Weekly Diaspora: Hitting Immigrant Kids Where It Hurts

by: The Media Consortium

Thu Sep 09, 2010 at 12:24:47 PM EST

by Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger

After a long summer of name-calling and absurd attempts to deny birthright citizenship to children of immigrants, immigration hawks are now bullying immigrant children on their own turf: Public schools.

California, New York, Iowa and Colorado are among the states that have cracked down on immigrant students by hiring ICE agents to investigate residency statuses or unlawfully barring students from enrolling. Such blatant discrimination flies in the face of the 14th amendment and Supreme Court precedent, both of which guarantee all children the right to a public education regardless of immigration status.

The latest assault on immigrant students comes not from over-zealous school districts, however, but from state lawmakers adamant about stripping immigrants of the few rights they possess.

Kicked out of school

As Matt Vasilogambros of the Iowa Independent reports, Iowa's lieutenant gubernatorial candidate Kim Reynolds recently came out in support of denying public education to undocumented children, a sentiment she shares with her running mate, former Gov. Terry Branstad. Branstad's position is even more extreme, however. He has argued that the Supreme Court decision in Plyer v. Doe-the 1982 case which guarantees immigrants the right to public education-should be overturned.

So far, only Colorado third party gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo has fully endorsed Branstad's extreme opinion. Tancredo has even gone so far as to say that, if elected, he would ignore the Supreme Court ruling altogether.

Branstad and Tancredo may be on their own for the moment. Bu, if this summer's birthright citizenship fiasco is any indication, anti-immigrant conservatives must be delighted to fall back on the age-old myth that immigrants are here to steal social services.

New York Stands Up

Last week, the New York Department of Education fired back at anti-immigrant activism in schools by issuing a memo directing schools not to investigate the immigration status of their students.

According to Braden Goyette of Campus Progress, the memo came in response to a New York Civil Liberties Union report charging that 139 New York school districts were collecting information about prospective students' immigration statuses-and barring or discouraging children from enrolling if they failed to provide proof of their citizenship.

Goyette notes that federal law only requires students to fulfill two simple requirements before enrolling: residency in the school district, and intent to remain in the school district. Immigration status is not a factor.

The memo is a victory for immigrant rights advocates, especially as it comes on the heels of reports that two California school districts are adopting even harsher anti-immigrant policies.

Negating Pylver v. Doe

As New America Media's Jacob Simas and Elena Shore translate from a La Opinión, a daily Spanish-language newspaper based in Los Angeles. Both the Unified School District of Calexico and the Mountain Empire School District near San Diego have hired staff exclusively to investigate the immigration statuses of their students. The school districts are attempting to get around Pyler v. Doe by arguing that their proximity to the border necessitates stricter enforcement of federal residency requirements.

In other words, they're worried that Mexican children are crossing the border to take advantage of our first-class, world-renowned public school offerings. The simple fact that student residency can be determined without revealing immigration status is obviously beside the point.

Cutting Social Services in New Jersey

Meanwhile, immigrants in New Jersey may be robbed of their own social services, as the state threatens to removes 12,000 non-citizens from the it's low-income family insurance plan.

As Change.org's Prerna Lal reports, several legal immigrants have joined a class action lawsuit against New Jersey's Department of Human Services, alleging that the state is violating "the equal protection guarantees of the United States and New Jersey Constitutions" by denying health care subsidies to legal permanent residents. Lal notes that legal permanent residents possess nearly all of the same rights as U.S. citizens, and pay taxes to both state and federal governments. They should, therefore, be safe from public policy discrimination.

But, while it's well documented that both legal and undocumented immigrants pay into our social services system through income taxes, that fact is persistently overlooked by the anti-immigrant zealots who want to keep immigrants off Medicaid and out of public schools.

Even former President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisors agreed that immigrants have a positive fiscal impact Social Security and Medicaid, contributing $80,000 more in taxes than they receive in public services. Other studies put that figure much higher.

Given their immense contribution to the social services net, guaranteeing immigrants' access to those public services is more than a matter of justice-it's a matter of fiscal responsibility.

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.

"(Pre)Viewing the Right-Wing Playbook on Immigration"

by: Restore Fairness

Thu Apr 08, 2010 at 16:08:41 PM EST

From the Restore Fairness blog.

As we continue to fight for immigration reform, one  thing that we can  be sure about is a right-wing attack. A preview of  this came about in  the days building up to the successful immigration march in D.C. when fringe right-wing   groups like Numbers USA, The John Tanton Network and the Tea Party Movement started pulling out all the stops to counter the building   momentum for immigration reform. Predictably, their approach mirrored   the strategies they employed a few years ago, during the last big push   for reform that took place in 2007 under former President George Bush.

A report by liberal advocacy group People for the American Way called “(Pre)Viewing the Right-Wing Playbook on Immigration”  has pulled from years of expertise on the right to lay out a list of   the key strategies that are traditionally employed to defeat immigration   reform, followed by tools to retaliate against these irrational and unsound attacks.

One of the  most common strategies employed by the right is an appeal  to racial  fear. This is carried out in a number of ways, including the  positing  of the “Brown” threat to a “White America,” and the outrageous   portrayal of immigrants and their supporters as invaders and enemies of   the United States. Inciting prejudice against Latinos, Rep. Tom  Tancredo  commented in November 2006-

Look at what  has happened to Miami. It  has become a Third World country…. You would  never know you’re in the  United States of America. You would certainly  say you’re in a Third  World country.

Not to be  left behind, former Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan  continued in  the vein of this fear-mongering around the “immigrant  invasion”. He wrote in 2007-

What is  happening to us? An immigrant  invasion of the United States from the  Third World, as America’s white  majority is no longer even reproducing  itself. Since Roe v. Wade,  America has aborted 45 million of her  children. And Asia, Africa and  Latin America have sent 45 million of  their children to inherit the  estate that aborted American children  never saw.

It goes without saying that claims that  America has been built by and  for White people are historically  incorrect and intensely racist. More  importantly, this country  continues to be shaped by immigrants and draws  immense political and  economic strength from its diversity.

Continuing in the vein of  racial divisiveness is the idea that  immigration rights advocates are  themselves racist, a notion that has  emerged in the post Obama election  days. While television personality  Glenn Beck has referred to  President Obama as someone who was opposed to  white people, he has  generated the idea from numerous accusations of  racism thrown at  pro-immigration advocates during the 2007 push for  reform. At that  time, the radio host Michael Savage attacked the National Council of La Raza by calling it “the Ku Klux Klan of the Hispanic   people.” He went on to say that it was “the most stone racist group I’ve   ever seen in this country”.

Portraying undocumented immigrants  as responsible for terrorism and   crime waves, as well as positing them  as “unclean” carriers of disease   and bio-terrorism is one of the  tactics that the far right has employed   on both local and national  levels during past debates around   immigration. Such as when  Lou Dobbs claimed immigrants were   causing an   epidemic of  leprosy in the country which was simply untrue. Or when   during the debates over immigration reform, Rep. Steve King, of the   House Republicans’ “Immigration Reform Caucus” extrapolated fictional   statistics claiming that 12 American citizens “die a violent   death at the hands of murderous illegal aliens each day”. If that’s so,   then why is it that the President’s  Council of Economic Advisers reports that immigrants have lower crime rates than   U.S. citizens and that immigrant men ages 18 to 40 are less likely  than  other U.S. residents to be incarcerated.

While we hope that  most of you would be taken by the impulse to laugh  off these  strategies as racist, rabble-rousing garbage, we must take  note that  such nativist fear-mongering has the power to garner  significant  support from many, especially within the current climate of  an unstable  economy. Work such as People For the American Way’s “Right Wing Watch: In Focus” series gives us the   best tool to fighting these attacks – truly understanding the reasoning   behind them, and countering them on their own territory.

Let’s  fight racism on our route to humane immigration reform!

Learn. Share. Act. Go to restorefainess.org

Weekly Diaspora: The Game Plan for Immigration Reform

by: The Media Consortium

Thu Apr 01, 2010 at 12:04:15 PM EST

By Erin Rosa, Media Consortium blogger

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), started a hubbub among comprehensive immigration reform advocates last 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.

For more links on immigration check out:

• On how I became an American - Feministing
• How Health Care Reform Affects Immigrants - New America Media

Hayworth, Norquist and CPAC: the Republican Fork in the Road on Immigration

by: AmericasVoice

Fri Feb 19, 2010 at 17:58:14 PM EST

Republicans are facing a major fork in the road on immigration, highlighted this week at CPAC (the major conservative conference in DC right now).

Does the GOP choose the backward-looking, anti-immigrant route led by former Congressman, now Senate candidate J.D. Hayworth, or the path toward real immigration solutions, led by Grover Norquist, who is supporting Hayworth’s primary opponent John McCain.

Hayworth is among the most egregious examples of the failure of the anti-immigration wedge strategy.  Nevertheless, he had a prominent role at CPAC yesterday. Dave Weigel reports that Hayworth was a “CPAC Superstar.”  In addition to speaking on a panel, he introduced an anti-immigrant movie, Border War: The Battle Over Illegal Immigration.

Is the Tea Party's racist rhetoric going to save broken families?

by: Restore Fairness

Mon Feb 08, 2010 at 17:52:54 PM EST

From the Restore Fairness blog. 

While it is difficult to find much coherence within the fractured and fast-changing Tea Party Movement, a look at their convention in Nashville last week shows that the issue of immigration seems to have gained greater popularity, emerging largely from the links made between immigration and the healthcare debate at their town hall meetings held last summer. Spearheading this issue for the Tea party agenda was Tom Tancredo, a former Colorado Congressman who kicked off the Nashville Tea Party Convention with a slew of racist comments meant to further the argument against immigration reform.

And then because we don’t have a civics literacy test to vote, people who couldn’t even spell vote, or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House named Barack Hussein Obama.

The Nashville Convention sought to unite the movement against the path to legalization. Tancredo’s opening speech included the argument that while Obama’s plans for immigration reform needed to be halted, it was a good thing that McCain had not been elected or he would already have ensured that Rep. Gutierrez’s bill for immigration reform was passed and “amnesty” given to the country’s undocumented immigrants. He incited the audience to protect the country’s culture saying “our culture is based on Judeo-Christian values whether people like it or not!”

While some, such as a Tea Party blogger Keli Carender said that immigration was not a part of the official agenda, Tancredo’s opening remarks, the prominent presence of the anti-immigrant group NumbersUSA, as well as a number of signs against “amnesty” from their individual supporters at the convention indicated that immigration issues could become a prominent feature on the movement’s agenda.

So what would Tom Tancredo have to say about the latest report by the Urban Institute that holds that immigration enforcement has a large-scale, detrimental effect on children? The truth is that the immigration system is in dire need of reform and racist rhetoric is not going to solve the complex problems caused as a result of a broken immigration system.

The report is based on research conducted amongst over 100 children of undocumented immigrants that were targeted by raids and arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in six U.S. states. Of the 190 children interviewed for this study, two-thirds were U.S. born citizens. The study says,

Children whose parents were detained for longer than a month experienced more changes in eating, sleeping, frequent crying, fear, anxiety, regression, clinginess, and aggressive behavior.  68% of parents or caretakers questioned said they noticed at least three behavioral changes in the short-term, or three months after a parent was arrested. In the long-term, or nine months after an arrest, 56 percent of children ages 6 to 11 and 12 to 17 showed angry or aggressive behavior. The most typical changes were an increase or decrease in eating among all age groups.

Long-term separation of children from their parents is “exceptionally harmful” to the development and growth of children. The report recommends immigration reform must include alternatives to detention such as electronic monitoring and supervised released, as well as a priority quota for immigrants with children to be considered for legal residency.

It’s groups like Tancredo’s that have gone on about the connections between immigrants and crime. An ACLU brief finds that the increasing criminalization of undocumented immigrants has led to a diversion of attention and resources away from more serious criminal offenses such as organized crime, gun trafficking and white collar crimes. For starters unlawful presence in the United States is NOT a “crime”. And secondly only the Federal Government can regulate immigration. So when states and localities use criminal laws to go after undocumented immigrants, they are not only adding to the misinformed rhetoric around “criminal” immigrants but actually diverting resources from where they should be applied. Moreover, studies have shown that increased immigration does not lead to increased crime and that immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated for violating criminal laws than non-immigrants.

Once again, we urge the leaders and citizens of this country to step away from their petty vendettas and take a look at the bigger picture, both in terms of what already exists and in terms of what would be best for all.

Weekly Immigration Wire: Reform Stagnates, Polarization Grows

by: The Media Consortium

Thu Jun 25, 2009 at 10:59:12 AM EST

by Nezua, TMC Mediawire Blogger

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.

Student Activists Shutdown Tancredo's Nativism

by: DreamActivist

Sat Apr 18, 2009 at 19:17:35 PM EST

Former Congressperson, Tom Tancredo, was not allowed to speak at a recent event in University of North Carolina hosted by the Youth for Western Civilization [Read: Youth Against Multiculturalism and Diversity].

Protestors shutdown the event through their non-violent chanting. Someone threw a brick through a window. And just for that, all hell broke lose or so the media spins. Our resident anti-immigrant demagogue William Gheen was quick to compare it to the persecution of Jews.

That's really a case of the pot calling the kettle black given that his organization--ALIPAC--has ties to right wing hate groups according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Setback for free speech?  Boo-hoo. Get over it.

At least Tancredo and his cronies do not have to worry about being invaded and detained by ICE whenever they practice their hate free speech.

This is also the same Tom Tancredo that asked ICE to arrest and detain college immigration advocates when they were testifying for the DREAM Act in 2007.

Apparently, ‘free speech’ is only convenient when the speech in question is in agreement to one’s own sentiments and belief systems.