Tag: immigration

DREAM Now Letters Recap: Tell Harry Reid You Want The DREAM Act Now

The “DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama” is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service.  With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!

This post will mark the completion of the first week of the DREAM Now Letters.  This social media campaign has been an immediate success, which is in large part due to the historic actions of DREAMers this week

Major bloggers from across the net, which I will link to below, have already cross-posted both Mohammad Abdollahi’s and Yahaira Carrillo’s stories.  The letters even made a brief appearance on memeorandum, a news aggregator that I’m addicted to.

If you haven’t read about it, yet, on Tuesday, 21 DREAM Act youth were arrested on Capitol Hill.  Nativists’ heads are already exploding at the notion that undocumented youth could openly declare their immigration status, get arrested, and not get deported.  David Bennion, my co-blogger at Citizen Orange, has the best write up of the action, by far.  It’s new media at it’s best.  He was actually there while it was happening. 

DREAM Now Letters: Yahaira Carrillo

The “DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama” is a social media
campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to
pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien
Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young
people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided
they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and
complete either two years of college or military service.  With broader
comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is
now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!

President Barack H. Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest
Washington, DC  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.

DREAM Now Letters: Mohammad Abdollahi

The “DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama” is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, havegood moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service.

Arizona: Neo Nazis Patrol Border

Is it chickens or is it eggs?  Is it that Governor Brewer’s immigration extremism gives cover to Nazis?  Or is it that Neo Nazis give cover to the ugliness that is SB 1070? Is it that Joe Apraio was thought to be as extreme as anyone could be, but people have emerged in Arizona who are even further beyond the Pale?

Is Arizona a Petry Dish from growing more and more virulent forms of extremism?  You pick.

This from AP:

Minutemen groups, a surge in Border Patrol agents, and a tough new immigration law aren’t enough for a reputed neo-Nazi who’s now leading a militia in the Arizona desert.

Jason “J.T.” Ready is taking matters into his own hands, declaring war on “narco-terrorists” and keeping an eye out for illegal immigrants….

But local law enforcement are nervous given that Ready’s group is heavily armed and identifies with the National Socialist Movement, an organization that believes only non-Jewish, white heterosexuals should be American citizens and that everyone who isn’t white should leave the country “peacefully or by force.”…snip

But Ready, a 37-year-old ex-Marine, ,,, and his friends are outfitted with military fatigues, body armor and gas masks, and carry assault rifles. Ready takes offense at the term “neo-Nazi,” but admits he identifies with the National Socialist Movement.

“These are explicit Nazis,” said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project. “These are people who wear swastikas on their sleeves.”

And so, today, running around in the desert where it’s dangerously hot are a bunch of heavily armed Nazis.  And Sheriff Arpaio continues to humiliate immigrants while failing to prevent crime.  And the Governor of Arizona continues to insist that SB1070 is not preempted.  And not racist. And a waste of money.

Arizona is a hot, dry Petry Dish for growing extremism.

My revulsion overflows.  I’m not advocating violence.  I’m just noticing the strong, negative feelings all of these creeps evoke.  I hope that the people of Arizona will find a way to be free of these demagogues.


simulposted at The Dream Antilles and Stars Hollow Gazette and dailyKos

Rand Paul to abolish Section 1 of 14th Amendment, ending birthright citizenship

Recently I have detailed the relationship that Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul of Kentucky and State Senator Russel Pearce of Arizona have with their Neo Nazi, white supremacist supporters.

That is why it was no surprise to me to learn today that Rand Paul told a Russian journalist that he opposes birth citizenship as protected under the 14th Amendment, or, as Russel Pearce calls it “anchor babies”.


   We’re the only country I know of that allows people to come in illegally have a baby and then that baby becomes a citizen. And I think that should stop also.

thinkprogress.org

Yeah, that’s called the Section 1 of the 14th Amendment

More below the fold.

Stories Of Impact Will Push Us To Fix The Oil Spill, Homelessness, And Other Big Problems

While I was on a recent radio show, a student called in from a campus “Rally Against 1070,” that challenged Arizona’s draconian immigration law. The rally was a great idea, part of the public outcry that’s needed. But I wish they’d called it something like “Rally Against the Show Us Your Papers Law.” Headlining it with a bill number gave people nothing to respond to emotionally.

Over nearly forty years that I’ve spoken out on various causes and written about citizen movements, I’ve come to believe that people work for justice when their hearts are stirred by specific lives and situations that develop our capacity to feel empathy, to imagine ourselves as someone else. New information–the percentage of people out of work or children in poverty, the numbers behind America’s record health care costs, the annual planetary increases in greenhouse gases–can help us comprehend the magnitude of our shared problems and develop appropriate responses. But information alone can’t provide the organic connection that binds one person to another, or that stirs our hearts to act.  

The Week in Editorial Cartoons – The Perfect Oil Clean Up Crew

Crossposted at Daily Kos

THE WEEK IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS

This weekly diary takes a look at the past week’s important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.

When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:

1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?

2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?

3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?

The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist’s message.

:: ::



Clean Up Crew by Cam Cardow, Ottawa Citizen, Buy this cartoon

Immigration: it’s simple.

Every once in awhile the media mouthpieces attempt to explain to the public that the immigration issue is “complex.”  Would anyone here like to explain to me in real terms how this is so?  I am not going to name names or point fingers here.

(Crossposted at Orange and at Firedoglake)

Operation Terraform, The Secret Obama Administration Plan For Arizona, Is Revealed

Washington (FNS)-An exclusive investigation by FNS reporting staff has identified and confirmed, through a second source, the Obama Administration’s secret plans for resolving issues with certain residents of Arizona that has been in the news over the past week, known as “Operation Terraform”.

The plan depends upon American authorities cooperating with the Canadian, Mexican, and North American Governments, and the plan will require one of the largest transport efforts since D-Day.

Until today, no one outside the involved agencies had been aware of the existence of the plan, much less its details, and as of today, no official will admit, on the record, that the plan is already in effect.

NeoNazi/AZ GOP link exposed through Racist Immigration Law. Where the hell is the media on this?

     Meet J.T. Ready, avowed Neo Nazi, past president of the Mesa Community College Republican Club and Maricopa County Republican precinct committeeman. J.T. is the second schmuck from the right in the picture below.

Image Hosting by PictureTrail.com

   And here is J.T. Ready (Left) with Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce, the author of the new Arizona police state “show me your papers” law, who has his own history of ties to Neo Nazi white supremacist groups.

Image Hosting by PictureTrail.com

    In most states being seen publicly with a Nazi would ruin your political career. In most states you would be shunned by your political party. But not in Arizona, and not in the Republican party.

WTF?

More below the fold

Arizona Backs Down. Sorta Kinda.

Battered by the media tsunami caused by Arizona’s “show us your papers” law and the resulting lawsuits and threats of boycotts, Arizona’s legislature today sought cover by seeking to moderate provisions of SB 1070.  Are these real changes or are they just cosmetic changes and an effort to save face?  It’s probably some of each.  Put another way, those who oppose the law can know that their outrage is being heard and felt.  But the changes don’t eliminate the problem, they just provide better cover for it.

The Arizona Daily Star reports:

– State lawmakers voted late Thursday to repeal one of the more controversial provisions from the new law aimed at illegal immigration….

HB 2162, approved by the House and Senate, changes the law to specify that when deciding whom to question about immigration status, police may not use race, ethnicity or national origin as a factor.

That is a significant change from SB 1070 as it was approved by lawmakers and signed less than a week ago by Gov. Jan Brewer. That version of the law permits police to consider any of those factors when deciding if there is “reasonable suspicion” someone is not in this country legally, as long as it is not the only reason for investigating further.

There’s more, of course:

As originally approved, SB 1070 requires police to determine the immigration status of those with whom they have “lawful contact” if there is reasonable suspicion the person is not here legally.

That “reasonable suspicion” language remains. But the language about “contact” is replaced with a reference to “stop, detention or arrest.” Paul Senseman, the governor’s spokesman, said the changes effectively reduce checking immigration status to “secondary enforcement.”

“There have to be other steps, such as another law being broken first,” he said, before an officer could, with reasonable suspicion, inquire if a person is a citizen or legal resident.

He compared it to Arizona’s seat-belt laws: Police cannot stop a motorist solely because the person is unbuckled. But officers can issue a ticket for failing to buckle up if the driver is stopped for some other reason.

Join me in Nogales.

Arizona Immigration Law Ripe for Abuse

(published at Truthout.org)

Immigration is a sensitive issue, but the immigration bill that passed the Arizona legislature is the wrong way to try to solve it. The new law gives Arizona law enforcement broad new authority to enforce federal immigration laws. It is so broad, not to mention vague, that abuse of this new authority by law enforcement is assured.

The New York Times summarizes the new law: “The law would require the police ‘when practicable’ to detain people they reasonably suspected were in the country without authorization. It would also allow the police to charge immigrants with a state crime for not carrying immigration documents. And it allows residents to sue cities if they believe the law is not being enforced.”

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