The present generation that is running the country grew up watching Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Gunsmoke, and Bonanza. While many call them Baby Boomers, I would call them closeted Marlboro Men (and women).
Our current President is the quintessential Marlboro Man. If you recall that great photo-op on the naval air carrier, with President Bush dressed like he just came out of a movie set - leather jacket and all.
Now the Marlboro Man has taken over immigration policy. What a better place to show your testosterone than an ICE raid?
The raids make clear to everyone in the world that we would rather behave like brutes- (separate families, ignore due process, and incarcerate people without charges), than sit down and negotiate some reasonable legislation regarding immigration.
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GLOBE EDITORIAL
Raids are beside the point
November 22, 2007
Boston Globe
FEDERAL IMMIGRATION officials have crafted guidelines on how to conduct more humane workplace raids to round up undocumented workers. It sounds oxymoronic: Enforcement actions aren't supposed to be tea parties. But what the country really needs is comprehensive immigration reform that gives immigrants more ways to work here legally.
Lacking such reforms, immigration officials should not rely too heavily on dramatic "show raids," but instead beef up incentives and penalties for employers. After all, it's the ready availability of jobs in the United States that attracts undocumented workers.
Massachusetts witnessed the human toll of raids in March when immigration officials raided the Michael Bianco leather company in New Bedford. Children of detained parents faced emotional and financial hardships, according to a report from the Urban Institute, a nonprofit Washington think tank that studied the New Bedford raid and similar actions in Colorado and Nebraska.
Worried about how arrests and possible deportations affect pregnant women, nursing mothers, and single parents - not to mention their children - Senator Edward Kennedy and congressman William Delahunt helped devise the new raid guidelines, which show compassion and common sense - but also limitations.
The guidelines call on federal officials to staff raids with personnel from the Division of Immigration Health Services, a federal entity that provides healthcare for detained undocumented immigrants. These staffers would identify detainees with family, health, and humanitarian concerns. Immigration officials are also being asked to work with state social services and community groups.
Still, these are only suggestions. And even when they are followed, fear will inevitably prevent some detainees from talking to government officials, even if the officials are human service workers.
Whether raids are genteel or jarring, their effectiveness is dubious. They grab headlines and generate fear, but they fail to slow the great waves of illegal immigration.
That's why other tools should be used. Employers need a 21st-century verification system, so that they can quickly establish who can legally work. Once that system is in place, penalties should be stiffened for employers who hire and abuse undocumented workers. Add presidential candidate Bill Richardson's advice to talk to Mexico about job creation, so its citizens aren't as desperate to cross the border, and that would be a move toward comprehensive reform.
Protecting children during raids is important, especially since an estimated two-thirds of undocumented workers' children are American citizens. But the country also needs a modern immigration system that relies far less on raids and more on genuine reform.
article: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2007/11/22/raids_are_beside_the_point?mode=PF
photo: http://www.hot-cigs.com/images/MarlboroMan.jpg
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