The government, using its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, has launched repeated raids against workers and immigrant communities across the country. Thousands of people have been deported without due process, whole families imprisoned though guilty of no crime, and entire factories raided and workers lined up, profiled and shackled. The raids are being done military style, with ICE agents in all black uniforms, heavily armed and helicopters overhead. In the recent New Bedford raid against mostly women workers, 300 agents were used against 350 workers. It is this government impunity and collective punishment against whole communities that are the crimes. Mass detention and deportation solve no problem. Rather, they serve to terrorize workers and are a clear effort to derail organizing efforts of all kinds, including that for united May Day actions this year. We join people nationwide in demanding No Raids and Deportations! Government Impunity is the Crime, Resistance the Solution!
Promise of Citizenship for Military Service
The government has already used the blackmail of offering citizenship to any undocumented person 18 or older if they enlist in the military. While this is the promise made, in an estimated 20 percent of cases, it is not kept. Many of the families involved have angrily protested this blackmail, as it has often meant death and severe mental and physical injury to those who enlist and serve in Iraq.
In addition, the DREAM Act (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) is being reintroduced in Congress. As its title implies, it is being presented as an opportunity for “relief and education” for the hundreds of thousands of undocumented youth in the country. Many of the youth have been here for years, are graduating from high school and are fluent in English and Spanish. Others are newly arrived. Some have a parent or sibling who is a citizen. But they are all being profiled and targeted for the military. Just as the No Child Left Behind law requires schools to turn over the lists of their students to the military or lose federal funds, the DREAM Act also has a military component that goes even further. Using the promise of education, it will in fact mean required military service for large numbers of youth.
The Act, as currently written, allows the youth deemed eligible, to obtain conditional permanent residency status for a period of six years — at the discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security. At the end of the period, citizenship may be granted if the person has maintained “good moral character,” and has “acquired a degree from an institution of higher learning in the U.S. or completed at least 2 years, in good standing, in a program for a bachelor’s degree in the U.S.” or “has served in the Armed Forces of the U.S. for at least two years” and received an honorable discharge. Participation requires registering with the government. It also requires either going to school or joining the army, or the youth will be deported, even if they have lived most of their lives in the U.S.
It is well known that many youth cannot afford college or may not complete it, as required. The DREAM Act is thus a criminal means to force young people who otherwise meet the usual criteria for citizenship to be denied it, while forcing them to join the military in a time of war. It provides the Pentagon with the means to secure a huge pool of recruits at a time when they are facing increasing resistance, among the troops and from youth refusing to be canon fodder in aggressive imperialist wars.
It also puts in law a double standard for citizenship. Those whose parents happen to be documented immigrants face one standard, while those who are undocumented face another. These youth are singled out and must meet a whole series of requirements, including required military service if they cannot attend college. As well, the youth are subject to deportation while having committed no crime at all.
Today, the government is targeting these youth, but they could easily extend the same criteria to all youth in the country, using such requirements as a back-door draft. In addition, there is discussion among Congressmen to deny citizenship to people born in the country, as required by the Constitution. As well, those who are natural citizens can lose citizenship, which until now has not been the case. Thus the same government that is profiling, terrorizing, labeling dissent a crime and using double standards is threatening to be the arbitrary “decider” of who is and is not a citizen. Clearly, with President George W. Bush demanding that “you are either with us or against us,” citizenship will become another tool to terrorize everyone, as it is already being used as a tool to terrorize immigrants.
Now is the time to reject government impunity and terrorism. Say no to raids, deportation and forced military service![TOP]
Our Dream Shall Not Be a Nightmare
Today, March 1, 2007 there was an announcement that the DREAM Act (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) will be re-introduced, by representatives Diaz-Balart (R-FL), Howard Berman (D-CA), and Royal Allard (D-CA) and in the senate Richard Durbin (D-IL), Chuck Hagel (R-NE), and Richard Lugar (R-IN) also announced that they will introduce the DREAM Act within the next couple of days.
This measure is supposed to offer citizenship to “immigrant” students with conditions, but we must read between the fine lines — what this measure really proposes is just another poverty draft in our communities.
When this measure was first introduced five years ago, many of us supported it, because we fundamentally believe that everyone has the right to an education. What has changed since then is that:
1) “Immigrant” students will be able to pay in-state tuition fees, but NOT have access to federal funding (loans, financial aid, etc.). Given the rise in cost of a college education (even at the community college level), and stringent college admission requirements this will limit many in our community from pursuing an education because most students need to work to support their families and do not have the economic means to go to college.
2) Military service was substituted for the original proposal of community service. We are well aware that the majority of our youth will have to opt for this choice due to their economic reality. This is why we call the “DREAM” Act for what it is — a poverty draft/Surge Act. Our youth will be forced to fight unjust wars and risk their lives for citizenship.
We are aware that neither the Republican nor the Democratic parties have the interest of the Mexican and Latino Americano working class communities in mind, and this is why we say NO to the DREAM Act and YES to a legalization process without conditions and the unconditional right to an education and access to higher learning institutions!
We make a call to all progressive youth, student, and community organizations to join us in the struggle to denounce legislation that will force us to fill the rank and file of the U.S. Military. Do Not Join the Military, join Somos Raza in opposing this piece of dangerous legislation by signing on to the statement below. Organize and unite with the interests of our community!
For more information contact: Somos Raza: somosrazasd@yahoo.com
[TOP]
Who Will Serve? Growing the Military
In late December 2006, the Bush administration reversed its previous position and agreed to a permanent expansion of the Army and Marine Corps. In reality, the size of the two “ground services” has grown steadily since 2001 when Congress approved a temporary increase of 30,000 to the Army and authorized additional increases to the Army and Marines in 2005 and 2006. The current proposal would make these increases permanent and by 2012 achieve the objective of an active-duty Army of 542,400 and a Marine Corps of 190,000.
In their public statements, Pentagon officials claimed that finding the bodies to reach these goals would not be difficult. Increased bonuses, massive publicity campaigns, and appeals to patriotism would be enough to attract volunteers, they argued.
Lesser-known programs such as the Army GED Plus Enlistment Program in which applicants without high school diplomas are allowed to enlist while they complete a high school equivalency certificate are expected to help (interestingly, the GED Plus Enlistment Program is available only in inner city areas). The Army’s recent fudging of entrance requirements to accept an increased percentage of recruits with minor criminal records may also raise enlistment numbers.
Given the prospect of a prolonged U.S. presence in Iraq, however, the Pentagon’s optimistic predictions about increasing the size of the ground services by making minor adjustments to existing recruiting practices may not pan out. In anticipation of difficult days ahead for recruiters, no sooner had Bush announced his decision than conservative think tanks began to recycle proposals about recruiting foreigners into the U.S. military.
In a recent Boston Globe article, unidentified Army sources reported that Pentagon officials and Congress are investigating “the feasibility of going beyond U.S. borders to recruit soldiers and Marines.” Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, Thomas Donnelly of the American Enterprise Institute, and Max Boot of the Council on Foreign relations cited historical precedents for using foreign troops. Since at least 2005 Boot has been recommending the establishment of “recruiting stations along the U.S.-Mexico border” as a way to solve the problems of military manpower and illegal immigration.
But the fact that several sources in the Globe article, including spokesmen for the Army and the Latino advocacy group National Council for La Raza (NCLR), expressed disagreement with proposals to recruit foreign nationals means that other more feasible options may begin to surface.
A likely scenario is that the Pentagon will focus on one specific sector of the undocumented population — foreign nationals raised and educated in the United States. According to the Urban Institute, every year approximately 60,000 undocumented immigrants or children of immigrants (who have lived in the United States five years or longer) graduate from U.S. high schools. By marketing the military to this group, problems associated with the recruitment of foreigners such as poor English language skills and low educational levels could be alleviated.
So far military recruiters have limited their efforts to the pursuit of citizens and permanent residents (green card holders). It is a little-known fact, however, that the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006 amended current legal statutes by allowing military service secretaries to waive citizenship and residency requirements “if such Secretary determines that the enlistment of such person is vital to the national interest” (U.S. Code Title 10, Chapter 31, §504: 2006).
Is the DREAM Act the Pentagon’s Dream Too?
If the Pentagon were to decide to exercise its new prerogative and begin to recruit undocumented youth in order to grow the Army and Marines, the most obvious selling point would be permanent residency and eventual citizenship. This in fact is one of the little-known aspects of the DREAM Act, legislation that would grant conditional residency to most undocumented high school graduates and permanent residency in exchange for the successful completion of two years of college or two years of military service.
In his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on July 10, 2006, Under Secretary of Defense David Chu said: “According to an April 2006 study from the National Immigration Law Center, there are an estimated 50,000 to 65,000 undocumented alien young adults who entered the U.S. at an early age and graduate from high school each year, many of whom are bright, energetic and potentially interested in military service...Provisions of S. 2611, such as the DREAM Act, would provide these young people the opportunity of serving the United States in uniform.”
More recently, Lieutenant Colonel Margaret Stock of the U.S. Army Reserve and a faculty member at West Point told a reporter that the DREAM Act could help recruiters meet their goals by providing a “highly qualified cohort of young people” without the unknown personal details that would accompany foreign recruits. “They are already going to come vetted by Homeland Security. They will already have graduated from high school,” she said. “They are prime candidates.”
The lure of citizenship is already a tool for recruiting green card holders, especially because of expedited naturalization procedures put in place for military personnel in 2002. In San Diego, for example, recruiters have told permanent residents “I can help you get citizenship” when in fact the military has no input into the final granting or denial of citizenship. Although exact numbers are difficult to ascertain, roughly 20 percent of legal residents in the military who have applied for naturalization since late 2001 have been denied citizenship. This suggests that military service carries no guarantee that permanent residents will be granted the one benefit for which they probably enlisted and for which they may be forced to risk their life.
Other anecdotes recount recruiters threatening that the immigration status of recruits and their family would be affected should the recruit try to back out of an enlistment agreement. More devious recruiters have used the law requiring undocumented youth to register for Selective Service as a way to convince non-English speaking parents that there is obligatory military service in the United States.
The expansion of the recruiting pool to include the undocumented would be a Recruiting Command’s dream and may be the only way for the Pentagon to increase the size of the Army and Marines Corps. A 2006 study by the Migration Policy Institute calculated that passage of the DREAM Act “would immediately make 360,000 unauthorized high school graduates aged 18 to 24 eligible for conditional legal status [and] that about 715,000 unauthorized youth between ages 5 and 17 would become eligible sometime in the future.”
Ironically, nativist and restrictionist groups as well as anti-militarism activists will oppose the recruitment of the undocumented although for completely different reasons. Some organizations that oppose the recruitment of foreigners may support a vehicle for recruiting undocumented graduates from U.S. high schools. […]
While the DREAM Act may facilitate access to college for a small percentage of these undocumented students, in many cases other factors will militate against the college option. Given the difficulty undocumented youth have in affording college tuition, the pressure on them to make financial contributions to extended families, and the tendency among many to adopt uncritical forms of patriotism based on “gratitude,” military not college recruiters may be the ones who benefit the most.
As one undocumented student wrote to me:
“I was brought to America [from Mexico] when I was 12. I am 21 now and I am only going to college because in the state of Illinois I pay in-state tuition despite being illegal. I would serve in the military if I were given an opportunity to do so and DIE for America if necessary. Shouldn’t I be able to be legal?”
Military manpower needs, limited economic and educational opportunity, and the desire for social acceptance could transport immigrants and their children to the frontlines of future imperial misadventures such as the quagmire in Iraq.
Jorge Mariscal is a Vietnam veteran and director of the Chicano-Latino Arts and Humanities Program at the University of California, San Diego. He is a member of Project YANO (San Diego). Visit his blog at: jorgemariscal.blogspot.com/ He can be reached at: gmariscal@ucsd.edu[TOP]
New Bedford Migrant Workers Are Not the Enemy
An army of 300 federal immigration agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has conducted yet another military-style raid on migrant workers in the country. This time it was the turn for an East Coast location, New Bedford, Massachusetts, where scores of workers were taken away. ICE, a branch of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security explains that their objective is “to more effectively enforce our immigration and customs laws and to protect the U.S. against terrorist attacks. ICE does this by targeting illegal immigrants: the people, the money and materials that support terrorism and other criminal activities.” (From their website “About us” section).
The terms “terrorism” and “illegal immigrants” are deliberately used in the same breath by ICE officials to sow confusion in the minds of the public. We need to ask them exactly what those ‘terrorist acts’ are that these hard working New Bedford leather workers were accused of in that horrific military operation this morning, March 7.
Most of the workers in the Michael Bianco Textile plant are women. Many in desperation ran into the frigid waters of the Atlantic Ocean. A Coast Guard helicopter however hovered overhead to give information to ground troops about the location of the “enemy”. While the federal and state governments fail so miserably in providing resources for the overall health, education, transportation, and other vital needs for millions of tax paying residents, our tax dollars are used to terrorize decent hard working people who only wish to provide for their families.
This raid should outrage all people of good will. The Boston May Day Coalition stands firmly in solidarity with the victims of this overwhelming, military-style attack on migrant workers.
We call on all who support justice to demand the immediate release of all victims of this raid and an end to the raids, arrests, and deportations being carried out throughout the country. Release all who are being held without criminal charge NOW! These people are not criminals.
We call on all who support justice to participate in all actions being called this Spring demanding an end to the raids and for full, immediate, unconditional, and non-revocable legal residence for all undocumented migrant workers. We must prepare now for the large mobilizations being organized for May Day 2007 in defense of the rights of migrant workers and working people in general.
Politicians and enforcement officials must be made aware that the whole world is watching. The world will mobilize on May Day to demand that no human being anywhere in the world is illegal.
For more information see: www.bostonmayday.org or call 617-290-5614[TOP]
New Bedford Raid
New England Mobilizes to Defend Immigrants
Across New England, activists came forward to denounce the military-style raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) against hundreds of mainly women workers at a factory in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Among the actions taken was nationwide circulation of the letter below, which was presented at a press conference in Boston. The action was coordinated by a broad based group of organizations. The women were mainly from the indigenous Mayan communities in Guatemala. As has been occurring in the many ICE raids, the government left scores of children abandoned as parents were not permitted get them. Family, neighbors and fellow workers organized to provide for the children and demand release of the women.
* * *
March 6, 2007
District Director, ICE
Dear Mr. Chadbourne:
We, the undersigned, write to communicate our dismay at the ICE raid conducted at the Michael Bianco, Inc. factory in New Bedford that resulted in the arrest of more than 300 immigrant workers. As organizations representing all sectors of civil society in Massachusetts, we are outraged at the military style operation and devastating effect it is having on the New Bedford community, especially the families of those being detained. These types of raids tear apart families, spread waves of fear and panic throughout the community and hurt local economies. These actions do not make us feel any safer or stronger as a nation.
We wish to communicate to you our following demands:
1) We call for the immediate release of all the workers who have been detained. Many of the detainees are parents with children, some of whom are US citizens. All of them, however, are human beings, with certain inalienable rights. It amounts to cruel and unusual punishment for them to be detained on a military base and shipped across the country, far from their families, while their cases are being reviewed.
2) We demand that the detained workers have full access to appropriate legal representation. Our country prides itself on respecting due process,therefore we expect that your treatment of those in your custody is consistent with those values.
3) We also call for a moratorium on the raids. While the U.S. Congress continues to seek a solution to the country’s immigration system, with legislation to be introduced next week, we call upon the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to put a stop to the raids so that the debate in Congress can be carried out in good faith, rather than against a backdrop of fear and repression. Amidst the pain and trauma that this raid has already caused in the New Bedford community and beyond, we maintain hope that you will do the right and humane thing by responding positively to our demands.
[TOP]
Organizing Meeting Responds to ICE Raids In NYC
Organizers in New York City denounced recent and on-going government raids and collective punishment against workers in NYC. On February 22, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted their second public raid in NYC in 2 weeks. ICE agents went into the ESPN Zone in Times Square. The raid was part of a nationwide sweep across 17 states directed at restaurant workers. Los Angeles was one of the major targets. On February 7, 200 ICE agents swept through Queens, imposing collective punishment on whole communities in a clear attempt to intimidate and criminalize everyone.
Since June 2006, following massive actions of millions in April and May of 2006, the number of government raids nationwide is 7 times greater and the number of detentions has grown 3 times. It is clear that ICE and government officials are on a broad and violent campaign to attack immigrants and try to push the immigrant rights movement back into the shadows. On-going organizing for May Day actions in 2007 in NYC and nationwide show the government intimidation and terrorizing is failing.
Congress is again starting debate on immigration legislation, while the daily attacks continue and grow worse in working class neighborhoods and cities with large immigrant communities. organizers of the meeting emphasized, “Now more than ever we need to join forces and make our voices heard and keeping standing up to these injustices.” Participants determined to step up organizing for planned May Day actions and work to defend all those under attack.[TOP]
“La Union Hace la Fuerza”
No to Raids, Deportations and Profiling
On March 10, Latinos Unidos of Michigan will hold a press conference in Detroit to denounce government raids, deportations and profiling and defend the rights of families and all those impacted. The conference will take place at St. Peters Episcopal Church, reflecting the stand of many church ministers to reject the government attacks, as well as that of human rights advocates and many concerned people. All concerned will join in solidarity to affirm the basic values of justice, fairness, due process, and humane treatment for all, no matter what their status. Speakers will denounce the raids and deportations that separate families, racial profiling, enforcement and raid tactics by ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement - Department of Homeland Security) with no respect to our core fundamental rights under the U.S. Constitution and the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We are demanding a moratorium on the raids and deportations.
Speakers will include: Pastor Walter Coleman, Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago; Father Norman Thomas, Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Detroit; Minister Dawoud Muhammad, Michigan Representative of Honorable Mininster Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam; Honorable JoAnn Watson, Detroit City Council Woman; Cardinal Bayi Lande, Shrine of the Black Madonna, Detroit; Bishop Nkenge Abe, Shrine of the Black Madonna, Detroit.
Pastor Walter Coleman will deliver a call from Ms. Elvira Arrellano for a moratorium on the raids and deportations. In September of 2006 Ms. Elvira Arrellano a young undocumented mother of U.S. born 7 year old Saulito Arrellano took refuge in Adalberto United Methodist Church. Since then, this church has became Ms. Arrellano’s Sanctuary.
Pastor Walter Coleman will call on the Faith Community for a “Statement of Unity” and mass participation in opposition to separation of families by our current immigration laws. And for the reunification of separated families in the comprehensive immigration reform legislation that soon will be before Congress and the Senate.
The “May First National Coalition” is calling for a national boycott to take place on May 1, 2007. Latinos Unidos de Michigan is a member organization of this coalition and will follow their lead organizing for May 1st here in Detroit. There will be other May 1st actions in many other major cities across the U.S., Mexico and Latin America on this date.
For additional information contact:
Latinos Unidos - United de Michigan (LUUM); Rosendo Delgado (313) 887-1849. rosendo@luum.org; Ignacio Meneses (313) 587-9285 laborexchange@AOL.com’ Elena Herrada (313) 974 - 0501 elenaherrada@comcast.net
[TOP]