If you follow the issue of immigrants' rights at all, then you probably read this front-page New York Times article on the subject of state efforts to crack down on illegal immigrants a couple of days ago.  The upshot of the story is pretty familiar: sick of the Feds' failure to solve the problem of illegal immigrants, state and local officials take matters into their own hands with get-tough enforcement measures that disrupt immigrant communities and send them packing back to where they came from.  

You know: good riddance and don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Sadly, this article is only the most recent example of a national media narrative that reports ad nauseam on anti-immigrant policies but fails to take into account the budding progressive movement to implement more inclusive and economically sensible initiatives.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles and docuDharma

The New York Times reports that 270 undocumented workers who were arrested at a meat plant in Iowa in March, instead of being swiftly deported back to Guatemala, have instead been convicted of federal misdemeanors, sentenced to 5 months incarceration, and then will be immediately deported. This marks a lamentable, new, harsher policy toward punishing defenseless undocumented workers who are selected for this special treatment.  And, let me say it, it's a show designed to frighten and threaten and disrupt the other almost 15 million undocumented workers now in the US.

Please join me in Iowa.

OND Meanwhile in Miami: News That Could Only Happen Here. . .today’s peerfearless reporter casts a jaundiced eye on America’s most hap’ning city and environs, the crossroads of four continents, home to everything and everyone under the tropical sun, where, when it’s not some scandal, it’s all Fidel all the time.  If it’s going on, it’s going on here.

WARNING!  What follows is a toxic take on the news; it may be addictive and offensive to some readers, so be sure to get hooked and enjoy the trill of revulsion.  Schooled as I am by journalists Dave Barry (2008 candidate for president) and Carl Hiassen (author of Basket Case, Sick Puppy, Tourist Season and Strip Tease), irreverence is the by-word in the following compilation of Important Stuff making headlines along the 25th N x 80th W parallels.

By Lee Cokorinos

Pat Buchanan: the amiable fascist for all seasons.

Prominent leaders of the anti-immigration movement would have us believe that not a ounce of racism lies behind their efforts. The most media-visible figures in this camp, such as Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, Tom Tancredo and Victor Davis Hanson may argue the case for restricting, deporting, rounding up and cutting off public services to those "illegals" stigmatized as culturally backward, unhealthy potential terrorists. But they protest that their motives for doing so are as pure as the driven snow.

The quote is from Cesar Chavez. Solidarity is the key to overcoming poverty and wealth disparity, the two greatest ills our country faces. That is why those who enjoy being on the rich side of the disparity equation are using the tactic of Divide and Conquer---and one of their goals is to take down our nation’s labor unions.

Politically of course...I have consistently argued in the past on this blog that Immigration is the one political issue that can yank the floor from beneath the Democratic Party without it even knowing. I'd like to take the time to explain why I think the psyche of America has become so anti-immigrant by using my own experiences.

Who can they blame next for the sad state of our infrastructure? How about the undefensible: Pigeons!

If you are to believe the latest news about the MN bridge collapse here... and here.... Let's blame pigeons and their crap. All that pigeon poop is, according to the burocrats, "highly acidic" after it dries. When it mixes with H20 in the air or rain, it creates a chemical reaction leaving a residue equivalent to salt and its corrosive properties. Though the explanation kinda of makes sense it still doesn't excuse the years of neglect. (Please read whole diary before voting...)

Yesterday 160 immigration agents arrested 167 workers at the Del Monte plant in Portland, Oregon, charged them all with being illegal aliens, detained most of them and shipped them off to Tacoma, Washington (about 130 miles away) where the government's has an immigration jail.

Del Monte didn't actually employ these people, or so they claim, even though they worked at Del Monte's plant, cutting up and packing Del Monte's product, under the supervision of Del Monte's managers.  Instead, these minimum wage workers were "actually" employees of American Staffing Resources.

And guess what?  American Staffing Resources is linked Bu$hCo.  First Brother Marvin "Savings & Loan Bailout" Bush was on the board of Directors until 2002, and right now, John H. Dalton, former Secretary of the Navy under Clinton, one of Washington's made men, (and also deeply involved in the S&L fiasco by the way), is still on the board.  

Below the fold, I explore this a bit further give you personal observations of the wreckage this raid left behind.

With the Immigration debate ready to make another come back in congress, i thought it would be very usefull to check and see where the public currently stands on immigration and whether the mood is even nastier then last year when it comes to dealing with the illegal immigration issue.

I just read an interesting article in the NY Times called . For Illegal Immigrants, Housing Slump Takes Toll What they talk about is illegal immigrants working in construction jobs at wages of $25.00 to $35.00 an hour.
 Now just stop...take a deep breath... and listen very carefully.
                            Ready now...
 Weren’t we being told by the Republican Party and George W. "Bust", that these illegal immigrants were "Doing the jobs the Americans won’t do"! You Know like picking lettuce, or "cor-r-rn", as our "leader" likes to say.

The arrest of hundreds of illegal aliens at the Michael Bianco factory in New Bedford, and of the factory owner who was fully complicit in employing them, has gotten a lot of attention in the national news media. For the most part, however, only local journalists have shown any interest in these other aspects of the case:

• The workplace rules and the conditions at the factory qualify it as a sweatshop
• The factory's main contract was with the Defense Department
• The Army must have known about the nineteenth-century like factory conditions, and the employment of illegal aliens, because it maintained an office at the factory

Though the raid at the Massachusetts leather factory has evoked plenty of comment around the country, especially from immigrant-bashers, the DoD has remained almost silent about its role in permitting this to continue for years. And what little it has said is almost certainly false.

The T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas (on the outskirts of Austin, Texas) is a private detention facility operated by Corrections Corporation of America. It and a smaller center in Pennsylvania are the only two facilities in the country that are authorized to hold non-Mexican immigrant families and children on noncriminal charges.

That's right, we are now imprisoning children, forcing them to wear jail uniforms and identity badges. Land of the Free.

Not to worry, though. The imprisoned children do get instruction daily; if you count one hour of English as actual instruction. They also get, out the goodness of Chertoff's black heart, one half hour of recreational activity, indoors, daily.

Even infants have to wear identity badges. Home of the Brave.

Crossposted from Town Called Dobson


click to enlarge

Crossposted from Town Called Dobson


click to enlarge

We know Neocons are insensitive to human suffering, especially since it is they who are resposible for so much of it.  So we have to appeal to what will get their attention, M-O-N-E-Y.

Don't they realize that by kicking undocumented aliens out of the country or throwing them into one of Halliburton's new concentration camps, they are exasperating the housing slump?

My kids always hated me for being right;  one of them still does.  Often,  like today, I'd rather be wrong.

I went back and re-listened to the 8 minute long news story from CBS station Channel 8 (Las Vegas) about Congressman Gibbons (now running for Governor of Nevada) multiple times to be sure I got this right.

The undocumented woman living in his home came with the house. Gibbons bought her with the house. Participated in the sale of a human being.

She was illegal and scared. Of course she stayed to clean up after the Gibbons, where else did she have to go. They paid her $4 an hour. They knew they were doing something illegal, told her to hide in the basement when anyone came over.

There was an episode on Desperate Housewives about this, but that housewife, with the woman hidden in her home, went to jail.

The principles of this world beyond terror can be found in the very first sentence of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This document declares that, "The equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom and justice and peace in the world.

-- President Bush at the United Nations, Sept 19, 2006

COMPLETE list of states NOT YET RATIFYING the CONVENTION ON THE ELIMINATION OF ALL FORMS OF DISCRIMINATION AGAINST WOMEN (CEDAW), one of the enabling conventions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Holy See
Montenegro
United States of America
Iran (Islamic Republic of)
Nauru
Palau
Qatar
Tonga
Somalia
Sudan

Latest to ratify: Cook Islands, August 11, 2006

Note: This treaty was signed by Jimmy Carter and has gone unratified by the United States of America for 27 years.