Immigration: September 2009 Archives

In a new media world, we are often evaluating the role "old" media has to play in communication. And the discussion is prompted by some important questions: how do we create dialogue? with who and where? using what tools?

While I'm very excited about the possibilities new technology has to offer (texting, blogs, iPods), I have a special appreciation for "old" formulas that work like Radio Bolsa's "Youth and Education" show in Orange County.

Every Wednesday night at 7pm, the hosts of Youth and Education, a program aimed at Vietnamese immigrant parents looking for help in guiding their kids through the US education system, answer questions and talk about issues ranging from financial aid to online bullying.

From the LA Times article:

The show reaches out to parents like John Nguyen, 48, who immigrated to the U.S. in his 30s and is now raising two sons who go to Ethan Allen Elementary School in Garden Grove. Nguyen, his wife and mother-in-law listen to the radio show every week.

"The show brings up topics that I never thought of before," said Nguyen, who owns a graphic design business. "I never went to high school or middle school here, like a lot of Vietnamese parents. That's why there are a lot of things we don't know."

Nguyen said he had learned about after-school programs, programs for gifted students and how to prepare students to transfer to other schools. Nguyen, a PTA member, has also been a guest on the show, encouraging Vietnamese parents to volunteer at schools.

Univision's Jorge Ramos has been one of the only journalist in the U.S. to remind Obama about his promises of comprehensive immigration reform in the first year of his presidency. Last week, when Obama was running through the major network circuit discussing healthcare proposals, Ramos went off the beaten path and asked Obama a question we here at RaceWire have also been wondering about: Why is Obama using the term "illegal" now.

During the election Obama used the term "undocumented immigrant" but lately he's adopted the term "illegal immigrants."

via Univision

Jorge Ramos Now, in your speech to Congress you used the words "illegal immigrants." However, and I remember very clearly, during the campaign you were very careful to use the words "undocumented immigrants". Why the change? You said words matter. Now, why do you choose to use the language that is being used by...

President Obama
Well, keep in mind...

Jorge Ramos
...those who criticize immigrants.

Last Week, about 150 leaders in Salvadoran communities across the United States met at the the First Salvadoran American Leadership Summit in Washington.

The group planned to lobby Congress about a path towards citizenship for those in the community without papers and talk about clear issues they could all agree to work on together.

Salvador Sanabria of Salvadorans in the World told the Washington Post:

"We're not here to look for unity, because unity is a romantic dream that is hard to reach. We're here to come to this round table without hierarchy to find a consensus about the actions we can take to help our community."

One issue they all could agree to work on was getting full citizenship for about 200,000 Salvadoran immigrants who were given temporary legal status after the 2001 earthquake. They agreed this should be a top priority in any immigration reforms. Overall, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, 47 percent of Salvadorans are undocumented.

Read the rest of the Washington Post story here.

Pictured above from left to right: Víctor Ramírez, Walter Tejada and Ana Sol Gutiérrez with other Salvadoran politicians. Photo taken by Alfredo Duarte Pereira for El Tiempo Latino.

Via Feministing comes the story of Simone Davis, a 17-year-old native Briton described as "an aspiring elementary school teacher and devout Christian." Simone's grandmother Jeannie, her legal guardian and a US citizen, has been trying for the last decade to get Simone US citizenship while the two of them have been living in Florida.

So what's the holdup? Immigration law requires Simone to be vaccinated against human papillomavirus (HPV), a sexually transmitted disease, with Gardasil, a vaccine that even doctors don't trust. Simone, understandably, sees no need and a lot of risks in Gardasil, and doesn't understand why it's not required of any of her fellow Florida classmates.

Simone and Jeannie sought a religious and moral waiver from all vaccines -- there's no way to seek a waiver from just one vaccine -- and were rejected. Local churches helped raise the more than $1700 to cover the fees for Simone's permanent residency status, and the Davises say they can't afford the $585 to appeal the waiver rejection, much less the prohibitively expensive vaccine.

So what does this mean for Simone?

It means she's facing separation from her family and deportation back to a country that she has no ties to, for the crime of refusing to pay to put her health and her life at risk. Simone and Jeannie are up against an immigration system that employs dangerous, sometimes deadly, double standards. And by fighting it, she's drawn attention to another double standard -- that of the 'good immigrant.'

From ABCNews.com:

When Gardasil was added to the vaccine list last year, it drew anger and protests from immigration advocates, who argued that it placed an unfair financial burden on women. A three-shot series of the vaccine can cost between $300 and $1,400.

Some health care policy experts suggested the requirement was excessive and unnecessary. Of the 14 required vaccines, 13 are designed to combat infectious diseases that are considered highly contagious. But Gardasil targets a virus spread through sexual contact.

Though 18 states are currently debating whether to make the vaccine mandatory [for all residents], none, so far, require it.

"I am most definitely surprised and I would love to know how it ever became policy," said Dr. Jacques Moritz, director of gynecology at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York City. "I wonder if the drug company could have had any influence."

"It's a voluntary vaccine, and for the U.S. government to make it a mandatory decision to come to this country is crazy," he told ABCNews.com. "It has no public health value that has been shown."

...

"Nothing is more important to [Gardasil manufacturer] Merck than the safety of our medicines and vaccines," she told ABCNews.com. "We are confident in the safety profile of Gardasil."

The company garnered $1.4 billion in sales last year.

Since the beginning of the healthcare debate, Sarah Palin has publicly decried the end-of-life option in healthcare reform as a “death panel." She wrote about it on Facebook and recently went off about it in China. But what she doesn’t know is that as she ranted in Hong Kong, a group of undocumented patients in Georgia had already gone up against the panel and, like many undocumented people before them looking for medical care, got some really, really hard news.

Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, GA told 51 poor and undocumented patients in its outpatient dialysis clinic that they needed to leave by this Saturday. Another 40 patients who have papers, but no money to afford treatment elsewhere, will be following them.

The Fulton County court ordered for the hospital to be closed saying they were not convinced that the patients, suffering from failing kidneys, had a constitutional right to the court’s relief, leaving the patients and their families in devastation.

Senator Vincent Fort with the Grady Coalition Advocacy group put it frankly:

“People are talking about death panels. The real death panels occurred here at Grady, when people were told to go and die.”

The media has circulating a haunting figure in recent days:45,000 deaths due to lack of health insurance—a grim marker of the depth of the country's health care crisis.

The statistic, from a new study by Harvard School of Medicine researchers, reflects projections based on government data on more than 9,000 individuals tracked over a number of years. Basically, we live in a country where about 46 million people don't have health coverage, and drawing from government medical and census data, researchers calculate that this trend was tied to “approximately 44789 deaths among Americans aged 18 to 64 years in 2005.” The link between insurance and death held steady even after controlling for various socioeconomic, racial and health factors.” (A handy chart tells you how many of those dead folks are from your home state.)

But when you factor those other characteristics in, a different sort of picture emerges. In the study sample, the Black uninsured rate, 23 percent, was nearly double that of whites. Nearly half of Mexican Americans were uninsured. Interestingly, the death rate for Blacks was significantly higher compared to Whites, but not for Mexican Americans.

"In the shadow of the raid" is a short documentary by Greg Brosnan and Jennifer Szymaszek that looks at the aftermath of last years Postville, Iowa raids.

via Street Dog Media

When the US government stormed a Kosher meat plant in the American heartland, arresting nearly 400 undocumented workers, a Guatemalan village wept. The biggest immigration raid in US history severed an economic lifeline to one of the poorest corners of the Western Hemisphere while pushing an Iowa farm town to the brink of collapse.

Documentaries like "In the shadow of the raid" have the potential to change public support of deportations because we don’t often hear about the impact on families, friends and communities of the workers who were detained.

The film will be premiering at the Morelia International Film Festival, in Mexico between Oct. 3 and Oct. 11, but we at RaceWire can't wait for it to come to the other side of the border.

By Nezua, Media Consortium Blogger

As the immigration debate grows increasingly tense and intertwined with economic worries, cultural anxiety, and deep-seated racism and xenophobia, it is important to be clear about what's at stake. This debate is about our humanity; about our most fundamental legal precepts concerning a human rights; about refusing to exploit the weak. Put simply: Human beings have rights that cannot be taken away by the stroke of a pen, rap of a gavel, or by angry pundits who demonize the disadvantaged.

RaceWire reports on a new campaign to push back against CNN's Lou Dobbs, who continually presents immigrants as bearers of disease, inherently criminal, socially corrosive. His hate speech contributes to hate crimes by extension.

Pundits like Dobbs have long been able to remain under the radar, but seem to be losing their ability to keep their personal agendas within the bounds of acceptable speech. Presente.org is launching a new campaign that works "with dozens of leading Latino organizations and ... allies in cities across the country — from Los Angeles to Phoenix to Orlando." Presente.org and their allies are banding together to "demand that CNN no longer allow Dobbs to spew hate thinly disguised as 'news.'”

We must not lose our moral bearing during difficult times. Let us be reasonable, as Alvaro Huerta is. Writing for the Progressive, Huerta notes how quickly the media leaped upon Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst, and yet all avoided "The central question: Why shouldn't undocumented people get health care?" If the undocumented pay taxes; if they have "historically contributed to making this nation the most powerful and affluent country in the world," then they shouldn't be denied access to care.

Media Matters has brought us this gem from the September 22 broadcast of The Lou DobbsShow, in which he takes denounces Roberto Lovato, founder of presente.org and Colorlines contributor, as "a typical left-wing activist coward propagandist."

Have a listen:

Dobbs declares that Lovato is "trying to deny my rights... while turning over this country to those who have no regard for our laws, for our rules and customs. And the legal foundation of this country. I mean, Mr. Lovato, you're a joke!... I consider you to be an outright fraud."

Who'd have thought that Lovato, of all people, would be the one to finally drive Dobbs to take up the mantle of equal rights? ARC has never been prouder of our unparalleled team of propagandists.

The Obama administration has promised to streamline immigration enforcement by targeting actual criminal offenders, as opposed to just civil immigration law violations (think more smuggled oozies, fewer expired tourist visas). But in Iowa, according to an investigation by the Des Moines Register, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) really needs to work on its aim:

The numbers show 67 percent of those detained—84 of 125 people from February to May this year — had no previous criminal offenses....

One-third of those arrested were not considered fugitives, the new statistics show. People are categorized as fugitives if they did not heed a previous court order to leave the country.

ICE spokesperson Tim Counts acknowledged that the vast majority of "fugitives" were "non-criminals," but said, "While we focus on the worst offenders, we are charged with enforcing the nation's immigration laws."

From our friends at Presente.org.

This week, the CNN anchor broadcast his radio show from the conference of anti-immigrant hate group FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Founded by a white nationalist, FAIR was linked earlier this year to vigilantes in Arizona who brutally murdered 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father in their home.

The appearance at FAIR is just the latest example of Dobbs using his status as a CNN anchor to spread fear about Latinos and immigrants. It's time we said ¡Basta! Enough is enough. Please join us in demanding that CNN drop Dobbs from its network:

BastaDobbs.com/Action

Dobbs' network, CNN, calls itself "The Most Trusted Name in News." But Dobbs has shown that the only thing he can be trusted to do is to spread dangerous, false myths about immigrants, to give airtime to extremists, and to use dehumanizing and disrespectful language towards our community.

For example, Dobbs has blamed Latino immigrants for an alleged leprosy epidemic that was widely debunked, and has insinuated high crime rates by Latinos falsely claiming "illegal aliens" make up a third of the prison population. Dobbs also regularly hosts extremist guests like FAIR, the Minutemen, and Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who he called "a model for the whole country."

The Dobbs threat to Latinos is real. Here is how Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center described it to us:

How dangerous is Lou Dobbs? The rise in hate crimes against Latinos coincides almost exactly with the time Dobbs has been propagating false conspiracy theories about Latinos on the air. He’s not urging people to go hurt and kill - but that is the effect of what he does.

To fight back against Dobbs, Presente.org is launching a new campaign, working with dozens of leading Latino organizations and our allies in cities across the country -- from Los Angeles to Phoenix to Orlando. We are joining together to demand that CNN no longer allow Dobbs to spew hate thinly disguised as "news."

Please join us in saying "¡basta!" and ask your friends and family to do the same. It only takes a moment:

BastaDobbs.com/Action

Thank you and Adelante!
The Presente.org team

For more on Presente.org's campaign against CNN's continued support of Lou Dobbs, check out Roberto Lovato's article at the Huffington Post.

By Nezua, Media Consortium Blogger

The immigration debate seems to be rushing forward on its own timetable—and without a structured frame to guide it, the effort is damaged from the start. As Rev. Luis Cortés, Jr., of Esperanza USA said during a call with media members yesterday, Democrats and Republicans are "running toward the harshest positions to show they can be the hardest on those who are the weakest."

Worse yet, silence from the White House has left the stage empty for "Right wing and anti-immigrant groups to shape this conversation," according to Eric Rodriguez, Vice President of National Council of La Raza (NCLR) Now, "politics are driving policy" conversations, thanks to radical pundits, teabaggers, and Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC).

On September 9, Wilson heckled President Obama during a joint session of congress. "It was the shout heard 'round the world (at least the country)," according to Versha Sharma of Talking Points Memo. What spurred this blatant display of hostility and disrespect? The President's truthful statement that undocumented persons would not be covered as part of health care reform. Wilson has since apologized, albeit insincerely: He continues to appear before cameras to defend his outburst. Not only that, but Wilson has lied about his professional expertise: He was never an immigration lawyer, despite his claims to the contrary.

Oddly, the White House didn't rebuke Wilson—it capitulated. The Washington Monthly reports that "The White House on Friday said it would bar illegal immigrants from purchasing health coverage through a proposed insurance marketplace," a measure the author, Steve Benen, categorizes as "wildly unnecessary." Obama won't please the likes of Wilson even if he outlaws the Spanish language. Creating a roadblock to health care by "preventing people who are already here from buying their own insurance with their own money" will simply shift the debt to the public at large. The truth of the matter is that preventative and regular treatment is much less costly than emergency room visits, where all taxpayers will shoulder the cost. It's a puzzling move that has already spurred strong reaction from groups like NCLR, America's Voice and individuals like Cortés, who asserted in yesterday's call that "Congress has lost its moral barometer."

In a piece for New America Media, Marcelo Ballve calls Wilson's outburst "quite appropriate," in the sense that his words, intention and energy are harbingers of the coming debate about immigration reform. No matter the issue, no matter how civilly Democrats approach it, "Republicans, and not a few Democrats, will scapegoat illegal immigrants for many of the nation’s problems." But is the White House prepared for a debate that is bound to be "even more rancorous than the bile-filled health care fight"? Given how rapidly the White House retreated in the face a red-faced liar, it's an important question.

We talked a couple of weeks ago about NASA astronaut Jose Hernandez's historic shuttle voyage. Since he's touched back down to Earth, the story has gotten more interesting, as Hernandez has refused to be repudiated by NASA for speaking his mind on the need for comprehensive immigration reform.

From the LA Times:

After the shuttle returned Friday, Hernandez told Mexican television that he thought the United States should legalize the millions of undocumented immigrants living there so that they can work openly because they are important to the American economy.

Officials at NASA flipped. They hastened to announce that Hernandez was speaking for himself and only for himself.

"It all became a big scandal," Hernandez later told television viewers. "Even the lawyers were speaking to me."

...

"I work for the U.S. government, but as an individual I have a right to my personal opinions," he said in a video hookup from a Mexican restaurant owned by his wife, Adela, near NASA headquarters in Houston. "Having 12 million undocumented people here means there's something wrong with the system, and the system needs to be fixed."

He added that it seemed impractical to try to deport 12 million people. In the earlier conversation, he spoke of circling the globe in 90 minutes and marveling at a world without borders.

Hernandez, whose first language was Spanish, grew up picking cucumbers and tomatoes in the fields of California's San Joaquin Valley. His parents, Salvador and Julia, had migrated from Mexico to Northern California in the 1950s in search of work. They eventually became U.S. citizens and raised four children, including Jose, the youngest.

What do you think? Why don't we hear more often about members of the Latino community openly advocating for immigration reform?

by Andrew Grant-Thomas, Deputy Director, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity

Last September in Chicago, I saw a play called “Amor de Lejos,” which is Spanish for “love from afar.” It was performed by a theater company of high school students, and offered a few short but vivid slices from the grueling lives of Mexican and Central American day laborers in Chicago.

Watching it was one of the most moving and provocative experiences I’ve had in some time. Not simply because the performances themselves were so wonderful. Not just because these 14, 15, and 16 year-old students had conceived, researched and written the play themselves. And not even only because the real stories the students told were so compelling.

No, the piece made such an impression on me in large part because I realized in watching that I had so rarely seen anything like it in any format -- the lives of poor, mostly undocumented, Latino immigrants, rendered holistically and with compassion.

What these student-actors brought home that night was that these men -– all the narrators were men -- have histories, aspirations, people they’ve left behind, people they long to see again. These would seem to be obvious points, no? But the truth is that our national context for discussions of immigration over the last several years -- the national “immigration debate” -- typically abstracts away from the textures of the lives and decisions of those at its core. The stories made clear that the day laborers sacrificed a great deal to get to the United States and accepted the terrible risks of doing so with eyes wide open. Surely it’s incumbent on us to better understand why.

The popular “bottom line” argument that undocumented immigrants are, by definition, “criminals who must be treated accordingly” must ring at least somewhat hollow when assessed against the deeply humanistic testimony to which these Chicago students gave voice. It is both remarkable and shameful that such testimony plays so small a part in our national dialogue.

Tuesday was Joe “You Lie” Wilson's day of reckoning. Following his temper tantrum during Obama's address on healthcare reform, the House, by a 240-179 vote, issued this stinging rebuke:

Whereas on September 9, 2009, during the joint session of Congress convened pursuant to House Concurrent Resolution 179, the President of the United States, speaking at the invitation of the House and Senate, had his remarks interrupted by the Representative from South Carolina, Mr. Wilson; and

Whereas the conduct of the Representative from South Carolina was a breach of decorum and degraded the proceedings of the joint session, to the discredit of the House: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives disapproves of the behavior of the Representative from South Carolina, Mr. Wilson, during the joint session of Congress held on September 9, 2009.

News With Nezua | Sept. 07, 2009 | 287g from nezua on Vimeo.

If you're like me, you know where you stand on the immigration debate (i.e. as far away as possible from the old white dudes with guns and American flags), and you've got no questions about the immorality of a system that keeps people vulnerable to exploitation and inhumane treatment. But the legal ins and outs of immigration policy itself can be hard to keep straight, no matter how familiar one is with the policy's consequences.

Fortunately for you and me, Nezua is here to help. In addition to his excellent blogging at The Unapologetic Mexican, Nezua's started a weekly video feature with La Frontera Times, 'News with Nezua,' to discuss immigration news, and to talk about what it means to be Latino. And, in this one, to explain the ramifications of U.S. immigration policy's 287(g) provision, which deputizes local police into Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Spoiler alert: they're not good ramifications!

And of course, you can also read Nezua's Weekly Immigration Wire updates right here on RaceWire. Thanks to Nezua -- and much respect to everyone who keeps us informed on the issues, and arming us to fight lies with truth.

The New York Times ran an editorial last week that observed: “Illegal immigration is an all-purpose policy explosive. Toss it into any debate and, boom, discussion stops because you’ve got people afraid that benefits or services might be going to those who don’t deserve them.”

Over the weekend, the tea-partiers were out in force fanning the flames of xenophobia at the National Mall in Washington D.C. protesting everything from taxes and government, to health care reform and anything they could associate with Obama and foreigners—especially immigrants.

Lest you think the Tea Party Express rally was simply a convergence of random racists, Eric Ward at the Chicago-based Center for New Communities provides some historical and institutional context of how white nationalist forces are well-connected to this current conservative movement. Ward writes:

“Now, coming on the heels of the march on Washington D.C., a group with ties to white nationalism, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) will enter the Capitol in an attempt to influence congressional lawmakers. In Special Bulletin: Pulling the Curtain Back on FAIR released in early September the civil rights organization Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reports that “From September 14-16, 2009, FAIR will host its annual ‘Hold Their Feet to the Fire’ conference, to broadcast its dangerously xenophobic message to Congressional Representatives and the American public.”

Haw haw! That Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC)! Yelling at the President, like a real clown! What a chump! That's no way to get things done HEY HUH WHA

"We really thought we'd resolved this question of people who are here illegally, but as we reflected on the President's speech last night we wanted to go back and drill down again," said Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), according to Time. The incident reportedly has led Finance chairman Max Baucus to insert a provision in his legislation to require participants in the health insurance exchanges to provide proof of citizenship. (TPMDC, and here)

What? But that loophole didn't exist in the first place -- undocumented immigrants could buy insurance with their own money (of course), but weren't eligible for any subsidies.

Right now it's not clear exactly what this new legislation would mean, should it make it into the combined version of the bill. But the lack of distinction between documented and undocumented immigrants is troubling, as is barring the undocumented from the President's proposed 'pool' of residents using their collective power to bargain with insurance companies. Forget subsidies for a second, and imagine how much more heft that group would have if the undocumented were a part of it! Everyone would benefit (except the insurance companies)!

And then there's the disenfranchising effect of having to produce even more paperwork to get promised subsidies. Ezra Klein says:

It's a very bad idea because the people you most need to reach — low-income folks, and the unemployed, and legal immigrants — are the least likely to have easy access to documentation and the most likely to get scared off by a lot of paperwork requirements. Any illegal immigrant interested in defrauding the government can get some forged papers and participate, just as happens now. But plenty of the people we actually want to participate will be barred because they haven't updated their ID recently, and they lost their Social Security card years ago.

Klein has since edited this post, since it's been clarified that documentation would be required for subsidies, not just to purchase insurance, which would be an absolutely nightmare. But what he's describing here will apply to the subsidy application process too. It punishes the people that we claim we're doing this to benefit.

Also, Ezra, why are you still saying "illegal" instead of "undocumented"?

By Nezua, Media Consortium Blogger

We're coming to the close of the year in which President Obama said that immigration reform would be a priority. But to date, the Obama administration has only extended harsh immigration enforcement provisions put in place by the Clinton or second Bush administrations. These punitive pieces of legislation include E-Verify, a 100% detainment policy, the Secure Communities initiative, and the infamous 287(g) agreement. Cumulatively, they do not reflect a workable philosophy on immigrants, society, or the U.S. economy. Instead, this enforcement agenda destabilizes communities with police persecution and terror.

As Christopher W. Ortiz writes for AlterNet, "Comprehensive immigration reform is large-scale systemic reform encompassing all aspects of social, political and legal life here in the United States." Ortiz, a police sargeant and criminal justice lecturer, presents an enforcement-heavy view of immigration reform, yet he does not agree with the current system of patchwork, or "band-aid" legislation. It is "a system of haphazard enforcement and piecemeal policies" that are "usurped" in some areas of the country and fully "ignored" in others. Ortiz calls for "a complete overhaul of the immigration system, from entry to citizenship."

But on all fronts, the White House is rapidly backing away from anything resembling a systematic overhaul. On the same day that the E-Verify mandate went into effect, as Daphne Eviatar reports for The Washington Independent, Dora B. Schriro, the woman appointed to overhaul detention system, left the Obama administration to run New York's jails. Shiro's sudden departure is another stall for meaningful reform of the nation's growing network of detention systems.

In another article, Eviatar highlights some of the issues that make E-Verify controversial. "In the middle of the toughest job market in decades, the administration has chosen to erect another roadblock to gainful employment for U.S. workers," Eviatar writes. But is it a roadblock to economic growth or simply to justice? The cash still flows, but the stream is diverted to the growing detention industry. Productive members of our society are simply shifted into incarceration. Instead of earning money to spend in their communities, the funds are redirected to the Corrections Corporation of America, and to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The recent mass firings at American Apparel also punishes productive workers in favor of harsh immigration enforcement. M. Junaid Levesque-Alam at Wiretap tries to find the logic, and justice, in these firings. The Los Angeles-based clothing manufacturer let go of 25 per cent of its workforce due to pressure from a federal immigration probe. Levesque-Alam doesn't find logic or justice in the Obama administration's approach to immigration—only the hypocrisy of Obama's use of a Cesar Chavez rallying cry—"Sí Se Puede!"—to gain Latino votes. "When a corporation can offer vulnerable people better prospects than the most respected elected officials, then something is very wrong with liberal policy—or the lack thereof," Levesque-Alam writes.

I enjoyed President Obama’s speech last night, and I want to especially thank Representative Joe Wilson for eliminating any possibility of a cogent Republican response.

But I’m not satisfied with the new health care plan by any means, and find it especially troubling that the sound of every undocumented person in the United States being thrown under the bus was “YOU LIE.” As if this were a Good Thing. That we’ve been reduced to fighting for a healthcare plan that violates the sanctity of the principle that we all deserve to be healthy, regardless of whether or not we hold citizenship. As if the next time I witness an auto accident, my patriotic duty is to check everyone’s immigration status before I call an ambulance.

The real lie here is that we’re all illegal, and there’s no way of reframing this to make it anything but the truth. The United States began as a colony by a colonial empire, yet we behave as if we’ve always been here. As if the sins of our past conquest make us better than the crisis of globalization we’ve helped to create and the people caught within it. The whole notion of “illegal” is an artificial construction designed to dehumanize, deprioritize and deport without any tugging on our American heartstring. I’m not an “illegal” because I’ve run a red light, pirated software, cheated on taxes, or am Queer – because these actions don’t violate the notion that I’m still an American citizen. But take away that citizenship, built on a false sense of global security and conquest, and somehow I’m not human?

The problem, to me, is simple: for all of President Obama’s talk about the “character of America,” one of the greatest demonstrations of our country’s character was completely debased: compassion.

Perhaps the most talked-about moment of President Obama's address to Congress last night followed the dismissal of rumors that the new health care plan would cover 'illegal immigrants.' Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) was so outraged that he yelled, from the floor, "You lie!" In an instant, Wilson was willing to breach protocol, embarrass himself, and undermine his party — because he was so infuriated by the idea that Obama's plan might provide care to a certain group of people.

Why is our conversation around immigration so often driven to extremes, both of language and of policy? In this video, Rinku Sen takes the term 'illegal' to task, showing how it's been used to make us comfortable with the suffering and exploitation of millions of undocumented immigrants.

More in the Word! video series:

"Reverse Racism": Word Distracts from the Big WHite Elephant of Systemic Racism
"Colorblind": Word Twists Good Intentions
"Merit": Word Hijacks the Conversation Around Race

Ta-Nehisi Coates has said some stuff I really dug about the fallacy of approaching racism as though it's a solely interpersonal problem that's solvable overnight. That said, I think he's not addressing the whole picture when he says:

I think a lot of us see a racial angle in a white South Carolina congressman yelling at the President and interrupting his speech to the nation. I'm not prepared to go there. Knowing this country, it's history, and some of South Carolina's particular history, I have my suspicions. But I hate these arguments in which we try to go back and forth over a contention, that's basically unprovable.

What would have happened if Obama was white? The truth is, I don't know.

I agree with every bit of that. But, Wilson's unfortunate track record aside, the conversation about racist interpersonal frames is a cheap distraction from the real live racism at play here.

Just who was that shrill voice heckling the President from the gallery at tonight's healthcare reform speech?

None other than Joe Wilson, Republican of South Carolina and vaunted protector of American borders and American values. Wilson's latest contribution to the civic discourse was shouting “You Lie!” in response to Obama's umpteenth reiteration that nothing in the emerging reform legislation would extend healthcare to undocumented immigrants.

Carl Hulse of the New York Times reports that even White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, a notorious Washington hardass, seemed taken aback:

“No president ever has been treated like that, ever,” Mr. Emanuel told reporters.

Well, we've never had a president quite like this one, have we?

Wilson's sneering outburst, hardly his first, clearly ignores the fact that the Obama administration has bent over backwards to deny that its reform plan would accommodate undocumented immigrants. But what else besides thin air might be informing Wilson's allegation?

In American households, the divide between the home and the workplace is always evolving, and immigrants are shaping that evolution more than we know.

Immigrant women workers today form a pillar of the middle-class family. As nannies, housekeepers and other domestic workers, their status is defined by the strangely intimate nature of their work combined with structural discrimination. A new study presents their hidden plight in a new light: as a driver of the advancement of the mothers they serve.

An economic study by Heinrich Hock of Florida State University and Delia Furtado of the University of Connecticut analyzes the immigrant labor market in household services (primarily child care, cooking, and housekeeping) and its impact on college-educated non-immigrant women. Predictably, they found that when privileged women have a cheap source of help at home, they gain freedom in other aspects of their lives.

By Nezua, TMC Mediawire Blogger

Many immigration reform activists feel stymied and frustrated by the Obama Administration's approach to immigration. Because the administration has not clearly denounced the racially-based violence and sentiment fueled by groups like FAIR and pundits like Lou Dobbs, it appears to be ignoring the individuals in need and siding with the powerful players, like the detention industry, or grossly negligent lawmen like Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

So what can an advocate, activist, or even a conscientious citizen do to make a difference during this period of government inaction? Have hope and take action yourself! As Eric Ward of Alternet writes in "Seven Days to Beat Anti-Immigrant Bigotry," "You can take a bite out of bigotry in less than five minutes a day!"

Ward's essay helps replace a potentially overwhelming sense of frustration with concrete, attainable and clearly defined actions. He put it together because a friend wrote him in sheer frustration, and asked him what she could do—without having a whole lot of time on her hands. She works 60 hours a week as a florist, but was determined nonetheless: "I don't want these bigots to have the last word."

The Washington Independent's Daphne Eviatar reports that 521 different civil rights and advocacy groups sent a letter urging the President to "immediately terminate" the infamous 287(g) program, which deputizes local police to carry out federal immigration duties. The program is currently being investigated by the Department of Justice for racial profiling and civil rights violations. This is great news! As we reported in the August 20th Wire, only a few voices were speaking out against postponing immigration reform. Now there are many.

RaceWire reports on the coalition of "immigrant, racial justice and civil rights advocacy groups" that have signed on to the letter, and describes the 287(g) program as a "disturbing hallmark of the Bush administration's law-and-order approach." Michelle Chen describes ground zero for 287(g)'s implementation—Arizona's Maricopa County, where Sheriff Joe Arpaio is at the helm—as a "warzone."