Jane Guskin on "The Politics of Immigration" at the James Connolly

VIDEO: Jane Guskin discusses recent immigration reform proposals on February 15, 2013, at the James Connolly Forum in Troy, New York.The forum was held at the Oakwood Community Center and co-sponsored by the Troy Area Labor Council, AFL-CIO; and Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace. Guskin was introduced by moderator Jackie Hayes, a graduate student at University at Albany SUNY and an activist with New York Students Rising.

Related links:

Immigration reform proposals:
Dignity Campaign
http://dignitycampaign.org/
ACLU Framework for Immigration Reform
http://www.aclu.org/immigrants-rights...
AFL-CIO's "Unity Framework"
http://www.aflcio.org/Issues/Immigration
United We Dream Core Principles of Immigration Reform
http://unitedwedream.org/principles/
"Gang of 8" Senate "Bipartisan Framework for Immigration Reform"
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/20...

Organizations:
New York State Youth Leadership Council 
http://nysylc.org/

Articles:
Prerna Lal, "Thoughts About the 'Gang of 8' Immigration Plan"
http://www.dreamactivist.org/cross-po...
Kandace Vallejo, "Immigration Reform for My Mom"
http://neverneutral.net/2013/01/10/im...
David Bacon, "The Dignity Campaign's Alternative Vision for Immigration Reform"
http://www.thenation.com/article/1727...
Luis Fernandez and Joel Olson, "To Live, Love, and Work Anywhere You Please: Arizona and the Struggle for Locomotion"
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jo52/LiveLove...

Profiting From Human Misery

By Chris Hedges, TruthDig
February 17, 2013

Marela, an undocumented immigrant in her 40s, stood outside the Elizabeth Detention Center in Elizabeth, N.J., on a chilly afternoon last week. She was there with a group of protesters who appear at the facility’s gates every year on Ash Wednesday to decry the nation’s immigration policy and conditions inside the center. She was there, she said, because of her friend Evelyn Obey.

Obey, 40, a Guatemalan and the single mother of a 12-year-old and a 6-year-old, was picked up in an immigration raid as she and nine other undocumented workers walked out of an office building they cleaned in Newark, N.J. Her two children instantly lost their only parent. She languished in detention. Another family took in the children, who never saw their mother again. Obey died in jail in 2010 from, according to the sign Villar had hung on her neck, “pulmonary thromboembolism, chronic bronchiolitis and emphysema and remote cardiac Ischemic Damage.’” [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/profiting_from_human_misery_20130217/

Legal, civil rights groups urge a halt to Operation Streamline

James Stiven, a retired U.S. magistrate judge for the Southern District of California, said Operation Streamline programs put extra pressure on courts and attorneys. But they have “no particular deterrent effect” on immigrants.

By Connor Radnovich, Cronkite News
February 21, 2013

WASHINGTON – Programs that fast-track illegal immigrants through the federal courts are costly, constitutionally questionable and are overburdening courts and should be done away with, civil rights and legal groups said Thursday.

The groups urged that Operation Streamline, which has been in place since 2005, should not be part of any comprehensive immigration reform package.

“The costs to the immigrants themselves, the family members they have in the United States as well as in Mexico, and any potential employers aside, we have to consider that the cost to our taxpayers in making Operation Streamline is absolutely prohibitive and hard to justify in these poor economic times,” said Heather Williams, first assistant federal public defender for Arizona. [...]

Read the full article:
http://cronkitenewsonline.com/2013/02/legal-civil-rights-groups-urge-a-halt-to-operation-streamline/

Five myths about the immigration ‘line’

By Daniel M. Kowalski, The Washington Post
Februrary 1, 2013

Daniel M. Kowalski is a senior fellow at the Institute for Justice and Journalism and the editor of Bender’s Immigration Bulletin. He practices citizenship and visa law in Austin at the Fowler Law Firm.

The “line” of people seeking American citizenship or legal status has become an integral part of our immigration debate. In a speech Tuesday, President Obama said that undocumented immigrants should go to “the back of the line” behind those who are going through the process legally. The immigration reform blueprint presented a day earlierby a group of senators contained the same requirement. But misinformation about this line abounds. [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-the-immigration-line/2013/02/01/d30cf73e-6bb8-11e2-bd36-c0fe61a205f6_story.html

Let's Stop Making Migration a Crime

By David Bacon, Truthout
February 15, 2013

David Bacon argues that instead of immigration reform that includes guest worker programs and more enforcement, we need to change the free trade programs that cause migration and stop making it a crime for the undocumented to work.

We need an immigration policy based on human, civil and labor rights, which looks at the reasons why people come to the US, and how we can end the criminalization of their status and work. While proposals from Congress and the administration have started the debate over the need for change in our immigration policy, they are not only too limited and ignore the global nature of migration, they actually will make the problem of criminalization much worse. We need a better alternative. [...]

Read the full article:
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/14569-lets-stop-making-migration-a-crime

Immigration Dialogue 2/15/13 in Troy NY

The Politics of Immigration
A Dialogue with Jane Guskin
at the James Connolly Forum
Co-Sponsored by The Troy Area Labor Council, AFL-CIO

Friday, February 15, 2013, at 7:00pm
Oakwood Community Center
313 Tenth Street, Troy, New York 12180
Donation of $5 requested, $2 unemployed and students
more information: 518 505 0948

Directions: Exit 9E off 787 Collar City Bridge for Rte 7, on left at 2nd light between 9th and 10th Sts.
Parking on left on 9th St., Old Fire station building parking lot left on 10th Use the door facing Hoosick St.

Jane Guskin is co-author with David Wilson of The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers, published in July 2007 by Monthly Review Press. Guskin and Wilson are also co-editors, since 1990, of Weekly News Update on the Americas, a summary of Latin American news. In addition, Guskin edited Immigration News Briefs, a bulletin covering immigration-related news, from 1998 through 2008. In 1997 Guskin and Wilson helped found the Coalition for the Human Rights of Immigrants, an all-volunteer group mobilizing against workplace raids. From April 2002 to April 2004, they worked to free their colleague and friend, Farouk Abdel-Muhti, from immigration detention.

Guskin is co-director of the A.J. Muste Memorial Institute, a grassroots foundation supporting nonviolent action for social justice, where she has worked since 1993. She lives in New York City.

Wage Theft Across Borders

By Frontera NorteSur, Grassroots Press
February 8, 2013

As discussion mounted over the issue of an expanded guestworker system in an immigration reform package, a company connected to former Secretary of State Colin Powell found itself in hot water in connection with the employment of Mexican workers in the U.S.

U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh recently ordered that Silicon Valley-based Bloom Energy Corporation fork out nearly $64,000 in back pay and damages to 14 workers from Chihuahua, Mexico, who were transported to California to refurbish power generators.

The court decision stemmed from a U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) probe that found the workers were paid in Mexican pesos the U.S. equivalent of $2.66 per hour, or a wage that is more typical of foreign-owned maquiladora plants in Mexico dedicated to manufacturing products for export.

Read the full article:
http://www.grass-roots-press.com/2013/02/08/wage-theft-across-borders/

Download a new report on the abuse of guest workers, "The American Dream Up for Sale: A Blueprint for Ending International Labor Recruitment Abuse":
http://fairlaborrecruitment.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/final-e-version-ilrwg-report.pdf