Fresh off the press, here is the latest newsletter.

Story highlights are:

Ethnic Cleansing coming to Mississippi?

Initiative 27 Has Passed, So Now What?

Food Facts:  Why People Migrate

Download to read more.  For past issues, please click to view the archive.

Please join MIRA, OCCUPY Jackson, OCCUPY Mississippi, the Mississippi Unity Caucus, Southern Echo, the United Auto Workers and numerous other organizations when we “Occupy the Capitol” on Tuesday, January 3, 2012 as we show solidarity on the issues that are important to the 99%.  Meet us at Smith Park at the corner of Amite and Congress Streets at 10am in Jackson, then walk with us to the Mississippi State Capitol to deliver Declarations of Concern to members of the Mississippi Legislature.

Participants in a protest against Alabama’s HB-56 march through Linn Park, Saturday, June 25, 2011, in Birmingham, Ala. (AP Photo/ The Birmingham News, Mark Almond)

by Elon James White

Recently I was invited to be a part of a delegation of labor leaders heading down to Alabama to speak out against one of the worst immigration laws in the country. I found it interesting, because the trip was billed as a “black” labor leader delegation. I’ve heard a lot about the black-brown discussion over immigrant rights, so I was ecstatic that this delegation of specifically black folks was going down to witness this law’s impact first hand. As a commentator on race and blackness, I felt it important that I join. Although there are those within the community who aren’t supportive, there are many who are absolutely against the prejudice that we’ve seen popping up across the country this past year, under the guise of “saving American jobs.”

I had been aware of Arizona’s SB-1070, so when the AFL-CIO asked me to participate I felt I already “got it.” I thought I knew what the situation would be when we arrived in Birmingham.

I was wrong.

Over two days we met with activists, business owners, and those that were affected the most by the law—undocumented people themselves—and my understanding was completely changed. I was against the law when I arrived in Birmingham. But 48 hours later I didn’t simply oppose it; I was horrified and angry for the people who have to live under it and confused as to how this could have ever been allowed in the first place.

To call Alabama’s HB-56 harsh is an understatement. From not being able to receive a birth or death certificate to being at risk for deportation if you seek child support—HB-56 not only creates an unwelcoming environment for any brown immigrants, it harks back to a terrible time in Alabama history that many thought was in the past.

We were all sadly mistaken.

As the delegation met undocumented residents and activists working with them, one thing that stood out was a broad climate of fear that will be familiar to those who lived through Alabama’s first Jim Crow era. Mary Bauer of the Southern Poverty Center spoke to us at the opening session of the delegation. She retold the story of someone who went to make a cash purchase at Walmart and was asked for identification. That isn’t in the HB-56 law. There isn’t any provision that you can’t make a cash purchase. But when the law of the land is prejudice, it creates vigilante immigration policing. People feel empowered to police anyone they think isn’t documented in any way they feel is reasonable.

As I spoke about HB-56 on social media, a plethora of responses came in. Some people got angry; some of them were black. The people affected by this law deserve it, they said. They broke the law and they should have thought about the consequences when they were paying a coyote to bring them across the border to steal American jobs. They’re flooding our country and they get free schooling for their kids, while our tax dollars are paying for them and they pay nothing! Why should we care about what’s happening to them?

Where do I start?

The rationale behind HB-56 is that Alabama wanted to deal with its incredible undocumented immigrant problem. But Alabama doesn’t have an undocumented immigrant problem: Only 2.5 percent of Alabama’s population consists of undocumented workers—less than Colorado and California. The country’s toughest immigration law sits in a state where there isn’t a problem to begin with.

Think about that.

There’s also evidence that the immigrant workers who have come to Alabama have, in fact, helped revive some of its dying, small-town economies.

HB-56, on the other hand, hasn’t helped Alabama. Samuel Addy at the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Alabama predicted that the state will lose 40 million dollars simply from the loss of spending from both documented and undocumented immigrants. Apparently, while lawmakers were writing this particular bill so they could protect Alabama’s economy, they forgot how all those pesky immigrants spend money.

Oh, and work.

Farmers are losing fields of crops because so many immigrants have left. So now the work just doesn’t get done. By trying to “save American jobs” HB-56 is going to destroy Alabama businesses. It seems the only immigration problem Alabama has is the one that it just created. Congrats.

During the delegation’s visit, we heard testimonies about the circumstances through which some of immigrants end up without documents. People arrive on work visas that eventually expire. Others grow up here in the United States not knowing they’re undocumented. The popular narrative of someone sneaking over the border by the cover of night is a great way to convince people that something terribly evil is occurring. But hearing about a teenager’s attempt to apply to college, only to find out his or her birth certificate doesn’t exist, changes your view of things.

I was struck by the patriotism of the undocumented immigrants who shared their stories with our delegation. They spoke of the American Dream—of how much they love this country and just want to work hard so that they can build something for their family. Many have been in the country for numerous years and have built communities. The delegation listened to these stories from the mouths of those now persecuted in Alabama and I found myself amazed that this is unfolding in 2011.

Repeatedly, our delegation discovered that the popular narrative about immigrants as a “problem” didn’t hold up to the up-close, human reality of immigrants’ lives and the communities of which they’re a part. Take the they-don’t-pay-taxes trope, for instance. Some undocumented immigrants we met expressed their anger at this demonstrable lie. One woman spoke passionately through an interpreter about her frustration with the media pushing this meme. She explained she’s paid into the Social Security system for 13 years, but can’t claim anything from it.

“We don’t wear shirts that say, ‘Don’t tax me, I’m undocumented!’ ” she pointed out.

Many of the people spoke of having tax IDs that allow them to work—with taxes deducted from their paychecks. A simple Google search shows that this has been covered previously by major news outlets, but when the debate heats up about undocumented immigrants this fact gets lost somehow. It’s hard to yell about how people are stealing from the system when you have to acknowledge that they’re paying into the system just like the rest of us—and that, in fact, they’re the ones getting taxed for nothing.

But perhaps the part that is most often lost in the debate over these increasingly tough immigration laws is that they poison the environment for everybody. HB-56 allows for law enforcement officers to request proof of citizenship if there’s reasonable suspicion—read: brown people. Imagine if you happen to have an attribute that now means you can be harassed at at any point; black people don’t have to work too hard to imagine that. A local Jewish business owner who is married to a Mexican woman spoke to us about how a school wanted to test his 6-year-old daughter to see if she (who is a U.S. citizen) spoke English—based on nothing beyond his Mexican wife bringing their child to class. Young brown students are teased and questioned about their immigration status because the other students’ parents are doing the same thing to the brown folks walking down the street.

The AFL-CIO delegation members all vowed to go home and speak of the situation in Alabama and work to repeal HB-56. Many of the black labor leaders noted how familiar this feels. This type of prejudice isn’t new. It’s just repackaged, aimed at a different group and adorned with a shiny new sticker that says “Pro-America!”

America’s immigration policy needs a major overhaul—no one argues this fact. But because we’ve failed to create a humane system that makes sense, people are suffering. People are living in terror. At what point does one say, this has to stop? Scott Douglas answered that question best when he addressed the delegation. “Think of this as self preservation,” he said. “Stop Alabama before it spreads.”

Elon James White is a writer/satirist and creator of the award-winning Web series “This Week in Blackness” and host of the online radio show “Blacking It Up!” which airs Monday-Thursday at 1:30pm ET onhttp://TWIB.FM.  Reprinted from http://colorlines.com

Joaquin Luna, a 18 year old teenager, committed suicide fearing the new anti-immigration laws in Texas. KGBT Action 4 News/Tucson Citizen

by Jose Antonio Vargas

An 18-year-old in Texas took his own life fearing he didn’t have much of a future.

Shortly after kissing his family members goodbye, and dressed in a suit and tie, Joaquin Luna shot himself with a small handgun the night after Thanksgiving, according to KGBT-TV Action 4 News. Letters Joaquin left behind showed he was frustrated and anxious about his immigration status. His older brother told the Rio Grande Valley station that Joaquin was counting on the passage of the federal DREAM Act, which would provide a path to legalization to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as minors.

“[Joaquin] didn’t (see) any other way or no other option,” his older brother, Diyre Mendoza, told Action 4 News.

The DREAM Act — now 10 years old, originally supported by both Republicans and Democrats – failed the Senate last year. It was re-introduced this past spring in the Senate without any Republican support.

Joaquin wanted to be an engineer. The 18-year-old wanted to be successful enough to care for his mother and give her a better life. He was a senior at Juarez Lincoln High in Mission, Texas, not too far from the U.S.-Mexico border, a school named after transformational presidents from both countries: Benito Juarez and Abraham Lincoln.

“Transformational,” however, is nowhere close to where we are when it comes to fully grasping and addressing illegal immigration. Luna’s tragic death inevitably serves as a painful and real backdrop to the often irresponsibly abstract and dangerously simplistic ways many politicians — including most of the GOP presidential candidates — portray immigration and undocumented immigrants. Newt Gingrich’s relatively reasonable and compassionate stance on immigration has further exposed the more radical and less humane positions of his Republican counterparts. As more details emerge surrounding Luna’s death, what pragmatic plans can the rest of the GOP field, from former Gov. Mitt Romney to Rep. Michele Bachmann, offer on immigration? What message does the GOP primary candidates — and President Obama, who have deported a record number of undocumented immigrants, separating families apart — have for young undocumented students about their futures in this country, a place they’ve grown up in, a country they call home and want to contribute to? Luna lived in Texas, which unlike most states offer in-state college tuition fee to undocumented students. Gov. Rick Perry continues to weather the storm caused by his comment that those oppose to in-state tuition break to the children of undocumented immigrants “did not have a heart.” What advise does Gov. Perry have for undocumented students who earn their degrees due to that tuition break but cannot legally work, in Texas and other states, after college?

It’s heartbreaking to read Joaquin’s story. Heartbreaking. The mind races, the soul aches. Yet another dream deferred. A young life lost.

Reprinted from http://www.defineamerican.com

by Salgondo

Victor is kind of an intense guy. At 19 years old, he speaks with honesty and grace beyond his years. It’s very difficult to not be awed by him; His baby face is unsuspecting, his demeanor light, his smiles genuine and deep. But when he speaks, it’s a different story.

We met him out in Texas during the United We Dream congress, and as we fell into conversations with him, we understood the importance of capturing some of his thoughts on film for the purpose of sharing them with all of our followers. With everything that’s been happening in Alabama, from the passage of HB-56 to the civil disobedience actions occurring in Alabama by allies and DREAMers from other states, we realized that there’s been a vacuum of testimonials from Alabama’s own DREAMers.  Who else could inform the rest of us about what it’s really like to live in Alabama better than someone whose daily reality is living and dealing with the consequences of this legislation passing?

The interview starts off with us asking Victor about a piece that he’d written for the Soundstrike website (it hasn’t been published as of yet, but we hope to see it up sometime very soon). He then delves into what he had written, his thoughts while writing it, and the interview then develops into him sharing some of the experiences he has personally undergone and witnessed since HB-56 passed.

Overall, we shot about 17 minutes of footage, and in this video, we’re showcasing eight minutes. As he spoke, I felt a warmth radiating through my chest, and I realized that I was experiencing a deep sense of hope and inspiration that I hadn’t felt in a very long time. Here I was, this privileged Californian DREAMer, 28 years old, completely tripped up by what this young man was saying. It was refreshing. It made me realize how caught up we’ve been, reacting to what’s happening in Alabama, that we haven’t really given ourselves the opportunity to listen and learn from those living and battling this legislation on their home-turf.

Our conversations with Victor and his willingness to give us an interview is definitely one of the highlights of my time at the United We Dream congress.

We hope that you find his words as inspirational as we did.

For more episodes, be sure and to click http://dreamersadrift.com/

To: MIRA and Allies,

As you may know, Mississippi made national news over the defeat of the “Personhood Amendment” to the state constitution, a result of a split white vote here.  Thanks to an aggressive NO campaign waged by the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and many others it went down to defeat by a substantial majority.  However the “Voter ID” amendment passed with a typical breakdown of 90%+ Black voters against, and around 10% of whites voting NO—which is consistent with the latent racism governing how whites in Mississippi vote when Black candidates run statewide or issues affecting people of color are on the ballot.  MIRA played a major role in the attempt for a NO vote on 27.

But the most damaging result of the election in Mississippi was the election of Tea Party/ xenophobe Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant to the office  of Governor and the seizure of the last Democratically controlled state legislative chamber in the South, the Mississippi House of Representatives by Republicans.  The numbers now stand Democrats 58 members, Republicans 64 members in the 122 member House.  You may remember Phil Bryant has built his political career around attacking Latino immigrants, pandering to white racism to move up.

Through years of political struggle all of the members of the Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus in the House of Representatives had won appointments to either chair or vice-chair of important legislative committees.  These gains may well be lost with the convening of the 2012 Legislative Session on January 3, 2012.  As you know the Caucus members fought consistently to defend immigrants in Mississippi, helping to defeat  some 300 anti-immigrant bills over the last 10 years, including many variations of the Arizona/Alabama style laws.  MIRA President Jim Evans is a leader in the Caucus, and currently Chair of the Constitution Committee.

IT IS TIME TO REGROUP.

MIRA URGES ALL WHO CAN TO COME TO AN EMERGENCY STRATEGY MEETING THIS WEDNESDAY, Nov. 16^th

AT 12 NOON IN THE MIRA OFFICE, 612 N. STATE STREET, JACKSON,MS

LUNCH WILL BE PROVIDED

BE THERE!

Keep up the mobilization,

Bill

*Special Immigration Debate Between MIRA Executive Director Bill Chandler and Mississippi State Senator Joey Fillingane*

When:  Thursday, November 10, 2011

Where:  Mississippi College School of Law, 151 E. Griffith Street, Jackson, MS

Time:  11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Cost:  Free with light lunch

Contact:  MIRA Office at 601-968-5182

Domestic Violence Workshop Sponsored by El Pueblo and MIRA

When:  Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Where:  El Pueblo, 696 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd., Biloxi, MS

Time:  6 to 8 p.m.

Cost:  Free with refreshments

Learn, Collaborate and Live!  Come join staff members of El Pueblo and the MIRA for a lively and important discussion on domestic violence.  Both men and women are encouraged to attend.  Discussion will be in English and Spanish.

Contact:  Sally Bevill at 228-386-5164 or s.bevill@yourmira.org OR Yvonne Gonzales at 228-436-3986

MIRA/SCLC Annual Unity Conference – Stand With Us:  Uniting the Interracial, Interfaith Communities of Color in Mississippi

When:  Friday, December 9, 2011

Where:  Mississippi Arts Center, Jackson, Mississippi

Time:  9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Cost:  $25 Registration Fee; Banquet $30; If you attend both the fee is $50.

Contact:  The MIRA office at 601-968-5182

Souvenir Program Ads:  Please contact the MIRA office at 601-968-5182 to place your ad by November 24, 2011.  Prices range from $25 to $500.

Naturalization Workshop

When:  Thursday, December 29, 2011

Where:  MIRA office at 612 N. State Street, Jackson, MS

Time:  2-4 p.m.

Cost:  $140 service fee to fill out N-400 Application for Naturalization plus $60 MIRA Membership fee

Contact:  L. Patricia Ice or Alexis L. Farmer at 601-354-9355 for more information

This workshop is only for people who would like to have assistance filling out their N-400 Application for Naturalization form.  You must be a lawful permanent resident for at least five years (or 3 years if you are married to and living with a United States citizen).  You must have good moral character and be able to pass a U.S. history and civics examination and read, speak and write English, unless you meet certain exceptions.

Note:  There will be no Naturalization Workshop in November.  The next Naturalization Workshop will be held on Thursday, December 29, 2011.

MIRA Civic Engagement Day at the Mississippi State Capitol 2012

When:  Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Where:  Begin at the MIRA office at 612 N. State Street,  Jackson, MS then walk to the Capitol Building one block away

Time:  Assemble at the MIRA office at 10:00 a.m.

Join us for a day with legislators to discuss legislation concerning immigrants and other vulnerable populations in Mississippi.  We must let our state legislators know that we are against any anti-immigrant legislation (whether affecting undocumented or documented immigrants) proposed during the 2012 MS legislative session.  The United States government is charged with creating and implementing immigration laws, not state governments.

Ongoing Immigration Consultations in the Jackson and Biloxi Offices

When:  By appointment only.  No walk-ins please.  Call us any time!

Where:  The MIRA office at 612 N. State St. Jackson, MS or the MIRA Office at DeMiller Hall, 610 Water Street, Biloxi, MS

Time:  By appointment only.

Contact:  L. Patricia Ice at 601-354-9355 in Jackson or Sally Bevill in Biloxi 228-386-5164

Cost:  $100 for initial consultation, and $60 for MIRA yearly membership.  Additional fees may apply for case follow-up.  Exceptions may apply on a case by case basis.

Please remember to make your tax deductible donation to the MIRA at www.yourmira.org. You may also join the MIRA as a member for $60 per year.

Volunteers Needed:  The MIRA needs volunteers to do a variety of tasks including translating articles, preparing our newsletter, making phone calls and promoting our activities.

For more information about volunteer opportunities contact the MIRA office at 601-968-5182.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - 04SEPTEMBER06 - A march of 5000 people in San Francisco, protesting bills in the US Congress which would criminalize immigrant status and violate the rights of immigrants, and calling for legalization of the undocumented. Copyright David Bacon

By Susan Eaton

August 10, 2011

One year after Arizona’s dread SB 1070 took effect, progressives have transferred their fear and loathing to the 2011 winner in the mainstream media’s toughest-immigration-law-in-the-nation contest: Alabama’s HB 56. Its unconstitutionality and inhumanity go further than Arizona’s law by requiring children to prove legal residence before enrolling in public school and making it a crime to give an undocumented person a ride in your car.
The good news is that Alabama and Arizona are still immigration policy outliers. While legislators in at least twenty-four states filed Arizona-like legislation this year, just five—Alabama, Utah, Georgia, South Carolina and Indiana—passed watered-down versions of SB 1070. In many states—Georgia, Alabama, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Nebraska and, most triumphantly, Mississippi—the threat of a viral SB 1070 has engendered and strengthened coalitions between immigrant supporters and African-American elected leaders who have played visible, pivotal roles in opposing, softening and defeating Arizona copycats.

“It is a new kind of Southern strategy,” says James Evans, a five-term Mississippi state representative, AFL-CIO organizer, minister and leading member of the legislative black caucus.

“This is a fight against a kind of venom that black people in Mississippi understand on that heart level,” Evans says, tapping his heart. “But this is hearts and minds working together. Walking together is how we all win, now and further down this long road.”

Richard Nixon pioneered the old Southern strategy, through which Republicans pandered to racism and won over Southern white Democrats disaffected after desegregation and civil rights legislation. Now, though, Latinos’ growing presence and electoral clout in the South and other regions, coupled with the moral authority of civil rights, has yielded a new game plan. This one depends not on racial and cultural division but on unity. In Mississippi, a methodically constructed alliance of African-Americans, immigrants and their supporters has grown downright formidable and, Evans suggests, “can help show the country a better way, a path to higher ground.”

It hardly happened overnight. But in the past few years, Mississippi activists’ formula of visible black and immigrant partnership, within a “workers’ rights/civil rights” frame, abetted by dogged labor organizing, has added up to visible success.

In the 2011 legislative session, Mississippi lawmakers introduced thirty-three bills that sought to make it easier to deport immigrants or else make life more difficult for them. This included a bill that would have denied undocumented people access to public benefits (which is already prohibited under federal law), one that would have restricted immigrants’ ability to rent apartments (federal courts have ruled similar bans unconstitutional) and another that would have mandated “English-only” in conducting government business. By April, all the bills were dead. This included an Arizona copycat, SB 2179—which, after it passed both chambers, advocates had assumed was unstoppable. The bill would have made it a crime to fail to carry immigration papers and would have authorized state, county and local police to determine the immigration status of a person during a “stop, detention or arrest.” The bill went further than Arizona’s by allowing for immigration checks during traffic stops.  The version that passed the Mississippi State Senate would even have allowed people to sue municipalities or law enforcement officials for failure to enforce immigration laws.Through legislative legerdemain, Democratic members in the House, led by black caucus member Edward Blackmon Jr. and Willie Bailey, a Judiciary Committee chair, killed the bill.

Similar bills died similar deaths in 2010 and previous years as black lawmakers spent significant political capital fighting them. Black caucus members are regular speakers at immigrants’ rights rallies. They take to talk-radio and attend community forums, urging constituents to oppose harsh immigration bills and to join pro-immigrant marches. In recent years, African-American legislators have used the power of their committee chairmanships in the House to let anti-immigrant bills languish and expire—despite the fact that their own legislative heft has hardly come easily in Mississippi, the only state whose official flag incorporates the Confederate flag.

There are no Latino or immigrant members in the Mississippi Legislature. Compared with Georgia (where 9 percent of the population are immigrants) and North Carolina (7 percent), Mississippi has few foreign-born residents (only 2 percent, or about 60,000 people), according to the US Census. Latino immigrants living just outside the capital, Jackson, complain of roadblocks where police and sheriff’s deputies ask for papers, jail people who can’t produce any and then hand them over to federal authorities for deportation. In February local police in several towns around Jackson cooperated with federal agents in raids on immigrants’ homes. Mississippi, then, might not seem the most fertile ground for growing a pro-immigrant coalition. But in 2000, a white labor organizer named Bill Chandler founded the advocacy group Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance (MIRA), hellbent on unity.

Raised in a racially diverse neighborhood of Los Angeles, Chandler had worked with Cesar Chavez’s United Farmworkers across the South and later in Mississippi, organizing mostly African-American workers in a variety of industries. He witnessed the migration of Latino workers who first came for jobs in the state’s burgeoning casino industry and chicken processing plants and later to clean up and rebuild after Hurricane Katrina. Chandler understood why the growing presence of exploitable labor worried the struggling African-American workers he’d helped organize over the years. (About 44 percent of African-Americans in Mississippi live below the federal poverty line.) He also feared that white conservatives would exploit potential tensions to divide two disenfranchised groups. But he’d long ago learned how to intercept that problem by organizing workplaces with significant shares of both Latino and African-American workers so that “everyone benefited.”

With MIRA, Chandler embarked on a parallel legislative strategy. He began by approaching African-American leaders in the state legislature to seek support for immigrants and by organizing an annual “Unity Conference” that cemented relationships between traditionally black civil rights organizations, labor and immigrant activists. Meanwhile, MIRA staff members organized Latinos and African-Americans in workplaces and through community forums in their neighborhoods. Chandler vowed never to ask white legislative allies to sponsor pro-immigrant legislation. He turned first to Representative Evans, and to a former teacher and union leader, State Senator Alice Harden, to sponsor bills. Pro-immigrant proposals included efforts to provide undocumented immigrants access to driver’s licenses (a measure passed the Senate but failed in the House) and to offer undocumented students in-state rates at public colleges (died this year). Several local black civil rights activists sit on MIRA’s board, as do union officials. In community forums and meetings with immigrants, most of whom come with no knowledge of the bloody protests and legal struggles that dismantled segregation, Chandler and others point out that if it were not for black civil rights leaders, the immigrants’ rights movement would have no foundation.
“And now? We would not be able to do anything for immigrants without the black caucus beside us. We’d be nowhere,” Chandler says. “This coalition would not benefit anyone if a Latino worker could not see African-Americans as their allies.”

MIRA’s strategy has trickled down to local government. Right after SB 1070 passed in Arizona, the majority-black City Council in majority-black Jackson responded by implementing an anti-racial-profiling ordinance designed to protect immigrants. MIRA’s legal project director, Patricia Ice, who is African-American and married to Chandler, first presented the idea to the prominent black civil rights lawyer and newly elected City Councilman Chokwe Lumumba. Ice wrote the legislation, which prohibits police from asking people to prove their immigration status, and Lumumba introduced it.

“This was a message to immigrants that they are welcome here in Jackson,” says Lumumba. “A bigger Latino population would help us politically, sure. But it is right morally. If we’ve learned anything in Mississippi, it’s how to stand together against oppression.”

In the coming months, Chandler and Ice hope to persuade other municipalities to adopt ordinances like Jackson’s. They think there may also be support for such a measure in Canton, a majority-black town of about 12,000, just north of Jackson.

Just days before a pro-immigrant march on the state Capitol, MIRA staff members had driven out to a dusty trailer park in Canton and talked with dozens of Latino immigrants about the proposals before the legislature. Most of the immigrants who rent the dilapidated trailers here work in the chicken processing plants that have become a staple industry in Mississippi. Isela Gonzalez, who hangs and cleans chickens in a Peco plant next to the trailer park, went to MIRA’s meeting. On the day of the rally, Gonzalez, who was pregnant at the time, recalls waking up “tired and sad.” Her common-law husband, the father of her children, had recently been deported, she said, after a sheriff’s deputy stopped him while he was walking back from work and asked him for papers he did not have.

“I became happy when I got to the march,” she says, cradling her newborn son in her arms. “I saw that we are not alone. There are people with us.”

Gonzalez joined “a lot of Mexicans and Guatemalans and white people” that day, adding, “I saw many more black people who seemed like important people, the bosses, that day.”
Gonzalez’s correct perception upends the ubiquitous narrative that casts African-Americans and Latinos as adversaries in a zero-sum game. As journalist David Bacon documents in his book Illegal People, African-Americans in Mississippi have seen themselves displaced by employers who have hired more easily exploitable Latino workers. But as Bacon also points out, and as MIRA takes pains to bring to light, the true villains are the less visible forces undermining economic security for all low-wage workers. Research bears this out. After conducting a large statistical analysis, Yale University economist Gerald Jaynes testified to Congress in 2007 that he and colleagues found very modest effects upon African-Americans’ wages resulting from immigration. Jaynes, like MIRA, stresses that African-Americans’ economic stability is undermined far more by factors like the decline of manufacturing jobs, weakened unions, a computerized information economy and educational inequalities.

“Look, everyone needs to put food on the table. Everyone wants to walk down the street without getting harassed,” Chandler says in MIRA’s scruffy Jackson office. Outside his door, immigrants sit waiting for the start of a workshop on the naturalization process. “We need to respect the different histories here between groups. But the folks in that waiting room and African-Americans looking for a living wage? They are engaged in the same struggle, and it is not with each other.”

Black leaders on the national level, too, have spoken out in recent months against efforts to pit the two groups against each other. In March, Michigan Democratic Representative John Conyers and Maxine Waters, a Democratic Representative from California, sharply questioned Republicans’ motives for holding a hearing on the effects of immigration on US unemployment.

“The notion that is underneath the surface of pitting African-American workers against Hispanic workers and immigrants is so abhorrent and repulsive to me that I want to get it on the table right now,” Conyers said.

Also in March, a few weeks before an immigration-enforcement bill passed in Georgia, Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis showed up unannounced and joined a rally against the measure. Outside the Capitol in Atlanta, Lewis stood with members of the state’s legislative black caucus. With microphone in hand, he strode straight toward the metal barricade cordoning off the mostly Latino crowd. His voice boomed over cheers and applause.

“I was involved…in the civil rights movement. I got arrested…. I was beaten, left bloody. But I didn’t give up,” he said. “And you must not give up.” The crowd quieted and Lewis flowed into preacher-like cadence: “We are all brothers and sisters. It doesn’t matter if we are black, white, Latino, Asian-American or Native American. We all live in the same house. If any one of us is illegal, then we all are illegal.”

Before putting down the microphone, Lewis, a leader of the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, offered his fellow protesters a parting gift: “If any of you get arrested and go to jail, I am prepared to get arrested and go to jail with you.”

Published on The Nation (http://www.thenation.com)

Thursday August 18, 2011

6:30pm-9:30

This month: Viewing of the new feature film “The Help”

A story about race relationship in 1960s Jackson, MS

 WHERE : Meet at 6:30 p.m. sharp at the

United Artists Parkway Place 10 Movie Theater

1075 Parkway Boulevard (at Lakeland)

Flowood, MS 39232

PRICE:  You must pay for your own movie ticket

Movie Ticket Prices:

$5.50 Senior-Over 60

$7 Student with College ID card

$8 Adult

CONTACT:

RSVP to i.cruz@yourmira.org or call Ingrid Cruz for information:

[MIRA Office Phone] 601-968-5182  

Summary

·       A total of 26 states rejected SB 1070 copycat legislation in the 2010 and 2011 legislative sessions.  Eighteen of those states rejected legislation in the 2011 session.

·       Five states have passed SB 1070 copycat legislation.  Provisions in three of those laws have been blocked.

·       SB 1070 copycat legislation is pending in seven states.

In the following states, the legislature refused to consider or move forward with an Arizona-style bill in the 2011 legislative session.

·       In California, AB 26, was filed on the first day of the 2011 legislative session by Assemblyman Tim Donnelly.  On April 5, 2011, however, the bill was rejected in committee by a 7-3 vote.

·       In Colorado, Representative Randy Baumgardner pulled HB 1107 before it had even been heard.  Although Senator Kent Lambert has filed SB 54 in the Senate, several leaders in the state, including Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper and notable law enforcement officers, have stated opposition to such a measure.

·       In Florida, thanks to organized opposition from religious, business, and immigrant rights efforts, the state legislature failed to pass HB 7089, an Arizona copycat, and SB 2040 before the end of its legislative session on May 6.  Florida also failed to pass legislation in 2010, making it the second state to reject SB 1070 copycat legislation twice over.

·       In Iowa, SF 102 and HF 27 are dead as they failed to move before March 11, the “funnel date” for bills to pass out of their originating chamber.  Opponents of the bills included Somos Republicans and the Iowa Catholic Conference.

·       In Kansas, after multiple failed attempts to pass a bill through the House Judiciary Committee, the House refused to bring Representative Lance Kinzer’s HB 2372 to the floor by a vote of 84-40.  The failure of this copycat bill is particularly notable as Kansas is the home state of Kris Kobach, attorney for the Immigration Law Reform Institute[1] and one of the authors of Arizona SB 1070, who was also elected Kansas Secretary of State in 2010.  The bill drew criticism from legislators and prominent businessgroups.  Kansas, the first state to reject Arizona copycat legislation, rejected the bill in 2010 on procedural grounds.

·       In Kentucky, Senator John Schickel’s SB 6 was passed out of the Senate in early January.  However, according to a fiscal-impact statement, the law was estimated to cost the state $89 million per year and members of the House stated their intentions toblock Arizona-like legislation from becoming law.  The bill was not passed in the House Local Government Committee and is now considered dead.

·       In Louisiana, Representative Ernest Wooton withdrew HB 411 from consideration after the bill was found to cost $11 million.

·       In Maine, State Representative Kathy Chase pulled her proposal, LD 1496, before it was even heard at the committee level.

·       In the Mississippi Senate, Senator Joey Fillingane’s SB 2179 was passed on January 18 and a changed version of the bill passed out of the House on January 28.  However, the bill was proclaimed “dead” on March 29, as the chambers failed to agree on a single version.

·       Nebraska’s Unicameral Legislature agreed to shelve Senator Charlie Janssen’s LB 48 after the proposal was found only to have two solid votes out of five needed to advance it from the Judiciary Committee to the full Legislature.

·       In Nevada, AB 430, introduced by Assemblyman Ira Hansen, died quietly as it failed to meet the state’s legislative deadline. Nevada also failed to vote on a similar bill in 2010.

·       In the New Hampshire House of Representatives, the Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety voted unanimously to kill HB 644.

·       In Oklahoma, despite advancing a bill that legislators called “Arizona-plus,” as it would have allowed police to confiscate the property of those found to be in the country illegally, the House rejected the bill by a vote of 62–31 on May 17, in part due totensions that the bill created within the Republican Party.

·        In South Dakota, the House State Affairs Committee rejected an Arizona-style bill by a vote of 11–2 after hearing from law enforcement groups and others who work with immigrants. 

·       In Tennessee, the Arizona copycat legislation introduced by Senator Bill Ketron (SB 0780) and Representative Joe Carr (HB 1380) was delayed until next year due to a fiscal note released by the Tennessee General Assembly Fiscal Review Committee showing that the bills would increase state expenditures by nearly $3 million for the first year and over $1.8 million in each subsequent year. 

·       In Texas, Republican Governor Rick Perry pushed for “sanctuary cities” as one of his “emergency items” at the start of the 2011 legislative session and allowed it to be addressed in a special session after it failed in the regular session.  On June 28, the legislature adjourned its special session without approving the legislation (HB 9 and SB 9), rejecting it twice in 2011 alone.

·       After Virginia’s Arizona-like bill, HB 2332, was revived and passed the House of Delegates on February 8, it was rejected at the subcommittee level along with numerous other anti-immigrant provisions on February 17.

·       In Wyoming, HB 94 died when no member of the House Minerals, Business and Economic Development Committee moved to vote on the bill.

The following are states where bills have been filed for the 2011 legislative session.

·       In Illinois, Representative Randy Ramey introduced HB 1969.

·       In Michigan, Representative Dave Agema introduced HB 4305 amid concerns of racial profiling and the release of a new report from the Michigan League for Human Services detailing how the law would hurt Michigan’s economy.  Republican Governor Rick Snyder also said that an Arizona-style law would hurt his state.

·       In North Carolina, Representative George Cleveland introduced HB 343 on March 14.

·       In Ohio, Senator Jimmy Stewart introduced HB 98.

·       In Pennsylvania, Representative Daryl Metcalfe, the founder of State Legislators for Legal Immigration,[2] introduced HB 738 on March 5. 

·       In Washington, Senator Val Stevens introduced SB 5338 on January 20 and the bill has not moved since.

·       In Wisconsin, Representative Don Pridemore introduced LRB 1116/1 on May 24.

The following are states where Arizona copycat bills have been signed into law.

·       In Alabama, on June 9, Republican Governor Robert Bentley signed Micky Hammon’s HB 56 into law.  The sweeping anti-illegal immigration bill makes it a state crime to be in the state without documentation, requires schools to collect information on the citizenship or immigration status of the students, and requires all businesses in the state to enroll in the federal E-Verify program.

·       In Georgia, on May 13, Republican Governor Nathan Deal signed HB 87 into law.   The bill was passed in the final hours of their legislative session, despite opposition from the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau and the Georgia Farm Bureau.  Since its passage, numerous news reports have highlighted the labor shortage in Georgia’s agricultural industry.  On June 27, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Thrash halted two sections of Georgia HB 87 that would have increased law enforcement’s authority to request documentation of citizenship and punished people who knowingly transported or harbored undocumented individuals.

·       In Indiana, on May 10, Republican Governor Mitch Daniels signed SB 590 into law despite pushback from the state police, from national organizations threatening conference cancellations, and from the signers of the Indiana Compact.  Although the final version SB 590 removed some harmful provisions, the bill nonetheless expands police authority to enforce federal immigration laws and is being challenged in court by the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigration Law Center.  On June 24, U.S. District Judge Sarah Evans Barker granted an injunction blocking the section of Indiana SB 590 that would have increased police arrest authority for anyone ordered to be deported by an immigration court. 

·       In South Carolina, on June 27, Republican Governor Nikki Haley signed S 20 into law. 

·       In Utah, on March 15, Republican Governor Gary Herbert signed into law a package of bills that attempt to deal with immigration at the state level including HB 497, a revised, SB 1070–inspired immigration-enforcement bill, and HB 116, an attempt to create a “guest worker” program for undocumented workers currently in Utah.  On May 11, just 14 hours after HB 497 went into effect, the law was put on hold by the U.S. District Court.

The following is a list of states where legislation failed in 2010.

·       In Arkansas, the group Secure Arkansas failed to attain the 77,468 signatures needed to put the measure on the November 2010 ballot.  However, it is expected that similar legislation will be introduced by the legislature in the 2011 session.

·       In Florida, Senator Paula Dockery and Representative Kevin Ambler pushed for the consideration of Arizona-like legislation in a 2010 special session, but they were unable to gain the two-thirds approval needed to bring up the legislation.

·       In Illinois, HB 6937 was filed by Representative Ramey on November 3, 2010, and did not move after being introduced.

·       In Kansas, the House of Representatives rejected their Arizona-copycat legislation on procedural grounds.

·       In the 2010 session, Louisiana defeated HB 1205, introduced by Representative Joe Harrison, which would have required state agencies and local governments to verify the citizenship status of all people who apply for public benefits and further criminalized the employment or transportation of illegal immigrants.  This measure was defeated with the help of associations such as the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, the National Federation of Independent Business, and Associated Builders and Contractors.

·       In fall 2010, Maryland’s Frederick County Commissioners wanted to introduce SB 1070 copycat legislation to the state house, but it was defeated at the commissioner level and failed to reach the state house.

·       In Michigan, H 6256 and S 1388, introduced by Representative Meltzer and Senators McManus, Cropsey, Allen, and Brown in June, did not move before the 2010 legislative session ended on September 30.

·       In Minnesota, HB 3830 was introduced by Representative Steve Drazkowski on May 6 and was referred to the Public Safety and Oversight Committee when the legislative session ended without further discussion.  It is expected that similar legislation will be introduced in the 2011 session.

·       In Nevada, Assemblyman Chad Christensen was unable to attain the signatures needed for the initiative to reach the 2010 ballot.  He also attempted to call a special session to vote on the bill, but that too was rejected.

·       In North Carolina, SJ 1349 was introduced by Senator Don East, which would have allowed for the consideration of an Arizona-like bill.  East’s resolution stalled in the Senate rules committee and North Carolina’s 2010 legislative session ended.  It is expected that similar legislation will be introduced in the 2011 session.

·       In Pennsylvania, Assemblymen Daryl Metcalfe and Harry Readshaw introduced HB 2479 on May 5, but the bill did not move after its initial introduction.

·       In Rhode Island, House Speaker Gordon Fox decided that HB 8142, Representative Peter Palumbo’s copycat bill, would not be heard in the 2010 legislative session.