Labels: immigration

Since Senator Russell Pearce became president of the Arizona Senate this year he’s ushered in a barrage of anti-immigrant legislation, most famously the assault on the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship. Now the original sponsor of the infamous SB1070 has introduced a new bill that should attract even more notoriety. This one has the ominous overtones of being all but guaranteed to cause great harm and even death to some of the people in this state.

Senate Bill 1405 reads as follows:

A. BEFORE A HOSPITAL ADMITS A PERSON FOR NONEMERGENCY CARE, A HOSPITAL ADMISSIONS OFFICER MUST CONFIRM THAT THE PERSON IS A CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES, A LEGAL RESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OR LAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES. THE ADMISSIONS OFFICER MAY USE ANY METHOD PRESCRIBED IN SECTION 1-501 TO VERIFY CITIZENSHIP OR LEGAL STATUS.

B. IF THE ADMISSIONS OFFICER DETERMINES THAT THE PERSON DOES NOT MEET THE REQUIREMENTS OF SUBSECTION A OF THIS SECTION, THE ADMISSIONS OFFICER MUST CONTACT THE LOCAL FEDERAL IMMIGRATION OFFICE.

C. IF THE HOSPITAL PROVIDES EMERGENCY MEDICAL CARE PURSUANT TO FEDERAL REQUIREMENTS TO A PERSON WHO DOES NOT MEET THE REQUIREMENTS OF SUBSECTION A OF THIS SECTION, ON SUCCESSFUL TREATMENT OF THE PATIENT THE ADMISSIONS OFFICER MUST CONTACT THE LOCAL FEDERAL IMMIGRATION OFFICE.

D. A HOSPITAL THAT COMPLIES WITH THE REQUIREMENTS OF THIS SECTION IS NOT SUBJECT TO CIVIL LIABILITY.

What this means is that anyone who is admitted to or receives emergency care at a hospital will have to prove that they are lawfully present in the United States. This of course presents a whole hornet’s nest of problems-- the least of which is hospitals will most likely not appreciate being saddled with the added responsibility of immigration enforcement.

Labels: assholes, hypocrisy, immigration, wingnuttia

Labels: Greedy Republican Bastards, hypocrisy, immigration

Labels: American Idiots, immigration, lunacy, racism, Republican brownshirts

Labels: American Idiots, immigration, pwned

Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan was detained for two hours for questioning at a U.S. airport before being released by immigration authorities, a news agency report said Saturday.

Khan, one of the Indian film industry's biggest stars, said he was detained because his name came up on a computer alert list at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, Press Trust of India news agency said.

"I told them I am a movie star," Khan was quoted as saying.

The reported detention made top news on TV stations in India.

Khan said he was able to message a lawmaker in India who asked the Indian embassy in Washington to seek his release. Khan was let go after embassy officials intervened, the agency said.

In New Delhi, U.S. Ambassador to India, Timothy J. Roemer, said the U.S. Embassy was trying to "ascertain the facts of the case - to understand what took place."

"Shah Rukh Khan, the actor and global icon, is a very welcome guest in the United States. Many Americans love his films," Roemer said Saturday through an embassy spokesman.

Khan, 44, has acted in more than 70 films, and has consistently topped popularity rankings in India for the past several years. He is in the United States to promote his new film, "My Name Is Khan."

Labels: Bollywood, Department of Homeland Security, idiocy, immigration

An outspoken anti-immigration activist from Everett has been arrested in Arizona in connection to a deadly home invasion robbery.

Shawna Forde, the executive director of the Minutemen American Defense, is one of three accused in the shooting deaths of 29-year-old Raul Flores and his daughter, 9-year-old Brisenia Flores, at their home in Arivaca, Ariz., a town 10 miles north of the Mexican border.

Two others - 34-year-old Jason Bush and 42-year-old Albert Gaxiola - were arrested. All three have been charged with two counts of first-degree murder, one count of first-degree burglary and one count of aggravated assault.

According to the Pima County Sheriff's Office, two men and a woman posing as police officers forced their way into the Flores ' home in the middle of the night on May 30.

It is not known exactly what transpired next, but Raul Flores and his daughter were shot and killed. The girl's mother was wounded and is recovering in a local hospital, deputies said.

Investigators believe the killings were premeditated by thieves looking for drugs and money.

On Thursday a tip led detectives to Bush, who was in a hospital in the Kingman area receiving treatment for wounds he allegedly sustained during the robbery.

On Friday deputies arrested Forde and Gaxiola in Sierra Vista and Tucson, respectively.

Investigators believe Forde masterminded the home invasion robbery, which Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik described as "evil" and "heinous."

"It was a planned home invasion where the plan was to kill all the people inside this trailer so there would be no witnesses," he said. "This is perhaps the most despicable crime that any of us in this organization has ever been associated with."

Moments after her arrest, Forde turned to news cameras and denied involvement in the deadly robbery with the words "No, I didn't."

But the sheriff described the woman as a dangerous, unstable person.

"If you look at her history closely and you know what we know, she's, at best, a psychopath," Dupnik said.

The mission of Forde's group is to secure U.S. borders and coastal boundaries from unlawful entry, as well as to "increase the awareness of the devastation caused by illegal immigration to our state and country," according to the group's Web site.

MAD sends volunteers to the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona for the purpose of "gathering exclusive footage of drug cartel drug smuggling and humane trafficking (sic)," Forde wrote on the site.

The far right wing has been laying the groundwork for violent action for decades. Long before they turn dangerous, political and religious groups take their first step down that road by adopting a worldview that justifies eventual violent action. The particulars of the narrative vary, but the basic themes are always the same. First: their story is apocalyptic, insisting that the end of the world as we've known it is near. Second: it divides the world into a Good-versus-Evil/Us-versus-Them dualism that encourages the group to interpret even small personal, social, or political events as major battles in a Great Cosmic Struggle -- a habit of mind that leads the group to demonize anyone who disagrees with them. This struggle also encourages members to invest everyday events with huge existential meaning, and as a result sometimes overreact wildly to very mundane stuff.

Third: this split allows for a major retreat from consensus reality and the mainstream culture. The group rejects the idea that it shares a common future with the rest of society, and curls up into its own insular worldview that's impervious to the outside culture's reasoning or facts. Fourth: insiders feel like they're a persecuted, prophetic elite who are being opposed by wicked, tyrannical forces. Left to fester, this paranoia will eventually drive the group to make concrete preparations for self-defense -- and perhaps go on the offense against their perceived persecutors. Fifth: communities following this logic will also advocate the elimination of their enemies by any means necessary, in order to purify the world for their ideology.

All these ideas have been part of the discourse on the right for decades. You can trace their genesis all the way back to the 1950s, starting with the overheated apocalypticism of the anti-Communist movement. Over time, it came to include the dualism of the John Birch Society and assorted white supremacist groups; the persecution complex of Nixon and his Silent Majority followers; the anti-liberal eliminationism that's been gathering force for the past decade; and the war on evidence-based science and reason that's always been at the heart of conservative arguments. As J. Peter Scoblic argues in Us vs. Them, narratives that justify violence have always been deeply ingrained in the right-wing belief system.

Since the Inauguration, all of these themes are being played far more loudly and openly. And somewhere between November 4 and this 100th day, the right wing has also begun to act on these beliefs in ways that push the whole process to the next level -- the level where thoughts and beliefs begin to crystallize into action.

Labels: bigotry, immigration, right-wing hatemongers, violence, wingnuttia

Republican members of Congress have been trying to subtly raise questions about Sonia Sotomayor’s objectivity — simply because of her non-traditional race, gender, and upbringing. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) said today that he is concerned Sotomayor has shown “personal bias based on ethnicity and gender.” Similarly, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) said in a statement today that Sotomayor may be subject to the “undue influence” of her race and gender:

Of primary concern to me is whether or not Judge Sotomayor follows the proper role of judges and refrains from legislating from the bench. Some of her recent comments on this matter have given me cause for great concern. In the months ahead, it will be important for those of us in the U.S. Senate to weigh her qualifications and character as well as her ability to rule fairly without undue influence from her own personal race, gender, or political preferences.

Responding to Inhofe, The American Prospect’s Dana Goldstein writes, “Yes. Because the worldviews of John Roberts, Sam Alito, John Paul Stevens, Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, and Antonin Scalia are not impacted at all by their white male identities. White men are raceless and genderless, haven’t you heard?”

Labels: Barack Obama, immigration, Latinos, Supreme Court

"I'm astounded that this issue is being trotted out again. Based on what I saw in 2004 and 2006, it's a scare tactic."

Who's that speaking? And what's he talking about?

That's fired US Attorney David Iglesias talking about the news leaked today that the DOJ and FBI are opening a nationwide investigation into allegations that the community organization ACORN is somehow working to undermine the November election through fraud. For more from Iglesias and his fellow fired US Attorney Bud Cummins, don't miss TPMMuckraker's Zack Roth's interview post from earlier this evening.

Iglesias got fired not long after the 2006 midterm election because he wouldn't get off the dime and bring bogus vote fraud indictments against Democrats or time other indictments of Democrats to sway the 2006 election. In other words, he got canned for not doing what a number of his former colleagues at the DOJ are happily doing this very day.

Nor was Iglesias simpy a respected attorney with solid enough connections to swing a US Attorney appointment. He was a rising start in the New Mexico Republican party. Iglesias was the Republican nominee for Attorney General in 1998. (Not that it's immediately relevant to this question, but Iglesias was the Navy JAG lawyer on whom Tom Cruise's character in A Few Good Men was based.) This was that reassuring case where a political person's partisan attachments butted up against his integrity and the latter won the day hands down. This is someone who knows this scam from the inside and whose testimony -- literal and figurative -- comes not in line with partisan attachments but in spite of them. Everyone should listen.

Labels: disenfranchisement, immigration, racism, Republic Party, selective prosecution

It's important to know, as you watch this, that ACORN was, to Republican field operatives, a Dirty Word in 2006...and in 2004, but general awareness among politicians and activists of what it does was limited to those who had to deal with its voter registration efforts. See here. (A clue: they were part of the America Coming Together consortium in 2004...that should have been a clue as to their ideological leanings.)

A few weeks ago, House Republicans screamed bloody murder when it appeared as if ACORN would benefit from the bailout bill, although McCain, President Bush and House Republicans have supported legislation with similar provisions before and they spent billions on the Road Home project, which contracts with ACORN to help provide housing for Katrina refugees. (You can't say...ah, but ACORN wasn't suspected of doing anything bad earlier... you can't say that because ACORN has been doing what ACORN is accused of doing for several cycles now.)

In 2008, of course, ACORN has become a stand-in not only for the registration fraud allegations, but also for the coincident insinuations that Sen. Obama and his liberal allies are trying to steal the election in battleground states. Indeed, because "ACORN" has become a national political issue, it will be hard for Republicans to use it as a political wedge issue. Once an attack is associated with a party, it doesn't become an attack; it becomes part of party dogma and can service only party activists.

McCain had no trouble fraternizing with ACORN in 2006 when their political interests coincided with his. Now, his campaign is writing e-mails in his name bashing ACORN as a tool of the Obama machine.

Labels: hypocrisy, immigration, Republicans

Fewer N.J. women receiving prenatal care

The number of women receiving early prenatal care in New Jersey has declined slightly during the last decade, largely because many do not have regular access to doctors or cannot afford to pay medical bills, according to a report released today.

The Prenatal Care Task Force report, released by State Health Commissioner Heather Howard, found teens, minorities and unmarried mothers are at higher risk of poor birth outcomes, including low birth-weight babies. Yet they remain less likely to receive early prenatal care, according to the report.

Uninsured mothers in New Jersey had the lowest rate of trimester prenatal care - 73 percent - while women with private insurance had the highest rate - 96 percent - across all racial and ethnic groups.

The overall average for prenatal care in New Jersey was 89 percent, according to the report, based on birth and infant death certificate data from 1990 to 2004.

Labels: family values, health care, immigration, Sarah Palin, SCHIP

Why did Democrats win in the 2006 congressional elections? Partly the war, and partly because the Republicans stressed the economy, in their words a very healthy and robust, growing economy. But reality is that 95% of the population has had no growth in real income over the last 6 years. When people feel they are not receiving their fair share of a steadily growing economy, and not just that but losing their investments, their pensions, and their health care, they start to ask where is all that growth going?

The greatest growth in jobs has been and will be in services, occupations that are not generally protected by unions. They should be unionized and can be because they cannot be outsourced; nobody in Mumbai can make the hotel beds in Peoria. That’s another big difference between the parties, Democrats support unions and Republicans try to destroy them.

Labels: 2008 election, Barney Frank, immigration, income inequality

Labels: immigration, Stephen Colbert, The Daily Show

Once all the engineers sat down for a pre-lobby meeting [in 2006], the chief lobbyist began explaining that what engineers should ask their representatives for is EB and F-4 visas instead of H-1B visas. EB and F-4 visas are a form of legal immigration for high-tech workers. Most engineers became upset and started to argue why they should ask for more green cards instead of asking for less H-1B guest workers. They argued that in both cases, American engineers are getting undercut by foreign labor.

Then the IEEE-USA lobbyist explained that legal immigration is better for American engineers because it takes "much longer" to process [emphasis is mine]. So this would put the potential H-1B engineers on the slow track of legal immigration, which will give IEEE-USA time to lobby in favor of American engineers. He said that it is safer for America because legal immigrants must go through a rigorous background check for ties to terrorism. He argued that it is better for the foreign nationals and it is better for Americans.

Most of the engineers were confused but believed that IEEE-USA was looking out for their best interests. After all, nobody else seems to even care about American engineering careers. So off they went to speak with congressional representatives or their staffers about this new EB and F-4 agenda, hoping that it will bring some relief to their career problems.

Some activists warned that IEEE was using the engineers as pawns to push legal immigration for engineers in addition to guest worker programs. At the time, it was hard for most to believe that such a conspiracy existed [emphasis is mine]. Now, almost a year later it is revealed that the chief proponent of H-1B visas, the SIA (Semiconductor Industry Association) has joined with IEEE-USA to support more green cards for foreign nationals with the caveat that they are fast-tracked. In other words, any foregn [sic] national who has a job offer at the time of graduation, gets an instant greencard. [Emphasis is mine.) American engineers felt betrayed. Is it possible that IEEE used these engineers as pawns as part of a grander scheme?

After, the article titled "IEEE-USA vs. Bill Gates" was printed; a delegation of top Microsoft representatives went to IEEE. They told IEEE that they contribute financially to many IEEE programs and asked why IEEE-USA is fighting Microsoft on the H-1B issue. At the time, IEEE-USA representatives told Microsoft representatives that the H-1B issue was what engineers indicated was their most important issue. At the time, IEEE-USA leaders told this author that they stood up to Microsoft to defend its members.

Is it possible that there is no country called America, that the world is truly flat? Is it possible that there is just an agglomeration of super-wealthy international corporations who claim to be American companies but are actually countries without borders? Do these corporations care about America or the American people? Do they control America?

This is no longer a battle for the H-1B visa cap. The H-1B visa cap is now moot because there are so many other fast-track proposals to bring in foreign engineers, computer scientists and other high-tech professionals. Other professions are next. Nurses, doctors, accountants and every other profession are also being targeted. This is now a fight for the heart and soul of America and what it stands for.

Labels: employment, H-1Bs, immigration

Labels: H-1Bs, immigration

I mentioned in my recent SNARK ALERT! post the number of articles that have been published recently, all decrying the supposed "high tech skills" shortage. I've noticed that each author has his or her own unique spin on this catastrophe, making it impossible for us bloggers (since we are not being subsidized by Big Business to spend eight hours a day pounding out the party line on our keyboards) to keep up with the task of refuting all of the misinformation being spewed forth.

I give you the following examples:

• Poor Billy Boy has no choice but to open a new software development center in Vancouver, British Columbia in order to skirt the limits on H-1B visas issued in the United States.
• Equally poor Rob Preston from InformationWeek tried his best, but all he could do was come up with a confusing article that seemed to imply there is a talent shortage, but could not seem to muster up any convincing facts or statistics to support his claim. At least he had the guts to face his accusers!
• Moira Herbst's article at BusinessWeek came up with an interesting twist. Sure, there are plenty of IT professionals and engineers out there, but most of them have the wrong skills sets. Enrollment in computer science and engineering programs at colleges and universities is predictably bottoming out, forcing Bill Gates to go on a public relations tour to urge students to switch their majors back to technical degrees.

Just when I thought things couldn't possibly get any worse, Anne Broache from CNET comes up with this gem, "Allow More Green Cards for Foreign Techies, Congress Told".

"But what's sometimes forgotten in the debate is a key point of agreement among at least some representatives of the warring sides. A new joint letter (click for PDF) to Congress from the Semiconductor Industry Association and IEEE-USA, the U.S. branch of the world's largest professional society of electronics engineers, seeks to remind politicos of that common ground, which is this: we need more green cards."

No, Anne, WE HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN ABOUT GREEN CARDS! And, no, Anne, WE DO NOT NEED TO ISSUE MORE GREEN CARDS! We do not mention Green Cards every time we write about this "high skills" debacle because we don't have time to write 300-page treatises debunking these claims each and every time you and your colleagues decide to write another article full of cheap shots aimed at American workers! And besides, have you Googled "Green Cards high tech skills shortage" lately? I came up with 805,000 results!

During the massive KoolAid-sipping debauchery amongst corporations in the 1990's, the decision was made to lower costs by downsizing thousands of experienced American professionals, and either replace them with lower cost H-1B or L-1 visa employees, or just to ship the jobs outright overseas and be done with them, once and for all. Surprise, surprise. We now ONLY HAVE A SHORTAGE of professionals who are perfectly matched for each and every esoteric little high tech position being created, and students, who are smarter than Bill Gates and his Strong American Schools cohorts realize, are REFUSING to major in technical career fields after having seen an entire generation of tech workers given the shaft and having no reason to believe it could never happen again.

U.S. corporations made their beds, now make them sleep in them! Just like the American households that must live with the consequences of their spending habits, U.S. companies should be forced to live with the available American talent pool that their policies have repeatedly diluted and destroyed over the past 15 years. Don't let these guys off the hook by letting them bring in workers from overseas.

I don't have time for any more of this nonsense. Tomorrow I'm going on a fall color tour. Don't anyone DARE try to publish another one of these phony talent shortage articles while my back is turned!

(Cross-posted at Carrie's Nation.)

Labels: employment, H-1Bs, immigration, Information technology

Labels: immigration

Labels: immigration

Labels: employment, H-1Bs, Hillary Clinton, immigration, Information technology, Microsoft

Four years ago the Bush administration, exploiting the political bounce it got from the illusion of success in Iraq, pushed a cut in capital-gains and dividend taxes through Congress. It was an extremely elitist tax cut even by Bush-era standards: the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center says that more than half of the tax breaks went to Americans with incomes of more than $1 million a year.

Needless to say, administration economists produced various misleading statistics designed to convey the opposite impression, that the tax cut mainly went to ordinary, middle-class Americans. But they also insisted that the benefits of the tax cut would trickle down — that lower tax rates on the rich would do great things for the economy, helping everyone.

Well, Friday’s dismal jobs report showed that the Bush boom, such as it was, has run its course. And working Americans have a right to ask, “Where’s my trickle?”

It’s true, as the Bushies never tire of reminding us, that the U.S. economy has added eight million jobs since that 2003 tax cut. That sounds impressive, unless you happen to know that a good part of that gain was simply a recovery from large job losses earlier in the administration’s tenure — and that the United States added no fewer than 21 million jobs after Bill Clinton raised taxes on the rich, a move that had conservative pundits predicting economic disaster.

[snip]

Wages, adjusted for inflation, have stagnated: the real hourly earnings of nonsupervisory workers, the most widely used measure of how typical workers are faring, were no higher in July 2007 than they were in July 2003.

Meanwhile, benefits have deteriorated: the percentage of Americans receiving health insurance through employers, which plunged along with employment during the early years of the Bush administration, continued to decline even as the economy finally began creating some jobs.

And one of the few seeming bright spots of the Bush-era economy, rising homeownership, is now revealed as the result of a bubble inflated in part by financial flim-flam, which deceived both borrowers and investors.

[snip]

Yet the overall economy has grown at a reasonable pace over the past four years. Where did the economic growth go? The answer is that it went to the same economic elite that received the lion’s share of those tax cuts. Corporate profits rose 72 percent from the second quarter of 2003 to the second quarter of 2007. The real income of the richest 0.1 percent of Americans surged by 51 percent between 2003 and 2005, and although we don’t yet have the data for 2006, everything we know suggests that the income of the rich took another upward leap.

The absence of any gains for workers in the years since the 2003 tax cut is a pretty convincing refutation of trickle-down theory. So is the fact that the economy had a much more convincing boom after Bill Clinton raised taxes on top brackets. It turns out that when you cut taxes on the rich, the rich pay less taxes; when you raise taxes on the rich, they pay more taxes — end of story.

But it’s not just trickle-down that has been refuted: the whole idea that a rising tide raises all boats, that growth in the economy necessarily translates into gains for the great majority of Americans, is belied by the Bush-era experience.

As far as I can tell, America has never before experienced a disconnect between overall economic performance and the fortunes of workers as complete as that of the last four years.

Labels: employment, immigration, income