For U.S. immigration, 'partnered' doesn't count

From the SF Chronicle:

Shirley Tan has been with her partner, Jay Mercado, for 23 years. The Pacifica women have twin 12-year-old sons and have been registered domestic partners since 1991.

That means nothing to the federal government, which recognizes only a marriage between a man and a woman. Federal authorities ordered Tan, who is not a U.S. citizen, to be deported from San Francisco to her native Philippines this morning.

But with the help of her congresswoman, Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, Tan received a three-week stay of the deportation order, allowing her to remain with her family until April 22.

"This is good news, since we now have a little more time for the legal process to work," said Tan's attorney, Phyllis Beech. "If this was not a same-sex couple, the spouse of an American citizen would be able to immigrate fairly quickly and fairly easily. Instead, they're being discriminated against because they are lesbians."

Under the federal Defense of Marriage Act, domestic partnerships and even legal same-sex marriages, such as those last year in California and which still occur in Massachusetts, aren't recognized as valid in immigration cases.

"I just really feel helpless," Mercado said. "If I was a man, none of this would be happening."

A spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the agency does not comment on individual cases.

For Tan, 43, the whole affair is a shock. After meeting Mercado in the United States in 1986, she returned from the Philippines on a visitor's visa in 1989 to be with her lover.

In 1995, she applied for political asylum, saying she feared for her life in her home country. She had been shot nearly two decades earlier by a relative in a dispute over an inheritance.

"I was 14 when it happened, and I was shot in the head and beaten," she said. "It's a miracle that I'm alive."

Any deportation action was stayed while the asylum request was being considered. But when the Board of Immigration Appeals turned down the request in 2002 and ordered Tan deported, no one - not even her previous attorney - told her.

"She and her family even received a security clearance to tour the White House in 2005," said Beech, a Fresno attorney who took over Tan's case this year. "They checked her fingerprints and never said there was a deportation order outstanding."

The respite ended Jan. 28, when immigration agents showed up at Tan's home in Pacifica to take her into custody.

"I'm not an activist," Tan said. "We're just common people living a peaceful and happy life, and then this happens."

It's a familiar story, said Rachel B. Tiven, executive director of Immigration Equality, which works to end discrimination in immigration law against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and HIV-positive people.

"We hear every day from American citizens whose families are being torn apart because their partner is being deported," she said.

A survey commissioned by Immigration Equality found that in 2000 there were about 37,000 same-sex couples in the country where one partner was a foreign national. About half of these couples had children under 18.

"The average age of these people is 38, so we're talking about long-term relationships," Tiven said.

Federal officials can look past immigration violations when heterosexual couples have children, Beech said.

"Even on an overstay (like Tan's), Congress has always taken the position that maintaining the family unit is so important that a noncitizen spouse can be legalized virtually without penalty," she added.

Since 2000, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., has introduced bills to allow the "permanent partners" of U.S. citizens the same avenue to permanent resident status spouses now have.

The bills have never made it out of committee, but that could change, said Ilan Kayatsky, a spokesman for Nadler.

"The landscape is changing with a president who supports the idea of immigration change and more progressives in both chambers," he said.

So far, 93 members of the House and 17 senators have signed on as co-sponsors of either HR1024, the Uniting American Families Act of 2009, or its companion measure in the Senate, S424 by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

The stay of the deportation order opens some paths for Tan. Her attorney is still working on efforts to get the appeals board to reverse its decision, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office is reviewing the case to see if anything can be done for Tan.

But those efforts might not be enough to keep her off that plane to the Philippines later this month. And if that happens, her entire family will pull up their roots to follow.

"We'll move, and we'll be together," Mercado said. "We raised our family, and we won't let anyone tear us apart."

Action alert from MomsRising

At MomsRising we're always looking out to make sure that mothers and families are treated fairly in our nation. The other day I saw a video that shocked me: Two young children crying, alone in a car, reaching out for their mother who'd been taken away by deputies wearing ski masks after being stopped for a minor traffic violation.[1] The images haven't left me. A nightmare, right? Never in America? Wrong.

A local NBC news report described the incident through the eyes of a witness, "…the deputies were wearing ski masks and detained the children's mother for about an hour while her children watched, crying."[2]

Who's in charge of these deputies!?

It turns out that the person in charge knew exactly what was going on. Sheriff Arpaio has been cited repeatedly for gross civil rights violations and racial profiling of both citizens and non-citizens in the name of immigration enforcement, and when questioned about his tactics, he said that under his jurisdiction, "it was not unusual for law enforcement officers to wear ski masks while on duty."[2,3]

In the video the young girl is asked, "What did the sheriff tell you?" The little girl said, "To be quiet, but I couldn't 'cause I wanted to go with my mommy." [2] And here's what Mary, a MomsRising team member said after seeing the video, "We may not all be on the same page about immigration policy, but we do all agree that children and mothers shouldn't be treated this way."

Regardless of where immigration policy stands, no one should be treated that way. We've all got to stand up against this inhumane treatment of families. This type of treatment of women and families simply isn't acceptable.


*Watch the video and join us in urging the Department of Justice to investigate Sheriff Arpaio's tactics at: http://www.momsrisingaction.org/o/1768/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26817

-Please forward this email to friends and family now so they too can take action too. We need to put a spotlight on this inhumane treatment with as many people paying attention as possible in order to get an investigation.

Together we can do something about this. Sheriff Arpaio is out of control in Maricopa County, Arizona, and it's going to take all of us, and then some, standing up to say that this type of treatment has got to stop.

With over 2,700 lawsuits against him, a history of virulently anti-Latino and anti-immigrant tactics, and 40,000 felony warrants outstanding in his jurisdiction, Sheriff Arpaio has fostered a climate in which real criminals roam free while his deputies cross the line by using tactics that violate civil rights in the name of immigration enforcement.[4]

The voices of mothers are needed right now to say clearly that all mothers and children need to be treated with respect and fairness.

*Don't forget to watch the video and sign on now to urge the U.S. Department of Justice investigate Sheriff Arpaio at: http://www.momsrisingaction.org/o/1768/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26817

Mothers taken away from young children by men in ski masks, and people being marched in shackles through town to electric fenced "tent cities" in the desert [5] crosses the line of humane treatment. Let's help put a stop to this.

Thank you - Kristin, Joan, Katie, Dionna, Mary, Ariana, Anita, Ashley, Donna, Roz, Julia, and the MomsRising Team

[1] See the video and take action: http://www.momsrisingaction.org/o/1768/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26817

[2] February 5th, 2009: http://www.azcentral.com/12news/news/articles/2009/02/05/20090205motherarrested02052009-CR.html

[3] From "Paying the Price: The Impact of Immigration Raids on America's Children": Approximately five million children have an undocumented parent; however, the vast majority of these children are U.S. citizens and under the age of ten. Despite efforts to mitigate harm to children by changing the manner in which raids and other immigration enforcement actions are conducted, children continue to be placed in harm's way.

[4] http://www.americasvoiceonline.org/page/content/sheriff

[5] February 5th, 2009: http://www.azcentral.com/12news/news/articles/2009/02/05/20090205motherarrested02052009-CR.html, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/opinion/04wed2.html , http://vivirlatino.com/2009/03/04/thousands-protest-racist-sheriff-joe-arpaio-in-arizona.php

p.s. MomsRising joins the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (http://www.ndlon.org), National Council of La Raza (http://www.nclr.org), America's Voice (http://americasvoiceonline.org/page/content/sheriff), and many others in calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to begin a federal investigation into Sheriff Arpaio's tactics.

Immigration, Detention, Deportation

Haiti said NO to U.S. deportations this week, saying that the country needs to rebuild after being ravaged by several storms. It's an interesting strategy, but doesn't really benefit the Haitians stuck in limbo in U.S. detention centers. Haiti wants the U.S. to let undocumented Haitian immigrants stay and work temporarily, and the U.S. is pressuring undocumented Haitians to go get passports so that they can be repatriated without the official designation of "deportation."

The AP also recently reported that over 100,000 of deportees last year had children who were left behind. Think about those kids and what legacy that leaves for them -- not only is ICE splitting up families and being just horrible and cruel (that is something I've come to expect) they are also creating a generation of disillusioned, underrepresented children who will grow up without their parents in constant fear of the U.S. government. WHAT ARE THEY THINKING?!?! This is not in their best interest! If we can't count on people doing what is selfish then what can we count on anymore? Or are they just banking on new tactics for repression, terror, and hegemony by the time those youths are of age to take action?

Also, I saw on Racewire that the Pew Hispanic Center released a report on rising rates of Latinos being charged for federal crimes. The New York Times says:

"Latinos made up only 13 percent of the United States adult population in 2007, but they accounted for one third of federal prison inmates that year, a result the study attributed to the sharp rise in illegal immigration and tougher enforcement of immigration laws.

Nearly half of Latino offenders, or about 48 percent, were convicted of immigration crimes, while drug offenses were the second-most-prevalent charge, according to the report.

As the annual number of federal offenders more than doubled from 1991 to 2007, the number of Latino offenders sentenced in a given year nearly quadrupled, to 29,281 from 7,924.

Of Latino federal offenders, 72 percent are not United States citizens and most were sentenced in courts from one of the four states that border Mexico. Federal prisoners who are illegal immigrants are usually deported to their home countries after serving their sentences."

So we're imprisoning people for trying to provide for their families, essentially, either by crossing the border to work or selling drugs. Not that drugs don't destroy communities but if the government and businesses provided livable wages and acceptable working conditions then maybe folks wouldn't be so inclined to deal drugs to buy food for their kids.

Also of note:

Last month, The New York Times reported that federal immigration prosecutions had increased over the last five years, doubling in the last fiscal year to more than 70,000 cases. Meanwhile, other categories of federal prosecutions, including gun trafficking, public corruption, organized crime and white-collar crime, declined over the same period.

The number of illegal immigrants in the country increased to 11.9 million last year, from 3.9 million in 1992.

Undocumented Immigration 101

So here's the basic situation as I understand it
The U.S. government has historically:
- manipulated governments and trade in the region,
- exploited opportunities to use land and bodies from south of the border
- criminalized the bodies that cross the border because of the incentives that big business (supported by the same government) provides for crossing
- accepted taxes from these individuals (for more click here) and
- allowed the U.S. economy to benefit from these workers while simultaneously
- incarcerating, detaining, and deporting any undocumented workers they find

The NYT reported today that undocumented immigrants are actually rebuilding New Orleans for us.. and then being mugged and attacked in the streets. For the full article click here

As Tom Barry writes in Dollars and Sense,

"The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 drastically altered the traditional political economy of immigration. The millions of undocumented immigrants—those who crossed the border illegally or overstayed their visas—who were living and working in the United States were no longer simply regarded as a shadow population or as surplus cheap labor. In the public and policy debate, immigrants were increasingly defined as threats to the nation’s security. Categorizing immigrants as national security threats gave the government’s flailing immigration law-enforcement and border- control operations a new unifying logic that has propelled the immigrant crackdown forward.

Responsibility for immigration law-enforcement and border control passed from the Justice Department to the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In Congress Democrats and Republicans alike readily supported a vast expansion of the country’s immigration control apparatus—doubling the number of Border Patrol agents and authorizing a tripling of immigrant prison beds.

Today, after the shift in the immigration debate, the $15 billion-plus DHS budget for immigration affairs has fueled an immigrant-crackdown economy that has greatly boosted the already-bloated prison industry. Even now, with the economy imploding, immigrants are currently behind one of the country’s most profitable industries: they are the nation’s fastest growing sector of the U.S. prison population.

Across the country new prisons are hurriedly being constructed to house the hundreds of thousands of immigrants caught each year. State and local governments are vying with each other to attract new immigrant prisons as the foundation of their rural “economic development” plans.

While DHS is driving immigrants from their jobs and homes, U.S. firms in the business of providing prison beds are raking in record profits from the immigrant crackdown. Although only one piece of the broader story of immigration, it’s all a part of the new political economy of immigration."

Click here for the full article The New Political Economy of Immigration

NEW HAVEN ICE RAIDS

Feds Return For Immigration Raid

by Melissa Bailey | February 3, 2009 3:14 PM

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Melissa Bailey Photo

Two local pastors were on their way out the door to pray with a family when they heard a knock.

Minutes later, they found themselves caught in an immigration raid, their family torn apart.

The raid a couple of weeks ago at the home of Juan Sil and Julia Morales appears to be the first in the city since June 2007, when federal agents swept up 32 alleged illegal immigrants, sending waves of terror through the Fair Haven neighborhood.

In the latest raid, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents targeted Julia Morales, a 44-year-old pentecostal pastor who has been living in the New York-New Haven area for a quarter century. The raid netted four people: Julia, her husband Juan, and two other men living in their home.

The feds described the arrests as “routine.”

“ICE is mandated by Congress to enforce a wide range of immigration and customs laws we will continue to enforce those laws in Connecticut and throughout the U.S.,” stated ICE spokeswoman Paula Grenier.

Agents went to the home to serve a warrant for deportation on Julia Morales, she said. During the process, they came across the three other men and charged them with immigration violations, she confirmed.

Now Julia Morales sits behind bars in a detention in a facility in Maine, pending deportation.

Kica Matos, City Hall’s point person on immigration matters, fumed over why ICE would target a woman who by the agency’s own protocol, ranks as the lowest priority for deportation. ICE’s stated goals are to collect illegal immigrants in this order: those who pose a threat to national security, those who are a threat to the community, those who have a criminal record, and lastly, non-criminal fugitives.

“This woman has not received so much as a traffic ticket,” said Matos. “She was a contributing member of the community. She was spreading the word of God in New Haven.”

“When is it an act of terror to preach about God?” asked Matos. “She clearly wasn’t a
priority.” In arresting a pastor, she said the raid has had an impact not just on one family, but on a whole church community.

Phony Lawyer

What is particularly tragic, Matos said, is the way the woman ended up on the feds’ wanted list.

Julia’s deportation order appears to have stemmed from when she sought help from a phony New York lawyer who later pleaded guilty to defrauding immigrants.

“She was trying to do the right thing,” said Matos. “She was trying to get proper status. She got duped by a lawyer—and now she’s paying the price.”

Juan, who’s 54, has better prospects at remaining in the country: He’s eligible to have his two adult U.S. citizen children (Priscilla and Jimmy, pictured with him above) petition for a change in his immigration status. He remains home with his family pending his next date in court. Julia’s brother, Gustavo Morales, remains in ICE custody pending a hearing; the fourth arrestee, Hernán Rivera, was released on a bond, Grenier said.

The Raid

Sitting on a few couches at a cozy apartment Saturday, heaped with climbing children and two pet dogs, the Sil-Moraleses recounted the day that the feds took their “motor,” their matriarch, away.

It was about 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 14. Juan and Julia were at home at 525 East St., where they live with one of their three grown kids in a highway-bordered neighborhood between East Rock and Fair Haven.

Jimmy Sil-Morales, who’s 23, was watching a movie with his uncle on the couch. His 4 year-old daughter was playing on the floor. Julia and Juan, pastors at a Pentecostal church on Howe Street, had an appointment at a parishioner’s house. As was their nightly routine, they were going to pray with a family in need of support. Julia put her coat on.

Then she heard a knock. Jimmy got up and answered the door with his mom. On the other side, there were several men in vests. The visitors didn’t identify themselves, according to Jimmy. (Grenier declined to give details on the raid, but said that ICE agents do identify themselves as law enforcement officers, police or ICE when making arrests. Local police were notified beforehand, she contended.)

“Are you Julia Morales?” the visitors asked, according to Jimmy. She replied yes, he said. They came in and announced that they had a warrant for her arrest.

Upon learning who she was, eight men “burst” into the house, said Jimmy. They asked everyone for identification. They checked upstairs, under the bed and in the closets, he said.

When the agents came across Juan Sil, he produced a driver’s license as identification. The license was valid, Sil said. ICE agents checked his record in a database.

Before they could pull up the record, Juan volunteered what they might find. He admitted to having a bad record long ago, including a drunken driving offense. But he told them, in the past 15 years, “my record has been clean.”

“God changed me,” he told them.

Until 15 years ago, Juan lived at the bottom of society. He was homeless, unemployed, drunk. Then he found God, and has been clean ever since, he said, working as an upholsterer and devoting his life to his church.

The story didn’t sway ICE officials from slapping him with an arrest warrant.

Juan got the warrant when he appeared the following morning in immigration court, as officials ordered him to do.

“You are not a citizen” of the U.S., the warrant claimed. “You are a native of Guatemala.” The warrant charged Juan with immigrating into the country illegally.

A U.S. citizen born in New York City, Jimmy escaped the wrath of ICE. His uncle, Gustavo Morales, wasn’t so lucky. Neither was the uncle’s roommate, Hernán Rivera. The two men, along with Julia Morales, were arrested for allegedly entering the U.S. without permission.

Agents took their fingerprints in the kitchen. Meanwhile, Jimmy’s 4 year-old daughter sat on the living room floor.

When the feds moved to take the suspects away, Jimmy pleaded with them to protect his daughter from seeing her grandma hauled away like a criminal. Jimmy’s daughter is “attached at the hip” to her grandmother, he explained.

“You’re not going to handcuff my mother in front of my daughter!” he cried. The agents agreed to let Julia hug his daughter goodbye. The agents waited until Julia was outside to put on the handcuffs.

The next day, Jimmy and his sister Priscilla trekked up to Hartford for their father’s court date. They saw their mom one last time before she was taken to a detention camp in Maine. Juan was told to return on a regular basis as his case was heard.

“The Motor of the Family”

Meanwhile, the family has struggled to get by without its babysitter, cook and spiritual leader. When they went to work, Julia’s three children relied on her to take care of their four little ones. When she wasn’t babysitting or helping out at church, Julia would cook Guatemalan specialties like tamales and cheesecake, and sell them to pay the bills.

In her absence, Juan has been trying to take over some of the child-minding duties.

The other day, Juan said he tried to change a diaper on one of his grandkids. “I couldn’t do it,” he said.

“My wife is the motor of my house,” said Juan, who’s 54 years old.

“She makes everything move,” chimed in Jimmy.

A Church Rises

The family said Julia’s detention has been a blow to the church community, too.

After he turned his life around 15 years ago, Juan was possessed by a fever to help others.

When the family moved to the New Haven area about 15 years ago, he and his wife started thinking about preaching.

They found an abandoned auto mechanic’s garage on Davenport Avenue and turned it into a church. The parish grew to about 200 — until the ICE raids hit in 2007, and churchgoers were afraid to leave the house. Juan left the parish and started a new church in West Haven, this one in and old antique shop.

When he wasn’t working at his job, upholstering boats and homes, he devoted all his time to his parish, he said. When a parishioner fell on hard times, he and his wife would reach out to the church community and try to find help. That meant serving as a marriage counselor, helping women in abusive relationships, feeding people with bare cupboards, and visiting the sick at the hospital. People seek his help, he said, because he understand where they’re coming from.

“I’ve been through everything,” he said.

After the West Haven building was condemned, the Sil-Moraleses didn’t give up on the church. They found someone to rent out a church on Howe Street and kept on preaching. Today, the Iglesia de Diós, Puerta a Canaan has a parish of about 60-80 people, they said.

“She’s not a criminal,” said Julia’s daughter Julie, as the family finished rattling off a list of benevolent acts. “She’s just trying to give us a future.”

Three times, Juan has driven the five hours to the Maine detention camp to visit his wife. He finds her in an orange jumpsuit on the other side of a glass wall. They talk for one to two hours, and then he drives back home.

Priscilla, who’s 21, accompanied him on one of the trips. She said her mom tells her how much she worries about them.

“I tell her everything is going to be fine,” said Priscilla. To honor her mother’s longtime wishes, she just enrolled herself in college.

The family has not decided whether they will fight the deportation order. They do know one thing for sure, said Priscilla: “We don’t want her in there [the detention center], lonely, cooped up like an animal.”

Juan said he would like to stay around to raise his grandkids.

If the couple does get deported, however, their kids have vowed to support them.

“We’re going to have to work for them,” said Jimmy, “like they did for us.”

Original article found here in the New Haven Independent