This is going to be an action packed weekend in DC and around the nation. On Friday, there will be protests of Yoo. On Saturday, there will be a massive antiwar demonstration (there will also be demonstrations in Philly, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and South Dakota, among other places). On Sunday, there will be a large march for immigration reform. And there will be other related events around the country, along with the small protests and events that happen all the time.

(Let me know if I miss anything)

Friday

While most eyes are focused on the HCR debate right now, there is another high-stakes legislative issue waiting in the wings. For those whose families and communities are impacted by the problematic immigration system, immigration reform is as crucial as anything else on the Democratic agenda.

But right now, immigrants and advocates are wondering whether immigration reform is even on the agenda of Democrats in Congress and the White House, notwithstanding Candidate Obama’s promise to make immigration reform a top priority during his first year in office.

That’s why I was happy to see the Inquirer’s editorial about the DREAM Act over the weekend.

Every year, 65,000 undocumented students graduate from high school each year. These students, after growing up in the United States and calling this country their home, are faced with unimaginable obstacles when it comes to continuing their education. Despite these obstacles, these undocumented students have decided to take matters into their own hands and fight for the opportunity to fulfill their dreams. These students are fighting for a piece of legislation called the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act.

Stu Bykofsky wrote an editorial in the Daily News yesterday slamming calls for immigration reform and the current CIRASAP bill that was recently introduced in the House and has been signed on to by several local politicians. Stu’s essential argument: ‘This bill only helps people who are here “illegally;” if you want to fix the problem, just tell people to get to the back of the line.' This argument is flawed for several reasons. First, immigration reform doesn’t just help those who are here without documents—rather it creates order out of our immigration policy and treatment of immigrants that will help all Americans. Second, there is no line to get on to if you are from a poor country.

Comprehensive immigration reform is absolutely necessary to continue to keep our country functioning. As things stand, we have 12+ million undocumented immigrants in this country. While our legal system generally applies equally to everyone regardless of immigration status (e.g. minimum wage laws, criminal laws), undocumented immigrants live in constant fear of deportation. This fear makes them scared to call the police when they have been the victim of a crime or when they are being exploited by an unscrupulous businessman forcing them to work for half-minimum wage. With such a huge population being exploited on a daily basis, the quality of living for all of us suffers—failure to call the police in the face of crime makes our communities less safe; failure to report unscrupulous employers lowers the wage floor for everyone.

Send them all home, you say? Stu does:

Second, the "path to citizenship" is unpopular, according to a new Zogby poll. Among executives, 59 percent support enforcement to encourage illegal immigrants to go home, 30 percent support conditional legalization; 67 percent of small-business owners support enforcement, and 22 percent approve of conditional legalization. And in union households, 58 percent support enforcement while 28 percent like conditional legalization.

But where does that leave our economy? Living in fear, working for less than the minimum wage, having no healthcare, and not understanding the language spoken in a country are not the kinds things you do unless it is out of necessity—don’t kid yourself and think that undocumented immigrants are here living high off the government. Undocumented immigrants are here to work and working they are. They help to make our economy run. They work in construction, building our houses; as migrant workers, growing our produce; and they open stores, contributing to the local economy. And remember, when you work, you pay taxes, regardless of your immigration status. According to the 2008 report on Social Security, undocumented immigrants (who will never collect social security), will close 15% of the fund’s long term deficit. In 2005, undocumented workers were contributing roughly $7 billion per year into the Social Security trust fund. Money that they will never get back. I’m not saying that we should keep people in a position where they pay in to the system and get nothing back; I’m merely trying to counter the all-too-often repeated argument that undocumented immigrants are here suckling the government teat and giving nothing back. Both parts of that argument are just plain untrue.

And of course, none of this is to speak of all of the things that this bill does for people who are here legally. Wage theft will be reduced, leading to higher wages for all workers; the economy will see a boost of $1.5 trillion; and people like my friend from an unnamed African country will be able to get a visa, who, after a Masters degree in Physics and several nursing degrees all from esteemed US institutions may have to leave the country despite 10 years studying here. All of these factors are very important to our economy, security, innovation, place in the world, and soul as a nation.

And what about this line that we keep hearing about? People are supposed to get back on the line, aren’t they? Even Newt Gingrich understands that there is no sensible line to get on. It is really hard to get a green card, especially if you are from a poor country. Most recently, for WORLDWIDE immigration to the US, we are statutorily capped at about 400,000 people per year. Total. That includes family members, people coming for a specific job, people in the green card lottery, etc… In 2006, it was estimated that somewhere around 1 million people per year were entering the US without authorization. That means that unauthorized entries are more than double the number of visas available each year. That smells like a problem—our numbers should meet the demand from businesses and workers.

Finally, a few parting words:

• Stu assumes at the end of his article that everyone that he spoke with was undocumented. The only person he really documents is an Argentinean who said that he came here for 2 years, but then decided to stay. How do we know that he is not authorized to be here? Is it because he doesn’t speak English or isn’t white? Would we make the same assumption if a merry old Englishman told Stu the same story? Many Latinos are in this country and city as citizens; some of these people don’t speak any English. We cannot and should not assume that dark skin plus limited English ability = “illegal.” It isn’t right morally and it isn’t correct legally.
• Jen from the New Sanctuary Movement (whose work I fully support) says that being here without documentation is akin to jaywalking. With all due respect to Jen, I can’t buy this argument—it belittles the problem in a way that would make me think we shouldn’t take it seriously.
• Stu laments the fact that there would ever be an “amnesty” that would allow a path to citizenship for people who are here without documents. I ask Stu to Google “Tax Amnesty” and then re-ask the question as to whether it ever makes sense for the government to normalize relations with people who may have broken a law in the past. I think he may change his answer.

Each year in the U.S., 65,000 undocumented students graduate from high school with limited options for higher education or employment. Many undocumented youth were brought to this country as children, even infants, by their parents. They are indistinguishable in every way but one from their citizen friends, classmates, and siblings: they don’t have a piece of paper that says they can stay here.

The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act) would change that. The Act would provide conditional legal status to applicants who:

Julio Maldonado was deported to Peru on Thursday, October 22, 2009, after arriving in the U.S. 38 years ago at the age of 3.

He and his cousin, Denis Calderon, had been victims of an attack based on their ethnicity in 1996. Julio was wrongfully convicted of aggravated assault, incarcerated for a total of 8 years, and then deported.

This article is featured in today's issue of Counterpunch. I am only posting an excerpt, so please go to the main link for the full article.

http://www.counterpunch.org/washington10212009.html

Julio Maldonado faces flying into an uncertain future if federal authorities succeed in deporting this former construction worker to Peru, the South American country he left 39-years-ago as a three-year-old child.

Maldonado faces deportation due to dictates of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA).

This law requires expulsion of both illegal immigrants and legal aliens like Maldonado who have criminal records.

Maldonado’s predicament is truly Kafkaesque from the circumstances producing his criminal record to the fact that federal authorities imprisoned him for four years based on his refusal to sign his deportation papers.

It’s all budgets all the time with the news that a veto-proof agreement may have been crafted. The compromise however leaves a lot of areas hanging:

Education: The compromise blows a major hole in the education budget as reported by Dan Hardy, confirming rumors that have been swirling for months (edit: a bit of hyperbole there - rumors have been swirling for a few weeks, not months). The School District is expected to be at least $140 million short – a move that one District insider said months ago would be "the end of the world." Hardest hit are likely to be pre-school and help for students looking to return to school and get their diplomas. The SRC meanwhile has chosen to postpone its September meeting dates without explanation. Explaining to the public how you didn’t really have a Plan B is such a chore. Read more at the Public School Notebook.

PICA punts on Plan C: Speaking of a lack of plans, the city buys time when PICA declines to weigh in on Plan C, saving the Mayor an embarrassing rejection as one Councilman notes. But it does highlight a widespread lack of faith in the alternative the Mayor has submitted.

Look on the Bright Side: Now we can play poker to really class up those slots barns! Although it looks like neighborhood bars may not get their video poker, the state believes its second highest revenue generator – expanded gambling through table games – is still the magic bullet to plug holes. Sort of. Actually only briefly. $200 million this year and a 40% drop in revenues next year (casino industry estimates by the way, and we know how reliable those are). Meanwhile, with the political gambling contributions ban eliminated, it’s a virtual free for all for the casino industry to ensure table games are as individually profitable as they are likely.

In other news, the Inky puts another foot on the BRT’s keister with a series of stories on the new tax assessments. Patrick Kerkstra notes that it’s "business as usual" for one city block where some assessments tripled. Meanwhile the BRT follows incompetence with – what else? More incompetence!

Among the findings:

Hundreds of the new commercial numbers were thrown off by mistakes littering the BRT's property records, including incorrectly sized lots and buildings that don't exist. At Seventh and Arch Streets, for example, the BRT calculated a new value of $5.2 million on what the agency thought was a huge, 200-space parking lot. But there is no such lot, just a narrow walkway next to the Federal Detention Center.

Instead of trying to figure out a property's real worth, the BRT's assessors slapped the same percentage increases on thousands of parcels across the city. More than 500 would get the same 40 percent increase - properties as different as a $6 million shopping center on Castor Avenue and a long-empty hoagie shop in North Philadelphia.

More than 6,000 commercial properties - a quarter of the total - are missing entirely, left undone as the BRT rushed to send the AVI numbers to impatient city officials last spring.

Apparent glitches in the BRT's computer models produced some bizarre results. Parking lots in a drug-ravaged section of Frankford, for example, were valued at a steep $140 per square foot - more pricey than many lots in Center City.

The most telling line:

Mayor Nutter, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment.

And finally, Michael Smerconish, who when googling past columns of his, I came across the unfortunate nature of his Philly Mag profile. I do not advise.

Anyway, he takes on the Joe Wilson-immigrant reform-Obama health care controversy, even though not a one links logically to the another.

Now for the record, Smerconish actually published a column about his diversifying of America paranoia:

I know I'm not alone in my belief that today's immigrants - those here both legally and illegally - are not assimilating the way my forefathers did when they arrived.

And before I'm shouted down as a xenophobe, hear me out. My intent isn't to amplify the shrill debate surrounding illegal immigration. What I'm interested in is defending the tradition to which my grandparents adhered: the one that led them to a new name and a better life in this country.

I fear we are leaving it behind.

Leaving aside the philly.com comment stream, and they are particularly colorful whenever immigration is raised – Smerconish nevertheless raises sensible points about why the far right’s call to completely deny undocumented people from receiving health care is bad policy:

1. It would require the undoing of the 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act requiring care for anyone who visits an emergency room.
2. It would require doctors and caregivers to function as immigration agents first, and health care professionals second.
3. It wouldn’t keep with our national rep to deny health care to people who were gunshot victims, or giving birth, or in a car accident, or suffering from a communicable disease, say.
4. And it doesn’t help the fact that what health care professionals are more concerned about are insurance protections than verifying legal status.

Smerconish omits one other important reality, and that’s the fact that so many families in the U.S. are of mixed immigration status. Back in 1999, the Urban Institute reported that as many as one in ten American families had at least one family member who was undocumented. A more recent Pew study shows that 75% of the children of undocumented immigrants are U.S. citizens. So it kinda makes it complicated when you start trying to deny citizen kids health care check-ups for school when their parents don't have the right paperwork.

In the end, though, Obama’s health care reform bill is meant to address health insurance plans and medical coverage in general. It’s not meant to rewrite every single law that deals with health care. And although Smerconish raises some good points, it’s just plain misdirection to raise the 1986 law and try to hang it on the president’s neck.

This morning dozens of community members along with several elected officials held a press conference with Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition to encourage the Mayor and Police Chief to reject participation in a federal immigrant tracking program called "Secure Communities."

The program would require police officers to contact ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement which is solely responsible for detention and deportation in immigration matters) as soon as individuals were booked through a federal fingerprinting process. This program is the most recent in a series of ICE programs that make local police the contact point between immigrants and ICE agents.

In other cities, the program has led to serious concerns around selective enforcement and racial profiling, expensive re-direction of personnel resources, and an increase in detention.

Last week, Governor Ed Rendell called upon the Justice Department to pursue federal civil rights charges in the 2008 beating death of Luis Ramirez. His call breaks an oppressive political silence since the murder and the subsequent acquittal of the defendants on all serious charges. In his statement, Rendell said:

"The evidence suggests that Mr. Ramirez was targeted, beaten and killed because he was Mexican," wrote Governor Rendell in the letter. "This beating was so brutal and violent that Mr. Ramirez’s skull was crushed in two different places. This senseless and cowardly attack appears to have been a hate crime as racial slurs were hurled against Mr. Ramirez throughout the fatal assault.

"Such lawlessness and violence hurts not only the direct victim of the attack but also our towns and communities that are torn apart by such bigotry and intolerance. That is why I am pleased that the Department of Justice is presently investigating whether to bring civil rights charges against Piekarsky and Donchak for their role in the fatal beating of Mr. Ramirez. I believe that justice and fairness mandate such a prosecution."

The Inquirer’s editorial board also issued a call for justice in this case, saying it has not been served.

First, many thanks to the Governor and others who are doing their part to stand up on this tragedy. Pennsylvania is fast earning a reputation as an anti-immigrant breeding ground. The political antics of Hazleton embarrassment Lou Barletta (the 2008 PA Mayor of the Year) to media clown Joey Vento have helped put PA on the national radar as a place of anti-immigrant ignorance and hate. And as the injustice of Luis Ramirez’ murder continues to rally people nationwide, it’s more important than ever that politicians in PA be held accountable for condemning rather than ignoring what's happening in our state.

So, ahem, Nation to Arlen Specter: Where are you on this issue?

(Note: A quick phone call to his office revealed that he has made no statements thus far on this case.)

From this year's Mummers Comics Brigade "Aliens of An Illegal Kind"

Generally, I avoid most things to do with Joey Vento; he does enough shameless publicity stunts to earn him his ignoramus ranking. This post isn’t about him, but it is about the Mummers and their embarrassing use of public dollars – in a time of financial crisis – to promote this kind of garbage.

A few people who watched this year's Mummers Parade took offense to Vento's starring role in a performance by Comics brigade B. Love Strutters titled "Aliens of an Illegal Kind."

The skit featured Vento popping out of the top of a float labeled "Gewizno's Steaks" with a "When ordering, speak English" sign. Vento waved a poster reading, "What?" and tossed fake cheesesteaks into the crowd.

Then an announcer for B. Love Strutters cried out, "Uh-oh, here comes the Border Patrol!" Club members wearing Texas-sized cowboy hats and brandishing wooden rifles pretended to hold back a rioting crowd of "immigrants" from storming the border "fences." As the immigrants burst forth, they traded in their country's flag for an American flag, and a Mummer dressed as President-elect Barack Obama handed out Green Cards.

No, it's not a joke:

Granted mid-season shows have a notoriously short lifespan, but still . . . is it possible for one of the most renegade agencies in the country (IMO) to get a vainglorious show that at best, hypes up the work of agents who are frequently poorly trained and overworked, and at worst stokes racial profiling, anti-immigrant sentiment and general xenophobia and ignorance?

Seriously, how secure do you feel when you see agents drawing guns against a family with children who were trying to cross the US-Mexico border - only to find it a case of mistaken identity (as was featured in tonight's episode)?

As a progressive and a fan of smart community-friendly policing I can not in good faith vote for Democrat John Morganelli for Pennsylvania Attorney General because Morganelli's rabidly anti-illegal immigration stances are both unconstitutional and bad law enforcement policy. If there is two things the Attorney General needs to have a firm grasp on its the Constitution and sound law enforcement policy.

First off, its the specific job of the Federal government as laid out in the US Constitution to set the rules and enforce citizenship, immigration and naturalization law. It falls under the clause giving the US Federal government exclusive and sole agency to make treaties with foreign nations. The Constitution is rather unambiguous on this point. Simply put, immigration law is not criminal law.

So since the Phillies got rained out, and I’m bitter that they didn’t call the game before Tampa tied, or at least at the bottom of the 5th, I’m bringing up last week’s story about City Council’s decision to raise the hotel tax. The tax will raise $6.3 million a year, of which $2.3 million will go towards funding the massive deficit incurred by the Convention Center expansion (already costing us nearly $800 million).

Nevertheless, it seems like a good time to remind hotelees that the reason for higher taxes is partly because of this past summer’s decision by the Convention Center board to pass on a virtually interest-free loan on tens of millions of dollars because it came from Chinese investors who were part of a federal program to promote jobs (10 new jobs must be created for every $500,000 invested) and provide legal green cards for investors. Ray pointed it out in a YPP post here.

Here’s the nuanced explanation from Convention Center board chair “Buck” Riley:

"We considered it. We looked at it. But it was kind of a bridge too far . . . too complex for us to consider," Buck Riley, chairman of the 15-member Convention Center Authority, said last week. "Right now, it is a dead issue."

Right. Too complex. You’re broke. 2.5% interest. $73.5 million. Job creation. A 20-year old program vetted and used by the feds to promote investment and employment. But don't let that stop the CC Board from freaking out about potentially being tied to legal immigration and deciding that raising taxes for chump change makes more sense instead.

On Tuesday, October 7, 2008 at 5:30 pm Jonathan Hiatt, the General Council for the AFL-CIO will address a small group of labor lawyers, unionists and law students about this critical election and what comes after November 4. Mr Hiatt will discuss topics such as the Employee Free Choice Act, the election, immigration and the Wall Street credit problems.

This event is a great place to mingle with leaders in the field of law, politics and labor. The event which is hosted by Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez will be in the City Hall Caucus Room, Room #400. Snacks and refreshments will be served. Tickets are $50 but call for low-income and student tickets that as affordable as $20. Space is extremely limited so be sure to reserve your ticket today by calling Fabricio at Jobs with Justice at 215-670-5855. A portion of the proceeds from this event will go to support Jobs with Justice.