Immigrants unite to gain rights and legal standing(immigrants the right to vote)

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."

Loopholes in immigration enforcement
The final report by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States was issued with a unanimous endorsement of the commissioners.

By Elton Gallegly
July 25, 2004

"Unity of purpose and unity of effort are the way we will defeat this enemy and make America safe for our children and grandchildren," the commission stated.

I agree. This is not a partisan issue, it's an American issue. There is plenty of blame to go around, among political parties and branches of government, for the events that led up to Sept. 11, 2001. Our responsibility today is to learn from our mistakes so we can defeat our enemies today and into the future.

We went to war Sept. 11, 2001. As the commission noted, America lost more people in the 9/11 attacks than in the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, which launched us into World War II. This war is no less a fight for democracy and the right to live free of tyranny. We must win it. To do so, we must make ourselves strong here and across the sea.

One recurring theme throughout the commission's report was the ease with which the 9/11 terrorists were able to gain entrance into the United States and move about once inside. That is a lesson I fear we still have not fully comprehended: Foreigners infiltrated the United States with the intent to attack us.

While we have cracked down on our borders and are taking steps to better screen those who enter via our land, harbors and airports, our borders remain porous. We entice people to come here illegally by offering benefits and amnesties and, once they are here, we do next to nothing to find and deport them.

This is a tremendous hole in our security. All of the 9/11 terrorists violated at least one immigration law. Some had operated in the United States unimpeded for more than a year -- even being stopped by law enforcement and let go because they had driver's licenses, which were illegally and easily obtained. Their right to be in this country was never challenged.

But it goes beyond just the 9/11 terrorists. Mahmud Abouhalima, a leader of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was legalized as a seasonal agricultural worker as part of the 1986 amnesty. Once legalized, he made several trips to the Afghanistan/Pakistan border, where he received the terrorist training he used in the bombing. Yet, we're talking about another amnesty.

At least eight terrorists held jobs for extended periods while living in the country illegally before taking part in terrorism, including those involved in the 1993 Trade Center attack, the plot to bomb New York landmarks and the Millennium plot. Yet, we still don't enforce our workplace laws.

"The (9/11) conspiracy made extensive use of banks in the United States. ... Their transactions were unremarkable and essentially invisible amid the billions of dollars flowing around the world every day," the commission concluded.

Yet today, banks and local jurisdictions throughout the United States accept as legitimate identification consular identification cards issued by foreign governments, which are easily forged and serve as the gateway to gaining other identification. Airlines accept consular IDs to get on a commercial flight. And, contrary to media reports, it's not just Mexico that issues the cards. Dozens of countries are in the process of issuing consular cards to their illegal citizens in our country. Some states -- including California -- allow or are considering allowing illegal immigrants to gain driver's licenses. This is insanity in a post-9/11 world.

"The most important failure was one of imagination," the commission concluded. "We do not believe leaders understood the gravity of the threat."

It doesn't take much imagination to see how terrorists could use the gaping loopholes that still remain in our immigration enforcement.

If poor, uneducated workers and their families can easily sneak into the United States, do we have any doubt that sophisticated, well-financed terrorists -- possibly carrying weapons of mass destruction -- can also breach our border?

Every level of government has to strictly enforce the policies and laws already in place. Had those laws been enforced, every one of the 9/11 hijackers would have been denied a visa, stopped at the border or apprehended inside the United States. That is the overriding lesson of the 9/11 attack. To ignore it is to ignore the lessons we should have learned.

-- Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Simi Valley, chairs the International Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Human Rights Subcommittee. He represents the 24th Congressional District, which covers portions of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

US Offers Citizenship To 7000 Ahiska Muslims

Several Ahiska Muslims packing to leave for the US

By Damir Ahmed, IOL correspondent

KRASNODAR, Russia, July 24, (IslamOnline.net) - The United States has agreed to grant citizenship to 7,000 Ahiska Muslims who will be settled in Pennsylvania, reported a Russian newspaper on Friday, July 23.

The first 11-strong batch of the Ahiska Muslims, living in the Russian province of Krasnodar, left for Geneva on Thursday, July 22, before flying to Philadelphia, reported Novie Izvestia.

It added that the Muslims would be housed near the grand mosque in Philadelphia.

The paper recalled that Krasnodar governor Alexander Tkachev was notified of the American decision on February 15.

Izvestia said the Russian government does not treat Ahiska Muslims as citizens and has not therefore given them passports or IDs.

An official in Krasnodar administration had told Interfax on Tuesday, July 20, that of the 11,999 Ahiska Muslims living in the region, 4,943 have received Russian citizenship and 744 have embarked on Russian naturalization procedures.

He added that more than 5,000 others have expressed a desire to emigrate to the United States.

Earlier, Chingiz Neiman-zade, chairman of Vatan, a Meskheti Turks association based in Georgia, said the United States had offered to accept the Ahiska Muslims living in Krasnodar as immigrants.

"On February 16, the International Migration Organization began an information program in Krasnodar to explain the terms for the resettlement of the Ahiska Muslims in the U.S.," he told Chicago Tribune on Thursday, July 22.

"The immigrants will be provided with housing and furniture, they will be helped to learn the English language and to complete formalities needed for residence in the US, which is especially important, and have been promised life-long welfare allowances for pensioners and the disabled."

Happiness

Ahiska Muslims were happy with the American offer.

"This decision marks a great change in our life", said Tepeshon Swanidze, leader of the Ahiska Muslim community in Russia.

"We thank the US administration for its humanitarian decision", he added.

Ahiska Muslims , originally hailing from Anatolia, were exiled from their homeland after Russia seized the region of Ahiska following its 1828-1829 war with the Ottoman Empire.

Many Ahiska Muslims were forced to seek refugee in Erzurum in eastern Turkey after being persecuted by the Russian Cesar for supporting the Ottoman Empire.

Facing a similar fate under the notorious Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, Ahiska Muslims fled to Uzbekistan in 1944.

One year later, they went to Azerbaijan where they currently reside.

Turkish and Azeri parliamentarians had recently appealed for an international intervention to pressure the Georgian government into allowing the return of Ahiska Muslims.

Ahiska became part of Georgia in 1918.

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