G DREAMS

“G” is a first-year Korean American undocumented student attending the University of California, San Diego. To protect her identity and family, we have not included her name.

From the Korean Resource Center and http://www.koreamjournal.com/Magazine/index.php

THERE I was standing before a crowd of 100 people - their faces, I could not see because of the bright lights, bur-l could hear their thunderous applause. I was the lead and first chair of my high school orchestra and had just finished my solo on violin performing “The Theme From Schindler’s List.” As I bowed before the appreciative audience, I couldn’t help but think: The United States of America is a place where anyone can earn a position of distinction with hard work.

It was in stark contrast to an experience I had as a fifth-grader in Korea, my birth country where I grew up until age 12. My peers had voted me vice president of our class, and I was so excited. But that day, the principal called me into his office and asked me to give up my position. He told me that if you’re vice president, that means you have to help support the school financially, and he knew my family was not in a position to do so.

So he gave my title to one of my friends, whose parents were well-off and had called the principal campaigning for their daughter. All I remember is crying all day. My mom told me, “It’s OK. It’s not your fault.”

Five years later, I was in a country where I could earn and keep the title of first chair of my orchestra, though my parents were not rich or influential. This is what I love about America, my adopted country.

To read more go to: http://krcla.org/blog/691/

The Political SceneReturn of the Nativist

The Political Scene - Return of the Nativist
Behind the Republicans’ anti-immigration frenzy
by Ryan Lizza, The New Yorker December 17, 2007

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/17/071217fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=1
(See the great artwork on the webpage above.Artwork caption: Tancredoism-a hard line on immigration-is abetted by an absence of Party leadership and by Bush’s unpopularity.)
Once upon a time, John McCain was favored to win the Republican nomination. His straight-talking appeal and his cultivation of the Republican Party’s right wing put him first—at least in the early conventional wisdom. Then, last summer, his campaign seemed to spontaneously combust in a puff of fund-raising troubles and staff intrigue. But McCain has slowly made his way back into contention. The usual line is that he has done it by being “the old McCain,” the one that New Hampshire voters (and many journalists) fell for during his 2000 Presidential run. Unlike Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, or Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, two of his chief competitors, he holds a press conference after nearly every campaign event. Just before a recent trip to South Carolina, he invited a dozen reporters for lunch at his Arlington, Virginia, campaign headquarters (on the thirteenth floor, naturally).Rather than trying to woo religious conservatives, an awkward alliance at best, McCain is focussing more on his natural base of independents (in New Hampshire) and veterans (in South Carolina). Instead of trying to run a by-the-numbers conservative campaign, he is emphasizing issues on which he has taken what he believes to be principled but unpopular positions. He is the only one in the Republican field who seems eager to talk about Iraq. “My friends, here’s the news,” he told a small crowd in Seneca, South Carolina, a few days after returning from Thanksgiving with the troops. “We are winning in Iraq. We are winning in Iraq. We are winning in Iraq.”Over lunch in Arlington, McCain had given the stock explanation for what caused last summer’s difficulties. “The problem, which was my problem, was that our fiscal expectations weren’t met by reality,” he said—in other words, he couldn’t raise enough money. But the next day, as I travelled with McCain around South Carolina, he told me that his campaign’s brush with death had less to do with fund-raising than with his role in championing the ambitious immigration-reform bill, supported by the White House, that died in Congress this year. “It wasn’t the budgetary problems. That was an inside-the-Beltway thing,” he said, referring to press coverage of his campaign’s setbacks. McCain gets animated whenever he discusses the immigration issue. After a town-hall meeting in Anderson, South Carolina, he recalled how the Irish were discriminated against in America. As he quoted a placard that hangs on the wall of an aide’s office (“Help Wanted—No Irish Need Apply”), he jabbed his finger in the air with such emphasis that he knocked my voice recorder to the ground and erased our conversation. “It was immigration” that hurt his campaign, he said when he continued, after a series of apologies on both sides. “I understand that. I was told by one of the pollsters, ‘We see real bleeding.’ ”There were two major factions in the immigration debate in Congress. A bipartisan coalition wanted a bill that included tough border-security measures, which everyone favored, as well as more controversial provisions concerning temporary-worker permits for undocumented aliens and a way for them to attain citizenship. Conservatives, led by Tom Tancredo, a Colorado congressman and Presidential candidate, demanded a bill that dealt only with security. McCain seems torn by how to address the issue, and he makes a small but telling concession to the Tancredo faction when he argues that security legislation must indeed come first. “You’ve got to do what’s right, O.K.?” he told me. “But, if you want to succeed, you have to adjust to the American people’s desires and priorities.”During another conversation, when I asked McCain what he had learned from the arguments about immigration, he said, “I think the main lesson is that Americans had no trust or confidence in the government. So when we said, as part of this comprehensive solution, we need to secure the borders, add temporary workers, and address the twelve million people here, they just didn’t believe us, O.K.?” He argued that the mismanaged response after Hurricane Katrina, the Washington corruption scandals such as those involving the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and unchecked government spending had undermined public confidence. “So what you have to do is prove to them that you’re going to secure the borders. And then I think that at least most of them—except for the Tancredos, who want to stop all immigration—would say, ‘O.K., I’m going to address these other issues.’ ”McCain’s standard answer to immigration questions is that he “got the message.” But every so often this practical McCain, bending to the mood of the primary electorate, gets shoved aside by the quixotic McCain, the one who never seems happier than when he’s championing a lost cause. At one stop in South Carolina, at Clemson University, a student engaged McCain in an argument about whether his plan rewarded illegal immigrants for breaking the law. McCain was by then in a combative mood. Minutes earlier, a professor had asked about a piece of Internet-crime legislation that he argued would group terrorism researchers with actual terrorists. “Am I a terrorist?” the professor asked, his querulous tone suggesting that McCain hadn’t answered the original question. The questioner was wearing tennis shoes, jeans, a pink polo shirt, and a gray blazer, and McCain looked at him carefully. “With those sneakers, you’re not a snappy dresser,” McCain replied after a pause, as audience members gasped and laughed. “That doesn’t mean you’re a terrorist. Though you terrorize the senses.” To the student with the immigration question, McCain patiently explained that some illegal immigrants had faced unusual circumstances, and he mentioned a woman who has lived in the United States for decades and has a son and a grandson serving in Iraq. When the student said that he wanted to see punishment meted out to anyone who has broken the law, McCain stopped trying to find common ground. “If you’re prepared to send an eighty-year-old grandmother who’s been here seventy years back to some country, then frankly you’re not quite as compassionate as maybe I am,” he said. Next question.McCain could stop discussing the controversial parts of his immigration plan or he could drop his support for them altogether, admitting that he was simply wrong, as Romney has done with abortion and other issues. I asked McCain about Romney, who had once expressed support for the comprehensive legislation backed by the Bush Administration—it sounded “reasonable,” he’d said—but now rails against it as “amnesty.” McCain said, “Both he and Rudy had the same position I did. In fact, Rudy was even more liberal. But, look, if that—” He paused and shrugged. “I don’t want to be President that bad.”Later that night, at the CNN/YouTube debate in St. Petersburg, Florida, immigration declared itself the dominant and obsessive issue of the Republican primaries, and the issue also clarified some essential differences among the candidates. The two formerly moderate Northeasterners, Romney and Giuliani, taunted each other about who was tougher on illegal immigrants. On the other side were McCain and Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, who told their opponents that illegal immigrants “need some of our love and compassion” (McCain) and that “we are a better country than to punish children for what their parents did” (Huckabee). The Romney-Giuliani exchange prompted Tancredo, whose platform calls for restrictions even on legal immigration, to giddily declare that his opponents were trying to “out-Tancredo Tancredo.”The emergence of Trancredoism as an ideological touchstone for two Republican front-runners is a stunning development, another indication of the Party’s rejection of nearly everything associated with the approach taken by George W. Bush. As a border-state governor, Bush boasted of his relationship with Vicente Fox, who became the President of Mexico, and he and his political adviser Karl Rove later argued that Republicans needed a pro-Latino vision for immigration reform. His strategy of cultivating immigrants as integral to the future of the Party seemed to work, and Bush did surprisingly well with Latino voters: in 2004, he won some forty per cent of their vote—double what Bob Dole achieved just eight years earlier.In the late nineteen-nineties, when the Republican Party began embracing Bush’s pro-immigrant message, Tom Tancredo was a relatively anonymous backbencher. “When I first started on this, when I came to Congress, nine years ago, I found that I could get few, if anyone, to pay attention to the issue,” Tancredo told me as he was being ferried between campaign events in New Hampshire. “I remember going into a Republican conference meeting and asking if I could show a video that a night-vision camera had taken of people coming across the border in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, in Arizona. You had all of these campers parked, people sleeping, and in between were probably hundreds and hundreds of people, most of them carrying guns. And I was showing this and it was two hundred and twenty-two members of the Republican conference, and there were four left at the end of it. And it was a three-minute video. They walked out murmuring things, you know”—he made a mumbling sound—“ ‘immigration, immigration, immigration.’ ”When I asked Tancredo about Bush’s argument that Republicans risked losing a generation of Hispanic voters if they adopted an immigration policy that many regard as nativist, he laughed and said, “It doesn’t seem to be holding its own very well, considering what happened the other night at the debate. If you think for a moment that Romney, Giuliani, and Thompson”—Fred Thompson, the former Tennessee senator—“haven’t polled the heck out of this thing, you’re wrong. They have. And they are there now because the polls tell them this is where they should be.”The rise of Tancredoism has been aided and abetted by a number of factors, including an absence of strong leadership in the Republican Party and the greatly diminished power and popularity of the President, whose approval ratings fell as the war in Iraq went wrong and the government failed to act effectively after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. In December, 2005, the nativist wing of the G.O.P. in the House—marginalized by Bush’s semi-successful rebranding of his party as progressive on immigration—passed legislation requiring seven hundred miles of fence along the Mexican border, and reclassified as felons illegal immigrants. (The bill set off huge immigrants’-rights protests in dozens of cities in 2006.) The post-Bush, pre-Tancredo era of the Republican Party had begun.Another catalyst was the peculiar dynamics of this year’s Republican Presidential campaign. In 1999, when Bush made his initial foray into Presidential politics, he already had credibility with conservatives, largely based on his tax-cut promises and his religious convictions. It gave him latitude to be heretical on other issues. By contrast, the 2008 Presidential campaign features five leading Republican candidates, each of whom is viewed with suspicion by at least part of the so-called base. Unlike Bush in 1999 and 2000, Romney, Giuliani, Huckabee, McCain, and Thompson have spent most of the campaign trying to establish their bona fides with conservatives. The effect has been to push the field farther to the right, especially on immigration.Anti-immigrant passion also owes much to the disproportionate influence of a few small states in the nominating process. National polls show that, as an issue, immigration is far behind the Iraq war, terrorism, the economy, and health care as a concern to most Americans; a recent Pew poll shows that, nationally, only six per cent of voters offer immigration as the most important issue facing the country. But in Iowa and South Carolina, two of the three most important early states, it is a top concern for the Republicans who are most likely to vote. “It’s the influx of illegals into places where they’ve never seen a Hispanic influence before,” McCain told me. “You probably see more emotion in Iowa than you do in Arizona on this issue. I was in a town in Iowa, and twenty years ago there were no Hispanics in the town. Then a meatpacking facility was opened up. Now twenty per cent of their population is Hispanic. There were senior citizens there who were—‘concerned’ is not the word. They see this as an assault on their culture, what they view as an impact on what have been their traditions in Iowa, in the small towns in Iowa. So you get questions like ‘Why do I have to punch 1 for English?’ ‘Why can’t they speak English?’ It’s become larger than just the fact that we need to enforce our borders.”Mike Huckabee is the latest victim of the Republican shift on the immigration issue. We talked on what should have been a happy day for Huckabee. According to at least one poll, he had taken the lead from Romney in Iowa, and was enjoying a sustained burst of positive media coverage. “Oh, man, it’s been unbelievable,” he said in his winning, Gomer Pyle-like voice. “We’re up in New Hampshire and I’ve got more press coming to the events than I’ve got people. I’m not kidding. It’s unbelievable. We have so many people coming we can’t fit them in the places.” But Huckabee’s excitement was tempered by Romney’s persistent attacks on his immigration record as governor of Arkansas, and he seemed to be grappling with the intensity of the question among Republicans. “It does appear to be the issue out here wherever we are,” he told me. “Nobody’s asked about Iraq—doesn’t ever come up. The first question out of the box, everywhere I go—Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, it doesn’t matter—is immigration. It’s just red hot, and I don’t fully understand it.”Romney has not been similarly reflective in trying to discern the source of the issue’s power. Rather, he has quickly and easily adopted the negative code words of the anti-immigration movement—“sanctuary cities,” “amnesty”—and has tried to attach them to Giuliani and Huckabee. In doing so, he became the first top-tier candidate to seize the Tancredo mantle. My own sense, from talking to Huckabee, a Southern populist, and McCain, a border-state senator, is that they are genuinely appalled by Romney’s tactics, not only because of the damage to their campaigns but also because of the damage they believe he’s doing to the Party’s image. Romney’s communications director, Matt Rhoades, said, “Both Senator McCain and Governor Huckabee have decided that to win in 2008, Republicans need to be more like the Democrats when it comes to illegal immigration. That’s the wrong course. McCain-Kennedy”—Edward Kennedy was a sponsor of the initial legislation—“was the wrong course. Governor Huckabee’s plan to give tuition breaks to illegal immigrants was the wrong course. America doesn’t need two politicians with records on illegal immigration that are in tune with Senator Clinton.”“He’s clearly distorted my record as well as my position,” Huckabee told me. “But I’m not interested in getting in a war with him to see which of us can be the meanest son of a gun running for President.” He went on, “My experience has been—not just in politics but in any realm of life—when people keep saying something over and over, and louder and louder, it’s to compensate that they don’t want you to know that’s really never what they believed.” Nevertheless, last week, Huckabee, too, found his inner Tancredo: he announced the Secure America Plan, which included tough language about enforcement and pressuring illegal immigrants to return home. This leaves McCain as the only Republican candidate who hasn’t folded in the face of Romney’s attacks. At the press lunch in Virginia, after McCain had discussed his warm relations with several candidates, a reporter asked about Romney. “I’ve never known him,” McCain said icily. “I’ve never had a relationship with him.”Barack Obama, during a recent interview with the editorial board of the Boston Globe, predicted that the Republicans will run next fall on two issues: terrorism and immigration. When I asked a leading Republican strategist and former Bush lieutenant if he agreed, he said merely, “I hope not.” He argued that it was incorrect to think that immigration was the second most important challenge facing the United States. “We need to address other issues, like the economy, health care, and education,” he said. When I asked Tancredo if he was leading his party “over a cliff” or “to the promised land,” he laughed and said, “I see manna out there.”The evidence so far, though, points to a cliff. In several election contests in the past two years, Republicans tried and failed to deploy immigration as a campaign weapon. This November, Republicans in Virginia and New York who ran on the issue were defeated. Not even Eliot Spitzer’s misbegotten plan to issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, which was thought to be ruinous for Democrats, has damaged the Democratic Party; rather, the Party increased its numbers in local races around the state. McCain says that last year he saw how toothless the issue was in Arizona. “Congressman J. D. Hayworth had a pretty good opponent,” he said of the former Republican from Arizona, who lost his seat in the 2006 midterm election. “J.D. ran just on the issue of immigration, in a moderate but Republican district. Arizona State University is there, in Phoenix. And J.D. got beat by four points in the general election. There was a guy who was going to take Jim Kolbe’s seat”—an Arizona congressman who retired last year. “Jim was there twenty years, and had always carried the district well. The Republican candidate was another one where immigrant, immigration, anti-illegal immigration was his theme. He lost by twelve points. So I think there is a lesson in some of those elections when people use anti-immigration as a major part of their campaign. But I also know that it galvanizes a certain part of the Republican Party.”Far from fearing the immigration issue, some Democratic strategists are quietly cheering how the subject has played out. Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist who has closely studied the politics of the issue, says simply, “The Bush strategy—enlightened on race, smart on immigration, developed in Texas and Florida with Jeb Bush—has been replaced by the Tancredo-Romney strategy, which is demonizing and scapegoating immigrants, and that is a catastrophic event for the Republican Party.”Besides McCain, who was the original Republican sponsor of the comprehensive immigration bill, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham is the Republican most associated with the legislation. Graham negotiated the details of the final version of the bill, which went down to defeat, and as a consequence he has become a target of ridicule on the talk-radio right. On the afternoon of the YouTube debate, Buddy Witherspoon, a Republican National Committeeman, was finishing a two-day tour of South Carolina, announcing his campaign to run against Graham in the June Republican primary. Witherspoon’s sole issue is immigration. After watching McCain’s testy forum at Clemson, I travelled a hundred and twenty miles to see Witherspoon in Aiken, a town of about thirty thousand. I found him setting up for his speech in front of a government office building at the end of an alley that abutted a shopping thoroughfare where tourists occasionally passed in a horse-and-buggy, casting curious glances. Exactly thirteen people were there to listen to him, including a ten-year-old who had accompanied his grandmother.Dean Allen, a plump and friendly fellow sporting an American-flag tie, told me that he runs something called Spirit of Liberty; he’s also helping Witherspoon’s campaign. “Some of these people may be coming in here to get jobs washing dishes, but some of them are coming in here to hijack airplanes,” he explained. “If you’re down there trying to look at the people coming across the border, maybe a lot of them are just motivated by economics, and they want a job washing dishes or cutting grass. But I can’t tell Jose Cuervo from the Al Qaeda operatives by looking at them, because they cut their beard off. It’s like trying to get fly manure out of pepper without your glasses on, you know? I mean, not a racist thing, but they’re all brown with black hair and they don’t speak English and I don’t speak Arabic or Spanish, so if they don’t belong here and they don’t come here legally, I want to know who’s here.” He echoed McCain’s observation that the anti-immigrant feeling is strongest in states with new Hispanic populations. “The illegal Hispanic population, it’s definitely growing,” he said. “I can tell you just from how many you see when you walk in Wal-Mart, and you drive down the street and you see buildings now with writing in Spanish that says ‘tienda,’ which is Mexican for ‘store.’ You didn’t see that even a year or two ago.”After speaking for forty-five minutes, Witherspoon walked across the street with me to Tako Sushi and we sat outside, where heat lamps warmed us. Witherspoon is tall and bald, and he spoke quickly, like a man full of opinions he’s been eager to vent. In his speech, he had run through many of the issues that have been festering on the right: the Law of the Sea treaty; an alleged plan to combine Canada, the United States, and Mexico into a super-state; the Patriot Act. But he was most exercised about immigration and about Lindsey Graham’s betrayal on that issue. “There’s a lot of unrest in South Carolina,” he told me gravely. “And people are concerned that the Senator no longer represents the views of mainstream South Carolinians in a lot of ways. Immigration is the No. 1 issue, no question there. We’re concerned about illegal immigrants coming in here and—well, under the Bush Administration, it’s now seven years into his term, and he hasn’t done a lot about it.” He was not impressed by Bush’s big-tent philosophy of courting Hispanics as the future of the Republican Party. “The big tent is great. But that doesn’t mean ’cause it’s a big tent you should include everything under the tent.”When I talked to Graham a couple of days later, he did not sound alarmed by the Witherspoon challenge. With more than four million dollars in his campaign account, he can afford to be somewhat, but perhaps not entirely, relaxed. His pollster, Whit Ayres, has been monitoring the issue closely, and Graham was eager to share the results. His role in the immigration debate has indeed hurt him. “What’s happened for me is my negatives have gone up about ten points,” he told me. “My approval rating has come down about eight or nine points. That’s the consequence to me.”But the numbers told another story, too. Graham read me one of the questions that his pollster asked about immigration. The poll tested voters’ opinion of three different proposals to deal with illegal immigrants: “arrest and deport”; “allow them to be temporary workers, as long as they have a job”; “fine them and allow them to become citizens only if they learn English and get to the back of the line.” In two separate polls, the majority supported the third option. The average for the first option was only twenty-six per cent.“What it tells me is that the emotion of the twenty-six per cent is real, somewhat understandable, but if not contained could destroy our ability to grow the Party,” he said. “And I don’t think you need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that if you’re going to win a general election you have to do well with Hispanic voters as a Republican.” He continued, “My concern is that we’re going to have an honest but overly emotional debate about immigration, and we’ll say things for the moment, in the primary chase, that will make it very difficult for us to win in November. There’s a fine line between being upset about violating the law and appearing to be upset about someone’s last name.”Graham, who is one of McCain’s staunchest supporters, had not yet seen a new poll by the Pew Hispanic Center, which reported that the gains made among Hispanic voters during the Bush era have now been erased. Nevertheless, he had a warning for Republicans: “Those politicians that are able to craft a message tailored to the moment but understanding of the long-term consequences to the country and to the Party are the ones that are a blessing. And the ones who live for the moment and don’t think about long-term consequences, demographic changes, over time have proven to have been more of a liability than an asset.” He added, “Be careful of chasing the rabbit down a hole here.” ?

Immigration more an issue for media than voters

The Lou Dobbs Primary?

Immigration more an issue for media than voters

12/7/07

Media coverage of the 2008 presidential election identifies immigration as a key issue for the U.S. electorate--even though, according to most polling, it does not rank as a top priority for voters.CNN's Republican debate on November 28 opened with a full 35 minutes of the debate devoted to the issue of immigration. Washington Post columnist David Broder (11/15/07) recently referred to "illegal immigration" as one of two major "icebergs ahead for the Democrats" in the upcoming presidential race (ex-President Bill Clinton being the other one). Columnist and CBS correspondent Gloria Borger (U.S. News & World Report, 11/10/07) declared immigration a "killer issue," and that Democratic candidates "had better get started" on a solution: "Independent voters are unhappy that nothing has been done on the matter, and anyone who wants to be president needs to keep independent voters happy." Borger approvingly quoted Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, who thinks the time has come for a "welfare moment"--an allusion to Bill Clinton's pledge to "reform" welfare in 1992. NPR decided to make immigration one of the three issues of concern of its December 4 Democratic presidential debate. (Iran/Iraq policy and China were the other categories.) The following day's New York Times report on the debate (12/5/07) was headlined (in the print edition) "Immigration, a Relentless Issue, Confronts Democrats in an Iowa Debate." The paper alleged that the issue of immigration is "a topic looming large both in the Iowa caucuses next month and in the general election."That's not what voters have been saying, though.The Iraq War still tops the list of priority issues for both Democrats and Republicans. "It's raised twice as often as the next-ranking issue, the economy," according to a recent USA Today/Gallup poll (11/30/07-12/1/07). Another recent poll (L.A. Times/Bloomberg, 11/30/07-12/3/07) found only 15 percent of Americans ranking immigration as one of the top three issues of concern to them. In fact, noted L.A. Times columnist Tim Rutten (12/1/07), "more than nine out of 10 Americans think something matters more than immigration in this presidential election." Even when the question is posed in terms of "illegal immigrants"--a politically loaded phrase--public opinion on undocumented workers is, as it is on most political issues, quite mixed. But "a strong bipartisan majority -- 60 percent -- favors allowing illegal immigrants who have not committed crimes to become citizens if they pay fines, learn English and meet other requirements," according to the most recent L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll (L.A. Times, 12/6/07). The polling data suggests that immigration is not at all the "relentless issue" the New York Times makes it out to be. If anything can be described as "relentless" about the issue of immigration, it's the way it has been pushed by the media.CNN's Lou Dobbs--who has a record of touting inaccurate xenophobic claims and promoting white supremacists on air (see Extra!, 1-2/04; Intelligence Report, Winter/05)--led into CNN's Republican debate (11/28/07) by calling immigration advocates "misguided abject fools" who are "working to subvert the will of the majority of the people of this country." Given the clear disdain U.S. media are showing for Americans' priorities for the upcoming election, one would think it was not the U.S. electorate but Dobbs himself whose vote was going to determine the 2008 presidential vote. Of course, time spent talking about immigration-- which appeals to more conservative voters--is time not spent talking about, say, the economy or the Iraq War. This could very well be smart politics for Republican presidential candidates; as GOP pollster Whit Ayres put it (USA Today, 12/4/07), "Anything that pushes Iraq farther down the agenda is good news for Republicans." But media shouldn't mistake GOP campaign priorities for evidence of a shift in the public's priorities.

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)http://www.fair.org

Check out Alternet's Headlines

Alternet, a alternative news site, has 3, count 'em, 3, articles today about immigration and worker's rights.

Check out their website at: www.alternet.org You may have to search for the third article, which is specifically about Burger King.

Pictures from the Chipotle Fair Food Launch!

Protesters Ask Chipotle to Put its Money Where the Burrito Goes

Many many thanks to Kate Bernuth!
Protesters Ask Chipotle to Put its Money Where the Burrito Goes
http://www.coloradoconfidential.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3176
by: Kate Bernuth
Mon Dec 03, 2007 at 09:20 AM MST
The hometown fast food joint, Chipotle Mexican Grill, has built a reputation for preferring naturally raised pork purchased from family farms. Activists would like to see the company take a similar interest in improving the well-being of farmworkers in its supply chain.
Kate Bernuth :: Protesters Ask Chipotle to Put its Money Where the Burrito Goes
A local coalition formed in support of Florida farmworkers is turning up the heat on Denver-based Chipotle Mexican Grill to live up to its slogan of "food with integrity" by agreeing to pay tomato pickers an extra penny per pound.
Local groups allied with a farmworker alliance based in Immokalee, Fla., staged a protest Saturday outside the Chipotle restaurant on 16th and Blake streets, just blocks from the company headquarters. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has targeted fast-food chains in its quest to raise wages and improve working conditions for migrant farm laborers who harvest tomatoes in south Florida.
"We think 'food with integrity' is a great idea," said Jordan Garcia, of Coloradoans for Immigrant Rights, a member organization of the Denver Fair Food Committee. "The reason we have chosen Chipotle is because they have said very clearly that they believe in honest food."
Chipotle, which at one point purchased about 20 percent of its tomato supply from Florida for 12 weeks a year, has responded to the CIW claims of farmworker abuse by ceasing to buy Florida tomatoes. But that's not acceptable for those who want to see the company incorporate the fight against farmworker exploitation into its mission of "food with integrity."
"We're asking Chipotle to take a stand," said Seth Donovan of Prax(us), an anti-human trafficking organization in Denver and ally of the CIW. "Fast-food chains have such huge buying power, they are in a position to pressure farmers to raise wages and protect workers."
The CIW negotiated hard-fought penny-per-pound deals with McDonald's Corp., and Taco Bell owner Yum Brands, Inc. - agreements that, if adopted industrywide, would essentially double wages for farmworkers. But those deals are in danger of collapsing under pressure from Miami-based Burger King, which has refused to sign on, and a tomato growers group that is threatening $100,000 fines against any farmer that participates. A spokesman for the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange called the penny-per-pound deals "un-American" because they allowed a third party to set wages. The growers also claim the deals are in violation of anti-trust laws but have so far offered no specifics.
Given the precarious future of these deals, Colorado organizers say it's more important than ever that Chipotle, with its focus on humanely raised livestock and organic produce, become an industry leader in the struggle to improve the lives of farmworkers. Chipotle spokesperson Chris Arnold did not return repeated calls for comment. In a short e-mail Arnold wrote, "We certainly respect their right to protest, but we don't buy any Florida tomatoes at all. We are reviewing practices among Florida tomato growers, but don't have any plans in place to begin buying Florida tomatoes." Arnold did not specify where Chipotle purchases its tomatoes. Florida supplies roughly 80 percent of the nation's fresh tomatoes between November and February.
Farmworker advocates say Chipotle's move does nothing to address the problem as the sub-poverty wages and abuse suffered by Florida pickers are well-documented and endemic throughout the tomato growing industry.
Migrant laborers - many of them illegal immigrants - have long been among the nation's most impoverished and most exploited workers. Over the past 10 years, the Justice Department has prosecuted six cases of farmworker slavery in Florida. There, the backbreaking job of harvesting tomatoes takes place in hot, pesticide-laced fields, where the workers must stoop to pick and haul tomatoes for 10 to 12 hours a day. They earn a piece-rate of about 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket. That can mean up to $10 an hour for those who can fill more than 200 buckets a day - 6,400 pounds of tomatoes. But the work is not guaranteed, and tomato pickers get no health insurance and receive no overtime pay.
"Chipotle preaches 'food with integrity,' but if they're not going to step up and protect the rights of human beings, I don't see much integrity in that at all," said Scott Kwasny, executive director of Colorado Jobs with Justice. His comment was in reference to Chipotle's well-publicized efforts to buy all its pork and some of its chicken and beef from "free range" farms, seen as more humane, where the animals are allowed to roam rather than kept in small cages.
Sarah Gill, a Denver resident who came out for Saturday's protest downtown, also said she'd like to see Chipotle's practices fall in line with its rhetoric.
"If you say you care, I want to hold you accountable."

The Immigration Con Artists

By David Sirota,
Creators SyndicatePosted on November 24, 2007, Printed on November 27, 2007http://www.alternet.org/story/68729/

I once got suckered by con artists. As I was walking by, they baited me into betting that I could guess which shell a little ball was under. Moving the shells at lightning speed, they diverted my attention and tricked me into taking my eye off the ball. When I lost the bet, I felt bamboozled, just like we all should feel today watching the illegal immigration debate. After all, we're witnessing the same kind of con.
As our paychecks stagnate, our personal debt climbs and our health care premiums skyrocket, We the People are ticked off. Unfortunately for those in Congress, polls show that America is specifically angry at the big business interests that write big campaign checks.
So now comes the con -- the dishonest argument over illegal immigration trying to divert our ire away from the corporate profiteers, outsourcers, wage cutters and foreclosers that buy influence -- and protection -- in Washington.
Republicans like Rep. Tom Tancredo (Colo.) are demanding the government cut off public services for undocumented workers, build a barrier at the Mexican border and force employers to verify employees' immigration status. Democrats like Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) are urging their allies to either embrace a punitive message aimed at illegal immigrants, or avoid the immigration issue altogether. And nobody asks the taboo question: What is illegal immigration actually about?
The answer is exploitation. Employers looking to maximize profits want an economically desperate, politically disenfranchised population that will accept ever worse pay and working conditions. Illegal immigrants perfectly fit the bill.
Politicians know exploitation fuels illegal immigration. But they refuse to confront it because doing so would mean challenging their financiers.
Instead we get lawmakers chest-thumping about immigration enforcement while avoiding a discussion about strengthening wage and workplace safety enforcement -- proposals that address the real problem.
Equally deplorable, these same lawmakers keep supporting trade policies that make things worse. Just last week, both Emanuel and Tancredo voted to expand NAFTA into the Southern Hemisphere. This is the same trade model that not only decimated American jobs and wages, but also increased illegal immigration by driving millions of Mexican farmers off their land, into poverty and ultimately over our southern border in search of subsistence work.
The con artists' behavior is stunning for its depravity.
First they gut domestic wage and workplace safety enforcement. Then they pass lobbyist-crafted trade pacts that push millions of foreigners into poverty. And presto! When these policies result in a flood of desperate undocumented workers employed at companies skirting domestic labor laws, the con artists follow a deceptive three-step program: 1) Propose building walls that would do nothing but create a market for Mexican ladders 2) Make factually questionable claims about immigrants unduly burdening taxpayers and 3) Scapegoat undocumented workers while sustaining an immoral situation that keeps these workers hiding in the shadows.
The formula allows opportunists in Congress to both deflect heat away from the corporations underwriting their campaigns and preserve an exploitable pool of cheap labor for those same corporations. Additionally, these opportunists get to divide working-class constituencies along racial lines and vilify destitute illegal immigrant populations that don't make campaign donations and therefore have no political voice whatsoever.
Of course, diversionary scapegoating is nothing new. As Ronald Reagan pushed his reverse Robin Hood agenda, he attributed America's economic stagnation to "welfare queens." Similarly, Bill Clinton championed NAFTA while telling displaced workers their enemy was "the era of Big Government." This bogeyman, Clinton said, would be vanquished by ending "welfare as we know it."
Undoubtedly, the media will keep claiming illegal immigration is complicated for both parties. But Republicans or Democrats could begin solving the issue, if they simply stopped letting corporate lawyers write trade pacts and started punishing employers who violate wage and workplace laws.
Sadly, even those modest steps probably won't be taken. In a political system that makes it difficult to tell the difference between a lobbyist and a lawmaker, both parties employ the art of distraction to perpetuate the crises that enrich their campaign contributors. Indeed, whether their target is undocumented workers or indigent recipients of public assistance, the political con artists attack the exploited to avoid cracking down on the exploiters -- and with immigration, they are hoping America once again gets duped.

David Sirota is the author of Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government--and How We Take It Back (Crown, 2006).
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/68729/

More Than One Solution is Required

Opinion Editorial Published in the Fort Collin's Coloradoan

More Than One Solution is Required
by Eric Levine

Glen Colton’s Nov. 5 column, in which he connects and blames everything from global warming and local growth to national immigration rates deserves comment.
Concerning global population, I can readily accept the proposition that given a small enough human population, our problems are solvable, while given rapid and never ending growth, few are.
However, the more Colton gets on his one problem one solution mantra, the greater his error. He ticks off problems such as drought, oil prices, wildfires and climate damage, implying they will all be solved only by lowering national immigration rates.
If the threat of climate disaster has taught us anything, it is that we are truly one planet, one species and one economy. Our resource management, pollution, consumption, economies, communicable diseases, climate change, and habitat loss do have one thing in common, but it is not what Colton suggests. Their true commonality is that they are all international problems.
Because his worldview stops at our borders, Colton confuses real population growth with population distribution; two very different animals. Surely China’s burgeoning economic tidal wave will soon greatly affect our climate, environmental quality, and resources more than anything he’s named. This is a real elephant we must address. So are issues of fair trade policies with the Third World, gross inequities caused by international corporatism, biosphere/habitat damage and extinction, to name several.
Some closed border advocates cynically proclaim that once third world economic refugees enter the United States, their consumption increases, thus exacerbating worldwide resource shortages. There are many mistakes in this flawed reasoning.
U.S./world trade policies largely by and for rich nations have caused many Third World disasters, and produced many of the impoverished refuges wishing to come here.
If immigrants to the United States increase consumption, what does that say about the problems our per capita consumption causes?
Instead of limiting migration here, couldn’t we solve over consumption just as well by “exporting” our citizens to Third World countries, say via a lottery?
If we use the argument that Third World people coming here damage our planet by adopting our consumption, doesn’t that mean we must also forever deny them our level of development and a decent lifestyle in their own countries?
Why wouldn’t accepting more residents in Colorado’s West Slope communities be preferable to the destruction of our planet’s rainforests via desperate slash and burn farming?
There are serious problems in the Front Range, but they are caused by growth concentrations exhausting our infrastructure and going well beyond optimum or even affordable economies of scale. It seems we never assess local growth’s true impacts by acknowledging new growth after a point can cost much more. Never addressing growth’s true rising costs means current residents end up paying more taxes to subsidize new residents, even as our community services and lifestyles decline.
Different problems with different solutions. Let’s stop simplistically lumping them together.

Eric Levine lives in Fort Collins and has been working for solutions to environmental problems for more than two decades.

Opinion Editorial from the Fort Collins Coloradaon

Opinion Editorial from the Fort Collins Coloradaon

by Eric Levine

Glen Colton’s Nov. 5 column, in which he connects and blames everything from global warming and local growth to national immigration rates deserves comment.
Concerning global population, I can readily accept the proposition that given a small enough human population, our problems are solvable, while given rapid and never ending growth, few are.
However, the more Colton gets on his one problem one solution mantra, the greater his error. He ticks off problems such as drought, oil prices, wildfires and climate damage, implying they will all be solved only by lowering national immigration rates.
If the threat of climate disaster has taught us anything, it is that we are truly one planet, one species and one economy. Our resource management, pollution, consumption, economies, communicable diseases, climate change, and habitat loss do have one thing in common, but it is not what Colton suggests. Their true commonality is that they are all international problems.
Because his worldview stops at our borders, Colton confuses real population growth with population distribution; two very different animals. Surely China’s burgeoning economic tidal wave will soon greatly affect our climate, environmental quality, and resources more than anything he’s named. This is a real elephant we must address. So are issues of fair trade policies with the Third World, gross inequities caused by international corporatism, biosphere/habitat damage and extinction, to name several.
Some closed border advocates cynically proclaim that once third world economic refugees enter the United States, their consumption increases, thus exacerbating worldwide resource shortages. There are many mistakes in this flawed reasoning.
> U.S./world trade policies largely by and for rich nations have caused many Third World disasters, and produced many of the impoverished refuges wishing to come here.
> If immigrants to the United States increase consumption, what does that say about the problems our per capita consumption causes?
> Instead of limiting migration here, couldn’t we solve over consumption just as well by “exporting” our citizens to Third World countries, say via a lottery?
> If we use the argument that Third World people coming here damage our planet by adopting our consumption, doesn’t that mean we must also forever deny them our level of development and a decent lifestyle in their own countries?
> Why wouldn’t accepting more residents in Colorado’s West Slope communities be preferable to the destruction of our planet’s rainforests via desperate slash and burn farming?
There are serious problems in the Front Range, but they are caused by growth concentrations exhausting our infrastructure and going well beyond optimum or even affordable economies of scale. It seems we never assess local growth’s true impacts by acknowledging new growth after a point can cost much more. Never addressing growth’s true rising costs means current residents end up paying more taxes to subsidize new residents, even as our community services and lifestyles decline.
Different problems with different solutions. Let’s stop simplistically lumping them together.


Eric Levine lives in Fort Collins and has been working for solutions to environmental problems for more than two decades.

Focus of CBC is uniting by faith, service

Published in the Greeley Tribune
Irma Saenz
November 6, 2007

In response to the letter sent to Greeley residents on Oct. 12, Congregations Building Community refuses to engage in the Colorado Alliance for a Secure America's cheap propaganda tactics.

CBC is not funding anyone's political campaign, nor are we affiliated with any political party. Our focus is in uniting our community by means of faith and social ministry.

CBC did not send Mayor Tom Selders to Washington, D.C., with a "pro-amnesty" agenda, nor did we provide him a script. He presented a statement of the impact of the Dec. 12 ICE raids in our community. He based his report on factual information, not personal opinion.

As the local CBC, through collective work we believe that people will learn to appreciate the cultural richness of each other by transforming faith into action. We empower residents to take action and value safe, clean and prosperous communities. We follow the church's social teaching, which proclaims that "human life is sacred and that the dignity of the human person is the foundation of a moral vision for society."

Colorado Alliance for a Secure America is resorting to divisive political activity to promote its anti-immigrant agenda. The letter it sent to Greeley voters focuses on the myths that feed the anti-immigrant climate in Greeley.

We encourage Greeley residents to look at the facts and not the myths of immigration. Immigrants do not take the jobs of American citizens; instead, they leave millions of dollars of unclaimed federal, state and local taxes.

According to the Urban Institute, National Academy of Sciences and the Social Security Administration, immigrants pay between $90 million and $140 million a year in taxes. Also, the Urban Institute has found that the total immigrants' tax payments make up about $20 million to $30 million more than they use in public services.

CBC's main focus is to be tolerant and respectful of cultural differences in the Greeley community. We do not promote discrimination. Unity and social justice are our main concerns.

Irma Saenz of Evans is a member of Congregations Building Community in Greeley.

Link to original article for comments: http://www.greeleytrib.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007111060137#commentbox

Call, Walk In For DREAMS

We all have DREAMS and ambitions that we strive for. Millions of teens in the United States are denied the opportunity and the right to pursue theirs.

They are Americans. All that they lack is one piece of paper to be recognized as such.

A paper that would allow them to pursue citizenship and a future here through going to college or serving in the military, the DREAM Act. Many of us do not agree with the military recruitment going on. Let your senator know you prefer a community service path

Tomorrow the Senate will vote on the DREAM ACT.
Call your senators over and over and tell them that you support a citizenship path for youth that includes college and community service options. Tell them you oppose the military service "option".

Tomorrow, Denver Public Schools has a day off. Students from all over the district will walk in to Auraria Campus to make a statement about how much they want the opportunity for an education and to contribute to our State and our Country.
Walk In with them.

Senators
# Call Senator Salazar: (202) 224-5852
# Call Senator Allard: (202) 224-5941
Email your Senators

WALK-IN: Make the DREAM Act a REALITY Now!
Wednesday, October 24 at 10am
Auraria Flagpole, Denver (Colfax and Speer)
Let's walk IN to the college campus and show others that we have the right to an education. We will then march to SENATOR KEN SALAZAR's office to demand that he be a cosponsor of the DREAM Act and make the DREAM Act a reality now!

Detention to Expand

Being in the detention business has always been profitable. This has become particularly true for those detaining immigrants. The Geo ICE facility in Aurora will be expanding from 400 beds to 1100 at the end of this year and is projected to generate $30 million in revenue annually. 1

Meanwhile, a recent report issued by the Government Accountability Office states that Immigration officials are not exercising discretion in who they deport. The GAO states that the officials are arresting and deporting far more immigrants whose only offense is being here without documentation than those who have been convicted of crimes. 2,3

More beds won't encourage agents to use greater discretion. It will instead allow them to continue rounding up and separating families.

1 BizJournal
2http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0867.pdf
3http://www.gao.gov/docsearch/abstract.php?rptno=GAO-08-67

Elvira, Liliana , Many More Families

As Elvira Arellano tirelessly organizes in Mexico after her deportation (after she left sanctuary), Liliana and her family have taken refuge in a different church. Across the country the New Sanctuary Movement is gaining traction.

Those who have taken sanctuary among us tell us the stories of so many other families. Every family a story of work and school, celebrations and sorrows. Every time I see their faces I think of what the current immigration system tries to take from my neighbors and friends; dignity, safety, respect, the right to work and family.

Each time I see a photo of Elvira or Liliana and their families I know that the system has not been successful. They demonstrate the dignity of people who have had enough, the safety of the love of their families, faiths and communities, the respect of all those working for a just world, and the right to be with their families.

REAL ID and You

This says it all! The video is from the ACLU.

Come out to the Real ID Community Forum and protect your privacy

Where : Colorado History Museum, 1300 Broadway, Denver
When : Wednesday, October 3 , 6:00 -8:00 pm

Security and technology experts from all sides of the political spectrum discuss the consequences of the federal Real ID legislation. Jim Harper of the Cato Institute, Mike Krause of the Independence Institute, security guru Bruce Schneier and our own Cathy Hazouri will comprise the panel. The discussion will be moderated by progressive blogger/journalist David Sirota . The event is FREE.

Please email Erik Maulbetsch at erik@aclu-co.org, or call 303.777.5482 x100 to RSVP.

Can't come to the event? Participate by asking questions!

Send them to: http://www.aclu-co.org/events/2007RealID.htm

Social Security office refuses to meet with immigrant rights coalition

Colorado participated in a national movement voicing opposition to the new DHS ruling on Social Security no-match letters and request that the SSA not send letters to employers

On Wednesday, September 19 five delegates from organizations of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition attempted to deliver a letter to the office of the Regional Commissioner for the Social Security Administration (SSA). The letter expressed our concern with the new DHS no-match letter regulations and asked the SSA to send letters to employees instead of employers if the October 1 ruling over turns the current injunction on the new rule. The letter was signed by twenty faith, labor and immigrant rights organizations throughout the state of Colorado, including organizations from Alamosa, Boulder, Denver, Durango, Greeley, Ft. Collins, Longmont and Montrose.

The delegates representing organizations who signed the letter included:

Sarah Custer, SEIU local 105; Gabriela Flora, American Friends Service Committee; Scott Kwasny, Jobs with Justice; Blake Pendergrass, Front Range Economic Strategy Center; Chandra Russo, Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition

We had been in conversation with the SSA Commissioners office for several weeks attempting to schedule a meeting to no avail. When we arrived to deliver the letter they refused to meet with us and instructed us via phone to leave the letter with security. We followed up by sending a hand written note along with another copy of the letter, expressing our disappointment in the failed meeting and our concern about the no-match matter. We also sent copies of the original letter to our CO delegation, majority and minority leaders in the CO assembly and the governor. We will continue to work with our allies across the country to stop the implementation of this damaging new rule.

Ch. 7, Ch. 2 and Univision showed up at the event with cameras and interviewed the delegation, along with an AP reporter. We also had live interviews on Spanish language radio Buena Onda (one before and one after) and with CNN Spanish radio.

Coverage on Channel 4: ID Verification Rule Could Hurt Legal Immigrants

AP write up: Advocates want delay in new Social Security verification rules
Associated Press - September 19, 2007 7:04 PM ET

Respond to Anti Immigrant Event in Greeley!

Immigrant Rights Advocates from Denver & Greeley bravely attended the Anti Immigrant Event in Greeley on Tuesday night, only to find that voices of dissent were effectively silenced….
Take a moment Today and participate in these 3 actions, ranging from EASY to ADVANCED!

Easy
1) Click on any of the links below and where ever available, use the talking points below to make comments and express that you believe immigrants are valuable assets to our community and anti immigrant sentiment is detrimental to our communities!
Decent Coverage:
http://www.9news.com/news/top-article.aspx?storyid=77546
http://cw2.trb.com/news/kwgn-illegal-immigrant-meeting,0,5182237.story?coll=kwgn-home-2
http://www.myfoxcolorado.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=4396685&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=3.2.1
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/video/14147769/index.html
Not so decent coverage:
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_6932520 & mwhaley@denverpost.com
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5701888,00.html
http://blogs.rockymountainnews.com/denver/rockytalklive/archives/2007/09/illegal_immigrants_and_crime_g.html#more Rocky Live Chat about whether Greeley should have its own ICE office
http://www.greeleytrib.com/article/20070919/NEWS/109190107
You could say:
Without the opportunity for public comment, the press was robbed of an opportunity to hear from the 50 or so pro immigrant people in the audience. It seems like the anti immigrant organizers of this event don’t value the views of all residents and citizens of Greeley. Community wide solutions can only emerge from community wide dialogue!
I empathize with victims of all crimes, but do not understand why Weld County D.A. Ken Buck is targeting one group of people for crime. This use of government resources and time to stigmatize and scapegoat an entire community is shameful.
Immigrants in every ethnic group in the United States have lower rates of crime and imprisonment than do the native born.
If we want to thoughtfully address crime in this country, we should look at the lack of meaningful opportunities for low income and youth of color in this country. We should also address how our criminal “justice” system warehouses disproportionate numbers of those youth, rather than provide essential services to address the underlying issues that led to criminal behavior in the first place.
Misinformation and generalizations about immigrants only serve to spread bias, hate and division. Painting immigrants as criminals is one of the tactics that extremist anti-immigrant groups have used to promote a white supremacist agenda.
To focus on immigrants as perpetrators of crime is unfair and one-sided. Immigrants are also victims of crime, particularly of crimes that are committed against them because of their race and ethnicity. Rhetoric like this discourages
immigrants from contacting law enforcement when they observe or are victims of crimes.

Intermediate:
2) The Mayor of Greeley, Tom Selders, has been targeted by anti immigrant activists. An advocate for Immigrant Rights by working to end the raids, send him your message of support!
Write a personal or organizational letter of support for Mayor Tom Selders!
Send to tom@selders.org or call (970) 350-9774 to express your support!
City of Greeley 1000 10th Street Greeley, CO 80631
fax: (970) 350-9736
You could say:
I applaud the efforts of Greeley’s Mayor Tom Selders’ in helping to vocalize the concerns of Colorado residents. I want to be part of the vocal majority who supports his plea for Comprehensive Immigration Reform for our nation’s hard working immigrants. His courage to speak up for his community should be commended.
People want to come here to work through legal channels but have no options. We call for an immediate end on all deportations and raids. The immoral and inhumane raids undermine community cohesion, family unity and imbue fear and uncertainty in the nation’s immigrant communities. They are distractions from crafting a workable comprehensive immigration reform, and what we need is a real commitment to an overhaul of the broken immigration system.
Undocumented immigrants are our neighbors, spouses, brothers, sisters, and friends. They are contributors to our communities, both culturally and economically. We benefit from immigrant labor without extending immigrants the protection of our laws. Any federal immigration policy must allow undocumented immigrants to legalize their status, support family reunification, reduce backlogs, protect workers rights, and provide opportunities for safe future migration.

Advanced:
3) Write a letter to the Denver Post and send it to openforum@denverpost.com or to the RMN and send it to letters@RockyMountainNews.com by Thursday, Sept. 20, 2007!
Three of the talking points below are sufficient (although more is okay), the length of your letter can be anywhere from 8 sentences to a few paragraphs.
Remember, editors like to publish personal accounts or community impact. Often times, the newspaper will call indicating they might print your letter.
1. Maximum length: 200 words
2. Submissions must include full name, home address, and day and evening telephone numbers for verification purposes.
3. Letters may be edited for length, grammar and accuracy.
(only straight text, no email attachments)
Please send a copy of your letter to jgarcia@afsc.org
Call or email Jordan at 303-623-3464, jgarcia@afsc.org if you need assistance.
You could say:
Without the opportunity for public comment, the press was robbed of an opportunity to hear from the 50 or so pro immigrant people in the audience. It seems like the anti immigrant organizers of this event don’t value the views of all residents and citizens of Greeley. Community wide solutions can only emerge from community wide dialogue!
I empathize with victims of all crimes, but do not understand why Weld County D.A. Ken Buck is targeting one group of people for crime. This use of government resources and time to stigmatize and scapegoat an entire community is shameful.
Immigrants in every ethnic group in the United States have lower rates of crime and imprisonment than do the native born.
If we want to thoughtfully address crime in this country, we should look at the lack of meaningful opportunities for low income and youth of color in this country. We should also address how our criminal “justice” system warehouses disproportionate numbers of those youth, rather than provide essential services to address the underlying issues that led to criminal behavior in the first place.
Misinformation and generalizations about immigrants only serve to spread bias, hate and division. Painting immigrants as criminals is one of the tactics that extremist anti-immigrant groups have used to promote a white supremacist agenda.
To focus on immigrants as perpetrators of crime is unfair and one-sided. Immigrants are also victims of crime, particularly of crimes that are committed against them because of their race and ethnicity. Rhetoric like this discourages
immigrants from contacting law enforcement when they observe or are victims of crimes.


Thank you for supporting the human rights of immigrants!
-Coloradans For Immigrant Rights
Organizing Citizens to Support Immigrant Rights!

Jordan T. Garcia - Immigrant Rights Organizer
Coloradans For Immigrants Rights (CFIR)
"Organizing Citizens to Support Immigrants Rights!"
a project of the American Friends Service Committee

Reflections on the Greeley meeting

WORKING FOR UNITY
Down the street on this same night, a meeting of over two hundred people took place to do exactly that. Realizing Our Communities (ROC) met to discuss how all of Greeley can be safer for everyone, welcoming of all peoples, and one community. The ROC meting did not recieve coverage in either the Post or the News. It did draw diverse people from all over Greeley together and continued a conversation that will end in healing and a stronger community someday.

Why do I write this reflection? Becuase the truth is important. I write this because there is a real need for us to bring our community together and to engage in actions that unite us. In order to do that we need to speak the truth of the fear, the racism, and the hate that undergird much of the anti-immigrant movement. I have not yet been anywhere where this was so evident as at "the forum".

The "FORUM"
Last night we entered a room of over five hundred people for an event organized by public officials; The District Attorney Ken Buck, the Sheriff and the United States Assistant District Attorney. The event opened with a police color guard presenting the flags of Colorado and the Minutemen side by side and the pledge of allegiance. I am a really outgoing person however I felt no invitation or desire to sit down and join the attendees.

The racism was palpable as each white person at the door was greeted with a smile and a handshake while my friends of color received neither. While there were some people who were white that weren't clapping as the presentation went on, the vast majority were.

The event was advertised as a forum. The first thing the DA did was to tell us all that the meeting was informational and that they would not tae questions from the audience. Each official began by saying that the foreign born population does not make up much of the crime in Weld County. As the slides rolled by they sent a contradictory visual message which didn't match the words of the officials. So we watched 12 slides go by of men with Latino surnames who were foreign born and had been convicted of drunk driving over the last year. The officials never mentioned how many people born here were convicted of drunk driving or what percentage of convictions the foreign born population represents. They also used foreign born interchangeably with "ixxxxxl immigrants". This generalization was meant to communicate again the underlying message that you should be afraid of brown people in general. And so it went with progressively more serious crimes.

We listened to the testimony of victims of crimes committed by immigrants. All of the testimonies were either done in the hall or by video in the victim's home, except the last one. The organizers saved the testimony of an immigrant woman whose husband was killed by an immmigrant driving drunk as the last testimony. She was being interviewed by a staff member of the DA's in an official room with an American flag in the background. The translation wasn't simultaneous so that her testimony was robbed of its emotion as the DA's staff member translated in a flat voice. As she spoke of the loss of her husband, and her daughter cried for her father, more than 100 people got up and left. Apparently they were uninterested in any crime in which the victim is an immigrant.

Absent from the forum was any mention of the crimes committed by citizens against immigrants. Unpaid wages, hate crimes, robberies, assaults, rapes, intimidation and threats.

The sheriff passed out Colorado Alliance for a Secure America (CASA) flyers as people left. The flyers attack the Mayor of Greeley, who went to DC to lobby for comprehensive immigration reform. This group of officials who insist that immigrant crime is a problem in Greeley apparently do not want a solution and are uninterested in immigration reform.

The group of us who were there spoke with the Sheriff and the District Attorney afterwards. The District Attorney literally walked away from two of my friends of color in midsentence. They were trying to make a point about the images and the presentation and the stereotypes his office is furthering. One of my friends was saying the whole event was a shame. as the DA walked away, I followed and watched him listening attentively to members of CASA. I approached him, and he listened to me, a white woman, who was saying the exact same thing that my friends had said.

Statement by the Anti-Defamation League
http://www.greeleytribune.com/article/20071003/READERS/110030117

Challenge Greeley's Public Officials and Create Community

Please go to both events or to "Realizing Our Communities"

"Ixxxxxl Immigration-the Untold Stories"

Greeley's District Attorney and Chief of Police are sponsoring an event on September 18th which stereotypes all people who are undocumented as vicious criminals.

Click here for their description of the event.

I believe it is critical to support the victims of crime while/and challenging the racist/nativist assumption that all undocumented persons are criminals as well as discuss how our broken system contributes to all of the above. Members of CIRC and CFIR will be heading up together. See below for details.

Carpool Information- Denver to Greeley
Time: 4:00pm
Date: September 18th
Place: 3131 West 14th Avenue, Denver

Event Information
Time: 6:30pm -8:30pm
Date: September 18th
Place: 4H Building at Island Grove Park, Greeley

"REALIZING OUR COMMUNITIES- The Way to Greatness"

Latinos Unidos is sponsoring a community building event that night.

Time: 7-8:30 p.m.
Date: Tuesday, Septemeber 18th
Place: Union Colony Civic Center, 701 10th Ave., Greeley.

Keynote speakers include Dwight Jones, state education commissioner; Polly Baca, CEO of Latin American Research and Service Agency; Steve Horan, director of Lutheran Family Services Refugee and Asylum programs in Denver, and Rolf Brende, chaplain and author of "The Gentle Heart Primer: Principles That Build Community."

94 Billion Dollars:The Price Tag to Deport

According to Immigration Control and Enforcement (ICE), it will cost the agency approximately $94 billion to deport everyone who is undocumented. The figure does not include impacts like the cost of lost productivity (i.e. the impact on production), the humanitarian impact on the families, communities and friends left behind or on the countries of origin who would have to absorb the repatriated families and individuals.

The ICE estimate also does not include the cost of constructing new detention facilities to hold the people suspected of being undocumented. Nor do they talk about what would be done with these facilities after everyone is deported. Who will we fill those facilities with next?

Action:TONIGHT

Fuerza Latina in Fort Collins has organized an amazing vigil and rally tonight at 6:30pm to support human rights such as those of activist Elvira Arellano. If you are interested in carpooling we'll leave at 4:oo pm from the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition's offices. Please contact Gina Millan at 303-893-3500.

Below is a strong op ed in the Fort Collins paper, the Coloradoan, which discusses the need for reform and invites people out to the vigil.

Those facing deportation are people
Kimberly Baker Medina

"Just as they have beaten at my door, they are beating at the door of thousands, forcefully separating children and parents and causing terror and suffering .... I believe in my heart that the people of this nation do not have hate in their hearts, they don't want to destroy our lives, our families and our communities. I accept what God has sent me to accept. But I ask of my community ... to join together with me and ask that we walk together for our dignity. I ask everyone of conscience and good will to join with us... the 12th of September."

These words were written by Elvira Arrellano, from the Chicago church where she sought sanctuary for a year to avoid deportation and separation from her son, a U.S. citizen. When she left the church in August to promote Sept. 12 as a day to speak out against deportations, she was arrested and deported, leaving her son behind.

Elvira's arrest is significant not because it is unusual, but because it is common, even here, in Larimer County. Locally, authorities send about 30 people monthly to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation. Since the beginning of 2006, about 10,000 people in Colorado have been processed for deportation. Every person deported leaves someone behind.

David couldn't get his baby girl to eat after ICE took his wife. His three U.S. citizen children, a 6-month old breastfeeding baby, a 2- and a 5-year old, were crying and looking for their mother, who was deported two days after her arrest, without saying goodbye to her children.

Harriet, an 80-year-old widow, lost her granddaughter and two great-granddaughters when her grandson-in-law was deported and his family accompanied him. Before his deportation, Harriet looked forward to their daily visits. Now, she spends her days alone, missing her girls.

Lisa's husband was turned over to ICE for a broken taillight after living here for 13 years. As Lisa and her 7-year-old son, both U.S. citizens, packed up daddy's things, her son couldn't stop crying. "I don't want my daddy to go to Mexico," he sobbed.

A person is no less human because she or he lacks immigration papers. Deportations destroy children and families and communities. The people deported in our community are your neighbors, co-workers, members of your church and your children's playmates. The majority have committed no crime other than to have no immigration papers. They came here to escape persecution or hunger, or to unite with family. They become part of our communities, our families and our economy.

Current immigration laws do little more than cause suffering and injustice. They don't allow people to enter legally to work or be with family, or legalize their status. We must stop punishing families for dysfunctional laws and devise an immigration system that works for families and for America.

Fuerza Latina, together with families, faith and community organizations, will have a vigil at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday in Old Town Square in honor of Elvira and all families. Please join us.

Kimberly Baker Medina is an immigration attorney and a volunteer with Fuerza Latina. All of the people mentioned above are local residents of whom she has personal knowledge, whose names have been changed for privacy reasons. For more information about the vigil, contact Javier at 297-8951.