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The "DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama" is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service. With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!
Dear Mr. President,
My name is Saad Nabeel and I am writing to you from Bangladesh. Prior to my arrival in this nation, I lived in the United States for 15 years. My parents brought me to America at age three. It is the only home I know. I used to attend the University of Texas at Arlington with a full scholarship in Electrical Engineering. Through no fault of my own I was forced to leave my home, friends, possessions, and most importantly, my education behind.
November 3rd 2009 is a day I will never forget. My mother called me and told me that my father had been detained by ICE and that we needed to leave immediately to Canada to seek refugee status. Being an only child, I had to take care of my mother and go with her.
The "DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama" is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service. With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!
Dear Mr. President,
My name is Lizbeth Mateo and I am undocumented. On May 17th, on the 56th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, I, along with Mohammad Abdollahi, Yahaira Carrillo and two others, became the first undocumented students to risk deportation by staging a sit-in inside Senator McCain's office in Tucson, Arizona, to demand the immediate passage of the DREAM Act. As a result of that sit-in we were arrested, turned over to ICE, and we now face deportation
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), started a hubbub among comprehensive immigration reform advocateslast week when he expressed to members of the Capitol press corps that progressive immigration legislation was "dead" for 2010 due to the contentious passage of health care reform. But the battle isn't over yet. In an interview with Sandip Roy at New America Media, Frank Sharry, the executive director of DC-based immigration organization America's Voice, says, "I think we have a good chance of seeing a bipartisan bill being introduced in April."
Graham's declaration mirrors similar antics that happened around the health care debate-where insurance reform was pronounced dead countless times by a wide array of pundits and lawmakers. In fact, Seth Freed Wessler of ColorLines reports that Graham, who has been working with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on an immigration reform bill for a year later changed his tune, stating that he would continue to craft a bipartisan bill.
The Battle in the Senate
Gabriel Arana with The America Prospect questions just how the GOP lawmakers will react to the upcoming immigration debate, arguing that, "Even for those Republicans who are willing to publicly support immigration reform, partisan rancor all but ensures it won't go anywhere."
And outside the Capitol? As Laura Flanders of GRITtv points out, the immigration debate, "has the potential to be far, far messier-and more violent-than the health care battle," and will likely galvanize those with xenophobic tendencies on the far Right to become even more unhinged.
On top of that, providing a pathway to citizenship for the 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States will most likely be dead in 2010 if a bill isn't proposed in the Senate this Spring. There needs to be time to debate the issue before the end of the year, and more importantly, before election season kicks off in the Fall. While there's already an immigration bill in the House of Representatives, a timeline for when one will actually be introduced in the Senate is unknown.
Immigration agents go rogue
Combined with the uphill battle for immigration reform, AlterNet reports on a government memo revealing that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has set quotas to initiate more deportations of undocumented immigrants, targeting those who had committed no crimes. The memo was in stark contrast to the Obama administration's stated goal to focus on deporting criminal offenders with violent histories, and prompted immigration rights groups to question the White House agenda.
At the same time, anti-immigration activists are also trying to label all immigrants as criminals. As the Colorado Independent documents, the shooting death of an Arizona rancher near the Mexican border has influenced former Colorado lawmaker Tom Tancredo and his followers to demand that the National Guard be sent the border-even though the death has not even been tied to an undocumented immigrant at this time. (The Department doesn't have jurisdiction over the National Guard to begin with.)
The Inter Press Service also reports on the results of such criminalization, as human rights abuses in immigration detention continue to increase each day. "More abuses in the U.S. immigration detention system came to light last week," notes the media outlet, writing that "It was revealed that two mentally disabled men continue to be held in detention while facing possible deportation for criminal assault convictions, despite having already served their time." The inmates were later released after the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California filed legal petitions against federal government.
This Sunday, tens of thousands of people plan to march on the National Mall in Washington, DC in an effort to persuade Congress and the Obama administration to tackle immigration reform in 2010. More than 700 buses are bringing an estimated 100,000 supporters to the nation's capital for the March for America. Participants are hoping to show strength in numbers on the ground, and flex muscle on Capitol Hill as well.
Advocacy groups are organizing countless phone banks and Congressional office visits to encourage lawmakers to support a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants who live and work in the United States.
On top of that, immigrant rights supporters are eager to note that President Barack Obama promised to overhaul the immigration system during his campaign, and said that immigration reform would be a "top priority in my first year as President of the United States of America." But now that year has passed, and with Congress still deadlocked on health care and economic issues, reform supporters just can't wait any longer.
While an immigration reform bill has been proposed in the House of Representatives, the same can't be said for the Senate. If the Senate fails to propose a reform bill this Spring, it won't be on the agenda for 2010 either. With elections at the end of the year, there's an aura of uncertainty over how possible it will be to pass reform after that, since the resulting congress could be more conservative.
Keeping a promise
For Obama and the Democratic lawmakers, keeping the promise of immigration reform could be essential to their political future. As Feministing noted this week, "the March is meant to send a message to Congress: immigration reform cannot wait. It's also a message to President Obama to keep good on his word and push immigration reform."
Obama's promise to reform the immigration system helped earn him 67 percent of the Latino vote in 2008, exit polls show. Latinos-who make up approximately 15 percent of the U.S. population and are the fastest growing minority in the nation-also delivered Democratic victories in states like Colorado, Florida, and Ohio during that same year.
But with 81 percent of undocumented immigrants in the United States originating from Latin America, a failure to take action on immigration reform could prove disastrous for Democrats and the White House. Numerous polls show that Latino voters want immigration reform, in part because nearly 9 million people in the country live in "mixed-homes," where some family members are documented and others are not, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.
In a story about the upcoming march, TPMDC reports that "organizers of the rally have a simple retort for Democrats: pass reform now, or lose Latino support in November." The news site quotes march organizer Gabe Gonzalez, who expresses frustration with the slow movement on immigration reform. "I cannot tell you how angry and outraged people are," she says. "I have conversations with my progressive friends and they're always surprised at how visceral it is."
About-face
On the other side of the political spectrum, conservative politicians who do not have a reputation for embracing immigration reform are trying to change course. The population of Latino voters will only continue to grow as children of undocumented immigrants reach voting age. Both Republicans and Democrats are fighting to secure that demographic as a reliable voting bloc.
In 2003, 63 percent of the 4.3 million children born to undocumented parents in the U.S. were citizens. By 2008, there were 5.5 million children in the same situation and 73 percent of them were born in the country. This new generation signifies what could be a significant political shift as Latinos continue to gain prominence and influence in the U.S.
There is a rift on the right when it comes to immigration, as AlterNet explains. "One segment of the Republican Party completely understands that critical political fact. They understand that to compete successfully in the future -- on a national scale -- they must be able to contest for a sizeable segment of the Hispanic vote. ... But there is another group of Republicans who want to use immigration as wedge issue to win short-term political advantage among anxious voters who think of Latinos as threats to their culture, their tax dollars, and their jobs."
Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks notes that both sides of the immigration argument are very passionate. "You got a lot of people in the country saying 'Aw, we need a border fence, and the damn immigrants are taking our jobs, etc.,'" he says. "On the other side you have people who are in favor of immigration, making it into some sort of sane system."
Although reform supporters are hopeful that a bill will be proposed in the Senate this Spring, whether it will have a wide bipartisan backing remains to be seen. But with changing demographics and an organized movement for reform, passing immigration reform would empower a reliable--and organized--voting block that is growing more significant by each election. In the end, it could change the political climate of the United States for generations to come.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Congressperson Joe ‘You Lie’ Wilson was hard hit this week while the POTUS effectively got away with snubbing women and undocumented immigrants in his health care speech.
Which U.S. citizens cannot provide proper government documentation? The first people to be affected by verification procedures is the Trans community. Oppressing against a particular group is often the slippery slope for oppression against other groups.
John Aravosis at America Blog cannot fathom why Democrats are on the defensive. He writes:
Why would anyone think that Wilson, or any of the extremists he represents, will support Baucus and Conrad’s plan, regardless of the changes? […]Wilson is holding firm. Perhaps Conrad and Baucus can delete women from the bill too, or gays, or blacks. That might finally get Wilson on board.
And Aravosis is right. Why is the Democrat party pandering to right-wing paranoia in the name of facts? Is ceding so much ground to nativists in the health care debate really the way forward? Will they also write the bill for immigration reform?
If you are still betting on Democrats like Senator Schumer (D-NY) to be a champion of the cause, expect a lot of anti-immigrant rhetoric and measures. After all, he has adopted the ugly discourse of the extreme right and is busy drawing a framework of eligibility verification using biometric tools complete with iris-scanning and finger-printing. I don't know about promigrant, anti-immigrant groups or even the American people but the winner here is certainly the company who gets the contract for this multi-billion dollar opportunity.
President Obama has often stated that immigration reform cannot be approached in a piecemeal fashion, and that his administration would tackle the issue in 2009. This week, Obama will be meeting with members of Congress to kick off a bi-partisan approach to reform. These meetings don't guarantee any legislative action will take place this year, but are at least an encouraging sign. In the meantime, the deportation industry shows no sign of slowing, hate crimes are rising and hate groups are being main streamed. As a result, the polarization between reform advocates and foes is getting worse.
On Tuesday, President Obama announced Sonia Sotomayor as his pick to replace Supreme Court Justice David Souter. Sotomayor could be the first Latina appointed to the Supreme Court. Predictably, attacks and slurs from the Right are already flying. Regardless, Sotomayor would be an excellent choice for the Supreme Court, signaling to Latino/as that the White House is aware of our need for more representation in government.
The Latino/a community has had ample reason to hope that President Obama would take on immigration reform in a humane manner. While Obama is undeniably centrist in his political approach, and has long been fond of language stressing punitive solutions to the immigration issue, he certainly seems to understand that "America is changing and we can't be threatened by it." Enforcement policies are becoming a threat, not only to immigrants, but the country at large.
In 2008, a disturbing trend developed in mainstream media regarding Mexico. While Mexico's President Felipe Calderón began his aggression against the Cartels roughly two years ago, the resulting uptick in violence was of no real interest to mainstream media. But when the U.S. Joint Forces Command reportJoint Operating Environment (JOE 2008) was issued in November, 2008, and declared Mexico and Pakistan nations in danger of a "rapid and sudden collapse," mainstream news outlets and certain politicians began broadcasting fears of violence spilling over into the US.
Last week, President Obama announced his intention to address immigration reform in the next few months in a meeting with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. The statement came as a relief to many, especially with recent reports of human rights abuses within the U.S. detention system. But, as most of the President's statements seem crafted to appeal to warring political constituencies, his actual intentions are still elusive.
I'm happily returning from my blogging hiatus this week to make a common-sense argument: passing the DREAM Act is not only the right thing to do, but in these trying economic times it is also the sensible thing to do.
I am such a passionate advocate for the DREAM Act that I often forget there are people in this world that don't know what the DREAM Act is.
This week, two comprehensive reports on the health of immigrant detainees were released by Human Rights Watch and the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. As Public News Service reports, "Immigrants are, literally, dying for decent care."
President Obama is shaking up the established political and corporate order with a bold economic agenda. Sadly, immigration reform remains untouched by Obama’s energizing blueprint for Change. Immigration policy and programs are still tied to President George W. Bush and former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff: Paramilitary-style raids, detention centers, and the deputizing of otherwise-engaged local police forces continue to stand strong.
The Obama Administration seems quite capable centrist positioning on many issues, including immigration reform. While some argue centrist position allows Obama to effectively reach consensus, immigration reform is an issue that he cannot play sides with.
George W. Bush told the world that the US was targeted for 9/11 because "we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world." And as President Obama said in his inaugural address:
The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart - not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.
In political circles, we sometimes use the phrase "police state," to describe losses of civil liberties or the encroachment of penal processes into our lives. But how does such a thing manifest in our every day experience? Some would point to the all-too-casual use of electric shock devices by legal authorities. Others would quickly mention the United States' swiftly growing enterprise of detention centers, barbed wire and concrete compounds or camps managed by Immigrations Customs and Enforcement (ICE).
On January 21st, over 500 immigrants, community members, faith leaders and advocates gathered on the chilly streets of Washington DC to march for immigrant rights. They were there to celebrate a New Day for Immigration in this country, marked by Obama's inauguration as President.
The crowd marched to ICE headquarters in DC, singing songs, beating drums, and carrying a giant American flag - symbolizing the idea of immigrant America. From the Washington Post:
Although the demonstration featured many speeches in Spanish and cries of "Sí se puede!" -- Yes we can! -- the crowd was also notable for its diversity. Suely Neves, 26, of the Boston group Deported Diaspora had come on behalf of her fellow Cape Verde immigrants. Standing next to her, Indian American immigrant Dimple Rana, 28, said she was concerned about the fate of the Cambodian refugees she works with in Lowell, Mass.
With the giant American flag waving overhead, and hundreds of immigrants marching for freedom and equal rights, I cannot help but be reminded of a portion of Obama's inaugural speech. In talking about "reaffirming the greatness of our nation", the new President noted that the path towards freedom and equality has never been for the "faint-hearted".
Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things – some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom. For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.
As we are days away from ushering in a new president, hopes are high that relief can be had in federal immigration law. Yet, the Bush administration has made last minute changes to immigration law, reminding us once more of the incompetence in which we have been living for eight years.
Conservative Pundit Mort Kondracke (Fox News-Beltway Boys) says there is a strong possibility Comprehensive Immigration Reform may pass in 2009. The PRO Immigration Reformers have found their Sea Legs with their strong Latino Democratic showing in this year's election and are pushing their agenda with President Obama. Meanwhile, President Bush said one of his biggest failures was not pushing CIR strongly enough and he pandered to the Republican base with his workplace raids, mass deportation efforts and rigorous employment verification.
Kondracke said the ANTI Immigration Reformers will continue to push their so called "ANTI Amnesty" (Mass Deportation) platform, but to no avail.
We turned out the immigrant and Latino vote. We demanded that our voices be heard on November 4th, and the son of IMMIGRANTS will be entering the White House in January.
So - what now? How do we ensure that the change we voted for is seen in a tangible way? How do we make sure that our concerns and our vision for immigrants' rights is heard at the top levels of goverment?
In a recent piece at the Huffington Post, Sally Kohn eloquently wrote:
The single greatest thing we can do to honor the spirit of Obama’s campaign and life work is bring as much enthusiasm to holding Obama accountable as we did to electing him.
Personally, I could not agree more. I’m sure some people will be hesitant to begin pushing Obama, so many of us are still reveling in the glory of this historic election and want nothing more than to keep believing the ballots cast on November 4th will equal the change we need. But our civic engagement cannot end with Election Day.
Obama’s campaign proved that America can truly harness its people power for positive and progressive change. NOW is the time to keep that momentum rolling.
Ok, so, how can you help? For a start, you can tune into the December 4th event “Realizing the Promise: A Forum on Community Faith and Democracy, organized by the Campaign for Community Values and the Gamaliel Foundation (for which Obama once worked) at which thousands of grassroots leaders will demand new jobs for a greener economy, an inclusive health care that includes everyone, re-regulation of industries that have taken advantage of our communities, and a comprehensive reform of our immigration system to make it work for everyone in our communiity!
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