November 2006 National Immigrant Solidarity Network Monthly News

November 2006 National Immigrant Solidarity Network Monthly Digest National Immigrant Solidarity Network URL: http://www.ImmigrantSolidarity.org e-mail: Info@ImmigrantSolidarity.org No Immigrant Bashing! Support Immigrant Rights! New York: (212)330-8172 Los Angeles: (213)403-0131 Washington D.C.: (202)595-8990 Every Dollar Counts! Please Support Us! Friends: We are appeal you for fund raising to support National Immigrant Solidarity Network. This is the critical moments for the immigrant rights, and peace & justice movements! Right-Wing anti-immigrant, pro-war, anti-labor forces in the Washington D.C. are pushing their racist agendas to against immigrants and more money for the war. We need to continue organize ourselves to send our LOUD VOICE to the Congress and the President our mass dissent!

November 2006 U.S. Immigrant Alert! Newsletter
Published by National Immigrant Solidarity Network

Please read the Newsletter, download URL: http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/Newsletter/Nov06.pdf
[Requires Adobe Acrobat, to download, go: http://www.adobe.com]

New Anti-Immigrant Laws Signed
But We’ll Not Be Silent!
We’ll Stand Up, Resist and Call to Immigrant Action!

In This Issue:

1) May Day 2007
2) Border Fence and Detainee Bill: An Analysis
3) Detention & Deportation News
4) Minutemen Watch
5) Immigration News
6) Open Letter from Asian American Organizations
7) Please Support NISN! Donate to Us, Subscribe NISN Newsletter

Bush Signs Border Fence and Detainee Bill: An Analysis

[Immigration News Briefs, New American Media and Media Monitors Network] On Oct. 26 at a White House ceremony, President George W. Bush signed a bill authorizing 700 miles of new fencing along the nearly 2,000-mile US-Mexico border in what was viewed as an effort to boost anti-immigrant Republican candidates just before the Nov. 7 elections. "We have a responsibility to enforce our laws," said Bush. "We have a responsibility to secure our borders. We take this responsibility serious." [AP 10/26/06] The House of Representatives passed the Secure Fence Act on Sept. 14 by a vote of 283-138. The Senate approved it on Sept. 29 by a vote of 80-19.

The law authorizes the construction of at least two layers of reinforced fencing around the border town of Tecate, California, and across nearly the entire length of Arizona's border with Mexico. Another expanse would cover much of the southern border of New Mexico, and in Texas the fencing would cover the border areas between Del Rio and Eagle Pass, and between Laredo and Brownsville. The entire fence is supposed to be completed by the end of 2008. The law also orders the Department of Homeland Security to install surveillance cameras along the Arizona border by May 30, 2007. The homeland security secretary is to achieve "operational control" of the US border within 18 months using unmanned aerial vehicles, ground-based sensors, satellites, radar and cameras.

The bill includes no money for the fence, although a homeland security spending measure the president signed earlier in October included $1.2 billion toward the border project's cost, including access roads, vehicle barriers, lighting and high-tech equipment. The entire fence project is expected to cost some $6 billion.

Why Border Fence is a Racist Division Wall
Three Native American nations and 23 tribes live in the borderlands between the United States and Mexico. The construction of the border separation fence will divide in two the ancient history of these peoples. "The land is the place God put us from time immemorial. I can't imagine that now it will be difficult to visit my family," because of the construction of the fence, said LouisnGussac, chief of the Koumeyaay nation located on both sides of the California border. O'odham, Cocopah and Kickapoo are the three Native American nations that will see their culture and land divided by a fence that is at least five feet tall. The Kickapoo nation resides in the Eagle Pass area. These Native Americans see the fence that will be built there as a tragic sign. "The territory of this reservation will be permanently divided by the hand of man," said anthropologist and Kickapoo expert Rebeca Brush.

Throughout history, the Kickapoo have had to change their traditions. In the 17th century, they lived in the Great Lakes region. A century later they were displaced to Kansas and Texas. "It's truly a tragedy. The construction of the fence doesn't make any sense," says Jose Aranda, a member of the Kickapoo in Eagle Pass. The mayor of the city, Chad Foster, has expressed strong criticism of the fence. "It's a cure that is worse than the disease," he said before Congress approved the bill.
Furthermore, Mexican residents abroad threatened with organizing rallies in the United States to protest the construction of a border wall between both nations. Members of Somos America, Red Nacional de Jornaleros and other organizations announced they will also demand the US president George W. Bush respect Mexico, a nation with which it has important commercial treaties.

“The building of the fence is an insult, a slap on migrant people who historically have contributed to the social, economic and cultural development of the US,” said Salvador Reza, leader of the Tonatierra organization. “That will be an enemy wall because that’s the way northerners treat us,” he affirmed.

America, Welcome to Martial Law?
"Will Americans push for the repeal of the Military Commissions Act and avert Martial Law? Will Americans say no to the unilateral power grab of President Bush? Or will we continue to allow our rights to be openly subverted by the smokescreen politics of fear mongering."

The Act passed the House on September 29th with 96% of Republicans supporting and 83% of Democrats opposing legislation that allows American citizens to be labeled 'enemy combatants,' incarcerated, and tortured. Senator Arlen Specter warned before he inexplicably voted for the bill that the Act would 'take our civilization back 900 years.'
Amidst a whirlwind of political sloganeering, mudslinging campaigns, and a Congressional scandal, the public debate concerning the recent passing of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 has remained eerily silent.

Law professor Marty Lederman explains the 'really breathtaking subsection is subsection (ii), which would provide that UEC [Unlawful Enemy Combatant] is defined to include any person 'who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense.'
Read literally, this means that if the Pentagon says you're an unlawful enemy combatant -- using whatever criteria they wish -- then as far as Congress and U.S. law is concerned, you are one, whether or not you have had any connection to 'hostilities' at all.'

For legal residents who are not citizens, the Military Commissions Act is far more dangerous. The Act 'encourages the justices to uphold mass detentions without the semblance of judicial review,' says Ackerman, entirely denying immigrants access to federal habeas corpus.

'Habeas corpus does not give you any new rights, it just guarantees you have a chance to ask for your basic freedom,' states Leahy, that is 'gone for the 12 million lawful, permanent residents who live and work among us, to say nothing of the millions of other legal immigrants and visitors who we welcome to our shores each year.

[Gone] for another estimated 11 million immigrants the Senate has been working to bring out of the shadows with comprehensive immigration reform.' The Act, he says, 'not merely suspend[s]the great writ of habeas corpus, it would eliminate it permanently. We do not have to worry about nuances, such as how long it will be suspended. It is gone.'

If there is any question that there is a concrete potential for the repeat of a mass detainment program profiling Muslim Americans and peoples of immigrant communities, as with the World War II Japanese internment program, consider the $385 million dollar contract awarded to Kellogg, Brown and Root - a Halliburton subsidiary - to construct detention and processing facilities on American soil; again, significant news that we did not get in mainstream media.

Will Americans push for the repeal of the Military Commissions Act and avert Martial Law? Will Americans say no to the unilateral power grab of President Bush? Or will we continue to allow our rights to be openly subverted by the smokescreen politics of fear mongering.

Q and A: Military Commissions Act of 2006 (Human Rights Watch)

Download the Report

10/30: ICE release reports 7 days before election

10/26: Fact Sheet on Fence Bill

Please read the Newsletter, download URL: http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/Newsletter/Nov06.pdf

Please Visit Our New Minutemen Watch Home Page!
http://www.MinutemenWatch.net

Immigration Resource Page
http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/resource.htm

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