Weekly Immigration Wire: Healthcare and the Undocumented

By Nezua, TMC Mediawire Blogger

This week's Wire will be brief. The MediaWire Bloggers are in Pittsburgh, Pa. for Netroots Nation. We will return to our regular format next week.

On Monday, President Obama met with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderón. Following the meeting, Obama made it clear that he doesn't expect immigration reform to pass until 2010, as the Washington Independent reports: Even if legislation is drafted this year, health care reform demands attention first. Some say the two issues are too connected to be separated, although there is no denying that the health care debate has reached a fever pitch.

Right-Wing pundits are polluting constructive dialogue about health care reform, many times citing immigration as mark against it. Protesters are violently disrupting town hall meetings in an attempt to scuttle the approaching legislation and cripple the president's agenda. Their aggression and confusion indicate that the health care and immigration debates are intertwined, as the Colorado Independent reports. Unfortunately, immigrants continue to be scapegoated for nearly every social ill that arises.

Even Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., misses the larger point by arguing that the undocumented should not be insured: A healthier nation is cheaper for everyone in the long run, and simply more humane.

Air America's Kase Wickman reports that, while the White House has plans to reform detention policy, the administration cautions that the "sequence" of legislation initiaves enacted must be handled in a way "where they don't all just crash at the same time."

RaceWire points out that many immigration reform advocates are concerned that, by declaring an intent to simply reform the detention system, the administration is failing to discuss any alternatives to detention.

High Country News reports on the border wall dividing Nogales, Ariz., and Nogales, Sonora. The wall is completely ineffective at preventing migrants from crossing and is seriously impeding "the migration and population growth of desert bighorn sheep and ferruginous pygmy owls."

Finally, Sojourners illustrates what's lacking in our approach to health care. Author Gareth Higgins, a recent U.S. immigrant, frames health care reform as an issue that determines what kind of nation and people the U.S. wants to be. Regarding the recent conflicts over health care reform, Higgins postulates that they are "really just skirmishes about human greed and selfishness, rather than serious discussions about how to ensure that no one goes without."

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration and is free to reprint. Visit Immigration.NewsLadder.net for a complete list of articles on immigration, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy and health issues, check out Economy.NewsLadder.net and Healthcare.NewsLadder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and was created by NewsLadder.

Comments

[Brittanicus]

The American people are at the end of their fuses, because for decades they have been supporting hundreds of thousands of businesses who hire illegal immigrants? Hundreds of billions of dollars are going into the pockets of corporate executives, because they pay--nothing--other than minimum wages to foreign nationals. Businesses are very well aware that taxpayers will keep supporting the 20 million plus already here, because a government mandated laws says its demanded of us? European Industrialized nations are also in the same place, having to deal with a EU parliament who are also forcing the same mandatory laws. In America there is a safety net for people who have lost their jobs and forced into the breadline?

[Brittanicus]

But illegal alien families who broke our sovereignty laws, have intentionally taken advantage of public welfare and federal legislation that gives them a right to our schools, health care and a whole barrel of benefits instead of US residents. Now President Obama wants to give AMNESTY, rewarding these people for crossing our almost defenseless border. This must not happen to the American workers and the rest of our population, because the Heritage Foundation has stated that just in retirement and pensions it exceeds $2 Trillion dollars. Even legal immigrants numbers have accelerated to 1. 5 million annually. We need no more poor, uneducated to sustain in America. We must cut down quotas to only the skilled contributors, who will not become a public charges. Then does anybody have an answer for those who will come after this AMNESTY? Eventually the millions who will come here, will lead to irreversible OVERPOPULATION.