We Can't Wait for Change
At a press conference with Mexico's President Calderón and Canada's Prime Minister Harper, President Obama responded to a question on the timeline for immigration reform by stating that immigration reform was a priority but would have to wait till 2010 after health care, energy, and financial regulation bills were passed.
This is a reversal of his campaign promise to pass immigration reform in 2009. Patience for 2010 is hard to come by when the new administration persists with an enforcement-only strategy that Obama criticized during the campaign trail. Both represent a betrayal to Latino voters who were a key constitutency in delivering the presidency and a majority of Democrats to the US Congress.
What President Obama and other Democrats fail to take into account is that the Latino community can't wait till 2010 for justice to arrive.
The escalation of human suffering continues: civil and human rights violations in detention facilities; families torn apart as armed ICE agents arrest loved ones in their home; increased hate crimes and racial profiling of Latinos; workplace abuses by unscrupluous employers; all of this and more have been a motivating factor for what Latinos expected in 2009: change.
Yet, where is the change? There have been some modest gestures: lifting a 5 year ban for legal immigrant access to S-chip and not including the faulty E-Verify program in the stimulus package (later included in federal contracts).
Yet the two central demands of the immigrant rights movement: stop the deportations and passage of humane immigration reform are nowhere in sight.
Shockingly, the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Janet Napolitano's leadership continues to support and expand Bush-era enforcement strategies. Despite numerous reports documenting human rights abuses in detention facilities, DHS refuses to create enforcable, independent regulations of the detention system.
For-profit prisons and local and state jails continue to cash in from the criminalization and detention of immigrant workers and youth.
Other administrative reforms have also gone unheeded. DHS refuses to repeal 287G agreements that have led to a vigilante cowboy culture by local and state law enforcement, such as Arizona's Sheriff Arpaio, who has been charged with over a thousand civil rights violations.
DHS has been window dressing workplace raids by pushing I-9 audits; which hurt workers as much any workplace raid. Indeed, the latest "desktop raid" targetted a unionized meatpacking plant. As one immigrant worker observed, "in the fields they never raid; because you have to be truly desperate to work there."
Social Security No Match letters sent to employers, that have less than 1% effectiveness, have yet to be repealed.
It is clear that the Obama Administration has a political strategy that continues to cater to the most virulent xenophobic section of American society and a private prison and defense industry.
Legalization should not be postponed--in an economy that is largely based on consumerism, anything that puts money in the pockets of workers is a good thing. Legalization has been shown to raise wages, increase tax revenues, and encourage people to spend more.
If politicians make promises they don't keep-who should we believe?
We need to believe in ourselves and hold politicians accountable not just in the voting booth but in calls to their office, public forums and meetings. The need for visible protests that force the issue into the public eye cannot stop. Indeed, it must escalate.
Immigration was a losing electoral platform for Republicans in 2006 and 2008. If Democrats don't challenge the dehumanizing policies of the past and deliver humane immmigration reform it will be a bankrupt electoral platform in 2010 and 2012.
Robert L. Borosage: Health Care Reform: Time to Go All In
Failure on health care may well strangle this era of reform in its infancy. That, of course, is what those on the right seek.
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I don't see this as a law issue. I see this as our issue of being a human being. Why aren't we doing anything when thousands of families are being separated and the children are wearing prisoner shirt?
This is not about being American. This is about being humane to other fellow world citizens. Although these immigrants are not Americans like we are, we don't have the right to detain those people for years. Obama needs to do something with this problem now. We can't just let them go like we always do!
http://www.newsy.com/videos/putting_immigration_on_the_back_burner
This is a good analysis of this issue. if interested, you should see what's the media are talking about regarding immigration reform.
This is the wrong time for immigation reform. We are in the worst financial crisis in 70 years, immigration reform legislation will only help the GOP in 2010. Every year 1 million Hispanic Americans register to vote. We need to wait until after the 2010 election to revisit the problem. By 2012, it will be clear that Hispanic American vote will control the keys to the White House for the next generation while the American melting pot works it magic. In the meantime we protect long term undocumented workers and their American children by all legal means possible. However, many undocumented workers without American children should be encouraged to return to their home country because the American economy is not going to improve much for the next 5 years.
Obama has his hands full taking on 25% of the American population that is out to undermine the will of the American people on issues such as energy and health care.
It is not enough to have the courage of our Visigoth Celtic Iberian ancestors, we must also have their emotional intelligence to outwit those who wish to continue with ethnic cleansing. Let's not do anything impulsive that we help the enemy. Time and history are on our side.
Except for the fundamental law of economics. On a crowded planet - where people are destroying the environment - the value of any individual in this environment will differ according to the numbers.
The planet is bursting with specific ethnicities and races.....
THE MORE YOU HAVE OF ANYTHING _ THE LESS VALUE IS ATTACHED TO SAME.
Animals will have more value than certain people. Clean water will be more valuable than the people fighting for it.
Lions and Tigers will be protected.... not so their human neighbors.
think about it.....
The more Latinos you produce - the less value they will have as individuals.
the more Africans you produce - the less value they will have as individuals.
This isn't about racism.... its a fundamental law of supply and demand.
There is demand for lower animals and pristine environments at the same time 'certain' humans are exploding in numbers.
My money says a mormon in Salt Lake will enjoy greater protection from natural selection than a Kikuyu in Kenya - or a Latino Family in Mexico city.
Why does President Obama insist that our present immigration system is broken? THIS IS NOT TRUE! The 1986 Act (IRCA) Simpson/Mazzoli bill if enforced, would have worked perfectly. REMEMBER THERE ARE MANY SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS, WHO WANT ABSOLUTELY--NO RESTRICTIONS-- ON HOW MANY FOREIGN CHEAP LABOR CAN BE ALLOWED INTO THE US?.
E-Verify attached to the SAVE ACT must be in-perpetuity, not voluntary, for everybody throughout the United States. Not employees who have just been hired, but everybody who is on the payroll. Begin a nationwide federal mandated 287(g) local police ability to question the legal status of anybody they wish to question? There should be a large formidable force of interior ICE inspectors who make lightening strikes on large and small business. The penalty for hiring illegal aliens should be extremely severe, as they are stealing jobs from Americans and legal residents. Confiscation of assets, heavy fines and certainly prison sentences. Without these pre-requisites, E-Verify will not be efficient enough. NUMBERSUSA for more details Without any question's workers in industry should have be able to call ICE, and leave a message about their suspicions of illegal activity in their working location.
Those illegal workers confronted by a upgraded application in the workplace, will soon shy away from any contact with employers who stipulate the use of E-Verification. Inferior enforcement for years of neglect and inefficiency whether intentional or not by previous administration, are to blame for the incessant illegal immigration that has clogged the American labors work environment. WE MUST COME DOWN ON ALL Senator and Congressman LIKE A TON OF BRICKS today at 202-224-3121 REMEMBER THEM AND THROW THEM OUT! DEMAND NO AMNESTY! NO FAMILY UNIFICATION KNOWN AS CHAIN MIGRATION! BUILD THE TWO-TIER ORIGINAL FENCE! NO MORE HEALTH CARE OR ANY OTHER KIND OF BENEFITS FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS. CLOSE THE BORDER AND STATION THE NATIONAL GUARD. $2.5 TRILLION DOLLARS, JUST IN RETIREMENT BENEFITS? WE NEED LEGAL IMMIGRANTS WHO ARE TOP EARNERS, WITH THE CREDENTIALS TO PROVE IT. WE DO NOT NEED ANYMORE IMPOVERISHED, UNEDUCATED WHO NEED WELFARE TO SURVIVE HERE. OVERPOPULATION WILL NOT BE IRREVERSIBLE.
One more campaign promise rescinded...one more lie...So much for change we can believe in!
good
i hope this is one campaign promise he breaks
This author is incorrect in saying for profit prisons are "cashing in" on the criminalization of immigrant workers. This is wrong. It is not criminal in the U.S. to be a legal immigrant worker. It is a crime to illegally cross the border and work here. There is a major difference. The author also says, "civil and human rights violations in detention facilities; families torn apart as armed ICE agents arrest loved ones in their home." This is false too. No families are "torn apart." Illegal aliens who are arrested and deported can take their entire family back to their legal country of origin with them. There are no laws that say families of illegals must stay here while other family members are deported. Again, a misnomer of the first degree.
"...Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..."
This Mexican says it's time to return the Statue of Liberty to the French. We cannot be an immagrtion country forever. you can say..., well your family has been here since the Mexican revolution..., your grandfather came i 1913. Yep.... and back then there were about 97,000,000 people in our country. Now there are over 300,000,000 and growing. Do we want to keep going until we reach a billion or more? do we want to look like china or india? I say no!
there are limited resources. There's limited water, food hydrocarbons to burn.
despite what anyone thinks or wants to pretend, we cannot be an immgration country forever. if we wait until a crises to have this discussion, we will be doing no one any favors.
Latinos don't have an electoral choice beyond the Dems.....
the only damage they can do is polling negative... and the GOP will grab that as evidence of Obama FAILING....
yeah - failing to do your dirty work for you without taking the heat for it...
I support a Mexican revolution. The greedy and corrupt Mexican ruling elites oligarchs will continue to steal from the Mexican people. Poor Mexicans must make their last stand and fight for their equal share in the Mexican economy. Corrupt Mexican oligarchs are eating the whole pie and poor Mexicans are fighting among themselves for the leftover crumbs. Viva La Revolucion!
mexico already had a revolution in 1910. the rich oligarchs lost and were replaced by an infusion of the wininners of the revolution -- northern mexico. This infusion of northern blood also gave the new ruling class, who married old rich female criollas, an infusion of indian blood. Then the new ruling class became like the old ruling class by marrying other light skinned people until the new ruling class was just as light as the old ruling class. The invaders are still ruling Mexico!
how funny.
Therefore, the revolution did succeed in mellowing out mexico, but it failed to change anything outright. Mexico is still a unoffical caste system that goes top to bottom: white, meztiso, indian.
Mexico can try another revolution, but in the long run, the end result will probably be the same; a white ruling elite ruling over the miztiso and indian masses. this is the american continent.
Every Mexican president in my lifetime has been mestizo. Not one White.
Why are there no Anglo mestizos in the US? they don't exist because native americans were exterminated by the protestant Anglos. But for the Catholic church native americans in LatAm would have been exterminated just as their cousins in Anglo north america.
I want single payer health care. We will not have it if we must cover 15 million illegals.
what are you people thinking? America cannot help itself if we are burdened with Mexico's problems as well.
Clean up your own system!
Mexico is corrupt to its core. AND the wealthiest Latin country in the hemisphere.
Send em packing! And maybe they will fix their own government.
America cannot insure the western hemisphere and every banana republic which loots the wealth of a nation.
at least the LGBTs won't be the only group thrown under the bus.
The mindset that Mexico is the only nation that wants to immigrate needs to stop and proponents need to be reminded that peoples from many nations want to (legally) immigrate to the US. Quit trying to jump to the front of the line.
Maybe California could sue Mexico for all the money they've wasted on Mexican citizens.
and BTW, what is Mexico doing to improve? Can't Mexico look to turn a corner and be a place their citizens want to work and live in?
ILLEGAL ALIENS shouldn't be detained they should be DEPORTED! This isn't a Latino issue it is an AMERICAN issue. We spend BILLIONS, in CA alone, on ILLEGAL ALIENS. We need to use these tax dollars on our own. Heavily fine those who hire ILLEGALS and they would self-deport.
Absolutely right. California is afraid to admit that a lot of their financial woes come from Illegal Aliens, they need to be politically correct.
I don't think the Dems are going to have to worry about the Latino vote, as long as entitlement programs are in our future they will vote for them.
And of course they'll harp on selecting A Latina Supreme Court Justice, which was a good choice.
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