"Georgia Immigration" - (Google) News Sweep - 4/3/'06
EMAIL CHECK: Please reply with "Subject: REMOVE " if you no longer wish to receive these "Georgia Immigration" News Sweeps. Now that the local Georgia legislative session is over you may not wish to receive these updates any more. As you know these emails are sent for educational purposes with volunteer efforts to a very small group of those interested in the subject of immigration stories which either appear in Georgia media or mention Georgia in regards to immigration. Thanks.
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"Georgia Immigration" - (Google) News Sweep - 4/3/'06
4/3/'06 - The following article(s) were found in the media. Several stories are provided ... with links to the original sources ... for your convenience:
- Poll finds more than half open to allowing illegal immigrants to seek legal status (AP - Access North GA)
- Religious leaders' efforts help reframe debate over immigration (night Ridder - Macon Telegraph)
- Georgia town weighs immigrants' presence (MS NBC)
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http://www.accessnorthga.com/news/hall/newfullstory.asp?ID=102597
| Poll finds more than half open to allowing illegal immigrants to seek legal status by The Associated Press WASHINGTON - Americans are divided about whether illegal immigrants help or hurt the country, a poll finds. More than one-half of those questioned are open to allowing undocumented workers to obtain some temporary legal status so they can stay in the United States. At the same time, people doubt that erecting a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border could help to fix such a complex and enduring problem, an AP-Ipsos poll found. Two-thirds do not think it would work. ``You can't go and round up 11 million people and ship them out of the country,'' said Robert Kelly. The Chicago lawyer is among the 56 percent of Americans who favor offering some kind of legal status. ``It just isn't practical,'' he said. A smaller but still significant share 41 percent opposes offering any kind of legal status, giving voice to a law-and-order mind-set that bristles at the notion of officially recognizing those who did not play by the rules to get here. ``Illegal is criminal,'' said Louella Kelly, a 65-year-old grandmother from Round Rock, Texas. She said her 16-year-old granddaughter has had a hard time finding part-time work because of all the jobs taken by those who are illegally in the country. ``If we're going to give them amnesty, then why don't we give amnesty to all the people who break out of jail?'' Political analysts see an opening in such poll results for President Bush, who supports a temporary guest-worker program. The Republican Party is divided. Business interests want to preserve their access to foreign workers as a cheap labor force, while many conservatives would rather get tough on illegal immigrants. The survey found 62 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of Republicans favored temporary worker status. ``If I were in the White House, I would be pretty pleased about this,'' said Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin political science professor who studies public opinion. ``It does suggest pretty strongly that the president has the opportunity to drive public opinion on this.'' Arizona State University professor Bruce Merrill said immigration was the first issue he had seen in 20 years that did not clearly break along partisan lines. ``Conservative Democrats don't feel any different from conservative Republicans,'' he said, with both camps strongly opposing the idea of rewarding people who broke the law to enter the country. The AP-Ipsos survey of 1,003 adults was conducted Tuesday through Thursday. Debate is swirling in Congress over a proposal that would legalize many illegal immigrants in the United States and expand guest worker programs for an estimated 400,000 immigrants each year. Two-thirds of those surveyed think illegal immigrants fill jobs that most Americans do not want, the poll found. But the survey found greater ambiguity on whether illegal immigrants are good or bad for American society. Fifty-one percent said illegal immigrants mostly make a contribution to society and 42 percent said they were mostly a drain. Likewise, there was deep division on how serious a crime it should be enter the country illegally. Fifty-one percent thought it should be considered a ``minor offense'' and 47 percent considered it a ``serious criminal offense.'' ``Americans are quite divided, but it seems as if they are looking for a solution that involves some sort of legal documentation,'' said Brian Sanderoff, president of Research and Polling Inc., based in Albuquerque, N.M. He predicted that as the issue gets more attention in coming months, more Americans will start forming strong opinions. Both pro- and anti-immigration interests predicted opinion would move in their direction as people become better informed. Michelle Waslin, director of immigration policy research for the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group, said that as people consider the specific requirements that immigrants would have to meet to obtain legal status, they are more supportive of the idea. Paul Egan, director of government relations for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors stricter immigration rules, said that when people fully understand the potential implications of the guest worker program, they will be more likely to oppose it. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. |
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Religious leaders' efforts help reframe debate over immigration
BY JESSIE MANGALIMAN
Knight Ridder Newspapers
SAN JOSE, Calif. - In the boiling congressional debate over the future of 12 million undocumented immigrants, a new, critical player has emerged to reshape the arguments and the issue: the nation's churches and religious leaders.
Religious groups, led by the Catholic Church, have joined business, labor and immigrant advocacy groups to galvanize surprisingly widespread support for protecting the rights of undocumented immigrants. Already, their efforts - punctuated by national rallies, hunger strikes and walkouts - have undercut an effort to criminalize illegal immigration.
And now they are propelling a more lenient Senate immigration reform bill, which gives legal status to illegal immigrants already in the United States. The proposal also includes tighter border controls and a guest worker program supported by labor.
"We have found a moral voice," declared the Rev. Carol Been, a Lutheran minister from San Jose, "that people are ready to hear."
Been and dozens of religious leaders from the Bay Area and around the country stood in the hallway of the U.S. Senate building last week, their hands bound to each other, humming "We Shall Overcome," as the Senate Judiciary Committee debated the sweeping reform bill.
Catholic worshippers in churches in San Jose and Gilroy collected 8,000 signed postcards from the Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network, urging Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to support "a just and humane immigration reform."
At a Tuesday rally in San Jose City hall, clergy from different religious groups raised handcuffed hands - a symbol of solidarity - after learning that evening that the Senate Judiciary committee sent a bill to the floor that excluded criminal punishment for undocumented immigrants, and included a path to legalization.
"The business community is in the best position to argue the need for workers," said Angelo Amador, director of immigration policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "The unions are the best to argue why legalization is not just an issue of labor but of protecting workers."
"But the churches brought the humanitarian perspective that to a large degree was forgotten," Amador said. "We know what that argument is but the churches were the best to articulate that."
The religious community's active participation in the debate about immigration is not surprising in one sense, because immigrants, particularly Latinos, have become the dominant faces of many church congregations. For Catholics, taking up the issue fits a historical pattern of extending a hand to newcomers - first the Irish, the Italians, now Latinos - and the church's core belief in social justice.
What is new, and unexpected, is the prominence of religious voices. Churches initially came into the immigration issue out of necessity rather than choice: an earlier version of the immigration reform bill, approved by the House of Representatives last year, would have subjected to criminal penalties not only undocumented immigrants but also anyone who aided them - family members, social service workers and the clergy. Church leaders reacted vehemently against that notion.
At the beginning of Lent, Cardinal Roger Mahony, who oversees a flock of 5 million Catholics in the Los Angeles Area, encouraged church leaders to challenge that aspect of the legislation. His highly publicized remarks also included a strong message of tolerance for illegal immigrants.
"Cardinal Mahony speaking out unleashed something really big," said Cecilia Munoz, vice president for policy for the National Council of La Raza, a civil rights group. "He, the church, made this issue public in a very profound way."
Now, even though the proposed legislation has been softened, churches have retained center stage in the immigration debate - a role that some have likened to the religion-infused discourse of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
Among some Protestant Latino clergy, there was strong support for a "humane process," in the treatment of undocumented immigrants, said Juan Martinez, assistant dean for Hispanic church studies at Fuller Seminary in Southern California, one of the world's largest multi-denominational seminaries.
"Cardinal Mahony gave a public voice for what a lot of us were thinking and feeling," Martinez said. "We felt sympathy for the stand that he took: that we had a pastoral role that was fundamental."
Martinez is part of the Red de Pastores y Lideres Latinos del Sur de California (Network of Latino Pastors and Leaders in Southern California), a group that brought together leaders representing 1,200 Latino Protestant churches in Southern California to oppose the initial house legislation and to lobby for comprehensive immigration reform. This network is part of the National Hispanic Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform.
"When people started to speak about principles and values, who we are as people, it shifted from an issue of border enforcement," said the Rev. Jon Pedigo, pastor of St. Julie's Catholic Church in San Jose, who was at the Senate gathering. "It brought it back to its proper place."
Still, the religious voice is not united. Many of the most conservative religious groups, which have united with the Catholic Church on other issues like abortion and gay marriage, are wary of immigration reform now under consideration.
Among the country's largest and most influential conservative religious groups, only the Christian Coalition has taken a strong public stand. It opposes the current, more lenient legislation in Congress because, said Sadie Fields, state chairman of the Christian Coalition of Georgia, "it rewards lawbreakers."
"We're against illegal immigrants because we must uphold the rule of law," Fields said. "We are a nation of law. Our biblical world view mandates that we be a people of law."
But the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, a group that represents millions of Latino evangelicals, advocates a path to legalization for illegal immigrants, after appropriate penalties.
"The major evangelicals have stood by on this issue not because of racism or xenophobia," said Samuel Rodriguez, Jr., of Sacramento, president of the Hispanic conference. "I believe it's because they are just dead focused on law and order."
Rodriguez said "the lack of support from our white, evangelical brothers and sisters" is a disappointment.
Not everyone is heaping praise on the religious community for its role on the immigration debate.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that advocates strict enforcement of U.S. immigration laws, said some religious leaders have used the criminal penalties provision "as protest bait."
"The idea that some nun would be locked up for giving some illegal immigrant a cup of soup is ridiculous," Krikorian said. "There's zero chance that the ordinary activity of a church is going to result in any kind of prosecution."
Whatever immigration reform bill emerges out of Congress in the coming weeks, the role of religion in public policy debate reached "a watershed," Pedigo said.
"This isn't just about politics or labor or economics," Pedigo said. "This is about my grandmother, my uncle, this is about me."
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http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12125843/
Georgia town weighs immigrants' presence
Latin American workers reshape city and spur a debate
GAINESVILLE, Ga. - Harold Hogsed wonders how his grandchildren learn anything in school, with all the time their teachers spend instructing Hispanic immigrants on basic English. A drawling Georgia native, he cannot understand what the Spanish-accented adults are saying. He sees them as a drain on his tax dollars and he wishes they would all go home.
"How many people can this country hold?" Hogsed asked. "I don't have the solution to it, but something's got to be done."
Their numbers show just how rooted the predominantly Mexican immigrants have become in Gainesville and throughout the South. They have put pressure on public services while becoming essential players in the local economy. Amid anxiety on all sides, neighbors, advocates and the new residents are assessing their presence and their future in a debate that resonates nationally.
Proponents of more generous accommodations for illegal immigrants staged a one-day economic boycott on March 24 that shuttered businesses and boosted morale. Business and farming leaders declared that immigrants are keeping them solvent. At a Mass on Thursday night dedicated to the immigrants, the Rev. Fabio Sotelo urged 300 parishioners to persevere, pray and write the governor.
Gov. Sonny Perdue (R) is considering a strong anti-immigration bill delivered last week by the Georgia legislature. Congress is considering significant federal legislation, with Gainesville's congressman, Nathan Deal (R), among the firmest supporters of tightened borders and toughened measures. Lawyers for U.S.-born carpet workers will argue to the Supreme Court this month that a Georgia manufacturer conspired to drive down wages by importing illegal laborers.
'Poultry capital of the world'
Gainesville advertises itself as "the poultry capital of the world" and it is the chicken-processing plants that are driving much of the city's startling growth. Since 1990, the official population has nearly doubled to 32,000 and the number of Hispanics has quadrupled to compose nearly half the registered population -- and far more when illegal immigrants are considered.
When the shift changes at the factories on Industrial Boulevard, hundreds of workers in hairnets stream through the doors of Koch Foods and Pilgrim's Pride. Their origins are reflected in the Spanish banter, the salsa tunes blasting from car radios, and the young ice cream vendor who calls his cart La Paleteria Lulu.
"Reality speaks and it says that, absent Hispanic workers, we could not process chicken," said Tom Hensley, chief financial officer for Gainesville's largest chicken plant, Fieldale Farms. "There aren't enough native American people who want to work in a chicken plant at any wage. We'd be put out of business."
A dozen years ago, Fieldale employed fewer than 100 Hispanics. Today, Hispanics total 3,000 in a 4,700-person workforce that transforms live birds by the thousand into boneless chicken flesh. To win jobs that start at about $10 an hour, applicants must present at least two identity documents from a government list of 18.
"If the documents appear to be legitimate, we accept them," Hensley said.
Two workers said they got jobs at Fieldale with fake documents, a practice considered an open secret. One longtime laborer, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, said he is counting on Congress -- "in a free country, a democracy" -- to design a compromise that legalizes needed and reliable undocumented residents.
Praised for excellence by President Bush in his 2004 Republican National Convention speech, Gainesville Elementary greets one new student a day in a school already 70 percent Hispanic. Nine in 10 students qualify for subsidized meals. Educators draft letters in two languages and visit homes to urge parents to support the students.
'Not our concern'
"We're not going to ask, 'Are you legal?' That's not our concern," said Principal Priscilla Collins. "We let them know that no one is going to come into our schools and do raids. That's not how America works."
Raids are much on people's minds. The telephones at St. Michael have been ringing in the past two weeks as anxious residents tracked rumors prompted by legislative activity in Atlanta and Washington. Is it true, they asked, that immigration agents grabbed 300 people at Wal-Mart? Was there a roundup of 500 along Jesse Jewel Parkway? Will agents raid the schools on Friday?
No, no and no, Lucia Martin answered.
Martin was sneaked into the country from Mexico at age 3. She remembers being tucked under the seat of a truck and told to keep quiet. Her family moved to Chicago. Twenty years ago, she arrived in Gainesville when her husband found work on the chicken line. She works at the church.
"There's a supply. There's a demand. There's an opportunity and you take it. It's human instinct," Martin said. When white residents complain that the new immigrants should wait their turn, she answers, "Did your ancestors get a visa?"
Martin's worry is that new rules will make it easier for government authorities to target immigrants unfairly -- by arresting people on a pretext to investigate their legal status. Angel Rojas, a Catholic Social Services worker, raised the same issue in advising an overflow crowd of educators and community workers to study the potential impact of proposed legislation.
"The main thing we need to understand is this affects everybody," Rojas said. He noted that one proposal would make it a crime to help an undocumented resident remain in the United States. A number of Mexicans, he said, have told him they would rather return home with their worldly goods than risk losing all during deportation.
That would be cheerful news to legislators who have said they hope to increase pressure and create a deterrent. It also jibes with the thinking of Joe Merck, a working-class Gainesville native and advocate for the homeless who describes the city as "overrun."
'They're having all these babies'
"I don't blame 'em coming up here, but half of 'em are illegal. We're taking care of 'em. They're having all these babies one right after another," Merck, 71, said. "You can go buy your credentials. It's a known fact, but nobody does anything about it. We need to send 'em back home."
Waiting for a ride, kitchen worker William Morton griped that he cannot obtain some restaurant jobs because he speaks no Spanish.
"This country's not right," said Morton, 38. "The economy's went down for us and gone up for them, and we're supporting Mexico."
Merck and Morton can be counted in the potential audience for the immigration proposals that have suddenly dominated the state and national debate. Deal, a seven-term congressman who received an A-plus career rating from Americans for Better Immigration, a group that favors stricter controls, said the United States is "a nation of law."
"To make sure we have the confidence of the American public behind us, we have to show we're going to enforce our law first and foremost," Deal said. The nation's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants "are going to have to go home."
Trinidad Avila, 44, is among those who consider that impossible.
Avila, who darted across the Mexican border as a teenager and later obtained residency, expects a compromise permitting workers and their families to remain, but wonders when. His two teenage children hold hands at the dinner table and pray for friends who are here illegally.
"People don't know what they're going to do," Avila said. "They're just wishing for the government to do something for them."
'Love-hate relationship'
Julia Perilla, who studies grass-roots Latino issues at Georgia State University, describes a "love-hate relationship" between the new immigrants and many Georgians, especially business people.
"On the one hand, they want us very badly. They are very, very dependent on Latino labor. On the other hand, there's an incredible amount of xenophobia that's on the rise in Georgia," Perilla said. "It's extremes. Nobody is in the middle."
Staff writer Kari Lydersen in Chicago and researcher Don Pohlman in Washington contributed to this report.
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/shared-blogs/ajc/badie/entries/2006/04/01/protesters_flag.html
Protesters' flags send mixed signal
By RICK BADIE | Saturday, April 1, 2006, 11:55 PM
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In America, protests are a way of life.
We can march, chant and sing songs about overcoming whatever ails us. Last month, an example of the freedom to express ourselves was on full display.
Thousands of demonstrators in numerous cities took to the streets to protest proposed federal and state legislation that would crack down on the 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants in the country. Expect more protests as controversial measures concerning immigration move forward.
Something struck me as odd when I watched the TV news and read articles about protests two weeks ago in Los Angeles and other cities. Many participants waved and wrapped themselves in their ancestral flags. Mexican flags were prominent, as were those of other Latin countries.
Protest organizers had implored demonstrators to show up with Old Glory. And yes, U.S. flag carriers could be seen. There just wasn't a preponderance of them, and that's a shame, as well as a turnoff.
It sends the wrong message to everyone. To folk like me sympathetic to the plight of illegal immigrants, and who take issue with their being made political scapegoats. To those, especially, who want to blame them for low wages, crowded schools and the changing cultural cadence in their neighborhoods. And to those straddlers who haven't formed much of an opinion, one way or the other.
When Latinos embrace their ancestral flag, it suggests that they're willing to come here for a piece of the American dream. They just don't invest in it hook, line and sinker. It hints that there's more love for the social, economic and political turmoil left behind than the opportunity afforded them here. It makes people think that, perhaps, there's no willingness like immigrants of past eras to learn English and study civics. To assimilate. That maybe all they are interested in are the dollars they can send back to Mexico.
It's one thing to stand up and speak out. When you wave or wrap yourself in the flag of another country, then march down an American street, you don't appear aggrieved. You seem arrogant. Pompous maybe. And if you're a student protester, misguided, perhaps.
In December, a poll conducted for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution showed more than 80 percent of respondents thought it was important for the Georgia Legislature to deal with illegal immigration. The General Assembly has done just that.
Senate Bill 529 would require state and local government agencies to verify the immigration status of adults applying for taxpayer-provided benefits. It also requires companies doing business with the state to check the legal status of new employees. Illegal immigrants arrested for felonies or DUI would have to be reported to federal immigration authorities. The legislation awaits the governor's signature.
A "National Day of Action" is being organized by labor, immigration, civil rights and religious groups to take place on April 10. Julian Herrera, a Norcross pastor and spokesman for a local alliance, has told AJC Gwinnett News that a local protest march will be held; the location hasn't been determined.
An immigration overhaul has just about reached the boiling point. Symbols are significant. They can either help or hinder the cause of the protesters.
American dreams and foreign flags don't mesh. Decide which one is the most important.
• Rick Badie's column appears on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Contact him at 770-263-3875. Or e-mail: rbadie@ajc.com
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Erik Voss
erik@ICAtlanta.org
404-457-5901 Direct
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