Oregon needs compromise, but some bills divide

Oregon needs compromise, but some bills divide

By Francisco Lopez,
Executive Director of CAUSA Oregon

In 1933, American philosopher, author and educator, John Herman Randall Jr. wrote a piece for the American Scholar about the importance of compromising.
In his piece, he wrote,

"Cooperation between human beings is possible only if they are willing to compromise; and politics, the art of cooperation, of group action, is at bottom nothing but the practical application of the method of compromise."

The current configuration of the Oregon Legislature is opening the doors for serious compromise. I hope, at some point during the session, a compromise will take place that will resolve the $3.5 billion state budget shortfall. This budget shortfall will affect the lives of the poorest of the poor, working-class Oregonians and state workers. The Latino community is not exempt from the impact of this economic crisis.

We need common-sense solutions in the areas of housing, education, health and human services. We need to make sure that common ground is reached in order to resolve the state's economic problems and be able to mitigate the pain caused by the economic recession.

But there is murkiness in this process: Individuals at the Legislature acting on right-wing principles are promoting legislation in order to distract us from resolving the real problems that Oregonians are facing. There are more than 10 anti-immigrant pieces of legislation at the Oregon Legislature that, if enacted, would affect the lives of working class immigrants.

Examples include mandatory e-verification of work documents for small businesses and hardworking farmers, English-only rules and many other pieces of legislation not related at all with resolving the current economic crisis. They are punitive and not serious problem solvers. These proposed pieces of legislation will create a burden among struggling small businesses, farmers, public services and many other productive sectors in our state. These "Arizona-style" copycat bills are destructive in nature and attached to extremist ideological principles that have nothing to do with compromise and cooperation.

CAUSA Oregon will work in the coming months and years on policies that will guarantee access to health services, affordable housing and quality education for all Oregonians. We will work to promote policies that will guarantee the safety and protection of the fundamental human and civil rights for all. We will promote these policies in an environment of civility. We will respond to that climate by promoting peaceful and respectful marches; we will pray for those who promote hate; we will visit our legislators and present to them humane solutions to our state's problems. We will organize educational and public-policy forums, leadership development classes, voter registration and education; we will help eligible Latinos to apply for citizenship; and we will build alliances to work for the common good in our state.

There is no doubt that this will be a difficult year, but we hope that with the help of God, our friends and allies, we will continue building an Oregon that is welcoming and inclusive in a spirit of cooperation and compromise for the well-being of all.

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Op-Ed: Two Years and Four Thousand Arrests Later

Two Years and Four Thousand Arrests Later: Del Monte and the ICERaids, An Update

by Stephen Manning, Sarah Loose, Alice Perry

A few hours after dawn, several white unmarked vans departed from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters in downtown Portland. Workers, most of who lived in North Portland, had left their homes earlier to arrive at the Fresh Del Monte food processing factory, donning their safety clothes and gear to begin another workday cutting and packaging fruit. By 10:30am, agents had spilled from the unmarked vans and surrounded the factory. It was June 12, 2007. The most ferocious immigration raid in Oregon and, at that time, in the United States was underway. By late afternoon, 168 individuals had been arrested.

Since then, ICE has arrested some 4,345 individuals in large scale raids. As the Portland community dealt with the raid and in communities across the country reacted, we learned many things about ICE, about immigration, about ourselves and, most importantly, about our communities.

First, we learned that the whole theory behind ICE’s large scale raid tactics was illegal. ICE’s mantra was that immigrants are criminals. A few months ago, in a case called Flores-Figueroa v. United States, the Supreme Court rejected that theory in a unanimous decision.

Second, we learned that raids like Del Monte have negative impacts beyond just the individuals detained. In Portland, teachers struggled to explain to children why their classmates had suddenly disappeared, even as many children including citizen children expressed fears that they too would be taken away. Massive amounts of energy and money went into dealing with raid’s aftermath. Two years later, the emotional and financial costs to the Portland area are still undetermined. Children are still separated from their parents. Faith communities struggle to provide support to detained immigrants who are still awaiting resolution of the immigration court cases. It became clear that when the due process rights of our legal system are ignored in the context of a raid, we all suffer.

For example, in Postville, Iowa, the scene of another massive raid a year ago, the entire town is at the point of going bankrupt. There is an eerie abandoned quality to the town from the schools to the shuttered businesses. The town shrank by half. "It's like you're in an oven and there's no place to go and there's no timer to get you out," said former Postville-Mayor Robert Penrod, who, overwhelmed, resigned earlier this year.

Third, we learned that enforcement only – deportation – will solve nothing and is a waste of time and money. In Postville, the initial price tag for the raid was more than $5.2 million in government costs. In Portland, we are still assessing the financial costs of the Del Monte raid. The economic impact locally has been substantial. Nationally, the number of people detained annually is triple what it was just ten years ago, with an annual cost of $1.7 billion, yet the problems with our immigration system have not been resolved. Ultimately, deporting people does nothing to address the root cause of migration and it underscores the need for a reasonable, rationale solution.

Fourth, we learned that there is no “line” for immigrants to stand in. Saying there is a line implies everyone has a chance to get in line; this is not true for most immigrants and was not true for most if not all of the Del Monte raid victims.

Oregonians are pragmatic people. We overwhelmingly reject the notion that we should (or even that we can) deport 12 million people. Americans know that immigrants contribute to our society and we want a long-term solution.

We learned that Oregonians are also sensible about reforming the immigration system – Oregonians on all sides of the political spectrum. People prefer “a comprehensive approach that secures the border, cracks down on employers who hire illegal immigrants, and requires all illegal immigrants to register and meet certain requirements to become legal” over raids. They join Americans across the country 86% of who support comprehensive reform, with 58% strongly supporting it.

Most importantly, we learned that our community is strongest when we act together and work across divides to build relationships. Del Monte workers impacted in the raid and currently stuck in legal and financial limbo, have organized themselves and are partnering with local faith communities and organizations to educate about the need for just and humane immigration reform. Oregonians across the state have come forward to say that what happened at Del Monte was a tragedy and a waste and to assert that immigrants in Oregon are part of the fabric of our community.

--
Stephen Manning is an attorney in Portland, Oregon. Sarah Loose is an organizer with the Rural Organizing Project. Alice Perry is an organizer with the American Friends Service Committee of Portland.--

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Respect for law is founded on a respect for truth

in the news

In an op-ed titled, "Illegal Immigration and Crime" appearing in Sunday's Oregonian yesterday, community volunteer and former attorney, Susheela Jayapal took on the false claims of Richard LaMountain. Last week, in our piece titled, Myths of Illegal Immigration and Crime, we reported on LaMountain's op-ed pointing out his false claims and anti-immigrant agenda.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS AND CRIME

SUSHEELA JAYAPAL

In his op-ed last Sunday ("Enable state's officers to aid federal enforcement efforts"), Richard LaMountain urged support for a proposed ballot measure beguilingly titled the Respect for Law Act. Among other things, this measure would repeal current Oregon law that prohibits using state law enforcement resources for activities focused solely on enforcing federal immigration law.

To make his case, LaMountain cites an array of statistics that purport to show that we're facing a tidal wave of crime committed by illegal immigrants. Therefore, he argues, local police should make the enforcement of immigration law part of their job. Police departments and organizations (including the Major Cities Chiefs Association, comprising the police chiefs of the 64 largest cities in the country) have strongly opposed measures such as this one, and for good reason.

First, they are unnecessary: Even assuming LaMountain's statistics are correct, local law enforcement agencies already have the authority and the tools to fight crime. Second, requiring local police to enforce immigration law would seriously erode public safety, not improve it. It would divert resources away from traditional police responsibilities, and it would destroy the relationships that urban police departments have built with their immigrant communities, deterring those communities from reporting crime or cooperating with police.

As for those statistics: They're either unsubstantiated or so taken out of context as to have been wrenched from any mooring in the truth.

Take, for example, the claim that illegal immigrants driving drunk kill 13 Americans a day. This claim is apparently based on another statistic frequently cited by U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, and other anti-immigrant zealots -- that 28 percent of all prison and jail inmates in the country are illegal immigrants. This percentage is applied to a federal count of the number of alcohol-related accidents reported in 2004, yielding 13 such accidents a day.

The problem is, that 28 percent number is just plain wrong. In 2005, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that fewer than 7 percent of inmates in federal, state and local prisons and jails were immigrants of any kind, legal or illegal. So that estimate of the number of people killed by drunken illegal immigrants? Also wrong.

One more example: LaMountain cites The Oregonian as reporting last summer that 1,000 of Oregon's prisoners were foreigners. That's true. He neglects to mention, however, that the article in question actually contradicts his position: The headline is "Illegal immigrants aren't filling local jails" (Aug. 19, 2007), and the general thrust of the piece is that crime rates for illegal immigrants "are on a par with the general population."

Respect for the law is founded on respect for the truth. LaMountain's argument in support of the Respect for Law Act is based not on truth, but on rank fear-mongering -- and as such, it deserves no respect.

Susheela Jayapal is a community volunteer and a self-described recovering lawyer. She lives in Northeast Portland.

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Myths of Illegal Immigration and Crime

If you perused the Sunday edition of The Oregonian online this week, you may have read the hysterical op-ed by former writer for the now defunct Conservative Digest and Oregonians for Immigration Reform member, Richard F. LaMountain. In LaMountain’s op-ed, he went about the tired game of myth telling that undocumented immigrants “commit more serious crime than the population at large.”

The reality of Mr. LaMountain's claims is it is part and parcel of the same collection of myths that groups like Oregonians for Immigration Reform, Americans for Legal Immigration (ALIPAC) and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) have been touting to drum up fear of immigrants in an attempt to mislead Americans away from supporting a remedy to our broken immigration system. In fact, these myths have been debunked time and again by reliable sources that have examined the data. One study this year done by the Public Policy Institute of California found that U.S.-born men have incarceration rates that are 2.6 times higher than those of foreign-born men and that evidence suggests that foreign-born individuals have very low rates of criminal activity.

What LaMountain and his group, Oregonians for Immigration Reform, pride themselves on is obstructionism to fair, just and non-punitive immigration reform , pure and simple. They even go so far as to celebrate every time Congress fails to pass any sort of remedy or solution to our broken immigration system, which should make any Oregonian pause to what their real agenda could be.

As for LaMountain’s agenda, we can only refer to his profile for his 2005 candidacy to Portland Community College Director Zone 4 seat. A few notable components to his platform included his goal to “End efforts to recruit, enroll and employ students from abroad”, “Reject official "multilingualism", “mandate that English is spoken by PCC staff on PCC premises” and “End PCC "affirmative action" and "diversity" efforts”. In a letter to the editor to the Portland Mercury, LaMountain asked, “Can our nation retain the Anglo-European cultural attributes…without a majority Anglo-European population? What will remain of Western values if countless non-Westerners continue to flood into America?” So, as Mr. LaMountain and Oregonians for Immigration Reform continue to participate in myth spreading and obstruction to real immigration reform, one can only question their true motives.

In a special report released from Media Matters for America last week titled “Fear and Loathing in Prime Time”, MMA specifically addressed the false myths about undocumented immigrants and crime which we hear perpetrated on some of the most prominent cable news programs. They said, “When it comes to immigration, cable news overflows not just with vitriolic rhetoric, but also with a series of myths that feed viewers' resentment and fears, fostering hostility toward immigrants”.

What is the most common myth? According to Media Matters, it is the myth that undocumented immigrants commit a disproportionate amount of crime. In their report, MMA refutes this myth citing several studies that show overwhelmingly that immigrants in general are less likely to commit crimes, that immigrants committed fewer crimes than native-born citizens, and that a greater proportion of immigrants in a neighborhood was associated with lower rates of crime. Read the full report by linking here

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