In Our Community: Immigration News

Image courtesy of WikiMedia Commons

Congress has remained pretty quiet lately on the subject of immigration, but the impacts of the broken immigrations system continue to disrupt our communities. I'll share a bit of news with you from Monday, July 5 to Monday, July 12.

On July 6, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Arizona over S.B. 1070, the new immigration law that would require police officers to check the legal status of anyone they "reasonably suspect" to be an undocumented immigrant. You can read more about it on our "breaking news" blog post from that date. In addition, Attorney General Eric Holder has requested an injunction to prevent S.B. 1070 from going into effect at the end of the month.

In an effort to push back against hate rhetoric in our communities, FCNL has developed a Letters-to-the-Editor Toolkit for you. Letters to the editor take no more time to write than emails to Congress, and by writing for a public forum, you can potentially influence both your state and federal legislators and many of the voters who elect them.

I've been listening to podcasts from a workshop on detention in the United Kingdom, "Meaning & Practice of Immigration Detention - Perspectives from Legal, Social & Political Theory." The lectures examine the legal and political frameworks as well as the social impact of immigration detention and asylum.

Unemployed? We've got a solution for you. Stephen Colbert and the United Farm Workers have teamed up to promote a new tongue-in-cheek campaign, "Take Our Jobs." This campaign hopes to "recruit U.S. citizens and legal residents to fill jobs that frequently go to undocumented farm workers and to urge enactment of immigration reform."

I'll leave you with a wonderful thought piece from Taquiena Boston, the Director of Multicultural Growth and Witness with the Unitarian Universalist Association, who writes:

In multicultural ministry borders or “la frontera” are described as places where encounter, conflict, and transformation can occur when people of faith use our collective power to amplify the voices and concerns of the oppressed. To my mind when Unitarian Universalists voted at the Minneapolis General Assembly to act in solidarity with Puente and others to support immigrant justice, our movement waded into the turbulence of a human rights issue that puts us at odds with the majority of Americans. To paraphrase an African American spiritual, Unitarian Universalists made a commitment to “trouble the borders.”

Now that the U.S. Justice Department has challenged the constitutionality of Arizona’s SB 1070 legislation, I hope that our movement will not think that we can relax our efforts around immigration...

Take Our Jobs

Image courtesy of Ag Worker Health Project

Are you a native-born resident of the United States? Looking for a job? Sign up today to be a farmworker! But United Farm Workers offers a cautionary note:

Job may include using hand tools such as knives, hoes, shovels, etc. Duties may include tilling the soil, transplanting, weeding, thinning, picking, cutting, sorting & packing of harvested produce. May set up & operate irrigation equip. Work is performed outside in all weather conditions (Summertime 90+ degree weather) & is physically demanding requiring workers to bend, stoop, lift & carry up to 50 lbs on a regular basis.

On Thursday, Stephen Colbert hosted Arturo Rodriguez, the president of United Farm Workers (UFW), on his political comedy show, "The Colbert Report." The interview promotes the UFW's national “Take Our Jobs” campaign, a tongue-in-cheek effort to "recruit U.S. citizens and legal residents to fill jobs that frequently go to undocumented farm workers and to urge enactment of immigration reform."

You can watch the interview here.

About 85% of the U.S. farm worker population is foreign-born, and the vast majority of these immigrants lack work authorization. AgJOBS, as part of a comprehensive immigration reform package, would provide these workers with protections and offer a pathway to legal status.

Breaking News: Justice Department Files Lawsuit Against Arizona

Photo from Alto Arizona

The Justice Department has filed a federal lawsuit against the state of Arizona, regarding its new law requiring police officers to check the legal status of anyone they "reasonably suspect" to be an undocumented immigrant. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the lawsuit would be filed several weeks ago, and it comes on the tail of President Obama's major speech on immigration last week.

The official press release is available on the Justice Department website. Politico also provides coverage.

As expected, the Justice Department's brief states that S.B. 1070 is unconstitutional. “[T]he Constitution and federal law do not permit the development of a patchwork of state and local immigration policies throughout the country.”

The brief also makes the point that S.B. 1070 interferes with federal immigration enforcement and distracts police officers from their regular duties.

Arizona's new law is scheduled to go into effect on July 29. Attorney General Eric Holder has requested an injunction but it has not yet been granted.

FCNL recognizes that inaction at the national level has created a vacuum into which states have stepped to create their own immigration laws. We oppose the new Arizona law, which opens the door to racial profiling and erodes trust between police officers and the communities they serve. We welcome the Department of Justice’s lawsuit, which asserts that federal immigration laws should be enforced by federal authorities. The Obama administration does not want to see a patchwork of state laws created, which would only yield a more chaotic and less humane immigration system.

The outcome of this lawsuit may influence the twenty-two other states which have proposed or introduced similar legislation. Ultimately, however, blocking state legislation will not be enough to fix the broken immigration system. We urge Congress to enact comprehensive, humane immigration reform before more states and cities decide to follow Arizona’s path toward a reactionary state in which we all have to “show our papers” to prove our legitimate status in the United States.

Not Surprising

Photo courtesy of Latin American Studies

Yesterday, President Obama delivered his first major speech on immigration reform.

A year and a half ago, when he took office, President Obama was poised to act on an agenda of change - and to make good on a promise to reform the broken immigration system within the first year. That promise has not been kept.

In fact, the situation now is worse than it was then. Deportations are on the rise, immigration courts are overburdened, and families live in constant fear of being separated. In the absence of bold leadership from President Obama and swift action by Congress, states have taken matters into their own hands with dire consequences.

This speech was notable as much for its omissions as its content. We did not hear the president setting a timetable for drafting and passing a bill. We did not hear a commitment to protecting vulnerable populations during immigration enforcement actions. We did not hear any mention of the anticipated Department of Justice lawsuit against Arizona's new law.

What did we hear? A compassionate description of the value of immigrants' contributions to U.S. society and economy, an outline of the major components of immigration reform, and accusations that the minority party has impeded the creation of a viable bill. In short, nothing new.

President Obama did call the new Arizona law "ill conceived" and "divisive," and he acknowledged that we can't "solve the problem only with fences and border patrols." Still, at the moment the administration is doing just that. At FCNL, we are deeply disappointed with the president's decision to deploy 1,200 National Guard troops on the U.S.-Mexico border.

As the New York Times editorializes, "Mr. Obama appealed to middle of the debate, to Americans who crave lawfulness but reject the cruelty symbolized by Arizona’s new law." If lawfulness is the goal, then we need Congress to provide a federal solution - and soon.

Missed the speech? You can watch the video here or read the transcript here.

The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal both offer coverage of the speech.

Obama's Speech on Immigration: Why Now?

Today, President Obama will deliver a major speech on comprehensive immigration reform. But the lackluster effort by Congress to create a bipartisan bill, and the ever-rising rate of deportations, leads us to ask: Mr. President, why now?

The Daily Beast's Bryan Curtis offers an incisive assessment of the timing of the president's speech in this article. Bottom line: When the Obama administration took office, we expected bold leadership on humane immigration reform but that promise has not yet been fulfilled. The humanitarian crisis stemming from the broken immigration system has become increasingly severe.

Stay tuned for an analysis of the speech later today.