9/1/09 - The Sanctuary: Over 500 groups demand End to Local Immigration Checks
Published in The Sanctuary 9/1/09 Over 500 Groups demand End to Local Immigration Checks Since taking office, the Obama Administration has been doing a carefully choreographed dance with both sides of the immigration debate in an attempt to place itself in a "sweet spot" where it believes it will be able to appease all concerned parties when the thorny issue of immigration reform finally moves up the legislative agenda. Taking a cue from past administrations who tackled immigration legislation, like Reagan in 86, and Clinton in 95, Obama has chosen to pave the way for negotiations by launching a pre-emptive strike against opposition from the right by engaging in increased crackdowns and heavy-handed enforcement to prove that he's "serious about enforcing the law". Both Reagan and Clinton engaged in increased workplace raids and ramped up deportations before coming to the table to negotiate. Bush, did the same after the failure of reform legislation in 06. But Obama, being much more attuned than his predecessors to the potential negative PR ramifications of pictures of crying children, or parents being paraded around in shackles, plastered across the pages of the New York Times or the Nightly News, has chosen to send his dog-whistle messages to the right in far more subtle ways. Since taking office he's increased the number of deportations and detentions through the use of roundups of "criminal aliens" (and anyone within proximity to them), and increased use of local law enforcement to single out undocumented immigrants at traffic stops and routine misdemeanor calls. Additionally he's ramped up the use of the provisions of Clinton's 1996 legislation that allows the deportation of legal residents who've run afoul of the law (even years ago on minor charges.) |
| Duke :: Over 500 Groups Demand End To Local Immigration Checks |
| While both he, and his Homeland Defense Secretary, have promised to review it's agreements with local enforcement agencies and revise their detention policies to make them more "humane", neither has been willing to totally abandon the enforcement policies that fill those detention centers. Finally last week, 521 immigrant-rights and human-rights organizations threw down the gauntlet and demanded that the Administration immediately terminate the Department of Homeland Security's 287(g) program that allows over 66 different local law enforcement agencies to run roughshod over the constitution
|
over-500-groups-demand-end-to-local-immigration-checks.html
