Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
immigrationreform
Rep. Gutierrez Arrested, Tells Obama: You Can Stop Deportations
06 months ago
Rep. Luis Gutierrez was arrested along with other immigrant rights advocates outside the White House on Wednesday while protesting the Obama administration’s refusal to exert its administrative authority to grant sympathetic immigrants relief from its deportation policies.
The Illinois lawmaker said he was unconvinced by a comment Obama made earlier this week when he said Republicans were to blame for the lack of movement on immigration overhauls.
“Here’s the only thing you should know,” Obama said in an address on Monday at a conference of the National Council of La Raza, the nation’s largest Latino advocacy organization, “The Democrats and your president are with you.”
“Don’t get confused about that. Remember who it is we need to move in order to actually change the laws.”
“The President says Republicans are blocking immigration reform and he’s right, but it doesn’t get him off the hook,” Gutierrez said in a statement. “Everyone knows he has the power to stop deporting DREAMers and others with deep roots in the U.S. and we think he should use it.”
Gutierrez is not alone in his demands. Immigrant advocates have long been challenging Obama to use his executive authority to grant administrative relief to undocumented immigrants facing deportation, especially undocumented youth who would have been eligible for the DREAM Act. It’s a power he’s so far resisted exercising. They were joined in April by 22 senators who sent a letter to Obama urging him, in light of the political realities of Congress, to grant deferred action to DREAM Act-eligible young people. The letter outlined multiple options Obama had to grant relief to the communities he says he supports.
On Monday Obama told the crowd that as president, he was duty bound to “uphold the laws on the books.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t know very well the pain and heartbreak deportation has caused,” he added. “I share your concerns. I understand them.”
“We are working every day to make sure we are enforcing flawed [immigration] laws in the most humane and best possible way,” Obama said.
The Obama administration has ramped up deportation efforts through programs like Secure Communities, which allow immigration officials to peer into the databases of local and county jails to check the fingerprints of anyone who’s booked against federal immigration databases. When ICE finds someone who’s deportable, they’ll ask local law enforcement to detain them–even if that person is never ultimately found guilty or even charged of a crime–to begin removal proceedings. While the Obama administration has maintained that its primary intent is to remove people convicted of serious crimes, “the worst of the worst,” the majority of those deported have no criminal record whatsoever. And the majority of those with criminal records deported last year were deported for traffic offenses or minor infractions. In just two years the administration has deported, Gutierrez said, over 1 million undocumented immigrants.
Gutierrez and other immigration advocates want Obama to put a stay on the deportations of young people who would be eligible for the DREAM Act, a narrow legalization bill for undocumented youth who grew up in the U.S. They also want Obama to refuse to deport the parents of U.S. citizen children, and to put an end to enforcement programs like Secure Communities, employer audits and E-Verify, the controversial worker authorization program.
In June the Obama administration announced Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy changes that would grant ICE attorneys prosecutorial discretion so that the agency might better prioritize the kinds of people they prosecute and deport–those convicted of serious crimes over young people who have no criminal record, for instance.
And yet, seemingly every day DREAM Act activists send up notice about another young person who’s facing deportation. Many times their advocacy is successful at stopping a young person’s removal. On Tuesday, when 24-year-old asylum seeker Andy Mathe was deported to South Africa over the loud protests and organizing of immigrant youth organizers, the Obama administration showed the limits of its compassion.
Haley Barbour’s Pro-Immigration Past Catches Up With Him
011 months ago
No one would confuse Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour for an immigrant rights crusader. But he’s not an immigration restrictionist hardliner either.
Back in September he said in an interview with the Hoover Institution that Latino immigrants to the Gulf Coast post-Katrina were instrumental to recovery work. He began by saying that his first priority regarding immigration reform would be to “secure” the country’s borders. Then he said something quite striking, not just for a Republican but for a member of either party these days:
A lot of it is just common sense. And common sense tell us we’re not going to take 10 or 12 or 14 million people and put them in jail or deport them. We’re not going to do it, and we need to quit–some people need to quit acting like we are and let’s talk about real solutions.
Now comes a blast from the governor’s past (via Swampland) revealing that Barbour was on Mexico’s payroll back in 2001. He was paid $35,000 a month to help extend a “mini-amnesty” provision that would allow some 300,000 undocumented immigrants in the U.S. to get visas or green cards without what’s called “touchback,” which requires that people return to their country of origin for anywhere from three to 10 years before they can get their papers.
How will these revelations affect Barbour’s rumored presidential aspirations? The real question is whether the GOP can stomach a candidate who wants to tackle some kind of legalization measure.
Don’t mistake Barbour’s Mississippi for a haven for immigrants though. His state is in plenty of turmoil. It’s considering laws that mimic Arizona’s SB 1070, would fine employers who hire undocumented immigrants and would outlaw “sanctuary cities.” And don’t mistake Barbour for a champion of racial justice. He spent the holidays back-peddling from a remarkable statement that, when thinking about Jim Crow Mississippi, “I just don’t remember it as being that bad.”
New State Officials Come Out Swinging on Immigration Policy
01 year ago
Just as Seth Freed Wessler predicted last week, local politicians haven’t wasted any time in getting to work on a slew of anti-immigrant bills across the country. In places like Florida, Maine and Rhode Island, lawmakers are citing Congress’ failure to pass any sort of immigration reform as a green light to move forward with regressive policies. And as the debate swings more locally, it is becoming more intensely personal.
Felipe Matos knows this all too well. At the end of last year, Julianne Hing wrote about how Matos had bravely faced off with the KKK during his time as a member of the Trail of Dreams, a march through southern states to dramatize the need for immigration reform for undocumented youth. But that was at least partly to be expected when you throw yourself into the geographic hot spots of one of the country’s fiercest political debates. What Matos didn’t expect happened last Friday in a town hall meeting in Palm Beach, Fla., where residents had gathered to discuss if the state should adopt an Arizona-style SB 1070 law.
In a meeting that swelled with over 200 people and ultimately made local headlines, Matos faced one of the fiercest anti-immigrant crowds he’s known. ”To me, it’s way more personal now because when I was walking through Georgia, I was not home. Over here, just two hours away from my house, people are calling a ‘rat,’ ” said Matos, who now works as an organizer with Presente.org.
While the majority of panelists spoke pointedly against any such anti-immigrant legislation, news accounts claim that statements on both sides were equally heated and “provocative.” Matos says at least one commenter on a news report advancing the event urged attendants to bring their guns. (The comment has since been removed.)
Florida is one of several states considering Arizona copycat legislation. And with newly elected golden child Sen. Marco Rubio in favor of the bill, along with a newly-seated governor who won office in part by campaigning for such a bill, local activists are in an uphill battle.
But it’s not just in Florida where heated immigration rhetoric is on the rise. As Wessler reported last week, Congress’ failure to pass any immigration reform bill has shifted the debate’s center to the state and local level where anti-immigration laws have flourished and are expected to continue to thrive over the next two years.
Conservative local lawmakers have consistently pointed to Washington’s inaction on immigration enforcement when passing new anti-immigrant laws. But ironically, the shift is driven largely by Washington’s active devolution of immigration enforcement to state and local law enforcement over the past several years. The Obama administration has continued that trend. The result is that the country is now covered in a lattice work of increasingly hostile localized laws and practices that are fueling an intensifying confrontation between immigrant rights advocates and anti-immigrant policy makers in state and local governments.
That’s exactly what’s happening in places like Florida, Maine and Rhode Island.
One of Gov. Rick Scott’s first acts in office was to mandate that all state employees pass through E-verify, a federal program in which employers check their employees’ Social Security numbers to make sure they’re legally allowed to work in the U.S.
In Maine, newly elected Gov. Paul LePage’s first act in office was to end the state’s executive order that barred state employees from asking about immigration status. The Portland Press Herald reports that LePage made his decision because the previous order “may have created the impression that Maine was a so-called ‘sanctuary state’ for those who are in the United States without lawful status.”
In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry (a likely GOP presidential candidate) included abolishing sanctuary cities in the state among his emergency items for the new legislative session.
On the other hand, last week Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee ordered that his state pull out of 287g, a controversial program that gave state troopers the power to work as immigration enforcement agents. Though the program was aimed at detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants who were convicted of serious crimes, most were deported for minor crimes, like speeding tickets.
According to The Providence Journal, lawmakers in the state are already planning to restore some version of the program through a new “Illegal Immigration Control Act.” And Rhode Island Attorney General Peter F. Kilmartin is moving forward with plans to join Secure Communities, an equally controversial program that allows law enforcement to check the immigration status of anyone who’s arrested and taken to jail.
As the center of the immigration debate moves to the local level, so has its activism. Matos plans to continue his work against the new legislation, along with other groups like the Florida Immigrant Coalition and Students Working for Equal Rights.
“When a bill like this gets introduced, the fear in the community increases, and the hate in the community just spreads,” Matos says. “And it becomes okay to be very racist.”
Reid: "DREAM Act Is Not a Symbolic Vote," Will Return This Year
01 year ago
The DREAM Act got a last-minute reprieve on the Senate floor last night as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pulled the bill and gave its advocates more time to whip up the votes it still needs to break a Republican filibuster.
The moment involved a bit of the Senate’s signature procedural drama. A motion to end debate–which requires 60 votes that haven’t yet materialized–was scheduled to take place just hours after the House made history Wednesday night, passing the decade-old DREAM Act for the first time in either chamber. But 15 minutes after the 11 a.m. “cloture” vote was supposed to begin, Reid instead called for a vote to again table the bill.
That motion was approved, 59 to 40, staving off what would have been an all but sure loss for the DREAM Act in the Senate. The move allows the Senate to vote on the House version, thereby streamlining the process if the Senate is successful. It also removes the hurdle of Republicans’ refusal to deal with any other legislation until their tax-cut deal with Obama passes. Advocates called it a gift.
“This next five, six days is like a gift for Christmas,” said Carlos Saavedra of United We DREAM. “We are going to put so much pressure on every single senator that is standing between ourselves and our dreams. Every single one is going to feel an immense amount of pressure.”
Saavedra sounded positively giddy, even as Beltway press declared the bill dead.
Reid and Sen. Dick Durbin, for their part, said they plan to bring up the House-approved version of the DREAM Act before the end of the year. “The Senate will move to the House-passed version of the bill later this month,” Reid and Durbin said in a joint statement. “In the mean time, we will work with House leaders and the Administration to ensure that the DREAM Act will be law by the end of the year.”
“The DREAM Act is not a symbolic vote,” said Durbin and Reid in their statement. “We owe it to the young men and women whose lives will be affected by this bill, and to the country which needs their service in the military and their skills in building our economy, to honestly address this issue. Members on both sides of the aisle need to ask themselves if we can afford to say to these young men and women there is no place in America for you.”
The DREAM Act would put undocumented youth who clear a bevy of hurdles on a 13-year path to citizenship if they committed two years to the military or higher education. The bill was first introduced in 2001 and has since gone through many revisions. Under the most recent versions of the DREAM Act, undocumented youth have been in the country for more than five years, entered the U.S. before the age of 16 and are presently under 30 would qualify.
Reid and Durbin, longtime DREAM Act champions, say the bill would immediately benefit “tens of thousands” of undocumented immigrants. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the House-approved bill would reduce the national deficit by $2.2 billion over the next decade.
Still, the bill faces stiff opposition in the Senate from a vocal set of Republicans who have said it would invite a flood of new immigrants and benefit millions of people who, as House Republican Congressman Steve King said Wednesday night, “would be rewarded with the objective of their crime.”
Republican opposition to the DREAM Act has relied mostly on fear-mongering, spinning elaborate nightmare scenarios where American citizens lose their privileges to immigrants.
“Any alien who has a pending application under the DREAM Act cannot be removed. If someone comes in, they can be 79 years old, or 99 years old,” King incorrectly asserted yesterday on the House floor. It’s one of the more bizarre lies about the DREAM Act. “And they can allege that they’re younger than that, and file an application under the DREAM Act. And now we have to go forward and adjudicate and determine if you really weren’t 16 when you came into America.”
Republicans have extrapolated costs and criticized provisions that aren’t actually in the DREAM Act; Sen. Jeff Sessions estimates the bill’s cost at something closer to $5 billion. he includes the cost of putting imaginary millions more on welfare and larger numbers in public schools.
The DREAM Act needs at least a half dozen Republican votes, and appears to have several fewer than that right now. DREAM Act advocates said they’ll use the next few days to press hard against senators who may not have taken the DREAM Act seriously before the House passage of the bill.
“We are within striking distance,” insisted Tyler Moran with the National Immigration Law Center, which supports the bill.
They also said that they were willing to address concerns that senators might have about the DREAM act, indicating that even further compromises to the DREAM Act may be on the horizon.
“Approval of the DREAM Act in the House of Representatives was a historic and important step,” said the White House in a statement. “We agree with the Senate leadership’s decision to table the version under consideration in that chamber in favor of taking up the version approved in the House.”
“The President looks forward to seeing the Senate approve it so that he can sign it into law.”
Report Shows How Far ICE Goes to Make Obama a Deportation Hawk
01 year ago
Last September, the garrisons in the federal immigration agency were put on a hypercaffeinated mission to get their deportation numbers up. They were so intent on appearing tough on immigrants, they cut corners and changed their accounting practices, recording in their annual deportation figure thousands of immigrants who had actually been deported the previous year or were expelled through alternative means.
According to the Washington Post, in an article by Andrew Becker of the Center for Investigative Reporting, ICE officials were instructed toward the end of fiscal year 2010 to find creative ways of ensuring that the year’s deportation tally met that of the previous year: a record 390,000. The article shows that ICE in fact set internal quotas for deportation, something about which the agency has previously equivocated. And it details a set of practices that reflect an agency more committed to political poker than administering a sane immigration policy.
The Obama administration has repeatedly boasted about its record deportation numbers. Just last week, while arguing in favor of the DREAM Act, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano told reporters, “We have in the last two years led a historic move to remove a record number of illegal aliens of criminal offenses.” She went on to say that the record setting number of deportations is the result of the government’s decision to uphold immigration law.
But the law and order claim is tarnished by the facts. Far from simply upholding the law, the immigration agency bent the rules in order to artificially drive up its reported deportation number by about 25,000.
Among other things, the agency instructed agents to offer more detained immigrants the option of what’s called “voluntary removal” rather than wait for a deportation order from overwhelmed immigration courts. According to the Washington Post, the practice did not succeed in driving the deportation numbers up, but it may have resulted in extended periods of detention for immigrants facing deportation.
Earlier this year, ICE produced a conflict for itself when an official announced that the agency was well on its way to meeting its deportation quota; ICE had claimed previously it didn’t have quotas. ICE Secretary John Morton issued a statement soon after saying, “We are strongly committed to carrying out our priorities to remove serious criminal offenders first and we definitively do not set quotas.”
The Post report, however, makes clear that the agency does in fact keep internal quotas and is willing to change its practices, even adjust counting mechanisms, to reach those quotas. The Obama administration has hoped by taking a tough-on-immigration stance it will better position itself for a broader immigration reform bill. That bill has not materialized, but the Post report reveals how far ICE has gone to bolster the administration’s hawkish narrative.
The DREAM’s Alive! Obama, Dems Plan Lame-Duck Immigration Vote
01 year ago
UPDATE 5:07pm ET: After a brief conversation with DREAM Act activists in which Sen. John McCain was encouraging but noncommittal about his support for the bill, McCain left his offices, which were scheduled to close at 5pm. Police arrived shortly after, and arrests of the six activists are expected.
UPDATE 1:30pm ET: Six undocumented youth are camped out inside Arizona Sen. John McCain’s D.C. office and plan to say there until they can get a statement of support from McCain. In doing so they risk arrest, and deportation.
“Not too long ago, Senator McCain was a champion, he supported and rallied for us,” said Guillermo, one of the young people taking part in the sit-in. “I look up to him as a war hero and are only asking from him to give me the same opportunity he had to serve and protect this nation, I want to be Marine.”
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The DREAM Act, which has been unable to clear filibuster threats for years, clawed its way back to life again yesterday as Democrats plotted an attempt to move the bill before a new, Republican-powered Congress takes over next year.
The day began with a White House meeting between President Obama and Congressional Hispanic Caucus leadership, and ended with the announcement from New York Rep. Nydia Velasquez that Speaker Nancy Pelosi had tentatively set Nov. 29 as the date to bring the DREAM Act up for a vote.
President Obama has been a reliable DREAM Act supporter, but has done little publicly to get the bill moving, until now. In a stark departure from his administration’s hardline stance on immigration, the White House announced that Obama promised to put his weight behind passing the DREAM Act in the lame duck session.
“The President and the CHC leaders believe that, before adjourning, Congress should approve the DREAM Act,” a White House statement read. “This legislation has traditionally enjoyed support from Democratic and Republican lawmakers and would give young people who were brought as minors to the United States by their parents the opportunity to earn their citizenship by pursuing a college degree or through military service.”
New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez and Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez, both of whom have been vocal proponents of focusing on a more comprehensive immigration reform bill, were also in the White House meeting, which Gutierrez said was productive.
“Passage of the DREAM Act is achievable right now,” Gutierrez said in a statement. “With the White House, Majority Leader Harry Reid, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and every Democratic Leader in the House and Senate pulling in the same direction, we can pass the DREAM Act before the end of the 111th Congress.”
Reid vowed during his hard-fought re-election campaign to bring the bill up for a vote after the election. Latino voters are widely considered to have made the difference in Reid’s narrow victory over tea party-backed challenger Sharron Angle.
The DREAM Act would give nearly a million undocumented youth with a clean criminal record a green card if they committed two years in the military or college. After a contentious year of aggressive organizing, the immigrant rights movement has coalesced behind the bill, which is considered low-hanging fruit in the decades-long fight to get immigration reform passed.
President Obama’s support of the bill is not new, but his willingness to take on a public role to fight for the bill is. Politico reported that Gutierrez said Obama was prepared to pick up the phone to urge senators to vote for the bill when it comes to a vote.
“We feel it’s a positive step that Obama is coming out,” said Matias Ramos, a DREAM activist and founding member of United We Dream. ”It’s fantastic,” echoed Gaby Pacheco, a DREAMer and an organizer with Presente.org. “We are really excited to finally see some leadership, but at the same time we know that we’ve heard this before.”
Pressure is high for Congress to deliver the DREAM Act now before the new class of Congress steps in next year. Democrats lost six seats in the Senate and gave up their majority in the House during the midterm elections. Many immigration advocates worry that if the DREAM Act doesn’t happen now, the immigrant community will have to wait a long time before it has the chance to see the light of day again.
Even though DREAM Act activists continually boast about the bill’s bipartisan support, many of its Republican cosponsors have abandoned the bill, and even conservative Democrats appear to be skittish in today’s anti-immigrant climate.
“There are senators that were co-sponsors of the DREAM Act before who are so far away from us now,” said Ramos, citing Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo and Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley among Republicans who cosponsored the DREAM Act in 2003. “Their absence in this movement symbolizes the rightward shift on the Republican party and that’s something that’s going to hurt them in 2012 if they don’t get their act together. We’re hoping it’s enough.”
In the coming days DREAM activists will be pushing hard to win back former cosponsors of the DREAM Act, including Arizona Sen. John McCain, whose dramatic re-branding of himself as a hardline anti-immigrant foe makes him an unlikely ally. “We’re going to try to bring him back to the table,” Ramos said.
Pacheco said that Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who has so far refused to meet with DREAM Act activists who are on the ninth day of a hunger strike to gain attention for the bill, would be a crucial vote. “Not only did she vote for it in 2007, but she’s retiring this year,” Pacheco said. “She has the opportunity to support the DREAM Act.”
Pacheco imagined the script Obama should use to sway hesitant Democrats: “Every Democrat needs to vote for this. This is something that’s important to the immigrant community. If I’m going to ask them for my vote in 2012 we need to deliver for them now.” She suggested that Obama turn to Republicans and remind them that the Defense Department fully supports the DREAM Act.
Several key Democrats owe their jobs to Latinos, who turned out in support of them during the midterms, and many see this as Democrats’ only chance to fulfill promises of immigration reform before 2012.
In September, as campaign season heated up, Reid attempted to attach the DREAM Act and a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal to the defense authorization bill. Both failed to make it to the Senate floor by a 56-43 vote, with not a single Republican voting for in favor. Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat who lost her seat in the midterms, sided with Republicans as well.
Pacheco said that DREAM activists are using the September vote as a road map for who they need to target in the coming days.
“But the line that’s also going around right now is that we might run out of time,” said Ramos. “The only certain things we know are that we’re going to have to keep pushing and holding their feet to the fire, and telling them what the DREAM Act means to so many young people who are caught in the middle.”
And what happens if the DREAM Act doesn’t make it through during this lame duck session?
“We’re in the mindset that that’s beyond our level of consideration right now,” said Ramos, adding that a group of leaders is, however, already strategizing for the next Congress. “Right now we are ready to mobilize to make our presence felt on Capitol Hill.”
Our Iraq War Helped Displace Millions–Who We Now Shut Out
01 year ago
By definition, they’re the people nobody wants. Conflict, disaster, persecution and other crises uprooted about 43 million people from their homes last year. Many millions were displaced by conflicts directly linked to U.S. foreign policy in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. But despite its historical promise of refuge to the world’s huddled masses, America keeps its humanitarian floodgates tightly guarded.
Recently, the Obama administration proposed an annual cap of 80,000 on refugees entering the U.S.–a generous number by international standards but a tiny fraction of the unrelenting wave of displacement.
The annual cap will include around 17,000 Iraqis (though the actual number admitted may differ from the annual target). The figure is a modest acknowledgment of America’s moral debt to that country. It also may reflect geopolitical posturing at least as much as it responds to humanitarian needs–not surprisingly, the U.S. absorbs far more refugees from Iraq, Burma, Iran and Cuba than from the rest of the world combined. Regardless, opening our doors to 17,000 Iraqi refugees is not nearly enough, when measured against Washington’s responsibility in driving them from their homes.
Betsy Cooper of the U.S.-based Iraq Refugee Assistance Project, argues that from a historical standpoint:
We could do better–and have. The United States annually resettled at least 35,000 refugees fleeing the Vietnam War for over a decade. After the Cold War, we welcomed over 60,000 Soviet refugees in a single year. We have played no less of a role in causing the refugee crisis in Iraq, yet our commitment to resettling refugees seemingly has waned.
What hasn’t waned is Iraq’s underlying instability, despite the formal end of U.S. combat operations and Washington’s eagerness to turn away from Baghdad toward Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to the Washington Post, recent polls suggest that a majority of Iraqis who have returned to their country after fleeing now long for escape again:
Of those who expressed regret, some 60 percent cited security concerns such as bombings, harassment, military operations and kidnappings. … 34 percent of those polled would consider leaving Iraq again unless conditions improve.
Refugees International reports that some Iraqi refugees who resettled in Jordan and Syria are so impoverished that they seek work back to Iraq, where they may “end up living as squatters in slum areas; many women turn to night clubs and prostitution; some children drop out of school to work; and others turn to smugglers to help them find work opportunities abroad.”
Those foreboding signs haven’t stopped the governments of the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands from forcibly repatriating resettled Iraqis.
The UN has raised concerns that Iraqis have been quietly shipped back on “special charter flights,” possibly in violation of U.N. regulations, according to IRIN:
No country told the UN [High Commissioner for Refugees] how many of the passengers being put on board the plane were going home voluntarily, and how many were being deported against their will, but reports from Baghdad say police had to be called to escort some of them off the plane.
Calling for an overhaul of the system, human rights activists point out that many are shut out due to arbitrary restrictions, like a one-year filing deadline for asylum applications. Human Right First has criticized the administration for applying so-called “terrorism bars” so broadly that under the rubric of national security, even victims of militia groups are branded “supporters” of terrorists.
Meanwhile, Europe’s reputation as a beacon of humanitarianism clashes with the continent’s rising ride of xenophobia. Officials have pushed back against resettling “non-European” humanitarian migrants–i.e., mainly poorer, darker people from across the Mediterranean. In recent weeks, Iranian asylum seekers in Greece, who have claimed they will face persecution or death if returned to Iran, sewed their lips shut to protest their legal limbo as their cases stall in the immigration bureaucracy.
Canada and New Zealand, too, have tightened their refugee and asylum policies, reflecting fears of “boat people” fleeing from crisis zones like Burma.
The Global South isn’t in such a privileged position to pick and choose among the desperate survivors clamoring for a temporary safe haven.
Typically, refugees in some of the most embattled regions are shuttled from one “fragile state” to another. Around 1.7 million Afghans have fled to neighboring Pakistan, only to face more militia violence and air strikes from the United States (which took in about 9,000 Afghan refugees last year)–and now add to that the devastation of catastrophic floods.
But even in a supposedly wealthy beacon of democracy like the United States, survivors are subject to all kinds of suffering. Asylum seekers, who apply for humanitarian protection after landing in their host country (as opposed to refugees who apply from abroad) may be detained arbitrarily, locked into a legal gauntlet that could drag on for months or years.
Amnesty International’s investigation of the U.S. immigrant detention system reveals:
According to a 2003 study, individuals who were eventually granted asylum spent an average of 10 months in detention with the longest reported period being 3.5 years… Individuals who have been ordered deported may languish in detention indefinitely if their home country is unwilling to accept their return or does not have diplomatic relations with the United States.
In conflict zones, monstrous violence has spawned a transient, deeply traumatized population: children out of school, parents separated, workers unable to provide for their families. When wealthier countries arbitrarily deny refuge to displaced migrants from zones of disaster and conflict, the divide between the industrialized north and global south grows wider still, and temporary displacement shades into long-term devastation of whole communities.
Bringing 80,000 people into the U.S. on humanitarian grounds helps ease some of that suffering, but countries like Iraq and Afghanistan need more than a slot in a resettlement queue. The U.S. and Europe need to restructure policies to account for social and economic inequality on a global scale, while ensuring that individual refugees have access to critical services, legal help, and a process for family reunification. Ultimately, refugee protection must be coupled with assistance to migrants’ home countries so that as many as possible eventually have the right to return.
America isn’t solely responsible for the global refugee crisis, but as long as U.S. policies keep churning up waves of destruction and displacement, Washington can’t justify shutting out so many of those who wash up on our shores.
New Video Documents Jan Brewer’s Failures
01 year ago
Phoenix’s crusading immigrant rights videographer Dennis Gilman doesn’t work for Gov. Jan Brewer opponent and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry Goddard’s campaign, but maybe he should. Check out the new video Gilman, whose long list of videos can be seen at his YouTube channel Humanleague002, put together documenting Brewer’s outsized talk and scant accomplishments for the ailing state.
Aside from her shameless anti-immigrant rhetoric, perhaps most disquieting of all is Brewer’s frequent incoherent mumblings, to constituents and reporters alike, and most familiar to people outside Arizona, during high-stakes televised debates.
This weekend the East Valley Tribune reported that with nine days to go before Election Day, Goddard is slowly narrowing the gap between him and Brewer. Brewer still polls ahead of Goddard by a double digit margin.
Homeland Security Quietly Dismisses Some Deportation Charges
01 year ago
The Houston Chronicle reported over the weekend that local immigration judges have recently been allowed to exercise some discretion and throw out deportation cases of people who have clean criminal records and have been in the country for longer than two years. It’s a rare sign of the Obama administration following through with its vow to keep deportation efforts focused on convicted criminals.
The Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review recorded 217 such immigration case dismissals in Houston in the month of August, up from a couple dozen in July.
The how’s and why’s of whose cases are being reviewed and thrown out are a secret matter. The criteria for and policies around case dismissals are ever-shifting and fairly political. The agency isn’t broadcasting these policy shifts. Instead, people learn of Department of Homeland Security policy from attorneys who are representing clients.
In recent weeks, some immigration attorneys reported the dismissals have slowed somewhat, while others reported they now have to ask ICE trial attorneys to exercise prosecutorial discretion in order to have their cases dismissed. Others, however, said they are still being approached by government attorneys seeking to file joint motions for case dismissal.
“They’re still doing it,” said immigration attorney Steve Villarreal. “They’re just doing it quietly.”
Deportations under President Obama, however, have soared to record highs. Even though people with criminal convictions on their records make up a higher percentage of those who get deported, a significant portion of those caught up in the deportation dragnet are people with either no criminal record at all, or people guilty of minor, nonviolent infractions.
Since 1996, when a set of immigration laws expanded the criteria that made someone deportable, immigration judges have seen their caseloads multiply exponentially even though there aren’t necessarily more immigration judges to handle the expanding caseload. And the docket has not thinned with President Obama. Immigration courts are famously backlogged; according to the Houston Chronicle article, the downtown Houston offices are already scheduling hearings for 2012.
Call it a matter of efficiency or practicality, but don’t call it clemency. People whose deportation orders are dismissed don’t get to update their paperwork or change their status. They get to stay in the country, but don’t gain any legal status, nor do they win any legal protection from future legal action, should the government choose to go after them in the future.
Obama: I Won’t Make Immigration Fixes Without Congress
01 year ago
Following the defeat of the DREAM act earlier this week, President Obama appeared on Telemundo Wednesday to talk about immigration reform. In the interview, the president was asked whether, in lieu of a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, he would use administrative powers to roll back the abuses of the immigration system. President Obama said he would not.
“You know, it is a very difficult thing to do administratively,” Obama demurred.
The statement was a peculiar one, because halting the policy of mass deportation would actually be a a terribly easy thing to do administratively. No law requires the Department of Homeland Security to pursue record-breaking levels of deportation, as it is doing now. In fact, the administration could in an instant plug the deportation pipeline if it so chose.
But of course the president was not speaking in practical terms; he was speaking about politics. “What we don’t want to do is give an excuse to the opposition to say, ‘Obama’s trying to do an end-run around Congress,’ ” he said.
Yet, even without such executive action, Republicans are refusing to participate in any reform beyond added enforcement.
The comprehensive immigration reform strategy adopted by the White House and leading congressional Democrats has intentionally offered up increased border and internal immigration enforcement as a means of garnering GOP support for a path to citizenship. That tact appears to have failed and comprehensive immigration reform will not become law this year. It looks increasingly as if the same is true of the DREAM Act. The president said as much in his Telemundo interview.
With no path to citizenship, the White House’s steadfast commitment to iron-fisted enforcement–including the allocation of billions of dollars for border militarization and a policy of mass deportation–is harder to justify.
Advocates are calling on the administration to halt the deportations and roll back the devolution of immigration policy enacted by the Bush Administration. The Secure Communities program, which checks the immigration status of anyone booked into a local jail, has become a target of local and national campaigns. The program is responsible for deportation of tens of thousands of people with no criminal convictions at all or only minor violations.
In the face of advocate demands for greater transparency, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano announced last week that the Secure Communities program is optional–that local jails are not required to participate. The news sets up advocates to demand their localities refuse to participate.
More broadly, some D.C. advocates are beginning to push the administration to rescind a Bush-era legal memo that granted local police the right to enforce immigration law. Deepak Bhragava, executive director of the Center for Community Change, a Beltway advocacy organization, says his group is “pressing Obama hard to stop deportations of undocumented immigrants and eliminate inherent authority for local enforcement of immigration law.”
With no form of legalization likely to pass any time soon, Obama’s explicit refusal to use administrative action to fix the broken immigration enforcement system pressure may continue to mount for the administration to act. It’s not clear how long the President can continue to offer only the stick, with no carrot at all.