The Obama administration has criticized the GOP's "attrition through enforcement" immigration policy framework while adopting it in practice. Undocumented activists have reduced their reliance on politicians and the advocacy community by strategically creating a quasi-legal status for people who publicly identify themselves as undocumented.

Attrition Through Enforcement

Immigration restrictionists have promoted an "attrition through enforcement" policy as a purportedly more humane alternative to mass incarceration and deportation. Instead of identifying, arresting, imprisoning, and deporting every undocumented immigrant in the U.S., the objective of attrition through enforcement is to make life in the U.S. so miserable for undocumented immigrants that they leave on their own. An aggressive campaign to deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants estimated to live in the U.S. would be logistically and fiscally unworkable and would necessitate massive human rights violations.

Imagine armies of tens of thousands of immigration enforcement agents scouring the country for people unable to produce papers, internment camps set up to house millions of immigrants awaiting deportation, and millions of U.S. citizen children left parentless overnight. This would be the administration's current enforcement policy implemented on a much larger scale, causing severe economic and social disruption that would extend far beyond the immigrant community.

Restrictionists understand that the domestic and international public backlash from such a campaign would undermine their long-term goal of reducing overall immigration to the U.S. Restrictionists know it is impossible to fully enforce the laws they wrote and shepherded through Congress. Attrition through enforcement aims instead to drive out immigrants by creating a climate of fear and by steadily eroding basic rights. The concept is as pragmatic as it is reprehensible.

In deportation defense work, immigrant rights organizers can work most effectively to stop a deportation when they collaborate with a reliable immigration attorney. Viewed from another perspective, an attorney can often better serve his or her client with the help of organizers. However, complications can arise with this type of collaborative work.

In recent years, collaboration between organizers and attorneys has most commonly involved Education Not Deportation (END) campaigns to stop the deportation of undocumented youth. END cases were rare before the summer of 2009. Now the federal government routinely agrees not to deport undocumented youth who would qualify for the DREAM Act, were it to be enacted, and who reach a certain threshold of visibility and public support. (The government routinely deports tens of thousands of DREAM-eligible youth who remain invisible to the public--and even some who have strong public support.)

I have worked on several END cases since 2009 as an immigration attorney. In my experience, an END case has the best chance of success when an attorney works closely with organizers and the client's existing support network. Attorneys have access to and relationships with immigration officials that organizers and family members usually lack. Organizers have the trust of the community and are not afraid to directly challenge the government. Organizers, attorneys, and others worked together on the early END cases and created the existing END model. Organizers and attorneys are better able to stop deportations when they work together.

Unfortunately, this does not always happen. Communication between the attorney and organizers sometimes breaks down, to the detriment of the client. Attorneys sometimes have a limited view of what is possible in a given jurisdiction, failing to acknowledge successes in similar cases elsewhere. Attorneys can be too cautious, apprehensive of damaging delicate relationships with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attorneys or deportation officers. Out of habit, attorneys can shut supporters and organizers out of the case, foregoing the collaborative model for a "what I say goes" approach. It's worth taking a closer look at how and why these problems arise, and what can be done to address them.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was listed as a "hero" for immigration reform by the pro-migrant political action committee, Immigrants' List.

I greatly value the work that Immigrants' List does, and encourage folks to donate to them. We need more pro-migrant PACs like Immigrants' List, and we need more money for them if we ever hope to have a pro-migrant impact. Of the ten heroes Immigrants' List cites, I agree with their selection of the other nine heroes. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), however, has to be one of the worst pro-migrant politicians in the country. That is to be distinguished, of course, from some of the worst nativists in the country, like Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.

I thought I'd begin this morning by resurrecting an old feature that symsess used to produce for Citizen Orange.  Unfortunately, it won't be the comprehensive link round-up that he used to put together, but I did want to put out a little bit of a link potpourri.

First, if you haven't heard, Presente.org, where I am a Campaign Associate, has a new Executive Director, Arturo Carmona. Jorge Rivas at Color Lines covered the announcement and here's Presente.org's official press release. After participating in a lengthy interview process, I can truly say that I'm really excited to work under Arturo's leadership, and having him on full-time this new year has already made a huge difference.

Second, Amalia Deloney of Latinos for Internet Freedom has a great post on why Latin@s should oppose SOPA/PIPA that's adds to my post on why migrants should oppose SOPA/PIPA.

Finally, Crooks and Liars published my post on Scott Douglas's interview on the Colbert Report, where he effectively states his opposition to Alabama's HB 56, the nation's worst statewide immigration law. Thanks to John Amato and the rest of the C&L team for continuing to be supportive of my pro-migrant blogging.

Happy Thursday everyone!

A new take on the language wars that frequently infect the immigration debate:


(Sombrero tip to Juan at dreamactivist.org)

I don't know if yet another take on the hypocrisy of mostly European migrants telling mostly Latino migrants to keep out will convince any nativists, but I find it funny nonetheless, and learned a little bit of Cherokee in the process.

If you don't want me to ruin the fun, stop reading here, but this also touches on a post I wrote earlier this week about the complexity of comparing one movement to another and about how the people best placed to do so are those who belong to both movements.

"Don't want to eat this SOPA" says dreamactivist.org, in one of my favorite word plays on legislation currently before Congress, SOPA in the House and PIPA in the Senate, that would sacrifice the free internet to satisfy a few big corporations who make their living off of outdated copyright laws. Today's got to be one of the largest demonstrations the internet has ever seen against something like this, with enormous sites like Wikipedia, Reddit, and Craigslist blacking out and others like Google prominently displaying their opposition and a way to take action.

I was going to write, today, about the amazing courage of Cook County Board President, Toni Preckwinkle. The Obama administration, led by John Morton of ICE, is waging an all out propaganda war on Cook County and local pro-migrant elected officials like Toni Preckwinkle are standing strong against the harmful program that is S-COMM. However, it appears the real moment of courage will happen when the Cook County Board takes a vote, possibly as early as today. I encourage everyone to sign this petition to defend Cook County, sent out by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) an organization that also deserves to be commended for it's work against S-COMM.

Preckwinkle's messaging is pitch perfect because it's the truth. It's an outrage whenever someone is killed by a drunk driver, but that doesn't mean that the U.S. justice system should be skirted and that there should be a different set of laws for migrants and citizens. S-COMM is the most dangerous program facing migrant communities, today, and if migrant communities are put in danger, we're all put in danger.

The battle against S-COMM is a hard battle to fight.

Scott Douglas, Executive Director of Greater Birmingham Ministries, nailed it on the Colbert Report, last night not only diction but also in tone, as he made his case against Alabama's HB 56, the most harmful and dangerous immigration law in the nation. Sometimes people try to go on Colbert and be funny, but it's hard to outfunny Colbert. It's better to just play it serious and let Colbert be the comedian, and Scott Douglas did that just as he said he would. More important, were his profound words which were almost always applauded by Colbert's audience.

There are few more difficult people to write about than the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (gotta give the man all his titles). MLK has long since become more about the people invoking his name, than about the man himself.

If I were to recommend one short article to read on MLK, today, it would be this 2005 Harvard Crimson article written by Brandon Terry, a friend, and one of the wisest people I know. He writes about the intellectual strands of MLK that have been long forgotten, namely "elements of Third World radicalism, black nationalism, and Marxism." Brandon also gives one of the best recommendations I can hope to give, on this day, to those who are interested in learning about the real MLK. Read the book "A Testament of Hope," a collection of MLK's writings which has effectively become my MLK bible.

I should end this post here. I'm tempted to say that if you haven't read through "A Testament of Hope," you have no business writing or even thinking that you know what MLK is about.

 

 

There has been a lot of talk lately about Mitt Romney being the poster child for vulture capitalism. This referring to the practice of opportunistically feeding off of struggling workers, prioritizing making profits for shareholders of big corporations over the creation of good jobs for working families. But what about the effects of vulture capitalism on immigration?