Migrants Get the Blame in Good Times and Bad

by Dave Bennion

Published November 20, 2008 @ 08:00AM PST

Through a slick bit of speculation, Mickey Kaus is attempting to pin the housing bubble, and therefore the financial crisis, not on poor risk management and deregulation but on migrants leaving the U.S.

Kaus gets mixed up on causality and timing.  In order to blame the bursting of the housing bubble on immigrants, he's got to show that they weren't leaving due to poor economic conditions--in his mind, immigrants are responsible for the downturn, not reacting to it.  He attributes an outflow of immigrants to Mark Krikorian's "attrition through enforcement" strategy, otherwise known as nonviolent ethnic cleansing:

The timing more or less fits, no? Real estate prices started to plummet just as expectations of imminent semi-amnesty were turning into the reality of harsher enforcement. Schools in immigrant heavy areas of L.A. for example, reported declining enrollments in 2006.  The nationwide character of the Gran Salida became apparent, even to the press by early 2008. . It seems highly plausible to me that there is some non-trivial causality running between the decrease in the net inflow of illegal immigrants and the real estate bust--all the immigrants who have disappeared would have had to live somewhere.

This is convenient for restrictionists like Kaus.  When times are good, immigrants are taking jobs that belong to citizens.  When times are bad and some immigrants leave to find work elsewhere, they are accused of sabotaging the economy by, through their absence, not purchasing goods and services.

By Kaus's own logic, then, isn't the attrition through enforcement strategy pursued by DHS responsible for the economic meltdown?

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Organizing 2.0

by Dave Bennion

Published November 19, 2008 @ 08:07PM PST

Roberto Lovato writes in Colorlines about the influence of technology on social movements and organizing.

WHILE CRISSCROSSING CRACKED STREETS to knock on the rickety doors of rundown row houses in Philadelphia's 14th Ward, Liza Sabater also found herself crossing the overlapping lines of political and technological history late last spring as she canvassed for Barack Obama's campaign.

"I got to spend some time with these Puerto Rican mechanics-guys most people wouldn't expect to have Internet access," said Sabater, an Afro-Puerto Rican technologist who blogs at culturekitchen and The Daily Gotham. "But there-among the wrenches and jacks-were their cell phones and handheld devices they use to surf the Web."

Sabater, who helps nonprofits use technology to further their missions, canvassed in Philadelphia with her two sons and coordinated work in the 14th Ward with three Latino volunteers from the Obama campaign. She saw in the mechanics' mobile devices proof of her belief that "the ‘digital divide' is a crock when we realize that laptops and desktops aren't the only ways to access the Web." But was the Obama campaign reaching these mechanics on their cells?

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Fight the H8, Pass the Dream Act

by Dave Bennion

Published November 19, 2008 @ 08:00AM PST

Friend of the blog DreamActivist had a post up a few days ago at the Sanctuary about the overlap of the two most urgent civil rights issues of our day:

President-elect Barack Obama has stated that undocumented students raised in the United States are "Americans for all intent and purposes." Yet, these undocumented American are punished for the alleged transgressions of their parents, and face many barriers to their DREAMs upon graduation from high school-often they cannot attend college, drive or work legally, obtains loans, or even legalize their status. While illegal presence is not a crime, anti-immigrant hysteria has effectively given them the tag of ‘criminal.'

The situation gets worse with the heteronormativity of U.S. immigration laws.

The Sylvia Rivera Law Project shows how this plays out in immigration and law enforcement scenarios.  Back to DreamActivist:

In this entry, you will come across undocumented LGBT youth from diverse backgrounds, states and circumstances that have come together in these waiting rooms of history to share the limbo of their lives.

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What Part of Illegal Don't You Understand? - DHS Breaks the Law Again

by Dave Bennion

Published November 18, 2008 @ 09:02PM PST

A pattern is emerging in DHS's response to requests for information relating to immigrants under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA): ignore, stonewall, and deny.  In a supposed nation of laws, DHS routinely violates federal law by subverting the Act.

First, Marisa Treviño picked up on something in a recent report from the Center for Public Policy Priorities on U.S. mistreatment of unaccompanied migrant children, A Child Alone and Without Papers.

[T]he most appalling incident cited in this report was how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) purposely stonewalled, denied or ignored repeated requests and Freedom of Information Act requests to gather the necessary data to help with this report.

In an attempt to analyze policies, procedures, and statistics pertaining to the removal and repatriation of unaccompanied children from Mexico and Honduras, we submitted seven Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). These requests, submitted in June 2007, ranged from inquiries regarding basic statistics to training materials for immigration staff to international agreements.

Six requests were either denied or responses were extended well beyond the publication of this study. Various reasons were given for the denial of a request or the delay in a response. For example, the department combined four separate unrelated requests under one FOIA case number and then responded that the request was too long to respond to within the standard time limits.

One request was closed for reasons that are unclear.

. . .

One can only surmise given the uncooperative responses of the DHS that they either believe themselves to be above the law or are hiding facts they know would be detrimental to themselves and this administration in its last days.

I guess if you were being generous, you might chalk up the failure to respond in accordance with federal law to lack of resources or bureaucratic ineptitude.  That would be a generosity that DHS rarely extends to migrants who violate the law--but when you are in charge of enforcing the laws in George Bush's America, you are held to a different standard than your average shmoe.

But that wouldn't explain the persistent complaints of practitioners that DHS is not properly fulfilling FOIA requests.

Or this story about DHS's apparent effort to drum up a big counterterrorism success story in late 2004 to help push George Bush into a second term of office. 

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ICE and DOJ Fight Against Human Rights of Indian Guestworkers

by Dave Bennion

Published November 18, 2008 @ 10:00AM PST

A disturbing message came to me yesterday from the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice:

Earlier this year, you supported the Indian guestworkers who risked everything in a heroic fight against human trafficking after Signal International (Signal) and its labor recruiters brought them to the Gulf Coast under false pretenses in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  Despite their valiant efforts and your support, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has refused to grant them protections as victims of trafficking-including continued presence-and has not yet filed charges against any of the traffickers.  Now in a horrific example of what happens when victims are not protected, a group of the workers have been targeted in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid and face federal prosecution as a direct result of their public campaign.  We are asking for your support as these workers continue their fight for basic protections and for the DOJ and ICE to prosecute human traffickers and not their victims.  This workplace raid on trafficking victims further highlights this outgoing Administration's misguided priorities.  If change is coming under the Obama Administration, we must make sure these workers are included in it.

When defense subcontractor Signal trafficked them to labor camps in the Gulf Coast and held them in forced labor, these workers fought back.  They escaped indentured servitude, triggering a major DOJ investigation into criminal trafficking. They walked from New Orleans to Washington, DC in the footsteps of Mahatma Gandhi, to show Congress the brutal realities of the US guestworker program.  And they launched a 29 day-long hunger strike, to pressure the DOJ to prosecute Signal on charges of criminal trafficking.

As a result of speaking out publically, a group of these men were targeted in an ICE raid. On October 28, 2008 - days before the presidential election - ICE arrested over 20 of these workers in a terrifying immigration raid in Fargo, North Dakota.  In line with their recent strategy, ICE charged them with federal crimes.   In a press conference after the raid, an immigration official charged the workers with stealing American jobs.  Now in federal custody, these courageous men face the threat of years in prison.

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Environmental Damage Increases Migration

by Dave Bennion

Published November 18, 2008 @ 07:00AM PST

Via BIB, Jo-Shing Yang at Truthout examines U.S. water policies in the Southwest near the southern border:

On October 21, 2008, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne inaugurated the ground breaking of the new Imperial Valley water reservoir near the U.S.-Mexico border. The 500-acre $172.2-million reservoir, to be completed in August 2010, will store surplus Colorado River water for use by coastal Southern California, southern Nevada, and central Arizona; previously this water had been flowing to Mexico and used by its cities and thousands of Mexican farmers.

This reservoir, along with the $250 million project to line a 23-mile stretch of the All-American Canal, also in the Imperial Valley, with concrete to prevent water seepage to an underground aquifer, Mexicali Valley aquifer, which is used currently by Mexican cities and farmers, means that there will be substantially less water from the Colorado River and dire consequences for Mexico.

. . .

Like the southwestern United States, which has been suffering from a decade-long drought which began in 1998, northern Mexico also has been afflicted by a punishing drought since 1992. This year, the extreme drought in Mexico continues, unrelenting. Climate scientists have predicted that the entire region from southwestern United States to north-central Mexico will be hit especially hard by global climate change and its associated extreme weather disruptions and extreme droughts.

. . .

Scholars of climate and water resources have cited stories of poor farmers who find it more difficult to tap into groundwater to irrigate their subsistence crops using traditional, manual techniques due to a combination of factors: deforestation, drought, over-withdrawal of water by cities, and over-pumping of water by agribusiness and large ranchers.

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Meet Your Foreign Beauty Today!

by Dave Bennion

Published November 17, 2008 @ 08:30PM PST

I saw this in a blogad recently:

Are you looking for an international dating site that lists foreign women from across the world? MyForeignBride.com is a popular foreign dating and marriage agency helping 1000's of foreign ladies find their prospective partners everyday. Our website features beautiful foreign women from Russia, Eastern Europe, Asia, Latin America & Africa looking for their perfect international partner for marriage.
Join free today and start interacting with foreign ladies from all around the world!

. . .

My ForeignBride.com can help make your foreign bride and International marriage dreams come true. Unlike many online International marriage agency's, we do not offer foreign brides or mail order wives, nor do we set up any International marriages. Instead, we offer foreign dating services to assist you in your search for that marriage minded single foreign woman. With just a few simple clicks, you could find your very own foreign bride, and being planning your international marriage.

It looks like this site utilized the services of myforeigncopyeditor.com.

Given that a sizeable portion of my job involves helping U.S. citizens get legal status for their foreign-born spouses, I look at this site with mixed feelings.

I have learned that love can take many forms, and that some of the least likely couples on the outside have some of the realest, most durable relationships you'll ever see.  I also believe that the internet facilitates connections between people who would otherwise never meet.  The success of not only dating sites like match.com or eHarmony, but also social networking sites like facebook or myspace, is due in large part to people using those sites to try to hook up or get into a relationship.

But in my work with immigrant victims of domestic violence, I also see the power imbalances that lead many mixed-status families to tragedy. 

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