Author: New America Media

By Marcelo Ballvé, New America Media

The Obama administration had long promised to shift the focus of
immigration enforcement from workers to employers.

In real terms, that means less of the high-profile raids like those at
electronics and meatpacking plants in Postville, Iowa and Laurel, Miss.
that characterized the last years of the Bush administration. Those led
to the arrests of hundreds of immigrant workers, but only a trickle of
employer prosecutions.

Instead, as John Morton, assistant secretary of Homeland Security under
President Obama, promised in a rare public speech earlier this year at
the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., his agency would “focus on the employer” and pursue “aggressive criminal and civil
enforcement against (employers) who knowingly violate the law.”

“But it hasn’t been done,” said Crystal Williams, executive director of
the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA).

Although Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) worksite arrests
appear to be trending down, worksite raids continue. I-9 or Employment
Eligibility Verification audits designed to spot unauthorized workforces
have leapt in number. Meanwhile, ICE’s own statistics — which the
agency shared with New America Media — show that the agency’s efforts to
investigate employers have yet to yield an increase in prosecutions.

In fact, the opposite happened — ICE brought less charges against
employers in 2009 than it had the previous year.

In the 2008 fiscal year, still under President Bush, ICE brought
criminal charges against 135 business managers, supervisors and owners
as part of immigration investigations.

In the next fiscal year — which ended in September 2009 after President
Obama’s first eight months in office — ICE brought criminal charges
against 114 employers, a 16 percent decrease.

Clearly, “white-collar” cases against employers who profit from the
broken immigration system are harder to prove than run-of-the-mill
immigration arrests.

But the number of employer cases appears as a “miniscule proportion”
when set alongside the total prosecutions initiated by ICE, said
Williams of AILA.

Taken together, the total number of ICE cases referred to the federal
courts ballooned to 20,411 in fiscal year 2009 — a 12 percent increase
over the prior year — according to data from the Transactional Records
Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.

These prosecutions take in everything from counterfeit toothpaste to
drug trafficking, but the bulk of the cases were relatively minor
immigration charges. Just over half (10,346), according to TRAC, were
for entry or re-entry of undocumented immigrants.

The large number of lower-level immigration prosecutions has immigrant
advocates worried that the agency’s focus is still on quantity rather
than quality.

Of course, new priorities take a while to trickle through a
law-enforcement agency as large as ICE. The agency has more than 7,000
agents and is the federal government’s second-largest investigative
force after the FBI.

“They are trying to do what they say they’re trying to do,” said Donald
M. Kerwin, Jr., vice president for programs at the Migration Policy
Institute. “Give them a couple of years to turn the ship around.”

It may be well be that this fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, 2009, proves
a turning point for worksite enforcement.

In December 2009 ICE prosecuted 6 percent fewer total cases than in the
same month the prior year, a drop driven mainly by a decline in charges
for illegal entry, a charge for which those convicted are rarely sent to
prison, according to TRAC.

Kerwin of the Migration Policy Institute sees this decline in
prosecutions as a possible sign the agency is re-ordering its priorities
to focus on serious and flagrant violators of immigration laws such as
exploitative employers.

And so far this fiscal year, ICE has initiated 1,687 investigations
against employers, more than the entire previous year combined, said
Harold Ort, ICE spokesman in Newark.

These cases include an ongoing investigation in the Baltimore area that
last month led to raids on two Maryland restaurants, as well as several
homes and businesses.

The sweep was meant “to ensure that employers are held accountable for
maintaining a legal workforce,” William Winter, ICE special agent in
charge of Baltimore, said in a press release issued after the raid.

Yet no employers were charged in connection with the Maryland raids. The
only arrests were non-criminal administrative detentions of 29
immigrants in the country unlawfully.

The absence of immediate charges against business owners or managers is
not unusual. The lag-time between raids and charges against employers
can be years.

But when raids are not quickly followed by high-level charges or
indictments, it reinforces the perception that it’s still employees and
not their bosses who are bearing the brunt of enforcement. They are the
ones being scooped up by ICE and fired en masse.

“This is not an acceptable way to treat members of our community,” said
Gustavo Torres, executive director of the CASA de Maryland immigrant
rights group, after the Baltimore-area raids.

ICE has no choice but to enforce the law when encountering undocumented
immigrants in the course of employer-targeted investigations, said
agency spokesman Ort.

Ort also defended the audits of I-9 forms as a powerful tool in
detecting unscrupulous employers, immigration-related fraud, and
fineable employment offenses.

“We consider … employee records as important as tax or income records,”
he said.

As a federal agency in charge of the politically sensitive task of
immigration enforcement, ICE must endure criticism from both sides of
the immigration debate.

On the one hand, immigrant advocates castigate the agency as a callous
enforcer that terrorizes immigrant communities through raids such as
last week’s sweep of Arizona shuttle van installations or I-9 audits
(which advocates call “paper raids”).

On the other hand, activists and elected officials with more
uncompromising law-and-order views on immigration prod the agency to be
more aggressive and make as many arrests as possible.

On March 18 — just a week after the raids in nearby Maryland — ICE
assistant secretary John Morton testified on Capitol Hill before the
House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee about his agency’s
budget request of $5.5 billion for the 2011 fiscal year.

Morton received a tongue-lashing from a Kentucky legislator.

Rep. Hal Rogers, a Republican, pointed out that while I-9 audits of
businesses had increased by 187 percent to more than 1,100 in fiscal
year 2009, at the same time there had been a drop in worksite arrests of
undocumented immigrants.

“When I look at the shift in ICE’s focus over the last year, I’m deeply
concerned,” said Rogers, according to a transcript of the hearing. “It
appears as though immigration enforcement is being shelved and the
administration is attempting to enact some sort of selective amnesty
under the cover of prioritization.”

For Frank Sharry, executive director of immigrant advocacy group
America’s Voice, only comprehensive immigration reform that modernizes
the system as a whole will free up immigration enforcement to balance
priorities and focus on illegal hiring and unfair labor practices.

In the current climate, federal immigration authorities certainly do
feel pressure to deliver politically expedient statistics.

This pressure was put on public view by the Washington Post’s March 27
publication of internal memos in which a top ICE official discussed
deportation quotas. In a written statement, Assistant Secretary Morton
said most of the memo obtained by the newspaper did not reflect ICE
policy, and added, “We definitively do not set quotas.”

Still, Morton himself was not above promising improved numbers as he was
grilled on the 2010 drop in worksite enforcement arrests during the
March 18 appropriations hearing.

“I am very focused on getting that up,” Morton replied.

By Maya Rockeymoore, New America Media

Now that the health care reform bill has been signed into law, President
Obama and the Democratic Congress have a significant legislative
victory to call their own. While many are relieved that the United
States has finally been able to gain a foothold on reform — an
accomplishment that has eluded presidents for almost 100 years — plenty of
others are still wondering what the changes will mean for their lives.

This “health reform anxiety” is especially prevalent among racial and
ethnic minorities, who — as a majority of the nation’s uninsured — have a
disproportionate need for access to quality health care.

Although the law falls short of what many supporters of reform wanted — it
doesn’t cover every single individual and doesn’t contain a public
coverage option — all in all, it does represent a good beginning for
tackling America’s worse health insurance abuses and provides a
promising framework for prevention.

Prior to the bill’s passage, low-income individuals and families, those
with pre-existing conditions, small business employees and individuals
looking for insurance coverage were largely out of luck or at the mercy
of rapacious insurance companies seeking to minimize risk and maximize
profit. Now these vulnerable populations, disproportionately low-income
and black and brown, have a basic guarantee against the health care
discrimination that previously excluded or took advantage of them.
 
Embedded in the 2,073-page law (plus the second “reconciliation” package
signed this week to fix earlier problems with bill) are myriad measures
promising to generate reams of discussion. For now, though, racial and
ethnic groups should find some provisions of special interest.

Among the health care law’s affordability and access provisions, new tax
credits should help middle and working class Americans, who aren’t
eligible for the low-income Medicaid program. This tax assistance is
designed to offset the costs of health care premiums.

Because people of color disproportionately have lower incomes, they will
also find help in the statute’s expansions of Medicaid coverage across
states for those at or below 133 percent of the federal poverty level.
Legal immigrants, however, will have to wait five years to be eligible.

Seniors of color, who are more likely to report being in poor health,
will find relief in the gradual closure of the “donut hole” in
Medicare’s Part D prescription drug benefit.

Elders and people with disabilities with serious (and costly) medication
needs, must now bite into the donut hole after Medicare’s initial help
paying for their drugs. At that point, they must pay the full cost of
their medicines until they reach a level of drug spending considered
economically catastrophic before Medicare picks up the cost again.
Medicare will provide significant help this year and next, and close the
hole completely by 2020.

In addition, the new state insurance exchanges will give businesses and
individuals a place to purchase affordable health insurance options.

Measures in the law that support disease prevention — backed by an
unprecedented $15 billion investment — are as important for racial and
ethnic minorities as the health care access provisions. That’s because
they suffer excessively from health disparities, particularly
obesity-related chronic diseases, such as heart disease, hypertension,
type 2 diabetes and renal disease.

The new law will target prevention efforts largely at community-based
services and interventions that support public health and wellness. It
also provides free clinical preventive services, such as cancer and eye
screenings through Medicare and other health insurance plans.

The legislation also includes incentives to bring more doctors and other
health workers and providers — especially racial and ethnic
minorities — into traditionally underserved areas. Backing this provision
are Medicaid reimbursement increases aimed at increasing the number of
providers willing to serve Medicaid patients.
 
Furthermore, several aspects of the law focus on eliminating health
disparities. Among these are wider support for community health centers,
minority health professionals and the collection of data by race,
ethnicity, sex, primary language and disability status.

What are the disappointments?

Small business owners wanting to provide health insurance for their
employees may be discouraged by provisions that give tax-credit
assistance only to the very smallest of small businesses among them.

Additionally, the state and regional exchanges that the law allows
states to establish will lack the same economies of scale that a
national exchange would have given to individual and small business
purchasers. That national option would have generated insurance-market
competition and driven down premium costs significantly.

Critical to our aging population is that although the new law eliminates
discrimination based on pre-existing conditions and gender (women have
been subject to higher insurance rates than men), it continues to allow
age-based discrimination. The legislation allows companies to charge
older adults three times what they charge younger adults.

While this is likely to have significant implications for seniors on a
fixed income, older adults in moderate and lower-income households can
still qualify for tax credits or Medicaid assistance to offset their
costs.

Despite its unprecedented investment in prevention, the implementation
of this law by itself is unlikely to spawn a wellness revolution that
keeps Americans healthy and reduces their need for acute care.

At the end of the day, health care reform represents a solid step
forward in expanding health care access and affordability. Although it
is not a radical departure from the existing system — after all, it does
keep the basic infrastructure of employer-based and for-profit care
intact — the law does a lot to defend and protect Americans’ right to
life — a human right that has been too long ignored.

Maya Rockeymoore is president and CEO of Global Policy Solutions, a
social change strategy firm in Washington, D.C.

By Sonal Ambegaokar, New America Media

This week, President Obama signed into law legislation that will bring a
sea change to the American health care system. This legislation, known
as the Patient Protection and Affordability Act, will stop insurance
companies from harmful practices, make health insurance more affordable
for low- and middle-income families and small businesses, and will begin
to control the skyrocketing costs of the U.S. health care system.

The new health care reform bill should draw both cheers and jeers from
immigrants across the country. Despite the bill’s investment and focus
on preventative health care and wellness, funding to increase diversity
in the health work force, and national recognition of health disparities
and cultural and linguistic competence, the status quo in obtaining
affordable health insurance will only change for some immigrants. Others
will continue to be left out.

Health Insurance for Citizens and Legal Immigrants

Naturalized citizens and “lawfully present” immigrants will have the
same access to affordable health insurance as U.S.-born citizens in the
new insurance exchanges. They will be required to get health insurance
and pay a tax penalty for not having health insurance. They can apply
for tax credits to make health insurance more affordable and apply for
an exemption from the requirement if health insurance remains
unaffordable.

Medicaid for Low-Income Legal Immigrants

However, under the new law, many of the lowest income lawfully present
immigrants will remain ineligible or be required to wait years to enroll
in the most affordable health insurance, Medicaid. While they can buy
health insurance and apply for tax credits in the insurance exchange,
this option may still be unaffordable for low-income immigrant families
who will be forced to choose between paying for health insurance and
basic necessities as they do today. Without the option of Medicaid
coverage, many of these immigrants may remain uninsured and be forced to
delay their care when they fall ill.

Undocumented Immigrants

Undocumented immigrants, including undocumented children, are not
provided any options for affordable health insurance by this health care
bill. Under existing rules, undocumented immigrants are not eligible
for federal health care programs. Although many undocumented immigrants
pay taxes and would like to pay their fair share for health insurance,
they are not allowed to get tax relief to help make insurance more
affordable. Fortunately, citizen and legal immigrant children of
undocumented parents will be able to apply for tax credits on their own
in order to have affordable health insurance. But these complicated
rules may ultimately leave children of undocumented parents uninsured.

The worst part of this bill is the restriction that prevents
undocumented immigrants from buying health insurance with their own
money. Because they are not allowed to buy insurance, undocumented
immigrants are explicitly exempted from the insurance requirement.
Unfortunately, this will not prevent undocumented immigrants from
falling ill and needing health care. Thus the health care reform bill
continues to allow millions in our society to remain uninsured and
forced to forgo or delay care, the very thing health care reform is
trying to remedy.

Excluding undocumented immigrants is not only short-sighted but will
create administrative nightmares for everyone else. Unlike today, anyone
who wants to buy health insurance under the new health care bill will
have to provide proof of citizenship or immigration status. This is the
only way to enforce the restriction against undocumented immigrants.
Thousands of U.S.-born citizens were recently unable to get the care
they needed at the time they needed it due to similar and costly red
tape in Medicaid because they did not have proof of their birth or a
passport to prove they were citizens. Rather than simplifying how we buy
health insurance, the new bill adds paperwork, bureaucracy, and delay
at taxpayers’ expense.

Leaders in Washington have had the courage to make fundamental changes
to the long-broken health care system. Let us hope they can go one step
further to ensure that everyone living in the United States has access
to quality, affordable health care.

Sonal Ambegaokar is a health policy attorney with the National
Immigration Law Center.

By Anthony D. Avincula, New America Media

ATLANTA — Contrary to perception in the South and other parts of the country that
H1N1 virus has already ebbed in recent months, health department
officials here reported an unusual uptick in flu cases and warned that
the H1N1 pandemic is far from over.

The last week of February alone saw 36 people hospitalized because of
H1N1 and seasonal flu. In the first week of March the number had almost
doubled, rising to 63. The victims, at least in DeKalb County, have been
mostly people of color and women. As of March 4, there have been 66
seasonal flu and H1N1-related deaths in Georgia.

“The H1N1 is still here,” said Dr. Elizabeth S. Ford, district health
director of Atlanta’s DeKalb County Board of Health, at an ethnic media
press conference on March 4. “The local and state health agencies will
continue to monitor this trend.” The press event was organized by New
America Media and sponsored by AIR, a nonprofit social science research
organization.

Grappling with budget cuts, a shortage of vaccines, and an insufficient
public health workforce, Ford attributed the spike of H1N1 and seasonal
flu fatalities in Georgia to its low vaccination rate. In DeKalb County
alone, the third most populated county in the Atlanta area, only 7
percent of the population got the vaccine since the 2009 H1N1 outbreak.

“There are 760,000 residents in DeKalb County — and the population count
is more than double during daytime — but less than 55,000 got
vaccinated,” said Ford, adding that she was disappointed that the
vaccines arrived late.

When the virus hit the country and peaked around June 2009, vaccines ran
out and the federal government identified states by priority. While
Georgia got the first shipments of H1N1 vaccine in mid-October, many
people took the wait-and-see approach, trying to ascertain how the new
vaccine affected people before taking it themselves.

“When we get out there, we’re really struggling. Everyone in the state
is asking the federal government for the same funding,” Ford added.

Although no conclusive investigation has made an association between the
deaths and race and gender, health officials here believe that
minorities and women are considerably more vulnerable and at higher risk
due to lack of health insurance and access to better health services.

Amid the enormous challenges in getting a majority of residents
vaccinated, DeKalb County health officials have given their H1N1
awareness effort a grade of A, but B for messaging and sending the
information out to the public, caregivers and infrastructure partners,
and C+ for their mass vaccination effort.

“The economic situation has affected public health tremendously,” said
Dr. Patrick O’Neal, chief of Emergency Preparedness and Response
Division of Georgia Department of Community Health.

Because of the unstable economy, he pointed out that many public health
workers are searching for a more stable job by moving to a federal
health agency, like the CDC. “Our workforce is essentially lured to a
higher pay scale. We’ve lost a large number of workers to the CDC.”

But O’Neal is concerned more about the possible third wave of H1N1
pandemic than the economic constraints. With re-assortment of the virus,
which is very likely to happen, as was reported earlier this year in
Hong Kong, he said that any genetic mutation of H1N1 is far more
dangerous, as the virus could develop a new strain.

“If the case in Hong Kong will be found to be a re-assorted virus, then
the global H1N1 pandemic remains very active,” O’Neal said after the
press briefing. “That creates the next wave of the virus.”

The only way that the virus will be curbed, he added, is when 90 percent
of the population gets protected through vaccination, or has been
exposed to the same H1N1 strain before and thus becomes immune to its
ill effects.

Historically, the United States was able to successfully eliminate
through vaccination some serious viral illnesses, such as polio and
typhoid fever. But many people still believe that the H1N1 virus is very
unstable — and certainly different from a uniform virus that causes
polio and typhoid fever. Skeptics also say that H1N1, like any influenza
virus, mutates and therefore no one-size-fits-all vaccination can
prevent it.

“It is a usual spin for people who have not been vaccinated to ask, ‘If
H1N1 is more fatal than any other flu virus, then how come nothing
really happens to us?’ That’s the problem right there,” said Pam Jones,
AIR media associate, adding that many Georgians are still wary of
getting the H1N1 vaccine.

“Even though H1N1 may be low and flat right now, come flu season it could
rise again,” O’Neal said. “It is clear that the virus still exists.”

By Jacob Simas, New America Media

Immigrant rights advocates have sent a letter to President Barack Obama
and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano
asking them to immediately suspend all immigration enforcement
activities through the end of the year in order to decrease fear within
immigrant communities and encourage their participation in the 2010
Census.

Questionnaires for the 2010 Census are due to arrive in the mailbox of every U.S. household between now and April 1.

“We are genuinely concerned that the climate of fear will seriously
impact the census form return rate of immigrant households — and if
people do not return the form, they will be reluctant to open the door
to a follow-up visit from a census worker,” said Catherine Tactaquin,
director of National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR). “We really need the leadership of the administration right now to make
a difference in the success of the census among our diverse immigrant
populations.”

The letter, which was signed by more than 200 organizations nationwide,
calls for the suspension of more than a dozen specific enforcement
activities operated through DHS, including immigration raids on homes
and workplaces.

ICE Responds

ICE spokesperson Lori Haley told NAM she was unaware of the immigrant
advocates’ letter. In a prepared statement, the agency said that ICE “fully supports an accurate count of the U.S. population,” and would
prioritize enforcing laws “on those dangerous criminal aliens who
present the greatest risk to the security of our communities, not
sweeps or raids to target undocumented immigrants indiscriminately.”

The problem, according to Arnoldo Garcia, a program director at NNIRR
in Oakland, is that ICE raids result in only 2 percent of the roughly
500,000 deportations of immigrants that occur each year in the United
States. “It would not be enough for Napolitano or congress to just say, ‘Okay, let’s suspend raids.’ That would be a gross injustice,” he said.

Even if ICE were to de-emphasize immigration raids, said Garcia, the
majority of people being picked up and deported are a result of less
visible strategies, like those arising from 287(g) agreements.

Such agreements allow local police and county sheriff departments to be
trained by ICE in identifying potential “criminal aliens.” The result,
said Garcia, is an increase in deportations and a growing mistrust of
government and law-enforcement agencies within immigrant communities,
including among legal permanent residents.

“Most people don’t realize that law enforcement is also deporting legal
residents on criminal charges,” he said. “If you’re not a U.S. citizen,
even if you are a legal permanent resident, you can still be subjected
to deportation.”

Garcia says the organizations are simply asking the Obama
administration and DHS to follow historical precedent. According to the
letter, the federal government eased immigration enforcement activities
during at least the last two decennial census campaigns.

Historical Precedent

The letter references a quote from Rep. Sylvestre Reyes, a Democrat
from Texas, who told Fox News last year that when he was working for
the Border Patrol during the lead-up to the 1990 census, he received
orders to suspend some enforcement efforts.

There is other documentation that would suggest that the INS changed
some of its operations during the 1990 census. For example, the INS
commissioner sent a fax on Feb. 15, 1990 to all field offices,
outlining guidelines for enforcement operations conducted while the
census was being carried out, with the intention of deterring INS
employees from “engaging in any conduct that is intended to inhibit or
deter any person or group of persons from the fullest possible
participation in the upcoming 1990 Census.”

The document goes on to state:

In keeping with an agreement between the Service and the Bureau of
the Census, news releases or public announcements made by the Service
with regard to Service enforcement activities will be temporarily
discontinued during the period starting February 11, 1990 and ending
July 31, 1990.

It is unclear from the commissioner’s fax whether the INS actually
suspended activities, or simply stopped reporting them to the public.

Doris Meissner, who was head of INS during the 2000 Census, told the
Orange County Register in January that she did in fact order suspension
of “routine operations and enforcement activities” during the two weeks
leading up to Census day, while allowing more serious enforcement
involving criminal activities to continue unabated.

However, Meissner said that the likelihood of the Obama administration
allowing even that to happen again is slim, considering how much the
political landscape has changed since 2000.

“We definitely went further than what I’m hearing from this
administration thus far,” she told the Register. “I think politically
they feel more vulnerable and they may even believe that by going any
further they would send signals that would embolden serious criminals
and possibly terrorists.”

Census Bureau Promises Hands-Off Approach to Immigration

Regardless of what has occurred in the past, Census Bureau spokesperson
Sonny Le says the bureau is taking a hands-off approach to the question
of immigration enforcement in 2010. “We don”t request or interfere with
other departments,” said Le. “Any decisions are going to have to come
from Congress or the president.”

Nevertheless, NNIRR is optimistic that the Obama administration will
recognize that the long-term benefits of an enforcement suspension
outweigh any short-term political backlash.

“Having an accurate count of the immigrant population is not only good
for immigrants,” said Garcia. “There has been a demographic revolution
in this country over the last 10 years, and in those communities where
there has been a big demographic change, if immigrants are
undercounted, the whole community will be shooting itself in the foot.”

By Marcelo Ballvé, New America Media

Prominent immigrant advocates launched their most sharply worded public
critique yet of the Obama administration’s immigration policy.

Advocates who spoke at a press conference Monday in Washington, D.C.
angrily pointed to statistics that showed a significant acceleration in
immigration enforcement over President Bush’s last year, with over
387,000 immigrants deported since Obama’s inauguration.

As a result, livelihoods were lost, local economies affected, and families split apart, the advocates said.

“These are the same enforcement practices that we marched against
during the Bush administration,” said Angelica Salas, director of the
Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.

On any given day, Salas added, over 32,000 immigrants are under
detention in jails and prisons around the country awaiting deportation.

The advocates said they felt betrayed by an Obama administration that
promised to take their concerns into account and then became more
aggressive than its predecessor in cracking down on immigrants.

Brent Wilkes, executive national director of the League of United Latin
American Citizens, or LULAC, a Latino civil rights group, recalled
candidate Barack Obama’s promise at a LULAC event to reform the
country’s immigration laws in his first year in office.

Wilkes said many LULAC members believed this promise, which hasn’t yet been fulfilled.

“But one thing they never believed in their wildest dreams is that
President Obama would have a record like this, where he surpassed the
Bush administration in deportations,” Wilkes said. “It is
unconscionable to have over 387,000 deported in the first year of an
Obama presidency, and our community is angry.”

A video of the event at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. is available for streaming at C-Span 2 . The advocates called on President Obama and Congress to halt deportations until the system gets an overhaul.

The press conference came on the same day President Obama was scheduled
to meet with Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
in an effort to nudge immigration legislation forward.

One of the presenters today was a schoolgirl named Beatriz whose family
was targeted by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement inquiry. She
tearfully described how federal agents trailed her in order to
investigate her parents.

Wilkes said roughly 5.5 million U.S. citizen children nationwide have
at least one parent who is an unauthorized immigrant and that
deportations inevitably lead to broken households.

“This administration seems proud to out-enforce the Bush
administration,” added Pramila Jayapal, executive director of the
Seattle-based OneAmerica group.

The advocates also contended that the immigration audits or “paper
raids” that have replaced workplace raids under Obama are just as
damaging to immigrant communities and the businesses that depend on
them.

The advocates, part of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement coalition,
plan to join other advocacy coalitions as well as labor and faith
groups in a pro-immigration march on Washington, D.C. March 21.

(Photo from Immigration and Customs Enforcement website.)

By Robert Dr. Cintli Rodriguez, New America Media

It was when I first stood atop the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan,
Mexico in 1976 that I was finally able to grasp something my parents
first communicated to me when I was five years old; that my roots on
this continent are not simply Mexican, but both ancient and Indigenous.

My red-brown face should have been enough to teach me this. However,
that was not the message I received in school at the time, nor is it
the message little red-brown kids receive today.

I experienced a similar kind of reaffirmation this past month when I
stood in front of the world-renowned, ancient Mayan observatory at
Chichen Itza, on Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula.

Upon my return to the United States, I received a message from a
colleague regarding the U.S. Census Bureau. My mouth soured; another
decade and another story about how the bureau paradoxically insists
that Mexicans are Caucasian. I will have to explain to them again that
Mexicans are the descendants of those who built the pyramids at
Teotihuacan and Chichen Itza — that it was not Caucasians who built
them.

The genesis of this nonsensical “misconception” goes back to the era
when the United States militarily took half of Mexico in 1848. At that
time, the Mexican government attempted to protect its former citizens
by insisting that the U.S. government treat them legally as “white,” so
they would not be enslaved or subjected to legal segregation. That
strategy only partially worked, because most Mexicans in this country
have never been treated as “white,” or as full human beings with full
human rights.

That era is long over, yet the fear, shame, denial, and semi-legal
fiction of being “white” remains, perpetrated primarily by government
bureaucrats.

Despite the bureau policy of racial categorization, the Indigenous
Cultures Institute in Texas, a Census 2010 partner, has advanced an
alternative: It asserts that Hispanics, Mexican Americans, and
Indigenous people of Mexico are native or American Indian. After
answering Question 8, regarding whether one is Hispanic or not, the
institute suggests: “If you are a descendant of native people, you can
identify yourself (in Question 9) as an American Indian in the 2010
Census… If you don’t know your tribe, enter ‘unknown’ or ‘detribalized
native.’ If tribe or identity is known, fill it in, i.e., Macehual,
Maya, Quechua, etc.”

This may not be the best option, but the bureau has never made it easy
to recognize the indigenous roots of “Mexican Americans/Chicanos” or “Latinos/Hispanics.” The long and sordid history of the census has been
to direct or redirect them into the white category, even —  and
especially– when they have asserted their indigenous roots or when they
have checked the “other” race category. (Since 1980, about half of
Hispanics/Latinos have checked the “other” race category and are
virtually the only group that chooses this category.) This has been a
standard practice of the bureau since the second half of the twentieth
century. Coincidentally, this is also when government bureaucrats
imposed the term “Hispanic,” a tag that generally masks the existence
of indigenous and/or African roots in many peoples of the Americas.

In 2000, the Census Bureau finally recognized a Latin American Indian
category, but it did not create an educational campaign to go with it.
The bureau now recognizes peoples who are traditionally viewed (using
arbitrary criteria) as indigenous in Mexico, Central and South America,
but it does not recognize those who are considered “mestizo” — peoples
who are at least part, if not primarily, native. The mestizo category,
borne of a dehumanizing racial caste system in the Americas, is also a
troublesome category, yet it is how most people of Mexican and Central
American descent identify, comprising approximately 75 percent of all “Latinos/Hispanics.”

The Indigenous Institute promotes its idea as a means by which Mexican
Americans or Latinos/Hispanics can honor their indigenous ancestry. If
this option is widely embraced, it remains to be seen how the bureau
will count this information. The same question arises if people choose
the American Indian category and write in “mestizo.”

Traditionally, the bureau has taken a narrow view of who is indigenous,
because the “American Indian” category was designed not to ascertain
the indigenous, but to count “U.S. Indians.” If a more expansive view
is embraced widely — as advocated by the institute — it would result
in an increase from 5 million (the 2009 census estimate) to perhaps 30
to 40 million people. (Not all of the nation’s close to 50 million
Hispanics/Latinos can or would claim indigenous ancestry.)

If done correctly, the institute’s suggestion need not negatively
affect the allocation of resources to specific tribes. Neither should
the way people identify be subject to government approval. Yet, the
ramifications of exercising such an option should indeed be studied.

Rodriguez, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona, can be reached at [email protected].

(Map from edmaps.com.)

By Marcelo Ballvé, New America Media

The Tea Party movement has energized activism against President Obama’s vision for immigration reform.

The link between Tea Partiers and immigration politics developed last
summer, when the impact of illegal immigration on the health care
system became a prominent side issue in town hall debates.

Since then, illegal immigration has steadily gained ground on the Tea Party agenda.

Immigration “is one of our main issues in the state of North Carolina,”
said David DeGerolamo, co-founder of Tea Party group NC Freedom, in a
phone interview. “And what it comes down to is that the United States
is a republic based on the rule of law. What part of illegal is right?”

DeGerolamo is scheduled to give a talk today on “How to Unite State Tea
Party Groups” at the National Tea Party Convention, which began
yesterday in Nashville.

The Nashville event has devoted a good share of its spotlight to
activists devoted to promoting get-tough policies against illegal
immigrants and blocking White House plans to offer a path to legal
status for the nation’s 12 million undocumented immigrants.

These activists label such legislation as amnesty, and they helped
derail a similar effort in 2007 that had the backing of then-President
George W. Bush.

Tom Tancredo, a former Colorado congressman whose signature issue was
illegal immigration, was yesterday’s kick-off speaker at the Nashville
convention, which is headlined by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

Tancredo served 10 years in the House beginning in 1999, but gained
widespread notoriety in 2002 when he called for the deportation of an
undocumented honors student after a newspaper wrote about his inability
to gain in-state tuition for college.

Also leading a session at the convention is NumbersUSA, a Washington,
D.C. organization that advocates for lower immigration levels.

In the Tea Parties, groups like NumbersUSA discovered a new opportunity
to spread and amplify their message, said Devin Burghart, who tracks
the Tea Party movement from Seattle for the Institute for Research and
Education on Human Rights.

“It has become far more common for Tea Party groups to discuss the
topic of undocumented immigrants at events and on their websites,” he
said. “In terms of their long-term planning it is clearly becoming a
part of their agenda.”

Of course, the links between hardline immigration activists and Tea
Partiers don’t necessarily add up to a united front on immigration.

With a movement as fractured, fast changing and diffuse as the Tea
Parties, it’s difficult to establish a clear idea of activists’ views
on a single issue.

“Immigration is not a part of the movement’s ‘platform,’” Keli
Carender, a prominent Tea Party blogger and speaker at the Nashville
convention, wrote in e-mail to New America Media. “I’m sure every
person involved in the movement has their own personal views on
immigration, and though they may be espoused from time to time, they …
may not be representative of anyone else in the movement.”

Individual candidates linked to the Tea Party movement, however, have embraced the illegal immigration issue.

Judge Roy Moore, who is running as a conservative in Alabama’s 2010
governor’s race and will speak in Nashville, has made immigration one
of the five topics covered in his platform.

Moore is known for his refusal as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme
Court to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from the state
courthouse.

“Definitely, he’s against illegal immigration,” said Moore spokesman
John Wahl. “There are a lot of things that can be done. There’s things
like making the official language [in Alabama] English. That’s just
common sense when you think about it.” Moore also supports state laws
to penalize undocumented immigrant workers.

Moore’s support for establishing English as an official language in
Alabama is part of a wave of similar “English first” proposals that
have caught on in state houses and city council chambers, in part
thanks to the efforts of anti-illegal immigration activists. The issue
has caught on with Tea Partiers, too.

For example, “official English” made a strong showing in the “Contract
from America,” a document being prepared online with input from Tea
Partiers nationwide. The contract will signal the Tea Party movement’s
policy priorities ahead of the 2010 midterm elections.

Of the various immigration policy proposals submitted, “An Official
Language of the United States” won the most votes. And it ranked eighth
overall — higher than interstate health insurance competition and just
below a proposal to end lifetime salary and benefits for members of
Congress.

The contract, which will be finalized this spring, has won praise from
former House majority leader Dick Armey who heads FreedomWorks, the
Washington, D.C.-based conservative group that has promoted Tea Party
activism.

In the Florida Republican primary for a U.S. Senate seat, Tea
Party-fueled upstart conservative Marco Rubio has been pressed to take
a more vocal stance against illegal immigration as he tries to steal
the primary away from sitting Governor Charlie Crist, a moderate.

Javier Manjarres, 37, a Colombian-American conservative activist in
South Florida, uploaded a video on YouTube Jan. 26 in which he grills
Rubio on immigration and reminds the candidate of his opposition to “any form of amnesty for immigrants who have broken federal law and
stayed in our country illegally.”

The video was meant to showcase Rubio’s views on illegal immigration
after conservatives who accused him of being soft on the issue had
heckled the candidate at a forum in Broward County, Manjarres said. “I
think he just had to become more vocal. I think he’s always had these
views. He just never really had to defend them.”

“Immigration is huge” with the Florida Tea Partiers, said Manjarres,
who heads his own Ft. Lauderdale-based organization, Conservative
Republican Alliance and moves in conservative and Tea Party circles. “Everyone knows what’s at stake there. The immigration issue will be as
big as health care.”

Manjarres’s organization was among the first to endorse Rubio’s candidacy.

In Martin County, Fla., north of Palm Beach, the Martin 9-12 Tea Party
Committee lists “enforcement of immigration laws,” along with limited
government and lower taxes, as one of its conditions for candidate
endorsements.

The Tea Partiers’ connection to immigration was forged last summer and
fall, when the health care and immigration debates fused at Tea Party
events and protests. One such event was an August town hall event in
Raleigh, N.C. organized by DeGerolamo, NC Freedom’s co-founder.

Two of the four invited speakers were prominent immigration
restrictionists: William Gheen, head of Americans for Legal Immigration
Political Action Committee (ALIPAC) and John Armor, a lawyer associated
with the American Civil Rights Union.

On YouTube videos of the event, Gheen warns the Tea Partiers about
Obama’s “massive amnesty” plan to legalize undocumented immigrants, and
both Gheen and Armor described the problem of “anchor babies.”

Immigration restrictionists have long alleged immigrant mothers enter
the country illegally to give birth on U.S. soil so that their children
will have citizenship and eventually, through family reunification
visas, be able to pass legal status to the rest of the family.

At the same Aug. 26 town hall, Ada Fisher, Republican National
Commiteewoman for North Carolina, earned a loud round of applause for
this statement criticizing federal laws requiring multilingual medical
interpreters: “You cannot be one nation under God when everyone’s
speaking something different.”

Not everyone agrees that Tea Party organizing has begun exerting a
significant influence on the immigration debate at a national level.

Tamar Jacoby, a conservative who heads ImmigrationWorks USA, a
pro-immigration business group, agrees that Tea Partiers may take up
immigration in earnest in the future.

But for the time being, she sees the Tea Partiers still in a very early
stage of organizing and far more zeroed-in on limited government and
fiscal issues.

And the Tea Party movement’s allies in the political establishment,
Republicans like Armey of FreedomWorks and former Alaska Governor Sarah
Palin, still have a chance to influence the course Tea Party activism
will take on issues such as immigration, Jacoby said. “Leadership will
matter. What Palin and Armey say will be very important.”

Palin and Armey are hardly firebrands on the immigration issue.

Armey, as Jacoby pointed out, is an “old friend” of immigration reform.
Armey has spoken out about making the system “more orderly” but “not
more restrictive.”

Palin’s position on immigration is still hazy. In a recent interview on
the Glenn Beck program she said, “I think Republicans, conservatives
are at fault when we allow the other side to capture this immigration
issue and try to turn this issue into something negative for
Republicans,” she said, according to a Fox News transcript.

Palin stressed immigration laws should be followed, but added, “We need to continue to be so welcoming.”

Whatever the ultimate Tea Party effect is on immigration politics,
candidates and elected officials often come to recognize there is a
political cost to taking hard-line stances, said Stephen Fotopulos of
the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.

Fotopulos cited the example of Harold Ford, Jr. who ran “sensationalist
ads about being tough on illegal immigrants” when he ran for office in
Tennessee. Now, Ford is campaigning for U.S. Senate in New York, where
the immigrant vote is powerful.

“We will see those ads again, used against him,” said Fotopulos.

(Photo of Tea Party protest by Sage Ross via Wikimedia Commons)

By Sasha Kramer, New America Media

This afternoon, feeling helpless, we decided to take a van down to
Champs Mars (the area around the palace) to look for people needing
medical care to bring to Matthew 25, the guesthouse where we are
staying which has been transformed into a field hospital.

Since we arrived in Port au Prince, everyone has told us that you
cannot go into the area around the palace because of violence and
insecurity. I was in awe as we walked into downtown, among the
flattened buildings, in the shadow of the fallen palace, among the
swarms of displaced people there was calm and solidarity.

We wound our way through the camp asking for injured people who needed
to get to the hospital. Despite everyone telling us that as soon as we
did this we would be mobbed by people, I was amazed as we approached
each tent people gently pointed us towards their neighbors, guiding us
to those who were suffering the most.

We picked up five badly injured
people and drove towards an area where Ellie and Berto had passed a
woman earlier. When they saw her she was lying on the side of the road
with a broken leg screaming for help. They were on foot and could not
help her at the time, so we went back to try to find her. Incredibly,
we found her relatively quickly at the top of a hill of shattered
houses. The sun was setting and the community helped to carry her down
the hill on a refrigerator door, tough looking guys smiled in our
direction calling out, “Bonswa, Cherie,” (Good evening, Dear) and
“Kouraj” (Courage).

When we got back to Matthew 25, it was dark and we carried the patients
back into the soccer field/tent village/hospital where the team of
doctors had been working tirelessly all day. Although they had
officially closed down for the evening, they agreed to see the patients
we had brought. Once our patients were settled in we came back into the
house to find the doctors amputating a foot on the dining room table.
The patient lay calmly, awake but far away under the fog of ketamine.

Half way through the surgery we heard a clamor outside and ran out to
see what it was. A large yellow truck was parked in front of the gate
and unloading hundreds of bags of food over our fence. The hungry crowd
had already begun to gather and in the dark it was hard to decide how
to best distribute the food.

Knowing that we could not sleep in the
house with all of this food and so many starving people in the
neighborhood, our friend Amber (who is experienced in food
distribution) snapped into action and began to get everyone in the
crowd into a line that stretched down the road.

We braced ourselves for the fighting that we had heard would come, but
in a miraculous display of restraint and compassion people lined up to
get the food and one by one the bags were handed out without a single
serious incident. During the food distribution, the doctors called to
see if anyone could help to bury the amputated leg in the backyard. As
I have no experience with food distribution I offered to help with the
leg. I went into the back with Ellie and Berto and we dug a hole and
placed the leg in it, covering it with soil and cement rubble.

By the
time we got back into the house the food had all been distributed and
the patient Anderson was waking up. The doctors asked for a translator
so I went and sat by his stretcher explaining to him that the surgery
had gone well and he was going to live. His family had gone home so he
was alone so Ellie and I took turns sitting with him as he came out
from under the drugs.

One of the Haitian men working at the hospital came in and leaned over
Anderson and said to him in kreyol “listen man even if your family
could not be here tonight we want you to know that everyone here loves
you, we are all your brothers and sisters.” Sometimes it is the
kindness and not the horror that can break the numbness that we are all
lost in right now.

So, don’t believe CNN’s Anderson Cooper when he says that Haiti is a hotbed of violence and riots. It is just not the case.

In the darkest of times, Haiti has proven to be a country of brave,
resilient and kind people. It is that behavior that is far more
prevalent than the isolated incidents of violence. Please pass this on
to as many people as you can so that they can see the light of Haiti,
cutting through the darkness, the light that will heal this nation.

Sasha Kramer directs the grassroots Haitian organization SOIL, which
works with rural and urban communties to develop indigenious solutions
to environmental problems. She wrote this dispatch from Port au Prince
on Monday, Jan. 19.

PHOTO: Earthquake victims receive medical treatment at an encampment in front
of Port-au-Prince’s Presidential Palace. UN Photo/Logan Abassi.

By Brian Miller, New America Media

Martin Luther King, Jr. dreamed of a society worthy of the principle in
its founding declaration that “all men are created equal.” But he did
not live in such a society, and he did not act as if he did. His life’s
work was dedicated to bringing the nation closer to that dream. While
we have made progress, the dream remains elusive.

Last year, after Barack Obama’s historic election, many pundits
declared that the victory had ushered in a new “post-racial” era. But
just as the civil rights victories of the 1950s and 60s did not end
racism, the election of our first African American president does not
create a post-racial society.

During his first year in office, President Obama, along with Congress,
has governed as though the myth of a post-racial America were true.
Faced with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, both
Congress and the president have pursued universal, broad-spectrum
solutions designed to lift up “all Americans.”

But a post-racial America and colorblind policies are ideas that can’t
stand up to the facts of persistent, and even growing, racial economic
disparities.

As detailed in the newly released “State of The Dream 2010: Drained”
report, racial economic inequities have worsened over the last year as
people of color have taken the brunt of layoffs from this Great
Recession. The unemployment rate for blacks jumped 4.3 percent to the
devastating height of 16.2 percent, while the white unemployment rate
stands at 9 percent, up only 2.4 percent by comparison from a year
earlier. And African Americans who are employed still earn less than
their white counterparts in similar jobs.

Racial disparities of wealth are even more persistent and severe than
income and employment disparities because unlike most jobs, wealth can
be passed from one generation to the next. So, families and communities
that are wealthy tend to stay that way, and those who are not wealthy
tend to stay that way, too, generation after generation.

Because African Americans hold only 10 cents to every dollar of white
net wealth, they are less able to cope with the loss of income and jobs
that have come with the Great Recession. Exacerbating the problem, most
of the wealth that is held by African Americans is held in the form of
housing that has collapsed in value due to the foreclosure crisis and
the predatory lending that fueled it.

It’s important that we get the recovery right. The Great Recession
began with the collapse of the predatory subprime mortgage market. Our
immediate policy response was to bail out the banks under the Toxic
Asset Relief Program. This did shore up their profits and ensured the
outlandish bonuses of executives, but it failed to bring relief to
where it is needed most.

As more predatory and adjustable rate mortgages reset to higher
payments and joblessness increases over the coming year, more families
will be forced into foreclosure. Foreclosed properties bring down the
value of homes near them, further reducing the wealth in communities of
color where foreclosure rates are the highest. Many homeowners,
regardless of being current on their loan payments, are left owing more
on their mortgage than their home is worth.

Last year’s stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,
certainly did more to shore up the broader economy than the bank
bailout. It did not, however, effectively reach the communities most in
need of recovery and reinvestment. Less stimulus funding has gone to
areas with higher rates of unemployment than to areas with more jobs.
And the sectors that have benefited most from stimulus money are
industries that have traditionally not been major sources of African
American employment.

MLK’s dream of racial equality cannot be realized until the economic
divide between races is addressed. The Great Recession and our policy
responses to it have proven once again that we cannot address racial
inequity by ignoring it. With colorblind policies, the people in the
worst economic position stay that way.

The “State of the Dream” report recommends targeted solutions to end
the foreclosure crisis, to bring jobs to where they are needed most,
and to bring opportunity where it is most lacking. These
recommendations will address the particular plight of African
Americans. Proponents of a post-racial or colorblind society will no
doubt be pleased that these solutions will also raise up all poor and
working class families regardless of race.

Brian Miller is executive director of United for a Fair Economy
(UFE), a national non-profit organization working to promote more
broadly shared prosperity and to end extreme inequalities of wealth and
income. Miller is co-author of UFE’s new report, along with Ajamu
Dillahunt, Mike Prokosch, Jeannette Huezo, and Dedrick Muhammad,
entitled “State of the Dream 2010: Drained – Jobless and Foreclosed in
Communities of Color,” available on-line at
http://www.faireconomy.org/dream