Thread: Open Border activists' plans for the new administration.

From: "Dulce M Mora" <dmora@radioarte.org>

One week has barely passed since a new president was voted in andObama is already planning the first days of his presidency, he’salready analyzing what executive orders he will revoke and has made his first appointments (Rahm Emanuel)... all of these are decisions that we will have to deal with in our struggle for immigrant rights, the pieces are falling into place.

THIS TUESDAY NOVEMBER 11THAT 6:30 PMAT RADIO ARTE 1401 W. 18TH ST PILSENWe will have a meeting to create our own plan for the new administration with respect to immigration. Please take the time to participate tomorrow in this discussion, either in person or through e-mail. The agenda for tomorrow’s meeting is being worked on by Rosi Carrasco and Bridget Broderick. rosicarr@hotmail.com bridgetbroderick@comcast.net

Please communicate through them or directly to this list serv your opinions and proposals. Personally I suggest you read the following e-mail sent few weeks ago by Shaun Harkin. I think it’s an excellent starting point for our meeting. Also I’d like to also mention that although we’ve been talking about planning a 100 day campaign (from inauguration until may day) the election of Obama and subsequent events lead me to believe that we most start NOW our pressure towards the Obama administration.

For the next 70 odd days Chicago will be the center of this transition; let’s take this opportunity, let Chicago again lead the way in the immigration movement. Logistically more people from a broader spectrum will be able to participate in any sort of actions here in CHICAGO rather than concentrating all our efforts in WASHINGTON
DC . Dulce

--------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Bacon <dbacon@igc.org>
Date: Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 10:06 AM
Subject: stop the raids in the first 100 days
To: dbacon@igc.org


STOP THE RAIDS IN THE FIRST 100 DAYS

Silence on Immigration
David Bacon | October 23, 2008
Foreign Policy In Focus
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5620

The first of the 388 workers arrested in the immigration raid on the
Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, were deported in
mid-October, having spent five months in federal prison. Their crime? Giving a bad Social Security number to the company to get hired. Among them will be a young man who had his eyes covered with duct tape by a supervisor on the line, who then beat him with a meathook. The supervisor is still on the job.

The Postville raid was one of the many recent immigration operations leading to criminal charges and deportations for thousands of people. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff calls this "closing the back door. " Meanwhile, his department seeks to "open the front door" by
establishing new guest-worker programs, called "close to slavery" by
the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Something is clearly wrong with the priorities of immigration enforcement.
Hungry and desperate workers go to jail and get deported. The government protects employers and seeks to turn a family-based immigration system into a managed labor supply for business. Yet national political campaigns say less and less about it. Immigrant Latino and Asian communities feel increasingly afraid and frustrated. Politicians want their votes, but avoid talking about the rising wave of arrests, imprisonment, and deportations.

This month national demonstrations across the nation are protesting the
silence, asking candidates to speak out. Immigrant communities expect a new deal from a new administration, especially from Democrats. They want a new U.S. president to take swift and decisive action to give human rights a priority over fear, and recognize immigrants as people, not just a source of cheap labor.

Agenda for the Next President

In its first 100 days, a new administration could take these simple steps to
benefit immigrants and working families:

* Stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from seeking serious
Federal criminal charges, with incarceration in privately run prisons, for
lacking papers or for bad Social Security numbers.
* Stop raiding workplaces, especially where workers are trying to organize
unions or enforce wage and hour laws. This would help all workers, not just
immigrants, to raise low wages.
* Double the paltry 742 federal inspectors responsible for all U.S. wage
and hour violations and focus on industries where immigrants are concentrated.
The National Labor Relations Board could target employers who use immigration
threats to violate union rights.
* Halt community sweeps, where agents use warrants for one or two people to
detain and deport dozens of others. End the government's campaign to repeal
local sanctuary ordinances and drag local law enforcement into immigration
raids.
* Allow all workers to apply for a Social Security number and pay legally
into the system that benefits everyone. Social Security numbers should be used
for their true purpose - paying retirement and disability benefits - not to fire
immigrants from their jobs and send them to prison.
* Reestablish worker protections ended under Bush on existing guest worker
programs, force employers to hire domestically first, and decertify any
contractor guilty of labor violations.
* Restore human rights in border communities, stop construction of the
border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, and disband the Operation Streamline
federal court, where scores of young borders are sent to prison in chains every
day.

Alternatives

After the first 100 days, Democrats will have to decide what reforms to bring
before Congress, and when. Some would delay action for a year or more. But the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce and dozens of trade groups won't sit on their
hands. They've been pushing for years for big guest-worker programs, more
raids and enforcement, and a weak legalization program. But many immigrant and
labor rights activists advocate three steps toward an alternative, more
progressive reform:

1. A moratorium on raids, while protecting human and labor rights, in the
first 100 days.
2. A law to give green-card visas to the undocumented and clear up the
backlog of people already waiting for them. If visas are more easily available
abroad, people won't have to cross the border without them. That law could
also create jobs in unemployed communities, repeal employer sanctions laws that
make work a crime for immigrants, and encourage labor law reform to protect
workers' rights. Guest-worker programs with a record of abuse should be
ended, as they were in 1964.
3. A new approach to trade policy and renegotiation of the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), so they stop causing poverty and uprooting
communities, making migration peoples' only alternative for survival. Reject
new trade agreements with countries like Colombia, which will cause job loss in
the U.S. and spread low wages, labor violations, and displacement abroad. U.S.
tax dollars, instead of being spent on the Iraq War, could expand rural credit,
education and health care in Mexico and other countries, easing the pressure
behind migration.

There's common ground here among immigrants, communities of color, unions,
churches, civil rights organizations, and working families. Legalization and
immigrant rights, tied to guaranteeing jobs for all working families, can bring
people together. All workers, including immigrants, need the right to organize
and enforce labor standards, the same goal sought by unions in the Employee Free
Choice Act. Changing trade policy will benefit working-class communities in the
U.S. while helping families of immigrants back home from Oaxaca to El Salvador.

The diverse communities who need these reforms can and will find ways to seek
them together. In fact, if Barack Obama wins the presidency and a larger
Democratic majority takes hold in Congress, they will owe their victory to this
coalition.

After the election, this same coalition will need jobs and rights. But
immigrant workers are going to jail now. The wave of raids continues to divide
families, even as candidates hold rallies and ask for votes. In Los Angeles'
Placita Olvera, activists have begun a hunger strike to stop the deportations.
Marches and demonstrations are making the same point from coast to coast.
Promises of change aren't enough. For candidates who want working-class
votes, the first step is to speak out.

We need Senators like Saxby Chambliss to oppose these open border schemes. Please support him if you can. He has a runoff election on 12/2 and the Democrats want his seat to edge closer to the magical 60:

www.saxby.org

The inaccuracies and contradictions in these demands just boggle the imagination:

Originally Posted by LawEnforcer

Agenda for the Next President

In its first 100 days, a new administration could take these simple steps to
benefit immigrants and working families:

* Stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from seeking serious
Federal criminal charges, with incarceration in privately run prisons, for
lacking papers or for bad Social Security numbers.

"Lacking papers" was never the issue, obeying the law was. So don't expect sympathy for that one. Social Security Numbers are not "bad" they are stolen. So we want amnesty for thievery? Does that mean I can steal SS numbers too?

* Stop raiding workplaces, especially where workers are trying to organize
unions or enforce wage and hour laws. This would help all workers, not just immigrants, to raise low wages.

But are they not also raided to keep underage children from being exploited for slave labor? So we should stop the raids and let the Requonquista crowd tell us it is now OK to employ underage children? And it would not help all workers since American workers who lost their jobs are more concerned about getting them back. So the fair "wage and hour laws" that Americans want have nothing to do with latino work sight organizing, they have to do with enforcing the current law against illegal immgration!

I am so sick and tired of these awful "illegal workplace" organizers trying to scam us into believing that illegal laborers benefit US laborers. They don't!

Double the paltry 742 federal inspectors responsible for all U.S. wage
and hour violations and focus on industries where immigrants are concentrated.

Again, and again, and again, for everyone to hear: U.S. wage and hour violations also consist of employing illegal alien labor!!!

The Tea Party is just about here .... let them try to push it through and watch 80% of America go bananas over this New Banana republic