I don't need anyone to tell me that injustice is immoral.
I don't need to hear that intangibles like justice and morality are nice when you have the time for them but during this political season it isn't pragmatic to use those intangibles to deal with present problems.
I don't have to organize a community or canvass a neighborhood or contribute money to candidates or even be politically savvy to know this and to act upon it.
I am a citizen. As one individual, I am as powerful as I allow myself to be.
Justice and morality - without being mindful of those intangibles we will simply continue to go on as we have been going, pessimistic, angry, watching others suffer and seeing no change in that suffering while those persons of privilege continue to enjoy their good fortune.
I am happy for those folks who enjoy their good fortune. I do not believe their good fortune takes anything at all from me. I'm funny that way.
But I don't consider it good fortune to see other human beings, my brothers and sisters on this planet, suffer - and to turn away is equally as painful because in order to do that I have to block off my own heart. That is not good fortune either.
Beck: "This guy (President Obama), is, I believe, a racist."
Dobbs: "And there's Van Jones saying, "Well, you know, you said something I don't like, so what are we gonna do? We'll just attack your sponsors." That didn't work out so shiny for him, did it? So, by the way, I gotta say hats off to Glenn Beck for having the guts to stand up to this."
More commentary, a transcript, and my civil rights friendly boot up Lou Dobbs keister below the fold.
19 year-old Herta Lluso is going to be deported from the US on August 19. Unless, of course, we can get ICE officials to grant her a stay of deportation. That's where you come in.
Herta's case is a strong example of just why we need the Dream Act:
The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act (The "DREAM Act") is a piece of proposed federal legislation that was introduced in the US Senate, and the US House of Representatives on March 26, 2009. This bill would provide certain illegal immigrant students who graduate from US high schools, are of good moral character, arrived in the US as children, and have been in the country continuously for at least five years prior to the bill's enactment, the opportunity to earn conditional permanent residency. The students would obtain temporary residency for a six year period. Within the six year period, a qualified student must have "acquired a degree from an institution of higher education in the United States or [have] completed at least 2 years, in good standing, in a program for a bachelor's degree or higher degree in the United States," or have "served in the uniformed services for at least 2 years and, if discharged, [have] received an honorable discharge." "Any alien whose permanent resident status is terminated [according to the terms of the Act] shall return to the immigration status the alien had immediately prior to receiving conditional permanent resident status under this Act."
Passage of the Dream Act, however, won't solve Herta Lluso's deportation, because she'll be gone, deported to Albania, long before it passes unless we get a stay of her deportation. What we need to do is get a stay of her deportation. And we need it now.
My name is Herta Llusho, I am 19 years old, and I writing this because I am about to be deported. I was born in Albania and was brought to the United States when I was 11 years old. With the help and support of my family, I have struggled through more than seven years of legal proceedings to find a way to stay in this country legally. Despite our best efforts, on August 19, I will be removed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from the only place I know as my home. I will be sent back to a country that has become a foreign place to me. I don't even speak Albanian well anymore. My only hope of staying here is for as many people as possible to ask DHS to delay my deportation until the DREAM Act is passed.
My parents brought me to the United States because they believed in the promises this country had to offer. To them it was the land of opportunities, values, and ideals. They were faithful believers of the American Dream, meaning that through hard work, education, and good character their children could accomplish anything they wanted. In fact, they believed in it so strongly that they sacrificed their own lives, as well as their relationship to make it happen. My dad stayed in Albania with the hope of relocating to the US, while my mom left everything behind in pursuit of a better life for her children. To this day, even after many years of struggle and sacrifice, they still believe that it is all worth it, and so do I. I have been truly blessed in the many opportunities I have received. The United States has made me the person I am today. I would like nothing more than to contribute to the country that has given me so much.
You can read her entire story at Citizen Orange. And you can listen to her tell it here (audio is not great, so turn it up):
There's not a lot more to say about why Herta should be kept in this Country. It's obvious. She is the kind of person we want in this Country. It is our loss to deport her.
Let's stop this deportation. Suggested action steps are here. Please do what you can.
Last week I posted a diary about LGBT legislation before Congress, suggesting that all was not doom and gloom in the fight for LGBT rights. Now there's more good news coming down the pipeline: on Friday the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) posted on its website the words that activists have been waiting years to see:
Title: Medical Examination of Aliens: Removal of HIV Infection as a Communicable Disease of Public Health Significance
With this we move one significant step closer to getting rid of one of the worst and most discriminatory bits of immigration law currently on the books: the HIV travel ban.
On Wednesday morning, June 3, at 10 a.m. the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA). (If you are in town, the hearing is in Room 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.) C-Span does not have Wednesday's television schedule up yet, but the Committee website offers a webcast of the hearing.
UAFA would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to allow a citizen to sponsor a same sex partner for citizenship.
This might be one of those bills that ultimately goes nowhere or it may fundamentally change the course of both the gay marriage and immigration debates. Follow me below the fold for more on this bill.
Note: this turns Orange and will appear at Congress Matters Sunday at 8 p.m.
Welcome to the tenth installment of "Considered Forthwith."
This weekly series looks at the various committees in the House and the Senate. Committees are the workshops of our democracy. This is where bills are considered, revised, and occasionally advance for consideration by the House and Senate. Most committees also have the authority to exercise oversight of related executive branch agencies. If you want to read previous dairies in the series, search using the "forthwith" tag or use the link on my blogroll. I welcome criticisms and corrections in the comments.
This week I will look at the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. The committee's jurisdiction is very similar to the House Judiciary Committee (the Forthwith diary is posted here). There is one big difference, though. The Senate committee gets to hold hearings on judicial confirmations, so this seems timely.
Additionally, the committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on an important gay rights/immigration bill (see Uniting American Families Act below).
Finally, some action is being taken against the management of the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville, IA, the site of one of the largest raids of undocumented workers in U.S. history when 389 people were arrested on May 12th of this year.
Federal immigration agents arrested Sholom Rubashkin, the former CEO of the plant, on Thursday. Rubashkin is being charged with conspiracy to harbor undocumented immigrants for financial gain, aiding and abetting document fraud, and aiding and abetting aggravated identity theft. He resigned shortly after the May 12th raid. If convicted on all counts Rubashkin faces up to 22 years in prison and $750,000 in fines.
Duke has an essay over at The Sanctuary about Nancy Pelosi's latest capitulation, this time on the subject of immigration.
According to the essay, Pelosi was talking about comprehensive immigration reform and decided to throw under the bus the idea of a real path to citizenship for many of the 12 million undocumented workers in this country.
The link in the essay to the LA Times article is not working, but here is the money quote:
...Pelosi also said Congress would have to tackle the politically sticky job of overhauling immigration laws in the new Congress, after a bipartisan measure collapsed last year.
The estimated 12 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally "are part of the U.S. economy. We cannot send them all home, and we cannot send them all to jail, so we have to address it," Pelosi said.
Any solution would have to be bipartisan, she said, so it may require sacrificing some of Democrats' past priorities, such as giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.
"Maybe there never is a path to citizenship if you came here illegally," Pelosi said. "I would hope that there could be, but maybe there isn't."
As Duke states, the egregious policies of the Repubs have drawn Latino immigrants in waves to the Democratic Party.
Yet here we have Pelosi, once again, speaking of capitulation and calling it "bipartisanship."
The Obama campaign is actively pursuing Latino votes. McSame? Apparently he's in a real bind about this, caught between his strongly anti immigration base and his previous, more moderate positions, his previous positions and the 2008 Republican Platform.
On the pedestal that supports the Statue of Liberty, is the poem, "The New Colossus", by Emma Lazarus. The poem concludes with these lines:
"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
No more. The United States of America is no longer quite the beacon it once was to the immigrants of the world.
The number of immigrants coming to the United States slowed substantially in 2007, with the nation's foreign-born population growing by only 511,000, compared with about a million a year since 2000, according to Census figures released today.
We learned from Dr. Erik Camayd-Freixas in his devastating essay (posted by Duke in its entirety at Sanctuary), that there were horrible travesties of both the law and justice itself in how the Postville, Iowa raid was executed.
As Dr. Camayd-Freixas said, speaking of his conversation with one of the immigration judges who had no choice but to rule as a rubber-stamp for the ICE:
As a citizen, I want our judges to administer justice, not a federal agency.
Yet that is exactly what happened. A federal agency administered "justice" and the defense attorneys and judges were helpless to change anything. As a result, an entire town was ripped apart, economic devastation ensued, and as we now see (h/t woc phd by way of symsess' great roundups at Sanctuary), the human rights abuses continue:
Women were deeply impacted by the raids. First, female workers at Postville were part of the round up. The lost access to their children, including babies that were still nursing, without warning nor concern. For others, many of the primary or main source of income in their household was permanently removed. In many cases, the raids also labeled these women as undocumented, ensuring that they could not work. Others, afraid of being deported in a raid, did not return to their jobs. The result is that most of the women are also unemployed and unable to be employed.
For women who did not immediately hear about the raids, there was also the fear and confusion about the location of their sons and husbands. Some women went for days without knowing what had happened. As fear turned into confirmation that men were being held for deportation, women's anxieties and stressers went up.
I've only caught some news snippets lately but I noticed what might be a pattern emerging.
The big immigrant round-up in Postville, IA was an exercise in mass processing of a large round-up of illegal immigrants. They were taken to a cattle auction fairground and batch processed through a rigged system that put them each in prison for five months prior to their deportation. There are some good diaries around on the subject. I'll add some links if I have time, otherwise a google should do it.
My discipline is computer science and I have had a lot of management experience in a large organization (IBM after they bought Lotus out; I was and am a Loti, ex). This whole operation struck me as a trial run for a process that would be repeated and refined over time. The victims in this case were the evil brown people - the illegal immigrants. They've been getting demonized for years now so the collective working class sympathy for them is pretty low. After all, they're taking American jobs. That those are jobs that Uhmericans won't do doesn't matter. They are part of the economic problem and therefore - no widespread outrage.
The second mass operation was the combined federal, state and local mass round-up of sex offenders. No big deal, they deserved it right? No one wants to defend that crowd. That makes it very easy to do a trial run on them, too. The feds made this happen by doling out huge sums of cash for lots of OT pay for state and local authorities. Everyone likes more cash in their pockets. One of the big benefits was building longer term relationships among the three governmental law enforcement levels. This was even touted in some of the press coverage. What a wonderful thing to see such cooperation on a multi-state, multi-locality effort.
So first the illegal immigrants and then the sex offenders. Nice, safely demonizable practice groups is what I see. The first run at Postville hit a single location and gave valuable feedback on how to process human beings through a carefully jury-rigged (npi) legal chute. (Check out the huge busing capacity in the first link up top.) It was just like cattle to the slaughter except the outcome was temporary imprisonment at just below the maximum sentence. Of course the immigrants will now be available as free prison labor for those five months.
The second run is more insidious. I've seen small rumblings here and there about the feds identifying state and local law enforcement types who would be willing to go so far as to shoot at Uhmerican citizens. I'll have to research that a bit more. Maybe someone can link to any relevant bits in the comments. The pervert posse set up what can be a continuing and growing bond, well lubricated by federal funds, to develop a vertical enforcement structure that could, if it fell into evil hands, be used to round up any stray thinkers. Not that anyone would actually be so evil as to conceive of such a thing.
Separately, these two events seem unrelated. Add a huge dash of illegal, warrantless wiretapping and let it simmer for a bit. Smells like soup to me. What would be the next ingredient? Across Russia and Europe it would always be the Jews, gypsys and gays. I suppose Muslims could be next. I doubt they'd go after the drug gangs. They're better armed and funded.
OK. I give up. Here it is: Operation Falcon! Federal And Local Cops Organized Nationally. I guess I'm just slow tonight. That's the official government web site touting its huge benefits.
I suppose the next move is outsourcing the wet work to Blackwater and Dyncorp. The last eight years will never be taught in American History classes. At least not the way they actually happened. File the American Dream under Nice-Try, No-Cigar.
In the wake of numerous press reports detailing the deaths of 83 people in ICE custody since its inception five years ago, countless cases of sick or mentally ill immigration detainees denied even the most basic care they require, the illegal detention of legal residents and citizens, expedited criminal hearings of those apprehended in immigration raids without providing basic legal representation or judicial review, and the illegal drugging of both detainees and deportees, there have been growing calls for the reform of the immigration detention system.
"I've said from the beginning that we can't reform immigration laws until we control immigration, and we can't control immigration unless we control our borders and our ports." - Lou Dobbs
We've heard that statement in various forms a millions times, repeated ad infinitum by various politicians and talking heads since Frank Luntz first advised anti-immigrant Republicans to stress that ""A country that can't control its own borders can't control its own destiny" to sell an anti-immigrant agenda to the American public.
But it has always gone without saying that the border that needed to be controlled has been the one to the south. Rarely, if ever, has the northern border been mentioned in most border security screeds.
On May 1st 2006, millions took to the streets in cities and communities throughout the nation to finally have their voices heard.
Out from the shadows came the forgotten, the marginalized, the nameless, faceless, mass of humanity who toil daily in thankless jobs with little reward or recognition.
Those who had labored invisibly for years as they quietly provided a nation with prosperity of which they could never partake, took to the streets to say "no more". We will no longer be marginalized ... We will no longer be demonized ... We will not be criminalize ....We Are America.
That day, as pundits and politicians tried to grasp the seismic shift taking place, attempting to read the tea leaves of public opinion and formulate positions that would serve them politically, two men had the courage to do not what was safe or politically expedient ...but rather, what was right.
One was an elder statesman, a lion in winter, who had long fought the great battles of his generation, battles for justice, and battles for equality. ....The other was a young man, just starting his political journey. A young man with a vision of the future based on hopes and dreams for a new America... An America that finally lived up to the principles and precepts on which it was founded. Those two men were Sen. Ted Kennedy and Sen. Barack Obama....The only two sitting Senators to take to the streets in solidarity with those who had too long been invisible.
The New York Times reports that 270 undocumented workers who were arrested at a meat plant in Iowa in March, instead of being swiftly deported back to Guatemala, have instead been convicted of federal misdemeanors, sentenced to 5 months incarceration, and then will be immediately deported. This marks a lamentable, new, harsher policy toward punishing defenseless undocumented workers who are selected for this special treatment. And, let me say it, it's a show designed to frighten and threaten and disrupt the other almost 15 million undocumented workers now in the US.
In temporary courtrooms at a fairgrounds here, 270 illegal immigrants were sentenced this week to five months in prison for working at a meatpacking plant with false documents.
The prosecutions, which ended Friday, signal a sharp escalation in the Bush administration's crackdown on illegal workers, with prosecutors bringing tough federal criminal charges against most of the immigrants arrested in a May 12 raid. Until now, unauthorized workers have generally been detained by immigration officials for civil violations and rapidly deported.
The convicted immigrants were among 389 workers detained at the Agriprocessors Inc. plant in nearby Postville in a raid that federal officials called the largest criminal enforcement operation ever carried out by immigration authorities at a workplace.
Isn't that efficient and fast. The poultry workers were arrested on March 12, they pleaded guilty in record time, and they were sentenced in short order. How, you might inquire, did this happen so swiftly? Where was their relentless, publicly funded defense? Where were their trials, their juries, their appeals, the recognition by the defense that these kinds of proceedings need to be fought and fought hard? Answer: none of that happened because the government used threats to cow the accused into pleading guilty.
Over at Standing Firm you can read the terrible story of how our federal government is dealing with the problems of immigration -- by coming into small towns and raiding them, tearing families apart, and terrorizing an entire community.
On Monday, May 12, federal immigration authorities raided the Agriprocessors, Inc. meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa. This massive raid led to the arrest of more than 300 workers and quickly threw this small town of less than 3,000 people into chaos.
Throughout the last week family members have been desperate to get information about their loved ones, children are staying away from school for fear of leaving their homes, attorneys have been attempting with limited success to gain access to workers being detained by federal authorities, and the entire town faces an uncertain future. Fears are growing that the detained workers will soon be shipped across the country to be prepared for deportation without being able to speak with attorneys or family members.
Before I go any further into this story, there's something we call can do to help:
The community of Postville is also organizing a humanitarian response to the raid. Please spread the word to individuals or institutions that would be willing to send donations to support families impacted by the raid. Donations should be sent to:
St. Bridget's Hispanic Ministry Fund
c/o Sister Mary McCauley
PO Box 369
Postville, IA 52162
(mark "Postville Raid" in the memo)
For further information about providing material or monetary support, please call Sister Mary McCauley at (563) 537-0002.
We urge you to write your Senators and Representative today to support the Detainee Basic Medical Care Act of 2008.
Shocking exposés this week by the New York Times, Washington Post, and 60 Minutes have confirmed the alarming breakdown in health care for detained asylum seekers and other immigrants in custody of the office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), resulting in needless suffering and, in the most tragic cases, avoidable death.
The signs feature handwritten messages of "welcome" in six languages by people from many of Wisconsin's immigrant communities. The two-sided yard sign features "welcome" in Spanish and Hmong, single-sided 11x17 window signs feature either Spanish or Hmong.
The Milwaukee event is billed as a statewide action, organized by Voces de la Frontera and endorsed by Peace Action Wisconsin. The movement is growing and linking up with the antiwar movement.
Organizers at Voces say:
The immigrant rights movement has made great progress over the last two years in defeating some of the most anti-democratic legislative proposals in the history of this nation. All three remaining presidential candidates support some form of immigration reform. However, we face continued efforts to criminalize both employers and workers through initiatives like the Social Security No Match Letters, increased raids that tear families apart, and anti-immigrant local and state ordinances that have led to increased racial profiling, civil rights abuses, and economic damage to local communities.
Last year at least 80,000 people of all races and ages from across the state marched in Milwaukee to support civil rights for immigrants. This year we must mobilize again in massive numbers to send a clear message of the need for change.
This year's themes:
* Stop the raids and separation of families
* Just legalization
* Access to driver's licenses
* Stop Social Security No Match Letters
* Fair International Trade Agreements for Workers
* Good Jobs and Health Care for all
* End the War in Iraq
If you'd like a sign, here's the info: Window sign: $2 plus postage. Call (608) 250-9240 or email info@wnpj.org to order. For PC fashionistas, T-shirts are $15. Be the first on your block.
March on Washington
On the pedestal that supports the Statue of Liberty, is the poem, "The New Colossus", by Emma Lazarus. The poem concludes with these lines:
