America's Voice Blog

Posted 02/22/12 at 05:11pm By Van Le

Citizens for a Better Arizona to Run Anti-Arpaio Ad During Tonight’s GOP Debate

When the Republican presidential candidates debate in Mesa, Arizona tonight, the grassroots group Citizens for a Better Arizona will be ready for them—with an ad drawing attention to infamous Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and calling for his resignation.

“Learn the real story of America’s Most Sued Sheriff, America’s Most Costly Sheriff and America’s Most Corrupt Sheriff,” says the press release announcing the ad, playing on Arpaio’s self-designated nickname, “America’s Toughest Sheriff.”

Watch the ad here:

Citizens for a Better Arizona is best known for its role in last year’s historic recall of State Senate President Russell Pearce, another anti-immigrant blowhard and the architect of SB 1070, the original anti-immigrant law.  Its ad campaign against Arpaio was announced today by group Co-Founder and President Randy Parraz, who has set his sights on kicking Arpaio out of office now that Pearce has been deposed.

Arpaio will be running for a fifth term as Sheriff this November, and Parraz believes he is newly vulnerable.  The Sheriff has a long history of flagrant civil rights offenses, where his “Ahab-like pursuit of undocumented immigrants” has led to charges of abuse, racial profiling, and gross overreach of authority.  He once forced a mother to give birth while handcuffed to a bed, oversaw a 58% increase in the rate of violent crime,  misspent $100 million in taxpayer funds, neglected to investigate over 400 sex crimes cases, and spent $50 million defending himself against lawsuits.  Last December, the US Department of Justice announced that its investigations of Arpaio had unearthed “a pattern or practice of unconstitutional policing” and “a chronic culture of disregard for basic legal and constitutional obligations,” and warned Arpaio that he had to change his ways.  This year, Parraz says, there will be a credible Democrat—Paul Penzone—running against Arpaio, as well as a grassroots movement dedicated to installing a new Sheriff.  And, Pearce’s recall has created momentum among activists who once believed removing Arpaio would be impossible.

“We have to hold him [Arpaio] accountable,” Parraz said during the ad unveiling.  “We have to show politicians that there are consequences to this kind of behavior and create room for Republicans who are sane.”

After tonight’s Republican debate, the ad will air a few more times in Arizona in the next few days.  The Arizona primary is scheduled for next Tuesday, February 28.

Posted 02/22/12 at 04:17am By Van Le

Kobach-Supported Anti-Immigrant Bills Likely Dead in Kansas

kris kobachAnti-immigrant allies of Mitt Romney just did not have a good weekend.

The Lawrence Journal-World reports today that the Kansas state legislature probably won’t be moving forward with a slate of immigration bills supported by Secretary of State Kris Kobach.  Kobach, who has managed to impose his anti-immigrant vision on states like Arizona and Alabama, appears to be a swing-and-a-miss in his own home state.

State legislators quoted by the Lawrence Journal-World, it seems, have carefully noted the impact of Kobach-authored laws like SB 1070 and HB 56  and concluded that it isn’t for them:

“I don’t sense the support in the Senate for that kind of legislation,” said Senate President Steve Morris, R-Hugoton.

House Speaker Mike O’Neal, R-Hutchinson, said, “I don’t have a burning desire to address immigration this year.”

O’Neal said he doesn’t want to pass a law that guarantees putting the state in litigation “just for political expediency so somebody can have a good vote.”

House Democratic Leader Paul Davis of Lawrence said the more people learn about the effects of similar Kobach laws in Arizona and Alabama “the more people shy away from the direction he wants to go.”

Which direction is that?  From the Wichita Eagle:

Lawmakers heard last week about crops rotting in fields in Alabama and Georgia after residents both legal and illegal fled the states; about a German Mercedes-Benz executive having been detained in Alabama after a traffic stop until his passport could be retrieved; about churches and charities fearing their ministries would be harmed by an anti-harboring law; and of state Rep. Ponka-We Victors, D-Wichita, who is of American Indian and Latino heritage, having been hassled and detained by border control agents while visiting family in Arizona.

Hence why a broad swath of allies stepped up to oppose the law:

Several business and religious leaders lined up in opposition. They said the bills would lead to racial profiling, and make the state less safe because undocumented workers would be unwilling to volunteer information to police about crime activity for fear they would be deported.

Morris, however, said there is quite a bit of support for a bill that would allow some undocumented workers to apply for a legal status that would allow them to work in Kansas industries facing labor shortages.

Kansas, by the way, is a state which needs more laborers so badly that it is petitioning the federal government for a waiver to begin a legal guest worker program.  Is Kris Kobach, in his anti-immigrant frothing, really so willing to ignore the Kansas economy and what it needs?

Posted 02/16/12 at 11:06am By Mahwish Khan

Felipe Montes Needs Our Help: NC Officials Trying to Strip Parental Rights From Deported Dad

Colorlines has another story about families being ripped apart by the nation's broken immigration system. Last November, Applied Research Center published a report, Shattered Families: The Perilous Intersection of Immigration Enforcement and the Child Welfare System, that revealed how over 5,100 children have been placed into foster care because their parents were deported. This is one of those stories -- and it's particularly wrenching:

Every morning since the first of his three boys was born in 2007, Felipe Montes would wake early and prepare breakfast for his wife and children, get his boys ready for their day, change them, feed them and when he could not arrange a ride with another family member, drive them to daycare. Then he’d go to work at a landscaping company for the next 9 hours and return home in time to cook his children dinner. “I love my kids to death,” Montes said recently. “When they were born, it’s something so wonderful you can’t explain.” Now, Montes may never see them again.

In late 2010, Montes was deported to Mexico after nine years in the United States—cuffed and loaded into a van by federal immigration officials who drove him from his hometown of Sparta in the rural North Carolina mountains to an immigration detention center.

With Felipe Montes gone, his wife Marie Montes fell on hard times. She was pregnant with their third child and was surviving on disability payments that she received each month due to illness. Without Felipe’s income and support she could not keep her family afloat. Less than two months after their baby was born, just two weeks after Felipe was loaded onto a plane and deported to Mexico, the Allegheny County child welfare department took the children from Marie and put them in foster care.

Allegheny County has already convinced a judge to end family reunification efforts with Marie Montes. She wants the children to be placed with their father. “If they can’t be with me, I want them to be with him,” she said. “Nobody is a better father than he is.”

But next week, on February 21, the county’s Department of Social Services plans to ask a judge to cease all efforts to reunify the family and put the children into adoption proceedings with foster families. Though Felipe Montes was his children’s primary caregiver before he was deported and has not been charged with neglect, the child welfare department nonetheless believes that his children, who have now been in foster care for over a year, are better off in the care of strangers than in Mexico with their father.

For Montes, this feels tantamount to kidnapping.

Yes, that's right. The Allegheny County authorities want to strip Felipe of his parental rights. It is appalling. Presente.org has a petition aimed at those officals. You can sign it here.

Mike Riggs at Reason wrote a post about Felipe Montes and his family with a title that sums it up: The Most Vile and Inhumane Immigration Story You Will Read This Week. 

Watch ARC's video:

 

Posted 02/13/12 at 05:12pm By Mahwish Khan

Romney Advisor and Endorser Kris Kobach Shows His True Anti-Immigrant Colors at CPAC

Kris KobachThe Republican Party’s embrace of anti-immigrant extremism was on full display this past weekend in the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Among the loudest voices was none other than that of Kris Kobach, who is an endorser and advisor to Romney on immigration issues. Kobach is also the champion of the series of state-based anti-immigration laws in states such as Arizona and Alabama that show the real world consequences, costs, and impracticality of Romney’s stated “self-deportation” immigration policy goal.

Kris Kobach let his true extremist colors shine at CPAC last week.

While the more moderate calls for immigration reform were met with boos, Kris Kobach’s extremist rhetoric received loud support from a captivated audience. “If you want to create a job for a U.S. citizen tomorrow, deport an illegal alien today,” said Kobach. Simultaneously, the Kansas Secretary of State reasserted his support for Arizona and Alabama “papers, please” laws that illustrate the real world consequences, costs, and impracticality of Romney’s stated “self-deportation” immigration policy goal. Kobach’s vision is expected to result in an $11 billion price tag to Alabama.

Unlike those at CPAC, the Romney campaign, which was initially enthusiastic about Kobach's support, has distanced themselves since (seemingly) from Kansas' Secretary of State. But that's not the story Kobach tells. In an interview with Talking Points Memo, Kobach said, “Comparing my involvement from 2008 to 2012, I’ve been much more involved.” In response to the Romney campaigns’ relative silence with regard to Kobach’s role, he said, “I think you’ll find that most presidential campaigns are kind of hard for reporters to get to comment on all of their various endorsers…So the notion that a reporter doesn’t get a phone call returned, shouldn’t be taken as an implication of much of anything, really.”

Perhaps the Romney campaign is catching on to one thing: that aligning yourself with extremist allies has potential to do serious harm with general election voters.

Also in the news around Kris Kobach today: the authors of “We’re With Nobody,” the tell-all book about the opposition research side of campaigning, have identified Kris Kobach as one of their main subjects. According to the authors, Alan Huffman and Michael Rejebian, Kobach received “significant funding from a notoriously racist group” when running for the state’s 3rd congressional district in 2004.  The authors said they were talking about Kobach because he could assume a leadership role if Romney is elected, and they wanted people to know exactly who he is.  Said Huffman, “Michael and I are always excited to point the finger at racists…We were pleased, therefore, to discover that the Kansas candidate was also linked to the leader of a radical group that denigrated the region’s growing Latino population.” 

This isn’t the first time Kobach’s motivations and associations have been questioned, and it certainly won’t be the last.

Posted 02/09/12 at 01:51pm By Van Le

Backlash against Kris Kobach Grows as Support for Alabama’s HB 56 Anti-Immigrant Law Wanes

kris kobachAs HB 56, the notorious Alabama anti-immigrant law, faces more scrutiny, the backlash against its architect, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, continues to grow.

The state legislature which passed HB 56 has returned to session in Alabama, only to find a new study which posits that the law could end up costing the state $10.6 billion, activist groups  bent on recruiting the state’s powerful auto manufacturing industry to their anti-HB 56 cause, and a new bill from one of their own—State Sen. Gerald Dial, who originally supported HB 56—which would repeal many of the law’s provisions.

People are fed up with HB 56, and they know Kris Kobach is the one to blame.

From Mary Sanchez at the Kansas City Star:

The rebukes aren’t coming from his usual critics, those who display sanity about the federal reforms needed to effectively deal with illegal immigration.

No, Kobach’s supporters are barking back now. The legislators and taxpayers who bought into his schemes to make the lives of illegal immigrants so hellish that they “self-deport.”

The editorial board of the Press-Register in Mobile, Ala., accused Kobach of banking on exactly what happened there — costly court challenges and a wide-range of unintended consequences for legal residents.

“Alabama allowed itself to be used as a guinea pig on illegal immigration so that a Kansas lawyer could build his political career,” the editorial said.

So Alabama’s legislature has gone to work, figuring out how to rewrite or repeal the damage done by Kobach’s handiwork, measures passed in 2011.

On Monday, the Immigration Policy Center released “Discrediting ‘Self Deportation’ As Immigration Policy.” Yes, you can make life harsh for immigrants, but everyone else suffers, too. Economists predict Alabama’s gross domestic product will lose up to $10.8 billion as a result, and $57 million to $264 million more in state income and sales tax collections could evaporate.

Ouch. 

Furthermore, since GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney was so quick to embrace Kobach’s endorsement earlier this year, we predict that it’s only a matter of time before this blowback starts falling on him and his “self deportation” shenanigans, as well.

Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Posted 02/07/12 at 04:42pm By Mahwish Khan

Dear Mitt: Not That You Care, But to Latino Voters, Pete “Prop 187” Wilson Is Still “El Diablo”

Pete WilsonCalifornia Proposition 187 was a 1994 ballot initiative to prohibit undocumented immigrants from health care, public education, and other social services.

At the time, Gov. Pete Wilson was its most ardent supporter. And now, former Gov. Pete Wilson is Mitt Romney's. 

Yesterday, the Romney press camp sent out a statement touting the endorsement from the latest member of Mitt’s anti-immigrant task force:  

“I’m honored to have Governor Pete Wilson’s support, because he’s one of California’s most accomplished leaders,” said Romney.

And the feeling between the two is mutual. In the same press statement, Wilson waxes poetic about the former governor of Massachusetts, claiming that only Mitt has the qualities to “restore America's strength and credibility, and win back respect for America from both our friends and our enemies.”

Maybe not from your enemies, Wilson. Peter Wilson, who will serve as honorary chairman of Romney’s California campaign, is well known in the Latino community as “El Diablo,” which translates quite literally to “the Devil.” So hated was he that the bill he championed mobilized enough Latino voters to vote Democratic. California has been blue ever since.  According to the San Francisco Chronicle:

An analysis today on Univision, the Spanish-language network, passed around by the Democratic National Committee, speculated that the Wilson endorsement “could further wreck (Romney’s) reputation with Latino voters, the fastest-growing voting bloc, in the general election.”

Latino voters will play a key role in new battleground states like Colorado, Nevada, Florida, and Arizona.  On a press call, this Thursday at noon EST, pollsters and political experts will discuss how the issue of immigration has influenced politics since the days of Proposition 187; the numbers behind the Latino vote in key states like Nevada and Colorado; and the impact Latino voters will have on the general election. 

Will Mitt Romney’s embrace of Pete Wilson, Kris Kobach, and other luminaries in the anti-immigrant movement help him or hurt him in the general election?  What lessons do Republicans in these purple states need to learn from the California experience?  What does the name “Pete Wilson” mean to entire generation of Latinos—and how personal is the issue of immigration to Latino voters? 

The answer to these questions and more, here, on Thursday. Follow us on twitter for a live-tweet of the call. 

Posted 02/07/12 at 12:31pm By Van Le

Immigration Policy Center Report Investigates Consequences of “Attrition Through Enforcement”

going out of businessThe hot new immigration buzzword these days is “self-deportation” (recently made popular by Mitt Romney), also known as “attrition through enforcement,” and the Immigration Policy Center has a new report this week explaining the full, frightening reality of what it is. 

As the introduction to the report reads:

The plan is called “attrition through enforcement” (sometimes called “self deportation”) and the groups behind it have created a web of federal and state legislative proposals that seek to reduce illegal immigration by making it difficult, if not impossible, for unauthorized immigrants to live in American society. While individual proposals may appear to be relatively benign, they are part of a larger systematic plan that undermines basic human rights, devastates local economies, and places unnecessary burdens on U.S. citizens and lawful immigrants.

IPC’s blog at Daily Kos has more:

They say they’re just enforcing current law, but in reality, they are creating new laws new penalties for violating those laws.

While attrition through enforcement might, at first, seem more reasonable than mass deportation, the goal is the same—make sure all unlawfully present immigrants leave the US, regardless of how long they’ve been here, how rooted they are in their community, and how many US citizen family members they have. The result has been undermining human rights, devastating families and communities, hurting local economies and placing unnecessary burdens on all Americans.

While not every state legislator who is legitimately concerned with unauthorized immigration or who introduces an immigration-related bill is promoting a national strategy of attrition through enforcement, it’s not too hard to see that some state laws are part of an organized strategy. Arizona’s SB1070 says right in the law that the “intent of this act is to make attrition through enforcement the public policy of all state and local government agencies in Arizona.”  State Senator Scott Beason of Alabama stated that his recently passed law “attacks every aspect of an illegal alien’s life” and is “designed to make it difficult for them to live here.”  Alabama’s state Representative Mickey Hammon said his law “was not designed to go out and arrest tremendous numbers of people. Most folks in the state illegally will self-deport and move to states that are supportive of large numbers of illegals coming to their state.”

Read the report here.

Posted 02/02/12 at 05:25pm By Mahwish Khan

In NYT Editorial, DREAMer Explains the Real Meaning Behind Romney’s “Self-Deportation” Policy

New York In an op-ed today in the New York Times, Antonio Alarcon, a 17 year old DREAMer, describes living life without his parents who “self-deported” to Mexico. As he explains, "self-deportation" is a term that Mitt Romney made popular in a Florida GOP debate. But the idea has some harsh, real-life consequences, particularly for the 11 million undocumented immigrants who are living in this country. His story encompasses a good number of those tragedies. Here's an excerpt, but read the whole thing. It's really worth it:

ONE of my happiest childhood memories is of my parents at my First Communion. But that’s because most of my memories from that time are of their being absent. They weren’t there for my elementary school graduation, or for parent-teacher conferences.

From the time I was just a baby in Mexico, I lived with my grandparents while my parents traveled to other Mexican states to find work. I was 6 in 2000 when they left for the United States. And it took five years before they had steady jobs and were able to send for me. We’ve been together in this country ever since, working to build a life. Now I am 17 and a senior in high school in New York City. But my parents have left again, this time to return to Mexico.

Last week, when asked in a debate what America should do about the 11 million undocumented immigrants living here, Mitt Romney said he favored “self-deportation.” He presented the strategy as a kinder alternative to just arresting people. Instead, he said, immigrants will “decide they can do better by going home because they can’t find work here.”

But really this goes along with a larger movement in states like Arizona and Alabama to pass very tough laws against immigrants in an attempt to make their lives so unbearable that they have no choice but to leave. People have called for denying work, education and even medical treatment to immigrants without documentation; many immigrants have grown afraid of even going to the store or to church.

The United States is supposed to be a great country that welcomes all kinds of people. Does Mr. Romney really think that this should be America’s solution for immigration reform?

You could say that my parents have self-deported, and that it was partly a result of their working conditions. It’s not that they couldn’t find work, but that they couldn’t find decent work. My dad collected scrap metal from all over the city, gathering copper and steel from construction sites, garbage dumps and old houses. He earned $90 a day, but there was only enough work for him to do it once or twice a week. My mom worked at a laundromat six days a week, from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m., for $70 a day.

Here's the conclusion, but, again, read it all:

Immigrants have made this country great. We are not looking for a free ride, but instead we are willing to work as hard as we can to show that we deserve to be here and to be treated like first-class citizens. Deportation, and “self-deportation,” will result only in dividing families and driving them into the shadows. In America, teenagers shouldn’t have to go through what I’m going through.

No teenager should go through what Antonio Alarcon is going through. 

Posted 01/31/12 at 02:47pm By Van Le

NPR’s “This American Life” Broadcasts Comprehensive Look at HB 56, Alabama’s Anti-Immigrant Law

this american lifeMore on Alabama and the HB 56 anti-immigrant law today: This American Life at NPR radio has a great broadcast entitled “Reap What You Sow” – a comprehensive story about life in Alabama under HB 56.

“Attrition through enforcement is when you make life so difficult, so unpleasant for immigrants that they choose to go home, they choose to self-deport,” the reporter intones.  He himself travels to Alabama, where he finds a state that forces every police officer to be in the business of busting the undocumented, where every encounter between a person and the state government is turned into a checkpoint, where every single day to day transaction involves checking a birth certificate.

He speaks with State Senator Gerald Dial (R-13), who supported HB 56’s passage but now supports its repeal, saying that the law is chilling foreign business investment.  He talks with Tuscaloosa Police Chief Steve Anderson, who calls HB 56 a “waste of resources” – “because there’s actually crime in Tuscaloosa, and immigrants are not a criminal priority.”

“They’re not in my top 10, maybe not even in my top 20,” Anderson says. 

The reporter notes how “there is something hateful in the air now,” how documented and undocumented immigrants alike are stared at everywhere they go now, “as in, what are you still doing here?”

He speaks with undocumented immigrants, including one woman who was forced to “self-deport” herself and her U.S.-born children to Mexico in between the time he spoke with her and the time the story was ready.

He also has a chat with HB 56 sponsor, Alabama State Senator Scott Beason, as well as author of the bill Kris Kobach—who, despite everything, continue to champion the bill and defend its results.

Toward the end of the report, the reporter notes that Beason’s and Kobach’s goal of self-deportation “sounds so rational, so clean, like it’ll happen automatically.  You don’t have to do much, they’ll just go.  But of course it’s much messier, you’re talking about separating parents from their children.  It’s completely primal, the things that scare us most.  And that is the actual plan. To scare them.”

That’s HB 56, and the concept of self-deportation at work for you: ripping apart families and terrorizing immigrants in order to address a non-issue.

Listen to the full broadcast here.

Posted 01/31/12 at 11:27am By Mahwish Khan

In Wake of Federal Indictment of Four Officers, East Haven Police Chief Resigns

new haven officeFallout from the federal investigation of the East Haven, Connecticut police force continues. Yesterday, the Police Chief, Leonard Gallo, resigned. East Haven Mayor Joseph "I might have Tacos" Maturo, Jr. accepted the resignation calling it a "selfless act": 

Maturo told a Town Hall press conference packed with local, regional and national media that the decision, which Gallo informed him of on Friday, was “a selfless act designed to assist in the healing process” with the Latino community, some of whom police are accused of mistreating.

Gallo’s retirement provides “an opportunity for the town to move forward with the healing that is necessary given recent events, and most importantly an opportunity for the entire East Haven community to move forward as a unified group to embrace the changes that will follow,” Maturo said.

The New York Times provided reaction from activists and allies, including America's Voice Board Chair Henry Fernandez, who are more than happy to see Gallo go: 

Chief Gallo “cultivated a racist and dishonest police force,” said the Rev. James Manship, a priest at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church, whose efforts to document police behavior helped prompt the federal investigation.

Father Manship called for the local prosecutor, Michael Dearington, to review the convictions of people who had been arrested by the four indicted officers, and to seek to vacate those convictions that were “tainted by racial bias or other unconstitutional conduct.”

Local and national immigration groups also had strong comments.

“This is a real victory for racial understanding and a clear indication of the power of our community,” said Henry Fernandez, a spokesman for Reform Immigration for America, an advocacy group. He said the mayor should seek strong representation from the Latino community on the search committee for a new chief.

Though Mr. Maturo said the search process would be transparent, Mr. Fernandez said, “we would go further and demand that the Latino community should be involved in the selection process and the U.S. Department of Justice should participate as well.”

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