Paying the Price: The Impact of Immigration
Raids on America’s Children It looked into the effects on the children of the Greeley, Colorado; Grand Island, Nebraska; and New Bedford, Massachusetts raids.
Are we punishing the kids?
Or is this the Bush Administration's "CHILD LEFT BEHIND" program?
One of our society’s fundamental principles is that, to the extent possible, children should not be punished for the sins of their parents. This principle has deep roots in both religion and law.
Are we as a society willing to pay the costs that these policies will incur?
Iowa has been anticipating an immigration raid since Homeland Security leased the National Cattle Congress fairgrounds in Waterloo late last week (as diaried by isucyclones94). The raid went down this morning at the Agriprocessors Inc. meat processing plant in Postville, Iowa. The plant is known as the nation's largest kosher slaughterhouse and was opened in 1987 by Hasidic Jews from New York. Postville has about 2500 residents and has a substantial Jewish and immigrant community that includes many native Mexicans and Eastern Europeans.
Those of y'all who live in free states up North are excited about voting straight Democrat in November. This diary is not to discourage you. The Alabama Territory is under a de facto regime that, logically, legally, on paper, does not exist. It is self-defeating for anti-fascists in the Deep South to participate in upcoming sham elections.
I've seen no front-page or diary coverage of this story which broke today in the Washington Post: System of Neglect. Sub-heading: "As Tighter Immigration Policies Strain Federal Agencies, The Detainees in Their Care Often Pay a Heavy Cost"
The story details some of the 84 deaths which the Post estimates have occurred at immigration detention facilities in the past five years.
The people of Waterloo, Iowa are in a tizzy. Homeland Security has swooped in like a blink of an eye. The Department of Homeland Security took over and isolated the National Cattle Congress on Waterloo's west side.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials in California have stooped to a new, almost unbelievable low: intimidating schoolchildren.
Allow me to state the obvious: schools should be safe. And they should feel safe for the kids, their parents, and the teachers and staff who work there. But for the students at four Oakland schools and Berkley High School on Wednesday, school felt anything but safe. That day, rumors spread throughout the schools that ICE were nearby, possibly planning raids at the schools. Parents text-messaged their kids, warning them that ICE agents were close by so that the undocumented parents couldn't come to the schools to pick their children up. The Berkley school district became so overwhelmed with calls that they set up an automated voice message for parents, which according to the San Francisco Chronicle, stated that the administration would "not allow any child to be taken away from the school." The schools -- including Stonehurst Elementary, where immigration officials were parked across the street -- became a panic scene.
On Wednesday, John McCain's home state Arizona Republic did some good excavation work in the ongoing demolition of the GOP nominee's maverick myth. Analyzing his Senate voting record since 1999, the paper found McCain rarely strayed from the Republican Party line. But that's only a small part of the unraveling of the McCain maverick fable. As I previously detailed, John McCain in his eternal quest for the GOP nomination has repeatedly reversed long-held positions and compromised supposed core principles to curry favor with right-wing Republican primary voters.
When I arrived at JFK November of 1999, I was in some respects the classical immigrant. I was certainly tired. I was quite poor. And after a six hour flight, I was most definitely a huddled mass yearning to breathe free. And I spent a time in this country acting as many immigrants do - working hard, keeping my head down, and not making any trouble. Even when you are perfectly legal, married to a citizen, speak the language, and have a decent job, it pays not to make waves around here.
In the time since then I have done much to assimilate myself into the American culture. I have visited all 50 states. I am addicted to baseball, both as a spectator and a player. I have become something of a historian of Brooklyn, my adopted home. But I have remained disengaged from the political process, even as the government of this country has become still more corrupt and self serving than I could have imagined. It's time I made an effort. And this post is my starting point.
How do we say we did NOTHING but sit on our hands as 66 people died in Family Detention Centers for NOTHING more than a Civil Violation as our Administration stays hindered by armies of those pushing for restrictionist laws and our government can not move forward with Comprehensive Immigration Reform!?!
The 66 risked their LIVES to provide their Children the Opportunity for the American Dream! Did they die in Vain?
If you—or your son in college, or your 80-year-old grandmother—are planning a bus or train trip within New York State (yes, I said WITHIN New York State), you had best be prepared with proof of citizenship. Riders who lack it may be detained as possible illegal immigrants or terrorists.
It has been the fashion in the "New" Democratic party to look down their collective noses at blue collar people. Clinton won Pennsylvania by suggesting that Obama is some kind of elite liberal who couldn't possibly understand the working class. Blue collar workers abandoned the Democratic Party in droves to vote for Reagan. Then they voted for Clinton. I'm not sure that it has made much of a difference for them in the long run.
Less than two months ago, Blackwater pulled their application to build a military training base on an 824-acre site in the San Diego County community of Potrero. Public outcry was intense. In a district which Bush won by 26% in 2004, all five members of the Planning Group who voted to approve Blackwater's application were recalled by unbelievable margins (60-70%). Despite this surge of people-powered politics, it appeared as if the military base would go on as planned until a thorn brought the lion down. It was ultimately a technicality – noise tests conducted at the site failed to meet county standards – that stopped the corporate machine.
Now they're at it again, secretly, three miles blocks from the Mexican border, and this time the people can stop them.
Here is the second part of the epic face off between Hillary Clinton and Bill "Culture Warrior" O'Reilly. They have a pretty passionate exchange about torture and foreign policy with regards to Iran, terrorism etc.
In the second part he asks the Senator about water boarding and torture, with O'Reilly bullying Clinton into trying to admit torture is the obvious solution. While I'm not a Hillary Clinton supporter I found myself cheering her on and think she did well. Much of that might have to do with the fact that O'Reilly is a douche.
I wonder if it sets the wrong precedent going on his show, since she chose to be interviewed on O'Reilly while she's yet to appear on a lot of other good shows. FOX News is probably pretty happy with themselves.
If these solutions don't stop the tides of illegal flow in and out of our borders, a friend of mine has a Texas-tough alternative and answer to replace the government's virtual fence failure. In fact, he says, we don't need a security fence at all. All we need to do is to post signs and position manned trucks at key points, just like our government does at Area 51, the top secret military airfield in remote central Nevada, around which there are no fences or walls. There is never a breach or unwanted border crossing there, at least that we hear about! And why? Because the boundary sign reads and is never questioned, "Warning: Use of deadly force authorized."
One would think that before Norris started proposing "final solutions" to "problems" of people who "aren't like us," he would have realized that the Nazis, through the experiences of their mobile killing units, the einsatzgruppen, discovered that shooting wasn't a very efficient way of killing large numbers of people. How long until Norris or one of his buddies takes the next step, and advocates gas chambers?
I'm going to be updating live on the pro-migrant marches here in Boston using my cell phone. Today is not a day to be on your computer. It's a day to get out and show your support for immigrant communities that have been beaten down by anti-migrant advocates and the federal government over the last two years.
I can't paste the widget here, but it will be on top of Citizen Orange all day today.
Quick note: Today we launched our new Special Coverage area focusing on immigration at AlterNet. We hope to advance a new and more progressive way to approach to the issue.
The often-overheated immigration debate is a distraction that draws attention from far-reaching problems facing American workers, particularly those on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.
Many immigrants' right advocates argue that newly arrived workers take jobs that Americans won't do. That's only partially true; many unauthorized immigrants fill non-union jobs that are impossibly crappy, pay poverty wages and are rife with workplace violations, and they work those jobs side-by-side with millions of natives and legal residents. The reality is that there are not enough Americans who are willing or able to tolerate poverty wages and other workplace abuses.
Lou Dobbs just complained on his show about Truth In Immigration's latest video. The transcript's not up yet of course. But here's the video he's complaining about.
