Terrebonne Parish school officials are considering barring students from speaking a foreign language during commencement speeches. The proposal comes after Hue and Cindy Vo, cousins who were co-valedictorians at Ellender High School, incorporated their native Vietnamese language into parts of their commencement speech before translating the words into English for the general audience.

Hue Vo told the Associated Press that her statement in Vietnamese was aimed at her parents, who do not speak fluent English. “Out of the whole speech, it’s one sentence dedicated to them to give thanks,” she said, pointing to the hardship her parents faced moving here from Vietnam. “It’s very important to my parents that I keep my culture,” she said. “I felt if I expressed myself in Vietnamese it would be more heartfelt.”

By the end of the 20th century, the Vietnamese were by far the largest Asian group in Louisiana, and the nearly 25,000 Vietnamese made up an estimated 44% of all the Asians in the state. In fact, Louisiana had the ninth largest Vietnamese population in the United States, according to the National Alliance for Vietnamese American Service Agencies of Washington.

Despite the large population, relations remain dicey in the racially and ethnically-divided Louisiana.

"I don’t like them addressing in a foreign language. They should be in English,” school-board member Rickie Pitre was quoted saying during a recent committee meeting.

The pro-English sentiment is an ironic one in a parish whose name is French for “Good Earth.” The area was settled by French-speaking Catholics deported from Nova Scotia in 1755. But as late as the 1950s, children who spoke French in school were routinely punished. Historians have argued that the long suppression of French in state schools caused a vital loss of cultural heritage in Southern Louisiana. Today, the cultural diverse heritage of Acadiana, including its French language, is often touted and celebrated.

In a press release this week, the Vietnamese American Young Leaders Association of New Orleans said that the policy will affect not only the Vietnamese American community in the Terrebonne Parish, but threatens all multilingual communities in this Gulf Coast region.

“This proposal is a grave act of injustice to all who embrace the diverse communities in which they are a part of,” Minh Nguyen, Executive Director of VAYLA-NO, stated in the press release. “It is blatantly discriminatory and infringes on core American values of the freedom of speech. We should instead celebrate the fact that the success of these students are rooted in their culture and their ability to communicate in a second language.”

Labels: immigration, louisiana, race and racism, vietnamese americans

Reports that 2008 could be a bad storm season has many along U.S. coasts nervous. But a growing number of immigrants are especially concerned in the wake of news that U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents will check the immigration status of individuals fleeing a hurricane.

In an excellent piece in The Brownsville Herald (Texas), reporters Laura Martinez and Kevin Seiff talk with immigrants on the U.S./Mexico border who face devastating choices if the law if enforced:

On Friday, a group of undocumented women discussed the issue over lunch. For some, it was the first they had heard of the Border Patrol's plans.

"Instead of offering us help when we need it most, they're threatening us with deportation," Patricia said. "It's like they're taking advantage of a disaster to go fishing for undocumented immigrants."

"I live an old house that would never make it through the storm," Maria said. "But this leaves me with no option but to stay there."

"It's like they're asking us to commit suicide," Patty said.

The law is also at odds with guidelines created by the United Nations -- and endorsed by the United States -- for dealing with victims of natural disasters: the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.

As the Institute for Southern Studies documented in a recent report on Hurricane Katrina and human rights, the U.N.'s Guiding Principles specifically call on governments to protect the rights of all people affected by calamities like a storm. Principle 4 specifically prohibits "discrimination of any kind" at any stage of the disaster response, including discrimination based on language, national origin, or "legal or social status."

The U.S. never formally ratified the U.N.'s Guiding Principles -- although it has ratified parts of them in other treaties, and has publicly embraced them. As we document in our report, as recently as 2004 the Bush administration explicitly called for "wider international recognition of the U.N. Guiding Principles in Internal Displacement as a useful framework for dealing with internal displacement."

Given the Bush administration's stated support of the U.N. Guiding Principles, how did the U.S. border patrol's new law -- which clearly violates U.N. guidelines -- come into effect?

Labels: disaster response, guiding principles on internal displacement, immigration, institute for southern studies, texas, u.s. border, united nations

The office of North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper ignited a firestorm of controversy recently by issuing an advisory letter calling on the state's public colleges to bar admittance to undocumented immigrants. The opinion is based on a federal law that bans such immigrants from receiving state benefits.

The president of the state's community college system requested the opinion last year after announcing a new policy allowing all 58 campuses to admit students regardless of immigration status. The move provoked a national outcry that led the system's leaders to seek Cooper's legal advice.

In response to the advisory, the state's community college system announced that it would change its open-door policy and no longer admit "undocumented or illegal immigrants" into curriculum degree programs -- though they would still be able to continue to sign up for non-college courses such as GED or continuing education classes. The community college system reports that in the 2006-2007 academic year it enrolled 112 students without proper documentation out of a total of 296,540 curriculum students.

Gov. Mike Easley and University of North Carolina President Erskine Bowles questioned the attorney general's decision, citing "considerable legal disagreement about what the relevant federal law really says." Indeed, the Department of Homeland Security -- the agency charged with enforcing federal immigration law -- said admission policies were up to the schools.

That hasn't stopped politicians from both major parties from seizing on the issue in this election year. The parties' gubernatorial candidates -- Democrat Beverly Perdue and Republican Pat McCrory -- have announced their support for barring undocumented immigrants from state colleges.

Meanwhile, state Rep. George Cleveland, a two-term Republican from eastern North Carolina, has filed legislation that would ban undocumented immigrants from the state's public universities and community colleges. And state Sen. Robert Pittenger of Charlotte -- the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor -- has introduced an even broader bill called the N.C. Citizen Protection Act that would bar undocumented immigrants from receiving state benefits.

The state's new policy toward undocumented immigrants has been condemned as "harsh and counterproductive" by a USA Today editorial, which points out that it punishes young people for their parents' decision. The editorial also observes that the push to prevent undocumented immigrants from getting an education could ultimately backfire against the state:

Skeptics ask: Why bother educating residents who can't legally hold jobs?

One answer is that is that if they do leave the country, they, like millions of foreigners who have benefited from U.S. educations, will have a more favorable view of the USA.

Another answer is that eventually, Congress will pass something akin to the DREAM (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) Act. This measure would provide a path to citizenship for youths, brought here before they turned 16, who head to college or the military.

When that day arrives, states that made the effort to educate all their residents will be glad they did.

Labels: higher education, immigration, north carolina

Over the last few years, a quiet but powerful alliance in Mississippi of African-American lawmakers, immigrant rights advocates and labor unions had successfully defeated a series of punitive bills aimed at the state's fast-growing Latino and new immigrant population.

But last month, that string of victories came to an end. Gov. Haley Barbour signed into law a bill with the most far-reaching employer sanctions in the United States. David Bacon reports:

The Mississippi bill, SB 2988, requires employers to use an electronic system to verify immigration status, called E-Verify. That system has only recently been developed by the Department of Homeland Security, and by the department's own admission, is not a complete record. Its accuracy is unknown, but by comparison, the Social Security database of U.S. workers, compiled since the 1930s, contains millions of errors.

The Mississippi bill goes much further, however. Employers are absolved from any liability for hiring undocumented workers so long as they use the E-Verify system. But it will become a felony for an undocumented worker to hold a job. Anyone caught "shall be subject to imprisonment in the custody of the Department of Corrections for not less than one (1) year nor more than five (5) years, a fine of not less than one thousand dollars ($1000) nor more than ten thousand dollars ($10,000) or both." Anyone charged with the crime of working without papers will not be eligible for bail.

Behind the scenes, the bill was considered not just a defeat for immigrant rights advocates, but was also a blow to the progressive coalition that was just beginning to blossom in Mississippi:

In the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, University of Mississippi journalism professor Joe Atkins called the law "a new xenophobia ... that threatens once again to lock down the state's borders and resurrect the 'closed society' that once made it the shame of the nation."

According to the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, the bill got the support of many Democratic state legislators because party leaders "wanted the house to bring out at least one bill dealing with immigration to relieve the political pressure being put on members (i.e. white Democrats), by right-wing forces in their districts. Many Black Caucus members were persuaded to go along. Unfortunately the bill they brought out was the worst of the six the Mississippi Senate passed."

The Black/Brown/progressive alliance had defeated 29 pieces of anti-immigrant legislation in 2007, and 19 such bills in 2006. But it broke down this year:

The 2008 legislative session was different, however. [Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance director Bil] Chandler describes three factions in the party -- the Black Caucus at one end, white conservatives hanging on at the other, and "liberals who will do whatever they have to do to get elected" in the middle.

When white Democratic moderates began caving in -- paving the way for the bill's final passage -- Chandler wrote a letter to Howard Dean of the Democratic National Committee, which concluded:

"State party leaders who "would go along to be accepted, rather than show the courage necessary for positive change... are peddling racist lies against immigrants that violate the core of the party's progressive agenda."

The bill is slated to go into effect July 1.

Labels: haley barbour, immigration, mississippi, mississippi immigrant rights alliance

We recently brought you the story of Bob Dumas, a controversial disc jockey with Clear Channel's G-105 radio station in Raleigh, N.C. He was the target of a protest by North Carolina's American Indian leaders over derogatory comments he made after learning an intern was getting married to a member of the Lumbee Tribe.

This week, leaders with the N.C. Commission of Indian Affairs accepted an apology from the station and are no longer seeking his firing. That decision followed a meeting with G-105's general manager, who promised that the station will no longer air negative stereotypes of American Indians.

However, the Lumbee Tribe -- which has a history of militancy in the face of racist attacks -- has not been so quick to forgive. Lumbee leaders continue to demand the firing of Dumas and his crew and are calling for a boycott of the station's advertisers. Tribal Chair Jimmy Goins is also urging members to send a letter [PDF] to the Federal Communications Commission requesting an investigation. Said Goins:

"I just want to put G105, Bob and the Show Gram, Raleigh, American Indians and Lumbee tribal members on notice ... I stand willing and ready to push this as far as possible; until Bob Dumas, Mike and Kristin are fired, the show is off the air and bigotry like this is no longer tolerated in the great State of North Carolina."

Meanwhile, Dumas is involved in a new controversy -- this one involving Hispanics.

Earlier this month, a member of his crew visited the Mexican consulate in Raleigh wearing a T-shirt that had taped to it a sign reading "INS," the acronym for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, an agency replaced five years ago by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He approached people in line and asked them what they were doing there, the Fayetteville Observer reported.

Meanwhile, Dumas told his listeners, "It made me a little mad when I saw the giant Mexican flag" outside the offices. He also accused those seeking services at the consulate of being illegal aliens, according to the paper:

Though some of them told Clark that they had come to get passports, Dumas continued with an on-air spiel that they were largely illegal aliens.

"Where are their American papers?" he asked Clark from the studio. "What do they have proving they’re American citizens?"

Dumas concluded that these Mexicans "don’t have American documents."

Then, as the consulate’s [Ricardo] Pintado tried to explain the reasons why Mexicans come to the consulate, Dumas cut him off mid-sentence. Pintado serves as the documentation officer at the building.

"They have zero documentation because they're illegal," Dumas said. "Illegal means illegal, dude."

Pintado told the paper that the stunt frightened some people who had appointments to get passports. He also said he didn't think the comment was racist but showed that Dumas was ignorant about the consulate's work. The director of El Pueblo Inc., a nonprofit advocacy group, sent an e-mail to the station complaining about the remarks, reports the Raleigh News & Observer -- and got a reply from the general manager, who said he didn't understand how the comments "could have been heard as insensitive."

Labels: Clear Channel, FCC, immigration, Lumbee Indians, media, north carolina, race and racism

We here at the Institute for Southern Studies are among the co-sponsors of a discussion series on immigration taking place in Chapel Hill, N.C. This Sunday brings the series' second session, focusing on economics and immigration. It will aim to address the hard questions of why are immigrants here, are they depressing wages, and are they taking jobs from non-immigrants?

The event begins at 4 p.m. at UNC's FedEx Global Education Center with a showing of the documentary "Morristown: in the Air and Sun." Filmed over an eight-year period in the mountains of east Tennessee and in Mexico, it features immigrants speaking about their lives and work. The film will be followed by a discussion facilitated by Dani Martinez-Moore with the N.C. Justice Center, another series co-sponsor.

The other sponsors are the Chapel Hill Institute for Cultural and Language Education, UNC-Chapel Hill's Institute for the Studies of the Americas, the ACLU of North Carolina, Orange County Latino Issues Committee, Chapel Hill/Carrboro CITCA, El Centro Latino, El Pueblo, N.C. Council of Churches, Radio Pa'lante, Student Action With Farmworkers, and the UNC School of Law Immigration/Human Rights Policy Clinic.

(ADDENDUM: Folks interested in attending this discussion might also be interested in another conference taking place at UNC-Chapel Hill this Sunday and Monday. Titled "Beyond the Sunbelt: Southern Economic Development in a Global Context," it will focus on the globalization of the southern United States.)

Labels: immigration, north carolina

Steven Greenhouse, a long-time reporter for The New York Times covering labor issues (remember when all papers had labor reporters?), has an excellent piece today on the impact of immigration raids in the South.

He looks at Smithfield Foods' giant hog slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, N.C., where more than 1,100 Latino workers have fled the plant since officials arrested 21 workers and held others at gunpoint nearly a year ago.

The result? According to Greenhouse, Smithfield is having to look harder to find new workers, shuttling in fresh employees who live over an hour away:

Around 1 p.m. each day, C. J. Bailey, a Smithfield worker, picks up Ms. Worley and 10 other employees in his big white van. They arrive at the plant around 2:15, and he drops them back home after 1 a.m.

Several of the newly hired workers in the van — they pay $40 a week for the ride — said they were thinking of quitting, unhappy about having to commute so far and work so hard. At the plant, where the pay averages around $12 an hour, many spend hour after hour slitting hogs’ throats, hacking at shoulders and carving ribs and loins. At the end of their shifts, many workers complain that their muscles are sore and their minds are numb.

Smithfield's workers -- whether black or Latino, documented or not -- pay the highest price for these grueling and dangerous jobs; many quickly leave even though they have few economic options (Smithfield admits that 60% of workers quit within 90 days).

Immigration raids do nothing to improve this situation for workers. In reality, the costly raids end up separating families and tearing up communities -- all for a short-term solution to the long-term problem of immigration reform.

But Greenhouse's piece also points out that the raids aren't good for business, either. This echoes research done in the 1990s in Nebraska, where a state task force found that raids were decimating the meatpacking industry while doing little to address immigration problems.

High-profile ICE raids and deporting Latino workers may be politically expedient and good media candy for the Lou Dobbs anti-immigrant set, but it doesn't do much to help workers, and business doesn't like it, either. It's a costly approach that's not good for taxpayers, either.

So who really benefits?

Labels: immigration, Work and Community

Since Hurricane Katrina, many employers on the Gulf Coast have turned to the federal H2B "guestworker" visa program to meet their need for employees. But labor rights advocates have long warned that the program is prone to abuse, since it ties foreign workers to a single employer for the entirety of their U.S. stay, creating a relationship of extreme dependence that's ripe for exploitation.

Today we got word from folks with the New Orleans Worker Justice Coalition about allegations of extreme abuse involving a Pascagoula, Miss. law enforcement official, a Texas shipyard, an Alabama labor recruiter and 30 Mexican men who came to this country looking for an opportunity to better support their families. Instead, the Mexicans are now hiding in New Orleans, without work or money.

The next time you hear President Bush or other politicians calling for expanding "temporary worker" programs, remember that this is what they're talking about:

For Immediate Release
August 22, 2007
New Orleans, LA
Contact: Saket Soni – 504 881 6610

Pascagoula Police Captain Kidnaps Guestworkers

Mexican H2B visa workers charge ranking officer with kidnapping, kidnapping with intent to enslave, false imprisonment, and gross civil rights abuses; File Notice of Intent to announce that they will bring major lawsuit.

More than 30 Mexican nationals who entered the country on H2B visas were kidnapped in Pascagoula, Mississippi by Captain George Tillman of the Pascagoula police department and a US labor recruiter.

Workers and advocates charged Tillman with State and Federal crimes kidnapping, kidnapping with intent to enslave, false imprisonment, human trafficking, and violations of the workers’ civil and constitutional rights. They filed a Notice of Intent declaring that that they will sue Tillman and the Pascagoula Police Department.

Workers released a formal statement today that recounted their journey as guestworkers across the post-Katrina Gulf Coast:

We are welders and pipefitters from Veracruz, Mexico, who entered the United States on H2B visas in July 2007. We are fathers and husbands, with families to feed. Like all workers we came to the United States because of economic desperation. We are here to feed our children, to send money to our families. We came to work for a Texas shipyard called Southwest Shipyards, LP.

Within days of our arrival we realized that recruiters had lied to us about the living and working conditions in the United States. Several of our co-workers sustained life-threatening injuries on the job. One man was electrocuted. When we organized to ask for safer conditions, we were threatened.

Faced with retaliation, we ran away from Southwest. We went to Alabama, where a recruitment agency named Black Hawk promised us jobs. We signed up with Black Hawk, but the agency packed all 30 of us in two trailers in rural Alabama -- and abandoned us. We stayed in the trailers for 6 days without food or transportation.

Desperate again, we escaped from the Alabama trailers to Pascagoula, Mississippi. There we were kidnapped by Captain George Tillman of the Pascagoula Police Department.

On the night of August 2, 2007, Captain George Tillman of the Pascagoula Police Department arrived at our doorstep in uniform, with his badge and gun. He was accompanied by another officer and the recruiter from Black Hawk. Tillman told us that the recruiter from Black Hawk was our "owner," and that we had to go with him. He said that if we didn't, we would face prison and deportation.

We resisted. But we were forced to pack our bags and get into vans. We were transported to a new location. Tillman and the others packed all 30 of us into three rooms. He warned us that the area would be monitored by the police.

The next morning the recruiter returned to take mugshots of us and videotape us. With the help of several organizations, we escaped, hid in a Walmart, and eventually fled to New Orleans, where we have been living in hiding without work or money.

Workers and advocates challenged federal officials to recognize that the H2B program is creating slave-like conditions for workers across the Gulf Coast. Thousands of guestworkers have arrived to work for US companies after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, said Daniel Castellanos, organizer with the Alliance of Guest Workers for Dignity, a Gulf Coast-wide organization of guestworkers. "I am a guestworker and I know the realities of the H2B visa," said Castellanos. "We are brought here on false promises. Our members report being sold, being kidnapped, being told they are owned. Meanwhile survivors of Katrina and Rita are still shut out of work two years later. The federal government is allowing this. They’ve traded the old slaves for new slaves."

Nsombi Lambright, director of the American Civil Liberties Union-Mississippi called on Mississippi lawmakers to ensure that legislation outlawing kidnapping and human trafficking are enforced. "We can't leave it up to conscience to ensure that people of color and poor people are protected from the hundred of Tillmans out there. We have laws. They need to be enforced."

Workers and advocates called on US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to investigate the abuses of civil and constitutional rights guestworkers face in the Gulf Coast. Advocates pointed out that law enforcement seldom protects and often intentionally violates the civil rights of H2B visa workers. "Corporations, law enforcement agencies, and recuiters work hand-in-glove to coerce and control workers. Police often enforce company policy, not US law," said Bill Chandler, director of the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance.

Saket Soni of the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice called Tillman's actions "immoral, unjust, illegal -- but not uncommon. Tillman's abuses tell us we need policy changes in Washington DC. But meanwhile, Tillman's going to have to pay up in Pascagoula."

Labels: Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, human rights, Hurricane Katrina, immigration, labor

Here at Facing South, we have closely followed the rapidly changing demographics of the South. In particular, the South has one of the fastest-growing new immigrant populations, which will be changing the face of the region's culture and politics for years to come.

States like Texas and Florida -- and more recently Georgia and North Carolina -- receive a lot of attention in the immigration debate, but the South's transformation can be felt everywhere, as this news clip from Alabama reveals:

When school begins in August a North Alabama school will likely make state education history.

Collinsville is located in Southern Dekalb County and has had a large Hispanic population for years now.

This school year Collinsville K-12 grades will become the first school in the state to have a Hispanic majority.

Hispanics have been drawn to the area in recent years for jobs at a local nursing home and at a poultry processing plant located in the community.

Labels: immigration

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) held a hearing yesterday on the adequacy of labor law enforcement in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina. Among those testifying was Jennifer Rosenbaum with the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, which helped bring several successful lawsuits against employers who stole wages from workers in the wake of the storm.

Not surprisingly, Rosenbaum concluded that enforcement was not adequate:

In my view, the [Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division] failed to provide a reasonable level of resources to the region, given the enormous scale of the disaster. Because of this failure, the DOL-WHD, through its New Orleans and Gulf Coast offices, had a limited ability to intervene and address the well-reported, epic wage theft that accompanied the reconstruction. The DOL-WHD thus allowed chains of subcontracted corporations to profit on the backs of the underpaid workers, particularly vulnerable migrant workers. In addition, the DOL-WHD failed to competently record and investigate many of the complaints that it did receive. In the resulting lawlessness, DOL-WHD utterly failed to protect migrant workers from minimum wage and overtime violations and from retaliation.

Other workers' advocates who testified at the hearing were Saket Soni and Jacob Horowitz with the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice, Tracie Washington of the Louisiana Justice Institute, Catherine Ruckelshaus with the National Employment Law Project and Ted Smukler of Interfaith Worker Justice.

IWJ recently released a report titled "Working on Faith: A Faithful Response to Worker Abuse in New Orleans." Based on interviews with 218 workers -- domestic and migrant -- in New Orleans last summer, the report reveals that:

* 47 percent reported not receiving all the pay they were entitled to while working in the region since Katrina;

* 55 percent said they received no overtime pay for hours worked beyond 40 per week;

* 58 percent said they were exposed at work to dangerous substances including mold, contaminated water and asbestos; and

* workers were unaware that the U.S. Department of Labor was an agency charged with protecting their rights.

Labels: economic justice, Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, immigration, labor, new orleans, regulatory oversight

As the Washington "immigration debate" begins to look more and more like "political theater," it's refreshing to hear some new ideas. Here's one from officials in Texas, who live the immigration issue every day:

In response to the Department of Homeland Security's plans to construct hundreds of miles of fencing along the border with Mexico, the McAllen Chamber of Commerce started a campaign of their own: build a wall around Washington, D.C.

Steve Ahlenius, president and CEO of the chamber, inaugurated the tongue-in-cheek campaign through a news release Tuesday.

"It's frustrating to no end that Washington, which has no idea of what's happening here and along the border with Mexico, is proposing to build a wall," Ahlenius said by phone. "My response is: Why don't we just build around Washington, D.C.? It can protect us from some bad characters, some bad legislation and bad ideas."

So far, no one in Washington has responded to the proposal. But Ahlenius says that the chamber's 1,600 members support the idea.

UPDATE: Speaking of walls, Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) is insisting that he meant no harm in his suggestion earlier this week that immigrant families be contained by an electrified goat fence:

“If the answer is ‘build a fence’ I’ve got two goats on my place in Mississippi. There ain’t no fence big enough, high enough, strong enough, that you can keep those goats in that fence.”

“Now people are at least as smart as goats,” Lott continued. “Maybe not as agile. Build a fence. We should have a virtual fence. Now one of the ways I keep those goats in the fence is I electrified them. Once they got popped a couple of times they quit trying to jump it.”

“I’m not proposing an electrified goat fence,” Lott added quickly, “I’m just trying, there’s an analogy there.”

Asked for clarification as to what exactly the analogy was, Lott spokesman Lee Youngblood said…”A fence in and of itself is not enough… You can have technology to support the fence and to supplement the fence.”

Bizarre, but not original. As Think Progress points out, Lott likely stole the idea from his GOP colleague Rep. Steve King of Iowa, who last year displayed a prototype for an electric fence in the House chambers. "We do this with livestock all the time," King said.

Great minds think alike.

Labels: immigration

Just weeks after the much-hyped "grand compromise" on immigration, Senate advocates fell five votes short of reaching cloture and moving the bi-partisan bill forward. The Washington Post today describes the "careful strategy" used to derail it:

Two weeks ago, when the immigration bill landed on the Senate floor, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) voted against an amendment that targeted one of its key provisions: a guest-worker program that President Bush and many U.S. companies have sought for years.

Shortly after midnight yesterday, DeMint returned to the floor and, along with three conservative Republican colleagues, voted in favor of the same measure he had opposed, to sunset the program after five years. Not that DeMint has anything against guest workers. He supports the idea. But weakening the guest-worker program would leave the bill in tatters -- and in the twisted logic of the Senate, that served DeMint's greater goal of derailing the legislation.

"If it hurts the bill, I'm for it," DeMint explained matter-of-factly.

Right Wing News also credits the work of Republican Senators DeMint, Jeff Sessions (AL) and Tom Coburn (OK), with DeMint being the ringleader. These three went on to target four Republicans sitting on the fence, including Jim Bunning (KY) and Elizabeth Dole (NC), who faces re-election next year.

At the grassroots, anti-immigration groups are claiming success -- and credit. GrassFire.org, a right-wing, MoveOn-style outfit, declared today that "The defeat of the Senate “Amnesty” bill last night can be directly attributed to more than one million Senate contacts made by Grassfire team members since the announcement of the “Kennedy-Bush Amnesty” bill several weeks ago."

Given the immense opposition to the bill among grassroots conservatives, why did Bush and leading Republicans go along with it? The Right Wing News writer offers a viewpoint that echoes our recent analysis about the true motivations behind the bill:

First off, there [is] the "Rovian School of thought," which says that passing this bill would capture the Hispanic vote for the GOP for decades to come.

Next up, there's the "Chamber of Commerce" vote. [T]hese Republicans were heavily influenced by business groups that want cheap labor no matter what the cost is for the rest of the country.

Labels: immigration, Southern Politics

It's no secret that the demographics of the South are rapidly changing. Here at Facing South we have been closely following the new, more racially and ethnically diverse South that is emerging -- and shifting more quickly than anywhere else in the country.

The latest evidence comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, which released their latest report yesterday The Condition of Education. The report charts trends in public schools from 1972 to 2005, when the latest data is available.

Here are some highlights on the changing racial trends in schools:

* Nationally, 42% of public school students were considered part of a racial or ethnic minority group in 2005, an increase from 22% of students in 1972. The growth of Latino students has been the biggest factor in this increase.

* 47% of the South's K-12 public school students are now "ethnic/racial minorities," up from 30% (mostly African-American) in 1972. The West is the only more diverse region, with 54% students of color.

* While the West has the highest number of students identified as "Hispanic" (37%), the South has seen the fastest growth: the proportion of Latino students has more than tripled in the South from 1972 to 2005, from 5% to over 18%.

Of course, the report doesn't look at private schools, making it an imperfect snapshot of the South's overall demographics. As studies have found, the South has seen the greatest growth in private education -- especially among white families attempting to escape public schooling, a factor in the re-segregation of Southern education.

But the overall picture is clear: the new generation of the South will look less and less like the old one.

Labels: demographics, immigration

The Senate is set to resume debate this week on a new "compromise" immigration bill (S.1348). This is a complicated bill and it's hard to find objective info.

In addition, many of the amendments are not incorporated in their final form into the version currently published at Thomas.loc.gov.

Read more for a roundup of information and commentary on the bill...

Labels: immigration

U.S. News & World Report observes today that the media is "reveling" in the bi-partisan immigration reform bill being pushed by unlikely allies like Sens. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), with support from President Bush.

Outside Washington, the lions and lambs aren't getting too cozy yet. While beltway pundits are applauding the "rare Capitol Hill demonstration of bipartisanship," advocacy groups on the left and right are firing up their email lists and fax machines in opposition -- immigrant rights groups, because the bill creates a group of second-class "guest workers" who will be kicked out once businesses don't want them anymore; anti-immigrant groups, because it "rewards illegal behavior" and in cases amounts to dreaded "amnesty."

Which begs the question: why would Bush and leading Democrats push an issue that seems destined to alienate key elements of their base, with 2008 just around the corner? A small piece in the New York Times this week offers some useful background: it has a lot to do with the future of politics.

The Times notes that, as has often happened in this country, there's a large gap between young and old voters. But the Times also points out that now, there's a new layer to the "generation gap" -- it's also a race gap. Older voters tend to be whiter, while the future voters of the country are more Latino, African-American and Asian-American:

More than 20 percent of children in the United States either are foreign-born or have a parent who was born abroad. Nearly half the children under age 5 are Hispanic, black or Asian. [...]

According to the latest figures, 80 percent of Americans over age 60 are non-Hispanic whites, compared with only 60 percent among those in their 20s and 30s, and 58 percent among people younger than 20.

We've written a lot at Facing South about the South's fast-changing demographics and what it means for Southern politics (and by extension national politics, since it will dramatically increase the South's already-significant clout). The Times drives these points home again:

The changes have potential implications for national politics ... Arkansas, Georgia and Tennessee have recorded the greatest percentage gains in their Hispanic population since 2000, with the biggest numerical gains, predictably, registered by California, Texas and Florida.

How does this relate to the debate firing up around immigration reform? It means that both parties can see the writing on the wall -- and no doubt want to be remembered as the ones that gave citizenship to several million Latino and immigrant voters, no matter how flawed the legislation.

An interesting sidenote: the Times also speculates that, on the state level, the generational race gap may be deepening the divide over political priorities, such as the willingness of older white voters to support public education. By way of evidence, they note that ethnically diverse states are seeing major battles over school spending develop; by contrast, "the three most homogeneous states — Maine, Vermont and West Virginia — spent the highest proportion of their gross state product on public education."

UPDATE: For more on why Democrats see opportunity in immigration reform, see the analysis by Ruy Teixiera of Donkey Rising. The focus is on Western states, but given the explosive growth in the South, the same could be said there.

Labels: immigration, Southern Politics

With Congress and the White House deadlocked on immigration, state legislatures have filled the void with a flurry of bills, making it one of the hottest state issues in 2007.

According to a new survey released by the National Conference on State Legislatures, immigration bills have surfaced in every state -- at least 1169 bills and resolutions related to immigration or immigrants and refugees in all. This is more than twice the total number of introduced bills (570) in 2006.

Issues around benefits, employment and law enforcement are the biggest; there have also been 104 resolution counseling federal lawmakers on what to do. As might be expected, the vast majority are measures aimed at limiting immigration or curtailing access of benefits to immigrants.

Out of the 1,000+ bills up for discussion, only 57 have been enacted so far. Some examples from the South:

Arkansas H 1024 - Prohibits state agencies from contracting with businesses that employ illegal immigrants.

South Carolina S 531 - Requests the Governor to declare by Executive Order that no illegal alien is eligible to receive public benefits.

Virginia H 1673 - Creates the Commission on Immigration as an advisory commission.

As for resolutions, Arkansas passed a typical non-binding measure: HR 1003, which Addresses the President of the United States and Congress to secure our nations borders and to develop a comprehensive immigration policy.

Clearly, the failure of national lawmakers to articulate a federal immigration policy isn't causing the issue to go away -- it's just being displaced to state legislatures, where, especially in Sunbelt states, conservative policy-making is gaining the upper hand.

Labels: immigration

Mexican and Indian immigrants who allege they were brought to the Gulf Coast and held captive by companies yesterday called on the U.S. Labor Department to investigate possible civil and criminal violations by employers they describe as slaveholders.

The workers were brought to Louisiana and Mississippi under the federal H-2B visa program, which allows employers to bring foreign workers to the United States to perform temporary nonagricultural work.

According to the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice, Louisiana Labor LLC brought 130 Mexican workers to the United States to work for the company, which is owned by Sulphur, La.-based realtor Matt Redd. Redd recruited the workers in Mexico, charged them airfare to the States, then had them driven to Westlake, La.

Redd allegedly stole the workers' passports to prevent their free movement, an act that constitutes a federal crime. He then reportedly leased them to area businesses including car washes, garbage companies and casinos, and promised others work with the prominent construction services company, The Shaw Group.

The Indian visa holders worked for Signal International, a major marine and fabrication company with shipyards in Mississippi and Texas. More than 500 Indian workers were recruited over three years, paying between $14,000 and $20,000 to come to the United States. The workers thought they were acquiring green cards and permanent residency but instead got only six-month visas.

"We drowned our families into debt," said worker Kuldeep Singh, whose father sold his farm to send his son to the United States. "How can I go back empty handed?"

When Signal workers tried to organize, the company allegedly pulled four workers out of bed in a pre-dawn raid and imprisoned them on company property for hours. The other workers then went on strike, forcing the company to release the men.

"This guest worker program is corporate driven, state-sponsored exploitation," charges the center's Saket Soni. "Companies profit from it. And the Department of Labor signs off on it."

Slave-like conditions for foreign workers are not a problem only with Gulf-based companies. Last month, Legal Aid of North Carolina's Farmworker Unit filed two lawsuits against North Carolina employers and Asian labor brokers, charging that the employers and brokers lied to the workers and the U.S. government.

The Raleigh News & Observer reports:

Lawyers with Legal Aid of North Carolina ... say they know of at least 115 workers whom contractors brought to North Carolina from the Far East between 2004 and 2006.

"There's a desire for a work force that's not going to speak up," said Kate Woomer-Deters, a lawyer with Legal Aid. "Any time you can get people who are more vulnerable than Hispanic workers, unfortunately, that's an attractive work force."

In one of the cases, Thai workers allege that a Mount Olive, N.C.-based corporation called Million Express Manpower and a Thai company by the same name violated federal anti-racketeering laws by committing visa fraud and also violated the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act by confiscating their passports and forcing them to work without pay in New Orleans shortly after Hurricane Katrina.

Million Express Manpower in Thailand allegedly promised the workers three-year H-2A visas for agricultural jobs. In return, the workers had to pay their transportation costs and "recruitment fees" of about $11,250 each. But the farm work was sporadic and ended a few months after their arrival. The company eventually moved them from motel housing inspected by the N.C. Department of Labor into crowded outbuildings behind its president's home. Armed guards prevented the men from escaping.

Some of the Thai workers were taken to New Orleans to clean a hotel damaged by Katrina -- work they say they were never paid for. There the men were housed in a condemned hotel and, short of food, were reduced to catching and eating pigeons.

The other Legal Aid suit pits three Indonesian workers against GTN Employment Services of North Carolina, two Indonesian labor recruiters and two North Carolina growers. The three workers each paid over $6,000 in recruitment fees and transportation costs to the labor brokers.

When the men arrived in North Carolina, GTN confiscated their passports, visas and return plane tickets. GTN never offered any farm work to two of the workers and only minimal work to the other. Eventually, all three workers were housed at a GTN warehouse in Charlotte where they had to share a bare mattress on the floor. When the workers asked to leave, GTN demanded more money to retrieve their passports and plane tickets. The workers eventually escaped on foot, leaving their belongings behind.

"The two cases reflect an emerging pattern," says Legal Aid Attorney Mary Lee Hall. "Labor brokers in Asia, with ties to N.C. employers, falsely promise three years of work. Since the contracts are approved by the U.S. government, workers believe the promises to be legitimate and pay the huge recruitment fees demanded by the labor brokers.

"However, the actual work may last only a few months, and workers earn a mere fraction of what they paid to come to the United States. Also, the visa is limited to one employer. It’s a situation ripe for exploitation and a subversion of the program, which allows for these visas in case of a true labor shortage."

It's also a situation that could grow worse, as President Bush and many in Congress are pressing to expand guest worker programs as a solution to the nation's immigration woes.

With debate on the programs' expansion about to get underway, the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center this week released a report titled "Close to Slavery: Guest Worker Programs in the United States" that documents the systematic abuse of workers under the H-2 visa system.

"Guestworkers are usually poor people who are lured here by the promise of decent jobs," says report author and SPLC Immigrant Justice Project Director Mary Bauer. "But all too often, their dreams are based on lies, their hopes shattered by the reality of a system that treats them as commodities. They're the disposable workers of the global economy."

Labels: immigration

To understand how efforts to crack down on illegal immigrants can end up backfiring against U.S. citizens, see today's New York Times story titled "Citizens Who Lack Papers Lose Medicaid."

The article describes how new federal requirements designed to keep illegal immigrants from receiving assistance through the joint federal and state health care program for the poor have instead excluded tens of thousands of U.S. citizens who've had trouble complying with stringent documentation requirements.

Under the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, most people who want Medicaid must provide "satisfactory documentary evidence of citizenship," which could include a passport or a birth certificate and driver's license. The law was authored by two Republican congressmen from Georgia: Nathan Deal and Charlie Norwood, who has since passed away.

State officials told the Times that the Bush administration is going beyond the law's requirements by requiring applicants to submit original or certified documents, leading to delays or even denials of coverage:

Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Ohio and Virginia have all reported declines in enrollment and traced them to the new federal requirement, which comes just as state officials around the country are striving to expand coverage through Medicaid and other means.

...

In Florida, the number of children on Medicaid declined by 63,000, to 1.2 million, from July 2006 to January of this year.

"We've seen an increase in the number of people who don't qualify for Medicaid because they cannot produce proof of citizenship," said Albert A. Zimmerman, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Children and Families. "Nearly all of these people are American citizens."

...

Dr. Martin C. Michaels, a pediatrician in Dalton, Ga., who has been monitoring effects of the federal rule, said: "Georgia now has 100,000 newly uninsured U.S. citizen children of low-income families. Many of these children have missed immunizations and preventive health visits. And they have been admitted to hospitals and intensive care units for conditions that normally would have been treated in a doctor's office."

The Times' revelations of how Medicaid's crackdown on illegal immigrants is hurting poor U.S. citizens should come as no surprise: The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities last year released the results of a survey that indicated the Deficit Reduction Act jeopardized Medicaid coverage for as many as 5 million U.S. citizens. Many of those who'd be most likely to experience difficulty in securing those documents -- such as Hurricane Katrina survivors living in temporary facilities -- were not represented in the survey, suggesting that the number of those likely to be harmed by the requirement was probably higher.

And it should be noted that while Medicaid was designed as a program to aid the poor, it's increasingly being used by the middle class. In fact, the program now pays for half the costs of all nursing home care in the United States, as previously middle-class seniors spend down their assets in order to foot bills that typically run more than $60,000 per year. Other middle-class Medicaid beneficiaries include people whose children or other dependents suffer severe disabilities such as cerebral palsy, mental retardation and multiple sclerosis.

As we ponder how Medicaid's crackdown on illegal immigrants is affecting U.S. citizens, a progressive think tank offers a report calling for a national immigration policy that helps rather than hurts middle-class Americans and those aspiring to attain middle-class status.

The Drum Major Institute for Public Policy -- a New York-based nonprofit founded by an advisor to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. -- recently released an updated version of an earlier report titled "Principles for an Immigration Policy to Strengthen and Expand the American Middle Class."

The report points out that the American middle class depends on the economic contribution of legal and illegal immigrants -- including paying taxes that help fund Medicaid -- so therefore any pro-middle-class immigration policy would reject mass deportation. It also argues for a policy that strengthens immigrants' workplace rights:

Because employers threaten undocumented immigrants with deportation, these workers cannot effectively assert their rights in the workplace by, for example, asking for raises, complaining about violations of wage and hour or workplace safety laws, or by supporting union organizing drives.

As long as this cheaper and more compliant pool of immigrant labor is available, employers are all too willing to take advantage of the situation to keep their labor costs down.

U.S.-born workers are left to either accept the same diminished wages and degraded working conditions as immigrants living under threat of deportation or be shut out of whole industries where employers hire predominantly undocumented immigrants.

As today's Times' story makes clear, Americans should be concerned not only by the degradation of working conditions under current immigration policy, but also by that policy's unraveling of the social safety net.

Labels: immigration