New Haven Independent

Posted by: nfjanette | June 12, 2007 7:15 PM

In the past few days City Hall has pressed its complaints to the federal government, claiming it the feds were retaliating against New Haven for its new immigrant-friendly municipal ID program.

Correction: illegal immigrant-friendly municipal ID program. I doubt highly, despite the chest-thumping my the mayor and the liberal press, that the feds have backed off on enforcing the law. More likely they are examining the data from the raids with respect to the claims of improper procedure.

Posted by: robn | June 12, 2007 7:59 PM

nfjannette,

What is the law that makes the New Haven ID illegal? Is this something the city attorneys overlooked?

Posted by: Omar | June 12, 2007 8:50 PM

MORE IMPORTANT CORRECTION-- March is planned for 3 PM not AM.

Posted by: Taxed To Death | June 12, 2007 10:28 PM

Junta: If your community seeks to take care of itself, then why do you need a city sanctioned ID card? Why not avail yourself of easily available banking services? Visit the library? The communitys children are already educated by taxpayers. If you really wanted to take care of yourself, you wouldn't need a city id card because your community would do what's necessary to become legal. You don't -- you may not be terrorists -- I don't think anybody here has said you are -- but bottom line is your shoving your program down our throats, not doing what's necessary to become legal and then getting yourself overwrought because federal lawmen enforce the law. It's tought to have much sympathy for that especially with all the race baiting coming out of City Hall and others your movement.

Posted by: CarlosR | June 13, 2007 9:34 AM

This blog is off the chain. Against my better judgement I post.

First off, there are many, many immigrants who are Black folks. My people got brought to the New World in chains too, and migrated to the US, some legally, some not, from Haiti, where along with Black immigrants from Jamaica, Brazil, Panama, Guyana, and all over West Africa and the Carribbean, we face both the discrimination against immigrants and the legacy of 400 years of oppression in the US. Black immigrants and African-Americans deal with the same systematic repression and brutality from the employers, the police, etc.

Does racism and its manifestations impact people of African descent differently than, say, non-African descended immigrants (like Mexicans)? Sure. But notice how the Minuteman types say the same things about immigrants (and please, they don't really give a good darn whether immigrants are legal or not- they just hate Brown people- do you think they like Blacks?) that were/are used to justify racism against Blacks: "they take our jobs"; "they are all criminals"; "they lower our wages"; "they bring disease"?

Let's all ask ourselves- who gains from all the immigrant bashing? What do African-Americans gain from repression against immigrants, as oppossed to the potential gains of a real Black-Brown working class alliance for civil, social, and economic rights?

Thanks to NAFTA, the best working-class jobs in Mexico are at Big 3 auto factories paying $2/hr. Those factories used to be Detroit with jobs that paid $25/hr, with lots of Black people holding middle-class jobs. So now those jobs are in Mexico at starvation-level wages (and soon the companies will move them to China because the Big 3 think $2/hr for Mexican workers is too much!). So who gains when Black folks and Brown folks and working-class white folks fight pull each other down like crabs? Life has never been better for the corporations and CEOs (making 500 times the wage of Black/Brown/white workers) that screw us all. Plenty of wealth in this country for quality health care and education, good jobs, and a decent retirement for everyone. The corporations (any of them run by Mexican immigrants?) aren't giving up the wealth without a fight.

Black folks don't gain much (anything?) by being an inch above immigrant workers at the bottom of the American class pyramid. Conditions for Black folks, or Brown folks, or poor whites won't change without a newer, stronger, Rainbow Coalition committed to economic, social, and political justice for all people. It won't be easy to build, but what is the alternative?

Let's all get free by raising standards for everyone.

Posted by: concerned | June 13, 2007 10:56 AM

taxed to death: What do you mean by "what's necessary to become legal?" I don't know what the processes are of doing that and I would suppose that you don't either since you didn't elaborate on it, but I would imagine that its a process that is mostly impossible for them to do. Please recognize that this ID program didn't just start from nothing, it took years of planning. The Junta community has been working and advocating for these people for many many years, if it were so easy to make people legal, they would have done it. There are no available banking services and Junta is only trying to help. How are the raids helping the community or the situation? I don't believe they are and it's necessary to speak out against them.

Likewise, Carson, how is your proposed organizing going to help the city? It's good that you can form groups, visit city hall, and let your voice be heard in the political process. But please recognize that these people have almost no voice at all, and organizations like Junta are only trying to help them and better their way of life.

Now I understand what your argument might be: "that since they came here illegally they don't deserve a voice..." But once again, this doesn't solve the issue at hand. I'm interested to see what your groups will propose as a solution when you attend city hall, since it is pretty much agreed in this country that deporting all of the current undocumented immigrants is an impossibility. What will your rally be about? And will you be able to keep notions of race out of your rallies and group meetings? And in all of these proceedings how will you seek to better the city other than to stigmatize a group of people and talk about how bad it is that other people are trying to help them? I ask that you please not respond with outrage but instead with compassion and practicality.

Always remember that these are other people, the same as you and I. I don't feel that they are causing you any harm, and I think that programs like Junta and ID program are only trying to help.

Posted by: Come On | June 13, 2007 4:54 PM

CarlosR,

Wow! What a great post. Time to stop this nonsense from the out-of-town Minutemen pretending to be something else when they post here. You do a great job of ending their lies about how they care about African-Americans and that's why they are fighting against immigrants. Our (African-American) community is based on a diaspora which has always included immigrants from the Carribean, Central America and Africa. Of course, the Minutemen either want to hide that or don't know because they never gave a damn about us until they wanted to split us from our exploited Latino brothers. Once again, what a great post!