Earlier in the week there was major concern about the continued backward, and repressive, direction that the Obama Administration has taken around immigrants in the United States and its mouthing of reform while it mandated repression.  Loud cries of anger and protest rose at the announcements of a toughening stance by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over the controversial and coercive Secure Communities program which too often has been a fast track to criminalizing economic refugees rather than violent interlopers, as well as a tool for the worst among us on these issues like Sheriff Joe Arpaio and other wannabe police officials that Secure Communities forcibly impresses into being immigration cops.  Some states, many cities, and other political jurisdictions have refused to comply with Secure Communities, rejected its attack on human rights and civil liberties, and refused the money, while the Administration has continued to force feed the program regardless and upped the ante in doing so recently.  Illinois and some other jurisdictions have continued their resistance, but clearly a deeper and perhaps more cynical politics is at work.

What seemed especially traitorous was the endorsement of Secure Communities in a hearty embrace by Cecilia Munoz, who has been a shining light for immigrant rights and before joining the Obama Administration after the election, one of the clearest and most effective voices for change with friends and allies in all sorts of organizations.  We certainly counted ourselves proudly among them at ACORN.   One of my friends speculated earlier this week about whether Cecilia had jumped to this conclusion or been pushed.

Yesterday’s announcement that the Administration will use “prosecutorial discretion” in dealing with deportation cases involving children who have been in the USA virtually all of their lives because they were brought here by their parents, perhaps illegally, families of servicemen and other divided family situations, those trying to serve in our military or attend college or similar situations, and instead only focus deportation procedures on criminal elements with records, gang membership, or similar problems essentially implements much of the promise of the DREAM Act.  Advocates estimated this could impact up to 2 million immigrants in the USA now.  Senator Durbin of Illinois, who has been a consistent and courageous advocate of the DREAM Act, was more subdued and guessed it might impact 100-200,000.  Anyway you count it, the announcement is a major step forward in alleviating a huge injustice and moral insult on the deepest principles of America.  DHS’s Napoliano was quick to point out that it doesn’t change the need for real reform or the DREAM Act, and for the first time in a long time, I have to say I absolutely agree with her on that point!

This is all temporary, and the President is making clear through these actions not only that he wants to hide behind Secure Communities on his right flank, but also that Latino and other voters in 2012 have to see him as the thin line between coming and going for immigrants and their families in this beleaguered category.

Though the details have not emerged, there can’t be much doubt that this was a deal that had Cecilia’s fingerprints all over it, while leveraging Senator Durban big time along with Majority Senate Leader Harry Reid, who still needed to deliver for the huge lift he got from Latino voters in his Nevada re-election last fall.  Obama never seems to understand that you have to give as well as get in politics to hold support, but Munoz, Durban, and Reid all understand the political equation only too well and no doubt knew the anger and frustration at losing everything was disillusioning if the only hope was the thin one of taking back control of Congress.

This was a classic velvet gloved fist political deal.  Give some relief to the the more innocent victims of our failure to enact DREAM and immigration reform, while hitting immigrants hard where they live and work, day after day, in their communities.  As NDLON attorney, Chris Newman, remarked on twitter last night, the new announcements on careful reading, still have moved to criminalize all immigrants in the USA.  The foot has been lifted from some necks with “prosecutorial discretion,” the principle continues to press down on all immigrants that the foot is still there, hovering, and can fall with any misstep or political push in an opposite direction.

There’s little doubt in my mind that Cecilia and the Senators crafted a deal, and it’s definitely better than nothing, so that’s something to celebrate.  Thank goodness Obama is facing an election, so he had to finally deliver something.  The sad part of it has to remain, that this is the best that all of their work on the inside could deliver.

Carlos had been pushed into a too early retirement and silencing of his voice and in that interval last year we had had a number of conversations about pieces I wanted him to write for Social Policy.  I urged him to write an overview of the prospects for immigration reform early in 2010, but he continually demurred that he wasn’t up to speed and promised to try with both of us knowing he wasn’t going to do it.  My bigger regret was that he had not delivered on his promise to write the larger piece I had asked for which would give his perspective on his time as an organizer and activist with La Raza Unida Partry, the political organizing and takeover of Crystal City, Texas, and all of the events in which he was so prominent when I knew him in Robstown, San Antonio, and Washington in the 1970’s.  We emailed, phoned, and Facebooked on the project for months through one missed deadline after another as I tried to wheedle him back down memory lane.  He would always counter with an invitation for me to come down to the Corpus area and share his passion for fishing on the Gulf and cooking whatever came up on the line.  That was a promise I often made, which I regret not having kept.

When I Googled for the story of what could have happened, it seems to have mostly been noted by young Hispanic writers he had influenced or who had seen his career as a pioneering breakthrough.  I gathered he had passed suddenly of a heart attack or stroke by himself at a rented condo at Port Aransas, which I remember mostly as a working class small town on the  before you take the ferry to Corpus.

Without a doubt Carlos was a standup progressive voice at the paper.  He gave my work some props in the 1990’s when Local 100 was organizing city and county workers in San Antonio and Bexar, and bought me a couple of lunches thanks to the paper and his friendship.  Nonetheless I was surprised not to see more voices from the days when he was the chief fundraiser and facilitator at the sharp edge of the Chicano movement in Texas as director of the TIED, the Texas Institute for Educational Development, which was essentially the 501c3 arm of the movement.

It is hard for me to believe that any organizer doesn’t know the name Jose Angel Guiterrez, who last I knew was a lawyer in Dallas after a stint in Oregon, but as Mayor of Crystal City was the face and voice organizing the “brown power” political takeover of the city and schools.  Those of us organizing low and moderate income people and people of color followed every detail and made pilgrimages to the city and county deep in the Texas valley to see what power meant in practice.  I can remember driving down there on vacation in either the fall of 1975 or maybe 1976 and camping along the way with my dog at the time, a cocker spaniel named JP (for Justice of the Peace after our own Pulaski County version of a political takeover, but that’s another story) to visit folks and see it all for myself and take away what I could learn from the experience.   Guiterrez was quoted in one Carlos’ obituary where he was only identified as a political science professor at the University of Texas at Arlington.

I think I met Carlos that trip in Robstown, his old hometown, where he showed me around.  I can remember another time visiting in San Antonio for something, where he picked me up in a Mustang and later I stayed at his place on the couch.  I can also remember a cute girlfriend of his and us waking up and almost missing my flight as hotroded me out to the airport.

In those days Carlos was the behind the scenes organizer maintaining the research, communication, and paper trails that provided the financial support work for Crystal City and the movement.  His skilled writing moved the proposals, his silver tongue knocked on the doors in DC and NYC to raise the money, and his time as an activist allowed him to beat it back to lead the David Hunters of the Stern Fund, the Dick Boones of the Field Foundation, and anyone else he could down to the Valley to deepen their commitment and support.

La Raza Unida Party was big stuff.  In 1972 the party fielded a third party effort in Texas behind a 29-year old Ramsey Muniz and while losing garnering over 215,000 votes or 6% of the total establishing its ballot line for years and its position as a force not only in Texas but throughout the Southwest and wherever Hispanics where looking seriously at politics.  Carlos was active in the campaign, though I never can recall whether he was campaign manager on the first run in ’72 or the second in ’76..  I think likely the second shot, since the overt nature of the party effort and his role would have made it harder to protect the tax exemption of TIED.

There is no bigger backer of multi-party endorsement or fusion tactics than I have been, but even the great Working Families Party of New York is only now pushing past 200,000 votes while the La Raza Unida Party had lightening in a bottle almost from the beginning if only the pieces could have been welded together as tightly.  They were the civil rights movement in the Texas Rio Grande Valley and built the inspiration and bridge for majority Latino political constituencies to win empowerment.  Their local base was always contentious given the history of Democratic machine voting and the padrone system in the Valley made so famous in Lyndon Johnson’s elections all the way to the White House.  The push back on their radical empowerment and educational programs from more conservative Latino voices and entrenched business and agricultural interests was intense and still casts a long shadow.

All of these are stories that Carlos should have told and could have told better than anyone.  Almost two decades as a San Antonio journalist and columnist no doubt gave him the skills to weave the pieces together.  Missing his work and writing creates a vacuum.

But this is my disappointment, not necessarily Carlos’ regret.  We got together a few years ago in San Francisco at a dinner where I cadged him an invite to see me and other old friends on the Coast.  He was visiting his daughter who was taking a program at Stanford that summer.  We all laughed about the old times.  We worried about the new times and the usual struggles of jobs and L.I.F.E.  He was happy and resiliently rode good spirits through the struggles and setbacks of the day right to the end.

There are many stories that must continue to be told and learned.  We lost many with Carlos.  Enough said.  Deeply missed.

New Orleans

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and outgoing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi have also stated that they are willing to have a go at passing the DREAM Act in the lame duck Congress.   As I have said earlier, this is good politics but passage would be so surprising that it might end all controversy about whether or not there is a God.

The DREAM act has had the most heat on the streets.  Students have shown the courage of civil rights organizers during much of the year, even when the outcome was likely deportation to home countries that in many cases they had never seen or visited.

Let’s get some things straight.  The DREAM Act is not a free “amnesty” ticket for teens.  The language leaves rocks in the road and mountains to climb:

The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act (The “DREAM Act”) is a piece of proposed federal legislation in the United States that was first introduced in the United States Senate on August 1, 2001^[1] and most recently re-introduced there and the United States House of Representatives on March 26, 2009. This bill would provide certain inadmissible or deportable alien students who graduate from US high schools, who are of good moral character, arrived in the U.S. as minors, and have been in the country continuously for at least five years prior to the bill’s enactment, the opportunity to earn conditional permanent residency if they complete two years in the military or two years at a four year institution of higher learning. The alien students would obtain temporary residency for a six year period. Within the six year period, a qualified student must have “acquired a degree from an institution of higher education in the United States or [have] completed at least 2 years, in good standing, in a program for a bachelor’s degree or higher degree in the United States,” or have “served in the uniformed services for at least 2 years and, if discharged, [have] received an honorable discharge.”^[2] Military Enlistment contracts require an eight year commitment.^[3] “Any alien whose permanent resident status is terminated [according to the terms of the Act] shall return to the immigration status the alien had immediately prior to receiving conditional permanent resident status under this Act.”   (from Wikipedia with sources in the House and Senate language of the bill)

Another way of looking at DREAM would be as an in-country visa program similar to what we now use to allow good students and other skill sets into the US now.  Why only open the doors to those outside, if there are other students who are succeeding here now, performing productively as students, and willing to live on the tight wire of life in order to be provisional Americans?   If we could get past the bias, there might be some common sense and the DREAM Act speaks not to a free ride, but at least a safe passage for those able to stay the course.

Reading the New York Times, it appears the only other viable option is laying tracks north for another underground railroad, but this time to Winnipeg Manitoba, Canada.  It may be the frozen north, but at least they understand the value of the hard work and education of immigrants.  In fact that is the American history and tradition for most of us, but it currently seems to be part of the national amnesia.

Win, lose, or draw, we might at least get a good fight out of this, and once we’re at close quarters, maybe we’ll make some progress, so DREAM On!

Shreveport

There is a clearly a strategic split among the reformers that has existed in a dialectic for some time, but is increasingly sharpening in more stark relief between organizers who believe that the chance has to come from local projects and grassroots organizing and resistance versus the policy-lobbyist wonks with the greater resources still spinning the stories of a immaculate change conception with the Beltway.  This division is spoken of in quiet tones behind the scenes but is constantly part of the debate.  With more than 150 organizers in New Orleans the absence of some of the folks from the national campaign “table” was shocking to me, even if there presence had been no more than solidarity.

I hope I’m not grabbing at straws but the best news I heard in my conversations was the increasing confidence that the days of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s reign of terror in Maricopa County, Arizona are numbered.  I heard rumors repeated from Justice Department sources, which has now sued Arpaio for federal violations in recent weeks, is that he will be indicted after the mid-term elections are over in November.  He will be a martyr to the whack right, but given the line drawn in the sand for years by so many in Arizona; this will be a significant victory.  I wish I could report more optimism from organizers on the chances of Attorney General Godard replacing Governor Jan “Brain Freeze” Brewer, but most just shrugged that there was no contest still.  I don’t know.

Good energy and deepening conviction will have to be what we go on now, since the numbers and politics seem aligned increasingly against us.

New Orleans

Wisely, because of travel concerns for many of their organizers, who are also constantly harassed and under surveillance due to their status, the organizers had arranged for video streaming of the conference, which despite the stutters and stops that go with such technology, meant that I – along with many others – could watch and listen to the speakers even while preparing for meetings about foreclosure resistance back in Phoenix at the time.  It felt weird to be in the desert watching organizers from Phoenix that I had last seen marching against SB 1070 in Arizona standing and talking in New Orleans.   When one speaker mentioned that more than 500 law enforcement jurisdictions in the country were “enforcers” for Janet Napolitano and President Obama’s ICE because of the wildly unaccountable and abusive 287g program, it was impressive that more than 100 had made it to New Orleans.  The city is a safe house for such meetings, since we now have a national reputation for enforcing no laws whatsoever with the police who are as often the criminals as anyone else.

NDLON, coming off its steady fights against Sheriff Arpaio and leadership of the massive coalition assembled to oppose SB 1070, is showing increasing leadership for the immigration reform movement in its willingness to stand with conviction and courage against abuses.  This conference is one of two that are expressly planned to deal with creating a strategy and increasing commitments to oppose abusive enforcement practices.

This work speaks to a grassroots rebellion and strategic shift in the reform effort.  The beltway strategies that were premised on the President’s leadership and a docile Congress willing to embrace reform have been discredited and with every passing day the ability to imagine reform without a true movement are unimaginable.  Ironically, many of the national reform forces, regardless of the importance of their contributions, have been unwilling to embrace resistance and movement strategies as off message and unsettling to the declining head count in Congress on this razor sharp wedge issue.  In a long run, not a short sprint, it is hard not to join NDLON and its allies in hunkering down to fight in the trenches, where it counts and where change must be made.  Whether on video stream, in person, or watching for the reports as consensus emerges, this conference and others in the future like it are perhaps the best harbingers for hope for reform.

Phoenix

As part of the Administration policy, criminalizing the employers has become more aggressive and effective in their weapons against immigrants.  From today’s Times:

“Under a policy that went into effect in April 2009, the Obama administration is taking a much tougher stance on employers who hire illegal immigrants than any administration in decades. Enforcement agents have subjected businesses across the country to much greater scrutiny, using tactics that were almost nonexistent until two years ago. Federal officials said they expected to announce record numbers of investigations and fines by the end of the year. As of July 31, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, had announced investigations of 2,073 businesses so far this year, outpacing the 1,461 conducted in all of 2009.”

In the story in the New York Times dining section the whole gamut of contradictions was on rare display.  Our friends at the Interfaith Workers’ Justice, based in Chicago, were clear that restaurants should pay a fair wage.  The Restaurant Association seemed to be warning that paying fairly and hiring legal would mean that prices would go up at your favorite chi-chi spot, though I’m betting prices are pretty stiff now.  To no one’s surprise he Pew Research Center seems clear that the back of the house in a restaurant is an open door for employment for recent immigrants:

“Out of a total of about 12.7 million workers in the restaurant industry, an estimated 1.4 million — both legal and illegal immigrants — are foreign born, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. According to 2008 estimates from the Pew Hispanic Center, about 20 percent of the nearly 2.6 million chefs, head cooks and cooks are illegal immigrants. Among the 360,000 dishwashers, 28 percent are undocumented, according to the estimates.”

So, if 10-15% of the industry is undocumented, ICE is shooting fish in a barrel it would seem, but rather than continuing the old school system of raiding the fish and watching them swim, now ICE and the Obama Administration is shooting the fisherman – the employers – rather than the fish.  And, there are recent examples of bagging some big ones:

“In June, the owner of two Maryland restaurants who pleaded guilty to hiring and harboring illegal immigrants was ordered to forfeit to the government more than $700,000 in assets — in addition to his motorcycle — and faces up to 10 years in prison. In November, a restaurateur in Mississippi who had pleaded guilty to hiring illegal immigrants was sentenced to a year in prison and a year of supervised release. Combined fines in the case, shared among several defendants, amount to $600,000.”

Many of the chefs and restaurateurs are making it easy for them by believing that they can slick this problem away by paying in cash.  Whoa, Nellie!  Not happenin captain!  The hole got dug deeper and the net flung wider.

This new policy will scare some criminal employers into line, and for sure listening to their blushing whines about their practices doesn’t encourage much sympathy for them, but it won’t work, it’s simply too big.

If they want a new immigration policy and if we want immigration reform, ICE needs to read the industry and employers’ lament and go on and take the next logical step:  criminalize the customers!  Then hell will finally break loose in full helter-skelter.  It’s the “going after the johns” strategy on prostitution by targeting the beneficiaries of the “criminal” activity.  It’s just a matter of time at this rate before someone goes in and frog marches a bunch of high rollers at a fancy $100 a plate meal into some paddy wagons and listens to them squeal, so we finally have the public engaged in the issue and reform.  Maybe then we will get somewhere.

In the meantime the pain of these policies spreads like a disease through the land.