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Seth Wessler
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Posts by Seth Wessler
Kyl Shoots and Misses on Kagan Immigration Brief
01 year ago
Day one of Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearings have wrapped up and she’s already heard a mouthful of criticism, some of which is plain inaccurate. In a notable example, Arizona Sen. John Kyl, while suggesting that President Obama picked Kagan because “he wants justices who will use the bench to advance progressive goals,” pointed to a brief from the solicitor general’s office clarifying the government’s position on U.S. Chamber of Commerce v. Candelaria. The case, recently taken up by the Supreme Court, challenges a 2006 Arizona law that punishes businesses for hiring undocumented immigrants.
In his comments, Kyl said he is “deeply troubled” by a brief released by the solicitor general calling for the Court to overturn the 2006 law, which takes business licenses away from employers found to have hired undocumented workers. But Kagan did not write the brief. The brief was released by an acting SG after Kagan’s recusal, following her nomination to the court.
Perhaps Kyl was cribbing from the conservative National Review Online’s Mark Krikorian (the head of the right-wing Center for Immigration Studies). Krikorian also lambasted Kagan last week for the Candelaria brief. In addition to being wrong about her responsibility for the brief, since it was issued after Kagan’s recusal, Krikorian’s argument is wrong substantively. He claims that the brief calls for the courts to rule against the federal “E-Verify” program for employers. In fact, the brief says the court should not rule on that program but rather let the “political branches” deal with it. The brief is about the implementation of additional state-level sanctions if an employer is found to have hired an undocumented immigrant. Krikorian is confusing the matter.
What are actually at issue in the case are significant questions about the extent to which states can implement immigration laws beyond federal laws. The preemption question, of course, is also a central part of legal challenges to the more recent and well known Arizona immigration law, SB 1070.
According to ImmigrationProf Blog, Candelaria raises three questions:
(1) whether an Arizona statute that imposes sanctions on employers who hire unauthorized immigrants is invalid under a federal statute that expressly “preempt[s] any State or local law imposing civil or criminal sanctions (other than through licensing and similar laws) upon those who employ, or recruit or refer for a fee for employment, unauthorized aliens”;
(2) whether the Arizona statute, which requires all employers to participate in a federal electronic employment verification system, is preempted by a federal law that specifically makes that system voluntary;
(3) whether the Arizona statute is impliedly preempted because it undermines the “comprehensive scheme” that Congress created to regulate the employment of immigrants.
So the case is about whether Arizona can attach additional state level penalties on employers who are found to have hired undocumented immigrants. The federal government’s E-verify program, which is a database of names and social security numbers, already checks the immigration status of new hires. The Arizona law takes this program a step further by imposing an additional state level sanction.
According to the Center for American Progress, which is not really progressive on matters of immigration:
The acting solicitor general of the United States argued (correctly) that Arizona had overstepped its authority by establishing a parallel employer-sanctions law. He stated that the state law was explicitly preempted by federal law and that the underlying court decision should be reversed. This is an important signal and a critical first step in halting the growth of state and local immigration legislation. Given the current developments in Arizona and elsewhere in the country, the administration now has an opportunity, and a responsibility, to provide a more expansive articulation of its views on federal preemption of immigration regulation and enforcement by the states.
Photo: Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) during confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court Justice nominee Elena Kagan on Capitol Hill June 28, 2010 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images)
How Congress Ignores the Jobless Without Political Worry
01 year ago
Millions of workers who are facing periods of unemployment longer than 26 weeks will lose insurance benefits in the coming weeks because Congress did not pass an extension of the unemployment program this week. The average unemployed person has been out of a job for stunning 34 weeks, but Congress has been stuck in a back and forth over extending the unemployment insurance program for months, with Republicans and some Democrats arguing that the extension would add too much to the federal deficit. The Times reports:
Senate Republicans and a lone Democrat, Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, joined forces to filibuster the legislation in a procedural vote on Thursday. Visibly frustrated, the majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said he would move on to other business next week because he saw little chance of winning over any Republican votes.
How can this be? If so many people are out of work, how can do-nothing politics be sustainable? Francis Fox Piven (yes, the architect of Glenn Beck’s fantasy leftist conspiracy to cripple the world) has an idea of how. Just after the news of Reid’s relent broke, I sat down for lunch with Piven, one of the country’s most prominent and influential scholars on poverty and organizing. I ran into her here in Detroit, where I’ve spent the week reporting from the U.S. Social Forum.
Piven explained that the way public benefits like unemployment insurance and cash assistance are structured now makes it increasingly difficult for those who rely on these programs to organize politically and demand respect. That’s because the welfare office and the unemployment office are no longer places where poor people gather. Whereas once everybody receiving assistance would go to the office to apply, the programs have become wholly restrictive and are now largely digitalized. The effect is that organizers can no longer organize these constituencies by showing up at the offices where people apply. Poor and unemployed people no longer have a center.
This may be one reason that unemployment insurance was not extended today. It’s conceivable that had massive numbers of unemployed people been organized, taken to the streets and flooded congressional in-boxes with emails and calls, the pressure might have been great enough to beat the Beltway’s anxieties about the deficit. Ironically, by making unemployment insurance easier to apply for–by moving applications online–administrators created a disconnected mass of people whom Congress is now openly ignoring.
U.S. Social Forum: Foreclosures Still the Story in Detroit
01 year ago
Bombed out houses and unemployment lines; empty factories and empty lots. These are the images that have come to animate Detroit’s decline, its deep and deepening depression, its seemingly disproportionate share of the pain doled out by the country’s economic downturn.
This story is true. On a drive through Detroit’s neighborhoods today with Sandra Hines, a local organizer with the group Moratorium Now!, a group fighting against the continuing crisis of foreclosure and eviction, I rolled through whole neighborhoods filled with burnt out houses and overgrown lots where homes once stood. For decades these neighborhoods have been deconstructed, first by redlining and the disinvestment that accompanied white flight and then by the decline of auto industry jobs.
But this is not exactly the story of Detroit in this recession. By the time the foreclosure crisis hit, many Black neighborhoods were already gone, the homes without residents to be evicted, the wealth already vanished. It was in the other neighborhoods, those that had survived, those that were thriving, that many families were robbed of their homes.
Sandra Hines is part of one of those families. I met her two years ago when I was traveling the country researching the racial impact of the economic downturn for our Race and Recession Report. Hines showed me the home she moved to with her parents when she was 18, the home into which they they poured their hard earned income and that they passed down to Sandra and and their two other daughters when they died.
When times got tough and the family needed money to get some work done on the house, they took out a loan. Without their knowing, they’d bought a predatory adjustable loan. The payments exploded and they got behind on their payments. The home was lost to foreclosure. They moved to an apartment.
The family’s home is in west Detroit on a street lined with old trees and mid century two-story brick homes with cropped lawns. The house stands there empty, owned by someone who bought it from the bank for a fraction of its value. The building that held two generations of her family’s wealth and a lifetime of her memories is now padlocked and she’s shut on the outside.
ColorLines will be releasing Sandra Hines’ full story in the coming weeks as part of a video collaboration with GritTV. Check back for more later.
Her story is like that of millions of others and it’s not a story past. As Michelle Chen just wrote on Racewire, a new report by the Center for Responsible Lending shows:
The recession still has more damage left to do. From 2007 to 2009, about 2.5 million foreclosures were completed throughout the country, and now, millions more homes are facing the same fate. About 1 in 6 Latino homeowners, and 1 in 10 Black homeowners have either lost their homes already or are at “imminent risk,” compared to 7 percent of White owners, according to the Center for Responsible Lending. The organization’s new analysis of foreclosure statistics from 2007 to 2009 confirms previous research, but the timing of the report is a bleak reminder that the economic crisis has not yet bottomed out in many areas.
Read Michelle’s whole blog here.
Foreclosures have largely left the news. Unfortunately, they are very much still the story.
Photo: ColorLines/Hatty Lee
U.S. Social Forum: Getting Started in the Streets
01 year ago
by Seth Wessler
in ussocialforum
Thousands of marchers streamed through the Detroit streets for three miles yesterday to open the U.S. Social Forum. Today, activists from across the country continue rolling into the humid Detroit heat on bikes, in buses, in packed vans and by air to get the conference moving.
I’ll be posting to Racewire for the rest of week with stories from Detroit and from the Social forum. Today I’ll be looking at the impact of the predatory mortgage crisis and what groups here are doing to fight back.
In the month of May, Michigan saw a rising rate of foreclosure—46% higher than a year ago—and ranked fifth in the nation for foreclosure filings.
Photo: ColorLines/Hatty Lee
Fixing the World at the U.S. Social Forum
01 year ago
by Seth Wessler
in ussocialforum
It’s no secret that today’s progressives are experiencing a churning set of not-so-lovely emotions, ranging from frustration to anger to grief. After eight years of George W. Bush, many of us expected the country and the world to be in a very different place now. But 18 months into Obama’s term, we’ve seen many of the most catastrophic policies of the Bush administration continued and retooled, and the collective weight of this not-change has put many in a pretty bad mood. Many–myself included–are yearning for a little jolt.
That’s why as many as 20,000 of these progressives–lefties, radicals, liberals, agnostic independents and the rest–are expected to arrive in Detroit this week for the second U.S. Social Forum. It’s the domestic outgrowth of the the World Social Forum, which can be understood as Davos for those not convinced that markets alone can solve the globe’s problems.
The gathering will run all week and will consist of panels, workshops, marches, mixers and work on the ground in Detroit. It promises to pull people from across movements, generations and regions and will be about as multiracial as the country it’s about. It’s raison d’être: To “declare what we want our world to look like and … start planning the path to get there.”
At the least, the Social Forum promises to be a good time. Who among us doesn’t love drinks and debate with 20,000 of the country’s most pathbreaking activists and progressive journalists? (Well, OK, “us” being political nerds like myself.)
At most, it’s an opportunity to think beyond the bounds of where we are, to make plans and to build new community in a time when we need to feel like the world is moving with us not against us–and that we’re moving together. It’s a time to think big. Indeed, that’s what the thing is about.
As the oil continues to flow in the Gulf Coast and the bullets fly in Iraq and Afghanistan, children are killed by police and by border patrol, states across the U.S. threaten to follow Arizona’s path to apartheid and unemployment and foreclosures continue to hit Black neighborhoods like a wrecking ball, the Social Forum promises to be a place to find solutions and celebrate victories.
All week, I’ll be in Detroit reporting for ColorLines, joining the crowds, digging up the stories and the back-stories and sending them your way. Check the site throughout the week to stay in the loop.
And if you’re going to be in Detroit, ColorLines would love to meet you! So here are the places we’ll be.
ColorLines and the Applied Research Center at the U.S. Social Forum
Start the week off right. The Applied Research Center, ColorLines’ publisher, and Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC)-United invite you to kick off USSF in color!
• FREE admission and appetizers
• Recession-friendly happy hour drinks and tacos
• Dancing and music hosted by The Cupcake Collective
Tues., 06/22 | 6-10pm (brief program at 6:45) | 311 E. Grand River, Detroit 48226 (Google Maps: http://bit.ly/9EP8Cu) (walking distance from the march)
WORKSHOPS AT USSF
Using New Media to Win Racial and Gender Justice
Innovative and interactive technologies are scoring victories for racial and gender justice, via storytelling, advocacy and opinion leadership. What’s getting heard and making an impact?
Wed, 06/23 | 1-3pm | Woodward Academy: 1476
Co-sponsored by ColorLines and Feministing
Women on Cash Assistance Testify on The Hill to Change TANF Policies
01 year ago
In D.C. these days, it’s hard for anyone to yell loudly enough to get heard over the buzz of health care reform. But in the shadow of Obama’s healthcare summit yesterday, about a hundred congressional staffers, reporters and advocates piled into a House briefing room to listen to low-income mothers talk about welfare.
Yesterday’s briefing was organized by the Women’s Economic Justice (WEJ) network, a cohort of low-income women’s community organizations. Several current and former cash assistance recipients were there to share their stories and I also spoke in my capacity as a researcher to the serious need for a reform of the Temporary Aid to Needy Families program.
The women on the first panel spoke through tears about the failures of welfare reform to help them get out poverty. In the words of one mother, “TANF was my biggest barrier to getting me and my family out of poverty.”
About halfway through the first panel, Congressman Jim McDermott, a Democrat from Washington, stepped in and spoke for a few minutes about the need to change the way we deal with poverty and re-reform welfare. He condemned TANF policies that abandon children and push women into lives of working poverty.
TANF (pronounced TAN-ef) was created in 1996 during welfare reform in the Clinton years. It instituted time limits on aid and made cash assistance tied to a person’s ability to find work. The poverty didn’t go away, but the help for families in need sure disappeared fast. In 2008, there were 1.7 million families on TANF, down from 4.8 million families in the pre-welfare reform years.
“People are very worried about Haiti right now,” McDermott said, “But you can see many of the same things here.”
Diana Spatz, the director of LIFETIME and an organizer of the briefing spoke after the first panel. “We’re not looking for pity here,” she said. “These are realities that we can change by changing this policy.”
The briefing, which was conducted again later in the day for Senate staffers, called Congress to restructure TANF to substantively keep families from falling into the depths of poverty. Several women demanded that the program be adjusted to allow mothers to continue to receive cash assistance while they attend college. Others recounted stories that expose the failure of the program to support women facing domestic violence. And several women said that as long as there is no time limit on poverty, there should be no time limit on receipt of cash assistance.
Though the Obama administration has announced it will not move to reauthorize the TANF program but, rather, will extend it for a year, the WEJ groups refused to be silent about what is needed to end poverty. For them, reauthorizing TANF is as urgent as health care reform.
Check out my recent ColorLines investigation about how the TANF program has pushed families of color precariously close to the edge.