This month the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) celebrated one year of Secure Communities, a program dangerously misnamed since it actually endangers rather than improves community security.
Abel Maldonado, a California state senator and the son of Mexican immigrant farmers, has been appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to be the state’s lieutenant governor.
Residents of a flooded village cope with a fifth day under water after typhoon Ketsana swept Bulacan province in the Philippines. (Photo: Catholic Relief Services/flickr)
As Tropical Storm Ketsana’s –“Ondoy” in the Philippines– destruction made headlines all over the world on Monday, Sept. 28th, I could not reach my family in the Philippines. Power and phone lines were down in Metro Manila and the surrounding provinces where my family lives, and cell lines were clogged.
My sister in Los Angeles, “Ate” Reby, had only gotten a text message from my mother the night before: “Reby, pinasukan ng baha yung bahay. Lubog yung kotse. Kami ng daddy na-stranded sa bubong…” [Floods entered the house. Our car is submerged. Your father and I were stranded up on the roof].
Reby and I thought it unimaginable that they would be trapped on our own roof, which tops a two-story house on the highest point of the subdivision. Finally I reached my sister Jocelyn and in subsequent conversations with my mother, both of us often breaking down in tears, we were able to piece together their terrifying tales. For the first time since any typhoons hitting the Philippines, my family found themselves in Ground Zero, as if they were in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
My mom and dad, both 77, live in Park Place Executive Village, Cainta City in Rizal province, east of Manila. My eldest brother Angelo lives with them, my other brother, Pio Jr., lives a street away, and my sister, “Ate” [a Filipino term for elder] Jocelyn, lives with her family in the next town, Brookside. These towns were two of the most heavily flooded areas after Ketsana.
Less than a year ago, at the dawn of the Obama era, there was a lot of talk about how the nation had just elected its first post-racial president. With his multi-racial and multi-religious background, and African immigrant roots, Barack Obama represented the hope of millions that the country was moving beyond its long, tragic history of divisive racial politics.
To be sure, Obama’s election as the first black president of the United States was an historic event of immense significance. But the idea of a post-racial presidency was a fantasy. Comments this week by former President Jimmy Carter reminded us that racial politics and prejudice are alive and well in America.
“I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African American,” Carter told NBC’s Brian Williams.
The issue of immigration was directly implicated in Carter’s remarks. The now infamous shout of “You lie” by Representative Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) during President Obama’s address to Congress last week came after the president asserted in his speech that undocumented immigrants would not be covered under the proposed health care overhaul.
“I think it’s based on racism,” Carter was quoted by the Washington Post as saying of Wilson’s outburst. The former president made the remark in response to a question at a public forum on Tuesday at the Carter Center in Atlanta.
The entire episode — Wilson’s shout, Carter’s critique, and all the various charges and counter charges, accusations and denials flying around Washington and in the media – suggest a very rocky future for immigration reform. (more…)
Health care reform opponents in West Hartford, Conn. (Photo: ragesoss/Flickr - Click to visit.)
This Wednesday, President Obama is scheduled to give a major speech on health care reform before a joint session of Congress. The speech comes after weeks of controversy over various proposals and their real or imagined effects on the country. Some groups have focused not on the details of how to cover more people, lower the cost of care, or improve the health of Americans, but on how immigrants fit into the equation.
When a Congressional Research Office report surfaced recently analyzing the treatment of immigrants (documented and not) under one of the pending health care reform bills, some took it to mean… well, the exact opposite of what the CRO found.
The Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a Washington lobbyist group with an immigration restriction agenda, claimed it confirmed their worst fears: that illegal aliens would get health care coverage on the government’s dime.
“Congressional Research Agency Confirms Illegal Aliens Will Get Health Benefits Under House Bill,” claimed the headline, still at the top of FAIR’s website on Monday.
There is just one problem with that assertion: if you read the CRO report, it says the complete opposite.
"You promised us change, not more of the same," Rubiela Arias' sign said at a New York protest against Janet Napolitano. (Photo: Maibe Gonzalez Fuentes.)
After June’s meeting on immigration reform between President Barack Obama and members of Congress, pro-immigrant activists were hoping for a new push towards what they thought was a shared goal.
So far, what they’ve gotten is an energetic effort by the administration to continue, expand and bolster Bush-era immigration policies criticized as insensitive, racist and ineffective.
“We are expanding enforcement, but I think in the right way,” Homeland Security Sec. Janet Napolitano told The New York Times in an interview for a story published Monday.
President Obama at Thursday's meeting with lawmakers on immigration reform. (Photo: The White House)
Finally, the much-expected meeting on immigration reform between President Barack Obama and lawmakers from both parties took place Thursday. Participating legislators said the president promised to put his energy into moving forward right away. The response from some reform advocates was “Game On!” But the various sides have already started drawing lines in the sand — spelling out what they will and will not accept.
Reps. Anthony Weiner (D.-N.Y.) and Joseph Crowley (D.-N.Y.) reported that President Obama began the meeting by promising to “use whatever political capital he has left” to enact comprehensive immigration reform this year.
See a White House video of the meeting:
Thursday’s meeting and the White House’s creation of a working group on immigration reform –to be headed by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano– were lauded by immigrant rights groups such as America’s Voice, which called Thursday “a turning point” and declared: “Game On”.
The renewed commitment from the Oval Office might allay advocates’ fears that the current economic crisis, as well as Obama’s high-profile efforts to enact health care reform would prevent the President and Congress from dealing with immigration this year.
No face masks anywhere in Mexico City. (Photo: Diego Graglia)
With Mexico presumed to be at the epicenter of the swine flu outbreak and Mexicans comprising one of the largest immigrant groups in the U.S., it didn’t take long for people to start making connections between the flu and immigration. Officials in Dallas and San Diego are reaching out to large Mexican immigrant communities in those cities with advice on how to prevent the possible spread of the disease. According to San Diego station KFMB-TV:
Health officials are concerned about the spread of swine flu from Mexico to the U.S. by illegal immigrants. Migrants in San Diego may not have access to medical care, which could lead to the spread of the virus within those communities.
In another related development, the L.A. Times reports that fear of infection is causing immigrants living north of the border to reconsider returning to or visiting Mexico.
At least one member of Congress, Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) recently called for the complete closure of the U.S.–Mexico border “until the virus is contained.” Republican congressman Duncan Hunter of California, has called for a U.S. ban on all nonessential travel to Mexico.
Meanwhile, conservative bloggers and commentators are blaming the flu outbreak on “illegal aliens” and using the health threat to advance their call for sealing America’s borders.
And so in addition to legitimate public health concerns (some of them related to immigrants from Mexico), the flu outbreak has spawned a nasty war of words over immigrants and their place in American society. Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin is widely quoted on the Web for her comment, “Hey, maybe we’ll finally get serious about borders now.” Pro-immigrant columnists have responded to Malkin and others with equally blunt language. The headline of a blog post by Bonnie Fuller on Huffington Post screams, “Hate-Mongering Conservative Commentators Using Swine Flu to Promote Racism!”
The flu scare comes just as the Obama administration is ramping up efforts to bring about immigration reform. In addition, on Friday pro-immigrant rallies are planned in cities across the nation to keep pressure on the president and Congress to address the plight of undocumented immigrants.
The vitriolic exchange kicked off by the flu outbreak certainly won’t help efforts to reach a national consensus on immigration policy. It also won’t help anyone who has the flu or is at risk of becoming ill. But could it have an impact on the pace and scope of immigration reform efforts? Maybe. Has it revealed new racial fault lines following Obama’s historic election as the nation’s first African-American president? Perhaps. Do we have any idea where this is all headed? In both medical and political terms the answer to that question unfortunately is no.
The tragedy that unfolded on Friday in an English class for immigrants at the American Civic Association in Binghamton, N.Y., was horrifying and brutal. But along with the shock and sadness there is also an opportunity to see where we are as a nation, where we have come from, and where we may be going next in our long immigration history.
Mourners at a service for immigrant victims of the Binghamton massacre. (Photo: The New York Times)
Binghamton is in mourning. On Sunday night 1,500 people gathered at a middle school in the small city in upstate New York to remember the victims of the massacre in which 14 people died, most of them immigrants. Local TV reports showed prayers being offered in several different languages, and a diverse crowd of mourners, standing together, holding candles outside the school on a cool April evening. More memorials are planned for later this week.
The victims came from around the world — Pakistan, Haiti, China, Brazil, the Philippines, Iraq, and the U.S. The gunman, 41-year-old Jiverly A. Wong, was Vietnamese.
We now know that Binghamton is a mirror of the nation. The city’s immigrant and refugee population –small compared to that of metropolises like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles– has grown in size and significance over the past 20 years. The mix of cultures, languages and religions represented by the victims of Friday’s tragedy can be found in any number of small cities and towns across the country from Siler City, N.C. to New Haven, Conn. to Manchester, N.H.
MEXICO CITY — As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton departed Monterrey, Mexico for Dallas Thursday the consensus among Mexican officials seemed to be that finally the United States has decided to acknowledge its share of blame in the growth of the drug cartels –and the violence they cause.
Thursday's El Universal cover
Mexican politicians greeted with approval and even delight Clinton’s statement that Americans’ “insatiable demand” for narcotics fuels the drug trade from south of the border. “Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians,” she had said Wednesday. (Of course the reaction in the U.S. was quite different.)
“A self-critical discourse which has never before been heard from a high-level American official,” said an editorial in El Universal, perhaps Mexico’s most influential newspaper, which ran Clinton’s quotation across its cover yesterday, above the headline:
But Mexicans’ elation was not complete, as two other newspapers highlighted on their covers: while Clinton made the statements Felipe Calderón’s government wanted to hear, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano continued a recent trend of statements about the Mexican situation that are offensive to Mexican ears.