Dan Kowalski’s Commentary http://www.ijjblog.org/ To strengthen news media coverage about justice and injustice, IJJ seeks to help journalists bring context, depth and diversity of perspectives to news coverage and commentary about complex justice issues. We also seek to make exemplary journalism accessible to the public across all media. We hope to raise the standing of justice issues in the field of journalism, ensuring that media decision makers nurture high-quality news coverage. en Copyright 2012 Sun, 16 Oct 2011 16:32:32 -0600 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=3.2ysb5-20051201 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Beyond the Alabama Law, It's the Looks October 16, 2011.

By Dan Kowalski

Even if H.B. 56, Alabama's tough new immigration law, is struck down by the federal courts - an outcome made more likely by an interim ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit - irreversible damage to the state's Latino population already may have been done.

Consider these comments in a recent news report (AP, Oct. 15, 2011) -

"Nelly Tadeo, a legal U.S. resident from Mexico, said she notices icy stares in Walmart and feels like whites and blacks are wondering if she is legal and pays taxes.  “Even if the law gets canceled, Alabama is not going to be the same. Now, people are just looking at you like, ‘You’re an illegal immigrant,’” said Tadeo. “I think that’s permanent. A lot of people never thought about who was illegal, who was legal before. Now that’s what they’re thinking about.”"

Alabama, devastated by the tornadoes in Tuscaloosa and elsewhere, needs every able-bodied worker to help rebuild.  But construction firm owners report that the fear generated by the Alabama law has driven away even fully documented workers.

The state's agricultural sector has been hit hard as well.  John McMillan, Alabama's Commissioner of Agriculture and Industries, reported crops rotting in the fields for lack of workers.  When farmers try to replace immigrant workers with locals, most of  the new hands leave the job by lunch. 

Many Latinos will stay in Alabama, due to family, school and business ties.  Some will suffer in silence, but on Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2011, many immigrant-owned businesses closed in boycott to protest the law and to illustrate the importance of Latinos to the state's economy.

Others will join the exodus, "refugees," if you will, not from the violence or poverty south of the border, but from the legal cold-shoulder H.B. 56 represents.  Immediately following the issuance of the Eleventh Circuit's order, Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, (D-IL-4) posted a press release on his website offering a welcome to Chicago "as a suitable destination to anyone choosing to flee Alabama."

"I offer anyone in Alabama an alternative.  When Alabama was not a viable location for African-American families to raise their children back 40, 50 and 60 years ago, many came north to my city of Chicago as part of the Great Migration and revitalized and reinvented Chicago.  Already, as Hispanic families are seeing no future for themselves in Alabama regardless of their immigration status or even U.S. citizenship, we are seeing some follow the same trail from Alabama to Chicago.  We need all the good, hardworking, and conscientious people we can get in Chicago so Alabama's loss is our gain."

Is this the wave of the future, Latinos being driven from state to state, all being made to feel unwelcome due to the legal status of some?  Here's looking at you, Alabama.]]> http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/10/beyond_the_alabama_law_its_the.html http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/10/beyond_the_alabama_law_its_the.html Dan's Column Sun, 16 Oct 2011 16:32:32 -0600 New hotline a clearinghouse for advice for immigrants facing deportation "In response to an acceleration of deportations — nearly 400,000 people last year — immigrant advocates in Chicago on Monday plan to formally unveil a legal aid and assistance hotline that during a monthlong test period received calls for help from as far away as California from people who had learned of it through word of mouth.

The hotline — 855-435-7693 or 855-HELP-MY-F(amily) — is modeled after ones for homelessness or domestic violence, where volunteers take calls around the clock and guide callers to help."

ANTONIO OLIVO in the Chicago Tribune, Sept. 19, 2011.

]]> http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/09/new_hotline_a_clearinghouse_fo.html http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/09/new_hotline_a_clearinghouse_fo.html Latest Immigration Stories Tue, 20 Sep 2011 09:55:45 -0600 Border Security After 9/11: Ten Years of Waste, Immigrant Crackdowns and New Drug Wars "In his groundbreaking 2001 study of border enforcement, "Border Games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide," border scholar Peter Andreas rightly observed that border policing has "some of the features of a ritualized spectator sport," noting that the game metaphor reflects the "performance and audience-driven nature" of the politics of border control. As the politics of border security in Texas and Arizona so well illustrate, "secure the border" is a rallying cry that energizes constituencies, catapults politicians to office and produces a steady stream of Fox News appearances for prominent border security hawks. It also diverts the debate over border policies far away from any reflective discussion of the structural causative factors producing the border crisis."

TOM BARRY in Truthout, Sept. 11, 2011.

]]> http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/09/border_security_after_911_ten.html http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/09/border_security_after_911_ten.html Latest Immigration Stories Mon, 12 Sep 2011 09:24:51 -0600 Complaints Of Legal Fraud Against Immigrants On Rise "Complaints of fraudulent and unethical legal advice that can result in the deportation of immigrants are becoming more common in Iowa, according to a state official and immigration attorneys."

JENS MANUEL KROGSTAD in the Des Moines Register, Sept. 11, 2011.

]]> http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/09/complaints_of_legal_fraud_agai.html http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/09/complaints_of_legal_fraud_agai.html Latest Immigration Stories Mon, 12 Sep 2011 08:59:14 -0600 Business Owners Sue Over H-2B Prevailing Wage Hikes "If he cannot hire guest workers, he said, the chain of lost jobs and income for local people would run back to the alligator and crawfish farmers whose crops he would not process and forward to the restaurants that serve his products. That sequence is what Louisiana employers said they hope to avert with the lawsuit. “This is a showstopper,” said Frank Randol, who runs a crawfish business and a Cajun restaurant in Lafayette and represents the Crawfish Processors Alliance, one group in the suit. “In 40 years I’ve been in this business, we’ve faced just about everything,” he said, “but now we are facing our own government trying to shut us down.”"

JULIA PRESTON in the New York Times, Sept. 12, 2011.

[Disclosure: I represent dozens of H-2B employers who would be hit hard by these wage hikes.  Dan Kowalski]

]]> http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/09/business_owners_sue_over_h2b_p.html http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/09/business_owners_sue_over_h2b_p.html Latest Immigration Stories Mon, 12 Sep 2011 08:09:21 -0600 S-Comm Stats Troubling Most detained under Secure Communities have scant or no criminal records, data show.

JENS MANUEL KROGSTAD in the Des Moines Register, Sept. 10, 2011.

]]> http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/09/scomm_stats_troubling.html http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/09/scomm_stats_troubling.html Latest Immigration Stories Mon, 12 Sep 2011 07:26:28 -0600 Hope For Human Trafficking Victims "In 2007, the last year for which there are official estimates, as many as 17,500 people were brought into the United States as human trafficking victims, according to the Department of Justice. Most were used for forced labor or forced sex or both.

And those crime victims have been treated in the same manner as illegal immigrants, people who can be forced to return to countries and circumstances that often helped launch their sad journeys.

But that may be changing."

YVETTE CABRERA in the Orange County Register, Sept. 7, 2011.

]]> http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/09/hope_for_human_trafficking_vic.html http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/09/hope_for_human_trafficking_vic.html Latest Immigration Stories Fri, 09 Sep 2011 07:07:31 -0600 DHS Pushes for Border Fence in Floodplain "The Department of Homeland Security is pushing for 14 miles of border wall to be built through Hidalgo and Starr counties even though it could flood U.S. towns and violate a treaty with Mexico."

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE, Texas Observer, Sept. 7, 2011.

]]> http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/09/dhs_pushes_for_border_fence_in.html http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/09/dhs_pushes_for_border_fence_in.html Latest Immigration Stories Thu, 08 Sep 2011 11:11:41 -0600 Borrowed Hands Does the H-2A guest worker visa program make it easy to exploit farmworkers?

DAVID BACON in California Lawyer magazine, Sept. 2011.

]]> http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/09/borrowed_hands.html http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/09/borrowed_hands.html Latest Immigration Stories Thu, 08 Sep 2011 11:01:52 -0600 Deportation Policy Shift Hasn't Trickled Down To Border Patrol "It means the “left hand isn’t aware of what the right hand is doing,” said Carlos Spector, Lara’s El Paso-based attorney. "I think it’s important to note that this [directive] has not reached the lowest levels of ICE... because [Border Patrol agents] are still picking up pregnant women.""

JULIAN AGUILAR on the Texas Tribune, Sept. 7, 2011.

]]> http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/09/deportation_policy_shift_hasnt.html http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/09/deportation_policy_shift_hasnt.html Latest Immigration Stories Wed, 07 Sep 2011 10:31:26 -0600 Immigration Cases May See Delays As Deportations Prioritized

"A shift in prioritizing which immigration cases to prosecute for deportation has created hope, some of it false, among those living in the country illegally."

GINNIE GRAHAM, Tulsa World, Sept. 6, 2011.

]]> http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/09/immigration_cases_may_see_dela.html http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/09/immigration_cases_may_see_dela.html Latest Immigration Stories Tue, 06 Sep 2011 07:10:04 -0600 Deported To An Unknown 'Home' The heartbreaking - and chilling - story of refugees deported to homes they've never known, due to retroactive immigration laws.

SARAH HOY on CNN, Sept. 1, 2011.

]]> http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/09/deported_to_an_unknown_home.html http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/09/deported_to_an_unknown_home.html Latest Immigration Stories Sun, 04 Sep 2011 09:17:09 -0600 Bad Record-Keeping Prolongs Detention Of Wrongfully-Deported U.S. Citizen "Andres Robles, 22, was released yesterday evening from the Lafourche Parish jail without explanation, "They just pulled me out and told me I was getting released," he told me today from his parents' home in Thibodeux, Louisiana. He was really happy to be back in his old bedroom, where he would have been living the last few years if DHS had not unlawfully deported him in 2008, ignoring the fact that he had derived U.S. citizenship from his father in 2002."

JACQUELINE STEVENS, Sept. 2, 2011.

]]> http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/09/bad_recordkeeping_prolongs_det.html http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/09/bad_recordkeeping_prolongs_det.html Latest Immigration Stories Sat, 03 Sep 2011 09:00:00 -0600 Hispanic Republicans of Texas "It’s expected that Latinos will be the majority in Texas in about a decade. Yet the state has one of the lowest Latino voter turnout rates in the country. That is why the GOP is making a play for permanent political dominance in the Lone Star State. In collaboration with the Texas Observer, reporter Melissa del Bosque has this profile of Juan Hernandez and the Hispanic Republicans of Texas PAC."

LatinoUSA, Sept. 2, 2011.

]]> http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/09/hispanic_republicans_of_texas.html http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/09/hispanic_republicans_of_texas.html Latest Immigration Stories Sat, 03 Sep 2011 08:04:08 -0600 Deportation Reviews Raise Hopes For Some "Now immigrants around the country are trying to find out how the review of nearly 300,000 deportation cases will actually work. The administration has said it would try to identify immigrants considered low-priority — including students, the elderly, victims of crime and people who have lived in the U.S. since childhood.

Many immigrants expressed hope that their cases would qualify, but immigration attorneys and advocates urged caution until more details are known."

PALOMA ESQUIVEL, Los Angeles Times, August 28, 2011.]]> http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/08/deportation_reviews_raise_hope.html http://www.ijjblog.org/2011/08/deportation_reviews_raise_hope.html Latest Immigration Stories Mon, 29 Aug 2011 07:18:26 -0600