Basta!

This week, the CNN anchor broadcast his radio show from the conference of anti-immigrant hate group FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Founded by a white nationalist, FAIR was linked earlier this year to vigilantes in Arizona who brutally murdered 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father in their home.

The appearance at FAIR is just the latest example of Dobbs using his status as a CNN anchor to spread fear about Latinos and immigrants. It’s time we said ¡Basta! Enough is enough. Please join us in demanding that CNN drop Dobbs from its network:

BastaDobbs.com/Action

Dobbs’ network, CNN, calls itself “The Most Trusted Name in News.” But Dobbs has shown that the only thing he can be trusted to do is to spread dangerous, false myths about immigrants, to give airtime to extremists, and to use dehumanizing and disrespectful language towards our community.

For example, Dobbs has blamed Latino immigrants for an alleged leprosy epidemic that was widely debunked, and has insinuated high crime rates by Latinos falsely claiming “illegal aliens” make up a third of the prison population. Dobbs also regularly hosts extremist guests like FAIR, the Minutemen, and Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who he called “a model for the whole country.”

The Dobbs threat to Latinos is real. Here is how Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center described it to us:

How dangerous is Lou Dobbs? The rise in hate crimes against Latinos coincides almost exactly with the time Dobbs has been propagating false conspiracy theories about Latinos on the air. He’s not urging people to go hurt and kill - but that is the effect of what he does.

To fight back against Dobbs, Presente.org is launching a new campaign, working with dozens of leading Latino organizations and our allies in cities across the country — from Los Angeles to Phoenix to Orlando. We are joining together to demand that CNN no longer allow Dobbs to spew hate thinly disguised as “news.”

Please join us in saying “¡basta!” and ask your friends and family to do the same. It only takes a moment:

BastaDobbs.com/Action

Thank you and Adelante!
The Presente.org team

Backlash

New American Media reports that more undocumented Chinese immigrants are entering the US through Mexico, Obama vows to "reform" the immigrant detention complex in the US (NYTimes article here) and RaceWire did a compelling piece on two permanent residents, Elliot Granade and Alexander Alli, caught up in the immigrant detention system in Pennsylvania for committing non-violent crimes. Racewire reports:

On any given day—DHS detains more than one thousand noncitizens in jails across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, particularly in the Middle District of Pennsylvania.... many are lawful permanent residents who are detained for months, if not years, while the immigration courts and federal courts resolve their cases. Yet they never receive a custody hearing to determine whether their prolonged detention is even necessary. Indeed, many choose to abandon their meritorious cases because they cannot endure the prospect of being locked up indefinitely.

We are struggling so hard with this, we are violating constitutional and basic human rights daily, and yet still no one seems capable of looking below the surface at what is causing the situation in the first place! About taking responsibility for the monster we have created through, for example, imperialist attitudes and policies in the region. That's just for starters... oh I could go on.

A Call for Action on E-Verify from Julianne Hing at Racewire

Call Your Senator Today: We Deserve More Than Flawed, Unjust E-verify
Time to pick up the phone, folks. Senator Jeff Session’s amendment to the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Act of 2010 (H.R. 2892) would make E-Verify mandatory for all federal contractors is up for a vote today. If implemented, the notoriously error-ridden system would affect 4 million people in this country.

Find your senators’ information by clicking here. Call right now and let your senators know that employer sanctions in the form of E-Verify don’t protect workers from exploitation or even accurately identify those without papers.

From the National Immigration Law Center:

The amendment would:

• Make the notoriously flawed E-verify program permanent.
• Require all federal contractors and subcontractors to use the program to verify all employees including existing employees.
• Harm U.S. workers, citizens and non-citizens alike, who are falsely denied work.

2. Tell them:
• You OPPOSE the Sessions amendment (#1371) to make E-Verify permanent and mandatory for federal contractors.
• You SUPPORT having a real debate about immigration issues and the only way for that to happen is by starting comprehensive immigration reform this year.


For more information about the problems with E-Verify, see http://www.nilc.org/immsemplymnt/ircaempverif/e-verify-facts-2009-01-29.pdf.

Immigration news

The NYT reports that a federal judge, Denny Chin, ruled that the "substandard and inhuman" conditions of immigration detention centers are a priority and Obama should address those conditions within 30 days.

Also, according to this Racewire article, the new mandate for a US passport when crossing US/Mexico and US/Canada borders is discriminatory against Mexican-Americans who are born outside of the hospital and therefore struggle to produce the many documents that serve as proof of US citizenship for those born outsie of hospitals:

The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which went into effect June 1, requires Americans passing across the Canadian and Mexican borders to have a valid U.S. passport or passport card, instead of just a valid driver’s license, as previously required.

The new policy affects many communities in the Southwest for whom border crossing is a routine occurrence, and whose economic and cultural life stretches across the official divide imposed by governments. The travel requirements especially impact Mexican Americans born on the U.S. side of the border who face difficulties producing the documents needed to obtain a passport.

Civil libertarians filed a lawsuit last year charging that the passport process was unfair and discriminatory. Essentially, the procedures were biased against Mexican Americans born outside a hospital, with the help of a midwife, by requiring “an excessive number of documents normally not required to prove their citizenship.” The government recently settled the case, pledging to revise its application review procedures.

Not speaking English and being an immigrant doesn't make you an unfit mother!

Speaking English a Requirement for Motherhood? Reunite Cirila Baltazar Cruz with her Baby
by Cindy Von Quednow
Original article (from Racewire) here)

In Pascagoula, Mississippi, in November 2008, Cirila Baltazar Cruz gave birth to a baby girl. Soon after, her daughter was taken away from her because she could not communicate with the hospital attendants.

Far away from her native Oaxaca, Mexico, she did not understand the Puerto Rican interpreter assigned to her. Cirila speaks Chatino, an indigenous Mexican language spoken by about 50,000 people. A social worker called in by hospital authorities deemed the new mother negligent and unfit to raise the baby, stating as reasons that she was an “illegal immigrant” and that she did not speak English.

To date, no one has asked the mother to provide evidence of support. She owns a home in Mexico and a store which provides both secure shelter and financial support, not counting the nurturing of a loving family of two other siblings, a grandmother, aunts, uncles and other extended family.

Baltazar Cruz is up for deportation, while her daughter is reported to be with an affluent Ocean Springs couple.

About 65 percent of Pascagoula’s 26,000 residents are white. Only 904 Pascagoulans are foreign born — about 20 of them from Latin America. Since most of the people that live in this tiny Gulf Coast town are isolated from the realities of immigrant life, it seems the authorities involved acted first and asked questions later. Now a woman has been separated from her child and can only wait to be sent back to her home country.

The Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance has started a campaign to reunite mother and child by asking people to pressure Mississippi. officials. Get more information about Cirila Baltazar Cruz, along with the addresses and phone numbers of the authorities to contact, here, and help right a wrong.