Sanders Releases a Real Immigration Plan !

Sanders on Immigration

By far the most progressive plan of any of the candidates.

Key Points

·       Institute a moratorium on deportations until a thorough audit of past practices and policies is complete.

·       Reinstate and expand DACA and develop a humane policy for those seeking asylum.

·       Completely reshape and reform our immigration enforcement system, including breaking up ICE and CBP and redistributing their functions to their proper authorities.

·       Dismantle cruel and inhumane deportation programs and detention centers and reunite families who have been separated.

·       Live up to our ideals as a nation and welcome refugees and those seeking asylum, including those displaced by climate change.

Details

This country is a nation of immigrants. Other than the native peoples of the Americas, every one of our families came here from somewhere else. Some came by choice, some by necessity, and others in chains. As we have developed as a nation, each of us has contributed to the growth and prosperity of America in our own way. And our nation has been most successful and most true to its ideals when that prosperity has been shared among all of us. In many ways, that is what this campaign is about: building a movement to create an America where everyone shares in the prosperity that they and their ancestors helped create.

Read the plan

https://berniesanders.com/issues/welcoming-and-safe-america-all/

U.S. Did Not Track the Kids of the Families They Separated !

By ASTRID GALVAN Associated Press

PHOENIX (AP) — The U.S. government separated thousands of families despite knowing it lacked the technology to document and track their whereabouts, according to a report released Wednesday by an internal government watchdog.

The problem resulted in some parents languishing in custody for weeks without knowing the location of their children.

The report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General found the agency lacked proper systems when Border Patrol agents took children from parents set to be criminally prosecuted for illegal entry.

Most of those separations took place in the spring of 2018, although the Border Patrol conducted a pilot program the previous summer.

The problem meant agents had to delete prior entries documenting families who arrived together and replace them with references to “single adults” and “unaccompanied children.”

The three agencies dealing with the immigrant families also lacked a cohesive way of tracking each other’s work, the report states.

An email Wednesday seeking comment from Homeland Security was not immediately returned.

The widely decried policy of separating families was meant to deter illegal immigration but was shut down by a U.S. judge who ordered the government to reunify the parents and children. President Donald Trump also signed an executive order to end the practice.

In this July 12, 2019, file photo, protesters hold up a sign that reads ‘uncage kids’ during a rally in Lafayette Park near the White House where they were calling for and end to immigrant children’s detention and family separations. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick, File)

More than 5,400 children were taken from their parents from July 1, 2017, to June 26, 2018.

The new report noted that Border Patrol officials knew they lacked the tracking technology months before the widespread practice began and did nothing to address the issue.

It said reunification was chaotic because it was coordinated via email instead of a shared system that could be accessed by the three agencies involved.

In addition, government employees sent sensitive information about immigrant children through unsecured means, and the number of families needing reunification was too high to manage through email, the report found.

The government has addressed some of the issues but not before family separations were ended, according to the report.

The Trump administration has continued other efforts to reduce immigration, forcing over 55,000 asylum-seekers to wait in dangerous Mexican cities while their immigration cases play out, and requiring thousands more to wait before they can even file an asylum claim.

Progressive Breakfast - Lulac - Pozole

No he ganado un solo caso de asilo”

No he ganado un solo caso de asilo”: el duro proceso buscando refugio en EEUU que retiene a los migrantes en México

Como resultado de las nuevas políticas del presidente Trump, las autoridades rechazan cava vez más solicitudes de refugio sometidas por centroamericanos que huyen de la violencia y pobreza extrema. Así lo afirman abogados entrevistados por Univision Noticias, una demanda y la organización ACLU.

ISAIAS ALVARADO

23 NOV 2019 – 10:34 AM EST

COMPARTE

La abogada Brenda Luján. Crédito: Isaias Alvarado/ Univision

TIJUANA, México.- La guatemalteca “Rosa” y su hija de 11 años llevan más de cinco meses en un limbo migratorio que las mantiene angustiadas. Solicitaron asilo a Estados Unidos en junio y las devolvieron a México para esperar sus citas en una corte federal de California. Cuando llegó a un albergue en esta ciudad fronteriza, alguien le tradujo lo que redactaron en su proceso y lo que escuchó le bajó la moral.

“Pusieron que yo no tengo miedo de regresar a Guatemala y eso no es cierto”, reclama “Rosa”, sentada en el patio de la Casa del Migrante de Tijuana, el que ha sido su hogar temporal este otoño. “Cruzamos la frontera el 16 de junio y nos regresaron. En la entrevista que me hicieron no me preguntaron por qué salí de mi país, ni por qué iba a Estados Unidos. Nada”, asegura.

“Rosa” ruega que no se publique su nombre, ni se fotografíe su rostro. Tiene mucho miedo. Relata que salió de su país porque pandilleros le pidieron dinero para dejarla trabajar en su salón de belleza. Ella los denunció con la Policía en mayo, pero nadie fue a investigar. Mientras tanto, siguieron las amenazas a través de cartas y llamadas telefónicas. La acosaban hasta cuando salía a comprar al mercado.

“Me dejaban papeles afuera de mi casa exigiendo dinero. Me dio miedo porque a finales de mayo ellos fueron a degollar a una señora a su casa, ella no quiso pagar la extorsión. Tuve miedo y me salí”, contó.

DACA Workshop

Border activist Scott Warren acquitted of harboring immigrants who cross...

On the Coup and Repression in Bolivia

Statement on Human Rights Violations in Bolivia

Evo Morales – the democratically elected President of Bolivia from the MAS party (Movimiento al Socialismo, Movement Towards Socialism) – was forced to resign on November 10, in what many observers view as a coup. In the wake of Morales’ resignation, there has been mounting chaos and violence. What is happening in Bolivia is highly undemocratic and we are witnessing some of the worst human rights violations at the hands of the military and the police since the transition to civilian government in the early 1980s. We condemn the violence in the strongest terms, and call on the US and other foreign governments to immediately cease to recognize and provide any support to this regime. We urge the media to do more to document the mounting human rights abuses being committed by the Bolivian state.

On November 10, Morales’ vice president and the heads of both chambers of Congress also resigned in the face of threats of violence against top MAS officials unless they left office. The pressure campaign included the burning of MAS officials’ houses and kidnapping of relatives. This paved the way for the ascension to the presidency of Jeanine Áñez (a conservative Roman Catholic opposition leader from northeastern Bolivia, widely accused of holding racist views) on Tuesday November 12.

The circumstances surrounding the rapid-fire resignations makes Áñez’s assumption of power highly questionable. There are serious doubts about the constitutional legitimacy of her succession. Without the forced resignations by MAS officials, Áñez would not have had even a minimally plausible constitutional path to the presidency, as she was serving as Vice-President of the Senate, a position that is not in the line of presidential succession within the constitution. Additionally, Áñez, whose party received only 4% of the vote in the most recent October 20 election, declared herself President in a Senate session lacking quorum, with MAS senators who make up the legislature’s majority boycotting partly due to fears for their physical safety.

Áñez represents the radical-right sector of the Bolivian opposition, which has taken advantage of the power vacuum created by Morales’ ouster to consolidate control over the state. Áñez appears to have full support of Bolivia’s military and police. Over the course of the last week the military and police have engaged in significant and increasing repression against protests, which have been largely, though not entirely, peaceful. By the night of November 13, La Paz and Cochabamba city center streets were empty of anyone but the police, military, and self-appointed neighborhood militias. There has been ongoing looting, burning of buildings, and violence on the streets and protesters have been met with much repression. In a highly disturbing move, Áñez issued an executive order on November 15 exempting the military from criminal responsibilities related to the use of force. Áñez has said Morales will face prosecution if he returns to Bolivia. And she has also floated the idea of banning the MAS party – which is undoubtedly still Bolivia’s largest and most popular political force – from participation in future elections.

Equally disturbing has been a resurgence of public anti-Indigenous racism over the course of the last week. Shortly after Áñez was declared President, she thrust a massive Bible into the air and proclaimed “The Bible has returned to the palace!” Three days earlier on the day of Morales’ ouster, Luis Fernando Camacho, a far-right Santa Cruz businessman and ally of Áñez, went to the presidential palace and knelt before a Bible placed on top of the Bolivian flag. A pastor accompanying him announced to the press, “The Pachamama will never return to the palace.” Opposition activists burned the wiphala flag (an important symbol of Indigenous identity) on various occasions. These are extremist views that threaten to reverse decades of gains in ethnic and cultural inclusion in Bolivia.

Webinar : No One is Illegal

DSA webinar: No One Is Illegal 

When:             November 21^st, 2019, 8:30pm EST, 7:30pm CST; 5:30pm PST

Register:          https://act.dsausa.org/signup/no-one-illegal-webinar-capitalism-imperialism-and-borders/

Sponsor:          Immigrant Rights Working Group – Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)

Borders throughout the world have become sites of state violence, racist discrimination, and policing of workers freedom of movement. Governments from the US to Mexico, the EU and Israel to name just a few have militarized their boundaries, policed them with guards, forced migrants to take dangerous routes where they are losing their lives in record numbers, jailed those that survive in concentration camps, and exploited others as cheap labor denied the rights of workers with citizenship. On this webinar, experts on capitalism, climate change, imperialism and migration will explain the systemic roots of population displacement, the nature and function of the new border regime and present a case for working class unity against the oppression and scapegoating of migrants in the U.S. and throughout the world. 

Speakers:

Justin Akers Chacon, author of No One is Illegal and Radicals in the Barrio.

Todd Miller, author of Empire of Borders, Border Patrol Nation, and Storming the Wall.

Harsha Walia, author of Undoing Border Imperialism, cofounder of No One Is Illegal.

Jorge Mújica, author of Voces Migrantes: Movimiento 10 de Marzo, DSA member and Organizer with Arise Chicago, National Council member of the National Writers Union.

To get involved in DSA, become a member, join the Immigrant Rights Working Group, and find out more about activist campaigns. 

Estas son las ocho ciudades de Estados Unidos más amigables con los inmi...

"This Is a Military Coup”: Bolivian President Evo Morales Resigns After ...

NYT on DACA

NYT on DACA

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court finally heard arguments over the future of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, a program that has kept roughly 700,000 young, unauthorized immigrants in limbo for years.

Here’s what you need to know:

Need a refresher on DACA and Dreamers?

In 2012, President Barack Obama introduced the program, which shields people who were brought to the United States as children from deportation. It was intended as a stopgap measure, and didn’t provide a pathway to citizenship.

But it did allow participants, known as Dreamers, to get work permits, and in some states, including California, to access in-state tuition and legally drive. Dreamers can renew their status in two-year intervals.

Recipients who aren’t veterans have to be enrolled in high school or have a diploma or G.E.D. and cannot — contrary to what President Trump has said — have a serious criminal history.

In 2017, President Trump moved to end the program after nine conservative state attorneys general threatened to sue over it. They said it was an overreach of presidential power. President Trump has been conflicted about the program, and his public statements have reflected that. editors note.  We should stop saying that the Democrats were as bad as the Republicans on immigration.  They were not.  The House has passed a new Dreamers bill. It languishes in the Senate.

Así fue el plan secreto para sacar a Evo Morales de Bolivia en un avión ...

Coup in Bolivia

The Bolivian Coup: What the Mainstream Media Don’t Tell You

Bolivia’s oligarchy launched an orgy of racist and fascist violence to oust president Morales

November 12, 2019 Francisco Dominguez  MORNING STAR

PRINTER FRIENDLY  

https://portside.org/2019-11-1https://portside.org/2019-11-12/bolivian-coup-what-mainstream-media-dont-tell-you2/bolivian-coup-what-mainstream-media-dont-tell-you

Supreme Court to Hear DACA Case

SCOTUS TO DECIDE FATE OF DACA: The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments this morning regarding the Trump administration's attempt, thwarted by multiple appellate judges, to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. A high court ruling, expected no later than June 2020, will decide the fate of nearly 669,000 Dreamers who were extended protection when President Barack Obama created DACA. POLITICO's Josh Gerstein will follow the arguments today. Members of Congress, DACA recipients, and supporters of the program will hold a pro-DACA rally on the court steps. 

The Trump administration terminated DACA on March 5, 2018, and while appeals courts compelled the administration to re-start the process for renewing DACA enrollment, no new applicants were accepted, POLITICO's Bianca Quilantan reports. Duke University senior Axel Herrera Ramos said the Supreme Court's decision will determine his plans after graduation. "For many of us who have DACA, it's been two years of waiting this out. In some ways, I believe that you get a little bit numb to the news of it. It's just extremely draining." 

If the court rules DACA unlawful, no future administration will be able to revive it without getting a bill through Congress. DACA recipients will lose their protection from deportation and, more immediately, their ability to work or to attend school legally. 143 different businesses and business associations have warned that eliminating the program "will inflict serious harm on U.S. companies, all workers, and the American economy as a whole."

"DACA recipients are filling vacancies at companies that otherwise would not be able to attract workers for open positions," these businesses wrote in an amicus brief last month. "They are creating businesses that employ other Americans. And their increased wages lead to higher tax revenues and expansion of our national GDP — producing new jobs and benefits for all Americans."

The Reality Check: THE NEW NAFTA WON'T PROTECT WORKERS' RIGHTS

The Reality Check: THE NEW NAFTA WON'T PROTECT WORKERS' RIGHTS: THE NEW NAFTA WON'T PROTECT WORKERS' RIGHTS By David Bacon The Nation, 10/8/19 https://www.thenation.com/article/nafta-usmca-trad...

Sanders Proposes Breaking Up ICE

With Bold Immigration Plan: Sanders Proposes Breaking Up ICE, CBP.

https://theintercept.com/2019/11/07/sanders-immigration-plan-ice-cbp/?

ON THURSDAY MORNING, Sen. Bernie Sanders dropped his long-anticipated immigration platform. Arguably the most ambitious of any Democratic presidential candidate’s so far, the plan goes beyond a general call for a path to legal status for immigrants and takes full aim at President Donald Trump’s racist policies at the southern border. Unlike any other candidate, Sanders calls for the break up of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and to improve working conditions and labor protections for industries that rely on an immigrant workforce.

One piece of this is the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, which would “provide domestic workers with at least a $15 minimum wage, strong protections for collective bargaining, workers’ rights, workplace safety, and fair scheduling,” regardless of immigration status.

“For too long, employers have exploited undocumented immigrants and guest workers to violate labor laws, skirt the minimum wage, and maximize their own profits,” the plan reads. “Large corporations target vulnerable communities as a source of labor and use their immigration status to retaliate when workers stand up for their rights.”

Read Our Complete CoverageThe War on Immigrants

The release of Sanders’s plan comes after months of scrutiny from leftists and liberals over his immigration policy — long considered to be one of his primary weaknesses. His plan follows the common left positions on immigration, including reinstating and expanding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program; ending for-profit detention; and overturning the Muslim ban.

Notably, he also goes further than even his fellow progressive hopeful, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, in calling for full demilitarization of the border. To break up ICE and CBP, under Sanders’s platform, their functions would be redistributed to other federal agencies. Under a Sanders administration, “deportation, enforcement, border and investigatory authority would return to the Department of Justice,” naturalization and citizenship authority would go to the State Department, and customs authority would return to the Treasury.

Notably, Sanders also goes further than even his fellow progressive hopeful, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, in calling for full demilitarization of the border.

Warren, on the other hand, pledged in her immigration plan to “remake CBP and ICE in a way that reflects our values.” Her plan, titled “A Fair and Welcoming Immigration System,” which came out in July, calls for the decriminalization of border crossings, expanding DACA, and raising the cap on the number of refugees admitted to the U.S. She also put forth some signature ideas such as establishing an “Office of New Americans” to “draft a national strategy for integration” for new immigrants, which would include providing English, civics, and employment-focused classes.

Choosing Democracy: Race, Borders and Belonging

Choosing Democracy: Race, Borders and Belonging

It is Not About Open Borders

Dan La Botz has written an extensive piece on Open Borders   in the DSA publication  Socialist Forum. I want to critique some parts of his arguments. 

His piece is Ten Arguments for Open Borders, the Abolition of ICE, and an Internationalist Labor Movement (Fall 2019) Responses

La Botz  is well informed in this field and  makes the best case for open borders.  However, the conclusions do not necessarily follow from his arguments.  In my view, he is about 80 % correct . At the same time, we should not assume that Open Borders is the only correct plan for the left, nor that it is feasible.  We need clarity on these issues in order to build our movement. And we should be aware that the  Charles C.Koch Foundation,  Milton Friedman, and others  Right  wing economists support Open Borders. 

 At the same time, most of organized labor, most of the major Civil Rights organizations, and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party- ie. the Sanders campaign, do not support open borders. We should understand why. 

La Botz’s descriptions of the economy and the political forces, and his analysis are very well informed.  The conclusions he draws from this work  go beyond the arguments he makes.  I do not have the time to go through each of  the arguments in detail.  His is  a substantive piece.  I can only point out some of the problem areas. 

1.     It is true that DSA at the August convention endorsed open borders.  Open borders is the policy of DSA.  Not all of us agree.  

In 2018 I  described some of these contradictions in a  piece Toward a Socialist Perspective on Immigration on Democratic Left. I am unable to locate that piece now,  The DL archives have had some disruption.

 A  related piece was posted as   Steps Toward a Labor Perspective on Immigration on the North Star blog.

https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/steps-toward-a-labor-informed-position-on-immigration

Here is an excerpt.

“It Is Not About Open Borders

In the article, “The Left Case against Open Borders”, writer Angela Nagel  gets some  of the economic conditions correct, but like Trump, she argues without evidence that the problem is that  unions, the Left  and immigrants’ rights activists support  “open borders”.   Her  writing  follows from the position in Melting Pot or Civil War? A Son of Immigrants Makes the Case Against Open Borders – (2018) by Reihan Salam

Developing a policy on migration for labor and  the left  is far more complex than presented by  Naegel and other writers.  

First we must  deal with some of  the false accusations about the role of unions  in the immigration policy  debates.  

Writer Nagel is wrong  in asserting that the left and labor favor open borders. This is accepting the false narrative of Trump and the anti- immigrant forces. .

There has been a long and well developed movement for immigration reform, along with connected policy proposals – few of which argue for open borders. Progressive policies and practices have emerged from within U.S. communities and the labor movement. “ 

2.      I agree  with La Botz that ,” We are in a struggle for hearts and minds on the question of immigration, a key issue in U.S. politics today”  He then  locates the problems in the crisis of 9/11  and  austerity policies following the economic crisis of 2008. 

While those issues were important, but, anti immigrant hostility was rampant as early as 1994 in the Proposition 187 campaign  in California when a Republican governor Pete Wilson gained re- election during a recession by blaming Mexican  immigrants for the job losses. Some 55 % of California voters cast their ballots for a harshly anti immigrant measure. Republicans have since  been repudiated in California and the state is a Sanctuary State.  However,  the contents of  the California  Prop. 187 Save Our State measure became federal policy as a part of the  Immigration Refo0rm  Act of 1996. 

On a national level  Republicans passed and Bill Clinton signed the  Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996,  a repressive bill that  provided for the construction of fencing along the border and criminalized many factors of immigrant life. Over the decades there were numerous appropriation bills to provide increased funding for the Border Patrol, militarization and fencing of the border.  See, Sand and Blood: America’s Deadly Stealth War on the Mexican Border, by John Carlos Frey. 

Many of the current repressive actions at the border were made possible by the Trump Administration’s use of this 1996 legislation.

3.    La Botz is accurate in describing many of the political forces since 2001. While I can agree with him  that the anti immigrant campaigns contribute to capitalist exploitation,  I do not  agree that Open Borders campaigns will advance the rights of immigrant workers.  The DSA International Commission has a number of pieces supporting the position of Open Borders as put forward by La Botz  and this position is supported by Alexandria Ocassio-Cortez, among others.