Tag: immigration reform

So we lost, didn’t we.

Sure, there’s no HCR bill signed yet, but we know the game has been fixed and we’ve been sucker punched.

Bad enough to get screwed by the Republicans for so many years.  It’s irritating, very irritating to get screwed by who we thought were our fellow Democrats.

So this is being a US citizen in the year Twenty-Ten.

Huh.

Even trying to be informed seems an impossible task, much less changing everything.

And to make it even more surreal, the very institutions, the members of which are riding a  high tide of obscene wealth and power, are also crumbling as I type this.

It’s chaotic!

So I look at these kids, these four kids who have wallked what they call the “Trail of Dreams.”

These are four undocumented kids who are demonstrating how they are coming out of the shadows (you know, those shadows that 12 million of our brothers and sisters live in, over 2 million of them children).

These are their names and a little P.R. information about them for the Trail of Dreams website.  First a joint statement by the four:

We are four students from Florida – Felipe Matos, Gaby Pacheco, Carlos Roa, and Juan Rodriguez – who were brought to the United States by our families when we were young. This is the only country we have known as home. We have the same hopes and dreams as other young people, and have worked hard to excel in school and contribute to our communities. But because of our immigration status, we’ve spent our childhoods in fear and hiding, unable to achieve our full potential. We walk in order to share our stories and to call on our leaders to fix the system that forces people like us into the shadows, stripping us of the opportunity to participate meaningfully in society.

I don’t have the wherewithal to report the crucial information I think all American citizens should know.

So I have to limit myself.

I think about the endless politics of the health care so-called “debate.”  What American citizens are being asked to settle for by both our representatives, the Democratic Party, and all the party activists thereof.

Compared to the uphill battle to pass the Dream Act, wow, we’re being offered pure HCR paradise.

One of the most ubiquitous arguments made on the issue of immigration is that before we can do anything of a progressive nature we need to “secure our borders.”

If we don’t “secure our borders,” heaven alone knows what will happen!  The terrists will get in, that’s for sure.  And millions of Mexicans and others from Latin America will descend upon our fair nation like a hail of locusts and we shall all be destroyed in the horror.

Over at Migra Matters, Duke Reed has a post entitled The down-payment’s been paid, when will the goods be delivered?.

To those who are convinced enforcement-only policies are paramount, the question all progressives should ask is:  How much enforcement is enough?

I wrote yesterday about a meeting Obama had scheduled with Chuck Schumer and Lindsey Graham to talk about immigration reform.

Well the meeting was postponed.  According to RollCall:

A meeting between President Barack Obama and Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) scheduled for Monday afternoon on immigration reform has been postponed and will be rescheduled later this week, thanks to flight cancellations in South Carolina.

At a 2008 speech to the  League of United Latin American Citizens, then-Senator Obama said:

“We need a president who isn’t going to walk away from something as important as comprehensive immigration reform when it becomes politically unpopular,” he told the group. “That’s the commitment I’m making to you. I fought with you in the Senate for comprehensive immigration reform. And I will make it a top priority in my first year as president.”

That was in 2008.

Now we have had a taste of how Obama governs and how he promotes legislation.  There is no excuse, therefore, to think that somehow the dynamic of immigration reform legislation will be any different than it was for healthcare, even if Republicans have a more “bipartisan” role.

From Clarissa Martinez de Castro, Director, Immigration and National Campaigns at the National Council of La Raza, posting at HuffPo:

Last Friday, the Associated Press reported that President Obama will meet on Monday with Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC), and is “looking forward to hearing more about their efforts toward producing a bipartisan bill,” according to White House spokesman Nicholas Shapiro.

But let’s be clear. If the meeting is just to “hear more,” it’s not going to cut it. The president had a meeting with Republican and Democratic members of both chambers in June 2009, and in August held a White House summit, hosted by Secretary Janet Napolitano, with a large number of representatives from faith, labor, business, law enforcement, immigrant, ethnic, and civil rights groups. Around that time, Schumer and Graham started working on a bipartisan proposal, and Schumer announced he would have the parameters of a proposal ready by Labor Day 2009.

With the Congressional legislative runway getting crowded and time running out before the November elections, it is time to land this plane. Monday’s meeting must be followed by a clear, bipartisan proposal and a firm timeline for Senate action. Anything less will be regarded as more stalling by the tens of thousands coming to DC to march in two weeks.

So today President Obama will meet with Senators Schumer and Graham.  Wouldn’t you like to be a fly on that wall?

One of the most bizarre notions to come out of the struggle for health care reform was being told over and over again, “Oh single payer never had a CHANCE!  It was never on the table!” said in tones by my fellow Democrats that implied one would be truly insane to suggest single payer be the starting point for any negotiations.

Well we’ve seen how that worked out.

If we’re lucky, we’ll get a weak and watered down public option that will take several years to get up and running, and we’ll be spending those years fighting tooth and nail with vested interests who will do everything they can to make it even more watered down and weak.   And the same will hold true for all the other regulations proposed in the health care bills, with insurance and pharmaceutical companies spending millions to create loopholes that will benefit them and make the rest of us suffer.

We’ve been playing defense far too long.

Yes I know, we have the Conservadems to deal with, we have those nasty Blue Dogs, we have a media who likes nothing better than to pursue inanities for ratings rather than inform the citizens of this country, we have many and dire obstacles in our path.

So why play defense, given that?  What is the advantage?

The other day Duke1676 posted a diary at Daily Kos entitled Words Do Matter Mr. Obama.

See, here’s the thing.  The advocates for progressive immigration reform  have reached a big obstacle when it comes to moving forward on this issue — the progressive activists and the Democratic Party itself.  The challenge is to change the dialogue so that progressive bloggers don’t repeat and feed the same old right-wing memes on the issue — the same old ways that we saw during the “debate” over the Iraq War, over FISA, over the notion that because Democrats are supposedly seen as “weak on security” they have to move far to the right in order to convince the average American otherwise.

The most recent example of this as described in Duke’s diary, is that during President Obama’s speech, he made a point of using the term “illegal immigrant” as a political choice when talking about how undocumented workers will not be covered under healthcare reform legislation.

Yeah, it’s just a word, isn’t it, why get all bent out of shape about it?

Eventually our sages in government will legislate something on health care and it will either be written into law or go down in flames, once again a failure of government to serve its people.  Even amid all the turbulence, though, I feel fairly optimistic we will get a bill President Obama can sign into law and it’ll be something we don’t hate too much.

We’ve been told the next thing our country should turn its mind to is immigration reform.

I have to laugh.  I really do.  I’ve heard more than once that one of the reasons we shouldn’t prosecute torturers is that it would cause such a terrible uproar, the Repubs would think we were revenging ourselves on the Clinton impeachment, it would “tear the country apart.”  Like it’s real woven together right now?  Like we have great cohesion and unity?  Anyway, that’s not where I’m going with this essay.

Immigration reform.