Reuniting Families Act- Now I Feel It.

As a white male, I haven't had the experience of dealing with prejudice, racism or sexism that many people face every day. While I certainly try to understand how they feel, I have not been able to really know the struggles of women or people of color because I haven't experienced it myself.

I have also not truly felt the effects of laws that have been changed or created in order to create more justice for oppressed people. For example, I celebrated the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, but not from the perspective of someone who's life would be affected personally because of the law. While I know that all laws that promote justice have an impact on the world (and thus impact my life), I have not had the experience of feeling that my life would be made different if a law were passed.

The Reuniting Families Act, recently introduced by Rep. Honda, is changing this for me. This law would allow gay and lesbian Americans to sponsor their immigrant "permanent partners" for legal U.S. residency. As a gay American with an Indian partner, this bill would make a tremendous difference in my life. This has an impact on many more things than I would have previously imagined, all the way from the big question of where my partner and I live down to the mundane details. For example, today my partner is spending the day at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles getting his license renewed because as a foreign national he has to get his license renewed more frequently than citizens or legal residents. He also has to go to the BMV in DC for foreign nationals which normally has a much longer wait than other BMVs. One of the most important differences this would make would be that my partner and I would not have to worry about him getting a work visa in order to stay here. It is extremely unnerving to think that if he lost his job and couldn't find another employer to sponsor his visa he would be deported to India.

Most importantly, the Reuniting Families Act would be a tremendous step toward the equal rights that gay couples deserve. There is no reason why my partner and I or any other gay couples should be discriminated against because of our sexual orientation. We should all be accorded the same fundamental right to choose our own relationships.

FCNL has taken the lead among faith-based organizations in lobbying for the Reuniting Families Act. I am so thankful to work for an organization that is working for my rights. As a matter of fact, FCNL hosted the press conference with Rep. Honda for the release of the bill. To find out more about the work of FCNL on this issue, check out our immigration blog--"Immigration: It's Our Community."

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Comedy Central Pokes Fun at the Anti-Immigrant Minutemen

Oh my love for Comedy Central grew substantially last night after I saw this clip where The Daily Show with Jon Stewart poked fun at the Minutemen, a "vigilante" group dedicated to stopping immigrants who are "invading" US borders. Daily Show correspondent Aasif Mandi manages to show the absurd lengths people will go to protect their--as Immigration Impact put it--"misinformed notion that immigration is bad for America."

Check it out:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Borderline Cops
comedycentral.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

Why You Should Care: Immigration Podcast

This week we pulled Alex aside to chat with her about what's cooking in FCNL's immigration program. Haven't heard a lot about immigration? Neither had we, and now we're hooked.

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While the President Addressed the Nation

I posted this on our immigration blog--Immigration: It's our community--this morning, but I thought I would cross-post it here as well:

Last night President Obama addressed the joint chambers of Congress laying out his administration's priorities for the next year. The entire speech focused on the economy, but emphasized energy, healthcare, and education as the top three areas of focus.

I was disappointed that President Obama failed to mention immigration even once during his address.

I was even more disappointed that on a day when he calls for the U.S. to take responsibility for its future once more, for its people to join in rebuilding their country, the first worksite raid of the Obama administration took place in Bellingham, Washington.

In their usual militarized and heavy-handed fashion (including the helicopter), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided Yamato Engine Specialists arresting 28 undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

As it appears now, they are attempting to charge these individuals with identity fraud, which--unlike "unlawful presence" or "entry without inspection" --is a criminal offense. This is the same tactic ICE piloted in Postville, Iowa last summer, a tactic that's legality is currently being reviewed by the U.S Supreme Court.

But the first worksite raid of the Obama administration is especially disappointing given that during the campaign last summer Obama said:

"When communities are terrorized by ICE immigration raids, when nursing mothers are torn from their babies, when children come home from school to find their parents missing, when people are detained without access to legal counsel, when all that is happening, the system just isn’t working, and we need to change it."

At that moment back in July, he seemed to get it. Yet the raid that took place yesterday was no different, three mothers with young children were among those arrested.

And I can't say that Obama doesn't get it now. As I posted last week, when he was on the radio show El Piolín por la mañana, Obama clearly spoke of the need for immigration reform precisely in light of the current state of the economy.

I think he does get it. But as his address to the nation last night showed, it is not currently a priority of the Obama administration. This is problematic for two reasons:

1. Without reform, raids like that the one that took place yesterday in Bellingham will continue to terrorize our communities, tearing mothers from their children, separating families, placing hardworking members of our communities in detention centers with inadequate standards, and even placing further strain on local economies.
2. By not prioritizing humane immigration reform, immigration will continue to be a divisive issue used to derail critical initiatives of the administration like healthcare and education.

As we've seen in congressional debates over SCHIP and the Recovery Act, immigration has been an issue which almost causes their failure. What will happen in a debate over universal healthcare if we have not already rectified the status of undocumented immigratants? What about education when hardline anti-immigrant advocates say they don't want money going to schools if it will fund ESL programs?

How will we move forward in what is best for our country without finding a way to include and recognize core members of our communities?

I wish Obama would answer that. Even President Bush left the Whitehouse saying one of his biggest regrets was that he did not push for immigration reform first, before social security reform. I don't want the Obama administration to leave with such regrets. I want change.

But I can say that I am left hopeful by the continued and growing efforts of communities around the country to speak out on the issue of immigration. As we saw last week, over 150 communities nationwide held prayer vigils calling for Congress to act on humane immigration reform. And in April, another national grassroots effort will take place in the form of "Neighbor-to-Neighbor" in-district visits with Congresspeople.

May theirs be the winds of change that move us forward.

Prayer, Renewal, Action

Throughout last week, over 150 communities nationwide joined together to pray for humane immigration reform in the 111th Congress.

In a campaign sponsored by the Interfaith Immigration Coalition (of which we--FCNL--are members), participants in these vigils called for:

1. Protection for immigrants and their families
2. Empowerment of the faith community to advocate on behalf of immigrants
3. Moral courage for Congress to take the necessary leadership to see that humane comprehensive immigration reform is passed

We got an amazing media response to these vigils with over 15 TV stations/shows and over 35 newspapers covering these vigils nation wide.

The TV clips, in particular, are really exciting to watch because issues of racism, xenophobia, and human rights violations were brought to the forefront of community news.

To check out all these exciting press clips, click here to go to our immigration blog: It's Our Community.

The Bush Administration Announces the Completion of 500 Miles of the Berlin Wall

Here in its final month of executive power, the Bush administration just announced that 500 miles of the US border wall have been completed...and they expect to get another 100 more done before President-elect Obama is sworn into office.

Nice to know our democracy continues to be crushed even in the waning hours of this "lame duck" session.

As hate crimes are on the rise towards the Latino population, immigrants are being abused and even dying in the poor conditions of our immigrant detention system, and hundreds of people are being killed along the US border, our government celebrates spending BILLIONS of dollars on a wall which has desecrated the sacred sites of native peoples, violated numerous environmental and religious freedom laws, and on top of it all is not even effective in reaching its purported (though faulty) goal of stopping undocumented immigration.

Is this really the vision we have for our country?

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Fox News Tries to Make Hate and Racism Sexy

My peers and I all probably remember when "reality tv" as we know it went big time. MTV started showing "The Real World" allowing us all to experience what it was like for seven strangers with different backgrounds to live together in the same house. The concept exploded. Today we have reality TV on everything from deserted island survival to fashion design to gay men.

And it's become sexy.

Today reality tv shows are much more graphic and explicit than they ever were back in the early 90s, playing up the drama of sex, drugs, friendship and betrayal. In many ways, it seems like participants in the shows cater to what they think the audience will want to see. In other words, they try to make it sexy. And I have no doubt that the producers encourage that as well.

But what are the consequences of the popularization and sexy-ilization of certain "reality" concepts?

Fox News is planning to air a new reality tv show called "Smile-- You're Under Arrest" two days after Christmas documenting the work of Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona, the notorious "America's Toughest Sheriff" who turned his police department into an immigration enforcement agency.

Yet Sheriff Arpaio's tactics are known internationally for openly racially profiling latinos throughout Arizona and spending vast amounts of money for large-scale immigration sweeps.



Since 2004, over 2,700 lawsuits have been filed against Arpaio for his racist and illegal tactics and Arizona's governor has cut funding to his unit. Yet he continues, just driving his county into a $1.3 million deficit.

And now, Fox News is parading his work all over television.

But do you think they'll mention the consequences of Arpaio's tactics? Like the fact that in exchange for focusing on immigration, he has ignored 40,000 felony arrest warrants? Or that response times to 911 calls have increased because he has pulled his "immigration enforcement team" from emergency responders and patrol units?

Immigrants are not criminals. And we endanger the physical safety of our communities by making people scared to report crime to the police for fear of being deported. We damage the moral character of our community by permitting hate and racial profiling to be the rule of law.

Some news for Fox News: Hate and Racism are NOT sexy.

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In the midst of our euphoria

Over the last couple of weeks, I--like most of the country--have been caught up in the whirlwind and euphoria of having a new president elect and 111th Congress. We've been tracking the transition team and trying to determine who will be chosen for the cabinet and agency positions. We've been watching the Obamas' interview on 60 Minutes and trying to determine what sort of dog they will get the girls (I personally am hoping they will rescue a dog...check out the Facebook movement built around this issue for continued updates).

On top of that, here at FCNL we've been busy with our Annual Meeting...which by all accounts was a huge success. Our network seems eager and ready to advocate for change here in Washington.

Yet in the midst of our euphoria over the election and our amazing network, we are continually reminded of why change is so greatly needed in our country at this moment.

Only days after a historic election in which the country voted against many anti-immigrant candidates in major political races nationwide and a record number of Latino and New American voters turned out to the polls, seven teenagers stabbed a Latino man to death in Suffolk, NY.

The teens, highschoolers between the ages of 16 and 17, told police that they "wanted to beat up someone who looked Hispanic." Labeled as a blatant hate crime, it is unfortunately only one of many that has taken place in Suffolk and across the nation in recent years. As America's Voice reported in their blog, "For the fourth solid year in a row, hate crimes against Latinos are on rise"....a rise which the Southern Poverty Law Center has estimated as a 40% increase since 2003.

The death of Marcello Lucero stands as a reminder that the election of a black President does not mean the end of racism. It represents progress, but is still only one (monumental) step in the path towards racial, economic, and social justice. It's time that we ask ourselves: what sort of transition team do we need in our education, welfare, and criminal justice systems to prepare our nation to combat racial hatred?

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The White Knights of America: Vigilantes of the 2008 Election

Tomorrow will be a historic moment in the annals of the United States. For a generation which has often been labeled apathetic, which has felt like the events of our time do not galvanize enough passion to inspire a movement, we have lived and live in a time which is a turning point in history.

We watched September 11th happen from the desks of our high school and college classrooms. We went to the funerals of our friends fighting in two wars. We saw one of our cities drown and six more kids get caught in a system of unequal justice.

Race continues to be both decisive and divisive. In watch lists. In recruitment. In evacuation. In classrooms and in justice. Tomorrow will be a historic moment.

Contrary to what you may think, I am not talking about who actually wins the election. I am talking about the election.

White privilege has little to do with the body, with the pigment of the skin. It has to do with power, and how we read the body in relation to power. It has to do with how we think, who we see as entitled, as belonging, and who we do not. It has to do with the fact that white people never have to think about being white. Their bodies are read as citizens, entitled to the rights of a nation. White people do not have to prove their belonging; it is assumed.

Tomorrow we expect to see record numbers of African-Americans, Latinos, and other people of color going to the polls. They will be exercising their citizen right to vote. Yet their citizenship is not assumed. They are read as the other: the criminal, the illegal, the fraud.

Groups like the Minutemen--which have been explicitly labeled as white supremacist and hate groups--are openly organizing "poll watches" to video people that might look "suspicious," "out of the ordinary," or "illegal." They say they are focusing on "illegal aliens"— people who don't speak English or "look" American.

Yet how do you see citizenship written on the body? How do you determine status from behind the lens of a camera?

You read the body in relation to power. Read white: innocent. Read black: guilty. Guilty until proven innocent. Assumed slave unless carrying the papers of a free man. Assumed illegal until verified documentation. The white knights of America remain vigilant in their cause.

No matter who wins tomorrow the system of racial inequality of our country will remain in tact. The historical significance of a person of color being so close to the White House should not be underestimated; it is a dent in very thick armor. But as Langston Hughes often reflected, why do we only hear talk about racism in classes on African-American history when racism is fundamentally a white issue? Why do we expect the skin tone of one man to correct a history of racial injustice?

Why would we expect it of Barack Obama any more than of John McCain?

As the polls open tomorrow, the most important question on my mind is what happens come November 5^th? Will we permit our new leader, our country, to still be led by knights and wizards?

Tomorrow will be a historic moment.

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The Immigration Industrial Complex

Undocumented immigrants are typically blamed for "stealing our jobs" and "taking our benefits." That is to say, they're typically accused of making us lose money. Now, all the research shows us that this is not actually the case, that our economy in fact depends on the labor immigrants provide. But after a string of articles that have come out lately, I can't help but wonder how much money are we MAKING off of the crack down on "illegals"?

A couple of weeks ago the Washington Post wrote about the $21 million detention facility being built in Farmville, VA by private investors to "capitaliz[e] on the massive influx of detainees into the Immigration and Customs Enforcement system over the past year." The investors claim that the facility will save the government money because it is not built on taxpayers dollars. Moreover, the Washington Post reports that the "town expects to receive about $322,000 a year in revenue by collecting $1 per detainee per day. An additional $425,000 would stream into Farmville and neighboring Prince Edward County by way of taxes and fees, buttressing Farmville's annual budget of about $24 million."

The Farmville facility was not requested by ICE. It's not even sure it will be used. The investors merely saw the crackdown on immigration and the ensuing increase in detention as an opportunity to make a PROFIT. I guess that makes sense when Washington pays $95 a day to detain immigrants (at which, on any given day, there are an average of 30,000 immigrants in detention) rather than $12 a day for alternatives to detention.

Take another example from today's Wall Street Journal. As the markets crash and most airlines begin cutting cost in every possible way (charging for the first checked bag, for your bag of peanuts, etc), there is one sector of the airline industry that is growing: the flights run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement deporting undocumented immigrants---or ICE Air as it is known by its employees.

ICE Air is a thriving business. The government pays $620 per person per flight for a one way ticket back to the immigrant's home country. And as the chief of flight operations for deportations and removals at ICE says, "We are making a valiant attempt to overbook" so that ICE can get more bang for its buck. Logically that means that they try to fill every seat, waiting until they have, as WSJ put it, "a critical mass of deportees."

And as they wait for this critical mass, they keep them detained which means, in turn, more profit for the detention center.

Do I even need to get into $67 million contract granted to Boeing (which could turn into a $2.5 billion project) to build the Berlin, I mean, US wall?

There is a growing (profitable) industry being built around the arrest, detention, and deportation of undocumented immigrants. Like the racial injustice rampant in the criminal justice system in the United States--the prison industrial complex as Angela Davis so rightly labeled it--how do we expect to reach equality and justice in the treatment of all peoples, including immigrants, when companies and profits are making millions off of their abuse and denial of rights?

It seems our country has yet another complex.

Immigrants as Target Practice: the new NRA ad to sway Latino voters

Anti-immigrant groups often play on myths about undocumented immigrants increasing levels of crime in the United States. While all of these allegations have been proved as absolutely false (foreign-born individuals are actually charged with crimes five-times LESS than native-born individuals), the National Rifle Assosiation (NRA) has taken this myth to a new (slightly hilarious) extreme...

While at FCNL we take a strong non-partisan stance on political affairs, the NRA has gone to another extreme with its anti-Obama website called gunbaNObama.com. The NRA has spent hundreds of thousands, if not by now millions, of dollars in tv and radio advertisements bashing Obama for eight votes he has cast during his tenure in the Senate that do not coincide with the NRA's positions. These ads most often focus on hunters, hardcore second amendment advocates, etc.

But their new ad reaches out to immigrants....kind of anyway.

In their efforts to yoke the immigrant vote (and immigration fears???), the NRA is running a spanish language ad speaking out against Obama. They say, I quote (I had to watch the English version of the ad just to make sure this translation was right on target), "Families should be able to defend themselves against rapists, drug dealers and other criminals illegally crossing our borders. But Barack Obama didn't think we should be allowed to use a firearm for self-defense. He even voted to allow the prosecution of people who used firearms to defend their families in their own homes."

Okay, forgetting the Obama bashing, they are trying to get the immigrant vote by saying we should be able to shoot undocumented immigrants????

Most of the time, I am just disgusted with the NRA's militarized and violent images included in their ads. But with this new one...you just have to wonder...WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? As my friends at America's Voice said, do you really think that "making criminals - much less target practice- out of immigrants is...going to fly with Latino voters on Election Day"?

Of Models and Mortals

Ever heard of a "modelizer"? To make a somewhat ridiculous pop culture reference to the HBO show "Sex and the City," they're men who are obsessed with models.

Apparently the US Congress is a modelizer.

While doing background research on major immigration policy and issues that have come up in the 110th Congress, I discovered that while attempts to enact desperately needed comprehensive immigration reform failed because of partisan politics and the national influence of hate groups and right wing radio and TV talk shows, Congress did in fact manage to take some actions regarding immigration....FOR FASHION MODELS!

They decided to create a new subcategory of visas just for fashion models which grants them an initial period of five years in the United States which can easily be extended to ten. On the other hand, non-specialty occupation temporary worker visas are issued for an initial period of a year or less and cannot be extended past three years.

Not to discriminate against models, but considering the massive human rights violations taking place within the area of immigration--ranging from worker exploitation to illegal and indiscriminate raids to cruel and inhumane treatment on the border and detention centers--Congress is concerned about our visa regulations for models?!?!

I mean, seriously?

Appropriations and the Wall

The Democratic leadership just released the details of their continuing resolution (CR) which is a "stopgap" measure meant to keep the government and discretionary programs funded by the Appropriations Bill running until March 6th.

For the most part, a CR just keeps programs running at their current levels. But the leadership decided to make a couple of exceptions:

Another $1.053 BILLION (yes that is $1,053,000,000) to border fencing, i.e. the wall--both physical and virtual.

Another $516 million to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE as they are commonly known)

And another $60 million to Immigration and Citizenship Services

Total: $1,629,000,000 spent on immigration enforcement.

That's a lot of money. Imagine if that went into education. You could give full tuition scholarships to 38,000 students for a four year degree program. You could fund all of the public schools, including supporting charter schools, in the state of New York for a year providing for a 5% increase in teacher pay and still have $100 million left in discretionary funds.

But instead we want a wall?

Three doves with one stone

"...how did you manage to kill three doves with one stone?"
~The State of Siege by Mahmoud Darwish

This weekend I reread one of my favorite poems, The State of Siege, by Mahmoud Darwish after going to a poetic tribute to him to honor the 4oth day of mourning his death. As I always am while reading his work, I was struck by his ability to capture the experience of war, exile, indignation and hope of a people under siege.

2008 marks the 60th year of conflict in Palestine. That means that Darwish lived less than 7 years in his country without facing air raids, detention, and check points, without being a refugee in his own country. Two generations, if not three, have grown up in a state of deadly conflict.

Yet how many times has the opportunity for peace been passed up for an obsession with war? For an obsession with erasing a people and their history? As Darwish says so eloquently, one stone can kill three doves, three opportunities of peace.

It can also displace millions.

When we speak about war, I feel our attention is often drawn to the number of deaths, the type of weapons used, or the amount of money spent on destruction. Yet what about the hundreds of thousands and in some cases (like Palestine) millions of people who are displaced as an effect of war?

One of the most run from topics in the Israel-Palestine peace negotiations is the question of the right of return. One of the most un-talked about topics of the Iraq war are the millions of refugees caused by the US invasion. The US has "improved relationships with Syria" precisely to let them "deal with" the "refugee problem" that we created.

Syria has resettled nearly two million refugees since the beginning of the Iraq war. Last Monday a senior coordinator of the State Department said that he expects that the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the United States will "significantly increase" in the coming year. "Significantly increase" means 17,000 (or a whole 1/118 of the number of refugees that Syria has resettled in a war that the US created). Sadly, that is 42% more than this year.

When we throw the stone, we don't calculate the far-reaching effects of our actions. We calculate the cost of our weapons, the loss of our troops (however, often excluding their welfare upon their return), and the increase of our debt. But we ignore the human cost of war, or a comprehensive understanding of how deep one bullet actually penetrates.

At this point in time, comprehensive immigration reform in the US is a far off hope for those of us who work on the issue. It's a contentious issue even among Quakers and peace activists. But I would ask, how do we prevent war or the next deadly conflict if we do not care for the effects of this one?

This is one of our doves.


Leave our land and take your dead bones with you.

Where will I go?

To France.

And what will I do there?

What you did in Lebanon.

~A paraphrased section of Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beruit, 1982 by Mahmoud Darwish

A different look at the US wall

While looking through the AFSC's (American Friends Service Committee) website on immigration, I came across a video produced by PBS on the border fence which provides an alternative perspective on the wall emphasizing property rights rather than immigrants' rights. Given that I posted about the wall yesterday, I thought I would offer a quick summary here.

To see the complete video, click here.

What PBS points out in this video is that the US border fence does not actually follow the exact border between the US and Mexico. At times, the fence comes as far as two miles inward into US territory.

The result of this is that many farmers are cut off from sections of their land and crops. Even more drastic, many people's houses are actually caught in this "no man's land" between the fence and the actual US-Mexican border.

Apparently, neither Congress nor the contractors have thought about how these people will get through the wall to go to the grocery store, the doctor, or to visit friends on the "US side." When a local whose house did fall on the "Mexican side" of the fence asked Homeland Security what she would do, she was told that they guessed she would have to "follow the Border patrol." As she described it to the reporter, she was being "locked out of the US."

As the PBS documentary points out, people in these border towns are not traditional supporters of immigration reform. However, the border fence has become a matter of property rights. What right does the US government have to separate people from their land, houses, and families?

Moreover, the legislation which authorized the construction of the wall also gave the contractors more leeway than any construction project in history. An amendment was tagged to the bill waiving any federal laws which impeded construction of the wall. So far, over 36 federal laws have been broken, including the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Farmland Protection Policy Act.

Who still thinks this is a good idea?

The Bush administration asks Congress for $400 million more to build the Berlin Wall

...I mean Jericho. No, wait...the US wall.

This is the most recent attempt by the Bush administration to "salvage" their plan for a 670 mile border fence between the United States and Mexico (as a point of reference, the Berlin Wall stretched a little under 100 miles long). Congress had designated authorization and funding for the fence through both the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 (a bill which was meant to provide the resources to "combat terrorism" and "other measures") and the Secure Fence Act of 2006.

The fence is intended to stretch nearly 700 miles, combining "virtual" fencing with a physical wall. The virtual fence is a complex system of mobile towers, satellite systems, cameras and control vehicles which are linked with "real-time" technology that border agents can constantly monitor. The physical wall is exactly what you think it is, a 15-foot three-layer thick,"unclimbable" wall.

The first section of the fence was supposed to be completed at the end of this year. But according to the latest news, this section won't be completed until 2011. The originally estimated (rather small..?!?!) figure of 4.5 million dollars per mile of wall has now gone up to $7.5 million. If you do the math, the $400 million more requested by the Bush administration won't even be enough to keep the project going, let alone finish it.

It's a shame--really--that such 'tactical infrastructure' may come to a halt and another $400 million wasted on a destructive project rather than spent on something a bit more useful...like food banks or hurricane relief.

Did I mention the environmental consequences of the wall? And that the most likely cause for displacement and refugee resettlement in the near future may be from natural causes like climate change, soil erosion, run-off...?

But I guess that's a subject for another post.

I'm alex, by the way, the new program assistant on civil liberties, human rights, and immigration. This is my first post on "Of Peace and Politics." Apart from keeping you informed on the usual comings and goings of intern life on the Hill, my hope is to use this blog to reinvigorate our current network, as well as reach out to others, on issues like comprehensive immigration reform, habeas corpus, and the ban of torture.