Today, The Argus newspaper in the Bay Area printed this letter to the editor about the immigration compromise announced yesterday in the U.S. Senate. A snippet: "Hillary Clinton has
hired California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez as her national co-chair
to help her open a gateway to the national illegal alien vote. Hasn't
he done a marvelous job for them in our state? People who break the law
to come here, and commit identity theft and fraud, will not stop at voting illegally to advance their agenda, which is not 'just to work.' [Snip.]
Call, fax, e-mail
these corrupt traitors who call themselves American senators and
congresspeople. Don't ask, don't plead, don't beg, just tell them what
to do.
"Ann McNett is a San Lorenzo resident."
No offense, but why even print something like that? Clinton has not "hired" Nunez. He endorsed the New York senator's presidential campaign. Open "the gateway" to the national illegal alien vote? How? When? The Senate is full of corrupt traitors?!
Sigh.
Nunez, pictured with L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, attended a rally yesterday in MacArthur Park, the site of a recent melee. The mayor called for immigration reform and issued bromides about the U.S. "Here in Los Angeles we all have the right to march peacefully. We're here because
we love this great country and we want to share in the American dream," the mayor told the crowd in Spanish.
Under the immigration package announced yesterday, immigrants would have to learn English. That means people such as Ann McNett of San Lorenzo won't have to take Spanish classes and discover, for example, "how easy it is for people in this country to illegally get pretty much whatever they want from my state and federal taxes."
(Photo:
Reed Saxon/AP)
Anti-immigration activists and Clinton haters are getting some mileage out of an October 1994 video showing labor organizer Fabian Nunez, now the Assembly speaker and a Hillary Clinton supporter, at a Los Angeles rally protesting Proposition 187. The initiative, which passed, was designed to cut off services to illegal immigrants but has since been eviscerated by the courts.
The video shows Nunez on stage at the rally chatting with his friend, Kevin De Leon, now an Assembly member as well, while the U.S. national anthem is played by a trumpet band. The two men, and others on the stage, snap to attention and raise their arms when the Mexican national anthem is played next. (Nunez is obscured behind another man during this, but his fist can be seen in the air.)
On stage, organizers put up U.S. flags featuring the original 13 states - as in, not including California - while members of the audience waved Mexican flags. Several thousand people attended the rally. View videos here.
More than a dozen California evangelical churches have joined a coordinate nationwide effort, Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, to call for humane treatment of illegal immigrants, stronger border enforcement, guest worker programs and smoother paths to citizenship. Formation of the group and its recent pressure on Congress could signal a major shift between the pulpit and the pew on one of the touchiest subjects in politics.
It's safe to say that white evangelicals are some of the most
politically conservative in the country. A poll in March 2006 by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public
Life, showed evangelicals are far more conservative on immigration reform than their counterparts in other religions. The survey found that 64% of white evangelicals agreed with the statement 'Immigrants today
are a burden on our country because they take our jobs, housing and
health care.' The figure was 49% in December 2004.
The Catholic Church has been actively involved in the politics of immigration for decades in California, but this newest movement represents a major coming out for evangelical leaders, and a threat to more conservative Republicans who would like to see illegal immigrants deported wholesale. (The Coalition For Illegal Immigration and Border Control holds a demonstration last week in Palo Alto, pictured.)
Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform this week began an
advertising campaign in Washington D.C. and sent 200,000 letters to
members of Congress. Quoting scripture, the group said: "We believe in the rule of law, but we also believe that we are to
oppose unjust laws and systems that harm and oppress people made in
God's image, especially the vulnerable."
(Photo:
Paul Sakuma/AP) Hat tip to California Majority Report.
The May Day immigration rallies across the nation, including a peaceful march in San Diego (pictured) didn't have much impact on federal authorities. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement says is stepping up its raids and deportations of illegal immigrants. Two strike teams are being added to Sacramento and Fresno. All 75 teams nationwide are expected each to make 1,000 arrests a year.
(Photo: Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images)
There is video of police moving in on protesters at yesterday's immigration rally in Los Angeles available here. The news clip includes fairly dramatic footage - for a functioning democracy, that is - of protesters and reporters getting roughed up.
According to the L.A. Times today, 15 police officers were hurt and about 10 people were taken from MacArthur Park by ambulance to hospitals for treatment. The injuries included mainly cuts, including "head and neck wounds.
None of the injuries were believed to be serious. Police reported that
one demonstrator was arrested."
Here are the opening scenes, from the Times:
"In Los Angeles, after police tried to disperse demonstrators who had
moved off the sidewalk onto Alvarado Street about 6 p.m., some of the
few thousand participants still in the park started throwing plastic
bottles and rocks at officers. Then, several dozen riot police, clad in helmets and wielding
batons, started clearing the park, firing a few dozen volleys of foam
bullets into the crowd. [Snip.]
"The violence began unfolding when a helicopter flew low over the
east side of the park and sirens blasted as police ordered people out
of the park, telling them they would be arrested if they didn't leave. The police formed a riot line across the park on the east side, forcing
the crowd to move west. Some participants were yelling at police, 'You
can't do this.' "
One protester called the shootings with rubber bullets an "atrocity." Read the story here. Photos by Rick Loomis, who just won the Pulitzer Prize for his work on the newspaper's fantastic Altered Oceans series.
(Photos: Rick Loomis/Los Angeles Times)
"I will not allow any of my department heads or anyone associated with
this city to cooperate in any way shape or form with these raids. We are a sanctuary city, make no mistake about it." - San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom in the Chronicle.
Newsom told about 300 members of St. Peter's Church this Sunday that no city employee would help with the yearlong federal crackdown, Operation Return to Sender. The nationwide
effort that has resulted in more than 18,000 arrests since its launch
in May 2006, authorities said.
(Photo: Ben Margot/AP)
The high-profile California National Guard mission to the U.S.-Mexico border is winding down a bit. Lt. Col. Jon Siepman says the number of air and ground troops participating in Operation Jumpstart is expected to decline to between 1,000 and 1,100 at the end of summer--down from nearly 1,400. "This has always been a temporary mission," he told the North County Times. Nevertheless, the newspaper found that, "Attempted illegal crossings into the U.S. are still a daily part of life along the border."
 "As an example: A few yards from where a California National Guard crew last week bulldozed a hillside just over the line that separates Tijuana from the U.S., a half-dozen homeless people were gathered in a drainage spillway, seemingly oblivious to the noise and work going on around them.
"The group was actually several feet inside the U.S., living in a makeshift encampment. A member of the group who identified himself as Jesus Gonzales said he had been there for several weeks, weighing whether to try to make his way farther into San Diego County."
But authorities believe that potential illegal immigrants are getting the message: Apprehensions fell by more than 6,500 people in a 12-month period ending April 1, The Times reported, with 67,926 arrests compared with 74,463 in the previous 12-month period, according to Border Patrol statistics.
The beefed-up mission ends in December for the California National Guard, assuming federal border authorities can hire enough agents to take over the mission. So far, fewer than 1,000 of the 6,000 federal agents requested have been hired, while numerous states have sent their Guard units to the Mexico border to "help out." In the photos, a Tennessee soldier monitors the border in Arizona as a part of Operation Jumpstart, and three Mexican youths hang on to the International Border fence between Anapra, Mexico, and Sunland Park, New Mexico.
New York National Guard members Spc. Steve Hammann, left, and Pfc. Jamie Kilbury of Lockport, N.Y., get an up-close look at the border with Border Patrol agent Sean King, right, near the Arizona-Mexico border.
(Photos: John Partipilo/Pool-AP; Matt York/AP; Ross D. Franklin/AP)
U.S. authorities have arrested 359 suspected illegal immigrants in California during a two-week operation that ended Tuesday, authorities reported. Fifty of those arrested in their homes across San Diego and Imperial
counties have criminal records, including convictions for child sex
offenses, robbery and drug violations, U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement officials told the Times.
The crackdown is part of Operation Return to Sender, a nationwide
effort that has resulted in more than 18,000 arrests since its launch
in May 2006, authorities said. The San Diego area sweep mostly captured people from Mexico, but illegal immigrants from 15 countries, including Cambodia, Cuba, Israel, Laos and Thailand, were arrested as well.
Amid this, AP writer Juliana Barbassa looked closer at what happens to the children of illegal immigrants when their parents are deported home. The three children of Pedro Ramirez and Isabel Aguirre, who were both arrested and ordered deported at the same
time, were forced to decide whether to stay in California or return to Mexico. "The predicament of deported parents is
tearing many families apart, said clergy and immigrant advocates
familiar with such cases. 'Is it really a choice? Staying in
foster care, or leaving with their parents?' asked Samina F. Sundas,
the founder of American Muslim Voice, which is trying to help the
Ramirez family.
"For the youngest Ramirez children, the choice
was clear: they want to live with their parents. But they said they're
sad about leaving their friends, and worried about enrolling in a
school in Mexico and having to write in Spanish, which they haven't
learned. Their 15-year-old brother, Pedro, a sophomore at Gunn
High School, struggled with the decision, trying to keep up with school
but breaking into tears at times, said his math teacher, Chris Schulz. 'He
wants to stay. He has a life, aspirations here,' Schulz said. 'But he's
decided to go, to support his mother and his family.' "
Those deported are barred from returning to the U.S. for a decade.
(Photo: David McNew/Getty Images, from 2005; Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images, from 2006)
When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger travels to India in November, he can bring along the story of Kartar Singh Sarabha, a U.C. Berkeley chemistry student who helped lead a revolt against the colonial government in India during World War I.
It's not the greatest U.S. immigrant story, but it has passion. Sarabha arrived in California in 1912 and immediately faced discrimination because, as an immigration officer said, he came "from a slave country."
Sarabha helped start the Ghadr revolution party in Washington, Oregon and California. "He would sit with a worker for hours and
explain to him how death is a thousand times preferable to a life of
slavery filled with humiliation," writes Ashfaque Swapan in Indian Life and Style.
Sounds like your typical U.C. Berkeley student.
Sarabha started a newspaper in San Francisco that preached the revolutionary overthrow of India. Ghadr, the newspaper, "carried extensive exposes of
the criminal deeds of the British empire, it carried poetry to inspire
young and old. The first issue declared: 'The time will soon come when
rifles and blood will take the place of pen and ink.' "
Anyway, World War I started and Sarabha traveled back home to kick some British butt. He is quickly betrayed and then hanged. That's the California history lesson for today. He should have worked out more, married a Kennedy and done a few action movies.
If elected officials needed more evidence that illegal immigration is roiling the state, Sunday offered a revealing snapshot into the divisions up and down California.
With federal strike teams arresting and deporting scores of Mexican and Central American immigrants in raids across the country, the Catholic Church has been drawing closer to California's illegal immigrants and preparing to offer them sanctuary.
That is, to a point.
In Orange County, Auxiliary Bishop Jaime Soto on Sunday called on parishioners to pray and fast for illegal immigrants--part of the "Hunger for Justice" campaign this week--but he stopped short of offering sanctuary for those being pursued by federal agents. Soto is declining to join a nationwide movement in which several churches--including Los Angeles' Our Lady Queen of Angels--will harbor illegal immigrants facing deportation, the O.C. Register reports today.
The 188-year-old Los Angeles parish, La Pacita, is completing a new addition that will house an illegal immigrant family. Church officials say the movement "is a political protest against immigration policies as well as a religious obligation recognized in biblical passages such as Leviticus 19:34: 'The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt,' " Louis Sahagun with the Times recently reported.
On Sunday as well, a pro-immigrant rally attracted about 5,000 people at the L.A. Sports Arena--far fewer than the 10,000 expected. "We are saying that in this great and generous America, there ought to be a pathway to citizenship," Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told the crowd. About 200 anti-illegal immigration activists carried U.S. flags and signs reading "Mexican gangsters belong in Mexico" and "Deportation? Si, se puede!"
Amid this, the United Farm Workers on Sunday held its annual Cesar Chavez Mass in Los Angeles. The group raised money on the Internet--$150 for a family of five, credit cards accepted--so they could  attend a Mass presided over by Cardinal Roger M. Mahony. "Farm workers are eager to take part in this historical day joining with thousands of UFW supporters from throughout Southern California. Please help us raise the funds to charter buses so they can attend this special event," said the union, which acknowledges it represents large numbers of illegal immigrants.
About 300 farmworkers showed up to the Mass.
Marc Grossman, spokesman for the UFW, said his group has a long history with the Catholic Church and Mahony (pictured with then-L.A. Mayor Jim Hahn, left, and candidate Villaraigosa in 2005). "The two institutions that have stood by farm workers," he said, "have been the labor movement and the Catholic Church." Mahony was the first chairman of the Agriculture Labor Relations Board and he presided over Chavez's funeral in 1993, where he called the labor leader a "prophet for the farm workers."
(Photos: Chris Pizzello / AP; Mark J. Terrill / AP)
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