Some of us first heard of Hota Ferschke, a Japanese widow of American soldier, Sergeant Michael Ferschke, at the immigration reform rally held here in Washington DC, last Tuesday, October 13.
Her story was one of many heart-wrenching examples of our nation’s broken immigration system – something she and her mother-in-law, Robin Ferschke, have been fighting hard to fix.
The backstory?
It’s a love story, interrupted…Hota and Sergeant Michael Ferschke were married while the Sergeant was stationed in Iraq. At the time, Hota had just learned that she was pregnant with Michael’s child, adorable “little Mikee” pictured to the right. However, because they were married by “paper proxy,” and not in person, a 1950’s-era immigration law would not recognize the couple’s marriage. As Hota’s mother in law, Robin Ferschke, explains it:
The 1952 law says they have to consummate after marriage in order for her [Hota] to be married in the United States. They couldn’t consummate because my son never came back.
Sergeant Fershke tragically died in uniform, shortly after he and Hota were married.
Ronda Racha Penrice sums up much of the controversy we posted on earlier this evening in “Will movement to remove Lou Dobbs overshadow Soledad O’Brien’s Latino in America at CNN?”
For many Latinos, CNN’s Latino in America is not their primary concern; Lou Dobbs is. Immigration has long dominated the topics on The Lou Dobbs Show. Many within the Latino community, in particular, feel that Dobbs has used his show to fuel anti-Latino sentiments, contributing to hate crimes against Latinos, as well as ongoing rejection of Latinos within this nation.
At a special preview screening of Latino in America, held at the Woodruff Arts Center, Jerry Gonzalez, who heads GALEO, the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, didn’t keep his mouth shut during the post-screening discussion. Sitting only a few seats away from both O’Brien and Mark Nelson, a vice president and senior executive at CNN, Gonzalez, a selected panelist, represented many Latinos when he emphasized that CNN must dump Dobbs.
The sentiment is so popular that there’s even an anti-Dobbs website, bastadobbs.com. In fact, Latino in America is shaping up to be the battle cry to get Dobbs removed from CNN. Many Latinos are further enraged by reports such as that by Michael Colderone at Politico.com that CNN refused to air “Dump Dobbs” during the series.
That “Dump Dobbs TV ad” is our very own, by the way.
AOL Latino has a blog up with many of these concerns, by our Executive Director, Frank Sharry. Yes, it’s in Spanish– just to make Dobbs’ head spin. And yes, there are “Latino in America” ads displaying above and beside it. Here’s a snippet:
CNN nunca ha provisto cobertura del dañino papel que Dobbs ha jugado en generar un ambiente hostil y nocivo contra los inmigrantes que ha atentado a su vez contra la reforma migratoria integral.
Más aún, esta noche CNN presenta la primera parte de su serie “Latino in America”, un especial de cuatro horas sobre los logros de los latinos y los retos que enfrenta a diario la principal minoría étnica de este país. No obstante, la serie no menciona a Dobbs ni los insultos que por buena parte de las 260 horas de programación anual el presentador lanza contra los latinos al centro del publicitado especial.
The mounting efforts (including our “Drop Dobbs” TV ad) underway to hold CNN accountable for Lou Dobbs are clearly having an impact.
In their coverage of CNN’s “Latino in America” series, the Associated Press reports:
CNN is airing a four-hour special on Latinos in America this week that ignores its own commentator Lou Dobbs, whose persistent advocacy against illegal immigration has angered many Hispanics.
Some activists have started an anti-Dobbs petition drive, and an advocacy group’s effort to criticize Dobbs within the documentary was turned down by CNN. This week’s special has left many Latinos with mixed feelings: proud that CNN talks about issues important to them but disappointed the network isn’t addressing Dobbs’ position head-on.
The “Latino in America” documentary airs in two parts Wednesday and Thursday at 9 p.m. EDT, repeated at midnight.
Today may be the premier of Latino in America, but it is also a nation-wide day of action, organized by the folks at BastaDobbs.com.
Even the Glenn Beck show today made CNN look extreme for continuing to give a platform to Dobbs.
Andrea Nill of Think Progress reports in John Stossel: ‘I Don’t Subscribe To Lou Dobbs-Kind Of Rants About Immigrants Wrecking America:’
Latino and pro-immigrant activists have launched two campaigns, Drop Dobbs and Basta Dobbs, which are aimed at pressuring CNN to “to hold Mr. Dobbs to journalistic standards” or dump him altogether. Perhaps sensing an opportunity, Fox News’ senior vice president for programming, Bill Shine, is trying to court Dobbs over to Fox’s business channel.
However, it seems not everyone at Fox News will be welcoming Dobbs with open arms. The network’s newest addition, John Stossel, issued some scathing criticisms of Dobbs in a radio interview today with fellow Fox colleague Glenn Beck. Stossel indicated that he doesn’t support conservatives like Dobbs who rail on immigrants. Beck asked Stossel whether he is willing to “throw his vote away” and not vote for a Republican. Stossel firmly held that if “conservative means stop all immigration and some other things that conservatives say,” then he will not vote Republican:
STOSSEL: If it means the Lou Dobbs-kind of rants about immigrants wrecking America, I don’t subscribe to that. I think immigrants by and large do good things for America.
Stay tuned– this controversy for CNN isn’t going anywhere…
Yesterday, on a vote of 79-19 on the conference report on the Department of Homeland Security Fiscal Year 2010 Appropriations bill, the Senate repealed the “widow penalty” – a measure that was enacted 71 years ago, prohibiting a widowed, foreign spouse to file for citizenship (for themselves and their non-US citizen children) in the event that they had been married for less than two years. According to the New York Times:
The new provision does not directly address the government’s definition of marriage, but it allows foreigners married to Americans for less than two years to submit their own petition for residency within two years of the spouse’s death, as long as they have not remarried and can prove a good-faith marriage.
The law is also retroactive; any immigrant whose citizen spouse died less than two years after they wed, no matter how long ago, would have two years from the law’s enactment to petition for residency.
The news comes as relief to many advocates who have been fighting deportation cases on behalf of a segment of the population that clearly has the right to stay in the country. The Wall Street Journal reports:
“This utterly changes the lives of these immigrants,” said Brent Renison, an attorney who has been fighting widow cases for several years. “They will go from being in the shadows and fearing a knock on the door by an immigration agent to leading productive lives with their families.”
Last night, CNN’s Rick Sanchez called out Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, AZ, for admitting to racial profiling during his “crime suppression sweeps” of Latino neighborhoods.
Watch it:
At the end of the interview, Sheriff Joe basically thumbs his nose at Federal officials who have criticized Arpaio’s sweeps (despite renewing cooperation agreements with him):
SANCHEZ: You’re going to sit there and tell the feds, you don’t care what they say, you’re going to do it your way and you’re going to do it when you want to do it?
ARPAIO: No, they don’t tell me how to do my job enforcing state laws. I worked 25 years as a top Justice Department drug enforcement official. I think I know the federal law and how to operate under the federal blanket. So…
SANCHEZ: All right. Well, for the record, they’re saying you don’t and they’re saying you’re violating it.
ARPAIO: Then come on after me, if he thinks I’m violating any of — federal laws.
Sanchez gets it right when he says that not since Bull Connor has a confrontation between a local Sheriff and the federal government come to such a standoff. So, is it 2009 or 1963, when Bull Connor’s aggressive police tactics against blacks in the South sparked civil rights legislation?
Here is Arpaio’s interpretation of the law– straight from the previous interview with Rick Sanchez shown above. Arpaio is arresting people because of “the clothes they wear, their speech”:
SANCHEZ: Let me ask you a question. How do you know when you arrest someone that they’re illegal?
ARPAIO: Well, first of all, Rick, we do it pursuant to our duties. When we come across someone on another crime and we find out that they are illegal, we take action. If those that have not committed a crime, we had the training — we still do — we turn them over to ICE. It’s very simple.
SANCHEZ: But you just said you detain people who haven’t committed a crime. How do you prove that they’re not legal?
ARPAIO: It has to do with their conduct, what type of clothes they’re wearing, their speech. They admit it. They may have phony I.D.s, a lot of variables involved.
We’ve been reporting for some time now on Senator David Vitter (R-LA) and his divisive campaign to pass an amendment that would bar undocumented immigrants from participating in the census.
The New York Times has a must-read editorial today called, “How to Waste Money and Ruin the Census,” which lays out why, exactly, this is such a terrible idea:
As required by law, the Census Bureau gave Congress the exact wording of the survey’s 10 questions in early April 2008 — more than 18 months ago. Changing it now to meet Mr. Vitter’s demand would delay the count, could skew the results and would certainly make it even harder to persuade minorities to participate.
It would also be hugely expensive. The Commerce Department says that redoing the survey would cost hundreds of millions of dollars: to rewrite and reprint hundreds of millions of census forms, to revise instructional and promotional material and to reprogram software and scanners.
In other words, it ain’t gonna be cheap, gentlemen.
And it’s not going to be fair, either — especially when it comes to allocating resources to states with split-status populations.
Would Sen. Vitter be happy if we just counted 3/5ths of the immigrants in our country, maybe?
Today, national civil rights organizations joined NDN for a press conference in Washington, DC. They report in “Leading Civil Rights Groups Join NDN to Oppose Divisive Vitter-Bennett Amendment:”
Tuesday, October 20th at 11 am in Dirksen 406, the nation’s leading civil rights groups will join NDN for a press conference on Capitol Hill to announce their opposition to the divisive Vitter-Bennett Amendment aimed at undermining the 2010 Census. The Amendment, proposed by Senators David Vitter (R-LA) and Robert Bennett (R-UT), seeks to add an 11th question to the census forms (which have already been printed) that would discourage minority populations from participating in the census and thus threaten the accuracy of the count.
In his letter to Senators urging them to vote “no” on the proposed Amendment, NDN President Simon Rosenberg wrote,
While the Vitter-Bennett Amendment may appear innocent, its intent and practical effect on the census and reapportionment process is not. If enacted the Amendment would almost certainly disrupt an orderly census count next year, eventually found to be unconstitutional, all the while start ing a highly divisive conversation about race, the Civil War and the 14th Amendment in the very first year of America’s very first African-American President.
Now there’s even a brand new website “Don’t Wreck the Census” up about the battle, which urges action:
Call your Senator right now and tell them to to vote “NO” on Senate Amendment 2644.
The real truth behind Vitter’s amendment?
Anti-immigrant legislators like Vitter are willing to compromise the accuracy of the census in their obsessive efforts to inject an anti-immigrant agenda into every conceivable realm of public life. But the real policy ramifications are endless. If passed, this amendment would stop the 2010 Census dead in its tracks–preventing the questionnaire forms from being mailed next spring and wasting over $7 billion in research, planning, and preparation that has occurred for Census 2010. And of course, it would discourage millions of immigrants from participating in the 2010 Census–potentially costing hundreds of billions in lost funding to local communities and diminishing the political power of states like Texas, Arizona, California, New Mexico, Florida and Nevada with large immigrant populations.
