streamline: Costs and Consequences that will tell you everything you need to know about the criminalization of immigration.  Not only is Operation Streamline ineffective as a deterrent, the report concludes, it is obscenely expensive and socially destructive.

In addition to draining resources and burdening the courts system, Operation Streamline imposes a devastating human cost, especially upon the Latino community. Latinos now represent more than half
of all individuals sentenced to federal prison despite making up only 16% of the total U.S. population. Increased enforcement measures also drive migrants to employ the services of professional smugglers and to attempt crossings in more obscure and dangerous areas.  As a result, immigrant fatalities along the border have become increasingly common, reaching totals more than four times those in 1995.
 Friends of Justice is designing a narrative campaign that will illuminate the abuses highlighted in the Grassroots Leadership report.  Our goal is to humanize and personalize the plight of the men and women who continue to cross and recross the border without documentation.  We will be asking who these people are, where do they come from, and why are they willing to repeatedly violate the laws of a sovereign nation?  The answers will shake you up.

Immigrants for Sale

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Posted by Pierre R. Berastaín

This video is from some time ago, but its message is as powerful today as it was when it first came out.  How do prisons make money and how do anti-immigration laws ensure these private prisons’ profits?

Federal judge places hold on Arizona’s immigration law

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Federal judge Susan Bolton has blocked core elements of Arizona’s new immigration law. 

According to the New York Times, “Judge Bolton took aim at the parts of the law that have generated the most controversy, issuing a preliminary injunction against sections that called for police officers to check a person’s immigration status while enforcing other laws and that required immigrants to carry their papers at all times.”

The Arizona law draws a clear line between legal immigrants and full citizens of the United States.  Legal immigrants are forced to carry papers with them at all times; citizens do not.

The legal system frequently turns on fairness tests rooted in the principle of equality.  Is it fair, the judge asks, for legal immigrants to be held to a requirement that doesn’t extend to the native-born? 

Ultimately, the Arizona law will go before the Supreme Court.  Judge Bolton feels that the most controversial features of the new statute should be placed on hold while the legal process wrestles with the issue.

I was vacationing in Arizona a couple of weeks ago with my wife, Nancy and daughter, Lydia.  One night, the owners of the little resort where we were staying had a barbecue and invited all their guests.   Apart from my family, everyone in attendance lived in the Phoenix area.  To a person, they believed the new immigration law was long overdue and entirely reasonable. 

I could understand their position.  The law, state and federal, is very clear about who can and cannot reside in the United States.  It’s hard to argue with the “what part of ‘illegal’ do you not understand?” argument. 

If this is bigotry, most of America is bigoted–the Arizona law enjoys solid support across the nation.

This debate is personal for me.  I have spent the majority of my adult life as a resident alien living in the United States.  A couple of years ago they handed me a copy of the US Constitution and a little flag.  I was now an American citizen with all the rights and privileges thereunto appertaining.

Not once during the decades I lived in this country on a green card (with the exception of going through customs) was I asked to produce papers proving my legal right to be in the country.

If I was living as a legal alien in Arizona the law wouldn’t concern me in the least.  I’m a white guy from Canada. 

If I was a brown guy from Mexico or El Salvador, the new law would concern me deeply.

Governor Jan Brewer’s brainchild doesn’t draw a line between resident aliens and full citizens; it draws a line between Anglos and Latinos.  As a practical matter, Anglos will be assumed to be citizens even if they are in the country illegally.  Latinos, on the other hand, will be forced to prove that they belong in the country even if they are legal aliens or, one assumes, full-fledged citizens.

Suppose a white resident alien is pulled over in a Phoenix suburb driving 4o mph in a 30 mph zone.  Are the police likely to ask him to prove he is in the country legally.  Not likely, In fact, they can’t pop the question unless they have solid grounds for suspicion.

Change the race of the resident alien and things shift radically.  There mere fact of having black hair and dark skin, plus nothing, creates reasonable suspicion.  How do you tell a Latino whose American roots go back six generations from a Mexican that crossed the border illegally?  You ask to see his papers.

Or can we trust law enforcement to be more discerning?

As a practicing Christian, I naturally ask what the Bible says about the treatment of aliens. 

I would ask the cultured despisers of religion not to get too flustered.  I’m not suggesting that the law of the land should takes it’s lead from Holy Writ.  This is a pluralistic nation where we have the right to practice any religion or no religion.  We even have the right to be anti-religious if that’s our preference.  I get all of that.

But I’m talking about me and people like me who use the Bible as life-guide; and I ask: what does the Bible teach about the aliens among us?

The subject comes up a lot, particularly in the Old Testament.  The people of Israel were entreated to love and honor the sojourner (some modern translations use the word “alien”) who lived among them.  Given the Bible’s generally dim view of foreign religions in general, and idolatry in particular, this blessing on the sojourner comes as a surprise.  The explanation is given in Leviticus 19:33,34:

When an alien (sojourner) resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien.  The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD you God. (NRSV)

At the feast of first fruits (described in Deuteronomy 26), residents of the land of Israel were to hand a basket of fruit to the priest and intone these ancient words:

A wandering Aramean was my father; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous . . .

The Exodus story (the heart of the Hebrew Scriptures) charts the fortunes of a slave people freed from captivity by the grace of God.  Even though we were despised slaves and aliens living without the rights of citizenship, the Hebrew Scriptures say, God looked on us with favor.  So we must be gracious toward the illegal aliens in our midst. 

I don’t dispute the right of nations to withhold the privileges of citizenship from all but the favored few.  But how should we regard the mothers and fathers among us who entered this country in search of a better life for their children?

During a series of hearings, Jan Brewer cut to the heart of the issue to Deputy Solicitor General Edwin S. Kneedler:  “Why can’t Arizona be as inhospitable as they wish to people who have entered or remained in the United States?”

Kneedler was ready with an answer: “It is not for one of our states to be inhospitable in the way this statute does.”

That kind of inhospitality, the Solicitor General seemed to suggest, was the province of the federal government.

But why should any of us want to be inhospitable to the aliens in our midst? 

Like the people of Israel, we were all aliens back in the day.  Our ancestors may not have been received warmly; some made the trip to the Promised Land in the hold of a slave ship.  But we were allowed (or compelled) to stay in the country.  No one tried to deport us.

Why should it be any different for the folks who enter the country searching for an alternative to a dead-end life of poverty?

By some lucky quirk of fate we ended up in this country.  Some of us were born here.  Others, like me, are allowed to live here legally (and apply for full citizenship) because we married an American citizen.  Virtue and merit had no bearing whatsoever.  The lucky few were born with tickets guaranteeing us a space in the lifeboat. 

There is no moral or spiritual justification for the hardness of heart on display across the country.  A nation of immigrants slamming the door on immigration. 

We’ve been down this road before.  The Immigration Act of 1917 barred citizenship to residents of “any country not owned by the U.S. adjacent to the continent of Asia”.

Nothing subtle there.

We look back on the restrictions placed on Chinese, Japanese or Eastern European immigration and wonder what we were thinking.

We weren’t thinking.  We were caught up in an unseemly fit of Xenophobia, just as we are now.

The history books will not be kind to Jan Brewer and the rest of the “what part of illegal do you not understand” crowd.  For the moment, however, Arizona’s controversial law is endorsed by between 55 and 70% of the American nation (depending on whose poll you read). 

Are we making moral progress in this nation, or have we spent the last forty years wandering in the moral wilderness?