Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog » Immigration

Wedging Immigration for the Democrats

jstuart — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 15:00:44 +0000

San Pedro Sula There was a strange meeting hosted by President Obama and some administration officials at the White House this week for a small group of immigration reform advocates including Ali Noorani of the National Immigration Forum, Eliseo Medina of SEIU, the head of the National Council of La Raza, and a couple of others, surprisingly even a representative of the Florida DREAM folks. Emerging from the meeting various people were interviewed and all of the statements looked like thy had just been to an old Democratic Party club meeting planning for the next election, rather than honing strategy around the prospects of reform, no matter how narrow. There was talk of the President making a speech about the importance of immigration reform, and generally all of the interviews I read seemed to be singing from the same hymnal and the stanzas focused on bashing the Republicans.

God knows they probably deserve it on this score and so many others, but the Democrats have hardly showered themselves with praise from the President through the Congress for the ways they have equally pandered to the worst impulses around immigration fears and in some cases xenophobia and old school racism in the shallow debates thus far about immigration reform.

Talking to people knowledgeable about the meeting, most of the participants seemed to feel that they had been brought in to the White House by the President for a close inspection of the woodshed. Seems that for an hour he read the “reformers” the riot act about how they needed to stop pushing the Democrats and start bashing the Republicans because they had not carried their weight at all in the President’s view and the Democrats were heads taller than the Republicans in their steadfastness for reform. Implicit in the President’s sudden affection for bringing forward the immigration issue now though has to be his belief, and the Party’s, that it is a good wedge issue for the Democrats in the mid-term election, especially with close contests at stake in the southwest like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s rough race in Nevada.

Admittedly, the reformers strategy has been weak and beltway-centric and all admonitions to bring the fight into home turf and vulnerable, battleground districts where a movement could build and we could prove that we could punish and win, have been rejected, and too often even obvious engagements like Arizona, first with Arpaio and now with SB 1070, have seemed to win support from funders and national efforts weakly and almost with fingers holding noses near the ground. But, even saying that, it hardly justifies a free ride for the Democrats who have run from the issue as well and under Obama and Secretary Napolitano have been enforcement firsters, reformers whenever folk.

The midterm elections are important in keeping reform efforts alive in many areas, granted Mr. President, but for immigration reform to become a reality it has to win as a moral issue, not simply a matter of party politics. All of these efforts are going to be setback if the Democrats from the top on down simply try to insert the issue as a wedge with or without the help of the reformers, and still have no plan for how to make reform a reality.

Profiling in Arizona? Hell Yes

jstuart — Mon, 31 May 2010 12:58:11 +0000

Phoenix SB 1070 is on the two month countdown to implementation barring action by the Justice Department or others to block its enforcement. The biggest rub has been the preemptive racial profiling of anyone by color or accent might seem to be an immigrant. Governor Brewer of Arizona has claimed that this is not the case largely “because she says so,” by maintaining that if you say the sky is green that does the job no matter how many times your eyes scream the lie.

My Rathke great grand parents and grandparents were German immigrants who had been farming in the Ukraine on a special program but refused conscription and ended up first in the Midwest and then in my grandfather’s case working as a foreman on the orange groves and ranches of Orange County, California, when there were still oranges, with the Mexican laborers. They were born there but came to live and work here. In this country we all have a story. As a second generation American, my chance of being profiled is nil.

On Thursday we were driving from Glendale back into Phoenix. Suddenly, a bubble light was signaling us over. The prototypical, large white cop was dressed in a flak jacket, which seemed odd for traffic duty in Glendale. A window next to me on the passenger side had been broken by vandals who failed to rob the car, but still left the spider web of dented and broken glass as the footprint of their effort. The cop wanted the license and registration of the Mexican-American driver of the vehicle. She gave over the registration and recited her license number from memory since she didn’t have it on her. Despite the fact that he didn’t ask, I offered and turned mine over, since the policeman was claiming that the only reason for stopping us was the window and the need to prove that the car was not stolen. The cop was uniformly friendly. He checked on his computer, and sent us on our way.

So, was this racial profiling? Hell, yes! Would I have been stopped if I were driving, as a red headed white guy? No. And, as my friend pointed out, what would have happened had I not been in the car? Would he have asked to search the car? The trunk? If he had noticed her purse on the back floor, would he have asked to verify if she really did not have her license and ID with her? Where could this have gone? Where might the story have ended?

On Friday evening I walked into a Circle K gas/food store with another friend, also Latina. She asked me to take a six pack of Corona up and pay for her while she looked for something else. The young voluble clerk, took the beer and my money, and then asked if he could see the ID of the woman who he had seen walk in with me. I said I don’t think she has any ID on her. For that matter neither did I, having just strolled out a couple of blocks to lend a hand. He starts spouting that Arizona law requires that everybody who comes in together has to show an ID to prove age. He seemed to feel absolutely no irony that he was lecturing me about an ID and had still not asked me to produce mine?!? I said, OK, I get it. I said, hold the beer, and I’ll be right back. We left, and I walked back 5 minutes later alone. He pulled our beer from behind the counter for me and reached out for my money. Still not asking me for an ID. So, I said, hey, buddy, I’m from Louisiana, what is this nonsense all about? He claimed they had been stung by the police a couple of days before with a young girl, and a co-worker had lost his job as the eyes were batting and had not asked for an ID. Well, yeah, but we were a long way from under aged, bub? He then claimed that Circle K had a policy formerly of asking for ID for anyone who looked under 30, but now were recommending a request for under 40. It was all so preposterous, that I just laughed since he seemed to be making it up as he went along.

As I hit the door to leave, he yelled back at me, “Welcome to Arizona!”

My point exactly, Madame Governor! This is now your state where racial profiling is the status quo and standard operating procedure.

Simply claiming at the school house door as Governors Ross Barnett of Mississippi and George Wallace of Alabama did in their day that you aren’t racist and you love darker people in your own way, is not enough to change the reality of every word and deed all around you.

Whether the deep South 50 years ago or the border states now, this has to change!

Marching to Arizona with the Troops

jstuart — Wed, 26 May 2010 14:24:55 +0000

New Orleans Time to pack for Arizona! It’s important to join the mobilization on May 29^th with the assembled forces to stand and protest against the implementation of SB 1070, the anti-immigrant, racial profiling bill that is terrorizing good people in Arizona.

I was surprised talking to a friend in Arizona yesterday when she told me that the President was sending troops to the border. I thought this might be a rumor. Wrong. Later it was all over the papers that Obama was dispatching 1500 National Guard ostensibly to deal with drug trafficking and crime along the border.

At the same time I watched Obama being interviewed before the Suns-Lakers game on a basketball court mostly about, well, basketball. He also said he “was personally” opposed to SB 1070 and was in support of the Suns having worn their Los Suns jerseys in solidarity against the haters on Cinco de Mayo. Charles Barkley and his buddies talked about Obama being the “omni-president” with his fingers on everything since he also had opinions on the 1^st draft pick choice for the Washington Wizards and the step up in Rondo’s game for the Celtics.

You can’t have it both ways. I can’t pretend that Obama is all over the basketball schedule and predictions, but is not mindful of the message he sends when he dispatches troops to the border posturing to beef up enforcement at the same time that tens of thousands are assembling to march in Phoenix this Saturday morning to demand justice.

There’s politics and then there is right and wrong.

The omni-President cannot be all things to all people.

The days on the calendar are steadily being crossed off to the point when enforcement of this grotesque travesty. We need the President to do the right thing then and refuse to cooperate with this cynical and racist legislation. When are we going to hear his real plans to act? Tick. Tock. Tick-tock!

Meanwhile it looks like all of us will be marching, but in this case the federales will be running for the border, while the rest of stand to be counted in the streets of Phoenix.

We need you with us there on the hot streets, Mr. President, and not sitting on a basketball court talking about draft picks.

Hope for Immigration Reform: Kennesaw State and Highland Park

jstuart — Sat, 15 May 2010 12:57:09 +0000

Cusco In the last several days two separate, but in my view, related events in very, very different parts of the country are starting what it takes to create change: make reform impossible to avoid because it’s too close to home! First, the girls’ basketball team in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park voted to boycott Arizona, stop their bake sales and not go to Scottsdale for their tournament. Secondly, there were again loud protests at Kennesaw State in George over the arrest and potential deportation of one of their fellow 21-year old senior students close to graduation. Different parts of the country, but the same theme – something has to be done about immigration reform. I bet they are related in ways that are less than obvious as well. I would bet money that the girls basketball team in Highland Park knows fellow students who are undocumented and are standing in solidarity with their friends just as the supposedly rock-rimmed conservative campus of Kennesaw State did in Georgia, a thousand miles away.

The Kennesaw story is also about the continued abuse that President Obama and Secretary Napolitano are allowing of the 287g program since the local yokel sheriff turned upside down a deal between ICE and the student because he got bent out of shape about a wrong address somewhere in the file. Heck, bubba, she’d already admitted to no docs, what did you expect a pristine passport or something. She was on a study release deal with ICE to roll out after graduation, but you have to get all out of shape.

Arizona over and over again and soon there will be hundreds and thousands of these very local fights about the immigration status of people we know and love. And, it will cost votes and it will build a movement. Where will you be then, Mr. President?

Since it’s a story about Georgia, I’m betting many have missed it, but here’s to the kids in Highland Park and Kennesaw State – lead on, brothers and sisters, lead on!

Kennesaw State student leaves Cobb jail

By Rhonda Cook and Andria Simmons

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
12:55 p.m. Friday, May 14, 2010

The Kennesaw State University student at the center of a heated debate
over immigration left the Cobb County jail late Friday morning. Jessica
Colotl had turned herself in earlier Friday. She posted bond, which had
been set at $2,500, and left the jail, accompanied by her attorney, around
11:40 a.m.

Cobb County Sheriff Neal Warren secured a warrant to arrest Colotl, 21,
Wednesday night on charges of lying on a jail booking form. A KSU officer
had arrested Colotl in March for driving without a license.

She was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement but a
month later, at the urging of KSU, Colotl's friends and advocacy groups,
ICE agreed to defer her case until she completed her degree. She was
released from a federal detention center in Alabama and allowed to return
to the metro Atlanta area.

Warren said he issued the arrest warrant this week after learning that
Colotl gave a false Duluth address when she was booked into the jail for
the traffic violation in March.

In another development Friday, federal immigration officials said they
will revisit the decision to defer the case against Colotl.

Ivan Ortiz-Delgado, spokesman for the federal department of Immigration
and Customs Enforcement, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday
the recent charges brought against Colotl will require the agency to
reconsider her status.

"The charges brought against her changed the conditions" that led to ICE's
decision to defer her case and release her from custody, Ortiz-Delgado
said.

"ICE will review Ms. Colotl's case agian and make an appropriate
determination. However, that has not happened yet," Ortiz-Delgado said.

Her attorney, Chris Taylor, and advocates will hold a news conference
Friday afternoon. It is not known if Colotl will attend.

But Taylor said in a  statement Thursday that he did not foresee any
complications in her posting bond and being released from jail.

"It is obvious from all the documents that I’ve seen that she has done
nothing wrong and has given her proper address to Cobb County and
immigration officials," Taylor said. "There has been no crime committed.
Jessica looks forward to defending herself against these false and
baseless charges.”

The American Civil Liberties Union on Friday accused Warren of  "misplaced
priorities and abusing the power granted to him" by the 287(g) program,
which trains local law enforcement officers to work with federal
authorities in identifying illegal immigrants who are arrested. The
Georgia ACLU office has asked the Department of Homeland Security Civil
Rights and Civil Liberties Division and the Department of Justice Civil
Rights Division to look at the case.

“Jessica’s case is yet another outrageous example of the unaccountable
local enforcement of immigration laws in Cobb County gone awry,” said
Azadeh Shahshahani, ACLU of Georgia National Security/Immigrants’ Rights
Project director. “It is past time to put an immediate end to the 287(g)
program in Cobb, which has led to racial profiling and the targeting of
hard-working members of the community, the separation of families and the
creation of an atmosphere of terror among immigrant communities in Cobb.
287(g) in Cobb has led to a less safe community for us all.”

Nancy Bodiford, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff's Office, said authorities
were tipped off about the false address by a member of the media and that
led to the arrest warrant. A reporter went to the residence listed on
Colotl's public booking records and discovered she did not live there. The
reporter was not identified.

Workers in the leasing office for the Duluth apartment complex at the
address on the arrest warrant told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on
Thursday that they didn't have anything "to share at this time."

Colotl, a Mexico native, has been in the United States for much of her
life, coming here with her parents when she was 10. Friends said the
family moved often until Colotl graduated from DeKalb County's Lakeside
High School in 2006 with a 3.8 grade-point average.

Her troubles began March 29 when she was stopped on the KSU campus and
charged with impeding the flow of traffic. She reportedly told the officer
she had a Mexican driver's license but could not find it; she offered him
a Mexican passport that expired in August 2007 as identification. While
driving without a license is a relatively minor offense, making a false
statement is a felony with a maximum punishment of five years in prison
and a $1,000 fine.

The student, who will turn 22 next week, was arrested the next day, taken
to the Cobb County jail and handed over to immigration authorities under
an agreement the county has with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
the 287(g) program.

Colotl was then taken to the Etowah Detention Center in Alabama to await
deportation.

At the urging of KSU President Daniel Papp, she was released May 1 and the
federal immigration agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, gave her
a year’s reprieve so she could complete her degree. Friends say she is two
semesters away from graduating.

ICE spokesman Ivan Ortiz said Colotl was granted "deferred action" status,
which did not change her immigration status but effectively delays her
deportation. If conditions change, she could be placed back into removal
proceedings.

Ortiz said ICE is waiting to assess the new charge before any decisions
are made.

"Our priority is to remove those who pose the great risk to the security
of our communities and national security," he said. "In this case, this
woman is not a criminal alien. That does not mean we are going to look the
other way and we are not going to process her. But our priority is the
removal of dangerous convicted criminal aliens."

Colotl's situation has sparked debate between human rights groups and
advocates for stronger immigration laws.

Human rights organizations and Latino community groups decried the
sheriff's actions as being a "witch hunt" and a waste of money.

“We are very concerned that Cobb County is taking action against Jessica
in retaliation for speaking out," said Mary Bauer, the legal director of
the Southern Poverty Law Center. "We think these actions are illegal, and
we’ll be in looking into that closely. This highlights the urgent need for
Congress to reform our broken immigration system.”

D.A. King, an outspoken critic of what he says is lax enforcement of
immigration laws, said the major concern is Colotl's enrollment at a
public university.

"The focus of these violations should be on the Board of Regents [of the
University System of Georgia]," he said. "The young lady who was in this
country illegally is by far the most sympathetic figure in this mess."

University System spokesman John Millsaps with the university system said
college applications ask about citizenship but there is no process for
verifying it if the would-be students says they are a U.S. citizen. The
question of immigration status becomes an issue only if a college
applicant says he is from another country. Out-state-students and exchange
students pay four times the in-state rate and Colotl was assumed to be a
Georgia resident because she graduated from a DeKalb County high school.

Papp has said that Colotl will now be charged out-of-state tuition.

Others argued over whether a federal program that trains local law
enforcement on immigration enforcement is Draconian or a necessary tool
that should be applied the same for everyone.

Cobb was the first law enforcement agency in Georgia and one of a few
nationwide to be accepted into the federal 287(g) program, an agreement
with immigration officials to check the status of everyone taken into the
jail. Cobb just renewed its contract with the federal government in
October.

The 287(g) program was designed to find violent illegal immigrants, but
critics say it more often catches minor offenders such as those violating
traffic laws.

Debbie Seagraves with the Georgia office of the American Civil Liberties
Union said local law enforcement abuses the program and the handling of
Colotl was evidence of that.

Warren, the Cobb sheriff, defended the program in a written statement
Thursday.

“I value any tool that helps me enforce the law and remove violators from
our community," he said.

Game Changers on Health and Immigration

jstuart — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 19:00:55 +0000

Takoma Park Sunday in the early spring turns out to be a big event for a change in the DC area for two reasons.

The final votes are being wrangled into the corral for health care reform, and it looks like what Majority Leader Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) calls the “final yard” will be handled in heart stopping, breath taking fashion with prayers said and fingers crossed. Good news for millions without health care, warts and all.

And, in momentous timing simultaneously, tens of thousands, certainly no less than 50,000 immigrants and their supporters and maybe as many as 100,000, are rallying and marching to demand real, comprehensive immigration reform after more than a year of suffering through empty promises and holding back anger and what Gustavo Torres, the director of the CASA de Maryland, which is bringing more marchers to the rally than any other organization, calls “frustration.” If the numbers hit the high end of organizers’ hopes, then perhaps immigration advocates will take a lesson from the health care struggle that will be crunching to a close, one way or another, at the Capitol as they pass by on the way to their buses. The immigration organizers might realize that there is a real movement behind them pushing out of the pain and into the streets that must have relief and win reform. Perhaps they will stop stifling the grassroots base and unleash them por la causa. If they do, and the beltway lobbying machine finally becomes coupled to the strategy and tactics of a movement, then a real bill, and not simply a convoluted politicians’ “framework” might emerge.

I wonder how different the health care bill might have looked and whether or not these last ditch manueverings would have been necessary had the health care organizers also stopped “managing” the base, and moved patients, the uninsured millions, and the victims of the current system to the forefront? There’s a reason that the politicians don’t like to see these messy problems firsthand. It’s easier to wheel and deal in the cloakrooms of Congress than to have to wrestle with what the President is calling, “doing the right thing.”

The courage of the nuns in the ultra hierarchical Catholic Church is an interesting case study in how the base can trump the brass, or in this case, I should say the bishops. These quotes from an article on their split in the Times says it all for how the game can change:

“When I read the Gospel, where is Jesus? He’s healing the lepers,” Sister Simone said. “It’s because of his Gospel mandate to do likewise that we stand up for health care reform.”

“We have a number of nuns in his district, and they’ve been calling him [Congressman Stupak],” said Sister Regina McKillip, a Dominican nun who lives in Washington. “Who’s been on the ground, in the field? Who knows the struggles people have to deal with? It’s the sisters.”

It’s time to listen to the base, the brothers and sisters in the streets and barrios, and let them raise their voices and put their feet to the ground and change the way politics is done by reminding many in Washington, that this is not really a “game” at all.

Guest Worker Abuses

dine — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:10:09 +0000

Saket Soni and the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice have beaten the drum in the more than four years since Hurricane Katrina about the abuses to south Asian guest workers pulled into the shipyards during the desperate labor supplies after the storm. Lawsuits against Signal International now coming to light reveal clearly the dark underbelly of the H-2B temporary guest worker program, and why it is so clearly not a solution to the immigration crises in our country.

Primarily Indian metalworkers paid brokers up to $20,000 USD, which is literally a king’s ransom in rupees, to undertake the work. They expected and put up with the terrible living conditions common in a labor camp in the shipyard, especially in the post-Katrina. What they also expected was that promises of a green card which would allow them to continue working in the USA would also be delivered, since that was so clearly the line that recruited them to the shipyards. Unfortunately, as any reader would know, that line was a total line.

As the 500 workers agitated about their conditions, circumstances, and the injustice of it all, supported by assistance from the Workers’ Center and national advocacy by NDLON, the National Day Labor Organizing Network, and its leaders, Pablo Alvarado and Chris Newman, the boss according to the court papers and an article by Julia Preston in The New York Times, saw the Indians as “whiners” and wanted to target and remove the ringleaders. Where did the boss go for advice in this area? Well, right to agents of ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement outfit so notorious throughout the land.

The advice was a classic labor busting technique more reminiscent of the old organizer tales of the Wobblies tarred and feathered and ridden out on the rails than anything else. The agent according to the boss said, “Don’t give them any advance notice. Take them all out of the line on the way to work; get their personal belongings; get them in a van, and get their tickets, and get them to the airport, and send them back to India.”

It didn’t work out so well in this one situation since folks like the Workers’ Center were all over this bad boy, but I have to wonder how many thousands of times this advice would have yielded exactly the expected result? This situation may see some justice through the courts, but this is rare.

The notion that we can build a “guest worker” program on the backs of desperate immigrant workers, almost classically exploitative labor contractors and recruiters, and still make a big deal out of the Statue of Liberty and any core values of the United States as a nation of immigrants, is the cruelest irony underlying all of this.

Napolitano Bringing Heat on Obama

NoorinLadhani — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:47:59 +0000

Silver Spring A Sunday feature in the Washington Post had Obama rating his initial chances at election as 25-30%. He was wrong then, but he could be right now about re-election if he continues to alienate the burgeoning Hispanic base that was key to his victory. A professor in today’s Times called the situation for immigrants the “worst of both worlds,” meaning that immigrants were facing escalating enforcement with no concrete prospects for reform.

The front page article on the Times was based on the virtually below the radar actions, which they labeled “small” butsignificant by immigrant reform advocates in Los Angeles and New York City targeting Homeland Security andtherefore immigration chief copy, Janet Napolitano, as the problem. She danced around the issue of Arpaio in the Times, by pretending that the 287g subcontracted immigration enforcement to cities and counties might be too onerous for the Sheriff, who has publicly just scoffed at them thus far.

More devastating as a time bomb for the President and Napolitano might be the eruption of hunger strikes in a private prison in Louisiana that holds detainees who have been swept up in the immigrant bashing. Reports from the Saket Soni, director of the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice as covered by Chris Kromm at the Institute for Southern Studies, hit the wire services and elsewhere this week about the sub-human conditions being allowed detainees in these private Homeland Security compounds.

I was shocked to read about Guantanamo conditions existing in Louisiana.

The lack of progress on reform and the steady tightening of the screws on immigrants that is now being allowed and encouraged by the Administration is no longer a well kept secret, and will not long be something that the Secretary can keep from bringing the President down unless there is action on all fronts now.

These kinds of reports will guarantee that the response will not be “small” for long!

Police: No on 287(g)

jstuart — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:16:43 +0000

New Orleans Big city police chiefs from places like Miami,Sacramento, and elsewhere came out yesterday against 287(g). They don’t want local police forces to be confused with the immigration storm troopers of ICE.

The Miami chief in a published report cited the downturn of cooperation between immigrants and police in his city as dating from a “get-tough-on-immigrants” speech made by Senator John McCain during the campaign. He and others stated the obvious: new immigrants do not know the difference between the local police force and federal officials. No, duh, in many of the countries from which they hail the federales are synonymous with the local police and don’t have the nice qualms around jurisdictional limits we find (supposedly) in the states.

I’m not sure what it takes Secretary Napolitano and President Obama to throw out 287(g) and the ravages of blockheads like Sheriff Joe Apaio, but big city chiefs with significant populations of immigrants are shouting loudly and clearly, if they would just listen, that 278(g) is hurting, rather than helping their departments, their cities, and the real fight against crime.

Sin Nombre and Gomorrah

jstuart — Wed, 13 May 2009 15:59:40 +0000

New Orleans We saw two back-to-back powerful movies, Sin Nombre and Gomorrah, both of which spoke profoundly and movingly to our work and why it is so life-and-death to our people. Sin Nombre was an extra treat because the writer and director, Cary Fukunaga, was in the audience and answered questions at the end of the film.

SN is a beautiful movie that dramatically portrays the immigrant trail from Honduras in Central America riding the rails through Mexico to the Texas border crossing at Reynosa. A deported father is making his way back to his new family in New Jersey and takes the young woman who is now his daughter on the trip. A gang originally Salvadoran is the other piece of this story since they prey on the traveling immigrants adding an additional level of fear and violence to the constant battle for survival of these economic refugees heading for estades unidos.

Gomorrah leeches out every last bit of romanticism that any may have had about the work of the “mafia” in Italy. This movie is brutish and almost stark and colorless in the drab and defeating way it portrays life in the huge apartment blocks dominated by poverty, unemployment, crime, and drugs and therefore ruled in its own way by these criminal clans with only the slightest sense of any code.

In both movies it seems almost inescapable to conclude that life for the poor and powerless in these very different countries in Europe and Central America has virtually no value to anyone. The movies though very different in outlook (there’s actually a “happy” ending of sorts in SN?) also make it hard to conclude that there is much hope that anything anytime or anyway soon is going to be any different. Both movies are like a staggering punch in the face.

I felt I had to go see Gomorrah since we had agreed to help Professor Ken Reardon and organizers in Sicily with their organizing problem there in any even larger housing development that the mafia has squatted in order to see if there’s an organizational “answer” to the dilemma for the poor and working families caught in this crossfire between government, mob, and the desperate need for housing. The whole movie was an ice cold shower of reality that forces the plans our plans for anything in Sicily to have to toughen up so that they are more than platitudes and bromides without meaning.

SN is lighter in some ways though the dread of death and violence lies under every scene. For every light moment in which Mexicans in the countryside toss oranges up to the top of the train to the immigrants, there is the continual danger of the train and toll it takes, as well as the fact that all of these travelers are easily victimized, robbed, raped, and killed without names or numbers as they seek a better, more hopeful life. One movie may be saying that this is no way to deal with criminals and that no one is really dealing with criminals, while the other says that but also says that the lack of immigration policy is a scourge on all of the countries of the Americas, including the United States.

It is amazing how clueless many still are. The well meaning New Orleans audience at Canal Place applauded Sin Nombre and its young director with polite enthusiasm.

One well meaning question struck me more than others as staking out the inestimable distance of the gap between these well intentioned viewers and the reality of migrants and the poor around the world. A woman respectfully asked Fukunaga whether his crew had “planted” all of the garbage strewn everywhere along the train tracks at every place the immigrants huddled to hobo along the route. He laughed as he answered, that “no,” all of the garbage was part of what was normal in this experience and never part of the task list.

Indeed! Had the director been making another movie the camera would have easily fallen on the cartoneros or reciclidades who would have been staying in Mexico City or any of these train stops along the way and making a living from this ever growing trash heap.

The question revealed how far the world of even New Orleans, hardly on anyone’s list of the worlds’ cleanest cities from the everyday reality of poverty and peril in the rest of the world. With Fukunaga we can agree that trash is the least of the problems here, almost past notice and beyond comment.

A Cinco de Mayo NOLA Appreciation

jstuart — Sat, 09 May 2009 19:02:57 +0000

New Orleans A surprisingly, frank and spot-on piece ran on the op-ed page of the Times-Picayune by Coleman Warner, speaking “truth to power” about the value of immigrants, especially mexicanos, in the recovery of New Orleans. I wanted to share it with all of you:

The Times-Picayune May 05, 2009
Newcomers deserve day to celebrate
Posted by Coleman Warner, assistant city editor,
It was sometime in 2006, one of the countless Katrina rebuilding days, and around noon I stopped by my gutted house in Lakeview. En route to the FEMA trailer in the back yard, I stepped into what was left of my old living room — wood studs and rusted nails, mostly — and found the air thick with smells of a freshly cooked meal.
As my eyes adjusted to the dim space, I noticed several men, sprawled about the floor, asleep. One of them opened an eye, nodded and resumed his doze. A battered radio blared Latin music, loud enough for all the neighbors to hear.

It was as if I had stepped into a rustic Baja cantina.

The Mexican workmen were deep into their siesta, not to be disturbed. I had hired the contractor who hired them, but wasn’t annoyed at their extended break.

Why? They arrived early in the morning and stayed late, performing all sorts of hauling and tearing and hammering tasks. These men, most of whom spoke little English, did the hard, early work on our wounded place.

It is to them, and to many other Latino workers in New Orleans, that I’ll raise a toast today, Cinco de Mayo.
The “Fifth of May” holiday recalls an unlikely Mexican military victory over the French in 1862 — and, north of the border, serves as a day for celebrating Mexican culture.

Not enough of that these days, especially here.

Hispanic workers have come to the New Orleans area in large numbers since Katrina, providing a critical labor pool for all the roofing, gutting, pipe-laying and wall-hanging. From what I’ve seen, they’ve tackled the sweat jobs with good cheer, no doubt because they are able to send needed cash back to relatives in Texas or Mexico or Central America.

What they’ve gotten in return is fairly shabby treatment.
If you believe a survey of Hispanic immigrant workers by the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., eight of 10 of the workers in New Orleans have been ripped off by employers while engaged in rebuilding projects. And there have been threats of violence against workers by employers, the survey concluded.
On the more brazenly criminal side of civic life, Hispanic workers are dubbed “walking ATMs” because they tend to carry cash — and are prime targets for holdups.
In one incident reported by this newspaper in December, Porfirio Martinez, 35, a laborer who sends money to his wife and children in Nicaragua, lost $87 to a robber carrying a .38-caliber pistol. Martinez later regretted the arrest of a suspect because police said the 19-year-old could land in prison for many years.

“I believe in second chances, ” he said.

There is hard feeling among some New Orleanians toward migrant workers who can’t speak our language, who require medical services and, especially, lack legal status. These same issues give me pause. We can’t toss aside immigration rules (even if we have immigrant family histories of our own) without inviting chaos.

But any debate on these questions should be couched in the realization that these laborers were among the shock troops of our recovery. Many of them remain, giving new seasoning to the cultural mix.

I’ll admit to not probing the legal status of the Hispanic men who descended on my home. There was Martin, the lanky, soft-spoken carpenter of Mexican ancestry who had a gift for intricate woodworking, and George, a gregarious painter who did meticulous work before returning home to Guatemala to run a cattle ranch.
And there was the Latin American crew — its background unclear — that saved me from building paralysis. I could not, for many weeks, find a local brick mason to assemble porch entries unless I was willing to pay twice the pre-Katrina rate. A contractor friend tipped me off to Hispanic brick masons who, in a furious few days of toil, got the job done, and at a reasonable charge.

That now seems like a long time ago. But just last week, yet another Spanish-speaking crew was on my block, pushing wheelbarrows and digging trenches. Their labors will ultimately remedy one sad gap in the city’s residential fabric.
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Coleman Warner is an assistant city desk editor. He can be reached at 504.826.3311 or cwarner@timespicayune.com.