Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog » immigration reform

Enough with The Talk on Immigration Reform

jstuart — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 15:16:10 +0000

New Orleans Frankly, I don’t read editorials in the New York Times. Usually they just made me mad. Saturday though there was one that was mad enough already under the headline: “Republicans Wanted.” The editorial was about the meetings last Thursday between President Obama and advocates for immigration reform.

Telling it like it is, the Times laid it our clearly: “Enough with the talk.”

Amen to that!

The notion that the President would ask the advocates to go round up Republicans I hit on the other day, and the editorialist was reading over my shoulder the other day when he correctly says, “…that’s enough to make anyone want to reach for the plug and pull it.”

The March in March is a game changer, but only the starting innings, the first quarter, the early round, but in truth winning or losing is now all in the streets, all in the barrios, all in the bodegas, and all at the grassroots now. Let’s take the “governor” off of the accelerator and stop downplaying the pain, tragedy and anger of the immigrant experience.

In the meeting with the President, all reports indicate Angelica Salas from CRLA , the great immigrant rights organization in Los Angeles, hit hard and wouldn’t back up on her insistence that deportations had to stop and the President had to lead. We need this and more. The charm offensive has to end. The cajoling has to take second seat.

Enough with the talk!

Following the Young on Immigration Reform

jstuart — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:10:32 +0000

New Orleans Maybe “following the leader” is going to be once again, as it is so often in movements, to allow the courage and immediacy of the young to finally dictate the tempo, and maybe even the targets, in the push to find a real path for comprehensive immigration reform?

Two things bring that to mind. The first has been the huge resolve – and wild media attention – to the four young undocumented young men and women from the Miami area who have been on the Trail of DREAMs to try and bring attention – and resolution – to the problem of higher education for immigrants. This is not a mass movement but it is shamefully inspiring. Last week I happened to be passing CNN and saw them show up in rural Georgia at some hard shell, moss backed sheriff’s office to ask him some hard questions about his enforcement of 287g deputized roundups for immigrants in his county. Lucky for him, he was out of pocket. What was he going to do? Arrest them as criminal offenders? Of course not! This is the courage of the bus rides, the lunch counters, and a thousand other points of civil rights pride. And, this is a demand about now.

The same thing can be said about the couple of hundred young people who marched – with all of our hope and support – a couple of days ago in Chicago – demanding a real solution to the immigration crisis with their banner unfurled: “Undocumented and Unafraid!” These are the kinds of actions that pop the bubbles of complacency around the go-slow, legislative stalemate and finger pointing on all sides in Washington.

And, why should we be surprised at any of this?

Talking to Ken Johnson yesterday for a piece in the coming issue of Social Policy magazine, I wanted to get all of the details straight on what he was doing as a 16-year old in small town Plaquemine, Louisiana when he helped spirit James Farmer, then head of CORE, into a hearse to get him out of a church during the dangers days of the fall 1963 there. They were fleeing a mob riding horses through the church because all white citizens had been deputized in order to keep the piece. What’s really different in 287g, but the uniform and the badge? Heck, Martin Luther King was only in his late 20’s in Montgomery? We might still be in Vietnam if young people, including many young men facing the draft, war, and exile had not shown the same fearlessness, moral resolve, and immediacy in calling the question on the war at huge risk over and over until it brought the Johnson government down.

The sweet sauce for immigration reform it seems finally clear is not going to come inside the Beltway and along the hallways of Congress and the corridors of power, but from the streets. And, it may be that the anger, passion, and immediacy of the young will once again have to force the hands of power to finally twist the levers of real reform.

Obama Feeling Heat on Immigration Reform

jstuart — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:12:19 +0000

Washington There is finally hope for comprehensive immigration reform if only because the inside-the-beltway strategy is crumbling and the anger and hurt if finally forcing itself into the open and driving the debate. Many activists and advocates have been pleading for a rally, march or some show of strength and purpose since exactly such an event was squelched for Inauguration Day 2009. Now a year later with some small progress in tone, but mostly some severe disillusionment with the lack of progress on the local vigilantism sanctioned by 287g, the increased punitive enforcements and senseless family breakups from unnecessary deportations, and the thousands pushed out of jobs the base knows the score no matter what lipstick DC players might put on this pig.

Not surprisingly on the eve of the March 21^st Rally and March, the President and his people summoned a dozen advocates for a meeting Thursday at the White House to try to soften some of the blows. Parsing the statements after it was over from participants was no easy task, especially reading the snarky line in the Times claiming the advocates were mainly happy to have had the President there for an hour of the session. I’m sure there’s a way that could have been written more patronizingly, but I’ll have to think about it. An hour from the President is frankly no big deal when dealing with the problems of 12 million plus undocumented immigrants and what this means to a core part of the progressive – and Democratic – constituency among Latino voters in this country.

There seemed to be little in the way of concrete progress from the meeting though. The President asking advocates to deliver Republican votes for the bill is a wild piece of “blaming the victim.” We can’t get there from here. From all reports of people in the meeting the President was testy and sparky in the meeting. He reportedly is chafing at being the target of the Rally and March. He was supposedly uncomfortable hearing about how bad a problem DHS is under Secretary Napolitano who has cranked up the enforcement without any relief and justice for immigrants. One participant claimed that Obama said he would meet with her.

From what I heard the biggest crack opening for relief on the way to reform was a tense exchange around the issue of whether or not the Administration is deporting immigrants without criminal records. The advocates placed the issue squarely on the table demanding that this be stopped. Reportedly the President claimed that they were not engaging in such deportations. This is not opinion but fact. These deportations are happening. If the President says they are not, this is something he can fix today by stopping such deportations and family breakups.

Realistically a bill seems unlikely for 2010 and pretty sketchy for next year as well, especially if it depends on reformers mustering bipartisan support, as I mentioned.

The odds improve if the movement is finally unleashed and allowed to put the pressure on not only the President but the other institutions and individuals standing in the way of reform. With DREAM marchers getting great traction and publicity by showing courage on their march up the East Coast and hundreds of young people and their supporters standing up in Chicago in an action yesterday where they declared they were “undocumented and unafraid,” the pressure is finally on the “by-and-by” folks caught in the DC lobbying strategies.

If we stop advocating and start organizing and leading the movement that is once again emerging, then real reform is possible. Maybe the events of these coming weeks are finally going to unleash the real forces of change?

Fake Job Searches

jstuart — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:55:51 +0000

New Orleans Two weeks ago we talked about the fact that guest workers might start to get some justice. New DOL regulations are requiring that companies actually look for workers locally before being able to pull migrants in from foreign lands, and they are going to have to pay them more. I saluted the effort, but was skeptical.

It did not take long to find some proof of my skepticism. There was an ad placed under “employment” in the Arkansas Times, a weekly in Little Rock that is largely entertainment ads and a couple of news and current events pieces. The ad was a classic:

“FIELD WORKERS-8 temporary positions; approx 10 months; Duties: to operate tractors during the preparation of the sugar cane crop before, during, and after the harvesting season. $9.09 per hour; Job to begin on 4/1/10 through 2/1/11. 3 months experience required in job offered. Must pass drug test. All work tools provided. Housing and transportation provided to workers who can not reasonably return to their permanent residence at the end of the work day; guaranteed of contract. Employment offered by A&M Farms, Inc. located in New Iberia, LA. Qualified applicants send resume to Guy Viator at (225) 766-0994.”

Hmmm…the number of field hands and tractor drivers that would be reading this ad and looking for a shot at going to New Iberia, just below Lafayette in the Cajun cane country of the Louisiana grand prairie, I bet is less than 2 fingers, just to be liberal, and the number of them that have “resume” just at hand and ready to fire off, for the chance to make $9 bucks for a temporary job for 10 months doesn’t fit on any hand I know.

It doesn’t take much to imagine that this ad is already clipped and copied as proof to be ready just in case someone from the DOL shows up and asks some day.

Why make a farce of farm work recruitment unless A&M Farms is pretty sure they, and outfits just like them, can get away with this pretty easily?

Some Justice for USA Guest Workers

jstuart — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 23:47:49 +0000

New Orleans Some good news for guest workers may also indicate pressure and problems for comprehensive immigration reform. One piece of almost buried news was $2.75 million dollar back pay settlement for an Arkansas tree planting outfit that means tracking down more than 2200 workers from Mexico and Central America who were ripped off while planting pine seedlings in the dirt throughout the southeastern USA. The other was the news that Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis announced new rules for temporary guest workers that would provide more protections for such workers and restore about a buck and hour that they had lost through Bush Administration rules.

One of the main requirements was a nod to US-based workers, but seems to already be incurring the disappointment, if not wrath, of farmers’ organizations in the USA. The DOL would now make growers and others actually prove that they have conducted job searches before they are allowed to legally receive guest workers. The American Nursery and Landscape Association and the California Farm Bureau Federation were both bemoaning how difficult this would make it for them and how few growers would access the guest worker program.

The landscapers have been one of the few business based groups ready to sign on and stand up for comprehensive immigration reform. They are other growers and farm based organizations have a huge investment in the issue of “future flow” for immigrant workers. These new rules put the squeeze on them, and presumably they will try to squeeze others for some real progress on immigration reform. The problem for comprehensive reform may be that in many of the conservative Republican districts where they have strength, they may now be more invested in a quick fix for their issue, rather than wallowing into the swamp of comprehensive reform making it more difficult for the rest of us to make sure the right thing is done for immigrants in the USA and not just for employers looking for cheap labor wherever the source.

Sheriff Arpaio Borderline Weirdness Alert

jstuart — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 22:39:45 +0000

San Jose Preparing for reentry to the US, it made sense, given all the recent publicity, to check the border crossings and see what was involved before showing up at the airport 3 or 4 hours early to wend our way home. Naturally for a view of whackiness at its worst, I thought I would see what Maricopa County Arizona’s notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio was doing these days to harass and bother people, especially since we are only one week away from a showdown in Phoenix where thousands are expected to protect his brand of anti-American vigilante injustice.

Wow, has the Arpaio watch become weird and bizarre!

I would have thought it might have gotten better since Arpaio’s deputies are no longer authorized by his buddy, Homeland Security’s Janet Napolitano, to pretend to be federal agents in rousting immigrants and anyone else based on his whim. But, I might have been wrong.

I looked at a press release he put out the other day which includes the following nugget:

“The most recent arrest was made last night as Sheriff’s human smuggling deputies arrested 12 illegal aliens in the North Valley near Anthem. Eleven of the illegal aliens were booked by Sheriff’s deputies into jail on state felony human smuggling charges.”

What in the blue blazes is a “human smuggling” deputy and how could this be a good thing for anyone in the Phoenix area? Let’s hope this peculiar turn of phrase means that Sheriff Joe now has some deputies that know about human smuggling, though given the way they have handled inmates under their custody in the past and the millions they have lost in lawsuits in this regard, I’m afraid they are confused frequently between being human smugglers and deputies.

The rest of the press release talked about something called “pro-texting,” as he called it. Which seems to be an immigrant alert system he claims is at large in his jurisdiction where people are texted cellphone warnings that his human smuggling deputies are in the area, and which would then seem to be a good thing, wouldn’t it? How else would one deal with such well know, over-the-top and past the bounds of law, and no self-proclaimed body snatchers?

The only other way would be to join the crowd in the warmer air of Phoenix next Saturday on a weirdness smackdown where the forces of good once again try to stop the evil Arpaio body snatchers and their wicked work.

Immigration Bill Up and Falling

jstuart — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:42:22 +0000

New Orleans Over the last 15 months I’ve had the opportunity to work closely with local and national efforts committed to winning comprehensive immigration reform. I know how urgently and desperately felt the need for real reform and real solutions are for 12 million undocumented workers and their families. I have been in meetings with the outstanding and firebrand Congressman Luis V. Gutierrez who finally introduced a bill whose initials read: C.I.R.A.S.A.P. – essentially comprehensive immigration reform now. But, saying all that and holding my breath I can already feel the bill falling even as it is put up on the calendar.

The story was buried in the Times at the bottom of page 26 in the 2^nd “news” section, and I couldn’t even find it in the Wall Street Journal – if in fact it was there. And, maybe that was the good news, because the bill was already bleeding badly from the expected cuts: “too liberal to win” according to “Democrats in the Senate;” no plan for “future flow” of labor which is a business/political cause in some Republican and Democratic quarters; and in the deepest gash the reporter Randal Archibold writes “the bill was declared dead on arrival by some Republicans – and, privately, by some Democrats – and denounced as impractical….” None of this is good news for the debut of our “best foot forward.”

Gutierrez’s argued that the bill “reflected a growing impatience with the pace of immigration change among a coalition of Democratic lawmakers, immigrant advocates, and labor and religious groups.” Certainly, it is not a new tactic to introduce a bill that might express the aspirations of a social movement and give the movement something to put on its flag to rally around. Unfortunately, that does not necessarily appear to be the strategy here. The bill is not a best statement of aspirations and hopes, because it already includes many of the benchmarks and obstacles frequently expressed to punish immigrants already in the US and others that are designed to repress immigrants. This bill seems to be the point of the campaign, rather than a tool for building the campaign. If that is the case the tactic overwhelms the strategy and threatens its goals of reform. I worry that this bill will now be met by tactical offerings from the right that are also force the agenda for punishment that reformers are not yet prepared to meet.

The impatience for reform is real. That impatience needs to be voiced from the immigrant community itself, so that it is then echoed by the employers who depend on such workers to their elected representatives as part of the demand for change. A bill needs to help shape the cry rising up from the barrios and workplaces for justice and reform. The field needs to dominate the beltway for there to be any hope of winning any semblance of real reform for immigrants (look at health care and say no more!).

Representative Gutierrez has been a warrior for reform, but he fights best as the sharp point of a social movement, not as a lone gladiator going out in the arena even if there is a cheering section among some part of the crowd. I hope this bill is a standard that we can raise in the battle, but we need to not be confused about how much remains undone in the field while this small statement is made in Washington.

Lou Dobbs: Meet Me in Phoenix

jstuart — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 15:41:37 +0000

New Orleans Here’s another good reason to celebrate this Thanksgiving: Lou Dobbs, immigrant hater-in-chief, claims he’s having a conversion experience. Now that he’s been bought and busted out of CNN, he was spinning in The Wall Street Journal and rapping to on an interview with Telemundo that he now believes there are “some” reasons justifying legalization for undocumented immigrants. He claims he’s now a friend “number one” for Latinos. Now someone beside the young will understand what a “frienemy” really is!

Of course if you really listen to the Telemundo interview on YouTube, which I did thanks to the prompting of a friend, you will find that the Lou-leopard has really not changed his spots all that much. This must be conversion-lite? Perhaps one of the best examples occurs when Dobbs is talking about his buddy, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the notorious and infamous jail keeper of Maricopa County.

On Telemundo Dobbs had this weird “defense” of Sheriff Joe having “lost” his 287g Homeland Security money due to his ongoing racial profiling and community terrorism because he was victimized by…yes, you guessed it: ACORN! Of course Sheriff Joe still has Homeland Security money from ex-Arizona Governor and now DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, he just doesn’t have quite as much. And, of course Sheriff Joe lost what bit he lost because he wasn’t really out looking for these immigrant “criminals” that Dobbs still wants to pretend are the vast majority of the 12 million undocumented workers in the USA. To me it sounds a little bit like Dobbs is simply moving his position a couple of degrees without changing any of his hateration. Now does he want us to believe his spiel will be he’s a friend of the immigrant, he just hates criminals, so it’s too bad that all immigrants are criminals. Is this where he’s going?

There’s a good way to clear this up. There is a huge call for a rally and march in Phoenix on January 16^th to force Arpaio to finally get right. The demand will once again be for Arpaio to stop the terrorism of Maricopa County communities and his immigrant bashing and baiting. The demand will also be to cease the abuses of the 287g program and to end the program since Arpaio is the poster boy for its unparalleled and unrestrained abuses. March with us in Phoenix, Lou! Stand up or shut up!

In fact I’m going to lobby right now for the organizers of the January 16^th March to formally invite Lou Dobbs to speak to the rally and clarify his position about immigrants. Standing with immigrants means standing against abuse.

Lou Dobbs, it’s time to man up for immigrants. You want anyone to believe you? Meet us in Phoenix and prove you not all talk, but are at least about a little bit of action – and justice for immigrants.

Memphis Tea Party Blues

jstuart — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:39:52 +0000

Memphis The lecture was the 2^nd in a series commemorating the 100^th anniversary of city planning in America, so 40 years in hundreds of city streets and Citizen Wealth and its themes were perfectly suited to the interests of students and civilians at the University of Memphis. I had warned my hosts that some of the excitement that came with me was unpredictable, but there was no reason to expect that there would be problems. Sunday night had been special and there were few clouds on the horizon other than some snarky comments on the Commercial Appeal site that carried an announcement that I was speaking.

By early Monday morning there signs of stirring in the hinterlands. A couple of alumni emails and some phone calls hit the university president’s office and were referred over for handling. The press office was drafting various responses. The campus police were mentioning they had a SWAT team. There were two interviews with local TV stations and the local paper, so who knew what to expect.

No one was around when we showed up at the auditorium, but before the start we heard there were a couple of Tea Party demonstrators with homemade signs out on Central Avenue. Most of the signs were riffs on the theme of “Commu-nuts!” which I thought was creative, cute, and meaningless, but whatever. Once speaking I noticed we had some outliers that started drifting in and sprinkling themselves in the crowd who didn’t fit the general study body type, so I assumed these were some of the protestors coming in from the misty cool of the Memphis evening.

The remarks went well enough, but as usual I was most interested in hearing the questions and continuing to gauge what was on the minds of people trying to grasp the impact of organizing.

The first guy was a roofing contractor who believed that his workers took off from October through December to make sure they got their Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) without any trouble. I asked him if hunting season had anything to do with it, but he didn’t appreciate the comment. It was hard to believe his example, but no sense in arguing about his experience.

A number of questions focused on real estate and pushed back around the role of CRA. These were some healthy readers of the CRA low-income family conspiracy to explain the greed of Wall Street and sub-primes. The real conspiracy is a blood boiler, so it’s not easy to understand why my friends on the right want to blame their neighbors rather than the multi-gazillion dollar beneficiaries who caused and collected the spoils.

Talking afterwards to some of the interrogators was interesting.

One who was most convinced that getting full access to benefits would create dependency was unemployed with a hard luck story that included an older brother with a meth addiction. It was very important to him to believe that “people chose poverty.”

Another who had raised a very pointed question about a position he claimed that ACORN had taken with HUD Secretary Cisneros during the Clinton Administration insisted we had lobbied against a change that would have impacted the “choice” of a family about where to live. I said I didn’t know the exact letter he was referring to, but our position on fair housing was to oppose any dilution of the protections against discrimination. We talked past each other for a little while. Afterwards he told me that ACORN had sued him in Memphis in 1995 at a realty outfit where he worked because the advertisements were alleged to not be sufficiently diverse. He claimed the suit was dismissed, which may have been the case. It turned out the complex question was really about a specific situation of a mixed Filipino client of his that wanted to live in a specific community. They had asked HUD for a fair housing clarification and 18 months later had gotten an answer which said they could represent the client in this area of “choice” discrimination, if they had a written request from the client. This was my best understanding of the unique circumstances. The bottom line: he had a beef with ACORN and was glad to finally have the chance to catch me in the open field to have me take some accountability for his grievance. Fair enough, I thought!

There were questions about illegal immigrants. Nothing on healthcare, which surprised me. Very little actually about ACORN.

People are out there searching, and they want to engage.

The paradox that underlies the controversy that seems to surround some of my visits to campuses these days is that the students love hearing the message and linking in with the passion for change and the call to organize, the community is intrigued, and the opponents are really delighted to have the opportunity to engage directly and have a chance to really debate their position with someone who is going to listen, respond, and pushback. That’s a hard bargain to beat and frankly a public service that University Presidents should be pretty proud to offer in building bridges in these troubled, polarized times.

Hunkering Down for Reform

jstuart — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:33:29 +0000

Washington Being around the DC area gave me an opportunity to ply friends and associates for information on what might be happening to some other critical efforts for reform now that health care is at center stage. The votes still don’t seem there for labor law reform and there’s no push to have it jump over health care in the queue of course.

More interestingly were the tidbits I gathered from my friends in the immigration reform movement. There seems to be an emerging consensus that this will be a longer fight than anyone would have wanted and that there needs to be a re-engagement tactically and strategically with the base to rebuild the momentum.

Importantly, there seems to also be two other important recognitions. One is that the anger and disappointment of the base about increased enforcement (like 287g) can’t be ignored or rationalized, especially in the absence of any positive steps towards reform by the Administration. The other is a recognition that to get this job done may require some real leveraging of the elections in 2010 and 2012, and in my view a much clearer quid pro quo about votes following reform, rather than hope.

This all is disappointing but at least seems like a dose of real politick that might mean that immigration reform is real when it comes and that we are finally girding for a fight rather than depending on the White House, which seems a disappointment for sure.

A professor I know well said something to me on the phone recently that put all of this in perspective. He observed that we now seemed to be getting the “Clinton Administration without the economic expansion!” That hurts, but sadly we may have to reckon with that being the truth as great expectations continue to dissolve.