Photo by Jenae ~ Imijfoto.com.

Last week, Senators Menendez (D-NJ) and Kennedy (D-MA) introduced a bill that promises to reintroduce the rule of law and the basic principles of fairness and humanity to the enforcement of our country’s immigration laws. The Protect Citizens and Residents from Unlawful Raids and Detention Act (S.3594) seeks to establish minimum standards of treatment for U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents and immigrants who are impacted by immigration enforcement operations.

In recent months, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has dramatically stepped up interior enforcement efforts and it’s no secret that hundreds of ICE detainees have been grossly denied not only due process protections, but also the fair treatment that every person, regardless of their immigration status, deserves. This failure to abide by the rule of law has resulted in utter chaos: U.S. citizens and lawful residents have been mistakenly detained; workers have been retaliated against for exercising their rights to organize in the workplace; and DHS officials have raided private homes without a warrant.
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Neo-Nazi protesters’ April 2008 march on the US Capitol. Photo by Streyeder.

NOTE: This story first appeared in the Huffington Post.

The current climate of undeterred public immigrant-bashing along with an immigration policy of “attrition through enforcement” has cultivated unfettered hatred and bigotry against an entire ethnic population. A recent survey by the Pew Hispanic Center shows its toll: half of all Latinos, immigrant and non-immigrant, say that their situation in this country is deteriorating and is worse now than it was a year ago.

One in seven Latinos are reporting ethnic discrimination in finding or keeping a job and 10% said the same thing about housing. But the most stunning finding is that nearly one-in-ten Hispanic adults–native-born US citizens and immigrants alike–report that, in the past year, the police or other authorities have stopped them and asked them about their immigration status. One in ten Latinos were stopped and asked for “papers.” What can that statistic represent other than a gross abuse of power by federal and local authorities?

Vicious public denunciations of undocumented, brown-skinned immigrants — once limited to hard-core white supremacists and a handful of border-state extremists — are increasingly common among supposedly mainstream anti-immigration activists, media pundits, and politicians and are surely fueling the problems that Latinos are facing. While their dehumanizing rhetoric typically stops short of openly sanctioning bloodshed, much of it implicitly encourages or even endorses violence by characterizing immigrants from Mexico and Central America as ‘invaders,’ ‘criminal aliens,’ and ‘cockroaches.’ In Virginia, a Prince William County and ardently anti-immigrant community task force appointee has suggested spending tax dollars to look into whether “illegal aliens have a preferred breeding season.” He has also referred to undocumented immigrants as “scourge that’s plaguing neighborhoods” and an “invasion of this country.”
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“Save the Earth- Stop Anti-Immigrant Emissions.” Produced by America’s Voice.

Last month, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) published a ludicrous report blaming immigrations for extreme weather, rising sea levels, changing ecosystems, melting glaciers, and dying polar bears. In other words, CIS was claiming that immigrants are responsible for climate change.  America’s Voice–an immigrant advocacy organization–to address CIS’ claims and “tell it like it is…a bunch of… well… watch the video.”

CIS isn’t the only group to blame immigrants for environmental problems–they join the ranks of hate and restrictionist groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the American Immigration Control Foundation, and the Social Contract Press. It doesn’t take a scientist to figure out that CIS’ primary concern isn’t the environment.
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Photo by julian.

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) released a new and highly misleading “report” claiming that E-Verify–a federal web-based employment verification program–is 99.5% accurate. This is yet another report in CIS’s long series of dubious “studies” issued to stall meaningful immigration reform and push its deportation-only agenda.

By claiming that E-Verify is highly accurate, CIS believes it can convince the public and Congress that the program must be reauthorized and expanded so that it would be mandatory for every single employer. This would mean that every single U.S. worker would have to get permission from the government to work – and the impact of a single error could be devastating. CIS can continue to use statistics that make E-Verify attractive. However, nothing will change the fact that E-Verify is not a solution to our nation’s serious immigration problems, and that attempts to expand the program will harm lawful U.S. workers.

The CIS report is based on misleading data coming from a small sample of 1,000 queries to the system coming from voluntary E-Verify users in 2007. Seeing as only about 1% of employers are currently using E-Verify, the results are not useful for predicting what would happen if all 7 million U.S. employers were forced to use the system.
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Photo by Joe Gratz.

On Wednesday, September 18, 2008, a federal appeals court in Arizona upheld a state law which revokes business licenses of employers who “knowingly hire” unauthorized workers. The law was challenged by business and civil-rights groups who highlighted the difficulties companies in Arizona face as they are threatened with closure if the error-riddled and unreliable E-Verify employment verification program, which they are mandated to use, fails. The 12-year-old E-Verify pilot program has never become a permanent and mandatory federal law because of questions into its reliability. Yet in 2007, Arizona legislators set up a requirement for E-Verify, leaving businesses holding the bag.

While enforcement is indeed a critical piece of immigration reform, it must go hand in hand with comprehensive solutions that fix our broken immigration system. Furthermore, the power over immigration laws must remain in the hands of the federal government and not deregulated down to the state level. The 9^th circuit has upheld a law that not only threatens Arizona businesses, but an already struggling state economy.
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Traffic jam on Los Angeles highway. Photo by Atwater Village Newbie.

In a September 2 Washington Post op-ed, “How Many Americans?,” Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies presents a nightmare scenario in which immigrant-fueled population growth in the U.S. degrades the environment and strains infrastructure and the economy over the next half century. The arguments upon which Camarota builds his case are commonplace among immigration restrictionists, but they rely upon flawed logic and a highly selective reading of available evidence that does not withstand close scrutiny.

At first glance, the restrictionist argument is attractive in its simplicity: stringent immigration controls, less immigration, fewer people, more resources, a better environment. However, as with so many simple arguments about complex topics, it misses the point. Over-population is not the primary cause of U.S. environmental woes.
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Photo by ldcross.

This week the Center for Immigration Studies released a report entitled “Allowing Noncitizens to Vote in the United States? Why not” and hosted a panel to discuss it at the National Press Club.

The thin attendance at the event can only mean that CIS is beginning to lose its credibility among mainstream media and the reasons why were evident.

After the author of the report went through his findings, he and the rest of the panelists basically said noncitizen voting is an isolated occurrence and even failed to become public policy in “a liberal enclave” like San Francisco. The only example they held up and used repeatedly was a 20-year old example of the small town of Takoma Park, Maryland (pop. 17,000) where non-citizens are allowed to vote in local elections.
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American’s News Project’s video on Anti-Immigrants putting the heat on John McCain

John McCain was an early supporter of comprehensive immigration reform, but in this presidential campaign, McCain has changed his position to come down harder on the issue. Many political analysts say he did so to appease anti-immigration activists in key swing states-Arizona, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, and Nevada. But at an anti-immigration rally in Washington, talk-radio hosts and activists said they wanted more promises of border enforcement from McCain before they embrace his candidacy.

Photo by Bikeportland.org

This morning, Republican members of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration perpetuated the persistent myth of immigrant criminality with their event on “The Toll of Illegal Alien Criminals on American Families.” The event was spearheaded by Lamar Smith (R-Texas), Steve King (R-Iowa) and Howard Coble (R-NC).

Tensions ran high as witnesses ranging from bereaved family members to the President of the Houston, Texas, Police Officers’ Union, to the Chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors made the case that the loss of innocent citizens is a direct result of not cracking down on “illegals” in the US. The witnesses demanded policies that would make life so miserable for immigrants, that they would be driven to self-deport. One witness even received enthusiastic applause after suggesting birth-right citizenship be repealed.
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America’s Voice’s video on What is FAIR?

America’s Voice–a pro-immigrant organization waging a communications campaign for immigration reform–has launched a new video as part of a series of moves to shed light on the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and expose it for what it is: a bona fide hate group.
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