First are Howard Dean and Generation DFA...

Also first - and a Howardly - to Charlie Grapski for speaking truth to power and for being unafraid to stand up and be counted.

Since Jessica put out such a great message the other day about Day 1 at Demfest, I thought that I would let the bloggers know that I still have one place left in a double room at the on-campus housing. Please let me know if anyone is interested. It is one of the rooms in a suite. The suite has a common living room, common kitchen and two bathrooms. The price is right, only $198 for the 4 nights. Contact me by e-mail if you are interested. marciagm@surfglobal.net

2406

Illegal immigrats are taking more then just jobs no one else wants. In Arizona, try finding a roofer, or auto-body repairman, or carpenter who is not illegal. These used to be decent middle-class jobs (before battlebob, I used to be bondobob). Not anymore. Of course, the quality of the work has gone down the tubes.

Let’s suppose you are an unemployed US white mail citizen and will take any job possible. If you apply to most restaurants, you won’t be hired because of discrimination for Latinos.

However, those that say just ship them back are clueless. Many illegal families have children here – who are legal US citizens. So what is the plan…ship back families that include legal US citizens? Break the families up? Besides, to ship all the illegal folks and their legal kids from Phoenix to the border would create a line of busses from Phoenix to the Canadian border.

So I think there are four issues:

1 – Choke off the supply by installing fences at turnstiles. The current border security efforts are forcing illegals into the harshest part of the desert. Roughly 500 folks die each year in the desert. So install the fence with lots of entry points so the folks can be processed and issued IDs; and not forced to die by dehydration.

2 – Choke off the demand by coming down hard on those that hire illegal workers. This means services, houses and repair prices may go up.

3 – Entice those that are here illegally by making language and citizen training easier to come by. My wife and I both taught ESD courses funded by the state. The operation was shut down as a budget savings and a path to citizenship removed. If we really want these folks to be productive citizens and really believe the benefits outweigh the costs, then we must be willing to supply seed money to get the effort going.

4 – What to do about Mexico; the land of the corrupt? Vicente Fox was elected as a social reformer. Last year, he said immigration is a US problem. Because Mexican wages are so low, everyone is on the take; from the border guard and city policeman to maybe Fox himself. If I want to start a business; why should I risk being shut down because the wrong folks were bribed; or not bribed? Entrepreneurs are risk-takers anyway and may see the risks of getting here far outweighed by rewards of doing business here; even if it is illegally.

I know people whose parents are here illegally but grew up here; were educated here; but can’t get jobs that require a background check (teaching, for instance) because they would have to turn their parents in to the INS folks.

A friend of ours was a gifted high-school student who went to Canada on a school trip with other students. He and five other students were denied entry back into the US because their parents were illegals. After much banging on our Representatives, they were admitted back into the country. These are the kids we want to see succeed; and be role models for other kids.

the last couple of decades have seen widespread wage deterioration among the working class.

The manufacturing sector has been in steady decline, and union power has been ripped apart.

The minimum wage hasn’t seen an increase since 1997, and now stands at a 54-year low against the average wage.

Inequality has shot up, and social mobility has markedly decreased.

As Georgetown economist Harry Holzer put it,

“An extra million immigrants a year cannot possibly explain why the vast majority of workers

in a labor market of 150 million workers have had stagnant wage growth.”

So, immigrants become the convenient scapegoat for a much larger economic problem.

--Ezra Klein

Gainesville Sun Editorial May 3,2006

‘Alachua Gotcha’

Clovis Watson: Are you record¬ing this conversation?

Charlie Grapski: Yes I am.

Watson: Well please turn it off, I do not wish to be taped. One might imagine the above

conversation taking place after Alachua City Manager Clovis Wat¬son became aware that citizen activist Grapski was using a digital recorder during their meeting on Friday to discuss release of public records relating to the recent city election.

But instead of insisting that the conversation be erased and the recorder turned off, Watson waited for Grapski to return to city hall the following Monday to inspect the requested records. And then he had Grapski arrested, handcuffed and carted off to jail.

“Here in the city of Alachua, we refuse to be intimidated and bul¬lied, especially when the individ¬ual doing that is breaking the law,” Watson later said.

Frankly, Watson looks more like the bully in this game of “Alachua Gotcha.”

Even granting that ignorance of the law regarding taping inter¬views without the subject’s con¬sent is no excuse, Grapski’s arrest seems like a gross overreaction.

And it inevitably invites specula¬tion as to motive.

Was Watson angry because Grapski had filed suit against the city regarding alleged misconduct in last month’s election? Is it just a coincidence that Grapski is run¬ning for the same legislative seat as Alachua Commissioner Bonnie Burgess, one of Watson’s employ¬ers?

Why turn a citizen’s quest for public information into a criminal case? Certainly, there’s nothing tactful about Grapski’s methods. He is a relentless, even abrasive, self-appointed watchdog who will file litigation or an ethics com¬plaint at the drop of a hat. But at heart, Grapski stands for the same thing we do, and the same thing that all taxpayers should stand for:

Transparency in government and the right of the voters and taxpay¬ers to know what’s being done in their names and with their money.

City managers are generally a tactful, diplomatic lot who try to bend over backwards to accom¬modate citizens, even rude or abu¬sive citizens who presume to “fight city hail.” Locking up Grapski for unauthorized use of a digital recorder is like swatting a buzzing gadfly with a sledgehammer.

-j

Another side of the immigration issue...

from Sojourners...

The Christian face of immigration

by David Batstone

Diana Villanueva-Hoeckley did not take the typical path to Westmont College, a Christian liberal arts college in Montecito, California. The 19-year-old sophomore was born in Guatemala, and then smuggled into the United States at the age of 7. Her story makes you want to cry. What the U.S. Congress may do to her makes you want to scream.

Diana's mother came to the United States legally in the mid-1990s. Once she had established some semblance of a life for herself in the Los Angeles area, she tried to obtain a visa for her daughter to come and live with her. The U.S. Embassy turned down her application. Desperate to have her daughter by her side, she paid a "coyote," or migrant smuggler, to deliver Diana to California.

Imagine the fright of being told at age 7 that you must take a long, covert journey with a stranger, all alone. Diana today can only recall snippets: a bus journey, a short plane ride, hanging out at borders waiting for the right moment to cross. "I just kept focused on how great it would be together with my mother again," says Diana.

Not long after her arrival into the U.S., Diana and her now-pregnant mother moved to Santa Barbara. Diana's sister, Estrellita, was born. Earning a meager income from a string of housecleaning jobs, her mother moved the family into a small trailer. Diana attended public schools in the Santa Barbara area starting in the third grade.

During her freshman year in high school, Diana took note that her mother was not looking well. Lacking health insurance, her mother visited a health clinic serving a low-income population. At first she was diagnosed with pneumonia, but slowly it became apparent that something much more serious was going on. She had lung cancer, and died within two years.

Chris Hoeckley and Cheri Larsen Hoeckley are both professors at Westmont College. Their daughter, Mackenzie, was Estrellita's classmate at the local public school. Many there were heartbroken by Diana and Estrellita's loss. The Hoeckleys reached out and embraced the girls into their family.

The Hoeckleys had for some time looked to adoption as an avenue for growing their family. Their desire to parent matched their religious conviction that God calls us to care for the orphans in need. They went through the county process to legally adopt the Villanueva children. In the midst of much tragedy, the Hoeckleys, now 5 in number, patched together a loving connection.

If only the story could move on from there to focus on the life experiences that all families look to create. But most families do not face criminal prosecution. Yet, Diana may one day soon be charged as a felon for illegally immigrating to this country 13 years ago. And her adoptive parents also could be criminally charged for aiding and abetting an illegal immigrant.

Legislation currently being debated in the U.S. House of Representatives actually contains these provisions. Diana cannot believe this is happening in a country she has come to love. "I'm shocked that people don't see me as someone who belongs here; this is my home," she told me sadly. Though Diana was legally adopted by the Hoeckleys, in many renditions of the legislation she would not be protected. And now that she is 19, she would be prosecuted as an adult.

"I look around and see so many immigrants here who are working so hard to make a good life," Diana said. "Why can't people see the big picture?"

Indeed, the big picture tells a different story to the political fear-mongering on immigration. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that nearly 12 million undocumented immigrants are living in the U.S. A number of studies demonstrate that they are anything but a "drain" on the U.S. economy as is widely feared. Douglass S. Massey, a Princeton University professor, has documented the contributions of undocumented workers to the government: 62% have taxes withheld from their paychecks, and 66% pay Social Security. Their payments to Social Security totalled $7 bilion in 2004, and in the same year they paid $1.5 billion to Medicare. Ironically, Massey found these workers usually don't take advantage of these programs, fearing the INS will be alerted to their presence in this country, Forbes reported.

All too many Americans do see immigrants as criminals, unfortunately. The New York Times on April 25 cited a Survey USA poll taken in the state of Kansas that shows nearly three-quarters of adults in the sample surveyed agree to the proposal that "the United States should find and deport all illegal immigrants." If only they could meet the Dianas who will suffer from this xenophobic zeal.

Diana studies in Westmont's San Francisco Urban Program in this semester. As part of her school work, she interns with a Catholic Charities program that aids immigrants. She is beginning to make a deeper connection between her life story, and that of other immigrants, to the gospel. "It comforts me that Jesus was seen as an outsider, and gathered around him followers who also were considered outsiders," said Diana. "Too many Christians at this moment are too scared and confused to see Jesus in the stranger, and realize how lives would be torn apart by these new laws."

If she is allowed to remain in the U.S., Diana has dreams of going to law school and eventually helping out vulnerable immigrants who cannot afford legal advice.

The Hoeckleys are most frightened to lose their daughter. "I have three daughters, full stop," says Cheri. "Now the government is trying to take away one of them."

From time to time, both professors lead discussions on immigration at church adult education classes. They express dismay that even socially-oriented religious communities have not reflected biblically or theologically to any great extent on immigration.

The Hoeckleys are encouraged by the principled position taken by several Christian churches to support the orphan, the widow, and the foreigner regardless the direction that legislation takes. The high profile stand made by Cardinal Roger Mahony also, they hope, will help Christians evaluate their politics on immigration.

"Our primary obligation as Christians is to embrace the foreigner, the stranger amongst us," said Chris. "I wish American Christians could see that appeals to 'national interest' or 'homeland security' should not lead us to abandon our highest principles."

There are hundreds of Christian colleges, both Protestant and Catholic, operating in the U.S. Imagine the impact these schools could have on the immigration debate if they would rally around families such as the Hoeckleys who find themselves threatened by this legislation. Christian colleges exist to educate young hearts and minds for Christian service. What better moment for faculty and students at Christian colleges to fulfill their vocation and welcome the stranger.

It is a movement waiting to be born. I pray God stirs some hearts.

Charlie seems to have put a hex on the Gainesville Sun. the service is now "unavailable"

Where are the WMD?

Thirty six billion dollars was Exxon/Mobile's profit last year. How is one company allowed to benefit so much at the expense of so many hard-working American people? Why isn't the decayed Congress doing something about it?

s/b get not gett.

lindab, I have defrosted a turkey breast for dinner. Sould I be afraid?

the gainsville newspaper website said it's server has been down due to heavy traffic. wonder why.