Today, The Progressive published a great op-ed by Marissa Graciosa - here is the full article, you can click over here to read the orginal post and comment!

The Bush Administration is wrongly forcing government contractors to verify the legal status of their work force with the Social Security Administration.

For me, this is personal.

My mother taught me how to write my numbers. Raised in the Philippines and schooled by nuns who traced their roots back to Spain, she makes her 1s like a lot of Europeans — straight sticks with a leaf-like line coming off the top toward the left and the whole thing leaning toward the right as resting in the shade from the afternoon sun.

My 1s are my mother’s descendants, but anyone might easily mistake my 1s for 7s. And if a clerk for the Social Security Administration makes that mistake or other mistakes like that it could cost me and 13 million Americans our jobs.

The Social Security Administration’s “match list” is notoriously error prone. The agency’s own inspector general found that 13 million of the 17.8 million “no matches” were actually U.S. citizens. So the assumption that if you don’t have a match, then you’re here illegally is wrong at least 70 percent of the time! The discrepancies had occurred because of clerical errors or other innocent things, such as name changes from marriages or divorces.

The unreliability of the “match list” figured prominently in the reasoning of the U.S. District Court for Northern California, which ruled last year that the practice would harm thousands of innocent workers and employers. In another case, an appellate court in California this June ordered the company that runs the Staples Center in Los Angeles to reinstate 33 janitors it had summarily fired after receiving “no match” letters.

But this has not deterred President Bush. On June 9, he signed an executive order requiring all contractors and other companies that do business with the federal government to verify their employee’s identity in the federal Social Security database.

The Social Security Administration has better things to do. Chasing after undocumented immigrants who have Social Security taxes deducted from their incomes but don’t ever withdraw from the system because their ID numbers are false, not only wastes government’s time but actually robs us of that additional tax income.

Meanwhile, millions of U.S. citizens are also terrorized in the process by businesses looking for any excuse to abuse and fire workers.

And employers looking to evade the ruling will resort to sub-contracting more of their workforce, a practice that reliably lowers wages and benefits across the economy. In an interconnected economy, we need solutions that help all of us, rather than finger-pointing as we collectively race to the bottom.

My 1s might look funny, but why put me and 13 million Americans at risk at a time of growing economic uncertainty? Unfortunately, that’s not a typo.

Marissa Graciosa is the campaign coordinator for the Fair Immigration Reform Movement, a national coalition of more than 300 grassroots organizations led by the Center for Community Change. She can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org.

A Tampa Bay area program offers classes on financial literacy and is helping immigrants integrate and flourish in the U.S.

Last week, a small group of immigrants met in a classroom at the Tomlinson Adult Learning Center for a Project Prosper financial literacy class. Over the past weeks, the students in the school’s English for Speakers of Other Languages have been learning about checking accounts, budgeting, saving, credit reports and protecting themselves against identity theft and fraud.

Besides financial literacy, Project Prosper provides small no-interest loans of up to $1,500 to eligible applicants in South or mid-Pinellas County who have lived in the United States for eight years or less. Borrowers also are required to save a certain amount of money, equivalent to 10 percent of their monthly payments, each month.

“Provided that they have made timely payments on their loan and they’ve taken a financial literacy class, then we’ll match their savings,” said Warren, president of Project Prosper.

“One of the beauties of this, as each person pays back their loan, they are making funds available for the next person to borrow. So far, we’ve not had to turn down anyone because of lack of funds,” Warren said.

 We need more programs like this that help immigrants succeed in our country, rather than pushing them into the shadows.

While John McCain and Barack Obama continue to earnestly court Latino voters, both candidates also continue to be vague when it comes to immigration.

As I posted yesterday, mainstream media certainly isn’t helping to further clarify either candidates’ view on immigration policy. So, last month, The Sanctuary stepped up to the plate and sent McCain and Obama a detailed survey, asking the questions that the media refuses to address. Last week, after no response, the Sanctuary re-sent the survey. They have yet to receive any answers.

Yesterday, Kety Esquivel, editor ar the Sanctuary, appeared on CNN to ask both candidates to stop the pandering and start addressing the tough questions.

Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama, we are waiting…

Yesterday, Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agents stormed six courthouses in Providence, RI - arresting dozens of people hired by state contractors. Though the details are few at this point, it is believed that those arrested were doing maintenance work on the courthouses. (Make sure to watch the video when you click on the first link)

Local immigrant rights advocates reacted quickly, with dozens of people protesting the raids in front of the ICE building in Providence at 8 p.m.

Ironically:

The raids occurred during the first meeting of a governor’s advisory panel, charged with monitoring any “unintended consequences” of Governor Carcieri’s executive order cracking down on illegal immigration. The order issued in March requires that state police be deputized with certain immigration enforcement powers.

There is talk that the contractors were refusing to pay wages - in which case it would seem the ICE raid is more than a coincidence. The same occurred in Postville, where Agriprocessors was under federal investigation for labor violations when ICE agents arrested all the would-be witnesses in the case.

Philip Kretsedemas, author of “Keeping Out the Other: An Introduction to Immigration Enforcement Today”, has recently published an article exploring how he thinks immigration policy can be effectively shaped.

The article, “What’s Different About the Immigration Problem We Face Today–And What Can Be Done About It?” was published yesterday on the History News Network.

Kretsedemas approaches the issue by putting current migration patterns in context, using the history of migration to the United States.

He also criticizes the concept of “border security” as the central focus of the debate.

…the debate around undocumented migration still seems to be lodged in a paradigm that is organized around border control. Although this emphasis is not entirely misplaced, it also tends to produce distorted explanations of undocumented migration and ineffective strategies for controlling undocumented migration.

He ends the article with his own proposition of a multi-pronged approach that includes:

* Tracking and decriminalizing legal status violations

* Revisiting current immigration quotas

* Eliminating exploitative hiring practices

* Cross-national planning

Last week, Tim Chavez at Political Salsa broke the story of a pregnant woman, Juana Villegas DeLaPaz pulled over by police in Nashville, who was forced to give birth while shackled to a hospital bed.

What she did wrong:

“She was pulled over by the Berry Hill Police Department as she left a prenatal clinic. She had her three other children with her. She showed a current car registration but had no license. She also showed a matricular card.”

She was arrested.

Some of the details:

* Her water broke while she was in jail; she was transported to Metro General Hospital.

* When the nurse asked her to undress to get into hospital clothes, the sheriff’s guard was asked to leave for the moment. He — yes, he — refused. So she had to undress in front of him. I don’t know about your culture, but in the Mexican culture and Mexican-American culture, that is a highly offensive affront to our women, no to mention our mothers.

* Then, while in labor, she was handcuffed by her wrist and ankle to the bed. I’ve seen women in labor, and they constantly are shifting positions to try and get some sense of relief, if that is even possible. Now consider the pain if handcuffs prevented your movement.

* Thankfully, the handcuffs were taken off two hours before she delivered. But then she was restrained again in bed a day later. And every trip to the bathroom required leg shackles. When the nurse strongly objected, the sherrif’s department stayed absolute. The nurse said the new mother would not be able to clean herself properly with shackles. The sheriff’s guard said it didn’t matter; he was doing his job.

Didn’t we hear that excuse before at Nuremberg? Never forget; we still hardly remember. Our Jewish brothers and sisters deserve better from us.

* It also didn’t matter if the baby received the critical mother’s milk in its first days of life. The child was removed from its mother, and Ms. DeLaPaz was returned to jail.

* The final injury inflicted upon this CIVIL/MISDEMEANOR offender was the denial of her use of a breast pump to express her milk for the baby and her own comfort. The nurse again strongly objected, but the sheriff’s department again played law enforcer, physician and God.

* Ms. DeLaPaz returned to her jail cell in great pain from her swollen breasts. She could not sleep due to the agony.

* Meanwhile, her infant son was taken to a pediatrican. There he was tested and found to have a blood level containing a high measurement of a dangerous chemical that produces jaundice, a yellowing of the skin. My father had jaundice before he died of cancer, so the condition denotes the medical seriousness of the moment. The jaundice was from a lack of breastmilk.

…In Mrs. DeLaPaz’s case, it is a mother of three AMERICAN children who was giving birth to her fourth young one. Surely, this area’s and nation’s supposed “pro-life” forces should be up in arms.

Her crime was being illegally in this nation — a civil MISDEMEANOR — and driving without a license — a TRAFFIC OFFENSE.

So now you know why Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have come to Nashville. It happened in your own backyard. And there is no reason that it won’t happen again, next time to another very expectant mother stopped for a traffic offense in the Berry Hill section of Nashville.

Continue following the story at Political Salsa.

From DMI Blog: A brief, but good post  by Cristina Jimenez about the lack of factual and sensible coverage of immigration in the mainstream media.

Last month I wrote about a Media Matters report that revealed that when it comes to immigration and undocumented immigrants, instead of news and/or facts, we are getting a bunch of lies and misinformation. Cable news anchors like CNN’s Lou Dobbs and Fox’s Bill O’Reilly use their “news shows” to promote a message of fear and anger, creating and encouraging hate and a strong sense of resentment against undocumented immigrants.

The result: (nothing positive of course) hate groups in the United Sates have increased by half since the year 2000 and the number of new anti-immigrant groups increased to 300.

Continue reading…

For those of you who think you have a good grasp on the issues, make sure you know where you are getting your information - Lou Dobbs doesn’t count!

Below I have included a clip of Paul Waldman (from Media Matters) when he appeared on Lou Dobb’s tonight.

For instance, when Media Matters fellow Paul Waldman was invited to Dobb’s CNN show to “discuss” the findings of the report, Dobbs refused to have a discussion and did not show both sides of the story. During the show, Dobbs kept promoting his lies, constantly interrupting and dismissing Waldman.

FL: MIAMI HERALD: Deportations jump by almost 50 percent in Florida - Federal immigration authorities deported 5,889 illegal immigrants in the first six months of 2008 to their home countries, including Colombia, Haiti, Jamaica and the Philippines.During the same period last year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported 3,942 immigrants.

OR: MAIL TRIBUNE: Federal rule could cause thousands of Hispanic workers in Oregon to lose jobs - Oregon’s agriculture, construction and hospitality industries can expect a major hit should the federal “No Match” rule go into effect, according to a study released Wednesday.

MA: BOSTON GLOBE: Initiative seeks to aid immigrants - Governor Deval Patrick launched a statewide initiative yesterday to find ways to integrate immigrants into Massachusetts “as quickly as possible” at a time when their numbers are booming. The New Americans Initiative, modeled after a similar approach in Illinois, calls on state officials, policy advisers, and advocates to hold a series of public meetings across the state and draft a report with policy recommendations by July 1, 2009.

AZ: Arizona Star: Ballot Measure May Modify Hiring Law - Arizona voters will likely get a chance to do what lawmakers and a federal judge have so far refused to do - ease the state’s new law imposing sanctions on employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. A business-financed group filed about 284,000 signatures Tuesday for its own version of a statute. Backers say their version provides “tough, enforceable, fair” laws. Only 153,365 signatures must be valid to qualify for the Nov. 4 ballot.

NE: Proposed ban on illegal immigrants stirs uproar in Fremont - A proposed law aimed at banishing illegal immigrants from Fremont, Neb., would require every renter -whether they were born in the United States or immigrated here - to obtain an occupancy license through the city.The proposal has sparked an outcry among advocates for Latinos.

From NPR -

College life, for any undergraduate student, is often met with challenges that can sometimes seem larger than life. Those same challenges can be even more burdensome for undocumented immigrants on campuses across the U.S.

Kent Wong, editor of Underground Undergrads and director of the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education, is joined by Mariana Zamboni, who attended college as an undocumented immigrant. The two discuss how the nation’s immigration debate, for some students, shapes the college experience.

Listen to the discussion here.

More proof that we need comprehensive immigration reform, rather than the current “enforcement only” or state-by-state piecemeal approach. Everyone suffers at the hands of the broken system.

From the Washington Post:

HINTON, Va. — Every morning, 26,000 white tom turkeys arrive at the Virginia Poultry Growers Cooperative plant in the Shenandoah Valley, where they are killed, gutted, cleaned, chilled, cut up and prepared for shipment by the end of the day. The work is hard and cold and messy, and few local residents are willing to do it.

So the cooperative relies heavily on immigrant workers. Its owners say that they do their best to weed out applicants who are in the country illegally but that their industry is increasingly squeezed by federal pressure on employers who hire illegal immigrants and criminal networks that sell false or stolen identity documents.

Now, poultry processors in Virginia and across the country are taking their case to Congress. Last week, several hundred industry leaders met in Washington to lobby for immigration changes and an improved document-checking system as well as relief from environmental rules that have doubled the price of the feed corn they buy for their birds.

“We depend on immigrants. If they all went away today, people like us couldn’t operate,” said Jim Mason, president of the cooperative, who visited a half-dozen congressional offices. “People think we hire Hispanics because we can get them cheaper, but it is absolutely false. We do everything the government asks and more to make sure our workers are legal, and we turn a lot of people away. But if an ID is stolen, there is nothing we can do.”

The lobbying blitz has come as diverse businesses, including hotels and seafood processors, have begun to unite to defend their economic interests in light of the intensifying government crackdown on illegal immigration. In recent months, stepped-up enforcement has led to a raids on workplaces across the region, including a Leesburg convention resort and an Annapolis painting company.

In Virginia, an umbrella group called Virginia Employers for Sensible Immigration Policy has recently been formed. Its members include the state Home Builders Association, Manufacturers Association, Retail Merchants Association and Chamber of Commerce. It also represents such major poultry companies as Tyson Foods and hundreds of smaller producers.

The group seeks to preserve the state’s attractive business climate, support legal immigration as essential to the area economy and press the federal government to increase action against illegal immigration instead of placing the burden on local employers, who can be heavily fined if they hire illegal workers.

“Our industry employs more than 10,000 people and supports more then 1,200 family farms,” said Hobey Bauhan, president of the Virginia Poultry Federation. “We are blessed with very low unemployment, and there are simply not enough Americans available to do the work. We offer a good wage, and we want to have a legal work force, but the available tools for checking document fraud are just not adequate. The entire federal immigration system is in dire need of reform.”

Some regional legislators appear to be sympathetic to such concerns, especially among industries such as poultry breeding and processing that support large portions of the rural economies of Virginia and Maryland. Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte (R-Va.), a longtime member of the House Agriculture Committee, has a busy constituent office in Harrisonburg, seven miles from Hinton, in the heart of the state’s poultry region.

Goodlatte agrees with Bauhan that the federal online documenting system needs to be changed to detect more immigrants who use stolen papers and place less blame on employers who fail to catch them.

The broader solution, he said, is not to legalize immigrants already working in the United States, as some have proposed, but to expand the national “guest worker” program, which allows up to 66,000 unskilled foreigners to work temporarily on farms and other seasonal job sites, so that it would include food processing and other agribusiness jobs.

“I am very much opposed to bills that would grant amnesty to illegal immigrants, and I also want to make sure we don’t undercut jobs and wages for those U.S. citizens who do want the work,” Goodlatte said. “We need the existing temporary worker program to keep up with the changing face of agribusiness. We need to enforce immigration laws and make them work better where there is a shortage of American workers.”

Efforts to expand the guest worker program failed last year in the broader collapse of a Senate compromise proposal for comprehensive immigration change. Opponents of the program say participants are vulnerable to such exploitation as being cheated of wages and being forced to stay in poor living quarters.

At Jim Mason’s processing plant, a majority of the 560 workers are immigrants who live full time in the United States, most of whom are from Mexico or Central America. Every instructional sign, such as “Wash Your Hands,” is in English and Spanish. Each department has a bilingual supervisor, and lines of people in smocks and hairnets chatter in Spanish as they hose, clean and chop turkeys on conveyor belts.

On the main door to the plant, a sign reads “This Business Employs American Citizens and Legal Residents Only.” In the hiring office, staff members enter the name of applicants and details of the documents they provide. Within a minute, the computer indicates whether the documents are genuine.

Mason said he quizzes prospective workers with extra questions to check their veracity. Many forged documents come from Puerto Rico, but most immigrant applicants are from Mexico or Central America, so he asksquestions to find out whether they know, for example, that the capital of Puerto Rico is San Juan.

More than he worries about immigration agents swooping down on his workforce, though, Mason fears he will not be able to afford feed for his turkeys, as the government increasingly orders U.S.-grown corn to be converted into ethanol for use in car engines.

“We are a family business. We have no subsidies and no safety net,” Mason said. “If we don’t get the ethanol situation settled, there is no need to talk about immigration problems at all, because we will be out of business.”