Editorial, New York Times
August 5, 2015
Children do not belong in prison. The mass detention of families offends American values, a lesson this country learned long ago at Manzanar, Tule Lake, Heart Mountain and the other Japanese-American internment camps of World War II.
Learned, but apparently forgotten by the Obama administration, which has just been ordered by a federal judge to release several hundred women and children locked up in its immigration detention centers in southern Texas. The centers, in Dilley and Karnes City, were thrown up hastily last year to contain a surge of families and unaccompanied children from Central America, many desperately seeking refuge from gang and drug and political violence at home.
In a sharply critical ruling on July 24, Judge Dolly Gee of the Federal District Court in Los Angeles found that the administration was violating a 1997 court settlement of a lawsuit involving the care and treatment of children in immigration detention. That settlement, Flores v. Reno, requires the government to hold children in the least-restrictive settings appropriate to their ages and needs, in places licensed to care for children, and to release them without needless delay to their parents or other adult relatives whenever possible.[...]
Read the full editorial:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/05/opinion/a-judges-rebuke-of-immigration-detention.html
Showing posts with label Dignity Campaign. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dignity Campaign. Show all posts
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Friday, November 21, 2014
Dignity Campaign Response to the Administration's Announcement on Relief From Deportation
Dignity Campaign
November 20, 2014
We welcome the administration's willingness to finally respond to the grassroots movement of marches, demonstrations, civil disobedience, and hunger strikes organized by communities around the country. For six years this movement has demanded an end to the administration's policy of mass deportations.
Relief from deportation for four to five million of the eleven million people who lack legal immigration status is a step in the right direction. But it is only a step. Deportation relief is a stopgap measure. We need permanent solutions so that those receiving deferred status are not vulnerable to a possible Republican administration and Congress that can easily reverse it, putting in danger those people who have come forward.
The plan, however, leaves millions of the other undocumented subject to deportation and to the vastly increased enforcement apparatus this administration and Congress have put in place and plan to continue. We call on activists to continue to fight for the right of all people to real legal status, beyond deferred deportation for some.
We reject the trade-off the administration is making, in increasing enforcement and labor programs as a price our communities must pay for deportation relief for some. More enforcement on the U.S. Mexico border will mean even more people will die trying to cross, and greater violations of civil and human rights in border communities. We need to demilitarize the border, not to increase its militarization. The U.S. already spends more money on immigration enforcement, including the notorious Operation Streamline kangaroo courts, than all other federal law enforcement programs combined. It is inexcusable to spend even more.
The announcement that the administration will end the Secure Communities program, opposed by advocates, and even several state governments, is another good step, but only a small one. It leaves in place the 287g program that is the root of local enforcement collaborations with ICE. Even worse, the administration plans to expand the number of privately run prisons for immigrants, and the number of people held in them.
Silicon Valley tech titans have been pushing for more labor programs and work visas to maximize profits by keeping wages to tech workers down. By giving this industry access to more work visas and tying labor programs to deportation relief, the administration is taking a step towards lower wages and undermining the rights of all workers.
The administration has announced it will work with Republicans on negotiating more free trade deals, like the Trans Pacific Partnership. Two decades of experience with NAFTA tells us that these deals drive people into poverty, leading to more displacement and global migration, while US jobs are eliminated. We need to end these trade arrangements as part of a sensible immigration policy. We must change U.S. immigration law and trade policy to deal with the basic causes of migration, and to guarantee the human, civil and labor rights of migrants and all working people.
www.dignitycampaign.org
https://www.facebook.com/dignitycampaignforimmigrationreform
November 20, 2014
We welcome the administration's willingness to finally respond to the grassroots movement of marches, demonstrations, civil disobedience, and hunger strikes organized by communities around the country. For six years this movement has demanded an end to the administration's policy of mass deportations.
Relief from deportation for four to five million of the eleven million people who lack legal immigration status is a step in the right direction. But it is only a step. Deportation relief is a stopgap measure. We need permanent solutions so that those receiving deferred status are not vulnerable to a possible Republican administration and Congress that can easily reverse it, putting in danger those people who have come forward.
The plan, however, leaves millions of the other undocumented subject to deportation and to the vastly increased enforcement apparatus this administration and Congress have put in place and plan to continue. We call on activists to continue to fight for the right of all people to real legal status, beyond deferred deportation for some.
We reject the trade-off the administration is making, in increasing enforcement and labor programs as a price our communities must pay for deportation relief for some. More enforcement on the U.S. Mexico border will mean even more people will die trying to cross, and greater violations of civil and human rights in border communities. We need to demilitarize the border, not to increase its militarization. The U.S. already spends more money on immigration enforcement, including the notorious Operation Streamline kangaroo courts, than all other federal law enforcement programs combined. It is inexcusable to spend even more.
The announcement that the administration will end the Secure Communities program, opposed by advocates, and even several state governments, is another good step, but only a small one. It leaves in place the 287g program that is the root of local enforcement collaborations with ICE. Even worse, the administration plans to expand the number of privately run prisons for immigrants, and the number of people held in them.
Silicon Valley tech titans have been pushing for more labor programs and work visas to maximize profits by keeping wages to tech workers down. By giving this industry access to more work visas and tying labor programs to deportation relief, the administration is taking a step towards lower wages and undermining the rights of all workers.
The administration has announced it will work with Republicans on negotiating more free trade deals, like the Trans Pacific Partnership. Two decades of experience with NAFTA tells us that these deals drive people into poverty, leading to more displacement and global migration, while US jobs are eliminated. We need to end these trade arrangements as part of a sensible immigration policy. We must change U.S. immigration law and trade policy to deal with the basic causes of migration, and to guarantee the human, civil and labor rights of migrants and all working people.
www.dignitycampaign.org
https://www.facebook.com/dignitycampaignforimmigrationreform
Thursday, July 11, 2013
The Dignity Campaign Opposes S. 744
From the Dignity Campaign
July 11, 2013
Dignity is Not for Sale; No Compromises on Human Rights
The many grassroots organizations across the U.S. who stand behind the Dignity Campaign (www.dignitycampaign.org) have worked tirelessly for immigration reform based on human, civil and worker's rights of immigrants, especially those who are undocumented. Senate Bill 744 is not the immigration reform we seek. S. 744 is a corporate boondoggle that will be a civil rights disaster for immigrant communities.
This bill holds the limited legalization program hostage to the further advancement of the security state, by doubling the number of Border Patrol agents, and spending an incredible $50 billion to build a double wall on the US/Mexico border, and deploy more drones and other tools of electronic warfare in border communities. S.744's beneficiaries are a very narrow class of elite contractors in the "security" and surveillance industries (like Bechtel), privatized prison corporations (like Geo Corporation), and corporate-scale agriculture, and technology giants striving to keep wages as low as possible through the expansion of guest worker programs. S. 744 accomplishes this by moving away from family-based immigration to an employment-based system.[...]
Read the full statement:
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2013/07/the-dignity-campaign-opposes-s-744.html
July 11, 2013
Dignity is Not for Sale; No Compromises on Human Rights
The many grassroots organizations across the U.S. who stand behind the Dignity Campaign (www.dignitycampaign.org) have worked tirelessly for immigration reform based on human, civil and worker's rights of immigrants, especially those who are undocumented. Senate Bill 744 is not the immigration reform we seek. S. 744 is a corporate boondoggle that will be a civil rights disaster for immigrant communities.
This bill holds the limited legalization program hostage to the further advancement of the security state, by doubling the number of Border Patrol agents, and spending an incredible $50 billion to build a double wall on the US/Mexico border, and deploy more drones and other tools of electronic warfare in border communities. S.744's beneficiaries are a very narrow class of elite contractors in the "security" and surveillance industries (like Bechtel), privatized prison corporations (like Geo Corporation), and corporate-scale agriculture, and technology giants striving to keep wages as low as possible through the expansion of guest worker programs. S. 744 accomplishes this by moving away from family-based immigration to an employment-based system.[...]
Read the full statement:
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2013/07/the-dignity-campaign-opposes-s-744.html
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Hunger Strike to Protest Immigration-Related Firings
STOP MAKING WORK A CRIME
A Bay Area Network Opposing the Firing of Immigrant Workers
FIRED WORKERS AND SUPPORTERS LAUNCH A THREE DAY HUNGER STRIKE TO OPPOSE THE "SILENT RAIDS"
PRESS RELEASE - for release Monday, June 10
Press Contact: Laura Rivas - 510-282-2500, Mike Henneberry - 510-719-7691, Sara Steffens - 510-332-9483
From noon on Tuesday, June 11 to noon on Friday, June 14, Bay Area immigrant workers and their supporters will be engaging in a FAST AGAINST THE FIRINGS to draw attention to the unjust firing of hundreds of immigrants.
Even though the full Senate has begun deliberations on the Immigration Reform Bill S. 744, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency of the federal Department of Homeland Security is requiring local employers to fire hundreds of workers, saying they have no immigration papers. The administration calls its reform proposal "commonsense immigration reform," but the fasters say there is no common sense in firing workers while Congress debates it.[...]
Read the full press release:
http://www.unionbook.org/profiles/blogs/california-hunger-strike-v-immigration-related-firings-david
Monday, January 9, 2012
How US Policies Fueled Mexico's Great Migration
[NAFTA, Smithfield, swine flu, worker exploitation and unauthorized immigration from Mexico--the sort of connections never made in the official US "immigration debate."--Ed]
By David Bacon, The Nation
January 4, 2012
Roberto Ortega tried to make a living slaughtering pigs in Veracruz, Mexico. “In my town, Las Choapas, after I killed a pig, I would cut it up to sell the meat,” he recalls. But in the late 1990s, after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) opened up Mexican markets to massive pork imports from US companies like Smithfield Foods, Ortega and other small-scale butchers in Mexico were devastated by the drop in prices. “Whatever I could do to make money, I did,” Ortega explains. “But I could never make enough for us to survive.” In 1999 he came to the United States, where he again slaughtered pigs for a living. This time, though, he did it as a worker in the world’s largest pork slaughterhouse, in Tar Heel, North Carolina. [...]
Read the full article:
http://www.thenation.com/article/165438/how-us-policies-fueled-mexicos-great-migration
By David Bacon, The Nation
January 4, 2012
Roberto Ortega tried to make a living slaughtering pigs in Veracruz, Mexico. “In my town, Las Choapas, after I killed a pig, I would cut it up to sell the meat,” he recalls. But in the late 1990s, after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) opened up Mexican markets to massive pork imports from US companies like Smithfield Foods, Ortega and other small-scale butchers in Mexico were devastated by the drop in prices. “Whatever I could do to make money, I did,” Ortega explains. “But I could never make enough for us to survive.” In 1999 he came to the United States, where he again slaughtered pigs for a living. This time, though, he did it as a worker in the world’s largest pork slaughterhouse, in Tar Heel, North Carolina. [...]
Read the full article:
http://www.thenation.com/article/165438/how-us-policies-fueled-mexicos-great-migration
Friday, August 26, 2011
Fighting the Firings
After years of ‘silent raids’ and federal workplace audits, unions and community allies are going on the offensive.
By David Bacon, In These Times
August 23, 2011
When the current wave of mass firings of immigrant workers started three years ago, they were called “silent raids” in the press. The phrase makes firings seem more humane than the workplace raids of the Bush administration. During Bush’s eight-year tenure, posses of black-uniformed immigration agents, waving submachine guns, invaded factories across the country and rounded up workers for deportations.
“Silent raids,” by contrast, have relied on cooperation between employers and immigration officials. The Department of Homeland Security identifies workers it says have no legal immigration status. Employers then fire them. The silence, then, is the absence of the armed men in black. To paraphrase Woody Guthrie, they used to rob workers of their jobs with a gun. Now they do it with a fountain pen. [...]
Read the full article:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/11857/fighting_the_firings
By David Bacon, In These Times
August 23, 2011
When the current wave of mass firings of immigrant workers started three years ago, they were called “silent raids” in the press. The phrase makes firings seem more humane than the workplace raids of the Bush administration. During Bush’s eight-year tenure, posses of black-uniformed immigration agents, waving submachine guns, invaded factories across the country and rounded up workers for deportations.
“Silent raids,” by contrast, have relied on cooperation between employers and immigration officials. The Department of Homeland Security identifies workers it says have no legal immigration status. Employers then fire them. The silence, then, is the absence of the armed men in black. To paraphrase Woody Guthrie, they used to rob workers of their jobs with a gun. Now they do it with a fountain pen. [...]
Read the full article:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/11857/fighting_the_firings
Sunday, March 27, 2011
What Wisconsin Means for Immigrant Rights
By David L. Wilson, MRZine
March 27, 2011
A few weeks can do a lot to sweep away old assumptions. Last year U.S. leftists were wondering why the worst economic crisis in 70 years hadn't inspired a stronger response from its victims; now Arabs have toppled neoliberal regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, and U.S. workers have fought cutbacks and union-busting in Wisconsin with massive rallies and threats of general strikes. The unexpected uprisings early this year may well mark the start of a period of sudden and surprising changes in political consciousness.
There hasn't been much talk about immigration so far in 2011, but this may be another area where the old assumptions are about to give way. [...]
Read the full article:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/wilson270311.html
March 27, 2011
A few weeks can do a lot to sweep away old assumptions. Last year U.S. leftists were wondering why the worst economic crisis in 70 years hadn't inspired a stronger response from its victims; now Arabs have toppled neoliberal regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, and U.S. workers have fought cutbacks and union-busting in Wisconsin with massive rallies and threats of general strikes. The unexpected uprisings early this year may well mark the start of a period of sudden and surprising changes in political consciousness.
There hasn't been much talk about immigration so far in 2011, but this may be another area where the old assumptions are about to give way. [...]
Read the full article:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/wilson270311.html
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Undocumented Immigrants Stand Up to Chipotle
by David Bacon, The Nation
February 11, 2011
Last month six hundred workers at the Chipotle fast food chain were fired in Minnesota.
Their crime? Working.
In the last two years, thousands of others have been fired for the same offense—1800 young women at Los Angeles sewing machines, 500 apple pickers in eastern Washington, hundreds of janitors in Minnesota and California. They're all victims of the administration's "softer" immigration enforcement strategy. [...]
Read the full article (but note that The Nation incorrectly referred to the Dignity Campaign as the "Dine With Dignity Campaign):
http://www.thenation.com/article/158513/undocumented-immigrants-stand-chipotle
===================
No one knows where the next layoffs will be, but Chipotle workers in New York are nervous.
Arde la situación en Chipotle
Zaira Cortés, El Diario-La Prensa
17 de febrero, 2011
NUEVA YORK — Ante la revisión de documentos de inmigración a los trabajadores de 60 sucursales de Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. en los estados de Virginia y Washington, empleados neoyorquinos temen una posible inspección en los establecimientos de la localidad.
En días pasados, Chipotle despidió a cientos de trabajadores en Minnesota después de que el Servicio de Inmigración y Aduanas (ICE, por sus siglas en inglés) detectara "documentos sospechosos" tras una investigación de los formularios I-9, los cuales verifican si el personal labora legalmente.
El gerente general de una sucursal de Chipotle en Manhattan, quien se negó a dar su nombre, comentó que gerentes del Área Triestatal de Nueva York viajaron a Minnesota para brindar apoyo a los ejecutivos en esta ciudad.[...]
Read the full article:
http://www.impre.com/eldiariony/noticias/locales/2011/2/17/arde-la-situacion-en-chipotle-239847-1.html#commentsBlock
February 11, 2011
Last month six hundred workers at the Chipotle fast food chain were fired in Minnesota.
Their crime? Working.
In the last two years, thousands of others have been fired for the same offense—1800 young women at Los Angeles sewing machines, 500 apple pickers in eastern Washington, hundreds of janitors in Minnesota and California. They're all victims of the administration's "softer" immigration enforcement strategy. [...]
Read the full article (but note that The Nation incorrectly referred to the Dignity Campaign as the "Dine With Dignity Campaign):
http://www.thenation.com/article/158513/undocumented-immigrants-stand-chipotle
===================
No one knows where the next layoffs will be, but Chipotle workers in New York are nervous.
Arde la situación en Chipotle
Zaira Cortés, El Diario-La Prensa
17 de febrero, 2011
NUEVA YORK — Ante la revisión de documentos de inmigración a los trabajadores de 60 sucursales de Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. en los estados de Virginia y Washington, empleados neoyorquinos temen una posible inspección en los establecimientos de la localidad.
En días pasados, Chipotle despidió a cientos de trabajadores en Minnesota después de que el Servicio de Inmigración y Aduanas (ICE, por sus siglas en inglés) detectara "documentos sospechosos" tras una investigación de los formularios I-9, los cuales verifican si el personal labora legalmente.
El gerente general de una sucursal de Chipotle en Manhattan, quien se negó a dar su nombre, comentó que gerentes del Área Triestatal de Nueva York viajaron a Minnesota para brindar apoyo a los ejecutivos en esta ciudad.[...]
Read the full article:
http://www.impre.com/eldiariony/noticias/locales/2011/2/17/arde-la-situacion-en-chipotle-239847-1.html#commentsBlock
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