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Why We Need a Deportation Moratorium Now
As a floundering Congress repeatedly impedes the passage of widely supported immigration measures like the DREAM Act, reform advocates are refocusing their efforts and calling on President Barack Obama to declare a moratorium on deportations.
Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), whose impassioned support of immigrant rights landed him in jail earlier this year, is at the forefront of that charge, reports Braden Goyette at Campus Progress. Joining a chorus of immigration reform groups, Gutierrez is asking for moratorium: “The President will tell us we need Republican votes in order to pass legislation, and he’s correct,” Gutierrez told a raucous crowd of New York immigrants last month. “But let me tell you something. With the executive stroke of that pen, he can stop the deportation and the destruction of our families.”
The deportation dragnet
The administration’s amped up efforts to detain and deport greater numbers of undocumented immigrants is understandably contentious among immigrant rights advocates. As Goyette notes, at least 6.6 million mixed-status families stand to be directly affected by increased immigration enforcement, and nearly 100,000 citizen children have already seen their parents—lawful permanent residents—deported by the government.
To make matters worse, individuals are being deported without demonstrable regard for clean records, mitigating circumstances or even legal residency, in spite of the administration’s assurances to the contrary. Alina Das, a fellow at NYU’s immigration law clinic who was interviewed by Goyette, sums it up this way:
“Once you’re in the system it often does not matter if you’ve lived here since childhood, if you worked and paid taxes your entire life, if you gave back to the community and served in the military. The laws are so draconian that immigration judges are not able to consider these factors in many cases.”
ICE under fire for netting innocents
The legal system’s rigidity is further exacerbated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s questionable practices, which have resulted in the unlawful detention and deportations of scores of immigrants. The consequences of ICE’s overreliance on local law enforcement and its apparently indiscriminate tagging of undocumented immigrants are making headlines and raising prominent eyebrows.
The Filipino Express, via New America Media, reports that immigration courts are rejecting 31 percent of deportation cases filed by ICE—a six-point increase since 2009. In larger cities, the rejection rate is as high as 70 percent, suggesting that ICE is increasingly detaining and processing people who have just cause to remain in the country.
ICE’s credibility on the matter has deteriorated so much that last week a federal judge ordered the agency to release previously withheld documents related to a controversial enforcement program called Secure Communities, which has netted a number of non-criminal immigrants, including domestic violence victims. Several localities have tried to opt out of participating in the contentious program—including Santa Clara and San Francisco Counties in California, Arlington, Va., and Washington D.C.—but ICE has waffled on allowing them to do so. The documents ordered for release should shed light on the issue.
ColorLines’ Seth Freed Wessler reports that last week’s ruling was the second of its kind made against ICE:
In July, a federal court ordered the release of all government documents related to Secure Communities, following a public information request by Uncover the Truth, a coalition of civil rights and immigrant rights groups. The government released only some documents, which revealed that the program had resulted in the deportation of tens of thousands of non-citizens with no criminal convictions at all, or with convictions for low-level things like traffic violations.
The dark side of detention
The indiscriminate roundup of undocumented immigrants can have grave consequences—particularly when the immigration enforcement system is overly outsourced and over capacity.
While we’ve highlighted several cases of detention centers run amok in the past, Forrest Wilder at the Texas Observer has been following the case of a particularly horrifying incident at the Reeves County Detention Center near Pecos, Texas.
Two years ago, when the facility’s remarkably poor conditions provoked immigrant detainees to demand a meeting with the Mexican consulate, 1,200 detainees rioted and commandeered the facility, costing more than $1 million in damages. The impetus: The arguably preventable death of Jesus Manuel Galindo, a 32-year-old epileptic Mexican citizen who had lived in the United States since he was 13 and was locked up for “illegal re-entry” into the country:
Galindo’s death set off a huge riot at the Reeves County Detention Center, the world’s largest privately-run prison. It was the first of two riots in protest of poor conditions, especially medical care that the prisoners claimed was literally killing people. At the time of his death from an epileptic seizure, Galindo had been locked up in the prison’s administrative segregation unit for a month, possibly as punishment for his persistent medical complaints.
Wilder further reports that, last week, the ACLU and two El Paso attorneys filed suit against officials and administrators of the ill-reputed facility, stating that “the utter disregard shown by RCDC prison and medical staff to Galindo’s repeated, beseeching, well-founded expressions of fear for his own personal safety bordered on sadistic.”
Galindo’s case is not unique among immigrant detainees in the United States. Immigrant detainees suffer myriad abuses and injustices while their cases are processed and the administration’s increasing emphasis on enforcement only exacerbates the problem.
With the DREAM Act stuck in sentatorial limbo, the dire circumstances of hundreds of thousands of immigrants should compel President Obama to take action where Congress will not.
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28 Comments so far
Show AllThe above message was sponsored by your local Chamber of Commerce and Farm Bureau. The last thing they want is to lose their endless supply of disposable, exploitable illegals, and be forced to (ugh!) pay a living wage to American workers.
Absolutely correct. It is not a progressive issue to have illegal aliens in the US. It is a progressive issue to get them all home to their own countries. The people that profit here are big business and big agra.
Isn't it time for Progressives to take a stance to get these people home?
That depends on how you define "progressive issues". If the paramount issue is minting more voters for the Democratic Party, then it is indeed a "progressive issue" to bring in as many illegals as possible. Considering that most progressives are upper middle class professionals, if the paramount "progressive issue" is having very cheap, very disposable day care, gardening, and baby sitting, then the more illegals the better.
Human rights is not a progressive issue? I fear you are right.
Embracing the right wing propaganda about this - that the issue is immigrants and not human rights - is not a progressive issue? I fear you are right.
If you are right, then there is no moral foundation for progressive politics and I oppose it then every bit as much as I oppose tea party, Palin, whatever. More so, perhaps, because at least with the right wingers we are not being deceived and misled.
You are expressing a right wing position, within a context created by the right wing politicians, and then telling us that no progressive can take any other position.
I do NOT believe you have some human right to an exploitable, disposable, illegal gardener or maid. If that disqualifies me from being a "progressive", then so be it.
That makes no sense. Certainly people have the right to choose to make a living. The "send them back" ranting - are you actually trying to convince people that this is motivated by a desire to help people out of being "an exploitable, disposable, illegal gardener or maid?" Nonsense.
I agree, wink, wink our economy needs more surplus labor, certainly not less, the labor market is too tight as it is.
Small businesses of all kinds, and Chambers of Commerce, promote "growth" and population influx to their area. This is because they know that more people means more jobs and more prosperity - they cannot escape that, even though in this case that forces them into a pro-Labor position. That is a function of the contradiction inherent in Capitalism - business needs the very people it is exploiting. It is illogical top then think that punishing workers for moving toward higher wages is therefore a blow against reactionary or business forces.
As for the corporations, they would much rather grow produce on plantation style farms south of the border, where they are free of environmental regulations and safety inspections, and where they can pay people $5 a day for work they would have to pay $100 a day for here.
Suppressing workers doesn't force to employers here to pay a living wage to American workers. That is absurd on its face.
The convoluted arguments people are coming up with in order to make their anti-immigrant hatred and bias sound reasonable, and kinda sorta left wing or pro-Labor, are illogical.
Your argument here is hateful and divisive, and can contribute nothing constructive to the discussion about this issue.
There is some downside to importing food from South of the Border.
I know some grocery stores won't take meat from Mexico.
Some customers will reject produce grown in Mexico.
Another point--more people = less prosperity (for individuals)
Obviously corporations come out very well in the equation.
There is a very well established correlation with population growth and poverty.
It's pretty easy to throw down that racist card though.
You don't really have to explain or refute anything when that's an option.
"It's pretty easy to throw down that racist card though."
That's Two's "strong suit".
Also, look up the definition of neoliberalism and compare with Two's tirades -classic.
Please make the case out in the open that I am arguing a neoliberal position, rather than merely making an unsubstantiated insinuation. Otherwise you are doing what you are accusing me of doing - debating by trying to discredit the other person with insinuations and implications.
At issue here is the arrest, detention and deportation of people guilty of no crime. Supporting that is indefensible and inexcusable, and attacking the messenger is merely a way for you to avoid the message and to avoid having the guts and honesty to openly support and defend the position you are taking on this.
Accusing others of "throwing down the race card" is promoting a vicious and racist right wing theme, and calling for arrest and detentions of innocent people and arbitrarily meting out cruel and unusual punishment is contradictory to all humanitarian sentiment, to all concepts of freedom and rights, and to any political position other than a very extreme right wing and racist position. It is authoritarian and cruel, and is the foundation of the thinking that enables fascism.
I hate cut&paste but here's a generic definition:
"The term "neoliberalism" has also come into wide use in cultural studies to describe an internationally prevailing ideological paradigm that leads to social, cultural, and political practices and policies that use the language of markets, efficiency, consumer choice, transactional thinking and individual autonomy to shift risk from governments and corporations onto individuals and to extend this kind of market logic into the realm of social and affective relationships."
All one has to do is go back thru your posts to see your recurring theme of worker mobility. What a coincidence....!
You just end up being a useful idiot for the corporatists although I believe you are probably truly passionate about the humanity of it all.
ROFL.
That is really hilarious.
Clearly, I am not arguing for individualism nor idealism - I argue against those every day here. I am arguing against the persecution of people for moving. I am not arguing for a system that forces people to move, or that relies on people moving in order to achieve social goals.
I did not say that the burden _should_ be shifted to individuals, and in fact I relentlessly argue from the opposite position. I am saying that it already has been, and that this is no excuse for placing more burden on them. Desperate people are reacting to the market - in order to survive, They are not to blame for that, nor am I advocating that. You could not possibly have understood my posts - nor do you understand neoliberalism. The problem with neoliberalism is that it exalts the individual in such a way that most individuals suffer. To think that we oppose neoliberalism by opposing people's desperate efforts to escape that suffering is absurd logic.
Or perhaps you do understand, and are being disingenuous here. You must have a low opinion of the readership here if you think this attack on me - patently illogical and absurd - would fly with them.
You are either very confused, or you are intentionally and quite cleverly being deceptive.
This makes a lot of sense to be, I know my interest is strictly leagalistic. Laws bieng equal, and that enforcement must be equal. I don't care so much about race as defining a criminal as a criminal.
Under our system of laws, these people have no rights because they have no legal existance. As when someone breaks into your home, whatever happens is not an issue for outside legal authorities. Unless someone calls them in. in otherwords I wouldn't sell them insurance.
P.S. Who cares what they might do in school, certinally our industries don't want them anymore than they want a US citizen, most of these jobs are routinely given to forigeners on H1B visas anyway. So these illegals will just be a further burden on our unemployment cycle.
>^^<
The concept of "rights" completely collapses by your interpretation of it here. You are talking about rights as though they were privileges, and then you are making them subservient to law. Law is subservient to rights, according to the founding documents that define and describe rights, and they exist independently of your opinion - or anyone's opinion - as to who should "get" them and who should not. They are inherent, we are all endowed with them. All legitimacy for the law is based on them. But you contradict that and undermine the very concept of rights. You claim that law comes first, and that some should and some should not have rights. Your argument therefore defeats itself.
In any case, you are arguing for people who have broken no law to be punished, ergo, your claim that it is legality you are concerned with also collapses in a heap.
The interesting thing about this, and I am glad to see these posts because they are so revealing, is that we are watching in real time as people twist the concepts of rights and legality so that they can be used to promote the exact opposite - tyranny and illegality. I guess that in an era when law-breaking by government officials and the wealthy has become routine, we should not be surprised that the same perverted twisting of reality permeates the thinking of the every day people.
The wealthy and powerful people twist everything into an apology and defense for what they want to do, so it is no surprise that powerless people such as yourself emulate that "winning" behavior by the powerful in order to feel powerful yourself, to feel like a "winner."
"Playing the race card" is a deceptive and malicious idea crated by right wing propaganda.
There are "some" problems with imported food? Wow.
Claiming that more people means more poverty is a murderous, and false, ruling class proposition.
Implying that people are "playing the race card" in lieu of having a strong argument is false and is a dishonest debate tactic - ironically, the very thing you are accusing others of doing.
This thread has been instructive and I am glad to see what we have seen here - as ugly and disturbing as it may be. It shows us that progressive politics is bankrupt, and that there is no possibility of accommodation or compromise on this and on many other issues.
"widely supported immigration measures like the DREAM Act"
Is the need to lie about these things endemic in the Amnesty and Cheap Labor community? The Dream Act and all the Amnesty pushes are opposed by a vast majority of Americans, over 75% as far as Amnesty is concerned.
Lying just brands you a liar.
By all means suspend all deportation except for Criminal Illegal Aliens, there are plenty of them.
Agree to stop all benefits and go after the employers that are using these people and everyone will hop on board "abandon deportation" bandwagon!
By the way, the only ones pushing for or evrenm mentioning deportation is yourself and rthe Cheap Labor lobby. No one else has any particular interest in oit. Its a waste of time if you don't stop all benefits and go after the employers in any case.
Also the pathetic use of "anti-immigrant to those that oppose Illegal Immigration identifies them for what they really are.
The racism of allowing illegal immigrsation must stop.
Stopping deportation of undocumented immigrants isn't the issue.
What we need is a law that requires deportation of documented ignorants.
I think we could solve most of our problems this way, including reducing our population by 89%.
Then, maybe, we could start all over again.
Your suggestion sounds a lot like the literacy tests required for voting in Mississippi in the late 1800 - early 1900's, used to keep blacks and illiterate whites from voting.
"deport[ing] greater numbers of undocumented immigrants is understandably contentious among immigrant rights advocates."
Why are immigrant rights advocates upset? Illegal immigration is a huge burden for them as well. What the author quite purposefully avoided was the word "illegal".
ILLEGAL immigrant rights advocates are upset. People like the Bushes who rely on cheap labor. Let's be honest here, that is who is upset. Big Government, Big Agra and the big corporations are the ones that want illegal aliens. They have co-opted the progressives to carry their water on this issue.
If you support an amnesty for illegals or open immigration, just wear your Republican clothes in the open. Its OK. Flaunt who you are. Tell your unemployed neighbors in construction or meat packing or labor that you think they need some competition from people that will work for slave labor....
Don't be a hypocrite. Support of Illegal Immigration is a Republican platform point, not a progressive position.
Very true, this why they won't mobilise NORTHCOMM and open the FEMA camps for the pourpise of simply checking everybody's Id if you can't show any you go to camp A for processing if it can be determined you belong here, you get an agoligy and a free trip home. If not you goto camp B!
At camp B, they determine where you do belong and send you home, in a nice paded shipping container. So if it's Mexico, China, Haiti. everyone gets the same trretment, we just put the container on a truck, or ship, and wave bye! Most ships go back prety empty as it is so at least they'll get a extra full container out of the deal.
We, have the manpower, we have the camp facilities Ready! call it a test, of the homeland security evacuation system! :)
In a month we could be rid of most of the undocumented vermin. The we explain any cought afterwards will be treated as any other dangerous felon, and mean it!
>^^<
A man just walked very quietly up to my door and placed a flier on my porch.
His head was down and he appeared embarrassed.
He is looking for work shoveling snow.
I feel bad for him..
Hard, seasonal work in the freezing weather.
We might have 10 snowfalls we might have none.
Where is the sympathy for him?
What will the DREAM act do for him?
Do we have jobs for him and for everybody else who floods the borders?
Obviously not.
Dude, get with the program. Professional, upper middle class "progressives", you know, the kind of people (lawyers, doctors, lobbyests, terachers, etc) who have no fear of losing their jobs to illegals have a GOD GIVEN RIGHT! to cheap day care, gardening, and, yes, snow shovelling.
One f@*#ed up situation. What I still don't get though, is why those who would champion this countries working people would ever sign onto something that is clearly spelled out by the articles accompanying photograph.
There is not a single peer reviewed academic study that will support the notion that increasing the labor supply in a shrinking or stagnant labor market will in any way, shape, or form be beneficial to labor.
Two Americas's argument that more people = more jobs is just not correct and can easily be dismissed just by the fact that we currently have an unemployment rate hovering around 20%. What more working age people does do is depress wages and keep the unemployment rate higher than it otherwise would be.
The statement that LABOR is the true source of wealth, while fundamentally true, depends upon labor actually having the means to fulfill its potential.
Unfortunately, the way we have things currently structured, there are so many barriers to actually unleashing labors potential. For instance, suppose you want to be a mechanic. In years past, all you really needed was the knowledge, a few simple tools, and the work ethic to make it happen. Today, the tools of the trade cost hundreds, some of them thousands of dollars. And this is just in one trade.
People seem shocked that plumbers charge 30 or 40 bucks an hour, but how many stop to consider that the professional plumber has to invest in expensive tools that we will never own. Pipe threaders, heavy duty commercial snakes, video systems for looking inside drains, among others.
I used to do commercial electrical work and some of the tools I had to have were way beyond what an ordinary homeowner or handyman would have or need. Cable cutters that cost several hundred dollars, circuit tracers in the range of a thousand bucks or so.
Until we care to change the entire paradigm of what our economy is supposed to be and who exactly it is supposed to benefit, all of these problems will continue. And they are problems, very real ones.
Just because someone lives in Mexico, Indonesia, or Haiti, just three among many places where poverty is rampant, doesn't mean that we should invite them all to come live here. We should, and morally we must, work with all the peoples of the world to raise all our living standards - not the wealthy - but the average worker.
If that means taking the monetary wealth that the very few around the world have built up and using it to truly unleash the power of labor then so be it.
The entire open borders crowd as far as I can tell is simply interested in transferring where the problem is located. If we really do want justice, and I consider the economic well being of people everywhere one of justice, then we need to couple immigration with a real jobs program, bolster our public education system instead of dismantling it, invest in adult education programs, create a nationwide network of public trades schools like they have in Europe and much of the rest of the industrialized nations.
The idea of immigration "reform" to me, especially after the failed amnesty of the Reagan years, is anathema to me unless we truly want to couple immigration to our foreign and domestic policies that drive so many, both here and around the world into economic desperation.
Show me that, unite the immigration groups with the rest of us in dismantling this oppressive system we all find ourselves under and I'll gladly get on the bandwagon.
What I won't do however, is promote policies that are against the interests of labor, and open borders under the current system is most assuredly against labor. Further impoverishing the U.S. working class, while it may bring on a revolution, is not in my opinion what we should be striving for.
As far as the current fight for amnesty goes, I do support, though reluctantly, Two Americas views. The simple fact is, these people are here, they DO deserve better than the oppressive policies we currently have. My only qualm about the whole matter, is that we ensure that unlike last time around, we truly do change things so that employers cannot still exploit labor, whether new immigrants or those of us who are already here.
The whole damn system sucks and needs to be dismantled. The single biggest roadblock to any true reform is that of how we create and control money. There are so very many jobs, both here in the U.S. and around the world that need doing but go undone because no one seems willing to foot the bill. Teaching, caring for our young and elderly, cleaning up the toxic mess we've made of the natural environment, rebuilding the outdated and collapsing physical infrastructure that modern society relies on. So very many things go undone.
Excess labor isn't a problem, not now, nor in the foreseeable future, division of physical resources and the current monetary system is the problem.
I know this is a long, and sometimes rambling post, but this is quite the complex issue, and we, as a nation really do need to discuss things in context of the whole.
:) Happy holidays!
Good post. The source of most illegal immigrants are nations and regions with poor prospects for individual success. This generally stems from three problems: First, and most common is systemic corruption in society. When la mordida supplants law as the civil rule, hope for success is lost. Secondly, lack of individual property rights. When property cannot be legally recognized, the ability to establish and grow a business is eliminated. Even if the property is two goats and a fenced lot to keep them in, being able to defend that property under the law is vital. Lastly, poor education. Widespread illiteracy is a key mover for families to move to a nation with universal primary education.
Mexico, Haiti, China, wherever. The solution is to spread growth of the rule of law, property rights, and general education however we can help.
What I fail to notice either in the article or in the above comments is any refference to the possibility that some of these ICE sweeps might be snaring legal immigrants as well as illegal ones. IIRC, this was a major concern among those watching the implementation of Arizona's SB 1070 last Spring and why parts of this law were suspended by court order. I would hate to think that anyone would be advocating the mass deportation of immigrants who are here legally. Yes, such people exist.
Barkingsquirrel,
Sorry it took so long to get to you, been a horrible couple of weeks for me - seems lately some cosmic force is having a LOT of fun at my expense, oh well, life goes on. :(
I know my post didn't explicitly state that part of the problem is innocents getting caught up in these sweeps, and it does happen. But I am not all entirely against ICE. Here in my neck of the woods, we have a small city of about 150 Thousand which has a very real and large gang problem. I know there are gangs of all sorts, when I lived in San Diego, we had Asian gangs, New York has White gangs, Los Angeles has Black gangs. The gang problem seems be one of the few things to skirt the ethnic barriers - people of all colors or ethnic backgrounds can be lowlifes.
But here, the gangs are Mexican gangs, and a good percentage of the members are Mexican citizens here in this country illegally. Our murder and violent crime rate is nearly double the national average and things are so bad that the gangs are in open warfare with the local police. At least two or three times a month, teenagers, most of them young teenagers, run up to somebody and unload with a handgun. Our city has had to bury half a dozen high school students this year alone, and our homicide count is currently standing at 18 and counting - down from 29 last year.
From a good article on our gang problem, the following:
"Our Salinas homicide statistic for 2009 is 29 homicides for 145,000 people, or 0.2 per 1,000 inhabitants. Although the 2010 Salinas homicide rate is trending toward a lower number, in 2009 we were apparently as violent as Russia, more deadly even than the whole nation of Mexico, and more lethal than Yemen, which is an acknowledged battleground in our war on terror. (www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita)"
AND,
"Most experts seem to concur that a major reason for Salinas' high rate of violence is the increasing presence and influence of Mexican gangs.
These are thugs of the highest order. Their history both in Mexico and parts north includes brutal, graphic violence designed to intimidate, including intentional decapitations, kidnapping, horrendous torture and a radical ideology.
In other words, the Mexican gangs are a great deal like the Taliban in Afghanistan, except they worship Money, not Allah. Like the Taliban, the Mexican gangs are seeking social control through terror. Like the Taliban, they seek to intimidate the population into compliance."
Sadly, the predominate victims of this violence are the illegal immigrants, and their children themselves. Part of the problem, but only a part, is that these people not only have to live in fear of the violence that is rampant in the community, but also of coming forward to law enforcement due to their immigration status. They make tailor made victims, not only for unscrupulous employers, but also for those who would defraud them of money, or commit acts of violence against them.
How can one possibly speak up when such an act will most likely lead to your deportation to life of abject poverty and misery?
Things have gotten so bad, that we have had to use our scarce resources to form a joint gang force among, State, Local, and Federal agencies to confront those who cause such damage. Part of this task force is ICE, and they do perform an important role in our ongoing battle - and yes its a battle - against such violent gangs. So ICE does have an important role to play, just not the role it does for struggling peoples who are only trying to survive in this messed up world.
Just do a Google search for "Child shot by stray bullet in Salinas, Ca" What you will find are page after page of children, most the children of immigrant farm workers - and for this it doesn't matter one damn bit whether were talking legal or illegal. One of the saddest just happened this past spring, Azael Cruz, a six year old boy, was killed by stray gunfire while getting a glass of water in the families own kitchen. The mother and father came to this country to work the fields and what they ended up with is a dead child instead.
So for those who advocate open borders, take a hard look at what is really going on. This issue is so much more complex than people make it out to be. Its a moral issue, an economic issue, a political issue (a divisive one at that), a law enforcement issue, a foreign and economic policy issue.
So very many things intertwine with the issue of immigration. I've said it many times, and I'll say it again, we need to talk openly and rationally about all the problems confronting us. Even if some of the facts are unpleasant or don't fit our political or personal ideas. Crafting policy - or solutions - on emotions simply will not work. Never has, never will.
Link to full article:
http://www.thecalifornian.com/article/20101218/NEWS01/12180310/Peter-Andresen-Welcome-to-the-Salinas-war-zone