Weekly Immigration Wire: As Action on Reform Stalls, Dangerous Polarization Grows

[For those new to UMX, The Weekly Immigration Wire is my weekly (paid) article I write for The Media Consortium. It is a column that runs on a few other sites (see end of post). However today I am posting a version of this post that varies from the one that is edited & published on the TMC blog.]

By Nezua, TMC Mediawire Blogger

Once upon a time, Barack Obama told the nation that we could not afford to approach immigration reform in a piecemeal fashion, and that his administration would tackle the issue in 2009. The surety of this sentiment has since trickled down into distillations fraught with equivocation and the apparent reality that there will be no legislative movement this year. While many advocates are hopeful that today’s meeting will result in tangible legislation instead of acting as a stall, aggressive stances by even key Democrats raise the question of how effective a result could possibly be when couched in terms of punishment.

At at time when the deportation industry shows no sign of slowing, hate crimes are rising and hate groups are being mainstreamed, this week’s Wire looks at the growing polarization between advocates and foes of immigration reform.

Writing for New America Media, Jun Wang reports on the disappointing consensus that emerged from at least one panel of immigration activists last Thursday, In Immigration Reform? Wait ‘Till Next Year. The panel was titled “Are We On Our Way To Immigration Reform?” and its roster included Nancy Ramirez, western regional counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), Gary Toebben of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, and anti-immigration hate group FAIR’s Ira Mehlmen. The overall agreement was that legislation will not, in fact, happen this year, which doesn’t bode well for the rising hate crimes against Latinos/as which are compounded by other instances of othering and racism, such as “employers in conservative cities” learning that “they are better off not hiring people who are ‘foreign looking or having foreign sound names.’” These reactions only reinforce the idea that Latinos/as are to be singled out and demonized and practically, they hurt the community’s ability to survive and earn a living.

Not content with simply raiding homes, workplaces or storming 7-11s, Immigrations Customs and Enforcement (ICE) is pulling unprecedented moves as of late, such as demanding to see the papers of 16 year old brown girls at train stations who are on their way to school and coercing them to sign away their rights to see an immigration judge right before they are deported out of the country. Also from New America Media, Three Deported Students Return to the U.S., Hiram Soto reports on the joint operation between the Border Patrol and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Representing the three minors who were deported and then brought back while they fight deportation, Immigration attorney Lilia Velasquez said she “hasn’t seen anything like this in her 25-year career,” regarding the children being let back into the US. The fact that “[a]fter analyzing everything, it was determined that it was in the best interest of the young people and their families, and also the United States, for them to return to the country on a conditional basis” seems a dangerous admission for Border Patrol agent Daryl Reed to make. Because one can extrapolate that logic to argue the entire destructive deportation fetish that has swept the Department of Homeland Security the last few years and is increasingly producing ridiculous results.

Also feeding the violent and anti-immigrant/anti-Latino/a energy in today’s US are hate-pundits like Michael Savage. In Things That Make You Go, “OMFG STFU,” Samhita Mukhopadhyay at Feministing reports on one of many broadcasts she deems are created “for the purpose of inciting violence against immigrants and to fuel racial tension.” Exposing his “paranoid” and fearful obfuscation of reality, Samhita clears up the anti-immigrant propaganda by pointing out that despite Savage’s tortured logic, the truth is that Immigrants are the “working base” of California, and not the ones creating a drain upon it. California’s immigrants pay roughly $40 billion in taxes every year.

One of the loudest politicians adding to anti-immigrant (and consequently, anti-Latin@) hostility is Tom Tancredo. So it may not be too much of a surprise to read The Colorado Independent’s article Tancredo linked to Minuteman group accused of Arizona double-murder in which the affinities, solidarity, and gratitude of Tom Tancredo are expressed in a letter to alleged murderer and leader of the anti-immigrant group The Minuteman American Defense (MAD)  for organizing a rally. It turns out that not only was this beaming “boilerplate rejection letter” (as campaign chair Bay Buchanan hopes to position it) sent to Forde, but a story published by the Everett Herald in 2007 places official Tancredo campaign staff at the event. The connections don’t end there, however and only grow more unsettling.

But those fighting for justice and on the side of human rights are hardly laying low. Undocumented immigrant Sonia Guinansaca writing for RaceWire tells an engaging and personal story in Mock Graduates Lobby for Dream Act in D.C. in a guest column. Tuesday, over 500 students from all over the US were mobilized to Capitol Hill in a “Mock Graduation ceremony” which was intended to both draw attention and show support for the DREAM Act, before heading into legislative meetings with members of Congress and Representatives. Guinansaca reminds us, gently, of the US’s most inspiring ideals: to be a land where any child believing their dreams are as real and worthy as any other child’s. To be a nation where “[n]othin’ is impossible.”

RaceWire also brings us more news of youth behind change in Immigrants’ Kids File Lawsuit Against US, and Other News. In this political lull, where immigration laws strain terribly in their inadequacy and in the lack of reform, “hundreds of deported parents are filing a lawsuit against the government claiming their constitutional right to stay in the US is violated by the deportation of their parents.”

Finally, in Juneteenth Launches African-American Immigration Reform Initiative, community organization ACORN “intends to raise the banner of comprehensive immigration reform by announcing the launch of The Black Leadership Immigration Project from the pulpit of a Phoenix, Ariz., church” and Public News Service reports on a study that finds one in three immigrants in New York is living without medial insurance coverage due to private insurance companies that do not go to adequate lengths to include them.

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Also featured at The Sanctuary, Huffington Post, Talking Points Memo, Open Salon, DailyKos, MyDD, Open Left, FDL, Rabble, Immigration Attorneys Online…