NY Times points out inhumanity of how we deal with immigrants
In today's editorial, the New York Times offered a powerful and moving portrait of how we are dealing with undocumented immigrants.
Andy in Harrisburg
A screaming baby girl has been forcibly weaned from breast milk and taken, dehydrated, to an emergency room, so that the nation's borders will be secure. Her mother and more than 300 other workers in a leather-goods factory in New Bedford, Mass., have been terrorized — subdued by guns and dogs, their children stranded at school — so that the country will notice that the Bush administration is serious about enforcing immigration laws. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of poor Americans, lacking the right citizenship papers, have been denied a doctor's care so that not a penny of Medicaid will go to a sick illegal immigrant.
As the country waits for Congress and the president to enact immigration reform, the indecency of existing policies is becoming intolerable.
Andy in Harrisburg
Labels: immigration
posted by ACLU of Pennsylvania at 3/15/2007 09:42:00 PM
6 Comments:
Terrorized? I don't know of anyone who commits a crime or faces deportation that isn't terrorified of the authorities. The 350 people in question knew full well that they were subject to arrest and removal from this country, so don't give me that crap about innocence and sorrow. The fact that they were unprepared for the inevitiable is their fault.
Your pathetic maudlin spin is disgusting, and just shows that you will go to any lengths to exaggerate and lie to gain your objective to vilify ICE. The fact is that ICE met with the Massachusetts governor weeks in advance of the New Bedford raids, but he apparently took no action to mitigate the unfortunate circumstances that eventually ensued. The dehydration incident and other problems with children occur because the arrested often fail to cooperate with ICE when arrested.
The following was written by EILEEN MCNAMARA of the Boston Globe:
A lapse in planning
By Eileen McNamara, Globe Columnist | March 14, 2007
Federal immigration agents first briefed senior members of the incoming Patrick administration about plans to raid a Massachusetts sweatshop that employed undocumented workers last December, days before Governor Deval Patrick even took office.
In the following two months, there were face-to-face meetings and conference calls between state officials and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to discuss the potential human as well as legal consequences of the planned roundup of laborers working illegally at the Michael Bianco Inc. leather factory in New Bedford.
Patrick himself was told in February that the raid would target the defense contractor that was using a largely undocumented female workforce to make safety vests for US soldiers in Iraq. Commissioner Harry Spence of the Massachusetts Department of Social Services was told a raid was coming several days before it occurred. The night before the sweep, Bruce Foucart, the ICE agent in charge of the operation, spoke with Spence to coordinate law enforcement and child protection aspects of the raid.
So, enough with the breast-beating pretense that the Patrick administration was blindsided by the stealth tactics of shadowy federal immigration officials. This is political grandstanding of the most transparent kind.
For all the focus on the aftermath of the raid, precious little attention has been paid to its planning. The state did play a part in that process, Spence's splenetic attacks on ICE and his denials of state responsibility notwithstanding.
Massachusetts Public Safety Secretary Kevin Burke said yesterday that he and others in the administration raised questions about the children of detainees from the first meeting with Foucart and his team on Dec. 29. "They were very nice, but very vague," Burke said. "We were assured there wouldn't be any problems. . . . Next time, the state will press more for details in the beginning."
It is reasonable to ask why the state did not press more this time. Patrick did not hesitate to appeal directly to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to allow DSS social workers access to the detainees after the raid. Why, then, did he not call Chertoff before the raid to insist that the necessary precautions to protect children be in place?
Immigration authorities denied a request by Spence to allow state social workers to accompany agents during the raid, Foucart said, "because this was a law enforcement action."
"I couldn't have them interviewing people at a crime scene," he said. "I was happy to set up a triage center at the New Bedford DSS office. I assigned one of our agents there to help sort out any problems. It is just not true that we failed to coordinate with DSS."
The decision to keep the social workers out of the building "left the state between a rock and a hard place," said Burke, the longtime Essex district attorney. "It's a federal operation. Am I going to beat up law enforcement officials for that? No."
No need. Spence has the blame game covered. On Monday, he continued blasting ICE agents for a lack of cooperation and for providing a public account of events that, he charged, "has been completely different from the truth."
Given the state's performance, that is almost funny. As late as yesterday afternoon Nancy Fernandez Mills, communications director for the Patrick administration, was insisting that "the governor was not told and did not know the raid was happening until it was going on" and that "DSS did not know about this raid until it was in progress."
Told that, in fact, members of Patrick's Cabinet had briefed him about the operation weeks ago and that Spence had participated in a conference call with ICE the day before the raid -- a fact the commissioner himself acknowledged in yesterday's newspapers -- she reconsidered: "I'd like to retract that statement until I talk to someone who actually knows something about this timeline."
It is going to be a long four years.
Eileen McNamara is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at mcnamara@globe.com.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
Do your homework Andy, and stop deceiving the people.
Anyone who's read the NYT for the past few years knows that they are extremely biased towards illegal aliens and care nothing for the American people, so they are easily dismissed as just another partisan rag with an agenda.
The Times mentions that illegal aliens aren't entitled to Medicare. Well the people, through their elected representatives decided that it should be so. The people have decided that that is one benefit of citizenship reserved for themselves. Why should the American people assist foreigners who have transgressed their laws and are subject to deportation? They are already parasites when they abuse our emergency rooms by using them as primary health care providers. Illegal aliens already have the right to an education while in this country, but that is the legislative result of the drooling nine decision of the Supreme Court. Someday we hope to have that overturned as it turns logic on its head that a state should pay for the education of foreigners subject to deportation.
The NYT incorrectly refers to illegal aliens as "thousands of poor Americans, lacking the right citizenship papers". There we go again, making a blatant effort at blurring the line between the citizen and illegal aliens. They don't just lack the right citizeship papers, they haven't even bothered to go through the process of applying for them. Nor would the probably receive them if they applied. Under our current immigration policies, we have deemed it imprudent to deny legal residency to those who would become dependent upon the actual citizens of this country. The fact that the NYT refers to Medicare is indicative of the fact that they would become dependent upon us from the very day they become citizens. The last thing we need is to adopt 20 million poor who would consequently cause our welfare bill to burgeon.
The Times states that "Officials in Colorado have settled on one solution: replacing those workers with prison chain gangs." The prisoners on these farms will not be on chain gains. That's just NYT hyperbole to evoke an emotional response.
Here is how the Federal Times Radio web site desribes the current status of prison labor as it sees it:
xhttp://www.federalnewsradio.com/index.php?nid=80&pid=&sid=1075865&page=2
"Colorado inmates already work at a dairy that provides all of the milk for the prison system, and build furniture, tame mustangs and export farm-grown fish. But those enterprises are run by the state or nonprofit organizations. This would be the first time Colorado convicts have been put to work for private businesses, Morgan said.
In Arizona, state inmates have been working on private farms for more than a decade. Arizona egg farmer Clint Hickman said he is thrilled with the program, which delivers up to 50 inmates a day to work for him. He said he would jump at a chance to hire inmates to work at an egg farm his family just bought in Colorado."
The Federal Prison Industries have been producing parts for DoD weapon systems and office furniture for years now. As you can see, putting prisoners to productive use is commonplace, good for the economy and rehabilitative. colorado is just emulating others.
I conclude by saying that prison inmates are citizens and human being also, and that they should be given opportunities to be productive and rehibilitated. They should be given priority over foreigners who are not constituents of our government. Our president and Congress should recognize that they work for the citizens of this nation, not foreign nationals who owe allegience to other sovereign powers. Protect citizen interests first and foremost. Aid to foreigners should be given to their governments, not their illegal alien intruders.
I like how you always post anonymously.
I am too lazy to register, by when I feel inclined to do so, I write under the name Horace. All I know about you "Atheism quotes" is your pen name, so what's the difference between that and anonymous?
"Under our current immigration policies, we have deemed it imprudent to deny legal residency to those who would become dependent upon the actual citizens of this country."
Substitute prudent for imprudent in the last anonymous post.
Horace
Well of course it would say that, the NY Times, along with most of the major newspapers out there are liberal.
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