"Almost all of our families originally came from some place else."

Precisely, Mr. President. The only ones of us who are not immigrants or the descendents of immigrants are full-blooded Native Americans.



Full transcript here.

Good Riddance to Galtians

Firedoglake:

They are showing signs of meeting or exceeding the 1997 record:  the rich who’d rather denounce their US citizenship than pay US taxes.

Good.  Let's replace them with a few million undocumented immigrants who will gladly pay lots of U.S., state and local taxes in return for citizenship.

Precisely

Indian Country Today:

Beware pissed-off Indians—especially the ones pushing strollers.

At a rally in Tucson, protesters who were apparently voicing their disdain for illegal immigants got an earful from a Native who may just have reached his breaking point. In the video below, a man with a child in a stroller engages the crowd, and doesn't mince his words:

"You're all fucking illegal!" he says.

"We didn't invite none of you here," he continues. "Get on with your bogus argument."

He also points to the American flag and says it "stands for all the Native Americans you killed to plant your houses here."

Click for video.

Via Firedoglake.

Repug Aims at the Browns, Hits Everybody Else

I wish this were a satirical attempt to point up the unconstitutional absurdity of denying birthright citizenship, but apparently this motherfucker is serious.

 

He is also so blinded by fear and hate of everyone who is not white he can't see that his bill would strip the citizenship of every single American who is not 100 percent full-blooded Native American Indian, since everybody who ever came to America from somewhere else was undocumented under our current laws, so therefore all their descendants would be illegal under this bill. Including himself.

 

Ian Millhiser at Think Progress:

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution expressly provides that nearly anyone born in the United States is a citizen, regardless of the immigration status of their parents. Yet, despite the Constitution’s clear command, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) wants to ignore our founding document and prevent the children of undocumented immigrants from becoming citizens:

It’s the first week of the 113th Congress, and one House member is already trying to stop children born in the United States to undocumented parents — whom he calls “anchor babies” — from gaining citizenship.

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), an outspoken hardliner on immigration, introduced a bill on Thursday that would “clarify those classes of individuals born in the United States who are nationals and citizens of the United States at birth.” The Supreme Court has consistently held that anyone born in the United States, regardless of their parents’ immigration status, should receive citizenship under the 14th Amendment.

King disagrees, as do 13 co-sponsors on the bill, including Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) and Mo Brooks (R-Ala.).

The Constitution is clear that King’s bill is unconstitutional. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The word “jurisdiction” refers to people that are subject to American law. Thus foreign diplomats and their families, who are granted broad immunity from U.S. law, are not entitled to citizenship under the 14th Amendment. Likewise, at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was drafted many Native Americans were subject only to tribal law and thus were not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. Undocumented immigrants and their children, by contrast, are not immune to U.S. law. And thus fit squarely within the Fourteenth Amendment’s command.

In the past two years, more than 200,000 parents have been removed from the country who say they have a U.S. citizen child.

 Really, they'd have better luck if they just came right out for deporting/executing everyone who is not white, straight, freakazoid and repug.

Your Guide to Racist Motherfucker Abuse of Employees

It's an epidemic, and a menace to the economic public good.

 

Rebecca Leber at Think Progress:

Not long after the owner of the Olive Garden and Red Lobster chains admitted their anti-Obamacare campaigns hurt more than helped, the owner of a Wendy’s franchise in Omaha, Nebraska plans to cut 300 employees’ hours to part-time to avoid providing them health care coverage. 

By moving workers to part-time status in order to avoid paying for their health benefits, the Wendy’s franchise would shift the costs of insurance coverage onto hundreds of employees:

SNIP

Heaping blame on Obamacare may be a popular tactic among the fast food industry, but it is a misleading one. According to the Urban Institute, Obamacare has a negligible impact on business costs, leaving large companies virtually unaffected while actually reducing costs for small businesses.

That assumes the goal is reducing costs.  It's not. The goal is to fuck over employees while blaming that Ni**er in the White House. 

 

I'm sure you've seen this T-shirt

A Mexican restaurant in Columbia, South Carolina is being criticized for its racist T-shirts showing a wooden trap using tacos as bait with the caption “HOW TO CATCH AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT”.

As the Palmetto Public Record notes, a South Carolina reporter tweeted a photo yesterday of someone who appears to be a Taco Cid restaurant employee wearing the offensive shirt.
 ThinkProgress spoke with an employee at Taco Cid who confirmed that restaurant workers indeed wear the shirt. He also noted that patrons can purchase it as well.

Taco Cid, a one-star restaurant that has shuttered franchises in recent years, appears to have cribbed the design from the “Offensive Obscene & Sex Related Tees” section of an online apparel designer.

South Carolina’s senior senator, Lindsey Graham, is helping lead immigration reform efforts among Republicans, saying that the GOP shot itself “in the foot” this election with anti-immigrant rhetoric and positions..

Again, the goal is not to amuse patrons or promote a crackdown on illegal immigrants, who are probably a majority of the chain's employees.  The goal is to intimidate and abuse those employees.

Ky Couple Holds Immigrant as Slave

The danger is not from immigrants, but to them.

Andrew Wolfson:

An Elizabethtown cardiologist and his former wife have pleaded guilty in connection with charges of harboring their maid, a Bolivian undocumented worker, for 12 years and using her for their financial gain.


Dr. Javier Arce, 59, pleaded guilty Monday to failing to report knowledge of a felony to the proper authorities. His former wife, Cristina Mier Arce, 56, of Hardin County, pleaded guilty to harboring for financial gain.

Her indictment alleged that the defendants recruited the undocumented Bolivian woman to work as their domestic servant and harbored her unlawfully from 1994 to 2006.

There's a shit-ton of euphemisms and plea-bargain weaseling in the story, but here's the bottom line: they used the threat of deportation to keep this woman doing their scut-work for 12 years, paying her a grand total of $20,000. That's about a buck and a quarter an hour even if she worked only 40 hours a week, which is doubtful.

This is the future the plutocracy wants for workers in this country: no escape from starvation wages.

No, You Can't Tell By Looking

I'm surprised. Given the attitude of many non-Hispanics in my Kentucky county, where virtually all the scut work is done by Hispanics, from tobacco cutting to housecleaning, I'd have guessed it was more like two in three, or even three in four.

Amanda Peterson Beadle at Think Progress:

One In Three Americans Falsely Believe Most Latinos Are Undocumented 

More than 30 percent of non-Hispanics inaccurately think that a majority of Latinos in the U.S. are undocumented, according to a new poll from the National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) and Latino Decisions about media portrayals of Latinos and immigrants. Only about 18 percent of the Latino population in the U.S. is undocumented, and 37 percent of U.S. Latinos are actually immigrants. In its report, the NHMC said media portrayals of Latinos and immigrants exacerbates “stereotypically negative opinions” about them. “It is producing attitudes among non-Latinos that contribute to hate speech and hate crimes,” said Alex Nogales, president and CEO of NHMC. The organization plans to share its results with the Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to push the agencies to study the impacts of hate speech in the media.

As I always say when this subject arises: Unless you are 100 percent Native American, you're here because of immigrants so shut the fuck up about "illegals."

Being Anti "Illegals" Makes You Racist

Yes, it does.

Ran into a repug-hating, Obama-supporting, professed liberal the other day who started foaming at the mouth at the faintest suggestion of immigration reform.

"They broke the law!" in smug superiority. "I have nothing against legal immigrants."

Bullshit. And racism.

Because the only difference between "legal" immigrants and "illegal" immigrants is time and race. Except for a few thousand full-blooded natives, everyone in this country is the descendant of immigrants. And the vast majority of those immigrants arrived before there were legal quotas restricting immigration.

Legal quotas, by the way, that until 1924 never applied to white people.

My immigrant ancestors got here because they accepted deportation to the colonial wilderness as an alternative to being hanged for theft. Almost immediately, they broke the law again by breaking their contract for indentured servitude and fleeing across the mountains. If the authorities could have found them, they would have been hanged, not deported.

I'd say most white Americans have similar fine citizens in their ancestral closets. We have no right to look down on anyone who risked her life to cross the border without papers.

So unless you are full-blooded Native American, Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

Rationality Breaks Out in Kentucky House

"Hey, y'all: the feds already have this covered, so we don't have to waste the taxpayers' time and money on it!"

That never stopped repugs looking for a racist vote to rally the mouthbreathing base, but Kentucky Democrats stood up and said "not this time, morons."

Joseph Gerth at the Courier:

A House committee killed a bill Tuesday that would block illegal immigrants from receiving government assistance after state officials testified that they are already prohibited under federal law from doing so.

Senate Bill 118 was tabled during a meeting of the House Local Government Committee, effectively killing the legislation. Committee Chairman Steve Riggs, D-Louisville, said he will not recall it before the session ends.

Sen. Mike Wilson, R-Bowling Green, said he sponsored the legislation after hearing from an anonymous source that it was a problem.

When Rep. Rita Smart, D-Richmond, quizzed him about who that was, Wilson said, “Someone who works for the Cabinet (for Health and Family Services), and I will not name names.”

But officials from the cabinet, which oversees aid to low-income people, said food stamps and other assistance going to people who are in the United States without proper documentation has never been identified as a problem in Kentucky.

Not to call Mike Wilson a liar, but that's smoke coming from his pants.

Civilization Burning in Arizona

What the repugs and freakazoids are doing in Arizona - and Virginia, and Alabama, and South Carolina - goes far beyond reversing the Great Society, beyond reversing the New Deal, beyond reversing the Enlightenment, beyond reversing the Renaissance, all the way to seeking the pure barbarism of the hordes who destroyed an entire continent's store of knowledge to usher in the Dark Ages.

Deep inside a long philosophical treatise by Henry Giroux at Truthout, we find this:

Two recent events in Arizona provide flagrant examples of what might be called the emergence of a virulent racism in the service of repressive educational policies and cultural practices fueled by anti-democratic and authoritarian interests. The first event involves the banning of ethnic studies as a result of the passage of Arizona House Bill 2281, which forbids public schools, as well as charter schools, in the state from offering courses that "promote the overthrow of the U.S. government," "promote resentment toward a race or class of people," "are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group" or "advocate for ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals." Crafted at a time when Arizona is at the forefront of a number of states in enacting a right-wing offensive that produces anti-immigrant and anti-Latino opinions, sentiments, and policies, the law was designed not only to provide political caché for Arizona conservatives seeking political office, but also to impose regulations "which [would] dismantle the state's popular Mexican-American/Raza Studies programs."

In one highly popularized incident, the current Tea Party conservative Superintendent of Public Instruction, John Huppenthal - making good on an earlier claim that he would "stop la raza" - notified the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) that, as a result of the new law banning ethnic studies, the popular Mexican-American studies program was in violation of the ban and TUSD would lose $15 million in annual state aid unless it was terminated. The program was eventually eliminated in spite of the fact that it was credited "with reducing dropout rates, discipline problems, poor attendance and failure rates among Latino Students."

The attack on ethnic studies was soon followed with a decision by the TUSD board to ban a number of books associated with this field of study. The list of removed books, in some cases literally taken out of the hands of crying students, includes classic texts such as "Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years," published by Rethinking Schools; "Occupied America: A History of Chicanos," by Rodolfo Acuna, and the internationally acclaimed "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," by Paulo Freire. In an attempt to eliminate any texts or class units where "race, ethnicity and oppression are central themes," the TUSD board also banned Shakespeare's play, "The Tempest."

What is important to note about the book-banning structure is that it applies to a school district not only founded by a Mexican-American, but also one in which more than 60 percent of the students are from a Mexican-American background. As author Jeff Biggers suggested, the racism at work in this form of "book burning" is not so hidden in that "the administration also removed every textbook dealing with Mexican-American history, including "Chicano!: The History of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement ," by Arturo Rosales, which features a biography of longtime Tucson educator Salomon Baldenegro. Other books removed from the school include "500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures," by Elizabeth Martinez, and the textbook "Critical Race Theory" by scholars Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic."

There is more at work in the attack on ethnic studies and the banning of books considered dangerous to children in the Arizona schools than the rise of Tea Party politics and specific acts of censorship (this would be a typical liberal interpretation of these events). There is also the emergence of deeper structures of a systemic racism and the increasing mobilization of neoliberal ideology to justify the ongoing attacks on people of color, immigrants and those considered other by virtue of their class and ethnicity.

SNIP

Even worse is when racism is disavowed, yet appears in another guise through a language of punishment that persecutes and demonizes anyone who even raises the charge of racism. For instance, As writer and Censored News publisher Brenda Norrell makes clear:

students ... protesting the elimination of the [Tucson School] district's Mexican-American studies program, have - without a hearing - been directed to perform janitorial duties this Saturday: an amazing message, right out of Newt Gingrich's playbook (he has been campaigning in the GOP presidential nomination race, proposing the idea that students should be hired as janitors to teach them a work ethic). Apparently, TUSD administrators are paying attention.

Meanwhile, many of the institutions that deal with youth - schools, juvenile detention centers and the criminal justice system - continue to adopt punishment strategies instead of addressing systemic racism. This is evident, for example, in the rise of zero-tolerance policies in schools - which disproportionately punish African-American youth - but is also evident in many routine disciplinary practices.

The fear is that ethnic studies can be taught in ways that provide a critical reading of history, power, ideas and institutional mappings. This is viewed as dangerous by conservatives and white supremacists because classroom learning can be used to expose specific modes of racial exclusion, class inequalities, and the ongoing punishing and silencing of the voices of young people. What many of the newly elected Tea Party ideologues recognize is that critical pedagogy has the power to challenge persistent racial injustice in the United States. More importantly, they fear the role that such a pedagogy can play in empowering minority students to become informed citizens who might exercise their rights by changing the fundamental institutions and power structures that affect their lives.

Death Penalty for Lack of Papers

When anti-immigrant hatred and hysteria trump the Hippocratic Oath, we are doomed.

Amanda Peterson Beadle at Think Progress:

Jesus Navarro, a dialysis patient who will die without a kidney transplant, has private insurance. He has a donor to provide the needed kidney. But because he is an undocumented immigrant, hospital administrators at UC San Francisco Medical Center are refusing to allow the procedure, saying that there is no guarantee Navarro will receive the necessary follow-up care because of his immigration status. Now, Navarro is stuck in an “ethical gray area” for the hospital. “It puts the doctors in a very awkward and torn position,” said Arthur Caplan, a bioethics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “You come into this trying to do good and find yourself stuck in the middle of a fight about immigration.”

For eight years, Navarro has used a home dialysis machine to cleanse his blood after his kidneys began to fail. He reached the top of the waitlist for a kidney in the spring, but doctors called off his transplant when they discovered his immigration status. Even after his wife offered her kidney for the transplant, administrators still refused to allow the surgery. Reece Fawley, executive director of transplantation at UC San Francisco, said in a statement that the hospital considers socioeconomic stability for all patients, including immigration status.

Navarro’s situation highlights a dilemma for hospitals when it comes to organ transplants for immigrants, especially if their undocumented status threatens their continued access to insurance:

Though no data are available, anecdotal evidence suggests clinics sometimes perform organ transplants on illegal immigrants, especially when the patients are young. In one high-profile case, UCLA Medical Center gave an undocumented woman three liver transplants before she turned 21.

But health administrators also reject patients because of their immigration status, though that usually happens when the patients lack insurance. Bellevue Hospital in New York attracted attention last year when it refused to transplant a kidney between brothers because they could not pay for the operation. [...]

Some bioethicists say the hospital should have performed the surgery because Navarro would not be taking resources away from other patients or putting his wife at serious risk.

After all, many legal residents fail to follow their post-surgical plan.

Some lawmakers would even want hospitals to check the immigration status for all patients. The Arizona legislature considered a bill that would require that, and Rep. Steve King (R-IA) said in November that it would not be going “too far” to have hospitals ask patients about their immigration status.

But in the meantime, Navarro’s private insurance from his job would cover the transplant and follow-up care, but he lost job last month after an immigration audit and his insurance could run out. If he is unable to extend his insurance and ends up in California’s Medi-Cal program, his problem would worsen because Medi-Cal would not cover the immunosuppressive drugs that prevent organ rejection after a transplant. “We don’t know what to do,” his wife said. “It’s like we’re on a ledge — we can’t go here or there.”

It's officially War on Immigrants here in the Land of the Free. Somebody call in Doctors Without Borders.

A Government That Works for the 99 Percent

This is what it looks like.

Major extra points to the Obama administration for this one. Smart, effective policy that is also smart, effective politics.

See, that wasn't so hard, was it?

Steven Benen:

For thousands of American families, this reform will have a tremendous impact.

Obama administration officials announced on Friday that they will propose a fix to a notorious snag in immigration law that will spare hundreds of thousands of American citizens from prolonged separations from immigrant spouses and children.

The change that immigration officials are offering would benefit United States citizens who are married to or have children who are illegal immigrants. It would correct a bureaucratic Catch-22 that those Americans now confront when their spouses or children apply to become legal permanent residents.

Although the tweak that officials of the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services are proposing appears small, immigration lawyers and advocates for immigrants say it will make a great difference for countless Americans. Thousands will no longer be separated from loved ones, they said, and the change could encourage Americans to come forward to apply to bring illegal immigrant family members into the legal system.

As the L.A. Times report explained, under the status quo, those in the country illegally are expected to leave to apply for a green card. “Depending on how long they’ve lived in America, once they leave they are barred from returning for up to 10 years. They can claim that their absence would pose a hardship for their spouse or parent and ask the Department of Homeland Security to waive the re-entry restrictions. But to do that, they must first travel to a consular office abroad and begin a process that can take months or even years, experts say.”

What’s more, those waivers are often extremely difficult to get, leading to mass separations of families for several years.

Charles Kuck, an immigration lawyer in Atlanta who is a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told the NYT, “This will open up a huge door to bring a large number of people into the light. There are hundreds of thousands of people who came to the United States illegally who are married to U.S. citizens who have not taken advantage of the waiver that is currently available. This changes their lives.”

Ideally, this would be part of a larger immigration-reform initiative, but the White House believes — correctly — that such an effort is impossible given Republican extremism and the results of the 2010 midterms.

Obama administration officials are therefore left to use their regulatory powers to take incremental steps.

That isn’t to say this is a small improvement. On the contrary, for those affected, it’s a critical breakthrough.

As for the politics, the White House’s move is likely to win praise from Latino voters — a key 2012 constituency — many of whom are already looking at the Republican alternative with warranted disdain.

Here's hoping the Obama administration has finally discovered the Executive Orders to Get Around Congress drawer and is just beginning to mine its contents.

Women Standing Up to ICE

There are few adults in this country more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation than immigrant women. Stripped of all rights, barely able to earn enough to feed their children, in constant terror of deportation.

But against an out-of-control Immigration and Customs Enforcement, it's those very women who are fighting back.

Laura Flanders at The Nation:

Alicia Arriaga arrived in the United States almost eight years ago from Honduras, settling in Atlanta. Four years later she had a daughter (also named Alicia). Soon after, the child began experiencing mysterious convulsions that, although not yet clearly diagnosed, can stop her breathing in her sleep. When the problem started, the Arriagas would drive the five minutes from their home to a nearby hospital, thankful that they lived close enough to arrive in time. But today they fear that the short trip could be catastrophic, not just to Alicia’s health but to her family’s future.

Like all undocumented immigrants in Georgia, the Arriagas must drive without a valid license. The state has long forbidden licenses for undocumented residents, and lawmakers have repeatedly tightened penalties for driving without one. In 2009 the first communities in Georgia enrolled in the federal Secure Communities Program, which deputizes local police to act for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Earlier this year Georgia passed HB 87, its own version of Arizona’s infamous “stop and check” law, most of which went into effect in July. Taken together, these steps have turned a routine traffic stop into a potential disaster for undocumented Georgians. The new law permits police to check the status of anyone they stop on suspicion of any crime or minor traffic violation. If arrested, detainees can be turned over to ICE and held while their fingerprints and papers are checked against a federal registry. Even if all charges are dropped, getting pulled over can lead to deportation.

SNIP

Less visible than the boarded-up businesses is the devastating effect Georgia’s new law is having on women like Arriaga, who fears deportation as much for her daughter’s sake as her own. It’s tough enough to be poor, nonwhite and female in today’s crisis-struck USA, but without legal status a woman is stripped of even those rights and resources that equal-rights and labor fights have secured. The Wild West quality of law enforcement when it comes to such new immigration laws—amid myriad state, federal and, frankly, ad hoc regulations—makes it virtually impossible to use existing protections against harassment, violence or exploitation. And abuse thrives in the chaos. Migrant women face particular threats at the border, in the workplace, even at home—and stiff odds stacked against them as they try to keep, and raise, their kids. This is what inspired women from around the country to travel to Atlanta in September under the banner We Belong Together for a conference organized by the National Domestic Workers Alliance and the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum. A similar delegation met in Arizona in May.

“We believe that when you see the world through the eyes of women you see an up-close, clearer picture of the full impact of what’s going on,” says Ai-jen Poo, director of the NDWA.

SNIP

There are some who are working to offset the human damage caused by harsh immigration laws. In June Senators Al Franken and Herb Kohl introduced the Humane Enforcement and Legal Protections (HELP) for Separated Children Act to improve coordination between child welfare agencies, NGOs and ICE. Lynn Woolsey has introduced a companion bill in the House. Others are raising questions about the conditions of imprisonment for designated deportees. The ACLU recently launched a campaign to protect women held in immigration detention from rape. State attorneys general are raising an alarm about sex trafficking of undocumented women.

But perhaps most significant, undocumented women are putting aside their fears and speaking up. Today Alicia Arriaga works with the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, a statewide group with members in fifteen communities. GLAHR’s meetings are teaching her how to deal with authorities. At the hospital and at her daughter’s school, she talks to other mothers. In July, after HB 87 went into effect, the group held a “women’s march” in protest. GLAHR member Maria Guadelupe Crespo told We Belong Together delegates that she had worried about how many women would show up. “My community has been paralyzed.” But on the day of the rally, more than 1,000 women came out.

With Christmas approaching, We Belong Together is soliciting letters from children asking Obama to stop deportations and keep families together for the holidays. As the president and his party hit the campaign trail seeking women’s votes, an alliance between women’s and children’s advocates, immigrant groups and undocumented women could amplify calls for federal immigration reform. “I’m here for the people who are scared,” says Arriaga, “who need to speak out.”

But don't think being a citizen protects you.

Marie Diamond at Think Progress:

In their zeal to crack down on undocumented immigrants, federal immigration officials have accidentally arrested and tried to deport thousands of U.S. citizens in the past year alone. Americans who find themselves in this nightmarish situation say their protests to the police fall on deaf ears, and they are denied any opportunity to communicate with immigration agents to clarify the situation.

Some citizens are held for a few days while the situation is resolved, but others have been locked in prison for months. Take the case of Anthony A. Clarke, a Minneapolis man who was arrested and illegally detained for 43 days while federal agents tried to deport him:

Clarke’s case is the apparent fallout of an aggressive ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] campaign to deport illegal immigrants who also have criminal records that show up during cross-checks of federal databases.

While those efforts have resulted in the deportation of hundreds of thousands of dangerous criminals, thousands of U.S. citizens have been snagged along the way, in part because agents operate in a secretive judicial environment where detention hearings are held out of public view.

After a detailed examination of federal immigration records, Prof. Jacqueline Stevens of Northwestern University estimated this year that about 4,000 American citizens were illegally detained or deported as aliens in 2010. In a study published last summer, she found that as many as 20,000 citizens may have been wrongly held or deported since 2003.

FBI records show that immigration agents were aware of Clarke’s legal status at the time he was arrested, and detained him anyway. The New York Times notes that “Any case where an American is held, even briefly, for immigration investigation is a potential wrongful arrest because immigration agents lack legal authority to detain citizens.” Clarke has filed a lawsuit in federal court.

In another horrifying case, a mentally-disabled citizen was actually deported and sent to prisons in Honduras and Guatemala before he was finally able to convince authorities there that he was an American.

The reason for the rising number of mistaken arrests appears to be ICE’s rapid expansion of Secure Communities, a deportation program, which has ballooned under President Obama and is widely criticized for eroding the trust between local police and immigrant communities and making it less likely that people will report crimes. Under the program, the fingerprints of every person booked at local jails are checked against Department of Homeland Security immigration databases. But the database is riddled with errors and routinely flags citizens as undocumented immigrants.

The administration’s harsh enforcement practices have resulted in 1.1 million deportations since the beginning of President Obama’s term, the highest numbers in six decades.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune observes that these stories “raise disturbing questions about the tactics of immigration agents and the adequacy of checks and balances in a parallel court system overseeing the…ICE agency.”

The way we treat immigrants in this country is shameful. There is no excuse for it, and we're going to pay even more heavily than we already are.

Where Are the "Pro-Family" Freakazoids on This One?

It's the same old racist family-destroying policy used on blacks for decades, now applied to the browns.

Marie Diamond at Think Progress:

A custody fight in Georgia is illustrating the biases of a foster care system that some say routinely subverts the parental rights of undocumented and non-English speaking mothers and fathers:

Ovidio and Domitina Mendez’s lost their five children to foster care when the Georgia Department of Family and Children Services arrived at their home claimed the kids were malnourished. The couple, who are both undocumented immigrants from Guatemala, says they did everything the child welfare agency asked them to do to get their kids back. But three years later, the children are still in foster care with strangers. Why? Because they are undocumented immigrants who speak Spanish, according to advocates.

A recent study by the Applied Research Center revealed that at least 5,100 children are languishing in America’s foster care system because their immigrant parents were detained or deported. But the report also found that even when undocumented parents are not detained or deported, they face bias in the child welfare system as a result of cultural and language discrimination.

For instance, at the June hearing that terminated the Mendez’s parental rights, they were peppered with seemingly irrelevant questions about their English-speaking ability and immigration status. “Describe for the court why even three years after [the children went into the state’s custody] you cannot speak English without an interpreter,” asked Bruce Kling, special assistant attorney general for Whitfield County Department of Family and Children’s Service.

The state also argued that the Mendezes’ should not regain custody because, as undocumented immigrants, they could not attain driver’s licenses and therefore couldn’t transport their children. ARC found that many county child welfare departments give this justification for why undocumented parents can’t be trusted as caregivers.

The suggestion that undocumented immigrants are unfit parents (usually for reasons related to their poverty) is often used to separate them from their children. But children then remain in foster care because of the barriers that undocumented mothers and fathers face in trying to regain custody. Parents’ undocumented status also works against them by preventing them from accessing state services that would enable them to better provide for their children.

Exploiting Illegals for Fun and Profit

It's their glee at discovering a new way to abuse their workers that gets to me.

Kevin Drum:

Tod Kelly tells a story about a commercial nursery that hired his firm a few years ago to help get their workers compensation claims under control. After examining the nursery's operations, they made several recommendations about buying some new equipment and updating their training:

As we were wrapping up, as an aside, we noted that one of their larger ongoing back injury claimants was an illegal alien. We could close that claim out quickly, we told them, by letting the injured worker know that we would have light duty work for him were he able to legally work for the nursery. Since he wasn’t able, he could be terminated and all future indemnity costs would disappear. As soon as we explained this, the brothers began looking at each other, wide eyed and smiling. I cringed inwardly. I knew we had just made a mistake.

The updated equipment was never purchased, of course. And taking the time to train or stretch was seen as a waste of the company’s time and money. The claims continued to flood in, but now with each claim came notification from the employer that they had “reason to suspect” the claimant was an illegal worker, along with a request to send the light-duty letter so we could avoid making indemnity payments. Over the course of the next year the number of employee injuries increased 20%. But without indemnity costs their annual claims cost decreased 55% — and their insurance premiums went down as a result. They were able to terminate our services the next year with a glowing letter of recommendation.

Today they have moved from being one of a top-100 nursery to being a top-15, and by all accounts are going strong.

If this reminds you a lot of The Jungle, you aren't the only one. The rest of the piece is worth a read too.

If we're not going to prosecute employers for hiring undocumented workers, can we at least get them for abusing their workers?

ACLU Out to Corral Out-of-Control ICE

The last decade has left the Fourth Amendment battered and gasping for life, but not yet dead. So "Warrants? We don't need no steenkin' warrants" is still a lie.

Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars:

Wingnuts are so fixated on the Second Amendment, they completely miss the Fourth. With the increasing militarization of police departments and federal agencies, such legal formalities as warrants go right out the window:

On the night of October 20, 2010, Angel Enrique and Jesus Antonio were in bed in their small, two-bedroom apartment in the Clairmont complex in Nashville. The doors and windows were all shut and locked.

Suddenly there was a loud banging at the door and voices shouting "Police!" and "Policia!" When no one answered, the agents tried to force the door open. Scared, Jesus hid in a closet. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents began hitting objects against the bedroom windows, trying to break in. Without a search warrant and without consent, the ICE agents eventually knocked in the front door and shattered a window, shouting racial slurs and storming into the bedrooms, holding guns to their heads. When asked if they had a warrant, one agent reportedly said, "We don't need a warrant, we're ICE," and, gesturing to his genitals, "the warrant is coming out of my balls."

The Fourth Amendment strictly prohibits warrantless intrusions into private homes and the Constitution's protections apply to both citizens and non-citizens alike. In the absence of a judicially authorized warrant, there must be voluntary and knowing consent; ICE officers forcing themselves into someone's home does not constitute consent.

The ACLU and ACLU of Tennessee this week filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of fifteen residents of the apartment complex who were subjected to this large-scale, warrantless raid by ICE agents and Metro Nashville police officers.

If you could have only one constitutional amendment to protect America from becoming Saudi Arabia or Syria, it would have to be the Fourth. More even than the First, the Fourth Amendment's protections against unwarranted searches is the last bulwark against the Security State.

As American as You and Me

As I've written many times before, the only "Real Americans" are full-blooded pre-Columbian natives. The rest of us are immigrants and immigrant descendants. And if coming to this country without proper paperwork is a crime, very few of us would be here.

Digby nails it:

I would imagine that many of you have already read this essay by Jose Antonio Vargas about his odyssey from being an undocumented child to undocumented success story, but if you haven't take a few minutes and do it. It's an extraordinary piece.

And then read the comments. Most of them are supportive and decent. But there are quite a few that simply say "tough shit." You're not "one of us", "you people" take our tax dollars, all the usual hideous nonsense. There's just no getting through to people who would punish someone who was brought to this country as a child and is as American as they are by exiling them rather than giving them a path to citizenship. Their issues have to do with a very deluded idea that because you happened to be born within some arbitrary lines on a map, you are a superior form of humanity to which others must "qualify" to be privileged enough to obtain. These people need to get out more.

The concept of citizenship is obviously fraught with complications. But those of us who were born as citizens didn't "earn" a damned thing to be Americans. It's an accident of fate. Vargas, on the other hand actually did earn his citizenship by spending years in the shadows and succeeding in spite of the terror he felt at losing everything he's worked for and being exiled from his home. The fact that this immigrant country can't find a way to legalize people who didn't ask to come to America as children any more than the rest of asked to be born here is a travesty. These people are as American as I am.

Tom B nails the utterly predictable - and predicted - consequences of anti-immigrant hatred.

Celebrate America

How have you honored your immigrant ancestors lately?

Via Digby:

The American Immigration Council is pleased to announce the winner of its 14th Annual “Celebrate America” Creative Writing Contest. Maya Young Wong of Altadena, California, won for her poem entitled “My Grandfather Ben.” Maya’s entry was chosen out of more than 6,500 entries from fifth graders across America. As the grand prize winner, Maya will attend the American Immigration Council’s annual benefit in San Diego, California where she will read her winning entry.

Maya’s poem describes the life of her grandfather coming from his Guangzhou village in China to America, his “Gold Mountain.” In less than 500 words Maya, a student at Castelar Elementary School in Los Angeles, was able to tell the saga of her grandfather’s journey to the United States, working in a laundry business, becoming a soldier and getting married.

From China sailed my Grandfather Ben.
He came to America when he was four plus ten.
His Guangzhou village was small and poor
And he helped his mother with farming chores.
Every morning he gathered bits of firewood
And drew water from the well as much as he could.
From morning to night he slaved like an ox.
But it was never enough to fill the rice box.
So his parents said, "You'd better leave home
And go to America where you can roam".
Until you find a great place of your own.
America, Gold Mountain, is the place to go
Big and wide, and high and low.

To read the poem in its entirety click here or visit www.communityeducationcenter.org.

Death Sentence for Driving Without a License

If she were from Ireland, all green eyes and alabaster skin, you know damn well she'd be let off with a warning and a fast-tracked naturalization.

From the Courier:

A Kentucky woman who faces deportation to her native Mexico is seeking asylum, saying she fears domestic violence from her ex-partner and that Mexican authorities can’t be counted on to protect her.

Ana Lilia Alanis-Paulin entered the U.S. illegally in 1997 at age 17. She is in an Illinois jail after being arrested May 5 in Lexington, where she lives, for driving without a license. She was turned over to federal immigration authorities.

A legal brief filed on her behalf alleges the father of her youngest child has threatened to harm her if she returns to Mexico, where he now lives. Alanis-Paulin had called Lexington police three times to report abuse allegations in 2008 and 2009 when he lived there.

If you haven't been keeping up on Mexico news, our NAFTA partner is about a half-puff of pot away from being a failed narco state. There is no such thing as law enforcement outside of Mexico City. The closest thing to a shelter for victims of domestic abuse is a closet you can lock from the inside. Not that that will help when the gangs decide to just burn the whole place down.

One more time, the facts on Mexican immigration:

The "law" these people "broke" is the result of the ludicrously small number of legal immigrants from Mexico permitted to enter the U.S. each year. Increase that number to match the number of Mexican workers needed by U.S. employers, and illegal immigration disappears.

Speaking of employers, their need for millions of desperate immigrants willing to work for pennies and accept horrific conditions is what keeps the coyotes busy. They are also why the border is so porous. You got a problem with Mexican immigration? Tell it to the Chamber of Commerce.

Which is correct: "Immigrants built this nation" or "White people built this nation"? Trick question! It's both. Because unless you are 100 percent Native American, you are the descendant of immigrants.

And the only thing that separates you from Ana Lilia Alanis-Paulin is an arbitrary quota.

But don't look for compassion, logic or humanity from ICE, either. The terrorism-terrified immigration service works as far beyond the law as any drug cartel.

Bring Marine's Father Home; Deport ICE Motherfuckers

You think immigration law in Kentucky needs to be fixed? First, stop abominations like this:

U.S. immigration authorities have deported a longtime Kentucky farm worker who had twice emigrated illegally from his native Guatemala — despite pleas for leniency from his son, a U.S. Marine preparing for deployment to Afghanistan.

Juan Andres, who with his wife has five children ages 12 to 22, was deported Jan. 27 to Guatemala, according to Gail Montenegro, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Andres, 41, had worked on farms in Kentucky and other Southern states since arriving illegally in the United States more than 25 years ago.

His son and other advocates had called for leniency because he had been a hard worker, abided by other laws and had been raising a family of U.S. citizens.

“I'm disappointed, to say the least,” said Ron Russell, whose Russell Immigration Law Firm represented Andres.

Attorney Rachel Newton, also with the law firm, said the decision could demoralize those in the armed forces who have undocumented family members. Anxiety about their relatives' welfare could distract them from being prepared for military service, she said.

“To me it sent a message to a lot of Latinos who are thinking about going into the service: ‘We're still going to do whatever we want to do to your relatives,' ” she said.

Unless you are 100 percent full-blooded Native American Indian, you are the descendant of immigrants - immigrants who by today's stupid and self-destructive laws would be rejected at the border and have to sneak in illegally.

What ICE is doing to Andres and hundreds of thousands of people like him is un-democratic, un-American and inhuman.