Title should read:
Immigrants ILLEGALS unite to gainSIEZE UNLAWFULL rights and UNDESERVED legal standing.
Witha little help from their freinds of course:
and the
DEMOC
Posted on 07/25/2004 8:41:30 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
Meet Emilia Otero, Socorro Campos and Stacy Kono. They are on the front lines of local movements that disregard the esoteric political debate of immigration policy and deal with the reality of an ever-growing immigrant population.
Sometimes they are an individualwith a good heart -- Otero; a businessman with a memory of his own hardships -- Campos; or an advocate who works with a nonprofit -- Kono.
But, in myriad ways, individuals, alone or through nonprofits and elected officials, are working to give immigrants -- documented or not -- legal standing.
In short, if Washington is still fiddling with new immigration legislation, these local initiatives that include voting rights, the ability to get a business license, a bank account and pay in-state tuition, are pushing ahead, reshaping local ordinances and state laws to recognize a new reality.
"The United States has had the highest period of sustained immigration in its history," said Louis Desipio, a political scientist from the University of California at Irvine. Indeed, 48.6 percent of the country's foreign-born residents arrived after 1990, according to the U.S. Census. And the percentage of the population that is foreign born, close to 12 percent, is approaching the historic highs of nearly 15 percent in 1890 and 1910.
Michele Wucker, a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute in New York, said there are two reactions to those numbers. "There are alarmists who spew lofty principals about what an American and citizenship should be and then there are people on the ground who are interested in getting everyone who lives in communities to understand that they are not only allowed, but expected to make a commitment to the place they live," she said.
Increasingly, from the Bay Area to New York, those people on the ground are effectively changing the ways in which immigrants are treated.
"There's been legislation passed at the city level and at the local level which clearly acknowledges the huge influx of immigrants in New York and recognizes those human beings as needy and deserving of social services," said Ray Hayduk, a professor of political science at the Borough of Manhattan Community College of New York.
Hayduk pointed to local legislation to protect immigrants from unscrupulous consultants and an executive order to insure that immigrants, regardless of their status, have access to city services.
Most recently, there's been an upswing of cities looking to give immigrants the right to vote in some local elections. San Francisco approved a measure last week that will be on the November ballot, Washington, D.C.'s City Council attempted to pass a similar law this month, and New York City is now working on legislation to extend the vote. Already, immigrants can vote in several cities including Takoma Park, Md. and Chicago.
But the building movement to offer immigrants the right to vote is only one of many initiatives that acknowledge the large number of immigrants. These measures are not without opponents. The politics around drivers' licenses for undocumented immigrants in California is a case in point. So are the voting initiatives that have roused argument and lawsuits. Nevertheless, there have been real gains on the local level, immigration specialists said.
Wucker pointed out that even the business community -- which has long looked at the immigrant community as little more than cheap labor -- is now also waking up to its consuming potential. To this end, institutions like Citibank, Bank of America and their competitors are developing programs to attract the immigrant. These include making it easier to bank in the United States with identification cards issued by the consulates and to send remittances to family abroad, she said.
Often these efforts to change laws and link the immigrant to the legal world have modest beginnings and revolve around labor issues. Take for example, Otero, a Mexican immigrant who has lived in Oakland for 40 years. Having successfully raised her children, she said, "I had a moral obligation to give back to my community." So, enlisting the help of her daughter, Shelly Gaza, she began working with the fruit vendors.
Over a two-year period that included Otero flying to Guadalajara, Mexico to buy pushcarts at a reasonable price, she and others successfully changed city law to recognize both the fruit vendors and taco and tamale trucks.
When she started, Otero said, everyone told her, "it's just not possible." But slowly, with help from businessmen like Campos, who runs Otaez, a popular Fruitvale restaurant, and elected officials like Ignacio de La Fuente, also an immigrant, the fruit vendors moved from the parallel world of the immigrant to the above-ground economy.
In November, two city ordinances confirmed the new status on the fruit vendors and taco and tamale trucks.
At 7 o'clock on a recent morning, Otero watched the now-legal enterprises as some packed fruit at a health department-approved commissary. They were the late shift. Immigrants who run the tamale trucks arrived at 4 a.m. and had already left to catch their morning customers.
Spanish was spoken, but profit and loss was the lingua franca. Vendors like Georgina Coria Arvizu sounded like any small business owner. After taxes and permits, she said, shaking her head, it's tough to make more than $800 a month.
Arvizu is a legal resident, but many of the new immigrants don't have legal residency, and the community that reaches out to them hardly cares, immigration specialists said.
"There's an enormous influx of workers who can't normalize their status and an enormous demand for their labor," said Janice Fine, a senior researcher for the Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Community Change.
Fine studies work centers like the Asian Immigrant Women Advocates in San Jose and Oakland. In many ways, she said, the centers echo the settlement houses founded by Jane Addams in the late 1800s that helped the immigrant with labor, language and social issues. But before the 1920s, the immigrant's legal status was not an issue. Nowadays, the work centers face the additional task of helping immigrants who may be undocumented and fearful for their position.
In Oakland, Kono, the program director, and her associates work with the Asian low-income women who are among the 3,600 garment workers in Alameda County.
"We let them know their rights and we can refer them to legal resources if they want to file a complaint," Kono said. Since the federal government now forbids the Legal Aid Society to use federal funds to help undocumented residents, Fine said, other nonprofits have emerged. In Kono's case, she sends her clients to the Asian Law Caucus for help.
Kono said her organization's forte is mobilizing the women to advocate for themselves. "The angle that we use is that the immigrant workers contribute to the local state and community level and so we also need to give back to them," she said. As a result, the women organized to get a health and safety project on ergonomics and were able to win a $25,000 grant from the city to pursue the work.
Fine said that when she first started studying the work centers in 1992, fewer than five existed. Now, more than 133 work centers have opened across the country and she estimated that as many as 10 to 20 new ones will be added each year.
"Their first function is to teach workers that they have the same rights as all American workers," Fine said. "Employers are not supposed to hire them, but once they do, they are supposed to stick to the laws."
Say what?
Employers are not suppose to break the law but once they do they are not suppose to break laws? What does it say about the newspaper's employee who chose that punch line to end her typing?
Well, all this has told me one thing, businesses owned by or that employ ILLEGAL aliens cannot be trusted. If they can rationalize their behavior I cannot trust them.
Mierda del toro.
what does that mean? :D
Literally, it means sh!t of the bull.
P.S. I know more than the Magic 8-Ball does. =:0
hehehehe there's a lot of BS in that article... I'd love to pick it to death when I come home from work!
Here's one illegal who didn't get his workman's comp once his employer found out he was illegal. Maybe things are looking up.
Appeals Court Ruling Limiting Workers Comp For Illegal Aliens Stands
July 24, 2004
LANSING, Mich. (AP) -- The state Supreme Court has declined to decide a workers compensation case brought by an illegal immigrant, allowing an appeals court ruling to stand that permitted benefits for the period before his illegal status was discovered, but not afterward.
The case involved Mexican immigrant David Sanchez, who was hired at Eagle Alloy Inc., a foundry in Muskegon, in 1997 with a fake social security number and driver's license. He was partially disabled after an accident crushed and burned his hand in 1998, and he was let go in 1999 after the company learned of his illegal status.
He later applied for and received workers compensation benefits for his injury. But the company appealed, arguing that he had violated a provision of Michigan law that requires recipients of workers compensation not to be imprisoned or committing crimes.
The state Court of Appeals ruled that while Sanchez is considered an employee entitled to workers comp, he may only receive it up until the day when his employers discovered he was in the country illegally.
"Essentially, Michigan law says if you're partially disabled, you get workers comp until the employer learns you're an illegal," said Thomas Cypher, a lawyer for Eagle.
A message seeking comment was left with a lawyer for Sanchez.
Cypher said states around the country are grappling with how to handle illegal immigrants seeking workers comp, and that the Michigan appeals court decision restricting the benefits could be an important example, along with the law's provision staking the benefits on a worker's legal status.
The Supreme Court said its decision Friday that it is no longer thinks it should review the questions, although it already had accepted the case and heard oral arguments from the lawyers involved. [sic]
Justice Stephen J. Markman disagreed with the decision to pass on the case, arguing that is has important implications for the thousands of illegal workers in Michigan, and for what he called "the rule of law and the meaning of citizenship."
"The issues in this case are substantial ones and of considerable importance to our state. They affect large numbers of Michigan statutes, they implicate legal principles of the highest order, and they are likely to become increasingly significant in the years ahead," Markman wrote in a three-page dissent.
"Otero, a Mexican immigrant who has lived in Oakland for 40 years. Having successfully raised her children, she said, "I had a moral obligation to give back to my community."
Ms. Otero, you have an obligation, for sure and it's to this country and that includes protecting our borders from ILLEGALS.
ILLEGALS!!!!!!!
ping
I think CRIMINAL INVADERS to our country should be
treated the same as a CRIMINAL INVADER in your home!
Title should read:
Immigrants ILLEGALS unite to gainSIEZE UNLAWFULL rights and UNDESERVED legal standing.
Witha little help from their freinds of course:
and the
DEMOC
Immigrants don't have same rights as citizens (naturalized or otherwise) and those who work here illegally are criminals, as well as those who would employ them. Both should be jailed.
Immigrants can petetion their own governments about rights, and those here illegally should be deported. If you don't wanna play by the rules, then take your lazy a$$es back from whence you came and see what kinda "great" life you can lead there.
Obviously not an enormous demand for their labor if they have to be allowed to sell tacos on the street. Just what we need --- tamale street vendors.
Our laws must be changed to adapt to their culture ---- next you'll have vendors shoving $10 Rolex watches they're pushing you to buy everytime you try to walk down a street. Or chicklet salesmen selling at every street light ---- everyone needs to look at Mexico and decide if that's really how this country should look.
Being allowed to vote in Mexico and the US certainly divides their loyalties about which country deserves the commitment.
A half assed commitment from criminals is not what America wants or needs.
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