Under the Moon

The film "Under the Moon" will come to Houston in March 2008. Matamoros Food Markets will give away 12 tickets to the film in a drawing on March 4.

A story portraying the immigrant familia....

Hopefully this movie comes to Texas. When I first saw a preview a few weeks ago...I was not that excited because its has the most common plot ( la famila inmigrante sufre al venir a los EEUU, la unidad de la familia es interumpida y luego atravez de eventos imaginables se reunen y se convierte en un cuento feliz) . Don't get me wrong, I truly wish that all immigrant families had a happy ending in real life. I just feel it is "refry". What matters in this story is that family is the most important aspect and the reality is moving...I'm sure that many people will go see it. We'll see if im right or wrong when I watch the movie.

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LA MISMA LUNA


In her feature debut, Patricia Riggen offers a touching tale of the way the love between a mother and child can thrive and endure despite physical separation.

In La Misma Luna (The Same Moon), Riggen gives us the parallel stories of nine-year-old Carlitos and his mother, Rosario. In the hopes of providing a better life for her son, Rosario works illegally in the U.S. while her mother cares for Carlitos back in Mexico.

Unexpected circumstances drive both Rosario and Carlitos to embark on their own journeys in a desperate attempt to reunite. Along the way, mother and son face challenges and obstacles but never lose hope that they will one day be together again.

Riggen's film is not only a heartwarming family story; she also offers subtle commentary on the much-debated issue of illegal immigration.

Adeptly weaving the stories of mother and son, Riggen has created a poignant film that reminds us that the most important thing in life is the love of family. At every turn, La Misma Luna (The Same Moon) underscores the notion that geography is insignificant, for we are all under the same moon.

http://www.lamismaluna.com/

Picture from itunes.

President Bill Clinton at Mason Park

Becuase this is a country of democracy...and for those of us who are still undecided...

Meet President Bill Clinton at a
Rally for Hillary

this Sunday, March 2nd at 11:00 amat Mason Park on 75th St

Let's make this a massive rally to show our Hispanic Unity and Strength!

Education and its influence amongst young voters

TRUE. College students are voting but those without college a education are NOT. The question is, what is the government trying to do to attract those who lack knowledge on the subject.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

February 28, 2008

WIRETAP contributor: Karlo Barrios Marcel0
Latest Research Reveals Huge Disparities Among Young Voters
http://www.wiretapmag.org/blogs/elections2008/43445/

College students are voting in record numbers and making their issues heard in the 2008 primary season. Young people without college experience -- who constitute close to half of the 18- to 29-year-old electorate and are more likely to be youth of color -- are notably absent.
If social science research can be sure about anything, it's the fact that education is positively correlated with many civic engagement outcomes -- including voter turnout rates. In the 2004 presidential election, 27 percentage points separated the turnout rates of the college-educated (61 percent) and youth who have no college experience (32 percent). This gap has persisted since 1972 and it continues today. New CIRCLE research found that one in four young people with at least some college experience voted in the 2008 Super Tuesday states, compared to just one in 14 non-college youth.
For the health of our democracy, it is critical that all citizens make their interests and concerns known to elected officials. When youth without college education don't vote, their interests get ignored by government, which in turn, provides inadequate resources to their schools and communities perpetuating the cycle of non-participation.
We need to address this gap now -- during this election -- and while the emphasis on the internet and online organizing is effective this year in delivering information about the voting process to college youth, it leaves out non-college youth, whose voices need the most amplification. Complicating outreach tactics even more, places that were once venues for mobilizing non-college youth, such as unions, and community organizations, are less effective today because of declining membership rates.
One way to engage non-college youth, in the long term, is to improve access to and affordability of college; but not everyone wants to attend. For those young people that do not want to attend college -- or can't afford or access it -- the focus needs to turn to high school civic education. A new CIRCLE working paper found that students in higher-income school districts are twice as likely as those from average-income districts to learn how laws are made and how Congress works. More than that, they are more than one-and-a-half times as likely to report having political debates and panel discussions.
Political campaigns know that getting votes from harder-to-reach, non-college youth is more costly, in both time and money, compared to reaching out to college-educated voters. So while politicians and today's presidential candidates need to find new ways to reach out directly to non-college youth, so do young, college-educated voters, who can leverage their growing voting power to give a platform to the issues and voices of non-college youth.
A successful democracy isn't just about voting; it also requires the full participation of all of its citizens in every aspect of civil society. And sometimes participation means standing up for those Millennials that don't have the ear of political candidates.

Looking for empathy in the mirror

On February 24, 2008, dreamacttexas published a post titled "The American Renaissance of White Racial Preservation." This post was based on a conference held in Washington DC that highlighted speakers noted for their right wing, anti-immigrant positions.

In a paradoxical way, the American Renaissance Conference reminds me of the new blog that has over 5 million hits in only six weeks. The name is stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com . Both the conference and the blog, albeit from different angles, are dealing with the same issue.

White people need to find their ethnicity too. Ever since they were forbidden to have their "white only" clubs - they have been culturally lost, spending their lives seeking the perfect coffee maker. Blacks have their clubs, so do Latinos, women too. But you hear about a white guys club and you automatically think RACIST! It might have been that way before, and probably still retains some of that need to keep out undesirables. But it is important to remember that there is another, very significant aspect of identity-making that takes place in these clubs that are limited to only one type of member. If you hang around people that look and think like you. - you usually find empathy (yes, even right wing evangelicals can be empathic with their own kind) -

Speaking of empathy; Obama is saying that the country has lost it's ability to be empathic. I agree. The American Renaissance Conferences and the stuffwhitepeoplelike blog are telling us that white people are desperate to find a solid coherent group so they can re-find their lost identity and connect with someone that "understands."


----

Guardian Diary - London
Hugh Muir
Thursday, February 28, 2008

What a swell party it was. Those lucky enough to get to the American Renaissance conference in Washington at the weekend - a yearly meeting of the nastier thought champions of the far right - had much to enjoy.

There were hot tickets like J Philippe Rushton, "the world's foremost scholar of racial differences". Also Bruno Gollnisch, the second-ranked executive of the French National Front, and Sam G Dickson, a "longtime racial activist" and lawyer to white supremacist groups. Michael Walker, once a leading light in the British National Front, was also billed to appear...

...one of the speakers to gain most attention - the after-dinner speaker in fact - was our friend Ashley Mote, the MEP for the South-East, who having served his prison sentence for benefit fraud, is finding new ways to exploit his freedom. His theme was Britain's "immigration crisis", and though some had misgivings about listening to a convicted criminal, reports suggest he went down well. Despite a pending appeal to the House of Lords, he may never be taken seriously as a politician now, so if he is mining the rich seam that is redneck cabaret, good luck to him. He did wrong, it's true. But a man's gotta eat...

diary@guardian.co.uk

for link to complete Guardian article click the title of this post

image: http://www.world-mysteries.com/illusions/sci_ill_mirror.jpg

Southeast Obama campaign to hold DREAM Act Press Conference

This is fresh from the Obama campaign media coordinators in Houston:


The Southeast Obama campaign in Houston will be holding a DREAM Act press conference where students and their families are invited to be part of this event:

WHEN: Tomorrow: February 29th @ 5pm

WHO: Obama campaign invites: Rep. Ana Hernandez, California Senators Gloria Romero and Gilberto Cedillo, author of in-sate tuition for immigrant students in California.

WHERE: 2215 South Wayside, Houston, TX 77023

For more information contact: 916 838-4456

***Students are encouraged to attend, the campaign will have materials to make signs if you wish to do so.

Aqui Estoy, Here I am- Theatre projects touch on Immigration

I was so happy to have come across this today. This is from Albany Park Theatre Project based in Chicago; this play explores the complexities of immigration, its consequences and struggles. The play seems to be out already, but it would be great to see this; this is the clip featured on PBS.

I come from the trash dumps of Honduras, the football fields of Mexico, the genocide in Guatemala, a first-grade classroom in Bogotá. I come from riding the tops of freight trains across la bestia, arriving at O'Hare airport in my mother's arms, hiding beneath clothes in a pickup truck headed for Los Angeles. I come from farming, from shoemaking, from scavenging. From busing tables and going to school. From construction, demolition, painting, gardening. I come from waiting for work at La Parada and waiting for the law to change. I come from my long-distance love for the family I left behind, my devotion to the family that came with me, my dreams for the family I created here. I come from being a citizen, refugee, resident, alien-I come from being American. Aqui Estoy. I am here. In Chicago, in Albany Park, on the stage, in the audience.
Aqui Estoy.

This reminded me of Nine Digits, a play from California that uniquely and solely talked about undocumented Students. As i continued reading i found out that one of the cast members from of Albany Park Theater Project is a DREAMER and Nine Digits was inspired by him.

Are you American if you were born in Panama?

Senator John McCain as an infant. His grandfather (in Naval officer's uniform) is holding him. McCain's father is to the left of them. Were they in Panama when the picture was taken?







My father once told me that could never run for U.S. President because he was not born in the United States - his mother had been a U.S. citizen (who lost her citizenship when she married a Mexican citizen). I was about ten years old at the time. His comment made me sad - although I knew he would never want to be President, I wanted to know that he could at least have the right to try. I remember thinking about it from time to time throughout my childhood. Now that I am an adult it seems somewhat comical - or "cutely innocent." But you know little girls often adore their fathers, and I certainly did.

As for McCain, we all know that if immigration would not be such a contentious issue these days, no one would have noticed his birthplace issue - there would not have been any question. The NYT does not say where the story came from. McCain's citizenship issue came up when there was some notice about Romney's Mexico connection. One (or more) of the major newspapers published the photo (above), but it didn't seem to go anywhere. So why now?

In a previous post I quoted ICE director Julie Myers saying that ICE wanted to send: "a strong message to those who choose to disregard our nation's laws"

Personally I hope this issue does not eliminate him from the race. But as many people are saying these days "illegal is illegal." What would the Republicans say if they were pressured to go by the letter of the law and pull McCain out for having been born in Panama? It wasn't his fault he was born there, why should he be punished for it? --- These days, its only DREAMERS that get punished for not having born here.

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February 28, 2008
New York Times

McCain’s Canal Zone Birth Prompts Queries About Whether That Rules Him Out

By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON — The question has nagged at the parents of Americans born outside the continental United States for generations: Dare their children aspire to grow up and become president? In the case of Senator John McCain of Arizona, the issue is becoming more than a matter of parental daydreaming.

Mr. McCain’s likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically since the founders first set quill to parchment and declared that only a “natural-born citizen” can hold the nation’s highest office.

Almost since those words were written in 1787 with scant explanation, their precise meaning has been the stuff of confusion, law school review articles, whisper campaigns and civics class debates over whether only those delivered on American soil can be truly natural born. To date, no American to take the presidential oath has had an official birthplace outside the 50 states.

“There are powerful arguments that Senator McCain or anyone else in this position is constitutionally qualified, but there is certainly no precedent,” said Sarah H. Duggin, an associate professor of law at Catholic University who has studied the issue extensively. “It is not a slam-dunk situation.”

Mr. McCain was born on a military installation in the Canal Zone, where his mother and father, a Navy officer, were stationed. His campaign advisers say they are comfortable that Mr. McCain meets the requirement and note that the question was researched for his first presidential bid in 1999 and reviewed again this time around.

But given mounting interest, the campaign recently asked Theodore B. Olson, a former solicitor general now advising Mr. McCain, to prepare a detailed legal analysis. “I don’t have much doubt about it,” said Mr. Olson, who added, though, that he still needed to finish his research.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and one of Mr. McCain’s closest allies, said it would be incomprehensible to him if the son of a military member born in a military station could not run for president.

“He was posted there on orders from the United States government,” Mr. Graham said of Mr. McCain’s father. “If that becomes a problem, we need to tell every military family that your kid can’t be president if they take an overseas assignment.”

The phrase “natural born” was in early drafts of the Constitution. Scholars say notes of the Constitutional Convention give away little of the intent of the framers. Its origin may be traced to a letter from John Jay to George Washington, with Jay suggesting that to prevent foreigners from becoming commander in chief, the Constitution needed to “declare expressly” that only a natural-born citizen could be president.

Ms. Duggin and others who have explored the arcane subject in depth say legal argument and basic fairness may indeed be on the side of Mr. McCain, a longtime member of Congress from Arizona. But multiple experts and scholarly reviews say the issue has never been definitively resolved by either Congress or the Supreme Court.

Ms. Duggin favors a constitutional amendment to settle the matter. Others have called on Congress to guarantee that Americans born outside the national boundaries can legitimately see themselves as potential contenders for the Oval Office.

“They ought to have the same rights,” said Don Nickles, a former Republican senator from Oklahoma who in 2004 introduced legislation that would have established that children born abroad to American citizens could harbor presidential ambitions without a legal cloud over their hopes. “There is some ambiguity because there has never been a court case on what ‘natural-born citizen’ means.”

Mr. McCain’s situation is different from those of the current governors of California and Michigan, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jennifer M. Granholm, who were born in other countries and were first citizens of those nations, rendering them naturalized Americans ineligible under current interpretations. The conflict that could conceivably ensnare Mr. McCain goes more to the interpretation of “natural born” when weighed against intent and decades of immigration law.

Mr. McCain is not the first person to find himself in these circumstances. The last Arizona Republican to be a presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater, faced the issue. He was born in the Arizona territory in 1909, three years before it became a state. But Goldwater did not win, and the view at the time was that since he was born in a continental territory that later became a state, he probably met the standard.

It also surfaced in the 1968 candidacy of George Romney, who was born in Mexico, but again was not tested. The former Connecticut politician Lowell P. Weicker Jr., born in Paris, sought a legal analysis when considering the presidency, an aide said, and was assured he was eligible. Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. was once viewed as a potential successor to his father, but was seen by some as ineligible since he had been born on Campobello Island in Canada. The 21st president, Chester A. Arthur, whose birthplace is Vermont, was rumored to have actually been born in Canada, prompting some to question his eligibility.

Quickly recognizing confusion over the evolving nature of citizenship, the First Congress in 1790 passed a measure that did define children of citizens “born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States to be natural born.” But that law is still seen as potentially unconstitutional and was overtaken by subsequent legislation that omitted the “natural-born” phrase.

Mr. McCain’s citizenship was established by statutes covering the offspring of Americans abroad and laws specific to the Canal Zone as Congress realized that Americans would be living and working in the area for extended periods. But whether he qualifies as natural-born has been a topic of Internet buzz for months, with some declaring him ineligible while others assert that he meets all the basic constitutional qualifications — a natural-born citizen at least 35 years of age with 14 years of residence.

“I don’t think he has any problem whatsoever,” said Mr. Nickles, a McCain supporter. “But I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if somebody is going to try to make an issue out of it. If it goes to court, I think he will win.”

Lawyers who have examined the topic say there is not just confusion about the provision itself, but uncertainty about who would have the legal standing to challenge a candidate on such grounds, what form a challenge could take and whether it would have to wait until after the election or could be made at any time.

In a paper written 20 years ago for the Yale Law Journal on the natural-born enigma, Jill Pryor, now a lawyer in Atlanta, said that any legal challenge to a presidential candidate born outside national boundaries would be “unpredictable and unsatisfactory.”

“If I were on the Supreme Court, I would decide for John McCain,” Ms. Pryor said in a recent interview. “But it is certainly not a frivolous issue.”

for link to NYT article click the title of this post

the article was previously posted on the Huffington Post
photo: http://www.friendsofmccain.com/images/father_grandfather.jpg

Virtual Border Wall Postponed at Least 3 yrs - Thank Goodness

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'Virtual Fence' Along Border To Be Delayed
U.S. Retooling High-Tech Barrier After 28-Mile Pilot Project Fails

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 28, 2008; A01

The Bush administration has scaled back plans to quickly build a "virtual fence" along the U.S.-Mexico border, delaying completion of the first phase of the project by at least three years and shifting away from a network of tower-mounted sensors and surveillance gear, federal officials said yesterday.

Technical problems discovered in a 28-mile pilot project south of Tucson prompted the change in plans, Department of Homeland Security officials and congressional auditors told a House subcommittee.

Though the department took over that initial stretch Friday from Boeing, authorities confirmed that Project 28, the initial deployment of the Secure Border Initiative network, did not work as planned or meet the needs of the U.S. Border Patrol.

The announcement marked a major setback for what President Bush in May 2006 called "the most technologically advanced border security initiative in American history." The virtual fence was to be a key component of his proposed overhaul of U.S. immigration policies, which died last year in the Senate.

Investigators for the Government Accountability Office had earlier warned that the effort was beset by both expected and unplanned difficulties. But yesterday, they disclosed new troubles that will require a redesign and said the first phase will not be completed until near the end of the next president's first term.

Those problems included Boeing's use of inappropriate commercial software, designed for use by police dispatchers, to integrate data related to illicit border-crossings. Boeing has already been paid $20.6 million for the pilot project, and in December, the DHS gave the firm another $65 million to replace the software with military-style, battle management software.

In an interview, Gregory L. Giddens, the department's executive director for the border effort, confirmed that "we . . . have delayed our deployment as we work through the issues on Project 28. While there is clear urgency of the mission, we also want to make sure we do this right."

Boeing has said that the initial effort, while flawed, still has helped Homeland Security apprehend 2,000 illegal immigrants since September. It estimated in 2006 that it would spend $7.6 billion through 2011 to secure the entire 2,000-mile southern border, an ambition that was meant to win support from conservatives for legislation creating a guest-worker program and a path to legalization for 12 million illegal immigrants.

But officials said yesterday that they now expect to complete the first phase of the virtual fence's deployment -- roughly 100 miles near Tucson and Yuma, Ariz., and El Paso, Tex. -- by the end of 2011, instead of by the end of 2008. That target falls outside Boeing's initial contract, which will end in September 2009 but can be extended.

The virtual fence was to complement a physical fence that the administration now says will include 370 miles of pedestrian fencing and 300 miles of vehicle barriers to be completed by the end of this year. The GAO said this portion of the project may also be delayed and that its total cost cannot be determined. The president's 2009 budget does not propose funds to add fencing beyond the 700 or so miles meant to be completed this year.

"The total cost is not yet known," testified Richard M. Stana, the GAO's director of homeland security issues, because DHS officials "do not yet know the type of terrain where the fencing is to be constructed, the materials to be used, or the cost to acquire the land."

The pilot virtual fence included nine mobile towers, radar, cameras, and vehicles retrofitted with laptops and satellite phones or handheld devices. They were to be linked to a near-real-time, maplike projection of the frontier that agents could use to track targets and direct law enforcement resources.

GAO investigators said that Boeing's software could not process large amounts of sensor data. The resulting delays made it hard for operators in a Tucson command center 65 miles to the north to lock cameras on targets. Radar systems were also triggered inadvertently by rain and other environmental factors. Cameras had trouble resolving images at five kilometers when they were expected to work at twice that distance, Stana said.

He added that the system was developed with "minimal input" from Border Patrol agents, resulting in an unworkable "demonstration project" instead of a operating pilot system. He blamed the DHS for acting too hastily in trying to deliver a working pilot by last June.

The effort produced "a product that did not fully meet user needs, and the project's design will not be used as the basis for future . . . development," Stana testified, adding that the DHS plans to replace most of the components. The Wall Street Journal said Saturday that Boeing's pilot project will not be replicated.

A nongovernment source familiar with the project said that the Bush administration's push to speed the project during last year's immigration debate led Boeing to deploy equipment without enough testing or consultation.

With more time, the source said, equipment and software will be tested more carefully and integrated with input from Border Patrol agents in three remote locations. "Doing it this way mitigates all kinds of risk," said the source, who was not authorized to speak publicly. Those running the project "basically took equipment, put it on towers and put it out there without any testing as such" because of the tight deadline.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Friday that the department will "take elements" of the pilot project and apply them elsewhere, but that it plans to expand the number of mobile ground surveillance units from a handful to 40, and to double its fleet of three unmanned aerial vehicles. Boeing has offered DHS a $2 million credit from the funds it has already received.

Technology at the border is "not necessarily going to be in the configuration of P28," Chertoff said, adding that unmanned aerial systems in particular "will play a major role" in most border areas.

Boeing spokeswoman Deborah Bosick said the company is referring all questions to the DHS.

for link to WP article, click the title of this post

Those All-American Teams That Work Together

Julie L. Myers, Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement:

"Our teams working together across six states today sent a strong message to those who choose to disregard our nation's laws"

Can you imagine "teams" working together to cause fear and terror - work that has de-humanized their "captives." They pick up teenage girls who skipped school. They pick up people and assume they are undocumented until they find proof otherwise, which is difficult since most people don't carry around their passports. They pick up people who walked a thousand miles to find a low paying job that would at least provide enough money to feed their kids.

What can I compare this to? The Gestapo looking for people like Anne Frank in Amsterdam? The dog catcher looking for stray animals? Or a bunch of grownups who are playing a dangerous game of tag (and enjoying it - just look at how they high-five each other when they make a hit)

You know those executioners in period movies? I just saw "Anne of a Thousand Days." As I saw the man in the black mask ready to cut off her head, I wondered what happens to executioners who are reincarnated.

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30 illegal immigrants arrested in Chicago area, ICE officials say

By Antonio Olivo |Chicago Tribune reporter

February 27, 2008

More than 200 illegal immigrants who had previously been ordered out of the country were arrested in Illinois and five other states during a four-day sweep that ended Monday, federal officials announced.

In the Chicago area, federal agents arrested 30 people from Poland, Mexico, Romania and nine other countries -- part of a continued escalation of enforcement against illegal immigration that has stirred fear and anger in immigrant enclaves across the country.

"Our teams working together across six states today sent a strong message to those who choose to disregard our nation's laws," Julie L. Myers, head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Tuesday. "If you ignore a judge's order of removal, ICE will find you, arrest you, and you will be returned to your home country."

About 72,000 "fugitive aliens" have been arrested since 2003, department officials said in a news release. In the Chicago area, 632 people have been arrested during such sweeps between October and last week, said Gail Montenegro, a local ICE spokeswoman.

Activists are preparing for another season of demonstrations.

Next month, a three-day conference scheduled in Pilsen will culminate in preparations for yet another march through the Loop, said Jorge Mujica, one of the chief organizers for the March 10 Coalition.

Planning also is under way for a "1,000-mile march" from St. Paul to Washington next month that will cut through Chicago.

-----------

aolivo@tribune.com

Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune

for link to Tribune article click the title of this post

photo: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2007/09/09/PH2007090901808.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/09/AR2007090901807.html&h=190&w=163&sz=14&hl=en&start=10&sig2=vBR1siRo-bLW90rHXCJAPg&um=1&tbnid=qdo1UOIcjxjwjM:&tbnh=103&tbnw=88&ei=KjfGR9W3E6qspwSzva0l&prev=/images%3Fq%3D%2B%2522julie%2BL%2BMyers%2522%26as_st%3Dy%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Dactive%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DG

Deported for Truancy in Tyler, Texas

Two sisters are being deported to El Salvador. It seems that missing too much school and a bad attitude encouraged someone to call in ICE. Even the judge was surprised.

Justice of the Peace Mitch Shamburger:

'"The officer [who booked them] called me and said I wouldn't have to worry about them skipping school anymore because ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) placed a hold on them and was deporting them back to El Salvador," he said.'

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Tyler Morning Telegraph
February 23, 2008
Skipping School Gets 2 Sisters Deported

By KENNETH DEAN
Staff Writer

WINONA - Skipping school is usually met with fines and the threat of jail time; but, for two sisters, the punishment was much worse - they were deported.

Smith County Justice of the Peace Mitch Shamburger said he presided over truancy court last month when Brisa and Lluva Amante, both 17, snickered in his courtroom.

The John Tyler High School students were before him for skipping school and Shamburger said he fined them each for the action and told them to go to school every day and not to come back to his courtroom.

"I thought they would take it seriously and I wouldn't see them again," he said Friday.

However, the twins and a younger sister were brought before him on Feb. 14 for another charge of truancy.

"I asked them if they didn't understand and they just kind of snickered," he said.

Shamburger said he instructed the bailiff to handcuff the two sisters and hoped that would sober up their mood.

"It cut down on the giggling, but they stood against the wall and still kind of laughed," he said.

Shamburger said he called the two teens in front of his bench and told them they were both adults in the eyes of the law and he was sending them to the Smith County Jail to do time for skipping school.

"I told the deputy constable that if the twins had a come to Jesus meeting then he could turn around, but they didn't so he proceeded to the jail to book them in," he said.

What happened next took Shamburger by surprise.

"The officer called me and said I wouldn't have to worry about them skipping school anymore because ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) placed a hold on them and was deporting them back to El Salvador," he said.

Shamburger said he hoped the girls would learn a lesson from visiting the jail, but was not prepared for the news.

"In all of my years on the bench I have never had someone deported for truancy," he said.

previously posted on Immigration Prof Blog

for link to Tyler.com article, click the title of this post

DREAM Students hold voter registration campaigns

For a long time our student organization held many events that encouraged citizens to vote and we also held numerous citizenship workshops where we helped permanent residents become citizens.

At the same time i couldn't help but to feel some sort of resentment for not being able to vote and knowing a lot of things about the system; there, registering people to become citizens... how ironic.

Today i came across this article and realized how important it is for us, DREAMER's to let people know what is going on with the presidential candidates and the DREAM Act for example. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have endorsed the DREAM Act numerous times. I have always felt more trust towards Obama, i have to confess that during the debate in Austin Texas on Feb. 23rd, his assurance that the DREAM Act would be a top priority made me smile.


Some of my friends who can vote but don't usually do have decided to listen to me and vote. If today i was able to go out and vote i would.

*******

SJSU students, legal and illegal, plan grass-roots voter registration campaign
By Javier Erik Olvera
Mercury News
Article Launched: 02/27/2008 01:33:14 AM PST

Jose Ruiz is like many college students.

He's outspoken. He's politically active. And, most important, he wants to make sure as many people as possible hit the polls come Election Day.

Why? Because he can't. Ruiz is an illegal immigrant.

Buoyed by Super Tuesday's record Latino voter turnout, a San Jose State University student group - made up of both legal and illegal residents - is planning a widespread, grass-roots campaign to register voters, especially those who can speak for them at the polls.

"I don't need to live in the shadows anymore," said Ruiz, a 24-year-old SJSU student whose mother brought him from Mexico on a tourist visa when he was a child.

But the campaign is already sparking some controversy, with immigrant advocates applauding the students' efforts and opponents arguing their efforts could have grave consequences for U.S. citizens. No matter the reaction, though, it's another step forward for the group known as Student Advocates for Higher Education, which has challenged lawmakers to pass a bill granting certain illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship if they graduate from college.

Group members have repeatedly made headlines during the past year. First they took part in a weeklong fast last summer to draw attention to the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (or DREAM) Act, prompting conservative radio host Michael Savage to suggest they starve to death. They also rallied....(more)

Image obtained here

Watching the Latino Vote in Texas

In a conversation I had more than twenty years ago with an assistant to Houston's mayor - I was told that Hispanic voters weren't taken seriously because they didn't go vote. The low voter turn out in the Latino community may still be partly true. But there should be much more incentive for people to go to the polls this time around.

Thinking back to what the mayor's assistant told me, maybe Latinos didn't vote because they thought their vote would note be taken seriously. It reminds me of when an African American girl won homecoming queen at my high school (in the late 60s). It was the first time ever. Many Anglo students and their parents were incensed and demanded a new election.

Maybe Latinos think that if they actually sway the outcome, that it will be challenged... or stolen anyway (this is a Texas tradition - think about LBJ's stolen congressional election). Or that the politician can't be trusted. About ten years ago in a class I was teaching at a local university - the students and I began talking about local Latino politicians. Almost all of the students told me they could not trust elected officials, Latino or not. They said that politicians said things they didn't mean and projected false fronts. That particular class was mostly Hispanic. Those young people would be in their early 30s now. I wonder if they still feel the same way.


Texas Observer on the Latino vote

"The question is how many of those urban Latinos can vote and will vote in the Democratic primary. Those numbers are difficult to discern — after all, voters don’t mark their ethnicity on the ballot. In an effort to understand the potential Latino impact on the primary, the Observer asked Leland Beatty, an Austin political consultant who specializes in voter identification, to analyze recent Democratic primaries and make an educated projection of Latino turnout.

Beatty qualified his analysis by saying that the 2008 primary may attract so many voters that it could be difficult to model. It’s possible the Democratic primary turnout will be double that of 2004. With so many new voters flooding the polling stations, predicting how many will be Latino and how many will be African-American is tough. Based on past primaries, Beatty’s computer models projected that Latinos would comprise 31 percent of the vote. The largest group lives in South Texas, where the more than 183,000 Latino voters make up more than 75 percent of the electorate."

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Texas Observer

Voto por Voto

Will Latino voters stand and be counted?

by David Mann

| February 22, 2008 |

It seems every election in Texas is accompanied by big talk from political pundits that, at long last, the slumbering Latino vote will become a decisive force at the ballot box. So far, it’s been more promise than reality.

But this year may finally be different. No, really. The campaigns for Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have streamed into Texas ahead of the state’s critical primary on March 4. Both campaigns are convinced that the Latino vote, which will likely comprise a third of the Democratic primary electorate, will be the key to Texas.

For Clinton, the calculus is simple. The Latino vote has been an indispensable segment of her coalition. She carried that vote in Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico. In California on February 5, Latinos probably saved Clinton’s candidacy by delivering a critical win in the nation’s largest state. Despite polls showing Obama surging ahead there, Clinton secured an impressive 10-point victory. Latinos made up 30 percent of the vote, a record turnout, and 67 percent went for Clinton, according to exit polls.

The Clinton campaign hopes to duplicate that scenario in Texas. Much of the credit for the Latino turnout in California went to Clinton’s field director, Mike Trujillo, a former staffer for Los Angeles Mayor and Clinton supporter Antonio Villaraigosa. Clinton sent Trujillo to Texas to rerun the California playbook.

Moreover, the Clintons have a long history in South Texas, dating to the early 1970s, when Hillary helped register Latino voters along the border for the McGovern campaign. She and Bill are friends with some of South Texas’ best-known politicians, including former San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros.

Garry Mauro, the longtime Clinton friend who’s working on her Texas campaign, has helped with the Clintons’ appeal to Latinos in the past. In fall 1992, Mauro, then-land commissioner, designed a South Texas strategy that forced George H.W. Bush to invest money in the state he called home.

Even Obama’s supporters concede that Clinton has considerable appeal among Latinos. “That Clinton name still has a lot of currency, and Bill Clinton especially is still very much well liked among Latinos in Texas,” said Rafael Anchia, a Dallas state representative who’s helping the Obama campaign reach out to Latino voters. The question is not whether Clinton will poll well with Latinos, but how well.

To have any chance of winning in Texas, Obama will probably have to keep Clinton’s share of the Latino vote under 60 percent. His camp believes he can nibble away at Clinton’s edge in the weeks before primary day. Anchia said that voters in general like Obama more as they get to know him. Obama ads have debuted on Spanish language radio and television stations.

Anchia says the campaign believes that while older Latinos may remain loyal to Clinton, the younger Latino voters in Houston, Dallas and San Antonio will flock to Obama, who’s proven popular with the youth vote. Several young Latino state representatives from urban areas have endorsed him, including Anchia, Trey Martinez Fischer (San Antonio), Norma Chavez (El Paso), Ana Hernandez (Houston), and Eddie Lucio III (Brownsville). And Anchia points out that North Texas has more Latinos than South Texas.

The question is how many of those urban Latinos can vote and will vote in the Democratic primary. Those numbers are difficult to discern — after all, voters don’t mark their ethnicity on the ballot. In an effort to understand the potential Latino impact on the primary, the Observer asked Leland Beatty, an Austin political consultant who specializes in voter identification, to analyze recent Democratic primaries and make an educated projection of Latino turnout.

Beatty qualified his analysis by saying that the 2008 primary may attract so many voters that it could be difficult to model. It’s possible the Democratic primary turnout will be double that of 2004. With so many new voters flooding the polling stations, predicting how many will be Latino and how many will be African-American is tough. Based on past primaries, Beatty’s computer models projected that Latinos would comprise 31 percent of the vote. The largest group lives in South Texas, where the more than 183,000 Latino voters make up more than 75 percent of the electorate.

The Latino vote will be the story to watch and could determine who wins the most important Texas primary in two decades.

for link to Texas Observer article click the title of this post

More on the Texas Two Step (March 4 Primary)

If you want to make the most out of the Texas Two Step - when you go vote tell the people working the polling place - that you want to return for the 7:15 pm caucus. They might try to discourage you.... but it is important that you forge ahead. Hopefully you will return for the Caucus (which could run late) and make a double difference for the presidential candidate of your choice.

You can attend the caucus if you early vote or if you wait until March 4.

Back in the Saddle

Why (and how) Texas will matter in March.

Forrest Wilder and Dave Mann | February 22, 2008 | Features

Twenty years have passed since a Texas primary played a significant role in anointing a presidential candidate. The last time was in 1988, when Michael Dukakis, Richard Gephardt, Al Gore, and Jesse Jackson locked horns in a four-way fight. Because of the state’s March 4 primary, we matter again: Democratic hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are looking to Texas and its 228 delegates to put them within spitting distance of the tin cup.

The Obama and Clinton campaigns, volunteers, and voters are dusting off the rulebooks and learning, or relearning, the peculiar ins and outs of how Texas selects Democratic presidential candidates. Unique in the nation, Texas hosts a primary and a caucus, both of which allocate delegates. In essence, Texans get the opportunity to vote for their candidate of choice twice, and we don’t even have to be dead to do it.

This hybrid system, which the Obama camp has taken to calling the “Texas Two-Step,” is governed by a maze of jury-rigged rules, and navigating them will likely look about as graceful as a plow horse on ice skates. A total of 228 delegates are in play. Thirty-five of these are so-called superdelegates, party apparatchiks assured of seats at August’s national convention in Denver. These delegates are deemed “super” because unlike pledged delegates, who arrive at the national convention locked into their choice, the supers can support whichever candidate they choose and can change their minds, for any reason, at any time, up to and including during the convention.

Texas’ superdelegates comprise the state party’s chair and vice chair, 13 Democratic congressmen, 10 members of the Democratic National Committee, five “add-on” delegates drawn from various Democratic constituencies, and three superdelegates to be named at the state party convention in June. For the first time in recent memory, they’re poised to make all the difference.

The national party elite crafted the superdelegate rules in 1980 to wrest some control over the nomination process from the unpredictable masses. Reforms in the 1970s had moved nomination fights out from the smoky backrooms of decades past, with changes ensuring that the majority of national convention delegates were pledged to back the candidate who won their state’s primary. But that process became a little too democratic in 1980, when Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy’s primary challenge to sitting Democratic president Jimmy Carter bitterly divided the party.

After that debacle, party leaders decided to designate 20 percent of primary delegates as “super.” The goal was to buttress support for establishment candidates, and the maneuver worked perfectly four years later when the newly designated superdelegates helped establishment front-runner Walter Mondale fend off upstart primary challenger Gary Hart. (Mondale went on to lose 49 states, failing spectacularly to support the presumption of establishmentarian wisdom).

In the 24 years since, superdelegates have gone largely unnoticed, content to line up behind whatever Democratic candidate romped most convincingly through the early primaries. Despite that recent obscurity, the Clinton campaign has made superdelegates part of its strategy since at least last year. As the early frontrunner, Clinton scooped up endorsements from many of the nation’s 796 superdelegates.

David Holmes, a Democratic National Committee member and Texas superdelegate, told the Observer the Clinton team began wooing him last May by taking him out to dinner when they were in town, among other persuasive endearments.

“The reason Hillary has more superdelegates is because she took no one for granted,” Holmes said. “[Obama] didn’t court me.”

After Super Tuesday’s split decision, it became apparent that neither campaign would likely win enough delegates in the remaining primaries to secure the nomination. That scenario gives superdelegates a heavy hand in the nomination endgame. They may well make the difference, either by pushing the leading candidate over the top, or by pulling a trailing candidate from behind. The Obama campaign, which belatedly recognized the importance of superdelegates, has boosted its lobbying and used its perceived momentum to sway some superdelegates who had previously supported Clinton...

Another 126 garden-variety “primary-sourced” delegates will be decided March 4, but this delegate cache too is apportioned in an idiosyncratic fashion. Each of Texas’ 31 state senate districts is assigned a number of delegates based on the number of votes received by John Kerry in 2004 and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Chris Bell in 2006. Senate districts that turned out the vote are rewarded with a greater number of delegates than those that sat on their duffs. At the extremes, the nearly Democrat-free Panhandle Senate District 31 has only two delegates at stake, while District 14, home to state Sen. Kirk Watson and liberal Travis County, has eight.

Adding to the confusion, an additional 67 delegates will be chosen by a three-tier caucus convention system that could alternately be described as a three-month endurance race. Of those 67, 25 slots are reserved for pledged party and elected officials who will be picked at the state convention but will vote based on the outcome of the caucuses. The remaining 42 are “at-large” slots, open to any Democrat willing to slog through the process.

Each precinct is assigned a number of delegates based on the number of votes received in that precinct for Chris Bell. Fifty percent of the 87,356 precinct-level delegates are concentrated in Harris, Dallas, Travis, Tarrant, and Bexar Counties.

The caucus action begins at the precinct level on the night of March 4, and then moves to county/senatorial district-level conventions on March 29, and then to the Texas Democratic Party State Convention in early June. Each step winnows the field of delegates until the state convention’s end, when 67 are left standing.

Caucuses tend to reward campaigns that can mobilize disciplined and highly motivated voters. Obama, in particular, has proven adept at harnessing grassroots energy to seize the levers of caucus control in state after state, winning 10 of 11 caucuses so far. For her part, Clinton may rely on union member supporters to vote for her at the caucus level.

Precinct caucuses in normal election years are relatively uneventful affairs, attended by few but the party faithful. This year, though, the system will be tested by an influx of new voters and candidates eager to lock up delegates at the precinct conventions.

Another 126 garden-variety “primary-sourced” delegates will be decided March 4, but this delegate cache too is apportioned in an idiosyncratic fashion. Each of Texas’ 31 state senate districts is assigned a number of delegates based on the number of votes received by John Kerry in 2004 and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Chris Bell in 2006. Senate districts that turned out the vote are rewarded with a greater number of delegates than those that sat on their duffs. At the extremes, the nearly Democrat-free Panhandle Senate District 31 has only two delegates at stake, while District 14, home to state Sen. Kirk Watson and liberal Travis County, has eight.

Adding to the confusion, an additional 67 delegates will be chosen by a three-tier caucus convention system that could alternately be described as a three-month endurance race. Of those 67, 25 slots are reserved for pledged party and elected officials who will be picked at the state convention but will vote based on the outcome of the caucuses. The remaining 42 are “at-large” slots, open to any Democrat willing to slog through the process.

Each precinct is assigned a number of delegates based on the number of votes received in that precinct for Chris Bell. Fifty percent of the 87,356 precinct-level delegates are concentrated in Harris, Dallas, Travis, Tarrant, and Bexar Counties.

The caucus action begins at the precinct level on the night of March 4, and then moves to county/senatorial district-level conventions on March 29, and then to the Texas Democratic Party State Convention in early June. Each step winnows the field of delegates until the state convention’s end, when 67 are left standing.

Caucuses tend to reward campaigns that can mobilize disciplined and highly motivated voters. Obama, in particular, has proven adept at harnessing grassroots energy to seize the levers of caucus control in state after state, winning 10 of 11 caucuses so far. For her part, Clinton may rely on union member supporters to vote for her at the caucus level.

Precinct caucuses in normal election years are relatively uneventful affairs, attended by few but the party faithful. This year, though, the system will be tested by an influx of new voters and candidates eager to lock up delegates at the precinct conventions...

for link to complete Texas Observer article, click the title of this post

DREAMERS can't apply for Houston Rodeo's Scholarships

Tio Cowboy: Juan Salinas, Rodeo Roper and Horseman by Ricardo D. Palacios

It's been a while since the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo (HLSR) decided that undocumented kids could not receive any of their scholarships. I remember when I first heard about it a few years ago. It seemed so unfair and didn't make sense that DREAMERS who attended local schools, went and spent money at Houston malls, movie theaters, spoke English like most everyother Harris county teenager -- could not qualify for the HLSR's scholarships.

Now another group is saying that Latinos are not getting enough of the action as the events are planned. Maybe their clout is diminishing because organizers fear too many undocumented people will show up. I once heard a about an upscale Mexican restaurant in Houston who's owner said he didn't want "regular" Latinos as customers - they were too low class and would scare away the affluent Anglos - honest, someone who knew the restaurant owner really told me this.

No matter what the reason, the administrators of the HLSR need to be more enlightened about the burgeoning Latino population in Harris County - as I understand it, the HLSR is for all residents of Harris County. The Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo has no qualms about accepting money from anyone who wants to attend it's events. Interesting that they can take the money in, but are exclusive about who gets any money back.

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Feb. 26, 2008, 6:15PM
Hispanic group calls for boycott of Houston Rodeo

By ALEXIS GRANT
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

A group of Hispanic leaders called for a boycott of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, saying show officials haven't done enough to include Hispanics in the event.

Their complaints Tuesday came the same day show organizers held a kickoff event event at City Hall to proclaim Friday as Go Texan Day. The three-week show starts Monday.

Made up of representatives from the Tejano music industry, Houston-area politicians and members of other professional organizations, the newly formed group VIVE Tejano-Houston gathered at the University of Houston to protest the livestock show.

"We request our friends across the whole state of Texas not to attend the Houston Livestock Show," said former state Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos.

The show is disrespecting the Hispanic community by hiring non-Tejano performers to play at the show's main venue on Go Tejano Day, and not enough of the show's scholarships go to Hispanic students, said Ruben Cubillos, co-founder of the group.

He also complained that the show doesn't have enough Hispanics at the executive level.

State Sen. Mario Gallegos, who said he tried to negotiate with show officials, offered to discuss the issues with them again.

"We're open to sit down and talk, and talk for real," he said.

Leroy Shafer, the show's chief operating officer, said Go Tejano Day is about Hispanic culture, not just one type of music.

This year's Go Tejano Day on March 16 will feature Duelo, a norteño band from Roma, and Los Horoscopos de Durango, a duranguense act from Chicago.

Tejano bands are scheduled to play on smaller stages. But because the genre's popularity has waned in recent years, a Tejano act won't take center stage, Shafer said.

"If, in fact, they're asking people to stay away because they're trying to keep this genre of music on a big stage, then they're asking people to go against the very essence of what this day is," Shafer said. "They're asking them not to come out and celebrate being Hispanic."

This is not the first time Go Tejano Day lacked a traditional Tejano artist on the main stage, show organizers said. That happened in 2001 and 2002.

Responding to the group's other complaints, show organizers said nearly a third of the 927 students who attended Texas universities on show scholarships last year are Hispanic.

The Executive Committee, the show's highest level of volunteer leadership, includes 11 active members and six lifetime members, but no Hispanics. Those members are elected based on years of service and leadership, as well as economic contributions to the show.

"We have several people on track to get on that committee but they won't be short-cutted," Shafer said.

Several members of the show's Go Tejano Committee also said they didn't agree with the boycott.

"They're completely out of line," said George Hernandez, a committee volunteer. "We're not chartered by the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo to hear Tejano music. If they want their music heard, they should join a music association."

alexis.grant@chron.com

for link to Chronicle article click the title of this post

The Ugly Truth About Sweatshops

(Fuerza Unida:Myspace)

Increasing Number of Immigrant Workers in U.S. Will Have Little Effect on Medicare, Social Security Issues

According to Report Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report

February 12, 2008

An increasingly aging U.S. population is expected to put additional strain on the costs of government-sponsored programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, even as the rising number of immigrants contributes to the total number of working-age people, according to a study released on Monday by the Pew Hispanic Center, the AP/Houston Chronicle reports.

The study -- by Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer, and D'Vera Cohn, a senior writer at the research center -- found that rapid growth in the number of adults ages 65 and older will result in increased costs per worker for programs that are geared to help seniors and children.While the working-adult population currently helps to cover the costs of the programs, the number of adults ages 65 and older is expected to increase to 81 million by 2050 -- more than twice the current size, according to Pew projections (Gamboa, AP/Houston Chronicle, 2/11).

Pew estimated that by 2030, there will be 29 to 36 seniors per 100 working-age adults; the current ratio is about 20 seniors per 100 working-age adults (Olivo, Chicago Tribune, 2/12). In addition, there will be 72 seniors and children per 100 working-age adults by 2050, compared with 59 in 2005, according to Pew. If immigration were halved, there would be 75 seniors and children per 100 working-age adults, and if immigration doubled, there would be 69 seniors and children per 100 working-age adults (AP/Houston Chronicle, 2/11).

Passel said the center's projections call into question previously held assumptions that the population of U.S. residents would become younger as more immigrants entered the country. He added, "The Social Security and Medicare issues are not really altered by immigration" (Chicago Tribune, 2/12).

(National Immigration Law Center: Public Benefits)

Spring, TX. Day Laborers need your help, BorderWatch still strong

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

Although Border Watch has been declining in Spring for almost two months, about 17 of them made it out this past Saturday. Day laborers, local residents, and activists were able to hold the grassy area in front of the store and keep most of the racists at a distance. But the BW leader Curtis Collier announced that they would move into this area next Saturday regardless of whether we are already there.

We do not want a physical confrontation. But we can’t let BW retake the grassy area, which they used in the past to videotape and harass the day laborers. So our challenge is to get enough people out there very early Saturday morning and have such a strong presence that the BW can’t do anything about it. Accordingly, we’re asking for the broadest possible participation in the protest on Saturday.

So please join us this Saturday, March 1, at 8 am. The day laborer site is located at 16350 Stuebner Airline Drive in Spring. If you can help us set up earlier, please call us to let us know you’re coming.

Also, please note that there will be a protest against the racist Sheriff’s Lieutenant Louis Guthrie, a Constable candidate in Precinct 4 and Border Watch supporter, on Wednesday, February 27, at 4:30 pm, at the Barbara Bush Library, 6817 Cypresswood Drive, in Spring. The library is the only polling place for early voting in the area.

These demonstrations are being organized by the Latin American Organization for Immigrant Rights, Mexicanos en Accion, Progressive Workers Organizing Committee, Houston Anti-Racist Action, Los Patriotas Latinos, Irish Unity Committee, America for All, CRECEN, and International Socialist Organization. For more information, please call (832) 692-2306 or (832) 282-6997.

In Solidarity,

David and Rona
PWOC

Tens of millions of workers -are vulnerable to illegal ICE raids

At today's hearing in D.C. the president of UFCWI Union reminded the panel that workers could be detained at gunpoint - whether they are citizens or undocumented. You know that is enough for a person to develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It is a good thing that someone is holding DHS and ICE accountable for the unconstitutional way they handle immigration raids. Efforts by lawmakers have been like a voice in the wind - Maybe it will take a few Unions to convince ICE to reign itself in.

Joe Hansen, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union and chairman of the National Commission on ICE Misconduct and Violations of 4th Amendment Rights [stated]: "Workers are not aware that they could be detained at gunpoint. That they could be handcuffed. . . . That they could be denied any contact with family members or legal counsel."

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Immigration Agency Accused of Illegal Searches

By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 26, 2008; A04

A privately convened commission of labor and immigrant advocates held the first of several planned nationwide hearings yesterday to publicize allegations that U.S. immigration officials routinely violate constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure during workplace raids.

At the gathering at the Hay-Adams hotel in the District, witnesses and members of the 10-person panel accused Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials of using arrest warrants for a limited number of illegal immigrants who work at a given company as a pretext to detain the entire workforce, including many U.S. citizens, while agents determine whether there are additional illegal immigrants among them.

"Tens of millions of workers in America go to work every day without . . . an awareness that at their workplaces, without any warning, they could be swept up in a massive raid conducted by heavily armed government agents," said Joe Hansen, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union and chairman of the National Commission on ICE Misconduct and Violations of 4th Amendment Rights. "Workers are not aware that they could be detained at gunpoint. That they could be handcuffed. . . . That they could be denied any contact with family members or legal counsel."

The commission heard testimony from two workers who are U.S. citizens who said they were detained for several hours during an ICE raid of six Swift meatpacking plants in December 2006. The union has filed a class action on their behalf.

Afterward, Pat Reilly, an ICE spokeswoman who attended the hearing as an observer, said the agency's procedures for questioning workers during raids at businesses are fair and humane and have been routinely upheld by courts.

"I would imagine that some people may be detained beyond what they feel is reasonable. But it's subjective," she said. "What we're trying to do is get to the bottom of who has the right to be here and who might be posing as a U.S. citizen."

for link to WP article click the title of this post

Jovenes Inmigrantes por un Futuro Mejor is very much alive!!

JIFM is still a very intricate part of Houston's immigrant community. I want to make it a point that the organization still exists in Houston. They are still providing immigrant students with the information and materials needed to apply for college/university and financial aid the right way. JIFM still does high school presentations, seminars, workshops and meet at Lee high school every Saturday morning.

Fortunately the Coalition of Higher Education for Immigrant Students runs an up-to-date website http://www.cheis.net/ that can answer any question you might have about Texas' in-state tuition law. JIFM's website http://www.uhjifm.org/ is under construction, but still available.

JIFM just had a very successful informational session at the Houston Hispanic Forum. A financial aid workshop was available for parents and their questions. DREAM Act information was given and a much needed TEXAS HANDBOOK for IMMIGRANT STUDENTS was given to the participants. If you have a question contact them at uhjifmcentral@gmail.com

I am thankful for the existence of this wonderful organization, as it has taught me many things and I have been able to help, educate and inspire many immigrant students. I have also met the greatest activist and supporters through JIFM and CHEIS.

Gracias.

Anti-Immigrant sentiment in Cypress Creek

As I watched the video you are about to see, it caused me great sadness, becuase no human being should be treated with disrespect, but instead with dignity. The US Border Watch has been intimidating the day labors on a weekly basis in Cypress Creek and day labor supporters have come out to protest this type of hate-group. In the video you can vividly see that hate is instilled on the banners "no more wetbacks." If you are a so-called Christian-American, why do you portray hate? Day labors have to work twice as hard to find a job, but it is racist to insinuate that day labors are undocumented! BorderWatch members should be volunteering to do GOOD things, like clean the community park, volunteer at the local hospital, but that is not positive action -- lets just intimidate the Latinos -- what better can they do...

See for yourself the type of language being used in today's close-minded hate groups.

This reminded me of the article the Professor posted below -- about the American Renaissance Conference --

http://www.startecproductions.com/DLP.htm

I Love This Country: Immigration in Ireland

George-Jordan Dimbo (photo: Kieran Dodds for The New York Times)

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February 25, 2008
New York Times

Border Crossings

Born Irish, but With Illegal Parents

By JASON DePARLE

DUBLIN — Cork-born and proud of it, George-Jordan Dimbo is top to toe the Irish lad. He studies Gaelic, eats rashers, plays hurling, prays to the saints, papers his walls with parochial school awards, and spends Saturdays at the telly watching Dustin the Turkey, a wisecracking puppet, mock the powerful.

If the Irish government has its way, he may soon be living in Africa.

George, 11, is an Irish citizen and has been since his birth when Ireland, alone in Europe, still gave citizenship to anyone born on its soil. His mother and father, Ifedinma and Ethelbert Dimbo, are illegal immigrants from Nigeria, who brought him back to Ireland three years ago, judging it the best place to raise him.

Since then, the unusual trio — the Irish schoolboy and his African parents — have shared a single room in a worn Dublin hostel while facing a prospect dreaded by children on both sides of the Atlantic, a parent’s deportation.

“Dear justice minister,” George wrote when he was 9. “I heard my Mommy and Daddy whispering about deportation. Please do not deport us.”

“Remember,” he added, “I am also an Irish child.”

Thousands of Irish children face similar risks, living in a country where one or both parents do not legally reside. Their stories find abundant parallels in the United States, where an estimated five million children — including three million American citizens — have parents who are illegal immigrants. New efforts to catch them make fear of deportation a growing factor in American life, the flip side of generous laws that make infants instant citizens.

The battle over the “I.B.C.’s” — Irish-born children — stems from a decade of head-turning change that has brought this island of red-haired Marys and blue-eyed Seans the demographic version of an extreme makeover.

For centuries, Ireland was a racially homogenous land of emigrants. Now it is a multicultural nation of immigrants, whose share of the population, 11 percent, is nearly as high as that in the United States.

Years of Irish prosperity have drawn Polish plumbers, Lithuanian nannies, Latvian farm workers, Filipino nurses, Chinese traders, and sub-Saharan asylum seekers. The town of Portlaoise, about 40 miles southwest of Dublin, has the country’s first African-born mayor. The Synge Street School, where George Dimbo says his Hail Marys beneath a plaster Virgin, is walking distance from the city’s first mosque and rents classroom space to two Chinese academies.

“I went to bed in one country and woke up in a different one,” writes the Irish novelist, Roddy Doyle, in a collection of short stories called “The Deportees” (Viking, 2007). They depict characters as diverse as an African war survivor on his first day of class, and Fat Gandhi, a gay tandoori vendor who “quickly realized that his loud embrace of Christianity was very good for business.”

The Dimbos are the kind of memorable figures who might have tumbled from Mr. Doyle’s pages. A former graduate student in Cork, Ms. Dimbo, 42, wore a Yoruba headdress to a recent parent-student event, and has just written a feminist novel about a migrant prostitute. Mr. Dimbo, 43, releases his frustrations with a daily run through the Dublin streets, and George is so unusually courteous that his sixth-grade teacher thought he was “taking the mickey”—Irish for pulling his leg.

“He’s the most mannerly child I’ve taught in years,” said the teacher, Brendan O’Boyle. “He’s very, very good, very upright, very honest.”

“He’s one of the best guys we’ve ever had,” said last year’s teacher, Gerard Mooney.

Not long after George arrived, a classmate told him that he disliked black people.

“But I’m black,” George recalls answering.

“No,” the boy said. “You’re Irish.”

So Far, Little Conflict

Ireland’s dash to diversity has so far provoked little of the conflict found elsewhere in Europe or the United States. There are no major anti-immigrant political parties and little anti-immigrant violence. When a Dublin high school student, Olukunle Elukanlo, was deported to Nigeria in 2005, his protesting classmates won his return.

Government officials here often credit Irish history for the tolerance. “There’s an emotional sense of understanding about what immigrants are going through because of our experience as immigrants,” said Conor Lenihan, the minister of integration.

But others see undercurrents of racial unease that could boil into conflict, especially if hard times return. “In Irish literature there’s a big fear of the returned immigrant who brings all sorts of chaos with him,” said Mary Gilmartin, a geographer at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. “Many people here feel threatened.”

As recently as the 1980s, young Irish were fleeing unemployment in droves, many to work illegally in the United States. By the late 1990s, an economic boom called the Celtic Tiger was luring them home, along with droves of foreign construction workers, farm hands, waitresses and nannies. A wave of asylum seekers joined them, many from Africa.

Some had escaped harrowing wars or genital mutilation. But officials grew skeptical of their claims as their numbers surged to about 12,000 in 2002 from a trickle a decade before.

Ireland not only offered citizenship to children born upon arrival; until 2003 it also allowed their illegal-immigrant parents to stay, a shortcut many asylum seekers used to win residency. Word got out: with a visa to Britain, a pregnant woman could reach Northern Ireland, take a cab across the border, and gain residency by giving birth.

Ms. Gilmartin argues that reports of abuse were exaggerated. But a 2004 referendum changed the rules, reserving citizenship for the children of longtime legal residents. It passed with nearly 80 percent of the vote.

By then, Ireland had about 18,000 mixed families of Irish children and illegal-immigrant parents. Wary of the costs of large-scale deportation, the government ran a one-time legalization program that gave residency to about 95 percent of those parents. The Dimbos were among the 1,000 or so families whose cases were rejected, and they have appealed to the Supreme Court.

Their situation, like that of millions in the United States, pits competing interests: those of children (to live in their country with their parents) against those of states (to enforce borders for the perceived common good).

Odyssey to Ireland

Ms. Dimbo first came to Ireland legally, to get a master’s degree in sociology in 1995. She was recently married, two months pregnant, and unaware, she said, that Irish law would make George a citizen. She gained legal residency through his citizenship, but they returned to Nigeria when George was 2 to join his father, who ran an import business.

With Ms. Dimbo working as a bank manager in Lagos, the family lived comfortably, but came back to Ireland twice, believing each time that George’s citizenship and their past residence gave them the right to stay. The most recent time was in 2005, to apply for the legalization program, not realizing, they said, that it only covered families who had remained in Ireland, which disqualified them.

With their savings gone, they have spent nearly three years in a government “accommodation center” — a dormitory where they share one room, line up for meals, and are barred from working.

“You feel like you’re a prisoner,” said Mr. Dimbo, a proud man dismayed by his forced dependency. “If we had known our lives would be like this, we never would have come.”

George said if his parents left, he would go with them — “every child needs his parents” — and wrote the justice minister to convey his fears. “I am very worried,” he wrote.

Gathered at another accommodation center, an hour outside Dublin in Mosney, many parents said their fears of deportation had begun to affect their children.

“My daughter knows I’m depressed,” said a single mother from Nigeria, who declined to be identified for fear of harming her case. “She goes, ‘Did I do anything wrong?’ ” Another single mother said, “I’m afraid I’m going to hurt my child.”

Other complaints come from men sneaking into Ireland, to join their children and wives who got residency through the legalization program. To avoid new waves of migration, the program gave no right to family reunification. “Unless we control the flows of people, public attitudes will turn against the whole process of immigration,” said Mr. Lenihan, the government minister.

But in denying children their fathers, the men say, the government may create the kind of immigrant underclass that plagues other parts of Europe.

“Our children are going to be growing up angry,” said one of four illegal-immigrant fathers from Nigeria who met with a reporter in Balbriggan, a Dublin suburb.

Another father blamed race. “If our kids were really Irish to them, they would not say, ‘Take the fathers away,’ ” he said.

At the same time, many of those facing deportation marvel at Ireland’s virtues, including the freedom to protest without getting shot and ambulances that come when summoned. When Lynda Onuoha joined Mosney mothers to demonstrate outside Parliament, they waved Irish flags. “We wanted people passing by to see that even though our kids are black, they are Irish by nationality, and we want to make a home here,” she said.

Even after tightening its rules, Ireland remains more generous than most of its European peers. The United States is the rare country that gives immediate citizenship to the children born inside its borders, whether their immigrant parents are legal residents or not. A 2007 bill to end the practice, which stems from the 14th Amendment, drew nearly 100 Congressional co-sponsors, though legal scholars have traditionally argued that a change would require a constitutional amendment.

Fear for U.S. Children

Deportations in the United States have been rare, but with enforcement on the rise, migrant groups warn of a new generation of American children haunted by fear. Border control advocates respond that the parents have only themselves to blame, for migrating illegally.

At times, Ms. Dimbo says the same. “To come here without papers, we are wrong,” she said. “We are cap in hand, saying for George’s sake, let us forgive and forget.” Adding her own note of Irish chauvinism, she said it was only when she got to Donegal that she appreciated the phrase “deep, blue sea.”

Mr. Dimbo added, “I love this country.”

George has spent 6 of his 11 years in Ireland, including most of his school years. What he recalls of Nigeria is mostly the heat and the corporal punishment in school. Asked if he feels more Irish or Nigerian, he answered politely in a Dublin lilt.

“I think I feel more Irish,” he said. “For one, because I am Irish.”

for link to NYT article click the title of this post

From the OTHER wall

Photograph: Suhaib Salem/Reuters. Palestinian children take part in a human chain protest, near the Erez crossing, against the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.



Gazans form human chain along Israeli border in protest at blockade

Mark Tran and agencies
The Guardian - London
Monday February 25 2008

Palestinians today formed a human chain in protest at Israel's blockade of Gaza as Israel deployed thousands of troops and police officers along the border.

About 5,000 people, many of them women, schoolchildren and university students, joined the chain outside the town of Beit Hanoun, about four miles from the border.

The crowd hoisted banners in English and Arabic, saying "End the siege of Gaza now", and "Your siege will not break our will".

One of the organisers, an independent MP, Jamal al-Khoudary, said the protesters did not plan violent action. "This is a peaceful event aimed to send a message to the world that the people of Gaza want to live in freedom," he said.

Organisers had hoped to form a chain running the length of the 25-mile Gaza strip, but turnout was well below expectations.

After the protest some 2,000 Hamas loyalists marched to a checkpoint several kilometres away from Erez. However, Hamas police blocked the main road leading to the Erez checkpoint and called on loyalists to obey the law.

Hamas organised the event to protest at chronic shortages of vital supplies in Gaza because of Israeli restrictions. The group said the event would be peaceful and marchers would not reach the border.

Israel took no chances and deployed troops and police to prevent any repeat of scenes that occurred recently at the Gaza-Egypt border.

"I hope that, ultimately, they understand that we are deployed and ready, that this will not be a repeat of what happened in the Philadelphi Corridor (Egypt border) a few weeks back," the deputy defence minister, Matan Vilnai, told Israel Radio.

Hamas blew open Gaza's border wall with Egypt last month, allowing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to cross into Egypt and stock up with food, petrol and other basic necessities. But Israel voiced fears the flood of people included Islamist militants intent on carrying out attacks, and Egyptian security forces rounded up hundreds of suspects.

"We don't plan to fool around in this regard," Vilnai said. "We will use measures in the way we deem necessary to prevent people breaking into the state of Israel's territory."

Israeli radio and TV stations devoted their morning news coverage to the event, warning of a mass exodus of Gazans.

"It's absolutely clear that among them will be people with explosive charges, there will be those among them who will be ready at any moment to blow up the border fence," an ultra-nationalist MP, Effie Eitam, told Israel Radio, reflecting a widespread sense of alarm.

"Suddenly there will be a big hole in the fence somewhere, there will be explosions, injured soldiers and the mob will stream into our territory. If that happens it will be the end of the state of Israel."

Last month, Israel tightened the blockade on Gaza, home to 1.5 million Palestinians, limiting supplies of fuel and other goods in response to cross-border rocket fire by militants.

Militants say the attacks are in response to Israeli raids and would stop if Israel lifted Gaza's blockade. Hamas is treated as a political pariah by Israel and the west for not recognising Israel. It has, however, offered Israel a conditional, long-term ceasefire.

Some Palestinians have advocated a strategy of non-violent resistance to Israel similar to the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and the worldwide impact of Gazans rushing into Egypt appears to have prompted Hamas to try and replicate such tactics on Gaza's border with Israel.

for link to Guardian article click the title of this post

The American Renaissance of White Racial Preservation

The American Renaissance Conference was held this weekend at a hotel near Dulles Airport just outside of Washington, D.C. According to the WP those attending the conference "promote the belief for white racial preservation."

A spokesman for the group told reporters that the "theme of the conference was the intersection of immigration and race, which he said is reflected in the presidential campaign" - well at least it was reflected in the campaign until Tancredo, Guiliani and Romney left the race. So little is said about Huckabee these days, his anti-immigration rhetoric is significantly muted, at least in the media.

The "intersection of immigration and race" is made clear by the demographic changes in the U.S. currently represented by the two Democratic front runners, an African American man and a white woman. It makes sense that a group of people who deeply believe in white nationalism would be concerned enough attend a conference on racial issues. With over 12 million undocumented immigrants, millions more here with visas, and the strong possibility of a president that won't reflect those wanting "white racial preservation" -- it would not be an exaggeration to assume that these people are terrified.

Kudos to the WP for reporting on this conference (an the accompanying protest). It is very important for information of this type to circulate publicly - otherwise it remains myth.

I do not fault these white renaissance men. Everyone is entitled to finding his own answer. For those of us not in this elite group, it is good to know what people are saying about "the African mind" and the Mexican personality.


p.s. One more thing; next time someone announces that the immigration problem is not about race, I'll mention the American Renaissance Conference.


-----

Protest at a Conference on Race
Demonstrators Aiming to Disrupt Meeting Are Halted by Police

By Eric M. Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 24, 2008; C04

Fairfax County police yesterday blocked a group of protesters who sought to enter a hotel near Dulles International Airport to disrupt a conference of people who promote belief in the need for white racial preservation.

Inside the Crowne Plaza Dulles Airport Hotel in Herndon were more than 100 attendees, most of them white men, of the American Renaissance Conference. Among the seminars were "Understanding the African Mind" and "Mexico From the Inside: Who the Mexicans Are and Why They Do What They Do.'' For sale outside conference rooms were neckties decorated with Confederate emblems and books such as "Race Differences in Intelligence'' and "Zoological Subspecies of Man.''

On the sidewalk outside -- just off the Dulles Toll Road -- stood a young, racially mixed group of three dozen protesters with megaphones and drums. They carried posters decrying Nazism, racism and fascism as they tried in vain to pass a police phalanx and enter the hotel to disrupt the conference.

Police firmly but gently pushed the protesters off hotel property and into an area marked with orange cones and yellow tape in a lane of the street in front of the hotel.

The protesters were relegated to yelling across the parking lot and spitting at a person who emerged from the conference to give interviews.

The leader of the protest, Marco Del Fuego, said he was involved in a similar demonstration against an American Renaissance conference two years ago at another Dulles area hotel. He said one objective of yesterday's protest was to pressure Crowne Plaza management to avoid hosting such conferences in the future.

The conference was sponsored by the New Century Foundation, which was launched by Jared Taylor, who calls himself a "race realist." Taylor spoke with a reporter about the conference in the hotel. Taylor, who lives in the Oakton section of Fairfax County, has been described by civil rights organizations as a "white nationalist" who espouses racism.

Taylor said a theme of the conference was the intersection of immigration and race, which he said is reflected in the presidential campaign. "The country is catching up with us,'' he said.

Taylor decried the attempt to disrupt the conference.

"And they call us Nazis?" he said.

Del Fuego said the people meeting in the hotel shared philosophical ties with anti-immigrant and racist groups.

"They promote violence against people of color,'' he said. "How can I stand for that kind of speech? You cannot compromise with people like that.''

Staff writer Fredrick Kunkle contributed to this report.

for link to WP article click the title of this post

Hearing on ICE misconduct: February 25, Washington, D.C.

UFCW Hearing on ICE Misconduct

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union's National Commission on ICE Misconduct & Violations of the 4th Amendment will hold its first hearing tomorrow,

February, 25, 2008 - 12:30 pm Eastern Time
Hay Adams Hotel
800 - 16th Street, NW.
Washington D.C.


The members of the commission include Joe Hansen, President, UFCW, Dennis Hayashi, Esq., Rev. Samuel "Billy" Kyles, Maria Elena Durazao, LA County Federation of Labor, Bill Hing, Professor of Law, UC Davis, Susan Gzesh, Human Rights Progrom, Univ. of Chicago, Oscar Chacon, Salvadoran American National Network, Tom Vilsack, Former Gov. of Iowa, Mary Bauer, Southern Poverty Law Center, William Spriggs, Dept. of Economics, Howard Univ.

12:30-3:00 PUBLIC SESSION—COMMISSION HEARING

Opening Statement: UFCW President Joe Hansen
Commissioner Introductions & Statements
An Overview of ICE Enforcement Nationwide
Arnoldo Garcia, Director, Immigrant Justice & Rights Program,
National Network of Immigrant Rights

Legal Briefing on ICE Enforcement: Constitutional Framework, Detainee Rights, and Obligations of Enforcement Officials
Jeanne Butterfield, Esq, Executive Director, American Immigration
Lawyers Association

An Analysis of ICE Enforcement
Monica Guizar, Esq.
National Immigration Law Center

Protecting Workers’ Rights: The UFCW’s Response
Peter Schey, Esq.
Swift workers:
Pasqual Talamantes, Grand Island, NE
Sonia Mendoza, Cactus, TX

Concluding Remarks
UFCW President Joe Hansen


previously posted on Immigration Prof Blog

Looking at the Texas and Ohio Primaries

From the Washington Post
February 24, 2008






















for link to WP article click the title of this post

IRAQ Veterans Waiting on U.S. Citizenship

photo: CBS/AP


The following article is about immigrant soldiers returning from Iraq and waiting too long for their citizenship - which is an absolute travesty. Think of how soldiers have to face such a terrible situation there - how many return with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (and the military balking at their treatment) As long as the United States continues to neglect its promise to our immigrant soldiers can we really say we are proud of our country?


With the current situation regarding this delay - what would have happened if the DREAM Act would have passed and thousands and thousands of DREAMERS enlisted then finding the promise of citizenship might not be an honest one.

It is very likely that the DREAM ACT will pass in the next presidential administration - if so will the same problem continue?

February 24, 2008
After the War, a New Battle to Become Citizens
By FERNANDA SANTOS

Despite a 2002 promise from President Bush to put citizenship applications for immigrant members of the military on a fast track, some are finding themselves waiting months, or even years, because of bureaucratic backlogs. One, Sgt. Kendell K. Frederick of the Army, who had tried three times to file for citizenship, was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq as he returned from submitting fingerprints for his application.

About 7,200 service members or people who have been recently discharged have citizenship applications pending, but neither the Department of Defense nor Citizenship and Immigration Services keeps track of how long they have been waiting. Immigration lawyers and politicians say they have received a significant number of complaints about delays because of background checks, misplaced paperwork, confusion about deployments and other problems.

“I’ve pretty much given up on finding out where my paperwork is, what’s gone wrong, what happened to it,” said Abdool Habibullah, 27, a Guyanese immigrant who first applied for citizenship in 2005 upon returning from a tour in Iraq and was honorably discharged from the Marines as a sergeant. “If what I’ve done for this country isn’t enough for me to be a citizen, then I don’t know what is.”

The long waits are part of a broader problem plaguing the immigration service, which was flooded with 2.5 million applications for citizenship and visas last summer — twice as many as the previous year — in the face of 66 percent fee increases that took effect July 30. Officials have estimated that it will take an average of 18 months to process citizenship applications from legal immigrants through 2010, up from seven months last year.

But service members and veterans are supposed to go to the head of the line. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, President Bush signed an executive order allowing noncitizens on active duty to file for citizenship right away, instead of having to first complete three years in the military. The federal government has since taken several steps to speed up the process, including training military officers to help service members fill out forms, assigning special teams to handle the paperwork, and allowing citizenship tests, interviews and ceremonies to take place overseas.

At the same time, post-9/11 security measures, including tougher guidelines for background checks that are part of the naturalization process, have slowed things down.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which checks the names of citizenship applicants against those in its more than 86 million investigative files, has been overwhelmed, handling an average of 90,000 name-check requests a week. In the fiscal year that ended in September, the F.B.I. was asked to check 4.1 million names, at least half of them for citizenship and green card applicants, a spokesman said.

“Most soldiers clear the checks within 30 to 60 days, or 60 to 90 days,” said Leslie B. Lord, the Army’s liaison to Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency that processes citizenship applications. “But even the soldier with the cleanest of records, if he has a name that’s very similar to one that’s in the F.B.I. bad-boy and bad-girl list, things get delayed.”

Such explanations are why Mr. Habibullah has decided that once he does become a citizen — if he ever becomes a citizen — he will change his name.

“I figured that’s part of the reason things got delayed,” he said. “You know, that I have a Muslim name.”

Thousands of Muslim civilians have also found themselves waiting months or years for background checks, and have filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court in Denver. But advocates for the immigrant service members said that those with pending applications are from a variety of backgrounds and that they do not suspect a pattern of discrimination against Muslims.

Some 31,200 members of the military were sworn in as citizens between October 2002 and December 2007, according to the immigration service, but a spokeswoman, Chris Rhatigan, said she could not determine how long it took for them to be naturalized since the agency does not maintain a database tracking military cases.

Over all, 312,000 citizenship or green card applications are pending name checks, including 140,000 that have been waiting more than six months, immigration officials said. This month, immigration authorities eased background-check requirements for green cards, saying that if applicants had been waiting more than six months, they could be approved without an F.B.I. check, and approvals could be revoked later “in the unlikely event” that troubling information was found.

After hearing complaints from at least half a dozen service members over the past three months, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York has drafted a bill to create a special clearinghouse to ensure that applications from active and returning members of the military are processed quickly and smoothly. A spokesman said several other lawmakers reported hearing many similar stories.

“These are men and women who are risking their lives for us,” Mr. Schumer said in a telephone interview. “They’ve met all the requirements for citizenship, they have certainly proved their commitment to our country, and yet they could lose their lives while waiting for a bureaucratic snafu to untangle.”

In interviews, immigration lawyers and military officials said that in general, the naturalization process takes service members between six months and a year, which is about half the current average wait for civilians. But some cases drag on much longer because of background-check delays or because applications are misplaced, or notices are mailed to stateside addresses after an applicant has been deployed, causing appointments to be missed.

“You try to resolve these things amicably, reaching out to the military, reaching out to immigration officials, but you hit roadblock after roadblock,” said David E. Piver, a Pennsylvania lawyer who filed at least six petitions in federal court over the past five years on behalf of service members experiencing longer than usual delays on their citizenship applications.

“It’s usually not any substantive issue that’s causing those delays,” he said. “What it boils down to are bureaucratic snafus.”

Feyad Mohammed, an immigrant from Trinidad and Tobago who lives with his parents in Richmond Hill, Queens, was naturalized last month — four years after he filed the first of four citizenship applications, and six months after his honorable discharge from the Army as a sergeant.

Mr. Mohammed first applied in 2004, after he returned from the first of his two tours in Iraq. But the application seemed to have been lost; when he checked after a few months, he said, no one at the immigration service could tell him where it was or even if it had been received. He filed again in 2005, but missed his interview several months later; it had been scheduled in Iraq, during his second combat tour, but he was home on leave on the appointed day.

After he was discharged in July 2007, Mr. Mohammed filed another application. The paperwork was returned because he had not included a check covering the processing fee, he said, ignoring a Bush administration initiative that exempts combat veterans from application fees for up to a year after discharge. It was then that Mr. Mohammed reached out to Senator Schumer’s office, which helped him file a fourth, and final, time.

When he was sworn in Jan. 25 at the federal courthouse in Downtown Brooklyn, Mr. Mohammed said, he felt “relieved.”

“I was a citizen,” he said. “I could finally move on with my life.”

But Sergeant Frederick, a 21-year-old immigrant from Trinidad, would be awarded citizenship only posthumously, on the day of his burial. He is one of more than 90 immigrant service members to be naturalized after losing their lives in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Sergeant Frederick’s mother, Michelle Murphy, said that he had filed his citizenship application a year before he was deployed to Iraq in 2005, but that his application was sent back to her Maryland home three times — once because of incomplete biographical information, again because he had left a box unchecked, and once more because he had not paid the fee.

Finally, Ms. Murphy said, Sergeant Frederick received a letter saying that the fingerprints he had included with his application could not be read and that he needed to submit new ones. She contacted immigration officials, who arranged for him to submit a new set of fingerprints on Oct. 19, 2005, near his base in Tikrit. On the way back from the appointment, his convoy hit a roadside bomb.

“If somebody is fighting for a country, if he’s deployed, if he’s in the middle of a war, it shouldn’t be that hard for them to become a citizen,” Ms. Murphy, 42, said in a telephone interview.

After his death, the immigration service began accepting enlistment fingerprints with service members’ citizenship applications, provided applicants authorized the military to share their files with immigration officials. A bill to make such sharing automatic has been passed by the House and is pending a final Senate vote.

In the meantime, Mr. Habibullah is working as an aircraft hydraulics mechanic in Connecticut, though he hopes to get a better-paying job in the federal government once he is naturalized. In October, Mr. Habibullah’s father and grandmother became citizens in separate ceremonies, though they applied fully two years after he did.

Mr. Habibullah has passed the citizenship test and been interviewed, and he said he does not know what to do to move his application through the backlog faster.

“Every time I ask about it, I get the same answer: it’s pending the background check,” Mr. Habibullah said as he looked over his military medals, which are displayed on a wall in the Mount Vernon, N.Y., apartment he shares with his wife and 1-month-old son. “I’m at the point right now that I’ve almost given up on it.”



Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

for link to NYT article, click the title of this post


photo: http://wwwimage.cbsnews.com/images/2003/07/03/image561669x.jpg

Riot at Immigrant Detention Center in Mexico

Migrants traveling to the U.S. by crossing Mexico in trains
AP photo, from La Jornada




"A group of 159 undocumented immigrants held in a center meant for only 89 in Villahermosa, Tabasco (Mexico) rioted in the early morning hours of Friday, Feb. 22. Seven were able to escape. They were being held at the Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM). Most were from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The riot was reported due to insufficient space. Protestors demanded they be immediately returned to their countries of origin."




-----

Migrantes centroamericanos, víctimas del hacinamiento
Motín de indocumentados en instalación del INM en Tabasco
LA Jornada - Mexico City

René Alberto López (Corresponsal)

Villahermosa, Tab., 22 de febrero. Un grupo de 159 indocumentados que estaban detenidos en un espacio diseñado para 80 personas en las instalaciones del Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM), en el municipio tabasqueño de Tenosique, se amotinaron en las primeras horas del viernes. Se estima que al menos siete de de ellos lograron huir y se pidió el apoyo de la Policía Federal Preventiva (PFP) para controlarlos, según reportó un noticiario de la radio local.

La protesta de los indocumentados ocurrió en este municipio ubicado en la frontera con Guatemala, a unos 200 kilómetros de Villahermosa. Al parecer el descontento se inició porque estaban hacinados en un espacio insuficiente y exigían que se les deportara inmediatamente a sus lugares de origen.

El número de migrantes fue aumentando en el transcurso de la semana. Estaban confinados en una garita y los autobuses que los trasladarían no llegaban, la situación se complicó y según emisoras de radio locales, comenzaron a quemar colchones y colchonetas. Sin embargo, el portal electrónico Noticias sin Fronteras de ese municipio aseguró que fue un hecho accidental, porque la colilla de un cigarro provocó el incendio de un solo colchón.

Las autoridades del INM pidieron el apoyo de la PFP, cuyos elementos sometieron a los inconformes y apoyados por efectivos del Ejército instrumentaron un operativo en la zona fronteriza para tratar de localizar a quienes lograron evadirse.

De acuerdo con el portal Noticias sin Fronteras, los indocumentados denunciaron que están en una situación de crisis en el área de aseguramiento del INM, y que debido a la saturación, uno de ellos, accidentalmente, prendió un colchón con la colilla de un cigarro. El lugar se llenó de humo y empezaron a gritar, exigiendo salir del área hacia la parte trasera de las instalaciones, donde algunos de los que sufrieron intoxicación fueron atendidos por paramédicos de la Cruz Roja.

Agrega el portal que entre ellos estaban siete cubanos y seis brasileños, los restantes eran de El Salvador, Guatemala y Honduras. La misma fuente detalló que entre la noche del viernes y la madrugada del sábado se repatriaría a los migrantes a sus lugares de origen.

Este viernes arribaron a Tenosique defensores de los derechos humanos, así como personal diplomático del consulado guatemalteco con sede en la frontera sur para vigilar que no se violen las garantías individuales de los indocumentados.

La delegación de la Procuraduría General de la República en la entidad informó que agentes de la PFP detuvieron a un presunto traficante de personas, quien transportaba a tres nicaragüenses indocumentados, a la altura del kilómetro 041+300 de la carretera Cárdenas-Coatzacoalcos.

for link to Jornada article click the title of this post

Undocumented immigrants can't drive - but they really do pay taxes

Texas Observer cartoon




As I was looking around the web for an image that would help emphasize the post on the border wall I found this cartoon about immigration - which reminded me of Obama's statement during the Texas presidential debate on February 22nd. As he said he supported immigration reform - he also stressed that securing the borders was a must -- then he went down a list of what immigrants had to do to regularize -- pay big fines, learn English, etc etc.

Lets hope that Obama includes the driver's license so people can get to their English classes. Having a license would also help people make it to the immigration office so they can pay their fines for being undocumented...

Lastly, thank goodness they won't need a car to get to the IRS to pay back taxes, they won't have to make the trip because most of them had taxes taken out of their pay checks -- you may not know this but most undocumented immigrants work for registered companies or corporations ... who have them on the payroll (a very few percentage wait outside of Home Deport waiting for potential employers).. You may argue that these type of jobs don't count because undocumented people use a social security card with the wrong name... but this doesn't matter! The IRS will accept money from you no matter what name you use. Just ask any undocumented immigrant who has recently obtained a green card...

cartoon: http://www.texasobserver.org/archives/zro_071116/images/danziger-immigration.jpg

The Border Wall and Selective Fencing: Part II

construction of wall between Texas and Mexico
photo from notexasborderwall.com



continued

The Observer called Homeland Security in Washington to find out how it had decided where to build the fence. The voice mail system sputtered through a dizzying array of acronyms: DOJ, USACE, CBP, and USCIS. On the second call a media spokesperson with a weary voice directed queries to Michael Friel, the fence spokesman for Customs and Border Protection. Six calls and two e-mails later, Friel responded with a curt e-mail: “Got your message. Working on answers…” it said. Days passed, and Friel’s answers never came.

Since Homeland Security wasn’t providing answers, perhaps Congress would. Phone conversations with congressional offices ranged from “but they aren’t even building a wall” to “I don’t know. That’s a good question.” At the sixth congressional office contacted, a GOP staffer who asked not to be identified, but who is familiar with the fence, says the fencing locations stemmed from statistics showing high apprehension and narcotic seizure rates. This seems questionable, since maps released by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers showed the wall going through such properties as the University of Texas at Brownsville—hardly a hotbed for drug smugglers and immigrant trafficking.

Questioned more about where the data came from, the staffer said she would enquire further. The next day she called back. “The border fence is being handled by Greg Giddens at the Secure Border Initiative Office within the U.S. Customs and Border Protection office,” she said.

Giddens is executive director of the SBI, as it is called, which is in charge of SBInet, a consortium of private contractors led by Boeing Co. The group received a multibillion dollar contract in 2006 to secure the northern and southern borders with a network of vehicle barriers, fencing, and surveillance systems. Companies Boeing chose to secure the southern border from terrorists include DRS Technologies Inc., Kollsman Inc., L-3 Communications Inc., Perot Systems Corp., and a unit of Unisys Corp.

A February 2007 audit by the U.S. Government Accountability Office cited Homeland Security and the SBInet project for poor fiscal oversight and a lack of demonstrable objectives. The GAO audit team recommended that Homeland Security place a spending limit on the Boeing contract for SBInet since the company had been awarded an “indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract for 3 years with three 1-year options.”

The agency rejected the auditors’ recommendation, saying 6,000 miles of border is limitation enough.

In a February 2007 hearing, Congressman Henry Waxman, a California Democrat and the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, had more scathing remarks for Giddens and the SBInet project. “As of December, the Department of Homeland Security had hired a staff of 98 to oversee the new SBInet contract. This may seem like progress until you ask who these overseers are. More than half are private contractors. Some of these private contractors even work for companies that are business partners of Boeing, the company they are supposed to be overseeing. And from what we are now learning from the department, this may be just the tip of the iceberg.”

Waxman said of SBInet that “virtually every detail is being outsourced from the government to private contractors. The government is relying on private contractors to design the programs, build them, and even conduct oversight over them.”

A phone call to Giddens at SBI is referred to Loren Flossman, who’s in charge of tactical infrastructure for the office. Flossman says all data regarding the placement of the fence is classified because “you don’t want to tell the very people you’re trying to keep from coming across the methodology used to deter them.”

Flossman also calls the University of Texas at Brownsville campus a problem area for illegal immigration. “I wouldn’t assume that these are folks that aren’t intelligent enough that if they dress a certain way, they’re gonna fit in,” he says.

Chief John Cardoza, head of the UT-Brownsville police, says the Border Patrol would have to advise his police force of any immigrant smuggling or narcotic seizures that happen on campus. “If it’s happening on my campus, I’m not being told about it,” he says. Cardoza says he has never come across illegal immigrants dressed as students.

Flossman goes on to say that Boeing isn’t building the fence, but is providing steel for it. Eric Mazzacone, a spokesman for Boeing, refers the Observer to Michael Friel at Customs and Border Protection, and intercedes to get him on the phone. Friel confirms that Boeing has just finished building a 30-mile stretch of fence in Arizona, but insists other questions be submitted in writing.

Boeing, a multibillion dollar aero-defense company, is the second-largest defense contractor in the nation. The company has powerful board members, such as William M. Daley, former U.S. secretary of commerce; retired Gen. James L. Jones, former supreme allied commander in Europe; and Kenneth M. Duberstein, a former White House chief of staff. The corporation is also one of the biggest political contributors in Washington, giving more than $9 million to Democratic and Republican members of Congress in the last decade. In 2006, the year the Secure Fence Act was passed, Boeing gave more than $1.4 million to Democrats and Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

A majority of this money has gone to legislators such as Congressman Duncan Hunter, the California Republican who championed the Secure Fence Act. In 2006, Hunter received at least $10,000 from Boeing and more than $93,000 from defense companies bidding for the SBInet contract, according to the center. During his failed bid this year for the White House, Hunter made illegal immigration and building a border fence the major themes of his campaign.

In early February 2008, Chertoff asked Congress for $12 billion for border security. He included $775 million for the SBInet program, despite the fact that congressional leaders still can’t get straight answers from Homeland Security about the program. As recently as January 31, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee members sent a letter to Chertoff asking for “greater clarity on [the Customs and Border Protection office’s] operational objectives for SBInet and the projected milestones and anticipated costs for the project.” They have yet to receive a response.

Boeing continues to hire companies for the SBInet project. And the congressional districts of backers of the border fence continue to benefit. A recent Long Island Business News article trumpeted the success of Telephonics Corp., a local business, in Congressman King’s congressional district that won a $14.5 million bid to provide a mobile surveillance system under SBInet to protect the southern border.

While Garza and Tamez wait for answers, they say they are being asked to sacrifice something that can’t be replaced by money. They are giving up their land, their homes, their heritage, and the few remaining acres left to them that they hoped to pass on to their children and grandchildren.

“I am an old man. I have colon cancer, and I am 76 years old,” Garza says, resting against a tree in front of his home. “All I do is worry about whether they will take my home. My wife keeps asking me, ‘What are we going to do?’”

Besides these personal tragedies, Eagle Pass Mayor Foster says there is another tragedy in store for the American taxpayer. A 2006 congressional report estimates the cost of maintaining and building the fence could be as much as $49 billion over its expected 25-year life span.

“They are just going to push this problem on the next administration, and nobody is going to talk about immigration reform, and that’s the illness,” Foster says. “The wall is a Band-Aid on the problem. And to blow $49 billion and not walk away with a secure border—that’s a travesty.”

for link to complete Texas Observer article, click the title of this post

The Border Wall and Selective Fencing: Part I

The Isreali - Palestinian wall under construction (is there a similarity between this wall and the one being constructed between Texas and Mexico?)




The inequity of our new Border Fence was highlighted by the Texas Observer. Two examples of the unfair and unethical policies of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security emerges as the fence is being built (or not built) in south Texas.

'"While the border wall will go through her backyard and effectively destroy her home, it will stop at the edge of the River Bend Resort and golf course, a popular Winter Texan retreat two miles down the road. The wall starts up again on the other side of the resort.

“It has a golf course and all of the amenities,” Tamez says. “There are no plans to build a wall there. If the wall is so important for security, then why are we skipping parts?”

...In early February 2008, Chertoff asked Congress for $12 billion for border security. He included $775 million for the SBInet program, despite the fact that congressional leaders still can’t get straight answers from Homeland Security about the program. As recently as January 31, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee members sent a letter to Chertoff asking for “greater clarity on [the Customs and Border Protection office’s] operational objectives for SBInet and the projected milestones and anticipated costs for the project.” They have yet to receive a response.'


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The Texas Observer
Holes in the Wall
Homeland Security won’t say why the border wall is bypassing the wealthy and politically connected.
Melissa del Bosque | February 22, 2008 |


As the U.S. Department of Homeland Security marches down the Texas border serving condemnation lawsuits to frightened landowners, Brownsville resident Eloisa Tamez, 72, has one simple question. She would like to know why her land is being targeted for destruction by a border wall, while a nearby golf course and resort remain untouched.

Tamez, a nursing director at the University of Texas at Brownsville, is one of the last of the Spanish land grant heirs in Cameron County. Her ancestors once owned 12,000 acres. In the 1930s, the federal government took more than half of her inherited land, without paying a cent, to build flood levees.

Now Homeland Security wants to put an 18-foot steel and concrete wall through what remainsWhile the border wall will go through her backyard and effectively destroy her home, it will stop at the edge of the River Bend Resort and golf course, a popular Winter Texan retreat two miles down the road. The wall starts up again on the other side of the resort.

“It has a golf course and all of the amenities,” Tamez says. “There are no plans to build a wall there. If the wall is so important for security, then why are we skipping parts?..”

Along the border, preliminary plans for fencing seem to target landowners of modest means and cities and public institutions such as the University of Texas at Brownsville, which rely on the federal government to pay their bills.

A visit to the River Bend Resort in late January reveals row after row of RVs and trailers with license plates from chilly northern U.S. states and Canadian provinces. At the edge of a lush, green golf course, a Winter Texan from Canada enjoys the mild, South Texas winter and the landscaped ponds, where white egrets pause to contemplate golf carts whizzing past. The woman, who declines to give her name, recounts that illegal immigrants had crossed the golf course once while she was teeing off. They were promptly detained by Border Patrol agents, she says, adding that agents often park their SUVs at the edge of the golf course.

River Bend Resort is owned by John Allburg, who incorporated the business in 1983 as River Bend Resort, Inc. Allburg refused to comment for this article. A scan of the Federal Election Commission and Texas Ethics Commission databases did not find any political contributions linked to Allburg.

Just 69 miles north, Daniel Garza, 76, faces a similar situation with a neighbor who has political connections that reach the White House. In the small town of Granjeno, population 313, Garza points to a field across the street where a segment of the proposed 18-foot high border wall would abruptly end after passing through his brick home and a small, yellow house he gave his son. “All that land over there is owned by the Hunts,” he says, waving a hand toward the horizon. “The wall doesn’t go there.”

In this area everyone knows the Hunts. Dallas billionaire Ray L. Hunt and his relatives are one of the wealthiest oil and gas dynasties in the world. Hunt, a close friend of President George W. Bush, recently donated $35 million to Southern Methodist University to help build Bush’s presidential library. In 2001, Bush made him a member of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, where Hunt received a security clearance and access to classified intelligence.

Over the years, Hunt has transformed his 6,000-acre property, called the Sharyland Plantation, from acres of onions and vegetables into swathes of exclusive, gated communities where houses sell from $650,000 to $1 million and residents enjoy golf courses, elementary schools, and a sports park. The plantation contains an 1,800-acre business park and Sharyland Utilities, run by Hunt’s son Hunter, which delivers electricity to plantation residents and Mexican factories.

The development’s Web site touts its proximity to the international border and the new Anzalduas International Bridge now under construction, built on land Hunt donated. Hunt has also formed Hunt Mexico with a wealthy Mexican business partner to develop both sides of the border into a lucrative trade corridor the size of Manhattan.

Jeanne Phillips, a spokesperson for Hunt Consolidated Inc., says that since the company is private, it doesn’t have to identify the Mexican partner. Phillips says, however, that no one from the company has been directly involved in siting the fence. “We, like other citizens in the Valley, have waited for the federal government to designate the location of the wall,” she says.

Garza stands in front of his modest brick home, which he built for his retirement after 50 years as a migrant farmworker. For the past five months, he has stayed awake nights trying to find a way to stop the gears of bureaucracy from grinding over his home.

A February 8 announcement by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the agency would settle for building the fence atop the levee behind Garza’s house instead of through it, which has given Garza some hope. Like Tamez, he wonders why his home and small town were targeted by Homeland Security in the first place.

“I don’t see why they have to destroy my home, my land, and let the wall end there.” He points across the street to Hunt’s land. “How will that stop illegal immigration?”

Most border residents couldn’t believe the fence would ever be built through their homes and communities. They expected it to run along the banks of the Rio Grande, not north of the flood levees—in some cases like Tamez’s, as far as a mile north of the river. So it came as a shock last summer when residents were approached by uniformed Border Patrol agents. They asked people to sign waivers allowing Homeland Security to survey their properties for construction of the wall. When they declined, Homeland Security filed condemnation suits.

In time, local landowners realized that the fence’s location had everything to do with politics and private profit, and nothing to do with stopping illegal immigration.

In 2006, Congress passed the Secure Fence Act, authored by Republican Congressman Peter King from New York. The legislation mandated that 700 miles of double-fencing be built along the southern border from California to Texas. The bill detailed where the fencing, or, as many people along the border call it, “the wall,” would be built. After a year of inflamed rhetoric about the plague of illegal immigration and Congress’s failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform, the bill passed with overwhelming support from Republicans and a few Democrats. All the Texas border members of the U.S. House of Representatives, except San Antonio Republican Henry Bonilla, voted against it. Texas Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn voted for the bill.

On August 10, 2007, Chertoff announced his agency would scale back the initial 700 miles of fencing to 370 miles, to be built in segments across the southern border. Chertoff cited budget shortages and technological difficulties as justifications for not complying with the bill.

How did his agency decide where to build the segments? Chad Foster, the mayor of Eagle Pass, says he thought it was a simple enough question and that the answer would be based on data and facts. Foster chairs the Texas Border Coalition. TBC, as Foster calls it, is a group of border mayors and business leaders who have repeatedly traveled to Washington for the past 18 months to try to get federal officials to listen to them.

Foster says he has never received any logical answers from Homeland Security as to why certain areas in his city had been targeted for fencing over other areas. “I puzzled a while over why the fence would bypass the industrial park and go through the city park,” he says.

Despite terse meetings with Chertoff, Foster and other coalition members say the conversation has been one-sided.

“I think we have a government within a government,” Foster says. “[This is] a tremendous bureaucracy—DHS is just a monster...”

for link to entire Texas Observer article click the title of this post


previously reported on Democracy Now

photo:
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://lh3.google.com/_aBTtkCbUGVY/RJ1s0MSTABI/AAAAAAAAAO8/KQejkimObsE/s800/_23_0021.jpg&imgrefurl=http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/4ohopjQ-d3Q8T6EhbYZ2gw&h=534&w=800&sz=159&hl=en&start=1&sig2=6TXIDYxvJ5Hat9b_wANr-A&um=1&tbnid=-cX0a5VKXjzHyM:&tbnh=95&tbnw=143&ei=x1HAR9aqPJmYoQSE97HvDQ&prev=/images%3Fq%3Disraeli%2Bpalestinian%2Bwall%2Bconstruction%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DG

Obama in South Texas

Obama is not as popular in south Texas as he is in other parts of the state. There haven't been overflow crowds like there were in Houston.

Some people are still saying that he is not really interested in the well being of Latinos. I am not quite sure what he has done to make people feel this way, but there is a sizable population out there that hasn't been convinced yet.

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In South Texas, Obama Focuses On Hispanic Voters

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 23, 2008; A07

CORPUS CHRISTI, Tex., Feb. 22 -- Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) campaigned through heavily Hispanic South Texas on Friday, attempting to make inroads into one of the most important constituencies in the state's key March 4 primary.

In previous primaries and caucuses, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) has consistently won the Hispanic vote, and Texas will show whether Obama's post-Super Tuesday winning streak has increased his appeal among a bloc of voters essential to the Democrats' hopes of winning the White House in November.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll this week showed Clinton and Obama running even overall in Texas. But Clinton led Obama 59 percent to 36 percent among likely Latino voters, who will make up one-third or more of the Democratic primary electorate.

Obama is a stranger in South Texas, compared with Clinton, who has been coming to the region for three decades, first to help register voters in the 1972 presidential campaign, later to help her husband, former president Bill Clinton, in his 1992 and 1996 campaigns. He tapped her Texas network to raise money for her two Senate campaigns. She also got a head start on Obama for the primary here, opening her Texas campaign on the night she was losing primaries in Maryland, Virginia and the District with a rally in El Paso and the next day a series of stops in South Texas.

Obama brought his standard themes of hope and unity to his opening events in South Texas, but also some tailor-made messages and lines aimed at wooing voters. He called for the creation of a new Veterans Administration hospital to deal with the health needs of the sizable population of military veterans in the area, who now must drive many miles to receive care. "We need a VA hospital right here in the [Rio Grande] Valley," he said. "People don't need to be driving 200 miles [for health care]."

He also talked of about changes in trade policy that would be good for both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, and he soft-pedaled his support for building a fence along the border designed to curb the flow of illegal immigrants. A fence alone, Obama said, is "not going to work" to solve the nation's immigration problems.

During a rally at the University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg, Obama offered a brown-black connection with the largely student audience with references to Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez, who organized the United Farm Workers Union in California. King, he said, had once written to Chavez to say their causes were one.

Obama also spent 45 minutes with about two dozen students from the university talking about the problems of financing the cost of college. He touted his proposal for a $4,000 annual tax credit for students, saying it would nearly wipe out the average college debt that Texas students accumulate, and, to a military veteran, said he would like the G.I. Bill updated and expanded to meet the needs of all veterans, whether from the active duty military or the National Guard and Reserves.

"Just be careful about those credit cards," he told the students toward the end. "Don't eat out so often."

Before leaving for an event in Corpus Christi, Obama appeared at the corner of the press filing center. "Crank it up, guys," he said to the reporters huddled over their laptops. "Words matter. Don't listen to Hillary." Then he added, "That's a joke."

When a reporter asked him to respond to a statement from Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the likely Republican presidential nominee, criticizing Obama on Cuba policy, Obama, saying he was not familiar with what McCain had said, quickly disappeared behind a blue curtain.

In Corpus Christi, Obama opened his rally by asking for a moment of silence for the police officer in Dallas who was killed earlier Friday while helping with traffic control for Clinton's arrival. He said the same officer had been on duty when he was in Dallas earlier in the week.

Obama found sizable crowds Friday -- an estimated 5,500 at UT-Pan American and 6,500 in Corpus Christi -- but they were smaller than he had earlier in the week in other parts of the state. He was planning to return to Austin late Friday for what aides expected would be one of his largest rallies of his campaign here.

There are six districts in South Texas where Hispanics make up more than half of the registered voters, and they will be at the heart of the competition between Clinton and Obama. Those six districts will award 22 of the 126 delegates that will be awarded through the primary on March 4. Clinton has more endorsements among Hispanic politicians in the state, but Obama has picked up the backing of some younger Hispanic politicians.

Obama advisers believe that, with more time to campaign in Texas than in some other states with large Latino populations, their candidate can improve his percentages against Clinton. "There's a familiarity gap we have to close," communications director Robert Gibbs said.

for link to Washington Post article click the title of this post

Sen. Arlen Spector: Too expensive to hold detained immigrants

There are so many thousands of immigrants currently detained in the United States, it is interesting that Specter would say "criminal aliens" (such an ugly phrase) are too expensive to hold in detention.

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The Philadelphia Inquirer

February 19, 2008 Tuesday
CITY-D Edition

Specter decries cost to hold deportable alien criminals;
He spoke at the Chester County Prison. He wants an efficient plan to send them back to their home countries.

By Michael Matza and Kathleen Brady Shea; Inquirer Staff Writers


Up to 1,000 deportable aliens are incarcerated in Pennsylvania lock-ups on any given day, costing $20 million a year - which could be saved if the offenders were efficiently expelled, U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter said yesterday during a visit to the Chester County jail to spotlight the broader national costs of illegal immigration.

While states are federally reimbursed for the cost of incarcerating undocumented immigrants, the toll ultimately is borne by all taxpayers.

"The financial burden is very substantial," Specter said yesterday at the Chester County Prison in West Chester, where he met with Warden D. Edward McFadden and officials from the Department of Homeland Security's office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

"We have an enormously serious problem at the national level," he said.

The Department of Homeland Security has estimated that in 2007, about 302,000 "removable aliens" were admitted to state and local jails.

"Most . . . incarcerated aliens are being released into the U.S. at the conclusion of their respective sentences" because of lack of federal resources, the agency said.

Specter, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been touring state facilities "to better understand the issues surrounding the identification and deportation of criminal aliens," his office said in a news release.

Earlier this month, he visited the state correctional facility at Camp Hill.

Specter said he chose Chester County for yesterday's visit because the prison has a substantial number of illegal immigrant inmates. Chester County is home to thousands of migrants who work in the mushroom industry.

The prison has an average population of about 950. Records showed 63 illegal immigrant inmates yesterday in the prison population.

McFadden said prison statistics showed that one out of 15 inmates had a charge or detainer from ICE.

Citing a 2006 report by the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general, Specter said a substantial number of aliens who have committed crimes that would make them deportable often are released rather than deported due to inadequate resources to identify and hold them.

Critics of the removal effort have called it "catch and release." ICE spokesman Michael Gilhooley said yesterday that the agency was making headway and was able to check the immigration status of "100 percent of the names" brought to its attention by local officials.

Among the difficulties Specter cited were a shortage of beds for immigrants facing removal, inaccurate recordkeeping, and problems compelling their native countries to repatriate them.

Of 774,112 illegal aliens apprehended nationwide between 2003 and 2006, 36 percent were released because of shortages in processing personnel, bed space, and the funding needed to detain them while their immigration status was adjudicated, according to the federal report.

Specter said he would like to see the secretary of state use her power to limit visas to those nations that do not readily take back convicted aliens. He also suggested withholding foreign aid from countries that were uncooperative.

Nicole Thompson, a State Department spokeswoman assigned as duty officer on President's Day, said she did not have enough information at hand to immediately comment on Specter's suggestions.

The 2006 inspector general's report, however, does make mention of a joint State Department, Homeland Security and National Security Council "Sanctions Working Group" that has put pressure on noncooperating countries to speed up the issuance of the travel documents that are needed when an alien is removed from the United States and returned to his or her native land.

The problem has persisted, especially with removals to Jamaica and certain countries in Asia.

"As a result of these barriers to removal," the report found, 14 percent of allotted detention beds were filled by illegal aliens whose countries were either slow or unwilling to issue the necessary paperwork. A recent agreement with Vietnam is expected to speed up the process regarding Vietnamese nationals.

Specter also said that district attorneys who prosecute criminal cases have the discretion to include deportation language in plea agreements with inmates who are willing to return home in exchange for shorter sentences.

University of Pennsylvania Law School professor Sarah Paoletti, director of Penn's Transnational Legal Clinic, which represents immigrants in asylum cases, said the plea-bargain idea sounds reasonable but is prone to pitfalls.

"Criminal defense attorneys aren't trained in immigration law," she said, so their clients could end up signing documents without understanding the full consequences.

Following deportation, an immigrant is ineligible to seek legal reentry to the United States for at least 10 years.

Arlen Spector talks about illegal aliens and the New England Patriots' signal-stealing scandal on video available at http://go.philly.com/specter

Contact staff writer Michael Matza at 215-854-2541 or mmatza@phillynews.com.

from Lexus Nexus Database

4oth Anniversary of 1968 Walk-Outs

I wish I could've been there 40 years ago...I watched the movie portraying the events of that era, It was very inspiring -- WALKOUT 2006 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0452703/.

I remember in high school, we wanted to walk-out because the administration didn't want to allow us to have PROM in Galveston's Moody Garden...which was out of the norm for any high school in Houston. We made our case and we got what we wanted... not so much significant like allowing Chicanos to go to college..

Young adults- Chicanos have paved the way for many and gave all Latinos an opportunity to go to college and be treated equally. I recommend the movie, check it out...but

Imagine if all immigrant students would rise to demand a path to citizenship? Educated Latinos, Asians, Middle Easterners and Europeans who have lived in the US all their lives could be able to revolutionize poor immigration reform...but only so few show this type of emotion mainly caused by wanting freedom...the rest are still unaware of their status or are living in fear.


~~~~~~~~~~

VOTE EARLY & MEET LA MAFIA!!!

& Oscar de la Rosa

Invite you to GET out TO VOTE Early

Saturday, February 23rd

10a-2p

Houston Community College Southeast Campus

6815 Rustic Houston, Texas

(I think they might be there, I'm not sure)

Obama says that our DREAM is a 'Top Priority'

Last night i watched the debate as many of us did. The Washington Post condenses the essence of the debate here.

What got me really excited however was the words of Obama:


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OBAMA: Well, this is an area where Senator Clinton and I almost entirely agree. I think that the key is to consult with local communities, whether it’s on the commercial interests or the environmental stakes of creating any kind of barrier. And the Bush administration is not real good at listening. That’s not what they do well. (LAUGHTER)

And so I will reverse that policy. As Senator Clinton indicated, there may be areas where it makes sense to have some fencing. But for the most part, having border patrolled, surveillance, deploying effective technology, that’s going to be the better approach. The one thing I do have to say, though, about this issue is, it is very important for us, I think, to deal with this problem in terms of thousands of — hundreds of thousands of people coming over the borders on a regular basis if we want to also provide opportunity for the 12 million undocumented workers who are here.

Senator Clinton and I have both campaigned in places like Iowa and Ohio and my home state of Illinois, and I think that the American people want fairness, want justice. I think they recognize that the idea that you’re going to deport 12 million people is ridiculous, that we’re not going to be devoting all our law enforcement resources… (APPLAUSE) … to sending people back.

But what they do also want is some order to the process. And so, we’re not going to be able to do these things in isolation. We’re not going to be able to deal with the 12 million people who are living in the shadows and give them a way of getting out of the shadows if we don’t also deal with the problem of this constant influx of undocumented workers.

And that’s why I think comprehensive reform is so important. That’s the kind of leadership that I’ve shown in the past; that’s the kind of leadership that I’ll show in the future.

One last point I want to make on the immigration issue because we may be moving to different topics: Something that we can do immediately that I think is very important is to pass the Dream Act, which allows children who through no fault of their own are here but have essentially grown up as Americans, allow them the opportunity for higher education.

I do not want two classes of citizens in this country. (APPLAUSE) I want everybody to prosper. That’s going to be a top priority.... (APPLAUSE)

Read entire debate here

Will Obama give us our DREAM?

Mana speaks for immigrants at Premios lo Nuestro

Last nite was the annual Premios Lo Nuestro presented in Univision. Premios lo Nuestro is the version of MTV Video Music Awards for Spanish television.

I must admit that i never really sit to watch these shows, but last night i changed the channel as Mana, the mexican rock group won artist of the year. Everything looked normal and ordinary until Fher, the singer of the band spoke for immigrant rights by saying that the United States had to recognized the need for the dignity of immigrants and the need for an immigration reform. I was shocked and was expecting Univision to cut the sound at any second. The crowd did not react much.

Mana is known for its efforts in environmental activism worldwide and for having talks with Irish band U2 in contributing musically, but i must say that last nite certainly came as a surprise.

I also found this article in Univision where Mana sympathizes with Hillary Clinton in women and immigration issues. Worth reading.

On another different note, did u guys watch the democratic debate last night? Senator Obama mentioned the need for the DREAM Act!!!

Stopping immigration raids in the new presidential administration?

Tonight, in the Texas debate between Obama and Clinton, Univision newscaster Jorge Ramos asked the two candidates if they would stop immigration raids. Neither clearly said they would stop the raids. Clinton mentioned the problem of babies left without caretakers when their mother's were detained. Obama said that protecting the borders was primary (as did Clinton) but he did not respond to Ramos' question about stopping the raids.

Some advice for both of the campaigns. If you really want the Latino vote, you need to be very clear that the raids would stop.

U.N. Human Rights chastises U.S. on record of racial discrimination

"GENEVA -- U.N. human rights experts told the United States on Thursday to step up efforts to combat racial discrimination in the detention of African-Americans and Hispanics and questioned the treatment of illegal immigrants."

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UN to US: Do More Against Racism

By ELIANE ENGELER
The Associated Press
Thursday, February 21, 2008; 4:48 PM
Washington Post

GENEVA -- U.N. human rights experts told the United States on Thursday to step up efforts to combat racial discrimination in the detention of African-Americans and Hispanics and questioned the treatment of illegal immigrants.

U.S. Ambassador Warren W. Tichenor said United States had made great strides toward equality but he conceded that "we still have significant work to do."

The United States was making its first appearance since 2001 before the experts of the U.N. panel on the elimination of racial discrimination. The 18 independent experts, who are unpaid, periodically review the performance of countries that have signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

Linos-Alexander Sicilianos, who led the questioning, said there was overwhelming evidence of police brutality against African-Americans, Arabs and Muslims, Hispanics and other minority groups.

"You need to intensify your efforts at all levels to combat this very alarming phenomenon," Sicilianos, a Greek lawyer on the panel, told the U.S. delegation.

Grace Chung Becker, a U.S. assistant attorney general, told the committee that U.S. law prohibits the use of excessive force by any law enforcement officer against any individual in the United States. The offenders can be punished under criminal law or the victims can bring a civil lawsuit, she said.

Sicilianos said he was pleased that the United States was committed to protect the rights of foreigners regardless of their immigration status, but he said there were numerous failures in living up to its commitments.

"Especially since 9/11, immigrants and refugee communities in the United States have been subjected ... to a range of systematic human rights violations directed by the federal government, local county and state governments, law enforcement agents, employers and private actors," he said.

Sicilianos said he based the accusation on evidence submitted by a large coalition of American human rights groups.

Several other experts on the panel said people of color suffer from racial profiling _ being stopped, searched and arrested by police much more than whites are.

"Especially Muslims are suffering from this, and measures are necessary to prevent this from continuing," said Kokou Mawuena Ika Kana Ewomsan, a human rights expert from Togo.

Becker noted that President Bush has said racial profiling "is wrong and we will end it in America."

"The current administration was the first to issue racial profiling guidelines for federal law enforcement officers," she added.

As one of the 173 countries which have ratified the treaty, the United States was taking its turn before the committee this week. A second session is planned for Friday. The United States has submitted a 119-page report to the panel.

for link to Washington Post article click the title of this post

Having the Dream Blues

Sometimes i feel like i should just prolong my time in school. Leaving the university will only take me to a "now what" stage. Graduate school is very feasible actually here in Texas, but the money is hard to put together if you are a DREAMER. However, in Texas it is undoubtedly easier than it is in California to attain financial help and go to school, but it is a challenge nonetheless if you are a DREAMER. I have had to take more than two semester off as well to put money together and be able to pay for school. Sometimes i also feel like i am not fully part of the whole college experience by dropping by for a couple of semester in a row and then taking some time to work and save the money.

Today i read Stephanie's story and unlike her, i have never been mad at my parents for being undocumented, I'm actually thankful to them for everything- they made a choice to come to this country because it is their job to give me and my brother a better life and they have done a wonderful job. I have become the person that i am because of them, i am stronger because of them and they are stronger because of me.

Every day we live not knowing what is going to happen, we live with the reality of the little things that remind us that we are undocumented. This country has a sure way of flicking you in the head and making you internalize fear, anger, sadness. Easy trips such as wanting to join the local gym and having them reject you for not having a state ID is quite a trip really.

I still have the dream that one day i will wake up and not be scared, sad, or upset. The day that i along with my brother and the thousands of dreamers in this country will celebrate our freedom. The day that justice will knock our door.

Struggling with noncitizen status
Hardships of being an undocumented immigrant force student to work long hours to finish school

* Jessica Chou, Daily Bruin staff
* Published: Wednesday, February 20, 2008

They finally broke the news to her after 18 years.

Stephanie Solis’ parents had hoped to hold back for as long as any secret could stay hidden, but it was only a matter of time before they had to tell the fourth-year English student the truth.

Solis was not in the United States legally.

For Solis, who only spoke English and had little recollection of her native Philippines, the notion that she wasn’t legally an American shocked her.

“I don’t feel very Filipino,” Solis said. “I’m told I’m not an American. But the only thing that still rings true to me is the English language.”

Her youth so far had been American in so many ways.

In the living room, her father listened to Rush Limbaugh. In the kitchen, her mother read Us Weekly.

Perhaps the only foreign connection to the Philippines that could have been found in her home was the homemade avocado ice cream in the freezer.

Solis felt so betrayed by her parents for having kept her immigration status from her for so long that she moved out and set out on her own.

Solis remembers sitting at a bus stop roughly a year later watching the cars go by as she waited for the bus that would take her to the train that would whisk her to a job making cardboard boxes.

Her life had become one of compromises – commuting six hours a day on public transit because she couldn’t get a driver’s license and saving up to pay for school.

By 2005, Solis started at UCLA, but because of her immigration status, paying for school was a major burden. Undocumented students are ineligible for financial aid, scholarships and many other types of financial assistance to help pay the fees.

Instead, many undocumented students are forced to pick up odd jobs to pay for their education.

Solis, like many undocumented students, has taken an unusually long time to get her degree.

“I’m in a position where I can’t consistently go to school,” she said.

Forced to take time off from work between quarters of school, Solis has been in college on and off for the last six years.

“There is that inconsistency which removes me from the standard college experience. I don’t feel like I’m integrated into it. I drop in when I can, and I visit when I can afford to for a quarter, and I’m there for 3 months, and I leave,” Solis said.

“And by the time I come back, everybody who was at the same level with me and everybody that I knew has already moved on or has graduated. There is that sense that I’m not going to college with my group – with my peer group. I’m going to college just with myself because I am my only peer group because everyone else is moving along at normal speed.”

Due to her hectic and stressful schedule, she woke up at odd hours and slept very little.

But it was the smaller realities of being undocumented – such as trouble cashing checks and getting a library card – that really got to her.

“It is the subtle things that flick me on the forehead reminding me that there is something wrong with who I am,” Solis said.

With her graduation finally imminent, Solis feels uneasy about what’s to come.

Like many undocumented college graduates, Solis will have difficulty finding a job without proof of legal residence, despite her degree from a top undergraduate program.

“The irony about that is that there is a sense of wanting to continue to prolong being in college simply because once I’m out and I have my degree, there’s nothing that I can really do with it.”

Image obtained here

Texas' Two-Step

By now, we're pretty sure you know that Texas has a 2-step process for selecting delegates on Election Day Tuesday, March 4, right?

While primary voting allocates 2/3 of the delegates to the national convention, another 1/3 of the delegates are selected at precinct caucuses that occur at your polling place at 7:15 p.m. March 4. (the # of voters will determine who gets 42 at-large delegates and 25 pledged-party and elected official delegates)

To have the maximum impact, you need to do both.

The Obama campaign has created a very detailed cheat-sheet with precint guidelines...you should contact your local field office across for more information.

Hillary on the other side is focusing on EARLY VOTING...

Turnout on March 4 is expected to set records. We strongly encourage you to vote early February 19-29. You may attend your precinct caucus even if you vote early.

PS..have you gone to OBAMAS website? its amazing!!

Pew Hispanic Center Releases Fact Sheets on Latino Electorate in Texas

2/20/08

Advisory
Pew Hispanic Center Releases Fact Sheets on Latino Electorate in Texas, Hawaii, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island

The Pew Hispanic Center today released fact sheets on the demographics of Hispanic eligible voters in the states of Texas, Hawaii, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. Each state fact sheet contains data on size and social and economic characteristics of the Hispanic and non-Hispanic eligible voter populations. These fact sheets are based on the Center's tabulations of the Census Bureau's 2006 American Community Survey.

All Hispanics in the 2008 Election fact sheets are available on the Center's website at www.pewhispanic.org

The Pew Hispanic Center, an initiative of the Pew Research Center, is a non-partisan, non-advocacy research organization based in Washington, D.C. and is funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

The Texas Stone Age voting system - 2 votes for 1

In terms of immigration issues, it is extremely important to vote this time around because Comprehensive Immigration Reform and the DREAM Act will most likely be revisited once the new presidential administration (and senate) takes office.


A grad student at UH spoke to an Obama supporter yesterday as they were standing in the "free speech zone" in front of the university library. The Obama person said that it was REALLY important to vote on March 4 because the vote counted twice... and that the voter should ask to attend the caucus meeting (even though they might be discouraged by the precinct people).

The Houston Chronicle published information on this interesting voting situation - and it reminded me of something I wrote about in my book on Fort Bend County*. From 1890 to 1954 there were two primaries in Fort Bend. African Americans and Latinos were not able to vote in the most important primary (which was held first). The regular Democratic primary was open to everyone but was held too late to make a difference. Latinos were finally given permission to vote in the 1st primary in 1937, (after women's suffrage)...and blacks were able to vote after they took the case to the Supreme Court in 1954. With the help of Thurgood Marshall, the court determined that the first primary was unfair...

Fort Bend wasn't the only county that had its special primary... many other Texas counties had the same....

In terms of civil liberties Texas has been behind many other states... this time the old system might help - if only voters are made aware that it still exists ---


-----

Lisa Falkenberg

Feb. 20, 2008, 11:18PM
COMMENTARY
Texas Dems vote twice on March 4
Kids screamed. Old men pumped their fists and chanted. And, yes, a few women swooned, including one who called out during a rare second of silence in the Democratic presidential candidate's rousing speech, "I love you, Obama!"

But rather than simply feed the frenzy and rally the rock concert that his candidacy resembles at times, the Illinois senator offered a brief but sobering civics lesson to the 19,000 who waited hours to hear him at the Toyota Center Tuesday night.

Showing up to his event isn't enough. Donating to his campaign isn't enough. Even casting a vote for him in the primary isn't enough.

A Texas Democratic voter's duty doesn't end at the polls this primary season, Obama told his supporters. Those who really want to influence the process need to show up at a Texas-style caucus held at each of the state's more than 8,000 precinct locations the evening of the March 4 primary election.

Texas Two-Step
Even though he didn't say it, that message is true for supporters of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton as well.

The number of voters who support either Clinton or Obama at the caucus will help determine which candidate eventually gets 42 at-large delegates and 25 pledged-party and elected official delegates.

The quirky two-part process has been assigned many metaphors, from the "Texas Two-Step" to "an exclamation point on your vote." And there have been a few jokes implying there's something naughty about the whole thing.

"This is the only place in one election that you can vote twice without going to jail," former President Bill Clinton told supporters Wednesday while stumping for his wife at the Galveston County Courthouse.

Stone Age system
The Democratic caucus — technically called a precinct convention — is one of many aspects of Texas' complicated, Stone Age primary-caucus system that many Texans either don't know about or forgot since it's been so long since Texas mattered in a primary.

Campaign officials with both Clinton and Obama say they're fighting for each and every delegate. But Obama, who has proven himself king of the caucuses thus far, seems to have put more emphasis on the issue in Texas.

His Web site makes references not only to getting the vote out but "getting the caucus out."

He's circulating a nifty cheat-sheet of precinct guidelines, complete with a link to a Web site with tools for wannabe precinct captains and grassroots organizers. This past weekend alone, his campaign trained 4,000 precinct captains in more than 20 Texas communities, and continued training this week, said spokesman Nick Shapiro.

"We're kind of putting the campaign into their hands," Shapiro says.

It's a comment that echoes the core message of Obama's campaign, which purports to be less about giving him the power to make change than empowering voters on the ground to aid in that pursuit.

Clinton is holding similar precinct captain training, and has reportedly opened 20 offices and enlisted 4,000 precinct captains, but her campaign indicated to me Wednesday that the former first lady's central focus right now is early voting, which began this week and lasts until Feb. 29.

Clinton acknowledged recently her limited grasp of Texas' archaic system, telling The New York Times that she had no idea how bizarre it was: "We have grown men crying over it," she said.

Every delegate counts
Michael Dukakis may have felt similarly in 1988. Although he won Texas' hotly contested statewide primary with 33 percent of the vote, my colleague R.G. Ratcliffe reported recently that Jesse Jackson's mastery of Texas' caucus rules and attention to grass-roots organization helped him split the state's delegates almost evenly.

In all, the caucuses help decide only 67 of the 228 delegates up for grabs in the Lone Star State, but with polls predicting a tight race, every delegate counts.

While Clinton is trying to overcome Obama's powerful message of change and his support among blacks in major urban areas of the state, Obama is battling Clinton loyalty among Hispanics, who were noticeably absent from the largely black crowd at Obama's Toyota Center event.

For the first time in decades, the Democratic nominee will be chosen in large part by the votes of Texans — both of them.

lisa.falkenberg@chron.com

for link to Chronicle article click the title of this post





*The case went through just before Brown vs. Board of Education. My book title is Cemeteries of Ambivalent Desire: Unearthing Deep South Narratives from a Texas Graveyard

A note about the George W. Bush Library

These kind of postings don't usually make it to dreamacttexas....but I just couldn't resist:

-----

The George W Bush Presidential Library is now in the planning stages. You'll want to be the first at your corporation to make a contribution to this great man's legacy.

The Library will include:

The Hurricane Katrina Room, which is still under construction.

The Alberto Gonzales Room, where you can't remember anything.

The Texas Air National Guard Room, where you don't have to even show up.

The Walter Reed Hospital Room, where they don't let you in.

The Guantanamo Bay Room, where they don't let you out.

The Weapons of Mass Destruction Room (which no one has been able to find).

The Iraq War Room. After you complete your first tour, they make you go back for a second, third, fourth, and sometimes fifth tour.

The Dick Cheney Room, in the famous undisclosed location, complete with shooting gallery.

Plans also include:
The K-Street Project Gift Shop - where you can buy (or just steal) an election.

The Airport Men's Room, where you can meet some of your favorite Republican Senators.

To highlight the President's accomplishments, the museum will have an electron microscope to help you locate them.

Last, but not least, there will be an entire floor devoted to a 7/8 scale model of the President's ego.

When asked, President Bush said that he didn't care so much about the individual exhibits as long as his museum was better than his father's.

-----
thank you DR

Editorial OK: Does Immigration Law Unfairly Affect State Students?

Yet another state denies affordable education opportunities to talented young undocument students, whoes DREAMS are much the same as my DREAMS - get an education, have a fulling job, give back to my community, and be a responsible citizens - "LIVE THE AMERICAN DREAM".

It is unfortunate that the 200+ students in OK have once again been told that they CAN'T go to school. Our low-income familes would never be able to afford triple tuition rates, I know my family wouldn't.

This is the same thing that happend in Georgia, an anti-immigrant law was passed in 2006, and the GA Board of Regeants decided to comply with the law - although they didn't have to, leaving many students without the opportunity to receive a waiver to pay in-state tuition.

The international student referred in this Editorial might be from another STATE attending college in OK and that is why he/she is paying out-of-state tuition, which to me is fair. I don't expect another state to embrace me as a TEXAN not having contributed (payed any taxes) and never lived there. Each state has a different law/time frame to allow you to become a "resident" of that state, allowing you to then receive their benefits.

OK has anti-immigrant laws that will only backlash in the near future - lack of talent and economically.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

News OK.com, February 20, 2008
By Susan Simpson

STILLWATER — Oklahoma's immigration law unfairly punishes some of the state's greatest assets: young people with the ability and desire to gain a college education, a University of Houston law professor said Tuesday.


The law that went into effect Nov. 1 makes it harder for illegal immigrants to qualify for in-state college tuition and bars them from state scholarships.

Michael Olivas said that is unfair because it targets the children of parents who brought them here illegally. Some teens do not know they are illegal until they are asked for proof of residency when they apply to college.

"You can't simply punish the kids in hopes that their parents will go home," Olivas said during his Kamm Lecture address at Oklahoma State University. "These children are here simply because their parents brought them here."

What have colleges done?
The state Regents for Higher Education changed some policies in October to bring them into compliance with the new law.

Undocumented students who have lived in Oklahoma for at least two years and have graduated from high school remain eligible for in-state tuition if they have applied with the federal government to legalize their status or pledge to do so as soon as they are eligible.

But illegal immigrants no longer qualify for state scholarships such as Oklahoma's Promise and the Oklahoma Tuition Assistance Grant, unless they had already applied and were covered under a grandfather clause.

In the 2006-07 school year, 244 undocumented students attended Oklahoma colleges, mostly at Oklahoma City Community College and Tulsa Community College. While they cost the state $112,000 in tuition waivers and state aid, they contributed $238,785 in tuition and fees.

What students said
Olivas said the stricter standards to college access are "mean-spirited," because giving illegal immigrants in-state tuition does not take away that right for other Oklahomans.

But one international student at the lecture complained he has to pay out-of-state tuition although he's been in the United States legally for several years.

Brenda Morales, OSU's Hispanic student coordinator, said students are unclear about the new rules. Morales said many don't know they can still go to college by paying out-of-state tuition, but that is probably too expensive for most families.

Reaction to Racial Profiling at Loyola University in Chicago

"The week of action, called for by Loyola's Anti Racism Movement (ARM), is in response to an incident of racial
profiling at Loyola in 2007, where four minority students were
approached by a campus security officer, accused of not being
Loyola students and of having fake Loyola IDs, and were called
various names related to their racial backgrounds such as
"gangbangers." The students filed incident reports and
repeatedly followed up on the status of their investigation,
but were never given any results. After discussing the
incident with other students of color, the students found that
their experiences—both the racist incident and the
administration's lack of response—were fairly commonplace."

-----

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE-

February 19, 2008
Contact: Erica Granados-De La Rosa
Phone: 301.828.5003
Email: egranadosdelarosa (at) luc.edu

LOYOLA STUDENTS PROTEST RACIAL DISCRIMINATION, DEMAND
UNIVERSITY ACCOUNTABILITY
Week of anti-racist action culminating in large student protest

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21st 1:45 PM— LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO
LAKE SHORE CAMPUS IN ROGERS PARK. 1125 W. LOYOLA AVE. IN FRONT
OF STUDENT UNION, ACROSS FROM LOYOLA REDLINE EL STOP.

Loyola University Chicago students of color and white allies
will be protesting their university's administration THURSDAY,
FEBRUARY 21ST, claiming a lack of accountability and public
transparency in cases of racial discrimination and profiling
on campus and widespread racism at Loyola. APPROXIMATELY 100
STUDENTS will be marching from the student union to deliver
demand letters to the office of campus safety, the President
of Loyola University, and the head of the Department of
Student Diversity and Multicultural Affairs. The event will
culminate a week of actions demanding that the university take
greater pro-active measures in combating racism and
investigate racist discrimination and harassment in more
public and open ways.

The week of action, called for by Loyola's Anti Racism
Movement (ARM), is in response to an incident of racial
profiling at Loyola in 2007, where four minority students were
approached by a campus security officer, accused of not being
Loyola students and of having fake Loyola IDs, and were called
various names related to their racial backgrounds such as
"gangbangers." The students filed incident reports and
repeatedly followed up on the status of their investigation,
but were never given any results. After discussing the
incident with other students of color, the students found that
their experiences—both the racist incident and the
administration's lack of response—were fairly commonplace.
"Our experience with racial profiling was not an isolated
event," said Erica Granados-De La Rosa, a freshman who was
involved in the initial event. "Students of color at Loyola
experience these incidents day in and day out. What happened
to me is a very common thing for students of color on this
campus, and is indicative of the racism of American society as
a whole."

The Thursday march comes on the heels of a student forum on
Monday February 18, attended by over 100 students, where
faculty, staff, and students of color shared experiences of
racism at Loyola. Over twenty students spoke about their
experiences of racial or religious profiling. During the
event, a white male walked past the front of the crowd, pulled
out what appeared to be a pistol and pointed it at the crowd,
and walked out of the front doors of the student union. Omar
Kamran, a junior and a minority male, called the CPD to report
the incident. While waiting for the CPD, a campus safety
officer arrived on the scene, grabbed Kamran's arm, and
immediately accused him of being the perpetrator, despite the
fact that Kamran gave a description of the suspect to the CPD
and had included the fact that the suspect was a white male
and had already left campus. "It was ironic that they would
accuse me, a minority male, of pointing the fake gun," Kamran
said, "since at that very moment someone was speaking on
racial profiling. I was racially profiled thirty feet from
someone talking about it. It really points to the necessity of
demanding that our university take racial profiling and racism
seriously, because we as minorities face these racist
incidents every day."

For information, contact Erica Granados-De La Rosa.
egranadosdelarosa (at) luc.edu
301.828.5003

ASU lets down its DREAMER students

----

AZ: After Just One Year, ASU Junked Its Scholarship Program For Illegal Immigrants. Sarah Fenske Wonders Who Will Step Up For Them Now
Phoenix New Times, February 14, 2008
By Sarah Fenske

Last year, when Proposition 300 went into effect and undocumented students were barred from getting in-state tuition rates at Arizona universities, Arizona State University did a brave thing: It enlisted private donors to do what taxpayers would not.

If students graduated from an Arizona high school but couldn't prove they were in this country legally, ASU awarded them a privately funded $12,000 grant called the "Sunburst Scholarship." The goal was to bridge the gap between in-state and out-of-state tuition - and keep a few hundred kids from dropping out of school.

Naturally, the plan drew fierce criticism from the usual suspects, not to mention threats of an audit from legislators who wanted to ensure that not one dime of taxpayer dough was going to Mexican-born kids.

Well, the legislators can stop worrying. Last week, ASU officials confirmed to me that they're discontinuing the scholarships.

The funding ran out, they said. Then they declined my request for specifics.

I suppose we should just be grateful that they did the right thing for a year. It cost an estimated $3 million to provide scholarships to 207 undocumented students, after all, and that doesn't factor in the blowback from the angry xenophobes who may have decided to take their bequests elsewhere.

In any normal universe, the Sunburst Scholarship would hardly be controversial. The students in question have done nothing wrong: Surely, Lou Dobbs wouldn't suggest that they should have defied Mom and Dad as 3-year-olds, or even third-graders, and vowed to stay in Mexico unless their parents obtained valid visas. (Well, okay, maybe Lou Dobbs would suggest that. Sigh.) In the loony anti-Mexican climate in Arizona today, though, the scholarships were truly an act of courage, and ASU President Michael Crow should be applauded for them.

But the demise of the Sunburst Scholarship raises real questions.

For one: When ASU realized the funding had run dry, why did it not contact leaders in the Hispanic community to come up with a transition plan? The activists I've talked to said they'd heard that the scholarships were being terminated only after getting calls from frightened students. Turns out the students learned they were being cut off in a letter from the school telling them to look for alternate financing for next fall. Clearly, this could have been handled with a bit more grace.

Here's another question: Just how hard did ASU work on getting donations for this scholarship? I haven't heard any direct requests for support. Granted, I'm not rich and not an ASU alum; I wouldn't blame anyone for leaving me off their fundraising list. But with an issue like this, you'd think a public plea would be in order - if nothing else, a story in the newspaper urging people to give. I can't find any evidence that ever happened. When we last heard about this issue, President Crow made it sound as though the matter was taken care of. ASU had found private funds. Period.

Which makes me wonder this.

Did ASU really run out of money? Or was it just easier not to raise it?

With legislators breathing hot air and an angry mob at the gate, it surely would be easier for ASU to cut 207 Mexican-born students adrift than to keep fighting.

"The fact that they're stopping these scholarships makes me feel like the pressure was greater than they could take," says Luis Avila, a local Latino activist and recent ASU grad.

I hope Avila is wrong about that. But I have to admit he may be on to something.

For seven years now, Congress has debated doing something about the students who come here, illegally, as little kids. Just about everybody agrees there should be a way for those kids to earn citizenship. Just about everybody agrees that society benefits if they're able to afford college.

The bipartisan plan to make it happen is called the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, or DREAM Act. It's been discussed, it's been filibustered, and it was even slipped into the immigration reform bills of 2006 and 2007. It just can't seem to get approved.

So the kids are stuck in limbo. Born in Mexico but educated through high school in the United States, they're in No Man's Land.

These days in Arizona, their situation is even more tenuous. They can't get tuition breaks to go to any state-funded university, but they also can't get hired for any job without their employer's risking his business license. But they can't just pack up their bags for Mexico, either - for many of them, this country is all they know.

Congress has screwed these kids because of its inability to do something, and Arizona voters have done their best to twist the knife. I guess we shouldn't be surprised that ASU, despite a noble $3 million investment, is dropping the ball.

But as easy as it is to blame ASU, and blame the government, there's another side to this story. And it has to do with individual responsibility.

Conservatives like me have always argued that if the public sector were forced to shrink, the private sector would step up. Before Social Security, for example, people took in elderly relatives. Today, we complain instead about the poor quality of government-financed nursing homes.

Before the welfare state, if you knew someone who was out of work, you'd slip them some cash. Today, we think jealously about them sitting on the couch watching TV and collecting government checks while we slave away at the office.

We need to admit it: In Arizona, at least, the anti-immigration crew is winning, bigtime. Mexicans without the right papers can't hold jobs. They can't post bail. They can't get payouts from a lawsuit. They can't get the in-state tuition reduction.

And what are we in the private sector doing about it?

I grouse because ASU never bothered to ask for donations for undocumented students. But there's no reason I should have waited for an invitation; ASU President Michael Crow was quoted in the newspaper talking about the scholarship plan four months ago. I could have written my check then.

The good news is this: As lazy as I've been about kicking in money, it's not too late. Alfredo Gutierrez, the former state senator and political consultant, tells me that a plan is under way to channel donations through Chicanos Por La Causa. That nonprofit already has the staff in place to funnel money to students without taking a penny for overhead. They'll call it the "American Dream Fund."

"We want to get at least 100 Hispanic individuals to give $1,000 to the fund," Gutierrez says. "Step two will be talking to the corporate and philanthropic community."

Step three, I hope, will be enlisting the rest of us - those of us who don't have $1,000 but who are dismayed that voters denied a bunch of good kids the opportunity to pay for their education. It's time we stop grousing and start pulling out our checkbooks.

Gutierrez admits he wishes ASU would have given community leaders a little more warning. But that's in the past. Now, he says, it's time to step up.

"This really lit a fire under us," he says. "There's hundreds of these youngsters that we've got some obligation and responsibility to. This really triggered a lot of energy."

Now that ASU is out of the picture, the American Dream Fund is these students' last hope. I don't want to believe that we, too, are going to let them down.

from the NILC listserve

The Gekko Speaks on Driver's Licenses for Undocumented Immigrants

He has an interesting statement on driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants-

The Gekko gives us a mixed message - he intimates that undocumented immigrants make the U.S. unsafe (his statement about the "the government's failure to keep it's borders secure) - " which is gekko-speak for "we have a dangerous situation because undocumented immigrants have crossed our borders - all this because the government didn't think our safety was important enough"

His use of the word "illegal," I'm sure, makes it somewhat easier for the anti-immigration crowd to listen to the gekko's message.

but his idea that everyone needs to have a license is a good one

- here is the link to the video:

http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=1407924497&channel=716039752

video by Nick Anderson, Houston Chronicle

The subtle nature of racial profiling

Reyna was a U.S. citizen


Amid the solemn obituary of the death of a Harris County Constable (Harry Thielepape) the writer (Kevin Moran) briefly mentions that the person shooting the Constable was an American citizen. The assailant had a Spanish surname.

Would Moran have clarified the immigration status of the shooter if the man's name would have been Smith? Probably not.

The comment that occurs in the article about Thielepape's death is a stark reminder that anyone that has a Spanish surname or appears Latino could easily be identified as undocumented. And nowadays since many law enforcement people are allowed to check residency status, this means that millions of Latino looking (or sounding) U.S. citizens are vulnerable to deportation. It's sort of like being guilty until proven innocent. If they are suspect and do not have documented proof, they are goners. After all, who carries around their passport all the time?

In the past, residency was sometimes mentioned if someone was a Mexican national - but not if they were an American citizen.

Perhaps American born Latinos should start wearing badges that state "I am an American."- and God Bless those who couldn't rightfully say the same thing.

P.S. Condolences to Constable Thielepape's family. All the officers from Houston's Precinct 6 are very dedicated to their community (disclosure - I live in Precinct 6).


-----

Feb. 20, 2008, 7:15AM
Precinct 6 deputy constable dies from shooting injuries

By KEVIN MORAN
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Harris County Precinct 6 Deputy Constable Harry Thielepape, who was shot Jan. 26 while working security at an apartment complex, died early this morning. He was 57.

Thielepape, who survived several surgeries to repair gunshot wounds, was with family members at Memorial Hermann Hospital when he died, Precinct 6 spokesman Danny Perez said this morning.

"His wounds were just so severe," Perez said. "He took a turn for the worse."

"He was a special guy," Precinct 6 Constable Victor Trevino said after learning of his longtime deputy's death. "He always wanted to be in law enforcement and he fulfilled his dream."

Thielepape worked first as a reserve deputy, then became a deputy 10 years ago, Trevino said. Thielepape was a corporal and assigned to a special squad that sought out parole violators in the precinct, Trevino said.

"He had a great sense of humor," Trevino said. "When he first came to work, I had trouble pronouncing his name and I asked him if it would be okay if I just called him 'Tailpipe'. He just laughed and said that would be fine, so I called him Tailpipe."

Funeral arrangements will be announced, Trevino said.

Thielepape was working a part-time security job at the north Harris County apartment complex when he apparently became suspicious about Jesus Gilbert Reyna, 21, who was wanted on a pair of Class C misdemeanor warrants, officials said when the shooting occurred.

Thielepape was assigned to a unit at the Precinct 6 constable's office that is charged with apprehending felony suspects and parole violators. Fellow officers speculated that Thielepape was looking for Reyna at the time.

Thielepape was not in uniform but wore his badge on a chain around his neck and a protective vest, officials said after the incident.

Witnesses reported seeing him pull the unmarked police car he was driving in front of Reyna to block Reyna, detectives said.

Thielepape took Reyna into custody after finding marijuana and a handgun on him, authorities said. He was handcuffed and placed in the backseat of the unmarked police car.

A veteran with more than 10 years on the force, Thielepape likely would have secured the handcuffs behind Reyna's back, officials said.

After the gunfight that left him dead, Reyna was found lying in the parking lot with the handcuffs in front, officials said.

Thielepape may have spotted Reyna struggling with the handcuffs and opened the back door to check that he was still secured.

Reyna was able to grab Thielepape's service pistol and began shooting. The deputy constable moved back under fire, detectives said.

"He took cover by a car and used his backup weapon," an investigator said two days after the incident. "He really did a great job, considering he'd already been hit a couple of times."

Apartment residents reported hearing up to 20 gunshots fired in the exchange, but detectives said there were no witnesses to the confrontation.

Reyna was a U.S. citizen but apparently didn't live at the complex, officials said.

He had a Harris County criminal record, most recently receiving two 30-day jail sentences in January 2007 after pleading guilty to a pair of drug possession charges.

Trevino said the reasons behind the shootings will probably remain a mystery.

Just the day before Thielepape was shot, Trevino said the two discussed why he worked security at apartment complexes that had known criminal problems.

"There are a lot of good people there," Trevino quoted Thielepape as saying. "They need to feel safe."

Chronicle reporter Mike Glenn contributed to this report.

kevin.moran@chron.com

for link to Chronicle article, click the title of this post

ICED- I Can End deportation

Today i received this email through a listerv in California. Turns out that the game ICED (I can End Deportation) is finally out and about, or perhaps it has been out and i just did not know.

It is nice afterall to see things like this going on. Saja Forum explains the game better than i do and where the game comes from. A human rights organization based in New York came up with this game in hopes of advocating for human rights for immigrant in this country.

One positive step, how many more do we need to get out of this upside down world we are in?

More questions about Obama using Patrick's speech

Deval Patrick and Barack Obama



One dreamacttexas reader responded to the post about Obama using a previous speech by Gov. Patrick:

Its a lot more than two lines. ABC's Political Punch blog dug a little deeper into this:

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/

"Deval Patrick's Timeline Doesn't Mesh with Reality

February 19, 2008 11:42 AM

Speaking to the New York Times Sunday, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick attempted to excuse his friend Sen. Barack Obama's lifting of part of his October 2006 "Just words" speech.

“In a telephone interview on Sunday, Mr. Patrick said that he and Mr. Obama first talked about the attacks from their respective rivals last summer, when Mrs. Clinton was raising questions about Mr. Obama’s experience, and that they discussed them again last week," the Times' Jeff Zeleny wrote. "Patrick said he told Mr. Obama that he should respond to the criticism, and he shared language from his campaign with Mr. Obama's speechwriters.”

But Obama was quoted using Patrick's language before the Summer of 2007.

"'We hold these truths to be self-evident, all men are created equal.’ Those are just words," Obama was quoted as saying in a March 19, 2007 New Republic story. " ‘I have a dream.’ Just words.”

So....the claim that Patrick an Obama "first" discussed this last Summer does not make sense.

It should also be noted that in addition to the "Yes We Can" slogan that Obama used in 2004, Patrick used in 2006, and Obama uses today, other language from the two clients of political guru David Axelrod has come from both men's mouths.

To wit:

Patrick in June 2006, at the Massachusetts Democratic party convention: "I am not asking anybody to take a chance on me. I am asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations."

Obama one year later, as quoted in USA Today: "I am not asking anyone to take a chance on me. I am asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations."

Just words?

- jpt

UPDATE: Some folks have pointed out that when Obama borrowed the line on voting your aspirations in Portsmouth, NH, on December 21, 2007, he footnoted Patrick, saying, "Don't vote your fears, I'm stealing this line from my buddy, Deval Patrick, who stole a bunch of lines from me when he ran for the governorship, but it`s the right one. Don`t vote your fears, vote your aspirations."

But in my original post, I wasn't referring to that quote.

I was referring to a month before, in November 2007, when Obama according to news coverage stood on the steps of the Clarendon County Courthouse in Manning, S.C., and, according to USA Today, said:

"Now, I've heard that some folks aren't sure America is ready for an African-American president, so let me be clear," he told his mostly black audience. "I never would have begun this campaign if I weren't confident I could win. But you see, I am not asking anyone to take a chance on me. I am asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations."

Don't believe me OR USA Today? Fine.

Check out the Obama website where they have the speech posted -- no credit to Deval Patrick is given:

"Now, I've heard that some folks aren't sure America is ready for an African-American president, so let me be clear: I never would have begun this campaign if I weren't confident I could win. But you see, I am not asking anyone to take a chance on me. I am asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations."

Or watch it HERE."

Plagiarism charges should not be discounted just because the original person was ok with it. Thats just like saying its ok to copy off of someone if that person being copied on allowed him or her to do it.

I want to give Sen. Obama the benefit of the doubt, but it looks like Obama's campaign manager just rehashed Gov. Deval Patrick's 2006 campaign strategy and fit it into this one. The people of Massachusetts are not happy with Gov. Patrick's job performance by the way.

I try to stay open minded, but to attack Sen. Clinton for pointing this out is a lot like shooting the messenger.

C_D

photo: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/PATRICK%20OBAMA%202.jpg

Sarkozy's "Security Spectacle" - 1,000 riot police sent to the Banlieue

cartoon of Sarkozy during the riots in the Banlieue







In another sign that Sarkozy does not seem to have all his wits about him, he ordered more than 1,000 French riot police to raid houses in the Banlieue to search for suspected ringleaders of the 2007 Paris riots.

Sarkozy accused of raids 'stunt'

The Guardian - London
Tuesday February 19 2008
Angelique Chrisafis


More than 1,000 French riot police and special forces raided housing estates in a troubled Paris suburb at dawn yesterday, kicking open doors and arresting 33 people in a search for the suspected ringleaders of violent riots last year.

President Nicolas Sarkozy's political opponents called the operation an excessive "security spectacle" after pictures of armoured police trucks and "RoboCop" riot police were broadcast by television reporters tipped off in advance. Leftwingers accused Sarkozy, who is suffering in the polls, of trying to bolster his UMP party ahead of local elections next month.

The operation focused on 10 apartment blocks in Villiers-le-Bel and the surrounding area north of Paris, which saw three nights of serious rioting last November after two teenagers died in a motorbike crash with a police car. Although the unrest was contained within a few days, it was more serious than weeks of rioting in 2005 because the Villiers-le-Bel rioters fired guns at the police. During the unrest, 130 officers were injured, including at least 10 hit by buckshot or pellets.

Sarkozy vowed to track down the riot ringleaders "one by one". In December police leafleted the estates offering cash rewards for information. This month, launching an aid package for France's troubled high-rise blocks, where youth unemployment can reach 40%, Sarkozy vowed a "war without mercy" on crime.

The labour minister, Xavier Bertrand, said the arrests of people aged 17 to 31 showed "there is no zone of lawlessness in our republic". But the socialist Ségolène Royal said launching the raids with cameras in tow during an election period served "to influence opinion, to scare".

Sarkozy has sunk to his lowest ever poll ratings. This weekend politicians, including the former conservative prime minister Dominique de Villepin and Royal, signed an appeal against the emergence of an "elective monarchy" in France. They did not name Sarkozy, but delivered a thinly veiled attack against a monarchic form of "purely personal power".

for link to Guardian article, click the title of this post

image: http://fanonite.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/stevebell512.jpg

When are you obligated to support your own?

Something has happened these past few days. According to the Washington Post, Obama is no longer "not black enough." Funny how winning a few primaries can change so much.

Prominent black supporters of Hillary Clinton are getting a little uncomfortable. What should they do now? Should they jump ship like Rep. John Lewis of Georgia did? It's a tough predicament.

Anyone considering themselves part of a group with tight loyalty boundaries goes through this at least once in their life.

If you are an immigrant, should you support all immigrants running for office? If you were once undocumented should you have special empathy for others who were at one time undocumented, but later made it big?

Of course empathy is a must if you want to be a decent human being. But supporting a political candidate just because of group affiliation is not enough. Supporting someone you do not feel is competent will only intensify negative stereotypes about things like Affirmative Action (that is why some people hate it so much)... Why would you want to help move up someone that won't make you proud you supported them?

Its a great thing that we have a woman presidential candidate, but that does not mean I will vote for her. Besides I've known some women politicians that would scare my grandmother.

Having a viable African American candidate for U.S. President is almost revolutionary. But I don't think that black people are being swayed by Obama just because he is black. They may feel understood because of Obama's struggle and the demographic fact that there are more African American men in prison than in college (yes that is really true). But he has a lot of other things going for him at the moment. No he is not perfect... but so far he has taken the high road. If he stays on course until November he might be the right guy to be our next national leader.


-----

Obama Wave Stuns Clinton's Black Supporters

By Kevin Merida
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 19, 2008; C01

You can see the confusion on some of their faces, hear the concern in their voices. How in the world do we deal with this?

Hillary Clinton's black supporters -- especially the most prominent ones -- hadn't expected their candidate to be in a dogfight right now. They thought Barack Obama was an election cycle or two away from being serious presidential timber. They thought Bill Clinton's presidency and the close relationships the Clintons had forged with African Americans would translate into goo-gobs of votes in '08. They were wrong.

Remember all the commentator chatter last summer: Is Barack Obama black enough?

Well, he's black enough now.

Obama has swamped Clinton among black voters in each of the 20 contests that had exit polls and large enough samples of African Americans to be meaningful. Just to put that kind of shutout in perspective, black voters represent the only demographic group that the New York senator has not carried at least once during the Democratic primary campaign. Obama now has such a lock on the loyalties of African Americans -- 84 percent of the black vote in Alabama, 87 percent in Georgia, 84 percent in Maryland, and on and on -- that the black vote is no longer contestable.

Which brings us back to the dilemma facing some of Clinton's high-profile black supporters -- those with titles and constituencies of their own. They are feeling some kind of crazy pressure. Last Friday, about 25 of them held an hour-long conference call to discuss what one described as an effort to "pester, intimidate, question our blackness" for not supporting Obama.

The catalyst for the call was a report in the New York Times that Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) was wavering in his support of Clinton. Lewis would not comment, but according to the Times, the congressman had indicated he was prepared to fully flip and back Obama and thus be more in step with his congressional district, which voted 3-to-1 for Obama on Super Tuesday. This bit of news was extremely significant, for Lewis is one of the coveted "superdelegates," those 796 elected officials and party insiders who are not bound by anything that has or will happen at the polls. They are free to choose the candidate of their liking, as unpledged delegates to the national convention. And with the nomination fight so razor-close, they are being wooed -- some say harassed -- like never before.

Lewis's office tried to put the brakes on the notion that a switch of allegiance to Obama was imminent. But too late. Some of Clinton's other black supporters decided to rally and try to blunt the fallout. Among those on the conference call were Trenton Mayor Doug Palmer, former Denver mayor Wellington Webb, and congresswomen Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas and Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio.

Palmer was among the more forceful voices, urging others on the call, as he put it yesterday, "to stand up and say why you're for Hillary Clinton in the face of adversity. We can't afford to be wishy-washy . . . Stand up. Fight. Advocate for your candidate. Don't capitulate. . . . Don't let nobody intimidate or threaten you. Just hold on."

In an interview Palmer still sounded riled about a few things he had heard about. One of them, reported by the Associated Press, was a private conversation between Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), a Clinton supporter, and Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), one of Obama's national campaign co-chairmen. Both lawmakers are superdelegates. Jackson had asked Cleaver if he wanted to go down in history as someone who prevented an African American from occupying the White House for the first time. Separately, Jackson told the AP that supporting Clinton in districts where Obama won overwhelmingly might place those politicians at risk of a primary challenge.

It just so happens that Palmer, the first black mayor of Trenton and an 18-year incumbent, presides over a city that voted overwhelmingly for Obama. Not that he is worried, mind you. Just bothered.

"To intimate that you may face a challenge for what you believe in, I just think that's over the top," said Palmer, who was first elected in 1990 by a 300-vote margin and has been reelected fairly easily ever since. "I think my citizens pretty much understand that I am a person who stands up for what I believe in. I'm not saying that if I run again somebody won't hold that against me. That's politics."

And should some upstart decide to take him on in 2010 for siding with Clinton in this year's presidential race? "My thing is: Bring it on!" Palmer declared.

Bravado has its place in American politics, but so does perspective.

Black Clinton supporters are feeling the same heat that black backers of Walter Mondale felt in 1984. Many black elected officials signed on early with Mondale, some because of the former vice president's civil rights record and his long ties to African Americans, some because of practical political considerations: They knew Jesse Jackson wasn't going to be the Democratic nominee, and so they went with the likely winner. They played it safe.

What many didn't foresee was how much excitement Jackson's campaign would generate in black communities, and how many new voters he would bring into the Democratic Party. His 1984 campaign became a cause for many who were not invested in politics, a way of embracing hope -- Jackson's equivalent of Obama's change -- and what it meant to be black at that point in time. Jackson drew large crowds and racked up big black vote totals. Black political and civil rights icons found themselves on the outside for being on the wrong side. Mickey Leland, a popular Texas congressman who later died in a plane crash, was booed and hissed at his own state's Democratic Party convention for backing Mondale. At the Democratic National Convention, Andrew Young was jeered by black delegates loyal to Jackson, as was Coretta Scott King, who was brought to tears by the experience. Jackson was so ashamed by the treatment of King that he intervened, telling black delegates: "It's a source of embarrassment to me . . . for you to boo or hiss any black leader in this country."

Like Jackson back then, Obama's campaign is creating unease for black politicians who find themselves out of sync with their constituencies. One big difference, of course: Obama is in a position to win.

The moment, observes Willie Brown, the former San Francisco mayor and longtime speaker of the California assembly, is like nothing that has ever been realized for a black officeholder. "It's like Michael Jordan and Dr. J. wrapped into one, playing basketball by themselves," says Brown, who is neutral in the presidential race.

That black voters have so embraced Obama, even against the legacy of the Clintons, is not surprising to Brown. "I think most white politicians do not understand that the race pride we all have trumps everything else."

It appears many black politicians also didn't understand how far racial pride would extend this election season. They are being called out on blogs, and petitioned in their home districts for going against Obama -- to their surprise and dismay.

"Some African American leaders, quite frankly, underestimated him," said Cassandra Butts, a longtime Obama friend and adviser.

They're not underestimating him anymore.

for link to Washinton Post article click the title of this post


photo: http://z.about.com/d/usliberals/1/0/1/2/ObamaHillaryWinMcNamee.jpg

Last time the Dems battled this way, Reagan won the election

My daughter was telling me about something she read in the Huffington Post... Last time there was such a division in the Democratic Party - Reagan was elected (the guy whose name is all over the buildings in D.C.).

Clinton is not going to get anywhere by attacking Obama, especially now that the country is beginning to see him as the anointed one. It will just make her look like a sore loser.

Obama has been accused of plagiarism because he lifted 2 lines from a 2 year old speech given by one of his present campaign managers (Gov. Patrick). Personally, I don't think this is a big deal, considering the two work so closely together. It would have been totally different if it was someone else's speech and not Patrick's.

It is a shame the Clinton campaign is resorting to this... it undermines her credibility - and sees her less as a fair-minded lawmaker and more as an angry woman scorned.


-----

Clinton Steps Up Attacks on Obama


Plagiarism, Financing Accusations Come on Eve of Wisconsin Primary

By Matthew Mosk and Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, February 19, 2008; A01

Aides to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) accused Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) yesterday of plagiarizing portions of a recent speech and continued to question his vows to reform the campaign finance system as she sought to drive home the idea that her Democratic rival's presidential bid is built on style more than substance.

The two-pronged attack came as Clinton attempts to slow Obama's momentum in today's contests in Wisconsin, which neighbors his home state of Illinois, and Hawaii, where he was born.

The race in Wisconsin, where Clinton dug in over the weekend in an effort to break a string of eight straight primary and caucus defeats, has turned increasingly negative. Just days earlier, Clinton aides accused Obama of breaking his pledge to accept public financing in place of private donations during the general election. Obama's aides say he did not make a firm commitment to accept public financing if he wins the nomination.

Yesterday, key Clinton supporters accused Obama of "lifting" a passage of the rousing speech he delivered to a party gathering in Milwaukee on Saturday night from Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, a longtime friend and supporter. The two passages, captured on side-by-side YouTube videos and distributed to reporters by the Clinton campaign, show Obama repeating, almost verbatim, lines from a speech Patrick gave two years earlier.

"The point we're making overall is that Senator Obama's record as a senator and as a public official is thin," said Howard Wolfson, a senior Clinton adviser. "If you're asking an electorate to judge you on your promises and you break them, and on your rhetoric and you lift it, there are fundamental problems with your campaign."

Appearing in Niles, Ohio, Obama said he didn't believe "this is too big a deal."

"Well, look, I was on the stump," Obama said when asked why he did not attribute the lines. Patrick, he said, "had suggested we use these lines. I thought they were good lines. I'm sure I should have. Didn't this time."

Obama later returned to Wolfson's assertion while speaking with reporters on his campaign plane. "The notion that using a line from one of my national campaign co-chairs . . . is somehow objectionable, somehow doesn't make sense," he said.

Obama's aides also called Clinton's criticism of his public financing plans "curious." They noted that she was also the first candidate in the 2008 field to announce plans to reject the public financing system, saying more than a year ago that she would attempt to use private contributions to finance a general election bid were she to become the party's nominee.

"We're just not going to be lectured on this," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said.

Obama first raised the notion of accepting public funds in the general election a year ago, when he sought a ruling from the Federal Election Commission that would preserve that option for him. He said at the time that if the eventual Republican nominee entered the system -- in which the candidate accepts $85 million to fund a general election campaign and agrees to raise no additional money -- he would enter it as well.

Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), who is moving ever closer to accumulating the delegates he needs for the GOP nomination, reaffirmed last week that he would be willing to accept that deal and urged Obama to "keep his word" on the issue.

Longtime advocates of campaign finance reform sent Obama a letter last week expressing "deep concern" that he would back away from the financing system. At the same time, several left-wing blogs urged Obama to "break the pledge," arguing that he should do nothing to cede the fundraising advantage that Democrats appear to have gained heading into the general election.

The candidate's advisers said yesterday that his pledge came before anyone realized how explosive his fundraising effort would become. Reports due to the FEC this week will show that Obama raised $32 million in January, almost triple what Clinton raised. Nearly all of Obama's total came via the Internet.

"The outpouring from small donors has been unprecedented and perhaps unexpected, and I would not want to do anything to deny those donors the chance to participate [in the general election], regardless of who the Democratic nominee is," said Alan D. Solomont, a longtime Democratic fundraiser who is a member of Obama's national finance team. "To be blunt, the ability of Democrats to raise money from both small donors and others is a significant competitive advantage."

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said yesterday he considers the entire discussion premature, given the tough, unresolved battle for the party's nomination. To both campaigns, Wisconsin has emerged as a critical steppingstone to the March 4 primaries in Ohio and Texas, as well as a fight for the state's 74 pledged delegates.

As Clinton crisscrossed Wisconsin yesterday, she returned to what has become a central theme of her retooled, sharper-edged campaign. She told a standing-room-only crowd of more than 1,000 at the Wausau Labor Temple in central Wisconsin yesterday afternoon: "There's a difference between speeches and solutions, between talk and action. I was raised to believe that actions speak louder than words."

It was that very notion that Obama had tried to address when borrowing Patrick's turn of phrase during the Saturday night speech in Milwaukee. "Don't tell me words don't matter," he said. " 'I have a dream.' Just words? 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' Just words? 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself.' Just words? Just speeches?"

Patrick used a nearly identical formulation during his 2006 campaign for governor, when he was drawing fire from his Republican opponent, who said his stylish speechmaking disguised a lack of substance.

At a titanium plant in Niles, Obama also noted that Clinton had appeared to borrow lines from other candidates, including her use of the signature Obama rallying cry "Fired up! Ready to go!"

"When Senator Clinton says 'it's time to turn the page' in one of her stump speeches or says she's 'fired up and ready to go,' I don't think that suggests that she's not focused on the issues she's focused on," Obama said.

Obama beat Clinton to Wisconsin, arriving last Tuesday to celebrate his victories in the Potomac Primary in front of more than 16,000 cheering supporters in Madison. He devoted more staff members to Wisconsin -- opening 11 offices in the state, to Clinton's four, and had television ads in circulation six days before she did. But Clinton made a late play for a state that offers her some advantages.

Although repeatedly detoured by winter weather, Clinton paid attention to rural and working-class voters in areas far from Madison and Milwaukee, which are considered Obama's prime territory. She ran television ads in markets including Green Bay, Eau Claire and La Crosse, challenging Obama's proposals on health care and energy policy and accusing him of refusing to debate her.

After a brief trip to Ohio to prepare for the potentially pivotal votes that will be held there and in Texas, Obama returned to Wisconsin for an election-eve rally.

Even before his return, though, Obama had retooled his speech so that he defended the transformative power of a rousing speech without using any of Patrick's lines.

"The only way that we're going to bring about change is if all of you get excited about change," he said in Youngstown, Ohio. "So I make no apologies for being able to talk good."

Slevin is traveling with the Obama campaign. Staff writers Jose Antonio Vargas and Alec MacGillis contributed to this report.

for link to article click the title of this post

photo: http://images.salon.com/news/feature/2007/10/13/hillary/story.jpg

How much beef have you eaten lately?

How much of this cow made it to your hamburger?



143 million pounds of beef has been recalled by the USDA. This is the largest recall in the history of the United States.

I wonder how many cows make up 143 million pounds? Considering how Americans love McDonalds, it would be no surprise if most people had at least some of this tainted meat.

How do you feel about eating meat from cow that was so sick it couldn't stand up? It upsets my stomach to think about it. USDA officials say it is "very unlikely" that people would experience and adverse affects from eating this meat. That is unimaginable... It will be interesting to see what comes up in medical studies in the next few years.

Do you think your average American citizen would want this job?

As for immigrants--

Can you imagine how the meatpacking workers must feel when they are dealing with these sick cows? They have probably vowed never to eat beef again - which may be a good thing. Studies show that Mexican immigrants are much healthier (than long term residents or citizens) their first years after immigration to the United States. But their health declines dramatically once they start eating as much meat as other Americans and discover McDonalds.


one meatpacking company spokesman said: '"We feel there is a very, very remote possibility of health consequences from consuming this product."'


for link to article click the title of this post



see related posts on dreamacttexas from January 30, 2008 and February 3, 2008

-----

USDA Orders Largest Meat Recall in U.S. History

By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 18, 2008; A01

The Agriculture Department has ordered the largest meat recall in its history -- 143 million pounds of beef, a California meatpacker's entire production for the past two years -- because the company did not prevent ailing animals from entering the U.S. food supply, officials said yesterday.

Despite the breadth of the sanction, USDA officials underscored their belief that the meat, distributed by Westland Meat, poses little or no hazard to consumers, and that most of it was eaten long ago.

The recall comes less than three weeks after the release of a videotape showing what the USDA later called "egregious violations" of federal animal care regulations by employees of a Westland partner, Hallmark Meat Packing in Chino.

Hallmark did not consistently bring in federal veterinarians to examine cattle headed for slaughter that were too sick or weak to stand on their own, Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said. "Because the cattle did not receive complete and proper inspection, [the USDA] has determined them to be unfit for human food, and the company is conducting a recall," he said in a statement.

About 37 million pounds of the meat -- cuts, ground beef and prepared products such as meatballs and burrito filling -- went to school lunch and other public nutrition programs, and "almost all of this product is likely to have been consumed," said Ron Vogel, a USDA administrator.

Some larger purchasers, though, may keep meat for as long as a year. Company and government officials will try to trace the meat to notify the purchasers not to use it.

The USDA issued 20 meat recalls last year, including one of more than 20 million pounds, and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee, called on the agency to toughen its inspection requirements. "How much longer will we continue to test our luck with weak enforcement of federal food safety regulations?" Harkin asked.

The National Cattlemen's Beef Association "support[s] USDA's recall as a precautionary measure. At the same time, we can say with confidence that the beef supply is safe. . . . There are multiple safety hurdles before it arrives at our grocery stores or restaurants," said James O. Reagan, who chairs the organization's Beef Industry Food Safety Council.

About 150 school districts and two fast-food chains, Jack in the Box and In-N-Out, have announced they will no longer use ground beef from Westland. The company has been closed since Feb. 4, when the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service withdrew inspectors from the Hallmark slaughterhouse after verifying the mistreatment of cattle shown on the videotape and discovering other problems.

The tape, made secretly by a slaughterhouse worker and provided to the Humane Society of the United States, showed electric shocks and high-intensity water sprays administered to cows too sick or weak to stand on their own, and the use of forklifts to roll such animals. Government regulations prohibit slaughtering for food cattle that cannot stand or walk on their own.

An inspecting veterinarian had said the cattle in question were healthy enough to be used for food, but they subsequently collapsed. Under federal regulations, such animals must be reexamined by a veterinarian and slaughtered separately. That apparently was not done.

One worry when an animal collapses is that it may have bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the infection known as "mad cow disease." A small number of people who have eaten meat from such animals have developed a fatal brain infection, but cattle with BSE have very rarely turned up in government inspections. Richard Raymond, the USDA's undersecretary for food safety, discounted the chance of BSE in any of the Hallmark/Westland cattle.

"We are very confident in the safety of the food supply," he said.

Hallmark fired two workers seen on the tape, and the men face animal cruelty charges in California. A company spokesman said senior management was not aware of the use of extreme measures to get sick cattle upright.

Humane Society President Wayne Pacelle said yesterday the recall "validates the chief finding we made, that sick and injured animals got into the food supply."

Officials at Hallmark and Westland could not be reached yesterday to comment.

The largest previous meat recall orders both covered 35 million pounds and came a month apart in 1998 and 1999. Both involved ready-to-eat products contaminated with listeria. Nearly two dozen people died and about 100 fell ill after eating the meat.

Last September, 21.7 million pounds of Topps Meat ground beef were recalled after at least 30 people were sickened from meat contaminated with E. coli bacteria.

In the Hallmark/Westland case, Raymond said, "We feel there is a very, very remote possibility of health consequences from consuming this product."

Staff researcher Rena Kirsch contributed to this report.

photo: http://www.chooseveg.com/LargePhotos/DownedCow.jpg

ICE Raids in Upstate New York?

This anonymous commentary came in today:

"Please tell everybody you know, documented or undocumented to watch out for the ice man in any Amtrak or Greyhound stations AROUND upstate New York. Even though I have a work permit and a pending petition to adjust my status I was arrested and locked up for 2 weeks until I posted a 2500.00 BAIL. TO TOP THAT THE ----- WOULD NOT GIVE ME MY WORK PERMIT BACK."
February 18, 2008 9:21 AM




Does anyone have information on ICE raids at Amtrak or Greyhound stations in upstate New York?

When can police ask residents about their immigration status?

See dreamacttexas post from December 17, 2008 "High School Senior detained in Roswell, NM"

LA Times:
"On Nov. 27, she [Karina Acosta] was driving her friend Brenda Molina and Molina's brother to school. Stopping in a fire lane outside the neighboring middle school to drop off the brother, she caught the attention of Roswell police Officer Charlie Corn, Roswell High's safety officer...Teachers and students complain that Corn frequently asked Latino students to prove they were in the country legally and got one other youth deported several years ago."
-----
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-school18feb18,0,6303315.story
From the Los Angeles Times
Student's deportation roils New Mexico town
School attendance falls and emotions rise in Roswell after a senior falls into the hands of immigration authorities.
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 18, 2008

ROSWELL, N.M. — This conservative city on the barren eastern plains of New Mexico long had been spared the acrimonious debates over illegal immigration that have racked so much of the Southwest.

That is, until December, when immigration enforcement entered the murky terrain of the local high school.

A school security officer stopped Karina Acosta, an 18-year-old pregnant Roswell High School senior, and discovered she was in the country illegally. He called federal immigration authorities, who swiftly deported her.

The district superintendent protested and the officer was removed from the school and transferred back to the city Police Department. About three dozen angry students and parents marched on police headquarters -- a notable event in a town not accustomed to controversy -- and were met by a handful of counterdemonstrators who backed the officer.

The schools suffered a sudden drop in attendance as students whose parents were in the country illegally kept them home. The local newspaper was peppered with angry letters to the editor denouncing illegal immigrants. And even two months later, unease permeates the community.

"What shocked me more than anything is what it did to this town," said Coreta Justus, one of Acosta's teachers. In the classroom, she said, "you can feel the difference vibrating from the students. I don't think they have those safety feelings anymore. School used to be a very safe place."

In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled that illegal immigrants had the right to attend public schools and that educators could not ask students whether they were in the country legally. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has a policy against entering campuses.

But local police forces like Roswell's are increasingly being pressured to crack down on illegal immigrants.

"You have legislatures that say one thing, a Supreme Court that has ruled something else," said Scott Douglass, Roswell's interim police chief.

"The country's not giving really clear signals."

Douglass defended his officer, saying he was obligated to call immigration officials once he learned that Acosta was in the country illegally.

There have been cases elsewhere of local police arresting illegal immigrants at schools to be deported. Last year in Tucson, police were called to a high school because a ninth-grader was caught with marijuana. When the student's family arrived, they arrested the student, his mother and his brother and handed them over for deportation.

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund sued the Albuquerque Police Department in 2005 after officers called the Border Patrol to a local high school. In a settlement last year, police agreed to stop asking residents about their immigration status.

"A school should be a safe haven, and any sort of law enforcement related to immigration status should be very, very limited," said Marisol Perez, an attorney with the Mexican American legal advocacy group. That conflicts with the widely held opinion that police should be free to ask suspects whether they are in the country legally, she noted.

Roswell, the home of the New Mexico Military Institute, is an island of motels, gas stations and modest houses. For decades, illegal immigrants have come here to work in the surrounding dairies and ranches, mixing with Latino families whose ancestors settled here before the land was part of the United States.

In the city, 44% of residents and 60% of students are Latino. Roswell is also home to a number of Border Patrol agents, and the agency has a training facility 40 miles to the south.

Karina Acosta came to Roswell from Mexico in 2004. Her teachers say that at first she felt alienated from other students and wanted to return to her home country, but slowly adjusted. Polite and industrious, she improved immensely in school and started working with her mother in a fast-food restaurant.

On Nov. 27, she was driving her friend Brenda Molina and Molina's brother to school. Stopping in a fire lane outside the neighboring middle school to drop off the brother, she caught the attention of Roswell police Officer Charlie Corn, Roswell High's safety officer.

According to Molina and a written account from Acosta's mother, Bertha, Corn pulled up behind Acosta in the high school parking lot. When Acosta admitted she didn't have a license, Corn asked her whether she was in the country legally. Corn told her to bring proof of legal residency the next day.

Acosta did not see Corn for several days. On Dec. 5, Corn ordered Acosta to his office and called immigration authorities on his cellphone. The immigration officials told him to hold her for deportation, according to Douglass, the police chief.

Acosta's mother said in her statement that she rushed to the school and Corn handed her his cellphone and told her to talk to the immigration official, but she declined.

Bertha Acosta could not be reached for comment; friends say she is terrified. Corn said he had been directed not to comment. Teachers and students complain that Corn frequently asked Latino students to prove they were in the country legally and got one other youth deported several years ago.

Corn's supporters say he has no racial biases and point out that his wife is Latina.

After news of the deportation broke, teachers say, parents refused to let illegal immigrant children go to school.

Some teachers may secretly approve of the deportation but don't realize how it affected students, said one of Acosta's teachers, Dolores Fresquez.

"My kids from Mexico are angry and hurt," Fresquez said. Supporters of the deportation "don't understand how many in this school are here illegally."

One of the counterdemonstrators at police headquarters Dec. 14 was Jack Satterfield, 53, whose youngest daughter goes to Roswell High School and deals with classes crowded by, he believes, illegal immigrants. A retired construction worker, he thinks Corn's action "was great. Our schools are so overpopulated. The majority of the people agreed with it."

City leaders are eager to put the incident behind them.

"This was a first-time occurrence and hopefully a last-time occurrence," City Councilman James Monteith said. "I have no ill thoughts about that man [Corn], and I feel terribly sorry for her."

But mutual distrust lingers. Latino activists say the problem extends beyond Acosta's deportation. Tales are rampant of Latinos pulled over by police for alleged traffic violations and questioned about their immigration status.

Adolfo Reyes, 38, a U.S. citizen, said that happened to him in December. Combined with the deportation, it has made him worry about what could happen to his children if they're stopped by authorities.

"We're concerned they're going to call [immigration] on our kids," Reyes said. "Our kids don't carry their birth certificates or IDs."

Douglass said the Police Department was still trying to determine when it was appropriate to ask residents about their immigration status.

"I've been trying to educate myself and hammer out a policy," Douglass said. The Acosta case has "muddied the spring pretty good, and it's hard to have any clear direction."

nicholas.riccardi@ latimes.com


photo: ttp://images1.comstock.com/Imagewarehouse/TS/SITECS/NLWMCompingVersions/C0041/C0041592/C0041592.jpg

Este cartoon tiene mucho de que hablar...

See more cartoons in our cartoons photo album

Grand Opening of Hillary Headquaters in Houston's EastEnd

Join Henry Cisneros, Dolores Huerta, and Antonio Villaraigosa for the opening of the Houston headquarters!


When:Monday, February 18, 2008 at 2:30 PM - 4:30 PM



Where:Houston for Hillary Headquarters 201 Broadway Street Houston, TX 77012


General Area: DescriptionHouston for Hillary invites you to a campaign headquarters open house with community activist Henry Cisneros, civil rights activist Dolores Huerta, and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

HostTexas For Hillary

Barack Obama in Houston

This is a great opportunity for Houstonians who are still undecided. Texas is a crucial state and you should exercise the right to vote(PS. Early voting starts Tuesday, Feb. 19th--I'll be there!!!). Take advantage of this historical event. We will keep you posted if Hillary will be in town in the near future. Good luck getting a ticket as they are running out like "pan caliente."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Join Barack Obama for a special 'Stand for Change' Rally in Houston on Tuesday, February 19th.

RSVP:

http://tx.barackobama.com/page/s/houston

Stand for Change Rally with Barack Obama

Toyota Center1510 Polk Street Houston, TX

Tuesday, February 19, 2008Doors Open: 6:00 p.m.

The event is free and open to the public.

However, tickets are required and admission is on a first come, first-served basis.

For security reasons, do not bring bags. No signs or banners permitted.

DREAMERS keep the U.S. intelligent

At a Washington D.C. meeting of DREAMERS in June 2007





Everything seems upside down in America. Our population is supposedly getting "dumber" according to a Washington Post article published today. Maybe this is true. Colleagues tell me that a number of their undergraduate students don't know who Napoleon was. I've had a good number not know about the Alamo. Some people can blame our public school system - and maybe there is a point to this.... the neo-conservatives worked on dumbing down our school curriculum - so potential voters could vote for people like George W. Bush and it worked. Only a very unprepared national population could have let W. become president.

Amid all the concern for our lowering IQ we have closed our eyes to a group of young people who are the opposite of our - computer game obsessed millennial children - We have chosen to ignore the DREAMERS. (undocumented college students). Yes, all the ones I've met know who Napoleon was, and know about the ALAMO. Just about all of them make better than decent grades and actually take their educations seriously. They are focused on having professional careers, knowing their future competency can make a big difference for their country (yes I mean the U.S.).

Yet, we continue to hold the hand of the millennial game playing child (and hope she gets it) while we ignore the fantastic possibilities for our country if DREAMERS could work as professionals in their fields once they graduate (they cannot because they are not legal U.S. residents).

It's not that our country is getting dumber - its that our priorities have changed. We place a huge priority in continuing a war that is killing off our millennial children - a war that is swallowing whole resources that could bring our public school education back to a level that can be respected.

In the meantime, DREAMERs make due with inner city schools and limited resources... and become star scholars. We reject the most innovative and hard working while we teach little to the rest... something is upside down in this world.


------

The Dumbing Of America
Call Me a Snob, but Really, We're a Nation of Dunces

By Susan Jacoby
Sunday, February 17, 2008; B01

"The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself." Ralph Waldo Emerson offered that observation in 1837, but his words echo with painful prescience in today's very different United States. Americans are in serious intellectual trouble -- in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations.

This is the last subject that any candidate would dare raise on the long and winding road to the White House. It is almost impossible to talk about the manner in which public ignorance contributes to grave national problems without being labeled an "elitist," one of the most powerful pejoratives that can be applied to anyone aspiring to high office. Instead, our politicians repeatedly assure Americans that they are just "folks," a patronizing term that you will search for in vain in important presidential speeches before 1980. (Just imagine: "We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain . . . and that government of the folks, by the folks, for the folks, shall not perish from the earth.") Such exaltations of ordinariness are among the distinguishing traits of anti-intellectualism in any era.

The classic work on this subject by Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter, "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," was published in early 1963, between the anti-communist crusades of the McCarthy era and the social convulsions of the late 1960s. Hofstadter saw American anti-intellectualism as a basically cyclical phenomenon that often manifested itself as the dark side of the country's democratic impulses in religion and education. But today's brand of anti-intellectualism is less a cycle than a flood. If Hofstadter (who died of leukemia in 1970 at age 54) had lived long enough to write a modern-day sequel, he would have found that our era of 24/7 infotainment has outstripped his most apocalyptic predictions about the future of American culture.

Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture (and by video, I mean every form of digital media, as well as older electronic ones); a disjunction between Americans' rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism.

First and foremost among the vectors of the new anti-intellectualism is video. The decline of book, newspaper and magazine reading is by now an old story. The drop-off is most pronounced among the young, but it continues to accelerate and afflict Americans of all ages and education levels.

Reading has declined not only among the poorly educated, according to a report last year by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1982, 82 percent of college graduates read novels or poems for pleasure; two decades later, only 67 percent did. And more than 40 percent of Americans under 44 did not read a single book -- fiction or nonfiction -- over the course of a year. The proportion of 17-year-olds who read nothing (unless required to do so for school) more than doubled between 1984 and 2004. This time period, of course, encompasses the rise of personal computers, Web surfing and video games.

Does all this matter? Technophiles pooh-pooh jeremiads about the end of print culture as the navel-gazing of (what else?) elitists. In his book "Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter," the science writer Steven Johnson assures us that we have nothing to worry about. Sure, parents may see their "vibrant and active children gazing silently, mouths agape, at the screen." But these zombie-like characteristics "are not signs of mental atrophy. They're signs of focus." Balderdash. The real question is what toddlers are screening out, not what they are focusing on, while they sit mesmerized by videos they have seen dozens of times.

Despite an aggressive marketing campaign aimed at encouraging babies as young as 6 months to watch videos, there is no evidence that focusing on a screen is anything but bad for infants and toddlers. In a study released last August, University of Washington researchers found that babies between 8 and 16 months recognized an average of six to eight fewer words for every hour spent watching videos.

I cannot prove that reading for hours in a treehouse (which is what I was doing when I was 13) creates more informed citizens than hammering away at a Microsoft Xbox or obsessing about Facebook profiles. But the inability to concentrate for long periods of time -- as distinct from brief reading hits for information on the Web -- seems to me intimately related to the inability of the public to remember even recent news events. It is not surprising, for example, that less has been heard from the presidential candidates about the Iraq war in the later stages of the primary campaign than in the earlier ones, simply because there have been fewer video reports of violence in Iraq. Candidates, like voters, emphasize the latest news, not necessarily the most important news.

No wonder negative political ads work. "With text, it is even easy to keep track of differing levels of authority behind different pieces of information," the cultural critic Caleb Crain noted recently in the New Yorker. "A comparison of two video reports, on the other hand, is cumbersome. Forced to choose between conflicting stories on television, the viewer falls back on hunches, or on what he believed before he started watching."

As video consumers become progressively more impatient with the process of acquiring information through written language, all politicians find themselves under great pressure to deliver their messages as quickly as possible -- and quickness today is much quicker than it used to be. Harvard University's Kiku Adatto found that between 1968 and 1988, the average sound bite on the news for a presidential candidate -- featuring the candidate's own voice -- dropped from 42.3 seconds to 9.8 seconds. By 2000, according to another Harvard study, the daily candidate bite was down to just 7.8 seconds.

The shrinking public attention span fostered by video is closely tied to the second important anti-intellectual force in American culture: the erosion of general knowledge.

People accustomed to hearing their president explain complicated policy choices by snapping "I'm the decider" may find it almost impossible to imagine the pains that Franklin D. Roosevelt took, in the grim months after Pearl Harbor, to explain why U.S. armed forces were suffering one defeat after another in the Pacific. In February 1942, Roosevelt urged Americans to spread out a map during his radio "fireside chat" so that they might better understand the geography of battle. In stores throughout the country, maps sold out; about 80 percent of American adults tuned in to hear the president. FDR had told his speechwriters that he was certain that if Americans understood the immensity of the distances over which supplies had to travel to the armed forces, "they can take any kind of bad news right on the chin."

This is a portrait not only of a different presidency and president but also of a different country and citizenry, one that lacked access to satellite-enhanced Google maps but was far more receptive to learning and complexity than today's public. According to a 2006 survey by National Geographic-Roper, nearly half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than a third consider it "not at all important" to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it "very important."

That leads us to the third and final factor behind the new American dumbness: not lack of knowledge per se but arrogance about that lack of knowledge. The problem is not just the things we do not know (consider the one in five American adults who, according to the National Science Foundation, thinks the sun revolves around the Earth); it's the alarming number of Americans who have smugly concluded that they do not need to know such things in the first place. Call this anti-rationalism -- a syndrome that is particularly dangerous to our public institutions and discourse. Not knowing a foreign language or the location of an important country is a manifestation of ignorance; denying that such knowledge matters is pure anti-rationalism. The toxic brew of anti-rationalism and ignorance hurts discussions of U.S. public policy on topics from health care to taxation.

There is no quick cure for this epidemic of arrogant anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism; rote efforts to raise standardized test scores by stuffing students with specific answers to specific questions on specific tests will not do the job. Moreover, the people who exemplify the problem are usually oblivious to it. ("Hardly anyone believes himself to be against thought and culture," Hofstadter noted.) It is past time for a serious national discussion about whether, as a nation, we truly value intellect and rationality. If this indeed turns out to be a "change election," the low level of discourse in a country with a mind taught to aim at low objects ought to be the first item on the change agenda.

info@susanjacoby.com

Susan Jacoby's latest book is "The Age of American Unreason."

for link to article click the title of this post

photo: http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/CHIRLA/images/rsz_2april10_action%20(41).jpg

A London view of McCain and Obama

Both advocate new immigration laws

----
The Guardian - London
Saturday February 16 2008
International section
Last updated at 00:02 on February 16 2008.

Neither man has yet to secure his party's nomination, but Barack Obama and John McCain have begun to lay down the battle lines for a possible confrontation in November's presidential election.

McCain, all but certain to lead the Republican ticket, is starting to plot election strategy, aides say, and the senator from Arizona has made it clear he intends to fight Obama's main premise of his candidacy head-on.

"I do not seek the presidency on the presumption that I am blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save my country in its hour of need," McCain said on Tuesday.

The Obama camp, meanwhile, has begun to mock McCain's main election vehicle: the Straight Talk Express, accusing the Republican of cleaving to the party line. "It looks like the wheels on the Straight Talk Express came off somewhere along the road to the Republican nomination," an Obama spokesman, Bill Burton, said.

Age vs Experience

At 71, McCain truly is old enough to be Obama's father. The senator from Illinois is 46. That might look like an obvious advantage to Obama in an election year dominated by talk of change. But Michael McDonald, an election specialist at George Mason University, cautions that McCain's age could help him. Older people are more reliable voters and people often vote for people like themselves.

Race could also be a factor in the campaign. "When you look at the primaries, in places like Alabama, Obama has won it with only a few whites crossing over - about 10% to 20%. He does better where whites are better educated, in places like Atlanta," McDonald said.

However, Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution, suggests the demand for change by the electorate could trump demographic considerations.

Firing up the base

Obama's ability to energise voters is undeniable. On the campaign trail, his rallies have packed out sports stadiums, and primaries and caucuses across America have seen record turnouts in all age groups and demographics.

McCain, in contrast, has been a divisive figure within the Republican party because of his opposition to torture at Guantánamo, his advocacy for new immigration laws and campaign finance reform, and his wavering stand on tax cuts. He has had trouble winning over social conservatives.

That may ease. In recent days, McCain has been endorsed by a number of conservative figures.

The White House said yesterday that the first president George Bush would formally endorse McCain from Texas on Monday. But Obama, for now, appears to have the edge. "There is still a sense that Obama has this charismatic movement behind him and McCain doesn't have that much charisma," said Frederic Solop, director of the Social Research Laboratory at Northern Arizona University.

Winning the centre ground

Obama has been winning over independent voters and even Republicans - or "Obamacans" as he calls them - in primary contests. McCain also appeals to independent voters because of his reputation as a maverick. But Obama is still tied down in the fight for the Democratic nomination. McCain, having virtually secured the nomination, can now focus on winning over centrist voters.

"Obama has to redefine himself in the general election," Solop said. "John McCain has the advantage going to the general election because he has a more moderate voice and is speaking more to the mainstream than Barack Obama."

However, McDonald argues that he ignores the deep unpopularity of the war in Iraq and McCain has pledged to keep US troops in Iraq as long as 100 years if the situation demands.

National security vs economy

An election fought on the economy would favour Obama. But what if an unforeseen event shifts America's political conversation - now focused on fears of a recession - to national security?

Republican operatives are already trying to frame the elections next November in terms of national security. That would help McCain, turning his age and experience into an unalloyed asset.

McCain's life experiences would fit well in an election fought on national security. He spent five years as a prisoner in Hanoi after being shot down in the Vietnam war. In Congress, he is the ranking Republican member of the Senate armed services committee. Obama has not served in the military and has no proven national security credentials.

Or as Nathan Sproul, a Republican strategist from McCain's home state of Arizona argues, Obama's message of hope and change will not play well if Americans feel their lives are in danger.

"In an age when people want to strap explosives on their body and kill us, I think most Americans ... will not be willing to accept that type of person as their commander-in-chief. His inexperience on all fronts is frankly stunning."

* guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008


for link to article click the title of this post

Investigation into Michael Tony Futi's Death

Michael Tony Futi

-----
Baby's airport death alarms Congress
By Dennis Camire
Honolulu Advertiser
Advertiser Washington Bureau
February 16, 2008

WASHINGTON Congressional lawmakers yesterday called for an immediate investigation into the death of a baby who was put in a locked room with his mother and nurse at Honolulu International Airport while immigration officials checked their travel documents.

Luaipou Futi and a nurse banged on the locked door and begged for medical help for Futi's 14-day-old son, Michael Tony Futi, who had flown to Honolulu Feb. 15 from American Samoa for heart surgery and was becoming distressed in the warm room. Michael died hours later at Moanalua Medical Center.

U.S. Rep. Peter T. King, R-N.Y., the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, asked the agency's inspector general to conduct the investigation, calling the incident a "terrible tragedy."

"My heart goes out to the family," King said.

Both Hawai'i senators and one congressman, plus a congressional delegate from American Samoa, are also pressing the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency for answers into the death of Michael.


U.S. Sens. Daniel K. Akaka and Daniel K. Inouye yesterday said they sent letters to Customs and Border Protection asking for an official inquiry into the death.

"The death of a small child always is a tragic occurrence, and I am distressed by the possibility that Michael's death might have been unnecessary," said Akaka, a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

In a statement, Inouye said, "My thoughts and prayers go out to the family of Michael Futi, and especially to his mother, Ms. Luaipou Futi."

"From a policy and regulatory standpoint, it will be important to review the agency's protocol on the clearance of gravely ill patients to ensure that we do not have a repeat of such a heartbreaking tragedy at any of our nation's ports of entry in the future."

Michael Friel, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection in Washington, said the agency could not comment because of possible litigation.

Delegate Eni F.H. Faleomavaega, D-American Samoa, also asked the Homeland Security Department to launch an investigation

U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawai'i, has written a letter to Customs and Border Protection's Honolulu office requesting "a full accounting" of procedures, rules and regulations covering detention of people traveling with young children.

Abercrombie said yesterday the child's death is "beyond tragedy."

"It is an outrage," he said. "I don't want excuses. I want answers."

A lawyer for the boy's mother said Michael died after he, his mother and a traveling nurse were kept in a warm room for about 30 minutes after arriving from American Samoa on Feb. 8. The boy was in Honolulu so he could be examined for a heart condition and probable surgery.

Luaipou Futi said her son became distressed in the room, and she and the nurse tried in vain to persuade officials to let them out.

The group was detained after a five-hour flight by immigration officials who apparently believed there was a problem with the mother's visa waiver, according to Rick Fried, the mother's attorney.

Fried said that while locked in the room, the baby started having breathing problems. After the three were released, city paramedics took Michael, in critical condition, to Kaiser Permanente's Moanalua Medical Center. He died later that morning.

Fried said he would file a lawsuit against the federal government over the child's death.

Akaka said he was particularly concerned with Customs and Border Protection's decision to detain a mother and newborn baby with a serious medical condition.

"It appears that Michael and his nurse were U.S. nationals entitled to enter the country so the decision to detain them rather than allowing them to continue to the hospital is particularly troubling," he said.

Rep. King said he respects the job Customs and Border Protection does but wants the inspector general to review the events leading up to the death and the rationale for detaining the infant and nurse, both of whom are U.S. citizens.

The review also should ensure that "a tragedy such as this does not happen again," King said.

Reach Dennis Camire at dcamire@gns.gannett.com.

correction: an earlier article states that Michael Tony's mother is an American citizen, she is not, although Michael and his nurse are. His mother did however have the proper documents to enter the U.S.

for link to article and photo click the title of this post


photo: http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/misc?url=/misc/zoom.pbs&Site=M1&Date=20080216&Category=NEWS01&ArtNo=802160346&Ref=AR

LA Times on Obama and Latinos

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-obama17feb17,0,7899933.story
From the Los Angeles Times
Hola, Obama
Latinos may have had their doubts about his candidacy. But he deserves a second look.
February 17, 2008

'Yes, we can."

The chant made famous by Sen. Barack Obama's presidential bid captures the senator's infectious optimism and movement candidacy. It also neatly translates into Spanish as "Si, se puede." That slogan, as any politically conscious Angeleno realizes, is the rallying call of this region's labor movement and its largely Latino leadership. And yet, despite Obama's surging national popularity and rhetorical identification with Latino political strength, many Latinos continue to harbor doubts about his candidacy. As this race enters its final stretch, Latinos owe Obama a second look.

Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton differ on few issues and generally agree on the matters of principal concern to Latinos. Both support comprehensive immigration reform; indeed, Obama promises to press that cause even more aggressively than Clinton. Both support significant revamping of the nation's healthcare system. Both favor economic, tax and job programs that would help poorer Americans, many of Latin American descent.

One of their relatively few policy differences places Obama in allegiance with many Latino leaders -- and Clinton on the other side. She opposes the issuance of driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, while Obama favors licensing those drivers. In part, his reasons are practical -- unlicensed drivers are more likely to flee the scene of an accident -- but the result puts him closer to what might be described as a predominantly "Latino" position on this issue than Clinton.

Nevertheless, Latino voters have given Clinton overwhelming support in some contests, notably California, where they favored her over Obama by roughly 30%, contributing significantly to her victory here. Partly, this may be because Latino voting power in this country owes much to Bill Clinton, who as president tapped several prominent Latinos -- Bill Richardson, Federico Pena, Henry Cisneros -- for positions of influence. Also, Latino voters traditionally have valued experience over soaring rhetoric. And some Latinos -- like some Anglos -- sadly have shown distaste for African American candidates, a reserve exacerbated by tensions between blacks and Latinos in many American cities. That last factor -- prejudice -- is rarely addressed directly, but it stalks this campaign.

The combination of history, loyalty and bigotry has hurt Obama, but there are signs that it may be ebbing. La Opinion endorsed Obama and specifically praised his "inclusive message of hope." The Service Employees International Union, with its huge Latino membership, on Friday backed his candidacy, and a number of prominent Latino officials have joined his campaign in recent months. Those endorsements have been trickling in and appear to be registering with voters. Obama lost California and other heavily Latino states on Super Tuesday. But he held his own among Latinos in Virginia, and his support is unmistakably broadening.

We in Los Angeles occupy the glorious center of Mexican American life. Our polyglot culture -- its language and institutions, politics, parades and street life -- is being shaped daily by the rub of black and white, Asian and Latino. Our mayor was elected by an inspiring cross-cultural coalition. It is, as we well know, a uniquely American joy to be immersed in the fast currents of cultural change.

Now the nation has the chance to experience a bit of the excitement that we enjoy in Los Angeles. It can set aside its prejudices and predispositions and join in support of a new kind of candidate. Texas, with its large Latino population, goes to the polls on March 4. Latino voters there and across the country should give Obama a chance. His victory could be theirs as well.

Si, se puede.

image: http://chavezfoundation.org/zencart/images/sisepuede.JPG

In a Locked Room at the Airport

The death of infant Michael Tony Fruti at Honolulu Airport brought to mind a similar event that occurred in Houston in May 2007. Mrs. G, woman in her late 60s, who spoke little English, was sitting next me on a plane as we flew from Washington to Houston. She began to have heart palpitations as we approached Houston. She had been detained a few days before when she landed in Houston (from Mexico). Now that she was returning she panicked, had chest pains and truly thought she was going to die. I wrote about this is a different blog (bornintheUSA2008.blogspot.com - "An embedded observer in the capital" May 20, 2007)

The problem occurred because Mrs. G had overstayed her visa by a few days in December 2006. While going through immigration at the Houston airport in early May 2007, she was placed in a detention room and interrogated by customs agents who she said screamed at her. She became very fearful and couldn't breathe. After a few minutes they brought in a medic and she was given oxygen.

The D.C.-Houston flight started out fine until the stewardess asked Mrs. G to move. A honeymooning couple were in separate seats - the request was so they could sit together. Since the woman did not speak English, she thought she was being moved because of some type of immigration problem.

Ironically, the newlywed wife was a nurse, and ended up attending Mrs. G after she fell ill. During the few minutes the younger woman was with Mrs. G, we spoke (in English) about the immigration situation in the U.S. She said it was important to secure our borders because there were lots of dangerous people trying to cross into the United States. She must not have thought dealing with Mexicans in Mexico was that risky - her honeymoon destination was one of Mexico's Americanized resorts.

When we landed back in Houston, Mrs. G panicked again when she was leaving the plane; she thought the EMT's who attended her were actually immigration officers coming to take her away.


A few minutes later, I was standing next to Mrs. G at the gate as the blond newlywed walked by with her handsome husband. I smiled at her and said "have fun." She had a scowl on her face and pretended she didn't see me.

How often are people like Mrs. G and the Fruti baby having to experience this type of treatment when arriving in the U.S.? As I told the EMT's at the Houston airport, they were going to see a lot more of this if ICE continued it's policies of demonizing immigrants.

2 wk old baby - U.S. citizen -dies while detained by ICE

A 2 week old baby with a heart defect goes into respiratory failure after being kept in a "warm, locked room." When his mother noted he was having problems she tried to open the door and found it was locked. She started screaming and customs officials told her "stay calm, relax." The baby died a few minutes later.

Supposedly they were detained at the airport because of a visa problem, but this doesn't make sense since both mother and baby were U.S. citizens - and had their passports to prove it.

It's sad that the media can make a circus out of a whale that is beached (which no doubt is a tragedy also), but for the most part, ignores something like this... Yes, there has been some coverage, but there should be absolute outrage over this incident.


...after about 30 minutes in the warm, locked room, Michael had trouble breathing, Fried said. "We're way past the time now that this baby would have been in good hands at Kapiolani," he said.Veavea checked the door, but found it locked, he said. She and Futi began to scream, but people outside the door told them to "stay calm, relax," he said...a spokesman for the state Transportation Department, said the child went into respiratory failure in the customs office, and airport paramedics failed to revive him.

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American Samoan baby dies after customs holdup in Honolulu airport
By GREG SMALL
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
Arizona Star
February 13, 2008

HONOLULU — The mother of a 2-week-old boy said her son would be alive today if they and his traveling nurse hadn't been held up at Honolulu International Airport by customs personnel. Luaipou Futi of American Samoa spoke through an interpreter during a news conference Tuesday at the offices of the family's attorney, Rick Fried. Futi's son, Michael Tony, died Friday at the airport after he, Futi and the nurse, Arizona Veavea, were kept in a locked room after flying nearly five hours from American Samoa so the child could be treated for a birth defect, a hole in his heart, Fried said.
Plans had called for the three to travel from the airport directly to Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children, where Michael was to be treated, Fried said.

Instead, they were held at the airport apparently because of some problem with a visa waiver issued by U.S. Customs and Border Protection that allowed Futi, 38, to travel to the U.S. and remain for the duration of her son's treatment, he said. Veavea had told officials at the airport that even if there was a problem, she and the child, both naturalized U.S. citizens with U.S. passports, should be allowed to leave the airport to go to the hospital, he said. Fried said he planned to file a notice of claim that the family intended to sue the federal government. Jim Kosciuk, a CBP spokesman, said he couldn't comment on the case because of potential legal issues.
LBJ Medical Center in American Samoa made the arrangements to transfer Michael to Honolulu for treatment he couldn't receive in the U.S. territory located 2,300 miles south of Hawaii, Fried said.

The three flew aboard a Hawaiian Airlines flight after it was decided the child born Jan. 25 didn't require an air ambulance. It was also determined he could ride in a private car that was waiting curbside, instead of an ambulance, from the airport to the hospital, Fried said.

The three were the first passengers to leave the plane, but after about 30 minutes in the warm, locked room, Michael had trouble breathing, Fried said. "We're way past the time now that this baby would have been in good hands at Kapiolani," he said.Veavea checked the door, but found it locked, he said. She and Futi began to scream, but people outside the door told them to "stay calm, relax," he said. About five minutes later, someone arrived to help perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation and eight to 10 minutes after that the infant was taken to another hospital, Fried said.
Scott Ishikawa, a spokesman for the state Transportation Department, said the child went into respiratory failure in the customs office, and airport paramedics failed to revive him.

Autopsy results are not yet complete.

Futi and her husband, Tony, 40, have a 14-year-old son and a 13-year-old daughter, but believed they could have no more children, so they adopted a son who is now 3, Fried said. "So this baby ... was a surprise to them, a real blessing. They were very excited about this," he said. Futi said she was so distraught, she couldn't eat or sleep.

for link to article click the title of this post

previously posted on Bender's Immigration Bulletin

A quiet negotiation on immigration in Washington

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The Frontrunner
February 11, 2008 Monday
House Democrats Working On Immigration Reform Package


Roll Call (2/11, Dennis) reports, "House Democrats are crafting scaled-down immigration reform legislation despite the political minefields that surround the issue, with Hispanic Members seeking five-year visas for illegal immigrants who pay fines and pass criminal background checks. ... It's unclear if the behind-the-scenes discussions will actually result in a bill coming to the floor, but Democrats say drafts of legislation already have been written and are being vetted behind the scenes." Rep. Joe Baca, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, "said he's seen a draft bill." He added "the prospects for a compromise package were discussed in high-level meetings Wednesday that included Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law." According to Baca, "the emerging legislation did not have the broader reforms included in last year's failed Senate immigration overhaul or in earlier measures backed by Hispanics, such as the DREAM Act. But Baca said the key piece for Hispanics is a five-year visa for illegal immigrants who can prove they have a job."

from Lexus Nexus Academic

Lofgren's Statement on demonstrations in Hanoi

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February 12, 2008 Tuesday
REP. LOFGREN ISSUES STATEMENT ON VIETNAMESE RELIGIOUS LIBERTIES
States News Service
DATELINE: WASHINGTON

The following information was released by the office of California Rep. Zoe Lofgren:

Yesterday, Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) met with a group of Vietnamese clergy from the Diocese of San Jose, California and agreed to make efforts on behalf of Catholics in Vietnam. She released the following statement in response to recent accounts that Vietnamese Catholics have held numerous demonstrations for religious liberty in Hanoi.

The regime in Hanoi must take firm and concrete action to prevent further religious and human rights violations against the Archdiocese of Hanoi and the Catholic faithful in Vietnam. The time has come for the government of Vietnam to recognize the right of religious groups to practice their faiths free of harassment and oppression. For far too long, people of faith have suffered under Hanoi' repressive and brutal rule.

Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren is the Chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law. She also Chairs the House Administration Subcommittee on Elections and serves on the House Homeland Security Committee. Congresswoman Lofgren is Chair of the California Democratic Congressional Delegation consisting of 34 Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives from California.

from Lexus Nexus Academic

Lost Congressional Hearing on ICE Raids

A couple of days ago I saw something about a hearing mentioned in a regional newspaper. The House Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law met to hear testimony on ICE raids and the detention of American citizens. At that particular moment I did not post the article. When I tried to do it later, I could not find any information on the hearing. It was not mentioned in the NY Times or the Washington Post. It turns out that information on the hearing appeared in newspapers with less national significance (like the article below from the Orange County Register)

Perhaps these types of hearings are not important anymore.

Just to note a comment by Rep. Steve King - who stated "it is not that hard to carry around identification." Did he mean a passport or birth certificate? A Driver's License does not verify residency - yet, how many people go everywhere with their passport or voter registration? I wonder if Steve King carries his passport around with him.

-----

Wednesday, February 13, 2008
House members grill ICE over Guzman case
Immmigration official says deportation of the mentally disabled U.S. citizen was an isolated accident, but critics disagree.
By MORGAN COOK
The Orange County Register

WASHINGTON - Federal immigration officials tried to convince a House immigration subcommittee Wednesday that last year's deportation of a mentally disabled American citizen was an accident, not evidence of widespread flaws in the agency's policies and procedures.

Lawyers and advocates suggested otherwise.

At the heart of Wednesday's hearing is the case involving Pedro Guzman, a 30-year-old California native who U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials removed from the country and sent to Tijuana, Mexico, in May, 2006.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, who chairs the panel, said she hoped the hearing "will reveal where problems lie and lead us to solutions."

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, asked Gary E. Mead, deputy director of the Office of Detention and Removal Operations at ICE, about the likelihood that Guzman was not the only U.S. citizen illegally removed from the country last year.

Mead said that about 310,000 people passed through the agency's 400 detention centers last year and that roughly 280,000 were deported. When asked how many deportations involved American citizens, Mead said, "To the best of my knowledge, only one U.S. citizen was removed."

Regardless, he said the agency is "reviewing its policies and procedures to determine if even greater safeguards can be put in place to prevent the rare instance where this event occurs." He said the agency anticipates having this review completed within the next 90 days.

Other testimony challenged how effective the agency's existing safeguards are in preventing unfair treatment of detainees and illegal removals of U.S. citizens.

Safeguards to detect mental or emotional impairments among detainees were not mentioned in Mead's written or oral testimony, nor was he specifically asked about such guidelines by committee members. But witnesses from human rights groups and lawyers testified that they believe the lack of such screens could be among the reasons that Guzman was removed.

Rachel Rosenbloom, a lawyer with the Center for Human Rights and International Justice at Boston College, said in her written testimony that no such safeguards exist.

Guzman was sent to Mexico after he signed a document accepting voluntary removal, a process by which illegal immigrants can leave the country voluntarily instead of being deported. Immigrants sometimes choose the option to make re-entry to the U.S. easier. The Department of Homeland Security reported that 965,000 people accepted an offer of voluntary departure in 2005.

Guzman can neither read nor write beyond a second grade level according testimony from his lawyer, James J. Brosnahan. He said that may have been the reason he signed the request for voluntary removal in which he claimed Mexican nationality. Rosenbloom testified that the Sheriff's department administrator who obtained his signature "checked a box indicating that Mr. Guzman had read the statement himself, in Spanish."

Mead testified that Guzman "claimed" he was a Mexican national but he did not specify how Guzman made that claim.

When King asked if there is any way cases like Guzman's could be a pattern, Mead said, "We don't think so, Mr. Congressman."

Rosenbloom said that mistakes like those that led to Guzman's removal are "inevitable" under U.S. deportation laws.

Chief among her concerns was the fact that a person threatened with removal has no right to government-appointed council.

Mead did not directly challenge Rosenbloom's claim, but he did say that detainees are offered phone numbers for free legal aid and embassies as well as access to free phones. Such access to phones and legal aid were not mentioned in his written testimony.

In her testimony, Rosenbloom said that no family or attorney was present during Guzman's proceedings.

Contact the writer: (202) 628-6381 or mcook@ocregister.com

for link to article click the title of this post

Feds admit mistakenly jailing citizens as illegal immigrants

As you read this many US citizen are probably detained and awaiting deportation in a cold, small jail cell not suitable for mothers nor children. It's a business that generates millions of dollars and releasing them would just be a loss to the corporations running the jail systems. Any number of humans, mistakenly jailed is unacceptable.----


Feb. 14, 2008,

By MARISA TAYLOR
McClatchy-Tribune Original:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5540262.html

WASHINGTON — A top Immigration and Customs Enforcement official acknowledged Wednesday that his agency has mistakenly detained U.S. citizens as illegal immigrants, but he denied that his agency has widespread problems with deporting the wrong people.

Gary Mead, ICE's deputy director of detention and removal operations, testified during a House of Representatives subcommittee hearing that U.S. citizens have been detained on "extremely" rare occasions, but he blamed the mix-ups on conflicting information from the detainees.Nonetheless, Mead said his agency is reviewing its handling of people who claim to be U.S. citizens "to determine if even greater safeguards can be put in place.

"The testimony before the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law came after immigration advocates told McClatchy that they'd seen a small but growing number of cases of U.S. citizens who've been mistakenly detained and sometimes deported by ICE. They accuse agents of ignoring valid assertions of citizenship in the rush to deport more illegal immigrants.

Unlike suspects charged in criminal courts, detainees accused of immigration violations don't have a right to an attorney, and three-quarters of them represent themselves.

Last month, Thomas Warziniack, a U.S. citizen who was born in Minnesota and grew up in Georgia, was mistakenly detained for weeks in an Arizona immigration facility and told that he was going to be deported to Russia.Warziniack, 40, was released after his family, who learned about his predicament from a McClatchy Newspapers reporter, produced his birth certificate.

In another high-profile example, ICE agents in California mistakenly deported Pedro Guzman, a mentally disabled U.S. citizen, to Mexico. Guzman was found months later when he tried to return to the United States.Mead contended that both Warziniack and Guzman said they were illegal immigrants, and he said ICE agents have to be careful not to release the wrong people. Guzman and Warziniack had been serving time for minor offenses when their jailers turned them over to immigration authorities.

Although Mead said that Guzman is the only U.S. citizen he knows who's been deported erroneously, immigration lawyers have said they've found at least seven others. In the past four years, ICE agents have detained more than 1 million people.

House committee members also heard stories of ICE agents interrogating or detaining U.S. citizens in their homes, at their workplaces and on the street.Marie Justeen Mancha, a 17-year-old born in Texas, said ICE agents raided her family's home in Georgia in 2006 while her mother was running an errand. Her mother is also a U.S. citizen."I started to hear the words, 'Police! Illegals!'" she recalled.

"I walked around the corner from the hallway and saw a tall man reach toward his gun and look straight at me."Mancha said the agents left after grilling her about her citizenship."I carry that fear with me every day, wondering when they'll come back," she said.Mancha is one of five U.S. citizens named in a pending lawsuit by the Southern Poverty Law Center that alleges wrongful interrogations or detentions by ICE in Southeast Georgia.

Rep. Steven King, R-Iowa, the ranking minority member of the committee, described the cases as isolated and urged the agency not to be distracted from detaining and deporting illegal immigrants.

"ICE does not aim to harass and detain U.S. citizens," he said.But Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., the chairwoman of the committee, said that after hearing such stories, she feared an "overzealous government is interrogating, detaining and deporting its own citizens."Nancy Morawetz, who runs an immigration rights clinic at New York University, said getting proof of citizenship is one of the biggest stumbling blocks for detainees, especially when they're shipped to a facility far from home.

In 2006, the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York nonprofit organization, identified 125 people in immigration detention centers who immigration lawyers believed had valid U.S. citizenship claims."As a country we do not have a national identity card," Morawetz said in an interview. "People don't walk around with a 'C' on their forehead that says they're a U.S. citizen."

ELVIRA ARELLANO DENIED ENTRY IN CANADA

It is unfortunate the Canadians did not allow her 3-4 day stay. Her efforts are admirable.---


Elvira Arellano, a Mexican citizen and sanctuary-deportee whose situation galvanized immigrant rights activism across the US, was scheduled toarrive in Vancouver to speak at a public forum on Sanctuary and MigrantJustice on Sunday Feb 10th and to join the US-based Marche Migrante onTues Feb 12th at the border.Elvira, however, was not allowed entry into Canada on Sat Feb 9th.

No reasons were given for her refusal and it is believed she was held indetention prior to being deported back to Mexico. A member of No One IsIllegal Vancouver was called by immigration authorities, expressing'concern' that Elvira's visit was only for 3-4 days and asked if it wastrue that Elvira was here to speak at a rally / for political purposes.Arellano took refuge in the Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago in 2006. Over the year, she become a spokesperson for the New SanctuaryMovement, as well as president of La Familia Latina Unida, and a symbol ofresistance against the systemic violence, exploitation, and racism in theUS immigration system.

On August 19, 2007, having traveled to Californiaon a speaking tour where she advocated the right of immigrant families tostay united, the single mother was arrested by US authorities and deportedto Mexico, without her son.According to an August 2007 Globe and Mail report "Faced with a spike inrefugee claims from Mexicans - the country is now the top source of asylumseekers in Canada - Canadian authorities have been refusing entry toincreasing numbers of Mexican citizens attempting to visit the country astourists.Those turned away complain of harsh, insensitive and even racisttreatment from Canadian officials".

Since Mexican citizens are not required to get a visa to enter Canada immigration officers at the airport and at the border are given the power to determine whether or not they are allowed in, costing visitors thousands of dollars, resulting in maltreatment, stress and fear.Elvira's refusal and turn-back reveals the abritraty and restrictive nature of the immigration enforcement system deployed against racialized migrants, particularly in the post 911 climate and with the implementationof border agreements such as the Safe Third Country Agreement and Securityand Prosperity Partnership Agreement.

Therefore, it is crucial that we continue to struggle against the pain,anxiety, and violence caused by this regime of border imperialism andcontinue to actively organize ourselves to support dignity andself-determination for migrants.

In solidarity, No One is Illegal-Vancouver

Looking again at the U.S. -Vietnam Deportation Plan

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San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.)
February 13, 2008


U.S.-Vietnam deportation plan needs second look

For years, America has offered a beacon of hope and freedom for people from all over the world. That's one big reason the United States has more than 1 million immigrants from Vietnam, many of whom fled war and oppression in their homeland.

So it's disturbing that U.S. immigration officials, under a new Washington-Hanoi repatriation pact, soon will begin deporting undocumented Vietnamese back to the authoritarian country they left. This reversal of longstanding practice is troubling on political and humanitarian grounds. Officials should hold off on the deportations until Congress can review the situation more closely, as 13 lawmakers have suggested.

To be sure, many of the illegal immigrants who could be sent back have criminal convictions in the United States. Those who have committed serious felonies, such as murder, kidnapping or child sexual abuse should not be given refuge here. But those convicted of lesser crimes, have already completed jail time or simply overstayed their visas are another matter. It makes sense to take a closer look at these individual cases.

The pact signed in late January affects about 1,500 Vietnamese nationals who arrived here on or after July 12, 1995, and are in deportation proceedings or have received a final deportation order. The pact doesn't affect those who arrived earlier, since the United States did not have diplomatic relations with Vietnam then.

Overall, there are about 8,000 Vietnamese nationals facing deportation; about 7,000 of them have criminal convictions.

The United States has repatriation agreements with many countries, but most of them are not authoritarian. Vietnam is unique because of its legacy of war and persecution, the U.S. role in Vietnam's history and the poor human rights record of the communist government in Hanoi. Its unsatisfactory record has been recently documented by the U.S. State Department, among others.

Returnees would likely face abuse or discrimination from a government that doesn't look kindly on their leaving in the first place. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who heads a House subcommittee on immigration, notes that the United States doesn't send illegal Cuban immigrants back to Fidel Castro's regime.

The United States has long been respected for welcoming foreigners, who enrich and strengthen American society. And the United States has served as a model for freedom and democracy. Immigration officials should tread carefully in order to uphold those ideals.

The price of xenophobia

---

Nativism's Electoral Flop
Bashers of illegal immigration are failing at the polls.
Washington Post

Thursday, February 14, 2008; A24

IN THE AFTERMATH of last summer's national debate over immigration reform, elected officials of all stripes were stunned by the popular passion and fury unleashed by the failed effort in Congress to provide an eventual path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Many Republicans concluded hopefully -- and many Democrats reckoned fretfully -- that immigration would be the premier wedge issue of the 2008 campaign. But with the presidential primaries in their homestretch, it now appears that both the hopes and the fears were overstated.

On the Republican side, what's striking is that the talk-show tantrums of the anti-immigrant ranters, despite having riled up a vocal minority, have had little impact on the outcome of primaries. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), who styled himself as the nativists' champion, dropped out of the presidential contest after never registering more than a blip in the polls. Former governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts took his turn at strident rhetoric against undocumented immigrants, to no discernible effect. Rudy Giuliani all but repudiated what had been his constructive, tolerant record on immigration as mayor of New York and then got shellacked in Hispanic-heavy Florida. Former governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas took the most rabid line of all, promising to drive all 12 million illegal immigrants from the country in four months; he seems destined to be an also-ran, barring unforeseen miracles.

Granted, hard-liners remain apoplectic about Arizona Sen. John McCain's erstwhile role as a champion of what they regard as amnesty for illegal immigrants; their ire may yet erode the Republican base in the general election. And many Republican congressional candidates will surely try to exploit the residual fervor on the issue in this fall's elections. But the fact remains that Mr. McCain is the presumptive GOP nominee, despite what amounts to only a mild shift in emphasis in his longstanding position. (He now talks about the primacy of border security but continues to express compassion for illegal immigrants, who, he notes, "are God's children.") Perhaps the more interesting fallout from the immigration debate has been in the Democratic primaries, which have been marked by a major surge of Hispanic voters in some states. In California, 29 percent of Democratic voters on Super Tuesday were Hispanic, almost twice the share they represented in 2004. In Connecticut, their share of the party's primary electorate leaped to 7 percent from just 2 percent four years ago. In Missouri, where the Latino vote was negligible in 2004, Hispanics accounted for 5 percent of Democratic primary voters this year.

Those jumps go well beyond Hispanics' increasing share of the overall population. And while Hispanics constitute a diverse electorate, concerned with jobs, education, health care, crime and other issues, it's a safe bet that the nativist rancor of last year's debate has motivated and mobilized many of them. This is bad news for a Republican Party that has aligned itself with the most noxious anti-immigrant voices.

No doubt, the unrealistic and irresponsible advocates of harassment, roundups and deportations will show up at the polls this November, if only to cast ballots against candidates who would embrace workable reforms. The hope here is that their electoral clout will be outweighed by a backlash among fired-up and fed-up Latino voters.

for link to article click title of this post

LATINO TALK TV...

TOO BAD ITS ON CABLE ONLY...

...BUT FOR THOSE WHO ARE LUCKY TO HAVE CABLE...

CHECK OUT THEIR WEEKLY SHOW

Monday Nights 7-8

IF YOU MISS A SHOW, IT'S ON THEIR WEBSITE...

http://www.latinotalktv.com/

...FEATURING ALL SORTS OF TOPICS, FOR EXAMPLE:

January 14, 2007 7:00 pm

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION - POLITICAL RHETORIC OR A TRUE EPIDEMIC?

Guests:Curt Collier, US Border Watch: Maria Jimenez, National Networkof Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Massey Villarreal, Greater HoustonPartnership/US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Rick Dovalina, LULAC PastNational President

http://www.latinotalktv.com/

ICE and the Travis County Sheriff's Department

TRAVIS COUNTY
Sheriff defends allowing immigration officials to have office at jail
At public hearing, many in audience, one commissioner fear Hamilton pulling county into enforcement debate.
Listen to this article or download audio file.Click-2-Listen

By Marty Toohey
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Travis County Sheriff Greg Hamilton encountered sharp criticism and a smattering of support Tuesday for his decision to allow federal immigration agents to establish an office at the Travis County Jail.

At two public forums, Hamilton defended the decision, saying the sheriff's office is simply allowing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to use a side office in a jail in which its agents have been working for 30 years. He denied the charge that the sheriff's office is enforcing federal immigration law or facilitating racial profiling.

"I take offense to (critics) saying we're racial profiling," Hamilton said. "This is a public safety issue."

The immigration agency can detain people who have been arrested if it suspects that they are illegal immigrants, and the agency wants to have someone at the jail performing that vetting around the clock. The agency plans to add agents in Austin, and Hamilton said there was no harm in letting them use an office.

At the forums, some audience members disagreed.

"I think there's a great deal of naiveté in that statement," immigration attorney Malcolm Greenstein said at a night forumarranged to express community outrage. "It's a difference between an arm's-length relationship and embracing."

Among the concerns were questions of who would be detained — particularly if Hispanics would be the only ones — and whether people who would otherwise be let out were going to be kept behind bars while immigration agents vet them.

The main concern was that Hispanics could stop reporting crimes to the sheriff's office because of fears that deputies could begin arresting people accused of being in the country illegally.

"This undoes years of work by many people," said Joe Lopez, a member of Austin Interfaith.

About 120 people attended the night forum, including immigration attorneys and TV crews, but not officials from the immigration agency.

At a public hearing held earlier in the day by the county commissioners, some audience members said Hamilton was doing the right thing and should cooperate with federal officials.

"In many cases, these individuals (who are arrested) get a free pass to live here in our generous community and then commit crimes," audience member Brent Munhofen said.

That meeting was also heated at times.

When one audience member told the commissioners he was once a migrant worker, another audience member said loudly, "You're an illegal."

A third audience member said that was an unfair assumption and offered to settle the disagreement "outside on the street."

Commissioner Margaret Gómez chastised Hamilton for "getting defensive" and for not conferring with the commissioners before making a decision, later saying that Hamilton was creeping toward enforcing immigration law. The sheriff's office has a long-standing policy of not enforcing immigration law.

"I happen to think that no person from Earth is illegal," Gómez added.

Hamilton said Gómez was mischaracterizing the arrangement — "I don't know what part of the conversation you didn't hear" — and accused her of politicizing a law-enforcement issue.

mtoohey@statesman.com; 445-3673


for link to article click the title of this post

A lesson in bravery

A fellow dreamer recently discovered this blog from DREAMER's in California.

This blog is amazing and for the most part written by DREAMER's. I have found it to be a great window into our hearts and minds. I often find myself reading it and soaked in tears because i finally found others channeling the same fears, feelings, hopes, and dreams that i have.

Grecia Lima teaches us a lot in this clip put together by UC students in San Diego. I encourage u all to watch and learn.

DREAMERS Finding Sanctuary - Part II

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Reverend Paiva, in Pico Union: "...This isn't about one or two people coming from another country. It's about power and the actions that create imbalances between countries. It's a part of the call, part of the mission, of the church. You need to be hospitable, welcome the stranger, help people in unjust situations."

Continued:

Gimme Shelter - Part II
The Nation
by SASHA ABRAMSKY

[from the February 25, 2008 issue]


The central questions are whether those fleeing economic destitution have as strong a moral claim, and whether their religious defenders have as valid a reason to do an end run around secular law, as those fleeing the guns and bombs of juntas did a generation ago. It's an arguable point. The religious men and women of the New Sanctuary Movement have concluded there is, indeed, a moral equivalence, one made all the more urgent by the increasingly unpleasant demonization of "illegals" that has occurred in recent years. And having reached a moral conclusion, the congregations have felt compelled to ac

t rather than to sit back and watch events unfold--displaying an admirable willingness to go to bat for their moral beliefs, absorb criticism and come out (verbally) swinging.

Churches in Long Beach and Simi Valley that have offered sanctuary have been picketed by the Minutemen, as well as California-specific groups such as Save Our State, and their pastors routinely receive hate mail and threats of violence. In Simi Valley, a deeply conservative suburb north of Los Angeles, the city council recently billed the United Church of Christ (UCC) nearly $40,000 for police services after anti-sanctuary groups launched a large protest against the church. The rationale? The congregation had brought the protests on themselves by offering sanctuary to an undocumented immigrant, and thus should be liable for all law-enforcement expenses. None of this has deterred the congregations.

"I think there is a higher law," says Frank Johnson, a retired pastor at the UCC church in Simi Valley. The Simi Valley church looks like a huge, cream-colored stucco McMansion, an utterly functional building on a wide back street, the surrounding hilly landscape a strange mixture of end-of-the-earth shards of desert rock and lush irrigated gardens. In a building just up the hill from the main church, 29-year-old Liliana "Santuario" is living with her infant son, Pablito. They moved from their home in the agricultural town of Oxnard into sanctuary last May, first to a church in Long Beach, then up north to Simi Valley--fleeing an ICE deportation order that would send Liliana to Mexico, from where she migrated close to a decade ago. If deported she would leave behind her three children and her husband (all US citizens).

"As persons of faith," continues the white-haired, mustached Johnson, "we believe God seeks justice for the people. Whereas in most circumstances we believe it's important to obey the law, there are occasions such as the civil rights movement and people shielding Jews from the Holocaust--all of those things are illustrations of the fact there is a law of love that trumps some laws that exist on the books, if there is injustice. That's why we're doing this."

The UCC people clearly believe their ward can become the new Arellano, and that doesn't necessarily make for the best interactions with the media. Liliana, a beautiful young woman, is always surrounded by handlers. She claims to be keeping a diary, in English, designed to help her learn the language, but the diary, which her handlers urge her to read to me, has clearly been written by a publicist.

"This is a country of opportunity," she reads aloud, her handler correcting her pronunciation. "But where is the love and compassion? When I think of the United States, I think of the Statue of Liberty. Give us your poor and free and huddled masses. I yearn to breathe free."

Liliana's handler looks at her. "Very good. Excellent," she tells her.

The scene is about as authentic as a B-movie script from one of the studios a few miles away in Hollywood. It's a shame because when she's allowed to just tell her story, Liliana is a compelling figure, her terror at being deported away from her three young children and her husband palpable.

Far more authentic is the scene in the Angelica Lutheran Church deep in the impoverished Pico Union barrio, near downtown Los Angeles. It's a landscape of broken-down old cars, discarded sofas, taco stands and street merchants hawking bags of secondhand goods. Little old ladies in flip-flops wander the streets. Prematurely aged men pause to rest on the furniture left out on the sidewalk.

Angelica is a large, arched, brick building. Originally built for Swedish immigrants, these days it is an evangelical church, presided over by the Rev. Carlos Paiva and attended mainly by Mexican migrants. Ads for the Harvest Bible University adorn its exterior. A small room in the back of the old building, furnished with a TV, couch, fridge and a stove, is currently home to José, a 44-year-old immigrant from Guadalajara, and father of four--the two youngest of whom are US citizens. To the furnishings he has added his clothes, a collection of English-language classes on CD and a few personal items.

José has lived in Los Angeles since 1989, when he paid a coyote $300 to help him cross over from Tijuana. In the years following, he worked several jobs, including truck maintenance at Los Angeles International Airport. He has been facing deportation proceedings since ICE caught up with him in 2004, and he sought sanctuary last February after ICE sent him a letter saying he was to be sent back to Mexico. The first church to welcome him was La Placita; then in September he moved to Angelica.

"Sometimes I feel very alone," he says in Spanish, sitting on a pew under the lush altar, with Paiva translating. "Depressed. It's not easy to be away from my family. I try to feel good. I try to be busy, working. I say prayers here." Paiva adds that José helps with the church's food distribution program to local seniors and also does custodial work around the building.

Given that there are an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in America, and the New Sanctuary Movement will only ever directly help a handful of them, its impact, as Chishti argues, is largely symbolic. And given the concerns about church-state separation, it has its problems, even at the level of symbolism. In light of the backlash it tends to provoke, it's also reasonable to ask whether it is always the best strategy for promoting the rights of immigrants. But its practitioners are, at the very least, offering a moral alternative to the overheated, often inflammatory rhetoric of the Lou Dobbses of the world.

Sanctuary advocates are spotlighting a broken immigration system that Congress has signally failed to fix. And they are standing up for downtrodden people in an era in which our patience for poverty and despair has too often been absent. Above all, they are refusing to compromise fundamental values. For all this, they may win public sympathy for their cause and inject a bit more humanity into the frequently callous immigration debate.

"I protest in silence," says Reverend Paiva, in Pico Union. "I protest with a peaceful heart. I protest by working together with Congressmen and politicians to work out a way we can solve this through humanitarian actions. This isn't about one or two people coming from another country. It's about power and the actions that create imbalances between countries. It's a part of the call, part of the mission, of the church. You need to be hospitable, welcome the stranger, help people in unjust situations."

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DREAMERS Finding Sanctuary - Part I

"Faith-based groups in California, New York, Illinois, Arizona, Washington and several other states are declaring a similar moral obligation upon their congregants to take in families that risk being split apart by immigration proceedings. As a result, several men and women have entered sanctuary since last January, when the movement coalesced out of a series of meetings held by immigrants' rights groups and social justice organizers nationwide, and many more are in the process of being adopted into sanctuary by local churches, Quaker meetings and synagogues."

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Gimme Shelter
by SASHA ABRAMSKY
The Nation

[from the February 25, 2008 issue]

Two young women sit at a table in Rabbi Laurie Coskey's office in a northeastern corner of San Diego. The church pastor in whose house they currently live sits to their left. Around the table are another pastor, the head of a local Quaker meeting and Rabbi Coskey.

The women came to America eleven years ago, when they were children, their parents having allegedly fled political persecution in a country in Eastern Europe. (To protect their identities, they requested that the country not be specified in this article.) They sought asylum status but were denied. They appealed the ruling up to the Ninth Circuit and lost there, too. They stayed in the country anyway. The girls went to school in San Diego; learned to drive, though they could never get driver's licenses because of their illegal status; made friends, almost none of whom know that they are undocumented; got good grades. The oldest was offered spots at top universities--but being illegal and therefore ineligible for financial aid, enrolled instead in a lesser-known, and cheaper, local college, where she declared a major in business administration.

At 6 am one day this past June, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents knocked on the family's door. They arrested the father and left behind the mother and her two girls--telling them that they would let the girls finish their semesters in school and university and would then expect them to leave the country, according to the family. The father was taken to an immigrant detention center. Three weeks later, he was deported. The girls and their mother went into hiding to avoid a similar fate.

Desperate, the girls began researching their options on the Internet. Legally, having rolled bad dice in the illegal immigration crapshoot, they'd run out of tricks. Quite simply, they had been unlucky enough to be among the tiny number of illegal immigrants snagged by immigration authorities, and there was nowhere left to turn. Despite having grown up in the United States and never having left the country in the eleven years they had lived in San Diego, they had no right to remain.

"We didn't make a decision to come or not come here," says the younger sister. "We were so young. Our parents made the decision." The sisters stumbled upon references to something called the New Sanctuary Movement, locally coordinated by Coskey and others, and later in the summer they made contact with local religious groups that had pledged to help people in their situation. "They were deer in the headlights," Coskey recalls. "They still are a little bit. They felt sort of raped by the system. It's a terrible word. But they were. They'd just grown up, lived their lives and done everything right, and here they were."

Within weeks, a local congregation had debated their situation and decided to take them in. "To be Christ in the world was to open my home and invite them in," explains the pastor, who, like the two young women, agreed to talk only on the condition that her identity be protected. "I hear Christ asking me to provide shelter and food and love to someone in need."

While many admire the sense of moral purpose demonstrated by New Sanctuary Movement leaders, some progressive immigration reformers are skeptical of their modus operandi.

"It's a highly laudable cause in many ways, and you can appreciate why they're doing what they're doing," says Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute at New York University's School of Law. "But it touches such an incredibly minuscule part of the population. It's more symbolic than meaningful in the lives of immigrants."

Chishti believes, moreover, that it's problematic that New Sanctuary advocates fail to distinguish between civil and criminal immigration cases, embracing individuals who have willfully ignored final deportation orders and who have ended up with criminal cases against them. "There are people who have final notices, know they have final notices, and then they're taking refuge. It gets you in the harboring problem."

It also gets into what is in many ways an even thornier issue: progressives don't like faith-based infringements on the secular political and legal system when conducted by conservatives. How, therefore, does it make sense to claim sacred privilege from the left? "Our legal system," Chishti notes, "does not recognize a church-based sanctuary. We have a separation of church and state."

Yet for all the flaws in New Sanctuary philosophy, its practitioners are highlighting something important: America is a country of immigrants, but in recent years more and more of those immigrants have entered illegally. They have done so not out of a desire to live on the margins and at perpetual risk of deportation but because the current immigration process makes it extremely hard for large numbers of people to migrate legally from countries like Mexico and Guatemala--or, for that matter, from countries such as the one the San Diego sisters came from--while at the same time economic and political factors, such as the way NAFTA has played out, make it extremely hard not to embark on a migration journey.

Political leaders bemoan the wave of illegal immigration that has resulted but, until recently, have generally avoided trying to alter the equations that underlie the phenomenon. After all, having a large undocumented worker population has proven rather profitable to big business. And thus the unofficial policy of "Let 'em in but keep 'em on their toes." Add to this mix the ongoing grassroots backlash against illegal immigration, and suddenly there are an awful lot of people who have been living gray-zone existences in the United States for years--oftentimes decades--who are now at risk of a knock on the door from ICE and a sojourn in an immigrant holding facility, followed by deportation. Many of them were brought to the country as children; their primary language is English, their cultural reference points are American, the country they identify with--despite their lack of a passport, valid Social Security number or driver's license--is the United States. Frequently their spouses are legal residents and their kids are American citizens. Deport these people and, in addition to shattering families, you are sending them back to a "home" they have no memories of, no connections to, no chance of succeeding within. It's a lose-lose situation. It's inhumane.

It is primarily in response to this quandary that the New Sanctuary Movement has grown up over the past couple of years. "We're in this for the long haul," says Michael Ramos, of the Church Council in King County, Washington. "There's going to be several years of uncertainty and fear in our immigrant communities. And it's only just that faith communities step forward and provide a measure of hope."

"The philosophy of the national movement is based around providing prophetic hospitality to families in need of it," asserts the Rev. Liana Rowe, a United Church of Christ pastor in Phoenix who coordinates New Sanctuary Movement activity throughout Arizona. "Based on teachings of the prophets in the Hebrew Bible, hospitality and compassion weave their themes throughout most of the major faith traditions in the world."

In the 1980s, as one Central American country after another collapsed into brutal civil war or military repression, churches around the United States began giving "sanctuary" to refugees fleeing the violence. Most of these men and women lacked legal papers, since the United States was reluctant to give refugee status to those fleeing governments deemed "friendly," and once in the United States they existed only in the shadows. Many found their way to progressive churches, and over a period of several years, those church congregations began helping them--providing shelter, voicing moral outrage when the Immigration and Naturalization Service instigated deportation proceedings, organizing transport between hideouts.

Unlike in medieval Europe, sanctuary inside a church carries no legal protections in the United States. But the cloak of religious authority, the aura of sacred space, does seem to provide a moral protection, making government agencies that much more reluctant to go after people facing deportation. Sanctuary providers cannot recall one instance in which immigration officers have forcibly entered church property to seize an undocumented immigrant for deportation.

"We have to start with the biblical vision of sanctuary," explains the Rev. Alexia Salvatierra, executive director of the California-based Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE), over herbal tea in a Los Angeles Starbucks. A curly-haired bohemian-looking woman, Salvatierra, who welcomed refugees into her home during the 1980s, lives in the West Side neighborhood of Los Angeles and helps coordinate the state's sanctuary providers. "Sanctuary is a social mechanism written about in the Book of Numbers--for situations in which a person has committed a crime and the response to the crime is inappropriate, cruel and unjust." In the Book of Numbers, sanctuary is proffered to those who have committed manslaughter but are going to be punished for the more serious offense of murder. In ancient Israel, Salvatierra says, there were entire cities given over to providing sanctuary.

In modern times, some religious figures in what came to be known as the Sanctuary Movement were prosecuted in the late '80s on federal conspiracy charges for transporting undocumented individuals across state lines. Among the religious left, these men and women have entered the pantheon of heroes, their actions models for those who today are providing sanctuary to undocumented immigrants. Faith-based groups in California, New York, Illinois, Arizona, Washington and several other states are declaring a similar moral obligation upon their congregants to take in families that risk being split apart by immigration proceedings. As a result, several men and women have entered sanctuary since last January, when the movement coalesced out of a series of meetings held by immigrants' rights groups and social justice organizers nationwide, and many more are in the process of being adopted into sanctuary by local churches, Quaker meetings and synagogues.

In the Seattle area, more than a dozen churches have pledged to take in sanctuary seekers. Scores more places of worship in San Diego, Los Angeles, New York and other immigration hubs have also declared their willingness to host men and women facing deportation.

The poster child for the movement, a woman named Elvira Arellano, was housed in sanctuary in Chicago for months before being arrested and deported while attending an immigrants' rights event in Los Angeles over the summer. Her deportation served as something of a catalyst for activists, and in recent months a large number of congregations have signed on to the New Sanctuary Movement. Those in sanctuary include not only Mexicans but also Eastern Europeans, Haitians and, in New York City, a Chinese family.

Salvatierra told me, "God leads social change through the victims and warriors. Whoever's on the front line, they're the leader and we're in solidarity with them. It's a liberation theology precept..."

continued

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TX: Van de Putte: Latinos Left Behind By Bush

Austin American Statesman, January 28, 2008
By Corrie MacLaggan

In the Spanish-language Democratic response to the State of the Union address, state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, said President Bush's administration has left many Latinos struggling.

She said that Latinos are earning less and that the collapse of the housing market has many fearing they'll lose their homes. And she admonished Bush for twice vetoing an expansion to the Children's H