And the guest worker bill (House Bill 116), while having a two year start date (meaning it doesn’t take effect now), won’t allow undocumented workers to regularize their status until federal immigration happens. I think that guest worker programs are a step in the right direction because they could provide a basic level of occupational safety and legitimacy to undocumented employees, but absent a pathway to citizenship for those who continue to be “guests”, workers could continue to linger without opportunities to collectively bargain and advocate for themselves. Utah’s HB 116 is an interesting concept, but it won’t go anywhere without a federal plan or policy to compliment it.

Both of these laws are going to be difficult to enforce and will likely be challenged as federal law trumps state law  (and immigration is considered a federal matter).

This short analysis about these two bills from Firedoglake is a great summation:

“It’s worth noting that the bill sponsor in Utah believes that his law is different from the Arizona law, in that it does not require law enforcement to ask about immigration status when picking up people on anything less than a serious misdemeanor. Meanwhile, the guest worker program, which would need a federal waiver that currently does not exist, is certainly novel; the bill sponsor of the law enforcement measure opposed it vociferously. A third law creates a pact with Nuevo León State in Mexico to funnel Mexicans into the guest worker program. Because a state can’t really create a guest worker program, the latter two bills have been dismissed by immigrant’s rights advocates (and frankly, any bill that invites workers to be employed under dubious grants of rights should be seen as immediately suspect). Therefore, you end up with a law that is in many respects a mirror of the Arizona law, with some of the most controversial pieces softened.”

While I don’t like the idea of potentially hundreds of different state level immigration laws because of the confusion it creates, one positive point about these laws is that they keep the immigration issue on the policy agenda.

US-Mexico relations have clearly had a rough time in 2010. Mexico’s seeming inability to deal with the increased violence south of the border plus the disruptive and unfortunate so-called Wikileaks has made many policy-makers pause on both sides of the border.

These Wikileaks have become a serious diplomatic embarrassment to the US world-wide. But in the case of Mexico they may have created even greater tensions given the timing. Official and personal assessments in diplomatic reporting are never meant for public disclosure. Yet everyone knows that diplomats carry out their duty by reporting situations as they see them. Hence, awkward situations are created when revelations of this reporting plainly embarrass both the US and Mexico.  But the underlying problem is that relations are managed by both sides in an equally clumsy if not maladroit manner.

The Mexicans rely primarily on their nationalistic Foreign Ministry (SRE). This limits other actors or constituencies from having a more substantial role. Whereas on the US side even though Mexico is a NAFTA country, the bi-lateral relationship is still managed like the rest of Latin America: too often as an afterthought. European policy in Washington is guided by the historical gravity of the Trans-Atlantic ties and their constituencies (DoD, Treasury, the banks, the Council on Foreign Relations, academia et al). Middle East policy is primarily driven by the pro-Israeli lobby and the energy sector. Africa policy is largely formulated with plenty of NGOs and the Black Congressional Caucus input. Asia policy is guided by the US Navy (DoD), Treasury, Walmart, the banks, the high tech economy and the trade sector.  Whereas, US Latin American policy, by and large a constituency orphan (except for the glandular Calle Ocho crowd and the equally emotional anti-narcotics and anti-immigrant groups) is in the virtual hands of the State Department bureaucracy. It does not attract the influential and powerful top-cover of the other regions’ constituencies. Hence, without daily guidance from on top (the White House, Wall Street, the energy sector or powerful ethnic lobbies) the State Department bureaucratic mattress mice policy-handlers are cautious, timid, risk averse, invariably resort to lecturing the Latins on the virtues of America, insensitively imparting adult supervision and placing careers first over policy (hence more responsive to the GOP members of Congress because they do threaten careers unlike the Democrats). Therefore , the WikiLeaks stories have become a real validation of Mexican (Latin) suspicions of the US lack of serious purpose or attention and only episodically engaged. Consistent and serious policy treatment by the US will only come about when the Latin Americans begin to cultivate domestic heavy hitters in the US to become their constituents or supporters. The Mexican-American community and Latinos in general are notably missing in action in any foreign policy formulation. As for the Latin Americans and especially the Mexicans, the lesson to be learned is that only weak powers largely depend on the foreign ministry of a great power for problem resolution. It is difficult to foresee how the out years will significantly improve.

This piece was inspired by a comment on my last blog post about abolishing Chicano Studies departments because “they doom aspiring minorities to a lifetime of poverty.” It reminded of the time-honored American tradition of emphasizing the necessity and superiority of certain fields over others. You’ll be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t slam the sciences or business while the line frowning upon ethnic studies goes down the street and around the corner. This often times is exemplified by employers who see a resume come across their desk with Women’s Studies or Latino Studies at the top, causing the following Q&A: “What exactly did this person learn? What did they do? I bet they learned to hate men (Women’s Studies) or white people (ethnic studies).”

These questions come up because a good number of people don’t know the content of these fields and subsequently disregard them. But those answers couldn’t be farther from the truth. When it comes to practical applicability, ignoring certain fields should only be acceptable when applying for a job that requires a particular specialization (such as nursing, engineering, a Master’s degree, etc). Otherwise, you can acquire the same skills in Chicano Studies that you can in almost any other field. The key is what you do out of the classroom through internships, research, and extracurricular pursuits, not one’s major. Thus, the importance of fields such as Chicano Studies lies in challenging how we think, not in being a gateway to employment.

Now, we can all agree that “minority issues,” throughout time, have been relegated to the doldrums of academia. American students get one version of history, and it’s not the one that includes the contributions of Latinos dating back to the Revolutionary War. For example, readings for a class I took this semester touched on the Bracero Program, shockingly revealing that my colleagues didn’t know about it, or its economic significance to American agriculture during and immediately after World War 2. And they certainly didn’t know its effect on US-Mexico policy to this day. Most of my colleagues taking the class were not Latino, meaning they were (on the surface) immersing themselves in a curriculum that was not personally relevant. The class shed light on issues relating to race, immigration law, labor relations, foreign policy, and employment discrimination. Broad topics, in a broad field, that got everyone to reflect on the legal and political mechanisms that promulgate Latino disempowerment.

Enter my definition of an effective field of study: one that causes people to spend time in thought, to question what they read, and ultimately be independent thinkers. In my experience, fields such as Latino Studies are among the best at creating such ability.  At their core, these departments offer exposure to areas such as law, history, policy, race relations, and politics. They’re fully capable of fostering independent analysis and are highly effective at challenging the preconceived notions of students. As our country increasingly grows fixated with taking information at face value, they’re needed now more than ever.

Let us use the death of investigative reporting to illustrate this point. The news has become stories on polls, causing a race to the bottom for some in political awareness, and necessitating the need for critical thought. This past election we saw campaign ads in New Orleans with a fence of illegal aliens crossing the border cause people to actually think New Orleans has such a fence, and subsequently feel it’s acceptable to ignore constitutional civil liberties, stop minorities in the street, and ask for identification. People don’t know how to interpret the news, specifically how to differentiate between current events, opinion, and garbage. When someone can’t take a principled stance on an issue, question different ideologies, and challenge their own belief systems, it’s a crisis. If people could do that, then they wouldn’t be surprised to learn Lou Dobbs, like countless other Americans, slammed illegal immigration while depending on it. I’m not saying ethnic studies departments solve any of this, they simply aid in fostering the ability to think critically, which this country desperately needs.

In closing, I would be remiss if I didn’t include a conversation I had with my Father before attending college. It went something like this: “Matt, you can study anything you want. As long as it leads to gainful employment.” My response was choosing a field I felt could segue into multiple professions: Communication. And as I near completion of my Master’s degree in Public Administration from Cornell, I am in a cohort with students whose undergraduate backgrounds include everything from Political Science to Women’s Studies to Philosophy. Our common link is the undergraduate research we conducted, fellowships we held, and leadership roles we took that enriched our academic experience. They highlight what a college degree really is: a piece of paper on the wall. As long as one pursues courses that teach them how to think critically while pursuing opportunities that maximize professional growth, they won’t be doomed to a life of poverty. That makes Chicano Studies OK in my book.

Matthew Stieglitz received his BA in Communication from the University of Delaware. He is currently a 2011 Master of Public Administration candidate at Cornell University concentrating in Government, Politics, & Policy Studies. After receiving his MPA, Matthew will attend law school in order to merge his public affairs background with a legal education to most effectively advocate for Latinos.

Barack Obama is trying my patience. Don’t get me wrong, I still believe he inherited a mess from George Bush and is doing the best he can to turn the ship of state around.  However allowing his Attorney General Eric Holder to come out against California’s Prop 19 is not only “not change”, it is an endorsement of the racist enforcement of our nation’s drug laws.

RACIAL INJUSTICE IN THE DRUG WAR

While roughly 12% Anglos and 11% of Blacks and Hispanics are consumers of illicit drugs, criminal justice statistics dramatically demonstrate an over-representation of Blacks and Hispanics arrested for the use of illicit drugs and in those who go to trial and who are ultimately sentenced to jail. It is no accident that Prop 19 is endorsed by the NAACP and California’s LULAC.  They are joined by LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition), SEIU ( Service Employees International Union), DPA (Drug Policy Alliance), NORML (National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws) who all say YES on Proposition 19.

CURRENT DRUG POLICY AN ABYSMAL FAILURE

In the almost 40 years since President Nixon declared a war on drugs, tens of millions of Americans have been arrested and hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent. Yet drugs are just as available now as they were then. And the impact has been felt most strongly amongst Hispanics, Blacks, and the poor.

There are many good reasons to support proposition 19.  The most obvious is because we have a failed drug policy. Cannabis has been illegal since 1911. Not only is cannabis still widely used and available, but our present failed drug policy is racist.  It’s costly.  It is undermining the Constitution.  It decreases respect for the police.  It fuels gangs and gang violence and U.S. drug policy is responsible for 8,000-20,000 deaths per year in Mexico.

MARIJUANA LAWS DEMONIZE AND TARGET MINORITIES

The NAACP and the LULAC of California both recognize how U.S. drug laws are used to marginalize discriminated against minorities. The adverse affects are detailed in Michelle Alexander’s new book, The New Jim Crow. In it, she points out that a drug conviction automatically makes a person a second-class citizen who can be legally discriminated against in housing and employment, denied school loans, and barred for life from serving on juries, accessing public benefits and even voting.

While African Americans make up only about 13 percent of the U.S. population and about 15 percent of drug users, they make up about 38 percent of those arrested for drug law violations and a mind-boggling 59 percent of those convicted for drug law violations. With Hispanics, the numbers are not quite as dramatic but are still appalling. We now have 7,000,000 Americans, one out of every thirty two American adults, incarcerated, on probation or on parole, and they are disproportionately young Hispanic and Black males.

The League of United Latin American Citizens of California (LULAC) endorsed Prop. 19.  State director Argentina Dávila-Luévano said, “The current prohibition laws are not working for Latinos, nor for society as a whole. Far too many of our brothers and sisters are getting caught in the cross-fire of gang wars here in California and the cartel wars south of our border,” she says. “It’s time to end prohibition, put violent, organized criminals out of business and bring marijuana under the control of the law.”

Historically, Mexican-Americans have been demonized by associating the Hispanic population with marijuana use. This effort becomes more intense in economic hard times. This trend started shortly after the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century when large numbers of Mexican workers came across the border.

As the economy deteriorated, local prosecutors and editors publicly decried the “loco weed.” One critic associated marijuana (called “marihuana” at the time) — not only with Mexicans but “Negroes, prostitutes, pimps, and a criminal class of whites.” States began outlawing the drug, one Texas senator asserting “All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff is what makes them crazy.”

Mexican-Americans were used as a whipping boy to generate anti-marijuana hysteria. In the 1930s Harry Anslinger, head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, led the propaganda campaign to make marijuana possession a federal crime. He was an avowed racist as evidenced by this quote about marijuana (which at the time was commonly known as  cannabis), “its effect on the degenerate races.” He was referring to “Mexicans, Negroes, Puerto Ricans, jazz musicians and other social undesirables,” as he described those he said used marijuana.

Anslinger quoted Floyd Baskett, the publisher of the Alamosa, Colorado newspaper (Alamosa is 18 miles from my wife’s hometown by the way), who wrote “I wish I could show you what a small marijuana cigarette can do to one of our degenerate Spanish-speaking residents. That’s why our problem is so great; the greatest percentage of our population is composed of Spanish-speaking persons, most of who are low mentality, because of social and racial conditions.”

A decade earlier earlier in 1927, a Montana state legislator was quoted in the Butte Montana Standard, “When some beet field peon takes a few traces of this stuff…he thinks he’ has just been elected President of Mexico, so he starts to execute all his political enemies.”

The anti-Mexican, anti-Hispanic rhetoric continues to this day.  Voting YES on Proposition 19 will be another big step to defeating this kind of racism. Right now among California’s likely voters, 63% of Latinos are likely supporters of Prop 19. The recent support of the California LULAC and a brief refresher on the odious history of marijuana prohibition should  be enough to continue that momentum toward cannabis decriminalization.

CURRENT DRUG LAWS ARE GOOD FOR CRIMINALS AND BAD FOR LAW ABIDING PEOPLE

Just as alcohol prohibition did, marijuana prohibition is enriching organized crime. Instead of regulating marijuana to control who can access it, policymakers have ceded control of the $400-billion-a-year global drug market to crime syndicates and thugs.

In Mexico, parts of the country are like Chicago on steroids under Al Capone. 28,000 people have died from drug war violence since President Calderon launched a war three years ago against well-armed, well-funded drug trafficking organizations. The U.S. government doesn’t report its prohibition-related deaths, but law enforcement officers, drug offenders and civilians die every day in our country’s war on drugs too.

OUR LEADERS USE MARIJUANA WITHOUT LEGAL CONSEQUENCES

Use of marijuana or other illegal drugs is rampant amongst our elected officials, yet few suffer any adverse legal or social consequences. President Obama used drugs. Former President George W. Bush was an admitted alcoholic and credible rumors say he regularly used cocaine.  Then there’s Bill Clinton, who famously said he smoked pot but didn’t inhale. Al Gore, Newt Gingrich, New York’s Mayor Bloomberg, former and current governors Jesse Ventura (I-MN),Gary Johnson (R-NM), Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA), and Sarah Palin (R-AK) all admit that they consumed cannabis.

CURRENT DRUG LAW CAUSES LOTS OF PROBLEMS

The war on drugs hasn’t just failed; it’s created problems of its own. The drug war is a good way to waste money. It has cost billions. In the last 30 years in California, we’ve built 22 new prisons and 4 new colleges.   20-30% of third strikes are for minor drug violations and taxpayers spend $40,000/year to incarcerate these folks.  Laws restricting the availability of sterile syringes have increased the spread of AIDS and hepatitis C.  The war on drugs, or more accurately the people who use drugs we’ve demonized, has weakened the 1^st, 4^th, 5^th, 9^th and 10^th Amendments of the Constitution.

WATCH OUT FOR THE BOOGEYMAN

The opposition is grasping at straws.  A recent article in L.A. Times was about a presumed marijuana addict, whatever that is. She spent $5,000/year on cannabis. At current rate of roughly $400/ounce, that is slightly more than an ounce/month, or one .9 gm joint per day.  This is just 10% of the amount of marijuana that the federal government provides to a person on the federal IND program. Most likely this person was self-medicating for her anxiety.

Another boogeyman of the Prohibitionists is that legalizing marijuana will increase use amongst teens. Most likely, the passage of Prop 19 will decrease the number of teens using it. Compare Holland 13% to the U.S. 19%. The Dutch Minister of Health stated “We have succeeded in making pot boring.” When Prop 215 was on the ballot, the prohibitionists said pot use would go up. It hasn’t. It has gone down.

BENEFITS OF YES ON 19

Legalization would be beneficial in key aspects of the war on terror. Afghanistan is the world leader in opium production, and this trade is highly lucrative because U.S.-led prohibition drives the market underground. The Taliban then earns substantial income by protecting opium farmers and traffickers from law enforcement in exchange for a share of the profits.  U.S. eradication of opium fields also drives the hearts and minds of Afghan farmers away from the U.S. and toward the Taliban.

Legalization could also aid the war on terror by freeing immigration and other border control resources to target terrorists and WMDs rather than the illegal drug trade. Under prohibition, moreover, terrorists piggyback on the smuggling networks established by drug lords and more easily hide in a sea of underground, cross-border trafficking.

We’ve heard cannabis is dangerous. Yet experts say it’s less harmful than coffee.  Henningfield & Benowitz compared 6 commonly used recreational drugs – alcohol, tobacco, heroin, cocaine, coffee and cannabis. Which one was the least harmful? Cannabis. Even so there are some who do develop a dependency on marijuana. Legalizing cannabis would aid in treatment. Jail is not treatment. Prop 19 encourages those also might need help to get it legally.

We have heard that passage of Prop 19 will increase the number of users.  This seems unlikely because of the  current ease in acquiring marijuana.  Illicit sales are encouraged because of the money to be made on the black market. The alcohol model of tax regulate would make cannabis harder to obtain.  The late conservative pundit William F. Buckley, founder of the National Review and for 33 years moderator of public television’s Firing Line, said it was easier for an eighth grader to get marijuana than alcohol. Why? Because alcohol is taxed and regulated and marijuana is not. The liquor store owner has an investment to protect, the illicit seller of marijuana does not.

We have examples in Portugal and Holland of what happens when you legalize drugs. Not much except there is less crime, less fear of the police, less money wasted and a reordering of police priorities. As the attorney who fought the case that legalized marijuana in Alaska in 1982 said after a 5-2 vote of the Alaskan Supreme Court ruling that the Alaska Constitution protected the private use of marijuana: “Do you know what happened the next morning?  The sun came up and life went on.”

It is time for life to go on in California. Vote YES on PROPOSITION 19!

David Bearman, M.D. is the Vice President of the American Academy of Cannabinoid Medicine and author of Demons, Discrimination and Dollars: A Brief History Of The Origins of American Drug Policy.

Webmaster’s note: There seems to be a rift between the Washington, D.C. LULAC and the California LULAC mentioned in this blog post. Please read this for more clarification.

Why do immigrants (legal or illegal) come to this country? In search of a better life of course. I am an immigrant myself [Bender Bending Gonzalez], and I came to the U.S. to obtain a better education, a better job, a higher standard of living, and if at all possible help my family that was left behind.  Such is the case with the millions of other immigrants that come from all over the globe. Contrary to what CNN, Fox News and my favorite Lou Dobbs may have you believe, not all immigrants come from Mexico. But what is an undisputed fact is that is that Mexican, Central American and South American immigrants create mini-economies by sending a large percentage of their annual earnings back to their home countries. According to the Inter American Development Bank (IADB), it is estimated that remittances from the U.S. to Latin America will exceed a staggering $100,000 million in 2010.

So what is the U.S. doing to make sure they get their share? Have a look at this announcement that was posted this week on the State Department’s website:

U.S. BRIDGE Initiative Commitments with El Salvador and Honduras

Office of the Spokesman

Washington, DC

September 22, 2010

On September 22, 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton signed separate Memorandums of Understanding (MOU) with Honduran President Porfirio Lobo and Salvadoran Foreign Minister Hugo Martinez outlining the United States’ commitment to the Building Remittance Investment for Development Growth and Entrepreneurship (BRIDGE) Initiative in Honduras and El Salvador.

Led by the Department of State’s Bureau of Economic, Energy and Business Affairs, the United States has committed through the BRIDGE Initiative to work with El Salvador and Honduras to develop and support partnerships with strong and reliable in-country financial institutions to maximize the development impact of remittance flows from the U.S. and to help establish strong foundations for sustainable, inclusive, and transformational economic growth.

Remittances have the potential to be a transformational asset in meeting the development goals of the Latin America region as they can enable greater access to the types of long-term capital required for the multi-year investments that will sustain growth. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) estimates that U.S. $50 billion in worker remittances flow from the U.S. to Latin America and the Caribbean annually.

Under the BRIDGE Initiative, strong in-country financial institutions in Honduras and El Salvador will be able to partner with the United States and multilateral partners to help explore options to use their remittance flows safely and soundly as an asset to raise lower-cost and longer-term financing for infrastructure, public works, and commercial development initiatives that are currently lacking in these countries. USAID-supported market assessments confirmed the feasibility of BRIDGE’s goals in Honduras and El Salvador.

Based on previous successful efforts in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, BRIDGE will not impact the basic transfer of remittances. The millions of households in El Salvador and Honduras that depend on remittances as income and for basic daily living expenses will not see their regular payments disrupted by this effort.

So why focus on El Salvador and Honduras? In my opinion, it is because they are easy corruptible targets. Hillary (inherently Obama) won’t dare pursue the same agreement with Mexico, not after she dug herself a hole by comparing Mexico to Colombia and because Mexican financial institutions are currently strong, relative to how severely the economic recession has affected other Latin American economies and don’t need any sort of BRIDGE type agreement.  Perhaps most importantly, Mexican institutions and special interests won’t let anyone else take their share of the pie. Mexico is the largest trading partner with the U.S. so it’s best to leave them alone. We’ll get our share by imposing higher trade tariffs.

The Salvadorian Central Reserve Bank indicates that there are signs that remittances are on the rise and that El Salvador has received $1,728 million as of June 2010, an increase of $43 million compared to the same month totals in 2009.  The latest statistics from IADB also indicate that Honduras remittances have increased by 11.2% compared to last year. We are talking beaucoup bucks.

Here’s my favorite line of the memorandum “Under the BRIDGE Initiative, strong in-country financial institutions in Honduras and El Salvador will be able to partner with the United States and multilateral partners to help explore options to use their remittance flows safely and soundly as an asset to raise lower-cost and longer-term financing for infrastructure, public works, and commercial development initiatives that are currently lacking in these countries.” This basically means, we’ll tell you how to spend your money, what contractors to hire and determine the infrastructure you need; and we’ll legitimize it by partnering with your own financial institutions.

I’m sure the government of President Lobo will say “fine, if this is what you want in exchange for you leaving me alone and letting me run my corrupt regime.”  But who are the real victims in all of this?  The poor immigrants who come to this country to work hard and get blamed for every single ailment by Tea Baggers and Minutemen.

These immigrants work the fields, they work in sweat shops and factories enduring abuses for salaries well below minimum wage because of fear of deportation. They are robbed of their dignity while crossing the border. God forbid they run into a group of Minutemen or Sherriff  Arpaio and his goons. They work their butts off so we don’t have to pay $5 for an orange, and then they send their hard earned cash back home. Our response to their struggle, we don’t give their children access to a higher education, we’ll portray them as almost subhuman in the traditional media, and in the end you better believe that  Uncle Sam is going “get his” come hell or high water. We’ll blame them for everything, and gladly take their money!

I am disgusted that President Obama is entering these types of agreements with illegitimate governments and that the elite in these countries are getting richer at the expense of the poor.  This is dirty business that stinks to hell and back.

I remember growing up in Mexico and people saying, “It doesn’t matter who’s in power in the U.S. It could be Reagan, Clinton, or Bush. We are going to bow down to their will either way”….and boy isn’t that the truth!

One of the arguments frequently given in the comments of my most-recent Huffington post is, essentially, that “illegals should apply for entry into the United States and wait in line like everyone else.” In a perfect world, this argument makes sense. Historically the U.S. has been a harbor for “huddled masses yearning to be free.” These masses identified themselves, waited in line, and were eventually admitted and naturalized, ‘mericanized, etc.

However, if there is one consensus in the immigration debate it is that the U.S. immigration system is far from perfect. The system is broken, as it were.

In 2008, David Bennion noted the following in Citizen Orange (h/t kyledeb):

“Immigrants eager to apply for employment-based green cards often find themselves in a Catch 22. There is typically a wait of three to five years for an employment-based green card for a worker with a college degree or two years of experience. But the worker must remain in status or leave the country during that waiting period and, unless he/she has an H-1B visa or qualifies under Section 245(i) of the INA, usually cannot continue to work for the employer in the U.S. and still get a green card at the end of the wait. Most employers don’t want to sponsor someone who can’t work for them for the next three to five years. This means that many immigrants who are qualified to work in the U.S. and have an employer willing to sponsor them still find themselves unable to work lawfully.

If you are poor and unskilled, it is usually much more simple: there is no line whatsoever. Duke from Migra Matters had a good run-down a while back of the miniscule number of green cards made available in 2006 for unskilled workers: 147. The great majority of immigrants from Mexico and Central America fall into this group. Almost none of them can get a visa to come here lawfully in the first place, and they certainly can’t get one if they leave the country after having violated U.S. immigration laws.”

The simple(ton) answer here is, in essence, Well, tough shit! Then they should just say home! Unfortunately, this answer fails to take into account the increasingly-hellish world many Mexicans and Central Americans now call home.

Last October, a report issued by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) found that the overall homicide rate in Central America “(32 homicides per 100,000 persons) is tantamount to more than three times the worldwide rate, and it exceeds by seven points the rate for Latin America as a whole.”

“To put it bluntly,” the report concluded, “Central America is the most violent region of the World, with the exception of those regions where some countries are at war or are experiencing severe political violence.”

Since the UNDP report was released, narco-violence seems set to put Mexico on course to join Central America in the dubious “most-violent” distinction. On Wednesday, AP reported the mayor of El Naranjo became the third Mexican mayor in a month to be slain by hitmen believed to be working for drug cartels. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has remarked that Mexico is “looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago.”

“How can I explain this,” writes Bennion, “For most undocumented immigrants, there is no line. There. Is. No. Line.”

But there could be, and needs to be, a line. And not just one line, but (at least) two.

The first “line” can be found in the Real Enforcement with Practical Answers for Immigration Reform (REPAIR) proposal released on 29 April of this year by Senators Harry Reid, Charles Schumer, and Bob Menendez. REPAIR offers a framework for a comprehensive immigration reform bill that secures our nation’s borders, reforms our immigration code, and offers a path to citizenship (or earned citizenship, or back of the line citizenship…whatever you want to call it) for undocumented immigrants already living in the United States. One provision of the REPAIR framework is the creation of an altogether new visa category (the H-2C visa) for “non-seasonal, non-agricultural workers to enter the United States” legally. In short, an H-2C visa category creates “a line” Latin America’s average Josés to apply for legal entry into the United States.

The second “line” can be found in the Refugee Protection Act introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy’s office in March. In some sense, those who wish to flee to the U.S. from the hellish violence in Central America and Mexico seek asylum. Unfortunately, not in the legal sense.

In order to qualify for asylum under current U.S. immigration law, an applicant must establish a “well-founded fear of persecution” due to their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Julia Preston notes in the New York Times that “American immigration judges, always careful not to open the asylum door to any flood, have made it more difficult for Central Americans running from gangs.” The Refugee Protection Act is designed to address this dynamic.

According to a press release by Sen. Leahy’s office:

“The bill eliminates the one year waiting period for refugees and asylum seekers to apply for a green card. The legislation authorizes the Secretary of State to designate certain vulnerable groups as eligible for expedited adjudication as refugees. The Refugee Protection Act also clarifies the law to ensure that innocent asylum seekers and refugees are not unfairly denied protection as a result of the material support and terrorism bars in law…”

In short, one thing the Refugee Protection Act would do is create a way for Latin Americans fleeing persecution from the violence plaguing the region to legally flee to el norte.

Unfortunately, the Refugee Protection Act remains stuck somewhere in the legislative pipeline and the H-2C visa remains two paragraphs in a framework, a draft, a outline of suggestions, and not somewhere immigrants can yet “line up and wait their turn just like everyone else” to come to the Land of the Free.

That said, until the U.S. immigration code is amended to create places where immigrants — and particularly, immigrants from Latin America — can line up, the argument this blog seeks to address remains, as Bennion noted in 2008, “a fabrication dreamt up by restrictionists to make their odious ideas palatable to an unknowing public.”

The new age of political correctness has created the insidious nature of this new racism: the great and grand struggle to protect America from getting too foreign (read: dark and alien) looking. After all, Latinos are not traditionally viewed as acceptable immigrants but instead like Native Americans: conquered and vanquished people but without reservations. They are people who traditionally were confined to certain sides of town. They were the ones with the ability to seasonally service rural parts of the country but who were expected to return to their places of origin.

If one ‘passed’ or assimilated in unnoticed numbers, then one could be accepted, especially with the increasing need for cheap labor, as the US rapidly became less competitive in the global market, as cost of labor skyrocketed. This occurred as traditional white and black Americans insisted in the American dream of high (living) wages. The massive migratory movements from Latin America began concurrently. Previously, the only significant flow had been during the Mexican Revolution. The Castro Revolution of 1960 ignited the first migratory movement covered by the mass media. The anti communist factor helped generally in accepting the first waves of mainly the Cuban white enclave fleeing a majority non-white country. Subsequently, the truly large numbers of immigrants coincided with the US need for cheap labor and the economic and political upheavals in all of Latin America. Hence, the rise of both legal and illegal immigrant movements into the US occurred.

At the same time, the increasing rise of remittances (dollars) sent back to the countries of origin ”hooked’ many Latin American governments to actively support or encourage this massive migration to the US and other developed countries suffering a labor shortage. With the US economy soaring from the late 80s through the 90s, the flow continued. It was the tragic incident on 9/11 that brought a noticeable halt to this readiness to accept this immigrant flow. As the deepest economic recession since the 1930s reared its head in the aftermath of 2001, the exacerbation of economic conditions especially unemployment together with the foreign anti-terrorist awareness or phobia heightened the rejection of ‘outsiders’.

During the Depression years of the 1930s, a backlash against Mexicans arose, significant round-ups of anyone suspected of being Mexican nationals took place and all were deported. Many US citizens were taken to Mexico forcibly. It is common to see, during these uncertain times, the ever-present nativist crowd spring into action as guardians of sovereignty and sentinels of the American tradition. The recognition that the “Latino” population is over 45 million is daunting. The battle cry of “border security” is now the operative term against illegal immigrants and increasingly anti-Latino. The feared white backlash is perhaps and unfortunately the gathering storm in civil relations in the US. Much lies ahead and the impending 2010 electoral cycle will serve to polarize the discourse. The “Latino” leadership must take note and rise to the occasion.

Along with that undocumented young adults are launching a DREAM Letters campaign addressed to Barack Obama. This social media campaign is inspired by a similar effort that the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network implemented for the repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell”. This is the second letter in the series (the first letter was published on Monday):

President Barack H. Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President,

My name is Yahaira Carrillo and I’m undocumented.  As I write this, over 20 undocumented youth are risking arrest and deportation to demand that Congress take action for the DREAM Act.  Just over two months ago, I, along with two others, became one of the first undocumented immigrants in U.S. history to do the same.  Like Mohammad Abdollahi, who wrote you a letter on Monday, I too am queer.  I risk being deported to a machista country, Mexico, where killings related to homophobia are rising.

I was born in 1985 to a barely-turned 16 year-old who had been kicked out of her house while she was pregnant for being a disgrace to the family. I lived with my mother in an abandoned house in Guerrero, Mexico. She struggled to find work, but was either harassed or asked for sexual favors. She said no. She was 17 in 1986 when the 8.1 magnitude earthquake hit Mexico. She decided to take me to the U.S., but we didn’t stay that long. At my grandmother’s request, we returned to Mexico. The hits kept coming: my mother ended an abusive relationship with a military man and feared for her life.

Then, my father called- after abandoning my mother while she was pregnant and being MIA for most of my early years, decided he wanted us to join him in California. My options have always been limited. I was 8 years old when I came to the U.S. When I was 14, my 18-year-old boyfriend wanted to marry me. I said no. When I graduated from the top of my high school class, I thought I couldn’t go anywhere. My parents were migrant farm workers- college wasn’t likely. But years later, I found a private college in Kansas that would accept me. I worked myself to the bone, and obtained an Associate’s Degree. Today, I am working towards my Bachelor’s degree. According to my calculations, it will take me eight years.

I’ve had people tell me that it’s not a big deal, that I should keep on waiting for the DREAM Act to pass. My life has been on pause, rewind or replay for years. Waiting is not an option.  That is why undocumented youth like myself are risking everything, right now, to pass the DREAM Act, this year.  If we’re putting our lives on the line for this, Mr. President, the least you can do is call members of Congress and ask them to do the same.

It started with 3 undocumented youth sitting in John McCain’s office, and it has escalated to 20.  How many more will it take before Congress passes the DREAM Act?

Sincerely,
Yahaira Carrillo

This list was signed by “Concerned Citizens of the United States” and indicated that this group observes people in public and included language that blamed undocumented people and those on the list for increases in crime, domestic violence and substance abuse. There was a message on the list urging officials to begin deportation procedures.

Yesterday I was able to speak with Tony Yapias, who heads up the Proyecto Latino de Utah, who has seen the list and has been responding to individuals and families who were listed. Yapias offered an interesting glimpse into what is happening in Utah in regards to immigration and provided some context for how he became involved in addressing this list.

On June 30, Yapias received a phone call from a woman identifying herself as a state worker and a Latina. She went on an angry tirade criticizing Yapias’s involvement in the immigrant and Latino communities. She did not identify herself by name, but she was angry about the immigration situation and expressed that state workers wanted to have a forum with Yapias. She also sprinkled her phone tirade with sentences in Spanish.

Accustomed to receiving threatening calls from anonymous people who harbor anti-immigrant sentiments, Yapias felt that something was different about this call because of the woman’s statement about state workers wanting to have a forum with him. When Yapias asked the woman what agency she worked for, she replied “I’m all of it.” This tipped off Yapias leading him to believe that it was someone from the state of Utah’s Workforce Services, which he describes as a “one stop shop” for applying for medicaid, food stamps and other services.

On Monday, July 12, Yapias received a copy of the list, and as he read it over, he initially felt shocked and terrified. Realizing that what was contained in the list was an egregious breach of confidentiality, he decided to contact the governor’s office to request that an investigation take place. Yapias expressed to the governor’s office that he suspected that this list may have come from Workforce Services because of the kind of information contained and because of the call he received on June 30 from the unidentified state worker.

Plainly the list singled out the Latino community because of the Spanish surnames, leaving out the possibility that other non-Latino immigrants could very well be using state services or in fact be undocumented. Last week, in another media interview with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, Yapias said,”…They don’t have any other names on this. I mean, yes, most of the undocumented immigrants in our community—in our state or throughout the country are Latinos. But, you know, what about the 35 percent or so who are non-Latinos—Asians, African—from Africa, from Europe, from the rest of the world?”

Utah Governor Gary Herbert asked that an immediate state agency review take place on Tuesday, July 13, and by Thursday, July 15, the state had found at least two state workers who may have been responsible for the creation of the list. The employees who do work for the Department of Workforce Services have been suspended from their jobs pending the ongoing investigation, but the person who made the call to Yapias apparently has not been suspended from her job and has even admitted to her supervisor that she instigated that phone call.

From what has been revealed at this point, it does appear that state and federal laws have been broken in the distribution of this list of “undocumented people”. Furthermore, some of the people on the list were in fact legal and one person on the list was even getting ready to take the citizenship examination. Yapias indicated that he suspects charges will be filed within the next week against those workers who breached the laws of confidentiality with this data. When asked what he felt about the attorney general prosecuting this case, he said, “Nothing lesser than full prosecution should be accepted.”

When I asked if there were other vigilante type acts happening in Utah in the name of immigration enforcement, Yapias said that there really isn’t much vigilante behavior except for this one. He also commented about the situation in neighboring Arizona creating an environment for the states wanting to take immigration matters into their own hands and offered this:

“These workers had access to information that was very confidential. We trust that this information should remain private. They [those who compiled the list] thought that they were being patriotic by identifying the “illegals” to turn into the feds and other state agencies, but they didn’t calculate how this could backfire.”

Because in Utah, the LDS church (Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints aka Mormon Church) is heavily involved in civic and political life, I did ask Yapias if the Mormon Church has commented on immigration more recently because of what is happening in Arizona and because he has asked the President of the Church for an official declaration, much like what the Catholic Bishops have offered on the immigration issue.

“Unless the LDS church takes a stand like Bishop Wester did on behalf of immigration reform in representing the US Catholic Bishops, we will have a similar law to the one passed in Arizona here in Utah,” Yapias opined.

Russell Pearce, one of the lawmakers behind Arizona’s SB 1070, is considered a “devout Mormon.” And ironically, Mormons have had their own immigration history migrating to Utah and settling there as squatters when it was still part of Mexico, and today some of the break off sects of the Mormon church have settled in the Mexican state of Chihuahua to avoid polygamy laws in the US. I have noticed that the traditional media doesn’t explore the LDS connection, but it is a dimension worth exploring since this faith and members of it are heavily involved in both Utah and Arizona politics.

For more information about this case, read and watch the following:

“They Have Terrorized Our Community” via Democracy Now!

Footage from KSL TV in Salt Lake City

And since Mitt Romney is back in the news, this blog is worth revisiting regarding the Mormon Church and its history with people of color.

On 11 February 2009, Celia Alejandra Alvarez-Herrera was arrested by a sheriff’s deputy in a workplace raid during which her jaw was dislocated against a wall.  Regrettably, my notes are obscured by a teardrop that escaped me as she described being beaten with a clipboard for crying out for medical treatment while in Sheriff Joe Arapaio’s custody.

Tears were status quo yesterday afternoon in the packed committee room in the Longworth building on Capitol Hill.  Some staunch stoics (like me) fought them.  Other impassioned advocates (like Rep. Jared Polis) did not.

“They called me bitch,” Alvarez-Herrera testified, in Spanish, about her detention. “They called me ‘doggie.’”  They told her to go back to Mexico, she said.  They also threw her Bible in a trash can and would not give it back, she continued, in Spanish, in tears.

“It’s true that we’re migrants,” Herrera-Alvarez admitted, in Spanish, during her testimony, “but why don’t they ask us why we migrated?”

“Why do they ask us for papers to work but not to go to war?” she cried.

Alvarez-Herrera’s arrest separated her from her four children, she testified, the youngest being only three months-old at the time of her arrest.  Her five year-old son, she continued, nearly died during his mother’s detainment, from complications due to asthma.

Before she was arrested, Alvarez-Herrera worked as a street cleaner in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s jurisdiction — one of millions of employment opportunities just-indignant-enough during Boom Times to require brown staffers.  Once in the Arpaio’s custody, Herrera-Alvarez “never received medical attention,” according to her biography distributed to press at the hearing.  “Now, she requires continued medical treatment due to this negligence.”

Herrera-Alvarez did not come to Capitol Hill alone.  She did not testify alone before our congress.  Silvia Rodriguez testified alongside her.  Rodriguez, 23, “was left homeless when her family decided to move to another state due to the increasing anti-migratory laws in Arizona.”  At the time, Silvia was a student at Arizona State University studying for dual bachelors degrees in political science and Chicano studies.  Nevertheless, she graduated Cum Laude and has been accepted to study at the Harvard Education School this autumn.

“A group of benefactors offered to pay her tuition,” according to Rodriguez’ biography, “but may rescind the offer because of language in SB 1070 about retaliation against those who help anyone who is undocumented.”  She too fell to tears during her testimony.  “The state I call home criminalizes me,” Rodriguez said. “I did not have control over where I was born.”

Rodriguez was 2 years-old when her family immigrated to Arizona.

Perhaps the most heart-wrenching of the day’s testimony came from Katherine Figueroa, 9, whose parents were arrested by Arpaio’s deputies in a workplace raid and detained for three months.  Katherine spoke of nightmares she has in which “they” come to arrest her other relatives, as well.  “Please tell President Obama to stop putting our parents in jail,” she pleaded, in English, in tears.  “All they want is a better life for us!”

A better life, too, was why Alma Mendoza came to testify before our congress.  “My children and I survived domestic violence for 15 years,” Mendoza said, in a press release distributed at the hearing.  “Now with SB1070, women will be afraid to call the police.  They will suffer in silence.”

Rep. Judy Chu, from Los Angeles, noted that already women from Arizona are coming to California seeking services resulting from domestic abuse.

Congresspersons Chu, Luis Gutierrez, Gwen Moore, and Hank Johnson made statements, but only Rep. Raúl M. Grijavla, chairman of the ad-hoc hearing on “The Impact of Arizona’s SB1070 on Women and Children”, and Rep. Polis, stayed for the full hearing.