« RI: 2 articles: R.I. Does Away With Mandatory Minimimum Drug Sentencing Rules and New drug treatment slots readied for parolees | Main | Justice Department Numbers Show "Alarming Growth" in Incarceration. Links to BJS report »
June 28, 2007
Editorial NY Times: Gitmos Across America
New York Times
June 27, 2007
Editorial
Gitmos Across America
Toughness is the watchword in immigration policy these days. When you combine the new toughness with same-old bureaucratic indolence and ineptitude, you get a situation like that described by Nina Bernstein in The Times yesterday. She wrote about how the boom in immigration detention ‹ the nation's fastest-growing form of incarceration ‹ ensnares people for dubious reasons, denies them access to medicine and lawyers and sometimes holds them until they die.
Sandra M. Kenley, a legal permanent resident who had high blood pressure and a bleeding uterus, died in a rural Virginia jail after not receiving her medication. Returning home from a trip to Barbados she was locked up because of two old misdemeanor drug convictions. Abdoulai Sall, an auto mechanic, had no criminal record, but was still seized during an immigration interview. He had a severe kidney ailment and he, too, complained about not getting his medicine. He got sicker and died in another Virginia jail last December.
Sixty-two immigrants have died since 2004 while being held in a secretive detention system, a patchwork of federal centers, private prisons and local jails. Advocacy groups and lawyers say that the system not only denies detainees the most basic rights but also lacks the oversight and regulations that apply to federal prisons. Instead of fixing this broken system, the Senate bill that is lumbering toward final passage ‹ after surviving a crucial procedural vote yesterday ‹ is overloaded with provisions that will make it even harsher and more unfair.
One of the worst amendments comes from Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. It would impose mandatory detention of all people who overstay their visas. It's a huge overreach that threatens to swamp the detention system, filling already-strapped prisons at great expense and inevitably leading to more abuses and deaths. And because it takes away the power of officials to decide who poses a genuine threat and who doesn't, it would undermine efforts to catch and deport the truly dangerous.
The cells would be full of people who shouldn't be there: asylum seekers, the elderly, pregnant women, the sick and those ensnared in paperwork mistakes. Children, like the kindergartners in inmate scrubs walking the halls of a federal detention center outside Austin, Tex. Day laborers, like those in suburban Brewster, N.Y., whose arrests were hailed by a mayor who spoke proudly of his community's "zero tolerance" for people unlawfully playing soccer in a schoolyard.
The country already detains some 230,000 immigrants a year, at an annual cost of $1.2 billion. Under the current immigration bill, it would build tens of thousands more beds to hold detainees. And it would need many more Guantánamo Bays across America if Mr. Graham's zero-tolerance vision is fully realized.
Non-citizens are subject to our laws and to being deported if they do bad things. But this doesn't mean the country must detain or deport everybody, or relinquish basic decency or even basic sense to achieve some imagined ideal of toughness.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/washington/26unions.html?fta=y
Labor Coalitions Divided on Immigration Overhaul
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: June 26, 2007
Now that President Bush has rallied Republicans to try again to reshape the immigration laws, supporters of the effort have a new worry. When the bill returns to the Senate floor, probably next week, opposition from labor unions could doom the bill¹s prospects by putting pressure on many Democrats to vote against it.
The threat that labor poses to the bill has gone largely unrecognized in part because three prominent unions ‹ the service employees, the farm workers, and the hotel, restaurant and apparel workers ‹ have backed the legislation. But that support, advocates say, has been outweighed by opposition from the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and virtually all other unions, including auto workers, Teamsters, food and commercial workers, and construction unions.
³The labor opposition on this bill is extremely important,² said Tamar Jacoby, an immigration expert at the conservative Manhattan Institute. ³For this bill to pass, we probably need 80 percent of the Democrats, if not more, to support it, and if unions are what pull them off the bill or make their support soft, that is a serious threat to the bill.²
The split between the three unions and the rest of labor reflects fundamentally different views of what is best for the future of the labor movement.
Supporters of the bill say that the A.F.L.-C.I.O., in opposing the legislation, is focused on protecting the gains that its mostly middle-class members have made in pay and benefits over the decades. To the labor federation, the big worry is that the bill¹s guest worker provision will pull down wages, take away jobs from Americans and exploit immigrants.
The three unions that favor the bill also dislike the guest worker program but are willing to support the bill to pursue a larger goal: a path to legalization for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in this country. The three unions, which represent many janitors, farm laborers and hotel housekeepers, have high percentages of members who are immigrants. They also recognize that it will be far easier to unionize immigrants ‹ perhaps the most fertile ground for labor¹s growth ‹ when illegal immigrants are given legal status.
The three unions argue that the best strategy to help the nation¹s immigrants is to push forward with the bill, however flawed, in the hope that it will be improved by the House. ³We think burying the issue and ignoring it would be a terrible mistake for the country and the economy,² said John W. Wilhelm, president of the hospitality division of Unite Here, which represents hotel, restaurant and apparel workers. ³We don¹t support the bill in its present form, but we think that the process is best served if the bill passes out of the Senate and the legislative process continues.²
But the A.F.L.-C.I.O. asserts that the bill is so flawed that it should be killed.
³We really have major concerns, and the concerns increase each day because the bill is getting worse instead of better,² said John J. Sweeney, the labor federation¹s president, who called the bill overly punitive. ³The bill¹s guest worker provisions pit workers against other workers. It creates a new underclass of workers.²
The federation continues to battle the bill despite amendments proposed to address labor¹s objections. The Senate voted to halve the guest worker program, to 200,000 workers a year, and to phase it out after five years.
³The A.F.L.-C.I.O.¹s hostility surprises me,² said Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a liberal group that supports the bill. The service workers¹ union and Unite Here, Mr. Sharry said, ³are forward looking, they¹re trying to figure out how do you improve workers¹ rights in an era of globalization and do more than protect aging members.²
Labor¹s split over the bill reflects tensions between the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the breakaway Change to Win labor federation; the three unions backing the bill belong to the rival federation.
Eliseo Medina, an executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union, said the bill would help not only immigrants, but also labor unions.
³We have thousands of members who are undocumented who would have legal status,² said Mr. Medina, the son of a bracero worker from Mexico. ³Second, it will allow workers who want to organize to do so without the fear of deportation, and that helps unionization drives. It¹s not just a question of helping us as labor; it helps all workers because if you have a significant number of workers without any rights, that suppresses wages for everybody.²
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/opinion/27weds1.html
Posted by lois at June 28, 2007 09:29 AM