Four on the Fourth Road Race

The Center for New Americans is holding their Third Annual Four on the Fourth Road Race on Friday, July 4 at 8:30 am. The four mile course tours downtown Northampton. Early registrants will receive a t-shirt.

All proceeds will benefit CNA's free educational programs for immigrants and refugees in the Pioneer Valley.

For more information call Northampton Running Company at 413.517.0059 or log on to http://www.cnam.org/4onthe4throadrace.html

News Digest - June 19, 2008

Topics

• Local News
• Criminalization of Undocumented Immigrants
• Crimes Against Immigrants
  
• Enforcement
• Detention
• Immigration Maze
  
• Elections
  
• State Immigration Enforcement
  
• Federal Legislation - Update
  
• General

Local News

Ortiz, pride of Sox Nation, joins US as a citizen (Boston Globe)
Ortiz joined 226 immigrants from 57 countries as they raised their right hands and took the Oath of Citizenship at the John F. Kennedy Library in Dorchester.

Workers at former Bianco factory seek union help (South Coast Today)
Eagle Industries, a Missouri-based, military equipment manufacturer, took over the former Michael Bianco Inc. factory last November, inheriting a Department of Defense contract for backpacks used by troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Workers say that while the sweatshop conditions outlined by the U.S. Attorney's Office in court documents have improved under new ownership, they need more rights. They want to see higher wages, paid sick leave and more affordable health care — and to do so, they say they need to unionize.

Immigration sweep nets 42, provoking outcry (Providence Journal)
At a news conference in Washington Square, half a dozen speakers said agents for Immigration and Customs Enforcement had gone into restaurants, stores and apartments during the sweep, but in some cases appeared to be targeting people because they appeared foreign and were driving landscaping trucks.

Criminalization of Undocumented Immigrants

More Illegal Crossings Are Criminal Cases (New York Times)
Criminal prosecutions of immigrants by federal authorities surged to a record high in March, as immigration cases accounted for the majority — 57 percent — of all new federal criminal cases brought nationwide that month, according to a report published Tuesday by a nonpartisan research group.

Homeland Security's Enemy Next Door (Tom Barry, Americas Program)
Faced with failure, the Bush administration's stated resolve to dismantle international terrorism has devolved into an attack on a far more vulnerable and proximate target—Latin American immigrants.

Immigrant Victims of Crimes

Rush to Prosecute Leaves Immigrant Victims of Crimes Without Protection (AlterNet)
Immigrants across the country are facing more aggressive enforcement tactics and it seems that victims of human trafficking and other crimes are no exception.

Crimes against immigrants go unreported (Truth in Immigration)
Criminals, armed with knowledge that their crimes are likely go unreported, have begun targeting anyone who may appear to be "illegal," whether they be undocumented, legal residents, or U.S. citizens of foreign descent. The local laws, instead of reducing crime, have only served to increase the amount of immigrant-targeted burglaries in these communities.

Enforcement

Sen. Menendez denounces raids on migrants (North Jersey Record)
Sen. Robert Menendez on Thursday said the top officials responsible for immigration enforcement proved to be "in denial" about constitutional violations by federal agents in a meeting he had with them.

Detention

Locked and Loaded (Nashville Scene)
The apathetic treatment of Hutto's immigrants was hardly an anomaly. CCA also operates a detention facility in San Diego that drew a separate ACLU lawsuit last year. In the complaint, the group claims that CCA routinely denied basic medical care to immigrant detainees with hepatitis, diabetes and other serious illnesses. One man from Ghana died from heart failure after the center's staff allegedly asked him to fill out some paper work—even though he was seen kneeling on the floor of his cell and complaining of chest pains.

Opportunity to Fix Shameful Detention System (AlterNet)
Now armed with hundreds of pages of evidence, the time has come for Congress to restore and protect the basic human rights of the 311,000 men, women, and children held in the detention system every year. The Secure and Safe Detention and Asylum Act calls for improved detention conditions and better oversight of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities. Additionally, it would allow immigration judges to review the cases of asylum seekers and release those individuals who pose no threat to society.

Immigration Maze

Visa backlog adds years to immigrants' wait (Houston Chronicle)
When they flew home in September, U.S. immigration officials at the Atlanta airport ordered his wife to return to Israel because her tourist visa had expired while he was waiting for citizenship. That lapse means Mama's wife now faces a penalty of up to 10 years before she can again enter the country legally.

Dying to be a U.S. citizen (Baltimore Sun)
Army Spc. Kendell K. Frederick, a native of Trinidad ... had left his base near Tikrit in October 2005 to get fingerprinted for his application for U.S. citizenship. The errand was necessary because the immigration service wouldn't accept the prints he gave when he enlisted. The 21-year-old was driving back to his base when a roadside bomb exploded near his vehicle.

Elections

Will Obama or McCain Halt our Growing Police State? (open letter, AlterNet)
Senator McCain and Senator Obama should both condemn these raids and declare that, their first day in office, they will put an end to them. Because Postville, like America, has bigger problems to deal with that require all of us working together -- not immigration raids tearing us apart.

Obama and McCain on Immigration: Life vs. Death (AlterNet)
So, in the netherworld of the immigrant gulag growing on our shores, the small differences around the minutiae of immigration law can mean the difference between life and death, a difference that can win the hearts and minds of many voters this year.

State Immigration Enforcement

Legality of Immigration Laws Questioned Across U.S. (Suffolk Life - Riverhead, NY)
The court's decision may raise questions about similar legislation in Suffolk County aimed at placing verification responsibilities in the hands of employers. Last week, the county Legislature gave the green light for an 18-month pilot program, which requires contractors doing business with the county to use E-Verify, even though officials both here and across the nation have blasted the system for its error potential.

Federal Legislation Update

Bush signs bill to provide troops with tax rebates (Mercury News)
To be eligible for the rebates, taxpayers had to provide Social Security numbers, lawmakers decided. But legislators inadvertently penalized about a million legal immigrants - and U.S. service members stationed overseas - whose foreign spouses are ineligible for Social Security cards.

Single-family immigration bills face great difficulty in Congress (Arizona Daily Star)
The legislation Feinstein introduced on Arreola's behalf — a so-called private bill — has languished in committee and might never be approved. Feinstein has reintroduced it to keep it alive and could do so again in January. As long as the bill is pending, the Arreola family can stay in the United States. But until it passes, they remain in limbo, knowing that one day, they may have to leave.

General

The ID War: Do You Have Yours? (Center for American Progress)
Proponents of REAL ID and similar legislation at the local level want stricter identification systems mainly to fight terrorism and limit immigration. Others are skeptical for security, privacy, and civil liberties reasons, of programs that require proof of ID. About 20 million voting age citizens in our country right now do not have driver's licenses. And minorities are particularly at risk of being disenfranchised by these proposals.

Janitors reinstated by appeals court (San Francisco Chronicle)
A federal appeals court ordered reinstatement Monday for 33 janitors in Los Angeles who were fired because their Social Security numbers did not match the government's database, a ruling that could strengthen unions' case against a Bush administration proposal to pressure employers to get rid of suspected illegal immigrants.

Films for Thought Series

We have been fortunate to connect with Food for Thought Books, a worker-owned collective in Amherst, which has been holding a monthly Films for Thought series open to the public. Last Wednesday, June 11th, we teamed up with Food for Thought's Javiera Benavente and Casa Latina's Edgar Cancel to screen Morristown: In the Air and Sun and hold a conversation about the issues of immigration, labor, ethnicity and economics brought up in the film.

Roughly 30 people showed up to the event and most were able to stay for the discussion afterwards. Many were upset by the unfair treatment of workers, both citizens and immigrants. An interesting comment echoed by many present was that the solidarity across cultures was uplifting. Too often the mainstream media shows only images of handcuffed undocumented workers walking single file onto ICE buses while angry nativists spew hateful refrains. Morristown was refreshing in that the residents represented in the movie understood that the rights they were organizing for were for ALL workers in their community.

The solidarity was even more poignant because of the parallels between Morristown's chicken processing and Postville, Iowa's meatpacking plants. In both cases, workers were unionizing with the help of United Food and Commercial Workers to petition for more bathroom breaks, adequate pay and safer work conditions. In both cases the workers voted to unionize. In Morristown's case, the company eventually recognized the union and accepted their demands. Postville, however, is a completely different story.

In Iowa, Agriprocessors refused to recognize the union vote. Their argument in court was that since many of the workers were undocumented, the union vote didn't count. Furthermore, the company was being investigated for child labor law violations. There were also allegations of physical and sexual abuse at the plant. Then on May 12th of this year, ICE descended on this town of less than 3,000 residents and detained 390 of its workers.

Our little Morristown screening collected donations for the Postville community, which is still reeling from the May raid. It will take a long time for this town to recover. If you would like to help out, please send donations to:

El Centro Latinoamericano
500 E. 4th Street Ste. 321
Waterloo, Iowa 50703

We also collected pledges for the Welcoming Massachusetts campaign and rallied interest in working to make Northampton and Amherst official Welcoming Communities.

The next Films for Thought screening will be Detained: The New Bedford Immigration Raid, on Wednesday, July 16th, 7 pm, at Food for Thought Books, 106 N. Pleasant St., Amherst, MA. For more information, contact wmciwr@gmail.com or Javiera@foodforthoughtbooks.com.

Films for Thought - Morristown: In the Air and Sun

Films for Thought Series present Morristown: In the Air and Sun directed by Anne Lewis followed by a post-screening discussion on immigration Wednesday, June 11th at 7pm Food For Thought Books (106 N. Pleasant St., Amherst)

This event will be a fundraiser to support those affected by the recent immigration raid in Postville, Iowa.

Morristown offers a working class look at globalization from both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. This film brings forth the voices of Tennessee and Mexican workers affected by economic globalization, through plant closings, immigration, farm and factory work. It shows the hardships of these forces but also people's courageous efforts to organize to address the problems. The film screening will be followed by a facilitated discussion about how current immigration policies and economic globalization are impacting our local communities.

Postville, Iowa Immigration Raid: This event will also serve as an opportunity to raise funds for those affected by the Postville, Iowa immigration raid. We will be collecting funds for the detainees and their families as well as for El Centro Latinoamericano, which is working directly the immigrant communities affected by the raid.

This event is co-sponsored by Western Mass Coalition for Immigrant & Worker Rights, Casa Latina and Food For Thought Books.

The Western Massachusetts Coalition for Immigrant and Worker Rights is a group of organizations and community members who advocate, educate, organize, and mobilize to protect the Human, Civil, and Constitutional Rights of all workers and residents in our communities.

Casa Latina is the only Latino-led and Latino-focused organization in Hampshire County, Massachusetts. Our mission is to promote self-sufficiency and a sense of community among local Latinos. We endeavor to fulfill this commitment by working directly with Latino residents to develop educational, access, and action programming based on the community's capabilities and needs.

Food For Thought Books is a worker-owned and collectively-run not-for-profit bookstore located in downtown Amherst since 1976. We specialize in author readings, community events, hand-picked books and all manner of nourishment for the heart and mind.

For more information about this event please contact Javiera Benavente at 413.253.5432 and javiera@foodforthoughtbooks.com, or visit our website at www.foodforthoughtbooks.com.

Our Immigration Past, Present and Future

There are certain ideals we proudly carry in our collective cultural legacy.

All men are created equal...
I have a dream...
Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...

Sadly, in many anti-immigrant arguments I've encountered, this last one has been modified to exclude those without immigration papers. In fact, if this argument had been accepted less than a hundred years ago, the great waves of Irish, Italian and Eastern European Jewish immigrants would have been placed in isolated detention centers and deported. Joshua Holland argues this more eloquently than I ever could in his article on AlterNet, Hardliners Try to White-Wash Their Own Pasts by Redefining Immigration .

Descendants of the huge waves of European immigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries make much of the fact that their great grandparents came here "legally," but they rest their case on a technicality: the only reason they were legal was that there was no law in effect restricting European immigration until the 1920s.

Furthermore, one of the few restrictions on immigration at that time was the Chinese Exclusion Act, which severely limited Chinese immigration and denied Chinese residents a path to citizenship. This first major law restricting immigration in the United States was on the books in one form or another, from 1882 to 1943.

It was enacted in response to economic fears, especially on the West Coast, where native-born Americans attributed unemployment and declining wages to Chinese workers whom they also viewed as racially inferior.

Does this argument sound familiar? It is a sad reality that United States' Immigration history is one steeped in racism. When I hear nativists declare, "The law is the law," I have to agree with them. But is every law a good law? Slavery was law. Segregation was law. Lynching was law and a national past time. The 1920 Cable Act mandated that any American woman who married an Asian should lose her citizenship. In 1923 the Supreme Court ruled that Indians from the Asian continent could not become citizens. There is a reason why laws are modified and repealed.

Laws change to better reflect our culture's growing social conscience. Immigration and Custom Enforcement's strict adherence to faulty law, while disregarding the United States Constitution and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, does not create justice in our society. In fact, I would argue that the Enforcement-on-Steroids strategy is actually stripping away at our proud cultural legacy.