Illinois Congressman Luis Gutierrez spoke at an immigration rally Tuesday in Washington, D.C. calling for immigration reform.
Joining him were several thousand families, community members and religious leaders who traveled in caravans from Illinois and other states. Also there was Illinois Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, as reported by Southern Maryland Online.
Gutierrez plans to introduce an immigration reform bill soon.
"We simply cannot wait any longer for a bill that keeps our families together, protects our workers and allows a pathway to legalization for those who have earned it," Gutierrez said in a statement. "It is time we had a workable plan making its way through Congress that recognizes the vast contributions of immigrants to this country and that honors the American Dream. I am preparing such a plan, and will introduce it in the near future."
As immigration activists step up efforts to press for an immigration reform bill, the Obama Administration has taken some immigration policy actions that puzzle and perplex. Some of it is good news, sort of, and some of it doesn't make much sense at all.
On the good news front, the Obama Administration stripped stripped Maricopa County (Arizona) sheriff Joe Arpaio of his federal authority to make immigration arrests.
Arpaio is a controversial figure who critics said harassed Latinos in an effort to root out undocumented immigrants.
An immigration rally, an Arizona sheriff and American Apparel
The East Valley Tribune, a small Arizona newspaper, won a Pulitzer Prize for a series that documented Arpaio was using racial profiling in his attempts to use local law enforcement to go after undocumented immigrants.
In 2007, Arpaio signed a 287(g) agreement with Immigration Customs and Enforcement that trains local police on immigration law effectively making them immigration police. Other agencies across the country have also followed suit which has upset immigrant advocates who say it gives local officials license to racial profile. They want the Obama Administration to end the program but a modified version was recently approved by Homeland Security headed up by former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano.
Arpaio remains defiant and said he will find ways to work around the laws and keep arresting undocumented immigrants.
And in Los Angeles, the clothing manufacturer American Apparel recently laid off around one-quarter of its workforce because their employees had Social Security numbers that didn't match with federal databases indicating they could be undocumented.
Immigration officials did not go in and raid the company as might have happened under the Bush Administration. They notified company officials of the discrepancies and so American Apparel decided to fire around 1,800 employees suspected of being undocumented as reported in a story in the New York Times.
This tactic doesn't split up families and lead to mass deportations like the raid under the Bush Administration in Postville, Iowa, where around 700 meatpackers were arrested.
But the problem with this supposed "kinder, gentler" policy is that it punishes the employees and not the employers who profit from undocumented labor.
President Obama has said he is committed to immigration reform but these makeshift immigration policies indicate that real change is slow to come.
In 2007, Arpaio signed a 287(g) agreement with Immigration Customs and Enforcement that trains local police on immigration law effectively making them immigration police. Other agencies across the country have also followed suit which has upset immigrant advocates who say it gives local officials license to racial profile. They want the Obama Administration to end the program but a modified version was recently approved by Homeland Security headed up by former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano.
Arpaio remains defiant and said he will find ways to work around the laws and keep arresting undocumented immigrants.
And in Los Angeles, the clothing manufacturer American Apparel recently laid off around one-quarter of its workforce because their employees had Social Security numbers that didn't match with federal databases indicating they could be undocumented.
Immigration officials did not go in and raid the company as might have happened under the Bush Administration. They notified company officials of the discrepancies and so American Apparel decided to fire around 1,800 employees suspected of being undocumented as reported in a story in the New York Times.
This tactic doesn't split up families and lead to mass deportations like the raid under the Bush Administration in Postville, Iowa, where around 700 meatpackers were arrested.
But the problem with this supposed "kinder, gentler" policy is that it punishes the employees and not the employers who profit from undocumented labor.
President Obama has said he is committed to immigration reform but these makeshift immigration policies indicate that real change is slow to come.
5 Comments
Brittanicus said:
Soon America is going to be confronted with another out-of-control AMNESTY for the 20 to 30 million illegal aliens already here. This is not taking into account the millions who will follow on, once the word gets out through Central and South America and the rest of the world. Only the armed National Guard on our lax border will be able to stop the incursion of the destitute, the sick, drug dealers, slavers, foreign terrorists and a multitude other entering this country illegally. The church, unions, the Communist ACLU, US Chamber of Commerce, Council of Foreign Relations and radical, International groups all have their agendas. These Anti-sovereignty organizations must embrace there corrupted puppet politicians, that ostensibly wants to make this cataclysm come true?
The driving force now behind this contradiction to his oath of Allegiance to American people is Rep.Luis Gutierrez's of Illinois, whose immigration enforcement since being in office is a (F-) grading according to NUMBERSUSA. The American Workers—MUST-- condemn this Immigration reform action by complaining to their indifferent Liberal Democrats and some Republicans at 202-224-3121. Don't let the aides reject you offhand as you want your representative to know? Currently 15 million US workers with the most sitting at home, sending out references, walking the streets and looking for work. Then this joker Luis Gutierrez is pushing for a second Amnesty? What are these politicians thinking, or do they think at all? My hope the taxpayers show him the door—ALL OF THEM--when he/she wants to be re-elected.
Gutierrez is just one of many who have blemished their own records of their loyalty to the American people? I just know that the last AMNESTY was an absolute failure, owing to the fraud that transpired. I think the majority of the US population knows that the majority of our politicians in every administration had no true intentions of ever securing the border, or enforcing any immigration law. This has been proven over and over again, with Senators like Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Diane Feinstein that have all genuflected to the demands of businesses big and small. It seems for decades that it’s been mandatory that we must support the world’s poor? The evidence has irrefutable shown that their disregard for US labor in Obama's stimulus bill, the potential health care reform and whatever deviant law, they place in the Senate and House to support the illegal immigrants and families once they break into America? WE welcome a millions or more legal immigrants each year?
INSTEAD OF JUST A CIVIL INFRACTION, ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTION SHOULD BE PENALISED AS A FELONY? THAT'S WHY THEY KEEP ON COMING? We should demand of those who represent us that E-Verify should be implemented immediately as mandatory, with no exemptions. Everybody in the workplace Must be verified. No more voluntary E-Verify? Every police department should be trained to apprehend and question any individual they see fit to check? No more of this Liberal Socialist political correctness garbage on racial profiling? We should have a federal force to audit I-9's, with the defiant ones going to prison. ICE should have larger funding with more interior and border agents, to sweep down on illegal business activities. Identify for yourself those politicians who are involved in corruption at JUDICIAL WATCH site. Our nation is silently being dismantled by the globalists and those who wave the banner for them.
Don't let sympathy cloud your mind to our own countries deterioration, the infrastructure and uncorrectable overpopulation. Each year our State and federal taxes go ever higher, to pay for the illegal immigrants, their emergency care, education, their extended circle of relatives that enter under family reunification. THE TAXPAYER HAS BECOME THE BREADWINNERS ILLEGAL ALIENS IN THIS COUNTRY AND THE WORLD. IT MUST STOP!
royz said:
Dear Brittanicus,
Thats a long explanation showing all the knowledge you have gathered. Making you a prisoner of sorts. What you suggest is nothing short of a lack of understanding the basic questions of life.
Ask yourself who do you pay taxes to?
Ask yourself what is E-verify?
Ask yourself who and what are you?
Ask yourself are you in a position to write what you are writing?
Is your writing a conditioning brought on by your education?
Do you think countries and armies should exist?
Do you think peace can come by allocating the wealth of countries to warfare?
Do you suppose the red Indians just disappeared and becoming a minority now because they deteriorated and killed this part of the world?
Please I would like to know your answers to these questions
Love
Roy
karebear said:
I thought being a journalist meant writing unbiasedly and i guess in the case of this article i am wrong. I am completely confused by Royz line of questioning, is he suggesting that anyone who is against Illegal Immigration is racist? Is the "journalist", Ms.Puente actually thinking that Gutierrez's plan makes sense?
Illegal immigrants didn't "earn" anything. THEY ARE HERE ILLEGALLY! You can discuss what the "white man" did to the Indians all you want(although wasn't Columbus from Italy and wasn't it Spain that commissioned him?). It was horrible, it was sad, it was in a COMPLETELY didn't time in history were no laws were in place to protect them. Fast forward to the year 2009 and you think that someone who breaks the law has the same rights and privileges as a natural born citizen or LEGAL Immigrant?! Where is your common sense?!
As a Legal Landed Immigrant with US Residency, i had to do ALL the applications, the background checks, pay the fees, do the interviews and all the red tape that comes with entering into the US legally. It took me four years to get my ONE year Green Card. I DO NOT live in subsidized housing, i DO NOT get food stamps, i DO NOT get free-medical attention, yet i am here legally and those that aren't are DRAINING the system dry and enjoy more freedoms than Americans or LEGAL Immigrants? Where is your common sense?!
And how is it that you, Ms. Puente, can be jumping for joy that Mr. Joe Arpaio can no longer "target" illegal immigrants? THEY ARE ILLEGAL! No background checks have been done. The have no job, so how is it that you expect them to get extra money beyond what the American tax-payers provide? IN order to work, you need a Social Security Number, in order to get a LEGAL Social Security Number, you need to be LEGAL.
DO you honestly expect the United States to shelter them under its umbrella, fitting the bill, turning the other cheek but it's okay that Mexico has ZERO TOLERANCE policy for illegals in their country. Talk about hypocrisy! Mexico's illegal immigrants are deported as soon as they are caught (which they are usually caught in those awful raids that you expect American officials NOT to do). No wasting of Mexico's money. Mexico's President Felipe Calderon encourages his country men to flee to the arms of America so that his very own people don't cost HIS country. Yet you aren't upset of this?!
Mexico is the richest country in Latin America and could easy eradicate the poverty its citizens live in if it were for dictator running the show. So instead of getting all upset over illegal immigration and the American's that want laws enforced, why don't, you Ms. Puente, organize protests and rally's with the joint cause of "charging Mexico's President with human rights violations"? Paint signs with "Fix Mexico and it's rampid corruption" written down. No, you won't do that because you are a hypocrite too.
To quote CNN's Lou Dobbs: Calderon can't have it both ways. He cannot fail his citizens at home and then act as the Great Imperialist Protector of his citizens who are driven by poverty and corruption to enter the United States illegally. The United States provides Mexico with an annual surplus of $65 billion in trade, an estimated $25 billion in remittances from Mexican citizens living and working here illegally, and at least another $25 billion generated by the illegal drug trade across our southern border.
libertybell said:
I support karebear's comments in the first six paragraphs.
We are sick of people just walking over the border, who could be Al Queida terror cells.
I look "white", but have American Indian/Native American ancestry- even got my DNA tested which proves it! So don't tell me to "go back to Europe" or else you are the racist! I am disgusted by the reverse racism. Also, Aztec people and Mayan people NEVER lived in the south US- only the Navajo, Hopi, and earlier, the Anasazi, for example. So go back to Mexico, Aztecs and Mayans! They were both violent and committed human sacrifice by ripping still-beating hearts out of victims or drowned them in sacred wells. They relished killing other people in wars - both were cultures of violence.
Also, there is evidence that Native Americans sailed from Europe during the Ice Age, see the studies of Dr. Stanford of the Smithsonian and the Clovis point spears. So not all Native Americans come from the Asian land bridge!
I am SO SICK of the racist accusations, which sound more and more like the hysterical witch hunts of the Middle Ages.
My brown-skinned, minority immigrant spouse came here and we BOTH took off work so we can go through the interviews, fill out the forms down to a "t", and we have walked through the red tape.
My immigrant sisters-in law came from two different countries and they are doing things LEGALLY. I have supported everything they needed.
We LOVE LEGAL IMMIGRANTS! We just can't stand illegal immigrants who are:
-women who deliberately sneak across the border to have anchor babies and then expect our welfare system to take care of them instead of being responsible adults who stay in their own countries
- MS-13 gang members
- Men who rape 12-year-old girls or women
- Drug dealers
- Drunk drivers like the one who hit my sibling's car or killed a teacher in the Carolinas
- Like the illegal alien waitress in Colorado back in 2002 who stole a 2-year old girl's identity and started taking out credit cards, loans etc. so the poor innocent child already had a bad credit history at age 3
- Theives who steal other's names and identities
- Offer to do a job for less money so that the job's average wages are brought down, increasing poverty and reducing the quality of life for EVERYONE holding similar jobs
And don't give me the BS about splitting up families. Illegals have FREE WIll and decided to come to the US and of their on choice, stayed in the US to have their anchor babies. So they can go back to their own countries of their FREE WILL and take their kid with them.
My girlfriend from another country had an American boyfriend, got pregnant, and decided to move back to her mother country. The American boyfriend immigrated to her country and married her, and they are happily living in her country.
Illegals will destroy our country and abuse our republic's system of representation. The reason politicians love illegals (Dems or Repubs) is because they can be counted in the Census as people, so places like California and Texas get more seats in the House of Representatives while places like Rhode Island may have less reps in the House. This same history happened at the birth of the Constitution, where the (evil) slave-populated South wanted slaves to be counted but, of course, not be given any human rights! Congress comprimised by counting a slave as less than a person, so two slaves would equal 1+ people. Thank goodness, the Civil War happened; the South ended up with more House seats but the slaves were now citizens. The danger is the "Tyranny of the Majority" - you will have just a few states with the majority of seats (California, New York, etc.) and controlling the majority of the government power while people in non-illegal alien states get less representation.
Congress is for the US Citizen people and by the US citizen people. Foreign nationals should not be counted for drawing the voter districts until they become US citizens with a vested interest in this country.
Send the children back with their parents to their mother countries, and you won't have the problem of splitting up families! If one parent is a US citizen, and one is NOT a legal resident, then you should ASAP apply your illegal alien spouse into the US immigration application system and get them in the pipeline.
There are so many reasons legal immigrants are wonderful and illegal aliens are destructive...
libertybell said:
One more thing - please look at the history of Easter Island and its desctruction by overpopulation- if we keep letting millions of people into this country, we will overpopulate the country and our resources will be strained. If ANY crisis like Hurrican Katrina occurs, be it locally or nation-wide, and we have strained resources, it will cause horrific anarchy, violence, and desctruction which could have been prevented in part by immigration control.
Funny thing is, overpopulation a factor which contributed to the desctruction of the Mayan civilization- see the archeology records!
Irregardless of culture,race, or gender, if you have too many people sucking up the resources in one country, it increases the chance of famine, plague, and decline of a civilization. See the past 10,000 years of human history for evidence.
All the same, I hope LEGAL immigrants can come to this country and contribute their wonderful energy, I'm just concerned that millions of people coming here will "love the country to death".
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