Fitial: No hope for jobless aliens

MONDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2011 12:00AM BY EMMANUEL T. EREDIANO - REPORTER FROM MARIANAS VARIETY

THE federalization of local immigration has made it worse for nonresidents especially the jobless who have now become “overstayers,”Gov. Benigno R. Fitial said on Friday.

“You and I know what is really happening. A lot of nonresidents are not working because they don’t have jobs,” he told reporters. “They are here because they still believe that there is still hope at the end of the tunnel,” he added referring to the nonresidents’ plea for improved status.

He said his administration has tried to tell nonresidents from the very beginning that it’s not going to happen.

“But nobody wants to believe me,” he added. “They are stubborn because they believe in someone. They should believe in something that is right, not in someone.” He did not say who that “someone” is.

The U.S. Congress, where lawmakers are “fighting over 12 million [illegal aliens] in the states, “is not stupid to entertain a few thousand [aliens in the CNMI],” he added.

“But I don’t blame them. Now, we have a lot of not only illegal overstayers but also unemployed overstayers,” he said.

He said his administration has the “numbers,” but these do not include those who came here pregnant.

“A lot of these people came in pregnant, just to deliver babies and become immediate relatives — we don’t know them. But we know they exist because they produce babies,” he added.

The governor said he continues to urge U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to start going after overstayers in the CNMI.

He said he asked ICE, “what is this policy that you cannot enforce on overstayers?”

Asked if he agrees with Lt. Gov. Eloy S. Inos who wants to give jobless aliens a 60-day grace period after the expiration of their umbrella permits on Nov. 27, Fitial said a lot of them have already been going home or preparing to go home because “they themselves know that they can’t have it.”

Visiting U.S. Interior Assistant Secretary Tony Babauta said beyond the report they were mandated by the federalization law to submit, they have sent no other communication to the U.S. Congress regarding the nonresidents in the CNMI.

Interior recommended improved status for qualified nonresidents, but no such bill has been introduced in the U.S. Congress.

Congressman Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan introduced H.R. 1466, but it grants CNMI-status only to certain nonresidents.

In related news, Fitial said his administration will come up this month with a directive that will allow U.S. citizens to continue hiring their caregivers.

He said the federal government has agreed to such an idea to address “one of those Johnny-come-lately issues” that was raised prior to the release of the transitional worker rule.

The governor said he has asked the Legislature for other suggestions regarding his proposed directive.

Fitial admitted he is also affected by the issue because he needs caregivers.

“I used to have two but now, I only have one,” he added.

Ethnic Californians -- The State’s ‘Environmental Vote’

New America Media, Text By Ngoc Nguyen, Posted: Aug 05, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO -- A majority of Californians want to move forward with environmental regulation, despite a tough economy, with the strongest support coming from those with the highest joblessness rates, according to a new survey by the Public Policy Institute of California.

A poll released last week found that two-thirds of Californians approve of AB 32 - a state law that calls for reductions in global-warming pollution, and nearly 60 percent favor taking action right away, rather than waiting for the state economy or job situation to improve. The survey of 2,504 adults was conducted July 5-19 in English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese.

“In the face of serious economic downturn, and that continues with high unemployment, residents in California remain steadfast in their support for environmental regulations that call for clean air and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and that is very important finding,” said Mark Baldassare, PPIC’s president and CEO.

California has the second highest unemployment rate in the nation, with 11.8 percent of Californians out of jobs compared to the national rate of 9.2 percent.

Support for the state’s landmark climate change law was highest among ethnic Californians: nearly three-fourths of Asians, blacks and Latinos support AB 32, compared to 61 percent for whites. Sixty-nine percent of blacks and Latinos and 53 percent of Asians want the state to act now to reduce greenhouse gases that cause global warming, compared to 51 percent of whites.

“People of color are the strongest environmentalists in California,” said Roger Kim, executive director of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN). “Air pollution, climate change, clean energy - [our communities have] the highest level of concern and favor more action from government at all levels,” he said during a briefing on the poll for ethnic media on Wednesday.

Support for environmental policies was strongest among African Americans and Latinos, who also have the highest unemployment levels in the state - 19.5 percent and 14.7 percent, respectively, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Most Californians believe climate change policy will lead to more jobs and address environmental problems and air pollution they are concerned about,” Baldassare said.

Pablo Garza, associate director for external affairs and state policy with the Nature Conservancy, said Californians’ strong support for environmental regulation during the economic downturn contrasts the “negative mood” of the nation and Washington, where federal legislation to tackle climate change has gone nowhere.

“California leads the nation on environmental policy and attitudes, and Latino, African-American and Asian communities are the environmental vote in the state,” said Garza, citing the defeat last November of Proposition 23, which called for the indefinite suspension of the state’s climate change law AB 32.

This year’s poll findings track with numbers from 2010, which showed that African Americans, Asian Americans and Latinos were at the forefront of support for the state’s climate change law.

The state’s ethnic communities were more likely to perceive climate change as a threat to health than their white counterparts, the poll found. Seventy-two percent of African Americans, 61 percent of Latinos and 52 percent of Asians said they were “very concerned” global warming would increase air pollution, compared to 36 percent of whites. They were also more likely than whites to believe that policies to reduce global warming would create jobs.

Jakada Imani, executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, said outreach to ethnic communities about the environment needs to focus on issues relevant to their lives, such as air pollution.

“We don’t talk about polar bears,” he said.

“The environment is very personal and impacts us everyday…it’s very much connected to issues of health, economics and politics,” said Kim.

Californians rank air pollution as the most important environmental issue. A majority (53 percent) of Californians said they consider the health risks from air pollution as very or somewhat serious. Seventy-seven percent of blacks and 67 percent of Latinos felt that way, compared to 44 percent of whites and 43 percent for Asians.

APEN’s Kim said that Asian immigrants in the United States come from Asian cities where air pollution is much worse, so “in comparison, the air here seems better.” He said the poll also shows varying socioeconomic status in the community, adding that perceptions of health risks from air pollution in low-income regions are in line with their black and Latino counterparts.

Yet despite the strong levels of support by ethnic Californians for environmental action and policies, activists say their voices are still not being heard.

“We’re not a part of the debate happening at all government levels,” said Kim.

He pointed to recent legislation signed by Gov. Jerry Brown that requires the state to get one-third of its electricity from renewable sources such as the sun and wind by 2020. This legislation will spur opportunities, Kim said, and ethnic Californians need to be at the table to ensure the implementation plan benefits the communities most in need.

Is Poverty a Death Sentence?

Published on Wednesday, September 14, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

By Bernie Sanders

The crisis of poverty in America is one of the great moral and economic issues facing our country. It is very rarely talked about in the mainstream media. It gets even less attention in Congress. Why should people care? Many poor people don't vote. They certainly don't make large campaign contributions, and they don't have powerful lobbyists representing their interests.US Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

Here's why we all should care. There are 46 million Americans -- about one in six -- living below the poverty line. That's the largest number on record, according to anew report released Tuesday by the Census Bureau. About 49.9 million Americans lacked health insurance, the report also said. That number has soared by 13.3 million since 2000.

Moreover, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States has both the highest overall poverty rate and the highest childhood poverty rate of any major industrialized country on earth. This comes at a time when the U.S. also has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on earth with the top 1 percent earning more than the bottom 50 percent.

According to the latest figures from the OECD, 21.6 percent of American children live in poverty. This compares to 3.7 percent in Denmark, 5 percent in Finland, 5.5 percent in Norway 6.9 percent in Slovenia, 7 percent in Sweden, 7.2 percent Hungary, 8.3 percent in Germany, 8.8 percent in the Czech Republic, 9.3 percent in France, 9.4 percent in Switzerland. I suppose we can take some comfort in that our numbers are not quite as bad as Turkey (23.5 percent), Chile (24 percent) and Mexico (25.8 percent).

When we talk about poverty in America, we think about people who may be living in substandard and overcrowded homes or may be homeless. We think about people who live with food insecurity, who may not know how they are going to feed themselves or their kids tomorrow. We think about people who, in cold states like Vermont, may not have enough money to purchase the fuel they need to keep warm in the winter. We think about people who cannot afford health insurance or access to medical care. We think about people who cannot afford an automobile or transportation, and can't get to their job or the grocery store. We think about senior citizens who may have to make a choice between buying the prescription drugs he or she needs, or purchasing an adequate supply of food.

I want to focus on an enormously important point. And that is that poverty in America today leads not only to anxiety, unhappiness, discomfort and a lack of material goods. It leads to death. Poverty in America today is a death sentence for tens and tens of thousands of our people which is why the high childhood poverty rate in our country is such an outrage.

Some facts:

• At a time when we are seeing major medical breakthroughs in cancer and other terrible diseases for the people who can afford those treatments, the reality is that life expectancy for low-income women has declined over the past 20 years in 313 counties in our country. In other words, in some areas of America, women are now dying at a younger age than they used to.

• In America today, people in the highest income group level, the top 20 percent, live, on average, at least 6.5 years longer than those in the lowest income group. Let me repeat that. If you are poor in America you will live 6.5 years less than if you are wealthy or upper-middle class.

• In America today, adult men and women who have graduated from college can expect tolive at least 5 years longer than people who have not finished high school.

• In America today tens of thousands of our fellow citizens die unnecessarily because they cannot get the medical care they need. According to Reuters (September 17, 2009), nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year -- one every 12 minutes -- in large part because they lack health insurance and cannot get good care. Harvard Medical School researchers found in an analysis released on Thursday."

• In 2009, the infant mortality rate for African American infants was twice that of white infants.

I recite these facts because I believe that as bad as the current situation is with regard to poverty, it will likely get worse in the immediate future. As a result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior of Wall Street we are now in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the 1930s. Millions of workers have lost their jobs and have slipped out of the middle class and into poverty. Poverty is increasing.

Further, despite the reality that our deficit problem has been caused by the recession and declining revenue, two unpaid for wars and tax breaks for the wealthy, there are some in Congress who wish to decimate the existing safety net which provides a modicum of security for the elderly, the sick, the children and lower income people. Despite an increase in poverty, some of these people would like to cut or end Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, home heating assistance, nutrition programs and help for the disabled and the homeless.

To the degree that they are successful, there is no question in my mind that many more thousands of men, women and children will die.

From a moral perspective, it is not acceptable that we allow so much unnecessary suffering and preventable death to continue. From an economic perspective and as we try to fight our way out of this terrible recession, it makes no sense that we push to the fringe so many people who could be of such great help to us.

Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006 after serving 16 years in the House of Representatives. He is the longest serving independent member of Congress in American history. Elected Mayor of Burlington, Vt., by 10 votes in 1981, he served four terms. Before his 1990 election as Vermont's at-large member in Congress, Sanders lectured at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and at Hamilton College in upstate New York. Read more at his website.

Should the Poor Be Allowed to Vote?

Published on Friday, September 9, 2011 by Facing South

by Chris Kromm

Last week, right-wing pundit Matthew Vadum created a stir when he argued that -- as his piece at American Thinker is titled -- "Registering the Poor to Vote is Un-American." Here's how the piece starts:

Why are left-wing activist groups so keen on registering the poor to vote?

Because they know the poor can be counted on to vote themselves more benefits by electing redistributionist politicians. Welfare recipients are particularly open to demagoguery and bribery.

Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country -- which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote.

Equating "the poor" with criminals? Suggesting the wealthy aren't "open to bribery?" 45 years after the Supreme Court ruled in the poll tax case Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections that voter qualifications can't be based on wealth, implying that maybe they should?

Rick Hasen, an election law professor at UCLA-Irvine, summed up the reaction of many: "Back after I puke."

But not everyone was turned off by Vadum's missive. Indeed, the next day, Vadum wasinvited to appear on Eric Bolling's Fox Business show to rail against President Obama's voter outreach plan.

Vadum isn't exactly a fringe figure on the right. Author of a 2011 book "exposing" ACORN -- praised by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) -- and writer for popular conservative websites like BigGovernment, Vadum works at the Capital Research Foundation, which has received millions of dollars from foundations run by the Koch brothers and other top conservative benefactors.

Indeed, the idea that citizens of lesser means -- even during a lingering economic downturn -- is a theme that appears to be gaining currency among some leading conservatives.

Last year, Judson Phillips, president of Nashville-based Tea Party Nation, declared on a radio show that it "makes a lot of sense" to go back to a system in the U.S. where voting is restricted to citizens who own property -- a troubling prospect for the one-third of U.S. residents who rent their homes, and would presumably be denied the franchise.

Rush Limbaugh seems to agree with Vadum as well. In December 2010, commenting on a news report about people lining up for housing assistance, Limbaugh asked:

"If people can't even feed and clothe themselves should they be allowed to vote? Should they be voting?"

As Ari Berman points out in a recent Rolling Stone piece, this isn't the first time leading conservatives have called for taking the franchise from those at the lower end of the economic ladder -- and less likely to vote Republican.

As influential conservative activist Paul Weyrich told a gathering of evangelicals in 1980:

I don't want everybody to vote. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.

While not as shocking as outright calls to keep poor people from voting, Berman argues that Republicans have pushed a bevy of laws over the last year that could have the same result, including requirements for voters to show a photo ID at the polls, restrictions on voter registration drives and moves to limit early voting.

The aim of peeling off Democratic votes with a big election year coming up seems clear enough. But historian Alex Keyssar, author of the seminal book The Right to Vote, argues that attempts to limit voting may have as much to do with economics as politics.

In U.S. history, for example, elites have pushed to restrict voting among the lower classes during times of economic upheaval, in part to stave off the possibility of political revolt:

The most common source of contractions of the franchise [in U.S. history has been] class apprehension--particularly when coupled with racial or ethnic divisions. The most well-known instance, of course, was the disfranchisement of African Americans in the South at the end of the nineteenth century; this was prompted not only by racism but by the desire of many white Southerners to maintain a disciplined and powerless agricultural labor force. Similar impulses figured in the passage of literacy tests aimed at Irish immigrants in Massachusetts in the 1850s, or Italians and Jews in New York in the early 1920s.

Which, says Judith Browne-Dianis of the civil rights group The Advancement Project, eerily resembles what is happening today:

Our democracy is supposed to be a government by, of and for the people. It doesn't matter how much money you have, what race you are or where you live in the country - we all get to have the same amount of power by going into the voting booth on Election Day. But those who passed these laws believe that only some people should participate. The restrictions undermine democracy by cutting off the voices of the people."

© 2011 Facing South

Chris Kromm is Executive Director of Facing South and Publisher of Southern Exposure at the Institute for Southern Studies.

The Pain in Spain

Published on Sunday, August 21, 2011 by Foreign Policy in Focus

By V. Noah Gimbel from Commondreams.org

As the sun rose on August 2, Spanish authorities destroyed the tent-village that had come to symbolize what some participants have called the Spanish Revolution. The ruling Socialist Party, via the Ministry of the Interior and in conjunction with the right-wing Popular Party that controls the local government, ordered Madrid's Puerta del Sol cleared of all remnants of the 15-M (May 15) movement as its participants, the indignados (the outraged) watched helplessly. Police boots, chainsaws, and fire hoses erased months of makeshift architecture, street art, and community – once inhabited by some 28,000 campers – from the Spanish capital’s central square.Protest in Spain; photo by Mandeep Flora via Flickr

The conglomeration of organizations that make up the 15-M movement vowed to march on the square at 7:30 that evening to protest what they called an illegal eviction. The government responded with nothing short of a call to arms, halting all metro and commuter rail access to the station at Puerta del Sol. Meanwhile, dozens of national police vans turned the square into a parking lot, and helmeted policemen set up barricades at every entrance to the square. Helicopters flew overhead as the combined forces of municipal police in riot gear and national police – hands on pistols – reinforced the barricades and patrolled the surrounding areas on foot.

Nevertheless, a fairly large showing gathered at the barricades that evening, gaining momentum as their non-violent outrage met with no response from the police. “We’ll stay until there are no more people from 15-M,” said one officer. That was around 8:30 when crowds were still rather light.

Around midnight, the much larger crowd decided to march around central Madrid to spread word of what had happened. When they returned to the barricades, their numbers had grown immensely, and they determined to hold an assembly in the nearby Plaza Mayor around 1 am. Three hours later, they had agreed to hold another assembly the next day in a square just off the Puerta del Sol to collectively determine the next move.

Why They Resist

The Spanish uprising was born largely online in the wake of the Arab Spring, when hundreds of small-scale grassroots groups joined together to form Democracia Real YA – Real Democracy Now – to unify their efforts in demanding social change. Taking their slogans from Stéphane Hessel’s internationally famous manifesto Indignez-Vous (translated Time for Outrage in English, Indignaos in Spanish), the group helped to move massive demonstrationson May 15 as public outrage against the Spanish government austerity measures and bank bailouts reached the boiling point.

Some participants, inspired by the images and stories emanating from Cairo’s Tahrir Square months before, set up tents in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol – home of the largest May 15 protest – and in other city squares around the country.

The simplest explanation for the surge of protests in Spain that followed is the economic crisis. At 21percent, the Spanish unemployment rate is the highest in Europe, and the highest in the country’s history. For people under 25 years old, the 46 percent rate is double the European average, as reported by Eurostat. Meanwhile, pensioners have seen their benefits cut, and the wages of even university-educated Spaniards are scarcely enough to make ends meet. The political system has progressively come to favor the two most powerful parties, who have in their turn come to favor the most powerful financial interests in the country.

The indignados have not simply been protesting. Through both physical and online organizing, the supporters of the 15-M movement have saved some 70 households from eviction and home repossession by blocking the entrance of bank agents. It is true that such blockages only delay the seizure of property for about a month without changing the structure that leaves victims of the housing crisis so vulnerable. Under Spain’s draconian repossession laws, banks are often only obliged to subtract 50 percent of the repossessed home’s market value from the total debt, and wage garnishing leaves those left homeless hungry as well – that is, if they have a job in the first place.

On July 5, a group of indignados in the working-class neighborhood of Lavapiés stopped the police from arresting an immigrant in a raid on the area of the city with the highest concentration of immigrants. Those who came to Spain from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe during the boom years prior to the crisis have been hit the hardest by the country’s financial woes and, without citizenship, are largely devoid of political rights. Between Sol and Plaza Mayor, as demonstrations rage, many homeless immigrants sleep in the streets and alleys while others sell cold beers and sodas to the protestors.

Stopping one raid, like stopping one foreclosure, doesn’t' address the structural powerlessness of migrant laborers, the dangerously violent anti-immigrant sentiment used by populist right-wingers to rally poor Spaniards to their parties, or the police repressionunleashed by the nominally socialist government against immigrant communities. Nevertheless, the willingness to turn collective indignation into direct action is a very important starting point if this movement is to lead to any real change in the coming months.

The current government has embraced change, but not the kind its main constituencies had anticipated. The socialist government has privatized state industries – most famously theairport authority – and centralized them in the hands of a tiny ultra-powerful elite. The party that came to power on an anti-war platform has augmented its participation in Afghanistan and participated in the NATO bombing of Libya. And Wikileaks has revealed Spanish leaders as willing servants of the United States, hindering, at Washington’s command, investigations into the illegal rendition, torture, and even murder of Spanish citizens by the U.S. military-intelligence apparatus. Meanwhile, as the November 20 general elections loom ahead, the opposition simply promises only to ramp up the corporate agenda, and to do so in a more straightforward manner than the socialists.

Always the most vocal organization in the 15-M movement, Democracia Real Ya has issued a somewhat vague set of demands focused on rooting out political corruption and unemployment, fixing the housing crisis, curbing the excesses of financial institutions, restoring civil liberties against censorship, improving public services, and curbing military spending. But the chants and the signs of the crowds suggest that these demands, and their inherent reliance on the government for implementation, fall short of what people in the streets truly desire.

What is preventing the movement’s mouthpieces from voicing the people’s true grievances seems to be a reluctance to radicalize. Democracia Real Ya spokesman Carlos Paredes recently said on behalf of the group, “neither have we tried to establish a dialogue with the government, nor will we. They have our proposals. We are not a political party, nor do we have negotiating capacity.”

Eviction Before Benediction

The government’s sudden eviction notice on August 2 in part revealed the anxiety over the Pope’s visit to Madrid on August 16 for the Catholic World Youth Day, which brought over a million young people to the city. But most people with whom I’ve spoken think the government, rather than ridding the streets of popular resistance, is simply provoking more of it.

This dynamic was on display when thousands of protestors came to the still-erected barricades on August 3 and 4. On multiple occasions, seated assemblies have taken place in high-traffic circles in the center of the city, with particularly dramatic images emanating from the iconic Gran Via, where hundreds of protestors blocked traffic in the middle of Madrid’s Broadway.

Meanwhile, the tactics of the police have gotten increasingly aggressive since the square’s closure. Agents at the barricades have made lists of the names and ID numbers of those gathered in front, and patrolmen have even evacuated nearby establishments patronized by people appearing to belong to 15-M. Photographers have been forced to give press credentials and private cameras have been confiscated and cleared of photos. Police even closed other squares where meetings (and camping) have taken place.

A critical moment came on August 4, after access had scarcely opened to any parts of the Puerta del Sol. As night fell, all access to the square was closed and over 1,000 protestors were forced to move from one part of the city to another. Turned away from Sol, they filled the Plaza de Cibeles outside City Hall where the Pope’s massive stage loomed. After an assembly there – traffic stopped on all sides – several went to protest outside of the Ministry of Interior where the police aggressively dispersed the crowd. The authorities raised the stakes by flying four helicopters over the city. But the crowds showed no signs of fatigue.

And their resilience appears to have defeated the government’s scare tactics. On August 5, Puerta del Sol finally re-opened with a diminished police presence, making way for massive celebratory demonstrations that lasted well into the early-morning hours. Although police were ordered to halt any attempts to set up tents on the square, 15-20 members of 15-M decided to sleep there anyway and were left unmolested. Over the weekend, numerous assemblies were held to discuss various issues from the economy to feminism, culminating in a general assembly on Sunday.

After Three Months, What’s Next?

After the massive presence in Sol on August 5, the police and sanitation workers once again rid Sol of all signs of 15-M and have stifled efforts at re-establishing an information center in the square. For the foreseeable future, it appears this game of cat-and-mouse, with tension on the rise, will continue. The police arrested eight people and subsequently released them. The general assembly on Sunday was fairly well attended, but produced few conclusions. Indeed, the momentum gained by 15-M when it was made homeless seems in danger of fizzling out as those in power continue to ignore its core demands.

When the right and left – symbolized by the Popular Party and the Socialist Party – have proven utterly inept at popular representation, there is a rational tendency amongst the disaffected to disassociate entirely from politics.

According to one organizer with ties to the United Left coalition party, there are a number of talented young deputies working to tie the grievances of 15-M into the party’s agenda. Although this may not translate into electoral success in the upcoming elections on November 20, the movement may yet acquire a voice within the parliament in the near term.

But without an institutional voice, the backers of 15-M continue to project their voices in the streets. Steadfastly committed to nonviolence, their strikes have been tactical and symbolic. Shutting down high-traffic streets, continuing to challenge the police state and creating a visual presence for the global audience that will attend the papal visit will all likely remain part of the indignados’ arsenal.

Some critics of the movement see the demonstrators as shiftless, participating simply in the spirit of street celebration so well practiced in this country. Desperate times, more than anything, call for strategic thinking. And 15-M needs to keep moving forward to prove itself a real driver of social change.

Noah Gimbel is an intern with Foreign Policy In Focus. He is currently working on a book on universities and empire and can be reached at ngimbel@ips-dc.org