URGENT: Share these know your rights materials for immigration raids

From United We Dream

February 11, 2017

In the past 72 hours, the Trump administration has begun a nationwide assault on immigrants and their families.

Reports of ICE (immigration) raids at grocery stores, food trucks, people's homes and at workplaces are coming in from Los Angeles to Atlanta and many communities in between. In this moment, it is more important than ever to ensure families know their rights if ICE agents come to their door.

Here are some simple things you can do right now to make sure you and immigrants in your communities know what to do if you see agents in your city:

Share our Know Your Rights graphic on Facebook.
Retweet us to share the graphic on Twitter.
Visit our Here to Stay website for more resources.
Sign up for SMS alerts by texting HERETOSTAY to 877877

Forward the below information to anyone you know who might be targeted by Trump's anti-immigrant agenda.

It's more important than ever for all of us to be in solidarity with each other because we know that our liberation is bound to each other. We must not be afraid, we must remain united and we must fight back!

What to Do if ICE (immigration) Comes to Your Door

As Trump continues to push his anti-immigrant agenda we want to make sure you Know your rights! Here are some steps to follow in the case ICE (immigration) comes to your door.

Do NOT open your door
Remain silent
Do NOT sign anything
Report and Record ( call our hotline 1-844-363-1423)
Fight back

Como el President Trump quiere aterrorizar a la comunidad inmigrante, queremos asegurarnos de que conozca sus derechos. Aquí hay algunos pasos para seguir en el caso de ICE (mejor conocida como la Migra) venga a su puerta.

No abra la puerta
Guarda silencio
No firme nada
Reporta y graba ( nuestra línea de ayuda 1-844-363-1423)
Haz un plan y pelea
Nuestros voluntarios de la línea de ayuda Migra Watch están listos para defender a nuestra comunidad de la Migra. Reporta actividad en tu ciudad! Llámanos al 1-844-363-1423

Most Undocumented Immigrants Live In Areas That Trump Lost

By Ben Casselman, FiveThirtyEight
February 9, 2017

Donald Trump ran for president on a promise to crack down on illegal immigration. But most of the people who are in the U.S. illegally live in places that voted for his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

More than 2 million of the nation’s roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants live in just two metropolitan areas, New York and Los Angeles, according to a new analysis of 2014 Census Bureau data from the Pew Research Center.1 Voters in both cities supported Clinton by overwhelming margins. Most of the remaining 9 million undocumented immigrants are concentrated in large urban areas that likewise voted for Clinton over Trump.[...]

Read the full article:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-undocumented-immigrants-live-in-areas-that-trump-lost/

US travel ban hits major setback as judges uphold temporary restraining order

Judges upheld order issued last week to prevent 90-day travel ban from seven Muslim-majority countries and 120-day freeze on US admission of any refugees

By Ben Jacobs, The Guardian
February 10, 2017

Donald Trump’s controversial travel ban suffered a major setback on Thursday after a panel of three judges upheld an injunction against the president’s order banning arrivals from seven Muslim-majority countries.

In its unanimous ruling, the three judges on the ninth circuit court of appeals upheld the temporary restraining order, which was issued by Judge James Robart, a federal district court judge in Washington state, and has blocked the enforcement of many key parts of the executive order.

The court found that “the government has not shown a stay is necessary to avoid irreparable injury.” In particular, its ruling noted “the government has pointed to no evidence that any alien from any of the countries named in the order has perpetrated a terrorist attack in the United States. Rather than present evidence to explain the need for the executive order, the government has taken the position that we must not review its decision at all.”[...]

Read the full article:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/09/judges-deny-trump-travel-ban-enforcement-uphold-order

She Showed Up Yearly to Meet Immigration Agents. Now They’ve Deported Her.

By Fernanda Santos, New York Times

NY Times: Protesters attempt to block deportation

February 8, 2017

PHOENIX — For eight years, Guadalupe García de Rayos had checked in at the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement office here, a requirement since she was caught using a fake Social Security number during a raid in 2008 at a water park where she worked.

Every year since then, she has walked in and out of the meetings after a brief review of her case and some questions.

But not this year.

On Wednesday, immigration agents arrested Ms. Rayos, 35. Despite efforts by her family and others who tried to block, legally and physically, her removal from the United States, her family said Thursday that she had been deported to Mexico, a country she has not seen since she left it 21 years ago.[...]

Read the full article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/08/us/phoenix-guadalupe-garcia-de-rayos.html
Watch video of the protest:
https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000004922421/arizona-protests-for-unauthorized-immigrants.html

Court dubious of government arguments on Trump's travel ban

A federal appeals court panel is expected to rule soon on the executive order barring refugees and visitors from seven Muslim countries.

By Josh Gerstein, Politico
February 7, 2017

The Justice Department struggled to convince a federal appeals court Tuesday to allow the federal government to resume enforcement of President Donald Trump's controversial travel ban executive order.

The Trump administration had hoped to persuade the appeals court to stay the entirety of a Seattle federal judge’s order blocking key parts of President Donald Trump's Jan. 27 directive blocking all refugee admissions and suspending travel to the U.S. from seven majority-Muslim countries.

However, the three 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges hearing the issue were skeptical enough of the government's case that Justice Department attorney August Flentje repeatedly raised a fallback option that the appeals court rein in the Seattle judge's order without lifting it altogether.[...]

Read the full article:
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-travel-ban-court-hearing-234766

Marx on Immigration: Workers, Wages, and Legal Status

Photo credit: Values & Capitalism.

Marx wrote about immigrant workers nearly 150 years ago, and he was certainly not infallible, but a great deal of his analysis sounds remarkably contemporary.… Among his insights, largely ignored by economists and activists alike, is the one Marx considered “most important of all”: the way immigration can be used to create “a working class divided into two hostile camps.”

By David L. Wilson, Monthly Review
February 2017

On April 9, 1870, Karl Marx wrote a long letter to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt, two of his collaborators in the United States. In it Marx touched on a number of subjects, but his main focus was the “Irish question,” including the effects of Irish immigration in England. This discussion seems to have been Marx’s most extensive treatment of immigration, and while it hardly represents a comprehensive analysis, it remains interesting as a sample of Marx’s thinking on the subject—at least on one day in 1870.

Given the intense and often bitter debates over immigration now taking place in the United States and Europe, the letter to Meyer and Vogt has received surprisingly little attention from the modern left. Immigrant rights advocates in particular have ignored Marx’s thoughts on the issue, especially his remark—which reflects his assessment of how the capitalist system operates—that the influx of low-paid Irish immigrants to England forced wages down for native-born English workers. In fact, many present-day supporters of immigrants’ rights have taken the side of liberal economists who insist that immigration actually boosts wages for native-born workers.[...]

Read the full article:
https://monthlyreview.org/2017/02/01/marx-on-immigration/

Update:  This article is now available in Italian on the website of Rifondazione Comunista as “Marx sull’immigrazione: Lavoratori, salari e status legale,” translated by Maurizio Acerbo.

Read it at: http://www.rifondazione.it/primapagina/?p=27920

America’s Construction Carnage

As unions decline, construction workers are dying at alarming rates.

[We should also remember that many of the construction workers being victimized at unsafe non-union sites are undocumented. These workers often fail to resist or even report dangerous work conditions because they fear that their employers will respond by calling in the ICE agents. The article points out the drastic underfunding of OSHA. In 2015 the government's budget request for immigration enforcement was $18.5 billion for the two agencies; for OSHA the Obama administration requested just $565 million. In other words, we spend 1/33 as much on protecting workers' health and safety as we do on making immigrants' lives miserable. We can expect still worse under Trump--unless we fight back.--TPOI]

By Sam Pizzigati, Other Words
February 1, 2017

Try this the next time you find yourself standing on a Wall Street corner. Ask the first power suit you see why Wall Street’s finest deserve to be making $25 billion in bonuses a year.

Wall Streeters actually have a ready response for impertinent questions like this: We deserve the big bucks, they’ll tell you, because we take risks.

Truth be told, risk-takers do abound in the canyons of Manhattan. But to see them, you have to lift your line of sight off street level — and beyond the corner offices of Wall Street’s high-finance movers and shakers.

You have to look skyward, up into the “high steel” world of construction workers continually adding new towers to the city’s skyline.[...]

Read the full article:
http://otherwords.org/americas-construction-carnage/