Mcpocrisy

Senator John McCain stood up today Saturday, December the 18th, 2010 on the US Senate floor to speak against a legislation that he had co-sponsored in the past, back on the days when he called himself a "maverick" and pretended to be a conciliatory moderate.

Today he lead the parade of anti DREAM Senators who denied a path to legalization to undocumented students who had grown in the USA and succeeded integrating themselves into our communities, many of them professionals with Bachelors and Master's degrees.

During the few weeks that preceded the failed DREAM vote, Mr. McCain's office organized a toy drive for the Holidays.

Awww, how sweet!

I wonder if McCain will check the immigration status of the children receiving the "largess"of the Republican supporters. Thanks to Senator McCain, some immigrant children will be getting a cheap toy made in China and will be denied of a path to legalization as Christmas gift in 2010

Poison Pills

In the ongoing quest to limit the human rights of the most vulnerable in Arizona, the Republican lead State Legislature has been introducing small poison pills into bills.

In a quiet manner, without the political theater that SB1070 created, bills that apparently have nothing to do with immigration had been embedded with articles designed to cause extensive damage.

The first one is ID requirements for notarized documents, House Bill 2037 ARS Sec. 41-311, that states anyone seeking to have a document notarized must show an ID issued by the U.S. government. Foreign documents (passports, matriculas etc.) are not acceptable, unless they are seeking to purchase real estate, and then they must also provide proof of legal status. Of course (that is intrinsic part of the game) notaries can be penalized for noncompliance by suspension or loss of their license.

This has a lot of implications on any legal procedures that undocumented persons may seek from child custody, to wills, to medical directives, power of attorney, legal representation, on and on, affecting the right to petition to authorities.

The second article

ARS Sec. 14-5108 affects directly undocumented children.

It states only children legally in the country can have guardians appointed by the courts.

So what happens when undocumented children need to have a guardian appointed??? Does Corrections Corporation of America take over as "guardians"?

Anti immigrant legislators have a sick obsession to hurt innocent children and families, maybe because they really want to affect the morale and the future of the whole community.

Both articles came in effect July 29th, 2010.

Charitable Work May be Punishable under SB1070

Today, my dear friend H could be detained, arrested and accused of harboring undocumented immigrants while transporting kids and young adults to their dental appointments. H has arranged pro-bono visits with a prominent dentist for children that lack dental coverage due to poverty and their immigration status. Most of them have never seem a dentist in their lives and some have complicated cases that require immediate care. I guess the dentist can also been accused of "harboring".

This is the Arid Zone where charitable work to the "least of these" is stigmatized and punishable.

SB1070 will not be implemented as a whole today Thursday, July the 29th 2010. Thanks to a ruling by judge Bolton, sections of the law signed by Governor Jan Brewer have been stopped from implementation through an injunction.

I continue to be really upset and troubled.

I do not understand why is people happy in the immigrants' rights community and the Mexican-American community.

This are the portions that has been stopped:

• The requirement that police officers investigate the immigration status of all individuals they stop if the officers suspect that they are in the country unlawfully;
• The mandatory detention of individuals who are arrested, even for minor offenses that would normally result in a ticket, if they cannot verify that they are authorized to be in the U.S.;
• The new statute imposing state criminal penalties for non-citizens failing to register with the Department of Homeland Security or failing to carry registration documents;
• The provision for warrantless arrest of individuals who are deemed by state or local police officers to be "removable" from the U.S.; and
• The new state statute making it a crime for alleged undocumented immigrants to work.

Left are provisions that criminalizes the solicitation of employment on public streets or the one that forbids local police agencies from adopting policies that limit or restrict enforcement of federal immigration laws, the so called Sanctuary cities. The section about harboring undocumented immigrant is still there.

There are poison pills on the sections that are still standing so forgive me if I'm not in the mood for a high five.

The Next Outrage

If you think SB1070, the law that makes a state crime being undocumented in the State of Arizona and seeks "attrition through enforcement", among other things is bad enough, wait to you read about what Russell Pearce is setting the stage for on next Legislative sessions. This proposals will target immigrant children as young as 5 years old:

SB2382

http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/bills/hb2382h.pdf

Summary

Dept. of Education will collect data of students enrolled in public schools and charter schools whose parents cannot provide lawful legal status.

Each Dec 15 will submit reports. The Superintendent of Public Instruction shall withhold school district's appointment of state aid if a school district does not comply. The Superintendent of Public Instruction shall withhold the salary, bonus or both of any employee or school district that fails to comply.

SB2182

For the purpose of determining state aid to school districts and charter schools, the determination of Average daily attendance shall exclude children whose parents are unable to provide child's lawful presence in the United States.

http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/bills/hb2182p.htm

The bills are technically dead but there is always the possibility of bringing them back in the next legislature (with different numbers). This is the tactic employed for parts and pieces of SB1070.

Those bills will try to challenge a Supreme Court Decision known as Plyler vs Doe.

Here is from Wikipedia:

Plyler v. Doe, 457 (1982), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States struck down a state statute denying funding for education to children who were illegal immigrants and simultaneously struck down a municipal school district's attempt to charge illegal immigrants an annual $1,000 tuition fee for each undocumented student to compensate for the lost state funding^[1]. The Court found that where states limit the rights afforded to people (specifically children) based on their status as aliens, this limitation must be examined under an intermediate scrutiny standard to determine whether it furthers a substantial goal of the State.

.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plyler_v._Doe

Plyler vs Doe is a supreme court decision that establishes:

If the State is to deny a discrete group of innocent children the free public education that it offers to other children residing within its borders, that denial must be justified by a showing that it furthers some substantial state interest. No such showing was made here.

According to the following piece, collecting data on the students and producing reports where the cost for the state is established, would be used to justify state interest.

Anti-immigrant former Congressman Tom Tancredo writes in an article called "The Next Arizona Earthquake" the arguments anti-immigrant activist will employ to challenge Plyler vs. Doe:

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=151021

"While it is true that the 1982 Plyler decision did forbid schools from denying a public education to children who are illegal aliens, the court did not say such a denial is unconstitutional. The court merely said Texas had not proved its case that providing that education placed an undue hardship on the public treasury.

That may have been true in Texas in 1982, but is it true in Arizona in 2010? Is it true anywhere in Texas, Arizona, California, Nevada, Colorado,Oklahoma, Utah or Georgia in 2010?

The only way to know the answer to that question is to first ask it. But to answer it requires asking for the school enrollment data. That's why Russell Pearce's SB1097 is so refreshingly revolutionary.

The Plyler decision did not forbid schools from collecting enrollment data. That is another myth promoted by the "immigrant rights" lobbyists."

Is this really going to happen??? Not for sure. It's a possibly scenario that we must be prepared to confront.

The immigrant wife

I came to the USA as an immigrant wife. I walked into a church in Monterrey, Mexico in the morning. I presided a small cocktail party at noon all decked in an extravagant dress. I said my farewells to my parents, siblings and friends and by 3:00 pm my husband and I left for the Mariano Escobedo airport.

Still in heavy makeup I arrived to Phoenix, Arizona at 10:00 pm, ready to put my life in a different route and live new experiences. Suddenly it felt like a gamble.

This was the beginning of my life in the United States of America.

My knowledge of the language and customs was more theoretical that practical. Never before that day had I the money to travel beyond a couple of quick trips to shop at the border. At that time my plans were to polish my English and at the completion of my husband Master’s degree, go back to Mexico. I would never imagined that 18 years later I would be still living here and my husband and I would be American Citizens , or that my sons would be Mexican- American, Chicanos.

I would never imagined that I would be fighting to change immigration laws in my adopted country.

My plans at the beginning never involved in bring leadership or notoriety in my life. My plans were to lay low, convinced of my own inadequacies….but life is full of surprises.

For years I followed passively the drama that every day unfolds in the USA. The deaths of those who try to cross the desert, the working conditions of the undocumented, the abuses they have to endure.

Those immigrant stories upset my conscience but I did not see any possibility to do anything about it even it felt really unfair. What can one do to alleviate the negative effect of socio-economic forces, social phenomena??

In time my husband started entering other social realities outside our life. Everything started when he gave his time as a mentor and guidance to high school students in the West-Central Phoenix corridor. He wanted to give the students the message that there were Hispanic engineers working in nice companies and that they also could aspire to a professional life through education. He went to a High School were the majority of the student population is Hispanic and all low income. But then realized an awful truth: “No matter how dedicated, smart and industrious these students are, they are condemned to menial jobs in the underground economy because of their lack of legal status”.

Even more frightening, he realized this young people, having immigrated undocumented as children had no legal standing and were legally vulnerable.

Through his experiences I started to understand the reality of immigrants with less fortune than us. Those who needed to come to this country in desperation to seek a better life and in many cases brought their little ones with them.

These smuggled little human beings were now the High School kids that my husband was encountering.

Those kids crossed the border undocumented at more or less the same time we did and started a new life along with us. Our immigrant lives started to interconnect

The truth is that in previous years these young people would have been able to fix their immigration situation, but not anymore. The laws have been modified and the country have closed the doors to most sometime ago,

The implications of being undocumented are difficult to imagine to those who do not know them. Besides it is easier to believe this country is incapable of treating people, young lives, the way it does.

Without a Social Security Number they cannot work legally and now they cannot attain financial support to go into Higher Education, are exposed to mistreatment, detention, incarceration, deportation to a country many do not remember. Blackmail, Sexual exploitation, human rights abuses may be present at any moment. This young people are condemned to a life with limited aspirations and to live in the shadows of the society that educated them. It is a modernized, sanitized version of slavery.

In this negative environment only a legislative proposal known as the DREAM Act could only open the doors to legalize this youth.

The lack of persons who have the time to speak for them (with the exception of the wonderful mentors we have found along the way) took my husband and I to raise our voices, and in my case, dedicate most of my working time to advocate for the DREAM Act.

From the immigrant wife living on the suburbs I became an activist with goals, and priorities. My main interest is focused on the young immigrants without opportunities and legally vulnerable.

How can I found purpose in mundane –middle class activities if one of these bright students can be literally taken out of the streets, incarcerated mistreated for maybe weeks, months and later deported to a country they do not know if their immigration status is discovered? How the most powerful government on earth can thrown young lives into homelessness??

Now, almost 20 years after I came to this country I’m working to change the society where I live so these young beautiful lives are accepted for who they are, for the content of their character.

To me is ironic that I, an immigrant, am fighting for the soul of this country, for its reputation as the leader of human rights, when still feel so inadequate. However I assume the responsibility with humility and passion. This is a big challenge to anyone but especially for an immigrant wife.