http://www.brickfish.com/politics/BorderFence


DESIGN YOUR PORTION OF THE BORDER FENCE

Sponsor: The Reform Institute Campaign Title:

Description: A law enacted by Congress last year authorizes 700 miles of fencing along the U.S./Mexico border. Construction of the fence is in its early stages.

If there has to be a fence built along the border, shouldn't it at least be pretty? This is an opportunity to express the message you feel the fence conveys about the U.S. Decide which side of the border fence you're painting and go to town! Maybe it'll be a welcoming mural or a warning to all not to cross, it's up to you!

Download the border fence template below or create your own "fence" canvas. Be creative and think big!

Rewards: Grand Prize: One winner, chosen by The Reform Institute art jury, will receive a $1000 scholarship to the school of "life."

Passion Prize: One winner, chosen by The Reform Institute panel, whose entry takes the most passionate stance will be offered a "paid freelance" opportunity with The Reform Institute from Oct. to Dec. for up to $500/month. See rules for complete details.

Best American Side: One entry representing the American side, chosen by highest score, will receive a $500 scholarship.

Best Mexican Side: One entry representing the Mexican side, chosen by highest score, will receive a $500 scholarship.

Visit The Reform Institute Duration: August 1, 2007 12:00 AM (PST) - September 12, 2007 11:30 PM (PST) How to Submit: Create your own fence or use the provided template (download below).
Click the Submit Entry tab and follow the steps provided.

Tell friends to come to Brickfish and vote for your entry!

Requirements: Your art should demonstrate your position on the border fence or immigration reform to have the best chance to win. Include a description stating your position in case it is unclear from your art. You are encouraged to create your own interpretation of the fence or use the provided template below. Legal Notice: No purchase necessary. Open to anyone who has access to the Internet, and is 14 or older at the time of entry. Click here to view the complete campaign rules and regulations. Campaign ends on September 12, 2007.

Total Activity: 292,213
Entries: 841
Reviews: 6,305
Votes: 7,562
Views: 277,507
Time Left: 18 days, 16:27:41

Today's Stats:
Top Score: Kristin
Top Reviewer: Sa****o
Top Voter: Renatta
Top Viewer: Alberto

Recent Entries:

Campaign Highlights:
La Campaña en Español.

Your art should demonstrate your position on the border fence or immigration reform to have the best chance to win. Include a description stating your position in case it is unclear from your art. You are encouraged to create your own interpretation of the fence or use the provided template below.

Some of The Reform Institute's agendas include promoting open and fair elections, climate stewardship and encouraging political discourse that rises above blatant partisanship. The Reform Institute supports comprehensive immigration reform that finds a balance between border security while upholding the status of the U.S. as the "land of opportunity." Get involved!

Parte de las agendas del instituto de la reforma incluyen promover elecciones abiertas y justas, la administración del clima y el discurso político que sobrepasa el partidismo. El instituto de la reforma sostiene una reforma completa de la inmigración que encuentra un balance entre la seguridad fronteriza mientras se mantenga las posicion the los Estados Unidos come "el pais de la oportunidad." ¡Participe!

PHILADELPHIA, HAZELTON

CITY OF HAZLETON APPEALS ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

BY WADE MALCOLM
STAFF WRITER
08/25/2007

A two-page, notice-of-appeal document, will start a long legal journey for the City of Hazleton, one it hopes will end with a higher court overturning a district judge's decision ruling the Illegal Immigration Relief Act unconstitutional.

The document, identifying several grounds for appeal, was filed in federal court Thursday. But the appeal will have to wait at least six months before it is heard by a panel of three judges at 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.

The appeal was not the least bit unexpected. The city’s attorneys were intensely — and immediately — critical of U.S. District Judge James M. Munley’s decision from the day it was released last month.

“They say patience is a virtue,” Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta said. “Certainly it will mean something in this case.”

The city is not only appealing Munley’s decision, but some of his pre-trial rulings as well, most notably his decision to let several plaintiffs, who are illegal immigrants, sue the city anonymously.

It is “conceivable,” Kobach said, that if the appeals court disagrees with Munley on protecting the identity of the Doe plaintiffs, a new trial could be ordered.

“But frankly, I would still say the odds are likely against it,” Kobach said.

ACLU attorney Witold “Vic” Walczak downplayed the importance of the pre-trial ruling, saying the case hinges on the ordinance’s due process violations and preemption of the federal government’s authority over immigration policy.

“We’ll have to address (the pre-trial rulings), but I don’t think they will play a major role in the appeal,” he said. “I’ve been wrong before but not often in this case.”

Statistically at least, the odds of Hazleton winning on appeal are also slim. Last year, the 3rd Circuit overturned only 15 percent of the lower court decisions it heard. If the 3rd Circuit’s decision is appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which both sides have promised to do, the case may take several more years to resolve.

In the meantime, Barletta said the city will find other ways to deal with the illegal immigration problem, which he feels is destroying the quality of life in Hazleton.

“All we can do is continue to enforce the laws that are already on the books,” he said. “If we catch someone who is an illegal alien, we report them to (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and detain them and hope that they are deported.”

wmalcolm@citizensvoice.com, 570-821-2051

©The Citizens Voice 2007PHILADELPHIA, HAZELTON

CALIFORNIA WITHOUT A MEXICAN

Workplace enforcement without immigration reform will cripple the economy -- and it will be Joe Public's fault.

Los Angeles Times
By Tamar Jacoby
August 25, 2007

The 2004 film "A Day Without a Mexican" was a political satire: an exaggerated fantasy about what would happen in California if all the immigrant workers suddenly disappeared. But now it seems that life may imitate art. Federal immigration authorities are readying a new enforcement tool that could indeed, if applied effectively, all but cripple the California economy.

A new fence? A massive influx of Border Patrol agents? A fleet of airborne drones? No. The new weapon is a simple two-page letter that will go out next month to companies whose employees' names and Social Security numbers do not match those on record at the Social Security Administration.

What makes these letters so potent? The SSA has been sending similar notices for years, but in the past, as long as a company had asked to see a worker's papers and filled out the proper forms, it was off the hook. Now the government is demanding that unauthorized employees be fired and threatening legal action if they aren't. This is expected to trigger widespread layoffs -- self-policing by millions of small and medium-sized businesses in California and other states.

The new measure is popular with the public -- a recent Rasmussen poll found eight in 10 Americans support it -- and understandably so. Voters want to get control of immigration. They're particularly keen to punish employers who hire illegal immigrants. And after years of lax enforcement, they're pleasantly surprised to see the authorities getting tough.

The only problem: Much as we need better enforcement, on the border and in the workplace, that's only half the answer. And without the other half -- better, more realistic immigration laws -- it will wreak havoc.

We've already had a preview of the likely consequences, and not just at the movies. For several years now, tougher border enforcement, plus competition from higher-paying hospitality and construction jobs, have deprived farmers in California and other states of the foreign workers they need to plant and harvest their crops.

The crisis peaks every year in August and September, and the photos start showing up in the newspapers: piles of rotting pears, strawberry plants choked by weeds, unpicked cucumbers grown to monstrous sizes and melons oozing in the fields.

Not even the least skilled, least educated Americans want to work in agriculture these days. More than 70% of U.S. farmworkers are estimated to be illegal immigrants. And if the SSA's no-match letters work -- if employers act on them as expected -- that could drive fruit and vegetable farming out of the United States, putting California's $30-billion-a-year industry at risk.

Agriculture would be just the beginning. According to economists, every farm job sustains three or four others -- at food processing plants, agricultural supply firms, companies that build trucks and other farm machinery -- many of them jobs held by native-born workers. And no-match letters won't go just to farmers. Hotels, restaurants, construction firms, landscaping contractors and healthcare services will get them too.

Those industries can't leave the United States. But they can slow -- slow dramatically -- and downsize. And imagine California "without a Mexican" a year or two from now: crumbling roads, understaffed hospitals, unbuilt classrooms and more.

This economic crunch could have a silver lining -- it might grab the public's attention and generate an outcry for better laws. Millions of Americans who think we don't need immigrant workers might wise up. Politicians who opposed immigration reform this year or last might have a change of heart. And Congress might overhaul the system in 2009, if not before, combining enhanced enforcement with legal ways for U.S. employers to hire foreign workers. That's the other half of the combination we need. And if a no-match crackdown goads us in that direction, the short-term economic pain might be worth it.

But what if, instead of choking the economy, the no-match blitz only drives more of it underground? Some companies will fire their illegal workers and downsize or move. Others will fire and then rehire them -- more deviously or completely off the books. Shady labor contractors will proliferate. Identity theft will skyrocket. Employers who have tried to play by the rules -- asking to see workers' papers, filling out the required forms -- will suffer, while those who deliberately flout the law will thrive and multiply.

The unintended consequences: more underground hiring, more sub-market wages, more mistreatment of immigrants, less tax revenue (most immigrants with fake papers pay taxes -- $5 billion to $10 billion a year in Social Security taxes) and a less regulated, more dangerous workplace for everyone.

Whose fault will this be? Not the feds -- it's their job to enforce immigration law, a job they've neglected for far too long. Some of the blame will lie with Congress, which could have changed the law, making it possible for employers to legally hire the workers they need. But in the end, the mess will be of our own making -- we the skeptical public who signaled to policymakers in May and June that we didn't trust them to rewrite the immigration code.

We told them to enforce existing law without changes, and that's what we're about to get. The question is what we'll do when that doesn't work and whether we can learn from our mistake.

Tamar Jacoby is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

IMMIGRATION REFORM WILL BE IN SMALL, SLOW STEPS

Opinion
VenturaCountyStar
August 23, 2007

There was something for everybody to hate in the compromise immigration "reform" bill narrowly defeated this summer in the U.S. Senate.

But that doesn't mean the pressure for changes has gone away, as the Bush administration proved when it announced a crackdown by executive order against employers of illegal immigrants earlier this month. For sure, that pressure won't ease unless the new campaign or something like it ends the enticement of illegals here with jobs and other benefits.

On the contrary, the longer today's talk-tough-but-do-little practices continue, the more furious become groups like the border-patrolling Minutemen and others who want the Mexican border closed. Similarly, the longer things remain unchanged, the angrier grow labor unions and others disturbed by the obvious exploitation of illegal immigrant workers by American employers who claim they can't find U.S. citizens to take their jobs.

Democrats in Congress stunned those immigrant advocates when, led by Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, they agreed to give alleged employer needs precedence over reunited families in deciding who would be allowed into the U.S.A.

So neither side would have liked the defeated compromise, which proposed allowing "guest workers" in at low wages and in quantities set by employers while it also sought a convoluted, expensive system for illegal immigrants to move toward citizenship.

The compromise's demise also left both sides unhappy. They may be relieved and keeping relatively quiet today, but not for long if the Bush move fails. And it well may because it won't cover anywhere near all the businesses that depend on undocumented workers, especially not those who pay their workers in cash.

All of which means change will come to the immigration system, but nothing as comprehensive as the bill that was defeated, with all its wrinkles and contradictions. Change also will not come quickly, most likely no earlier than next year earliest.

Here are some of the likeliest coming moves, all foreshadowed by this year's failed bill:

— Authorizing the hiring of hundreds more Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to begin cracking down en masse on employers of illegals. Despite Bush's orders, ICE, at the moment, doesn't have a large enough force to do a thorough job and would need thousands more agents.

— This would be a popular move among those who want to get rid of illegal immigrants without going through a massive deportation program. It's what Colorado's Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo, now running as a single-issue presidential candidate, says he wants. Trancredo is on record saying that mass expulsions of the approximately 12 million illegals now here would be impractical. "Attrition through enforcement," he called it in one interview. "If people cannot get the thing they came for — a job — they go home."

— A guest-worker program. Yes, almost everyone knows that time-limited work visas usually don't work well because so many of those using them stay on illegally after their visas expire. But from the apricot groves of California to the apple orchards of the upper Midwest, farmers have been crying for two years about finding too few migrant workers to harvest all their crops.

— Because those farmers are a powerful lobby and because plenty of factories and packinghouses make similar claims about a shortage of American workers to do rough labor, chances are Congress will create some sort of guest-worker program within the next year or two. The challenges will be to provide screening against possible terrorists and other criminals, find a way to track migrants after they enter this country in order to make sure they don't overstay their time, and to make sure the purported needs of employers are genuine and not merely a ruse to save money via ultra-low wages.

— Border enforcement. It's almost a sure bet that Congress will soon authorize more money to expand the electronic "fence" now under construction. This is politically safe, as it tramples on none of the major interests contending about this issue — employers, unions, advocates for equal pay for immigrants and immigrant opponents who claim the newcomers deprive Americans of jobs.

It is a feel-good measure that would let lawmakers of all stripes go home saying they've actually done something about illegal immigration. But whether fences or the electronic devices now planted on parts of the border actually deter illegal crossings is a question yet to be answered.

In short, anyone interested in immigration reform had better get used to the idea it will come slowly and in small pieces, rather than in one sweeping bill as was tried this year. But because the demand for change is so high, more changes will surely follow the recent Bush move.

— Thomas D. Elias, of Santa Monica, is a columnist and author. His e-mail address is tdelias@aol.com.

Opinion
Santa Cruz Sentinel
August 24, 2007

AS WE SEE IT: IMMIGRATION DISGRACE/MEAN-SPIRITED POLITICAL POSTURING HAS FOLLOWED COLLAPSE OF REFORM LEGISLATION.

Since the collapse in June of the bipartisan, President Bush-backed immigration reform proposal, it's come to this in the American political debate over the people crossing borders illegally to work and live in this country:

Leading Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani takes a political swing Wednesday through California, proclaiming, "I will end illegal immigration" Giuliani earlier had said he supports construction of a fence along the border with Mexico and deporting illegal immigrants who commit crimes.

Republican candidate Mitt Romney this week releases a campaign commercial essentially accusing Giuliani of being a hypocrite, since as mayor of New York City he allowed the city to continue being a "sanctuary" that barred local police from tipping off federal immigration authorities about arrests of undocumented immigrants.

Another Republican candidate, Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., said officials in Newark, N.J., share partial blame for the brutal murders of three college students earlier this month. Tancredo said the officials failed to deport two of the murder suspects, both undocumented immigrants who had been arrested earlier for other crimes.

The state of New Jersey announces that police officers are now required to notify federal officials when they arrest an illegal immigrant for an indictable offense. The new policy is applauded by groups that oppose illegal immigration, who say sanctuary policies put the public at risk.

This is the aftermath of the loss of political will, and heart, that occurred earlier this summer, when an Internet-fueled campaign aimed at Republican elected officials scuttled the reform deal, which opponents derided as amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Democrats, in turn, didn't like the compromise reform measure because they felt it was too restrictive regarding how long immigrants could stay in the U.S.

Even though Republicans risk losing previous gains in the Latino vote, no one expects anything to be done about the immigration chaos until after the November 2008 elections.

In the interim, the federal Department of Homeland Security, which supervises immigration enforcement, made an announcement that sent a chill through the agriculture, restaurant and tourism industries in Santa Cruz County.

In a move aimed at employers more than workers, the department said it would start enforcing "no match" letters, which inform employers that the names and Social Security numbers of employees on their payroll do not match those provided by the Social Security Administration.

While the warning letters have not yet been sent to local employers, many are already howling, saying they have no way of knowing if an employee is providing a fake number.

Since local immigration experts estimate about 20,000 undocumented people work the fields, wash dishes, landscape yards, cook meals and clean hotel rooms and homes in Santa Cruz County, among many jobs, the federal crackdown could have major consequences for local companies and residents.

Elsewhere in the country, raids have been carried out, and workers deported.

Companies that ignore warning letters face fines of up to $10,000 per employee, or criminal prosecution.

Meanwhile, border enforcement has increased, and the number of overall immigrants is down, based on apprehensions by border officials.

Still, people are living scared and the underlying economic and social justice issues remain unresolved.

We agree with Rep. Sam Farr, D-Carmel, who told the Sentinel Editorial Board this week the current situation is a "mess" and that a mean spirit has taken hold of the political debate over people who come to this country to better their lives and the lives of their children.

Review and Outlook
The Wall Street Journal
August 22, 2007; Page A14

GOP IMMIGRATION MELTDOWN

Are Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani competing for the Republican Presidential nomination, or for the job of vacation replacement for Lou Dobbs? It's hard to tell these days as the candidates attempt to one-up each other's anti-immigration rhetoric.

Mr. Romney has faulted the former New York City mayor for not directing the local police to harass illegal-alien janitors, cooks and bus boys, thus making the Big Apple a so-called "sanctuary city" for the undocumented. Mr. Romney apparently doesn't think the NYPD has anything better to do with its time, though given the record drop in violent crime during the Giuliani years, which coincided with an increase in immigrants to the city, he might reconsider that notion.

Mr. Giuliani has responded by slouching toward Tom Tancredo, unveiling plans to tackle the immigration problem with ID cards, physical barriers and patrols along the Mexican border. But Mr. Giuliani's previous support for these newcomers, who've helped to revitalize New York over the past two decades, makes his more recent rhetoric seem like a gambit to neutralize Mr. Romney's appeals to the restrictionist right. At least Mr. Giuliani still stresses his interest in giving foreigners more opportunities to enter the U.S. lawfully.

Both candidates, however, ignore the reality that more security measures will have limited effect if not paired with a guest worker program that gives foreign nationals more legal ways to access job offers in the U.S. The same goes for the Bush Administration's recently announced plans to step-up "interior" enforcement. Taking U.S. employers to the woodshed won't fix the illegal immigration problem, and it could do real economic harm.

Under the new rules, scheduled to take effect next month, businesses with workers whose Social Security numbers don't match their names could face criminal charges and heftier fines. It's hard to understand the rationale of a policy that holds employers responsible for the inability of the federal government to produce secure Social Security numbers.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was careful to note that business operators who make an honest attempt to play by the rules have nothing to fear. "If they follow the process in good faith, they have a safe harbor," Mr. Chertoff told us in an interview. Yet the feds have repeatedly conducted high-profile investigations and raids on businesses that hired consenting adults with the appropriate paperwork.

The Justice Department in 2001 obtained a 36-count indictment against Tyson Foods, alleging that the food-processing concern had hired 136 illegal aliens to work among thousands of other employees at plants in six states. In November 2006 federal immigration authorities raided Smithfield Foods, the world's largest hog slaughterhouse, alleging that 541 of its 5,000 employees had Social Security numbers that didn't match government records. And last December, Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided Swift & Co., a beef and pork processor, rounding up 1,300 of the company's 15,000 employees in six different facilities.

It made no difference to the feds that all three companies had voluntarily participated in employment-verification programs set up by the government to vet new hires. Smithfield, Swift and Tyson, which was acquitted on all counts, were not spared the bad publicity and millions of dollars in lost profits due to work stoppages. Some "safe harbor."

The industry expected to be hardest hit by more worksite enforcement is agriculture, where it's an open secret that at least half of the work force may be illegal. Because Americans have better options than working as seasonal strawberry pickers in Arizona, growers will have to decide whether to shut down, move operations somewhere with a steady supply of legal workers, or pay illegals off the books and hope they're not raided. If acute labor shortages ensue, leading to job cuts among native workers -- and higher prices at the supermarket -- the voting public will know where to assign blame.

Mr. Chertoff says his hands are tied because Congress has refused to put in place a guest-worker program that would give U.S. employers legal access to enough foreign labor. "The right way to do this is comprehensively, where you address the economic needs simultaneously with the enforcement," says the Secretary. Agreed, but he and the Administration still have the discretion not to pile more unreasonable and unworkable enforcement policies on top of the existing ones.

None of these worksite raids has turned up a jihadist to our knowledge, despite being conducted in the name of "homeland security." Given that resources are not unlimited, you'd think that DHS officials, like New York's Finest, could find more productive work than chasing down landscapers and treating honest businessowners as if they were criminals

BUSH'S IMMIGRATION CLAMPDOWN

The Nation.
Article
David Bacon
August 22, 2007 (web only)

A year ago, in the middle of the nation's most bitterly fought union organizing drive of the past decade, management at the Smithfield Foods pork slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, North Carolina, sent a letter to 300 workers. The company, Smithfield claimed, had been notified by the Social Security Administration that the workers' numbers didn't match the SSA database. Come up with new numbers, the company ordered, that could pass the "no-match check," or they'd be fired within two weeks.

The Smithfield plant, largest of its kind in the world, employs 5,000 people, about half of whom are immigrants. No one can say for sure how many lacked immigration papers, but as in most meatpacking plants, many undoubtedly did. Despite their status, during the prior year those workers walked out twice to join immigrant-rights marches. They had even shut down production lines protesting the high accident rate. The fear created by the no-match check was an easy way to cut that activism short.

For the past two decades employers have threatened, and often implemented, similar terminations in workplace after workplace. At the Woodfin Suites in Emeryville, California, the hotel threatened no-match firings after workers began demanding compliance with the city's living-wage law. At the Cintas laundry chain, plant managers fired hundreds of employees last year in no-match checks during UNITE HERE's national organizing drive. The list goes on and on.

Now the Bush Administration says that vastly increased checks will become a fact of life in every US workplace. On August 10 Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told reporters that the SSA will soon send letters to all businesses with ten or more employees, listing all workers whose numbers don't jibe. After a ninety-day grace period, the Administration will require employers to discharge those whose numbers are still in question.

The scope of Chertoff's order is staggering. About 12 million people living in the United States have no legal immigration status. Most of them work. In order to get hired, they have to present a Social Security number to their employers. Some use invented numbers, while others borrow existing numbers. This causes no harm to others; if anything, it subsidizes the Social Security fund, since undocumented workers can't claim benefits, although they're paying deductions like everyone else.

Yet if the Chertoff regulation is implemented as announced, as many as 8 or 9 million people will lose their jobs at the end of this year. The impact will be catastrophic. Most undocumented families live close to the margin as it is, from paycheck to paycheck. They would suddenly have no means to buy food, pay rent, clothe their children or send them to school. The human suffering would be immense. Working-class communities, already stretched to provide services to currently unemployed workers, would have no means to meet these additional needs. Undocumented immigrants are ineligible for welfare, food stamps, unemployment insurance and almost all other public benefits. Tens of thousands of workplaces would fall silent, as those industries most dependent on immigrant labor would virtually cease to function. Crop cultivation and harvesting would stop immediately. So would meatpacking and most food processing. Hotels and restaurants would turn away customers.

Construction would stall, as laborers and other lower-paid workers would disappear. Shutting down construction would put skilled citizen workers on the streets as well. In convalescent homes, the absence of undocumented caregivers would cause a crisis for the sick, disabled and elderly of all races and nationalities.

Many of the industries that would be affected contribute heavily to Bush and the Republican Party, including to candidates who have called for this kind of Draconian immigration enforcement. Accepted wisdom in Washington says the Administration is pandering to win the support of anti-immigrant extremists in the Republican Party. While this may be true, it hardly explains why the Administration seems so intent on biting the corporate hand that feeds it.

At the August 10 press conference, both Chertoff and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez provided an explanation. Employers worried about the loss of their workers, Gutierrez said, could avail themselves of existing guest-worker programs, which allow corporations to recruit workers outside the United States and bring them into the country on visas tied to employment. The Administration, he promised, would make the programs easier for employers to use.

In recent years companies have pushed relentlessly to relax caps on guest-worker recruitment and cut already-weak requirements for housing, wages and labor protections. As the cries of employers for workers become louder, it's not hard to predict that Congress will eventually be asked to authorize new contract labor schemes. Providing legal status to people here without papers, however, is excluded from this agenda.

Chertoff's enforcement regulations, and Gutierrez's guest-worker expansion, simply implement by executive order provisions of the immigration bill that Congress wouldn't pass two months ago. That bill also coupled big guest-worker programs with no-match checks and raids. These are the centerpieces of the Administration's immigration reform program, and were originally proposed by some of the country's largest corporations and industry groups.

"We do not have the workers our economy needs to keep growing each year," Gutierrez said at the recent press conference. "The demographics simply are not on our side.... Ultimately, Congress will have to pass comprehensive immigration reform." Chertoff rolled out the same message last year, after huge immigration raids at the Swift meatpacking plants. Congress had to understand, he said, that Bush wants "a program that would allow businesses that need foreign workers, because they can't otherwise satisfy their labor needs, to be able to get those workers in a regulated program."

Firing millions of workers to gain leverage in Congress is a brutal tactic, but the Administration's pressure campaign of raids and no-match checks has been growing for the past two years. Its enforcement actions on the ground are often carried out in cooperation with employers.

When the no-match firings began at Smithfield last November, hundreds of slaughterhouse laborers walked out and stayed out for three days. In an unprecedented accomplishment, they forced the company to rescind the firing order. But after the workers were reinstated, Homeland Security agents came out to Tar Heel in January. They arrested twenty-one people inside the plant and deported them. The fear it inspired broke the back of the union's in-plant organizing strategy.

At the Woodfin Suites in Emeryville, after the company began to threaten no-match terminations, the City Council went to court to prevent the firings. Then Republican Congressman Brian Bilbray, chair of the House Immigration Caucus, called Homeland Security on behalf of company president Samuel Hardage. Bilbray got the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to jump-start an investigation of the immigration status of those workers who, according to the hotel, had been listed in a no-match letter. That was the same group that had demanded enforcement of the living-wage ordinance. All of those listed in the no-match letter were eventually fired.

Firings for no-match discrepancies are a misuse of the Social Security database. The SSA was created not to punish workers but to benefit them, by making disability payments when they get injured and providing pensions when they're too old to work. But for twenty years successive administrations have tried to use Social Security as a tool for immigration enforcement. Employers have used those efforts as pretexts to discharge employees when they organize unions, demand better wages and try to enforce labor standards, or simply to replace higher-paid workers with lower-paid ones.

In the past the Social Security Administration has sometimes been uncomfortable with this betrayal of its mission. Community protest in the 1990s persuaded the SSA to include a paragraph in no-match letters warning employers not to interpret them as evidence of lack of legal immigration status. In 1999, in the middle of the huge Operation Vanguard immigration raids, the SSA even denied the Immigration and Naturalization Service (a predecessor to the ICE) access to its database, after 3,000 people were driven from their jobs in Nebraska meatpacking plants. Since then, however, the ICE has been brought into line by the Bush Administration, and is now more than willing to go after the nation's undocumented.

Because firing several million people at once would be economically disastrous to the Administration's corporate supporters, actual enforcement will be, as always, selective. At the August press conference Chertoff acknowledged that the ICE couldn't track down every failure to fire workers listed in no-match letters, but would instead mount highly publicized raids to scare employers into line. The order is intended to encourage employers to act on their own, as Smithfield did. To justify its no-match firings, the company said it was simply implementing Bush's no-match proposal in advance.

It's time for a few reality checks about what this enforcement scheme will and won't accomplish.

Reality check one: Workers who lose their jobs won't leave the country. Immigrant communities are deeply embedded in the social fabric of this country, not only in cities like New York and Los Angeles but also in tiny towns like Bridgeton, New Jersey, and Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. To get here, migrants often take out loans on homes in their countries of origin. Losing a job here can mean losing that home. Family members living there, dependent on remittances from the States, would go hungry. And for many who emigrated because they were hungry themselves, going back is simply not an option.

Reality check two: When Bush and many Congress members push for new free-trade agreements, and implementation of NAFTA and CAFTA, they are creating the very conditions of poverty that are driving people north. With 200 million people in the world living outside the countries where they were born, the flow of migration is not stoppable. Anti-immigrant measures like raids and no-match checks create human misery, but don't stop the movement of people.

Reality check three: Firing millions of undocumented migrants won't create jobs or raise wages for other workers, or end discrimination against workers of color. When Operation Vanguard railroaded thousands of immigrant workers out of Nebraska meatpacking plants in 1999, there was no wave of hiring that followed in Omaha's African-American neighborhoods. A de facto color line--reflecting a common belief among employers that blacks and Chicanos will be more inclined than white workers to fight for better wages and organize unions--keeps them out of many US workplaces. At Smithfield, where black workers did organize, no-match firings and deportations intimidated into silence immigrants who were active in the campaign and created such fear that in-plant activism virtually stopped.

Reality check four: Employers complain about the no-match regulation, and many are sincerely concerned about its impact on business and workers. But some employers will benefit. Increased fear and vulnerability makes immigrant labor cheaper, by making it riskier to protest bad conditions or ask for higher wages.

These realities are inspiring a rising wave of protest in unions and immigrant communities. The week after Chertoff's announcement the United Food and Commercial Workers, the main union for the meatpacking industry, held a conference in Omaha to expose the abuse of rights in last year's raids at the Swift plants. The meeting also discussed plans for opposing the new regulation, which it predicted would lead to more firings and deportations.

"We have to do everything we can to stop these aggressive enforcement actions," said Mark Lauritzen, UFCW packinghouse director. "Last December [in the Swift raids] workers became criminals just by going to work. The Administration is using the ICE as a political hammer to beat up on them."

In California the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA) and the Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana have organized sit-ins in the offices of Congress members to demand that they take action to protect immigrant communities. Activists were outraged when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi greeted the no-match announcement by saying, "Securing our border remains a top priority for the New Direction Congress."

"Democrats should remember that undocumented people live in Latino and Asian families and communities that include millions of citizens as well," warned MAPA president Nativo Lopez. "They will need our votes next year to elect a new Administration. If they don't defend us now, they give us no reason to come out to the polls a year from now." Both Lopez and Ernesto Medrano, organizer for Teamsters Local 952 in Orange County, opposed this year's Senate immigration bill because of its enforcement provisions, and criticized those Democrats who supported it. "We are not seeing any leadership from our elected officials," Medrano said bitterly. "Why aren't they speaking out on our behalf? We need to take this to the streets."

AUTHORITIES SAY THEY HAVE TRUE ID OF MURDERED TRUCKER

HUDSON COUNTY NOW
From the Jersey Journal newsroom

by Michaelangelo Conte
Monday August 27, 2007, 7:54 PM

County homicide detectives have determined the true identity of the truck driver found bound and stabbed to death in Jersey City on Friday after contacting his family in Central America, officials said today.

Rafael Angel Aguero Espinoza, 50, was bound hand and foot with duct tape when his boss found him in the sleep compartment of his rig parked on Senate Place at Van Winkle Avenue, officials said.

Originally investigators tentatively identified Espinoza as Arnaldo Lopez after finding he had two driver's licenses from different states under that name, Hudson County First Assistant Prosecutor Guy Gregory said yesterday. Espinoza also had a third driver's license under his real name and police were able to confirm his identity when they reached his family in Costa Rica, Gregory said.

It's still unclear if Espinoza was in the country legally but investigators have reached out to immigration officials to determine that and are waiting for a reply, Gregory said. The motive of the murder appears to be robbery and a search of Espinoza's boarding house room in a Jersey City turned up a "sum of money," but Gregory would not say how much.

The autopsy report says Espinoza died as a result of stab wounds to his left bicept and shoulder, as well as one under his left armpit, which was likely the most severe, Gregory said.

Homicide detectives say Espinoza was last seen Aug. 17, but trucking logs found in the cab showed he may have been in Pennsylvania Monday. It's believed he had been dead several days when found.

Anyone with information on the murder is asked to call the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office at (201) 915-1345.

15 MILES OF BORDER FENCE DONE, WITH 685 LEFT TO GO

CONSTRUCTION OF U.S.-MEXICO BARRIER SLOWED BY ENVIRONMENTAL, LABOR AND DESIGN ISSUES

Construction of U.S.-Mexico barrier slowed by environmental, labor and design issues

By Richard Marosi
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Article Launched: 08/26/2007 03:05:29 AM PDT

SAN DIEGO -- Nearly a year after Congress passed legislation calling for the construction of 700 miles of new fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border, about 15 miles have been built, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Some Republicans and anti-illegal-immigration groups in recent days have criticized the lack of progress, but the Department of Homeland Security -- which had committed to erecting 70 miles of fencing by Sept. 30 -- says the project is back on track after being slowed by environmental concerns, contractor hiring and design issues.

Workers are scheduled to break ground next week on a seven-mile stretch southwest of Tucson, Ariz.; work on the remainder of a 37-mile barrier outside Yuma, Ariz., is continuing as well.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon, a longtime fence backer, said in a letter to President Bush last week: "This lack of progress is unacceptable, especially when adequate funding is available to earnestly proceed with fence construction."

Bush signed the Secure Fence Act in autumn in hopes that bolstered enforcement would lead the then-Republican-led Congress to pass a broader immigration overhaul.

Opponents noted that the legislation came during an election year, when many lawmakers expressed skepticism about the fence idea but didn't want to be vulnerable to attacks for being soft on border enforcement.

"It was an election-year political gimmick. People knew that it was more about symbolism than about reality," said

Tamar Jacoby, a Manhattan Institute policy analyst who supports immigration reform.
Homeland Security has set a timetable that calls for 300 miles of new fencing and 150 miles of vehicle barriers to be in place by the end of 2008. Congress allocated $1.2 billion for border-infrastructure improvements this year, and the administration has requested an additional $1 billion for next year.

But construction couldn't begin, federal officials said, until more-effective fencing could be designed, contractors hired and environmental issues addressed. Outside Yuma, for instance, the fencing is being built with small holes to allow a native species, the horned lizard, to move freely across the border. The government also has met with ranchers and local lawmakers opposed to the plan.

"The administration has made the decision to address local land concerns and environmental concerns to the extent that they can. ... It slows the process down, but we're still committed to getting it done. Ultimately, the goal is to secure the border," said Brad Benson, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, the agency responsible for building the fence.

To immigration reform advocates, however, the lack of progress is a hopeful sign that the fencing might never be completed.

"It's just absolutely wrong. The fence is not going to stop anything," said Enrique Morones, president of the Border Angels, a San Diego-based immigrant rights group. "I think people really do realize that it is not the solution. ... It's extremely expensive and it's not effective."

OHIO, FAIRFIELD

ICE

ICE RAID ARRESTS 200 AT CHICKEN PLANT

Immigration agents raided a poultry packaging facility in Fairfield early today and arrested as many as 200 illegal immigrants who were working there.

The raid, one of the largest of its kind this year in Greater Cincinnati, is part of a two-year investigation into the hiring practices at the Chicago-based Koch Foods Company.

The Fairfield processing facility is located at 4100 Port Union Road in Fairfield.

Immigration officials described Koch Foods as an “egregious violator” of U.S. immigration laws, which means the company is suspected of knowingly hiring undocumented workers.

Brian Moskowitz, a special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for Ohio and Michigan, said agents arrived with search warrants today and seized documents and other materials that could be used to build a criminal case against company officials. Search warrants also were served today at the company’s Chicago offices.

“We’re going to look wherever the evidence takes us,” Moskowitz said. “No one gets a free pass.”

Monte Lobb, a spokesman for the company's Fairfield facility, said he has been trying for several years to weed out illegal immigrants. He said he attempted to work with government agencies but received little help.

"The government won't work with me,'' he said.

Lobb said agents detained more than half of the 200 employees working when the raid began, many of whom he believes are here legally.

"I'm against illegals,'' Lobb said. "I'm not going to do anything to break the law, but people get false papers.''

Moskowitz said agents will focus today on detaining and processing the illegal immigrants rounded up at the facility, where chicken is packaged for sale around the country.

Fairfield and West Chester police departments cooperated with ICE agents in the raids. Many of those arrested today will be questioned and processed at a converted garage at the West Chester Police Department.

Moskowitz said most of the immigrants are believed to be from Africa, Mexico and Latin American countries.

He said agents would attempt to identify everyone who has been detained to determine if they have family or children in the area who rely on them for care. If they do, they may be released pending deportation proceedings.

Koch Foods, which bills itself as "America's chicken specialist," has processing and packaging facilities in Georgia, Indiana, Illinois and other states. According to Forbes magazine, the company was founded in 1973 and had revenues of $1.4 billion in 2005.

The magazine listed it last year as the 274th largest private company in America.

Reporter Leigh Taylor contributed.OHIO, FAIRFIELD

"I'M HOME!!!!!"

Dear Friends,

Keith, boys, and myself, Akiko, all four of us have entered United State through Chicago O'Hara airport on last Friday, August 24th. I passed the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) office, and now I have a stamp on my Immigration Visa, received from US Embassy in Tokyo last month, is the admission into the United State as an immigrant, mean is…. I have temporally Greencard in my hands!

Now I am to receive actual green card within 2-3 month by mail.

It is fifth day today from our arrival. I still wake up from sleep, look around the room, and think where I am. It is miracle what has happened to us.

Friends from our church and neighbors have greeted us at the airport for our arrival, along with a writer from Bradenton Herald, and TV crew from BayNews9. Our close neighbor arranged a limo for us to ride back to home in Bradenton. We had Champaign toss inside car, we enjoyed sunset through the window.

We are still adjusting with 13 hours time different between Japan and US.

We had an interview with AP writer from Tampa this afternoon. Keith said to him that he heard from State Representative that the hard ship waiver do not happen often that there are only one case beside ours, and was for a medical reason. The fact that our story was AP wired to 52 different counties, and we had so many people involved with web site campaign was done by a professional public relation company in the area, I think this was truly a miracle that what has happened to us.

I took my son Leo to his pre school yesterday, was the first time in 8 months I drove my 4Runner. Surprisingly I remembered how to drive!

My life is slowly coming back to normal.

Thank you so much for your support and e-mails through my hard time in Japan.


Akiko Campbell