[mobglob-discuss] Vancouver- Weekly News/Articles Bulleting

[Harsha]

For the past year, No One is Illegal Vancouver has been distributing a
weekly news and articles bulletin. If you are interested in receiving this
bulletin in the future, please email us at noii-van at resist.ca to
subscribe.

[The No One is Illegal campaign is in full confrontation with Canadian
colonial border policies, denouncing and taking action to combat racial
profiling of immigrants and refugees, detention and deportation policies,
and wage-slave conditions of migrant workers and non-status people. We
struggle for the right for our communities to maintain their livelihoods
and resist war, occupation and displacement, while building alliances and
supporting indigenous sisters and brothers also fighting theft of land and
displacement.]


1) He did the work Canadian's wouldn't (Toronto Star)
2) Kurdish refugee suing Ottawa over delays (CBC)
3) Passenger Wearing Arabic Script Forced to Cover Up (CP)
4) BC Federation of Labour urges citizenship for migrant workers (CBC)
5) Guest workers exploited (Straight commentary)
6) US Immigration News Briefs: Immigrant Rights Marches; Workplace Raids
7) Immigration agents raid Bellingham company, arrest 26 (AP)
8) Immigration agents arrest 34 at tomato farm in NY (AP)
9) Thousands march for immigrant rights (Seattle Times)
10) Katrina: disaster profiteers pocket millions in deals (Independent)
11) Is CIDA helping the poor -- or our mining companies? (Macleans)
12) Why Bush Came Clean About Secret Torture Prisons by Marjorie Cohn
13) Racism, Divided Families and Deportation by Lee Sustar
14) New Orientalism's 'barbarians' and 'outlaws'By Alastair Crooke


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Toronto Star
He did the work Canadians wouldn't
Sep. 4, 2006. 01:00 AM
DAVID BRUSER


SANTA MARIA XOXOTECO, MEXICO—Fanny Romero steps carefully along the pocked
dirt road, her 12-year-old daughter Sayuri apace, eyeing her mother's
belly. Sergio, impatient like most 8-year-olds, trots ahead, leading the
way to the house.

It's late afternoon, and the surrounding Hidalgo mountains keep the
two-storey concrete building in a cool spot of shade. For six years,
Fanny's husband Hermelindo Gutierrez, a migrant worker, had been building
this home with money earned every February through July working in a St.
Catharines greenhouse 3,000 kilometres north of this rural village.

But Gutierrez didn't come home when he was supposed to last summer, and
the money has dried up. The work has stopped. No flooring, furniture,
wiring or railing for the stairwell. Just a shell with windows.

Gutierrez is still up north — not working, alone, and very sick. His
kidneys have failed, and he is undergoing dialysis treatments three times
a week. And he has discovered a sad truth: The system that brought him to
Canada to do work Canadians didn't want, has abandoned him.

With money donated by a church in Canada, Fanny managed just one visit to
her husband earlier this year. The kids go exploring, their voices echoing
from empty rooms. Fanny, seven months pregnant, glances over her shoulder
to make sure her kids are out of earshot.

"I just ask God that Hermelindo gets better," she whispers. "He had so
many dreams about finishing this house, and now with this illness,
everything's just come crashing down."

In February 2005, for the sixth straight year, Gutierrez came to St.
Catharines, one of 15,000 Mexican and Caribbean migrant farm labourers who
arrive every year in Ontario, a largely unseen workforce that picks the
vegetables, fruits and flowers that dress our dinner tables.

They come to Canada legally under the 40-year-old federal migrant worker
program, chasing a dream of a better life for their families back home,
toiling in fields and greenhouses six, sometimes seven days a week,
earning a little more than minimum wage while propping up Ontario's
agricultural sector.

The workers pay income tax, contribute to the Canada Pension Plan and
Employment Insurance, are covered for injuries suffered on the job by
Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, and carry a health card. But in
practice, they are not treated like Canadians.

When they fall sick or get hurt, when they're most vulnerable, the system
fails them. The federal government says responsibility for the workers'
welfare falls to the Mexican or Caribbean consulates. The foreign
governments say their job is to ensure the smooth running of the program,
balancing the needs of workers and employers.

That leaves the workers, who by law cannot unionize, without a dedicated
advocate to help them cope with illness, injury, language barriers,
homesickness and fear — a sobering note on a Labour Day weekend when
Canada pays tribute to labourers who have contributed to the country's
prosperity.

"There's nothing in the system that's going to support them when things go
wrong," says Father Frank Murphy, a Catholic priest who has ministered to
Mexican farm migrants for years.

The void is sometimes filled by labour activists, support groups,
churches, and even graduate students. Janet McLaughlin, a University of
Toronto anthropology student, has proved indispensable to Gutierrez in his
struggles, and she says the country should be ashamed. "Canada washes its
hands of its responsibilities to take care of workers once they become
sick or injured," she says.

For the next four hours, Gutierrez can't move from his chair in the
hospital on Ontario St. in St. Catharines. If the urge hits, he must go to
the bathroom where he sits. The 34-year-old migrant farm worker wears a
white and light-blue sleeveless T, showing broad shoulders and lean but
muscular arms. He doesn't look sick.

"Want a bullet to bite on?" a nurse quips, as she approaches with a long,
menacing needle. Gutierrez's face goes slack as he watches the needle go
in, but he doesn't wince. He has been doing this three times a week for
about a year. Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, from 6 to 10 p.m. "He's very
brave," the nurse says. Two needles now stick out of a ropy, unnatural
bulge in his arm — a "fistula" — created from surgically joining an artery
to a vein to accommodate the flow of blood from his body to the
blood-cleansing dialysis machine, then back into his body.

The machine reads his blood pressure at 173 over 113. Normal is below 120
over 80. High blood pressure is a common symptom of kidney failure.

"Why is it so high?" he asks in halting English. To Gutierrez's visitors,
an attendant explains in English: "He's got no kidney (function) so he's
not getting rid of fluid. When he drinks, it stays in. It increases the
blood pressure."

Gutierrez does not fully understand how the dialysis machine works. "It is
really very difficult for me," he says through a translator. "There are
some times they need to tell me something very special or very important I
have to go and look for someone to make the translation for me. Sometimes
they have to call a friend of mine to try to get the right information."

Hanging from the ceiling, a television shows the Mexican soap opera
Alborada, a little flavour of home. He does not know when he will see his
wife and kids, or again sit in the lacquered pews of his town's
picturesque church, its interior covered with 16th-century frescoes.

Gutierrez is certain, however, that if he returns home — where he has no
medical insurance, or even a car to get to the nearest hospital — he will
die. That's why he's angry that the Mexican consulate wanted him to leave
Canada. "Basically, we get sick and they just get rid of us," Gutierrez
says. In late March of 2005, as an ache settled in his lower legs, his
ankles swelled and fatigue paled his skin, Gutierrez figured hard work had
worn him down. But he did not complain.

Until then, he worked in the greenhouses at Pioneer Flower Farms for six
years, travelling to and from Canada each year without problem — save
calloused hands — and a growing reputation on the farm as one of the best
workers.

"We knew he was not the same," says Henk Sikking Sr., owner of Pioneer
Farms. "I thought he didn't have enough sleep. He had no energy left. We
couldn't figure it out. I think he felt embarrassed because he couldn't do
the work."

In early April, a trip to a clinic for urine and blood work proved both a
blessing and a curse for Gutierrez. RBC Insurance covers Mexican workers
in the migrant worker program for, among other things, medical expenses
incurred above and beyond what OHIP covers, such as prescription
medicines.

Just days after his diagnosis of kidney failure, Sikking says, RBC called
and insisted he send Gutierrez home within days."I said, `Why?' They won't
tell me. I said, `He's not going home. He's staying here,'" Sikking says.
"They wanted to buy him out. I said, `No way. You can't. He's going to
die.'" Gutierrez, too, says he was pressured, from both RBC and the
Mexican consulate in Toronto, when both called the farm office after the
diagnosis.

"(A consular official) called me. He told me that my illness was not
covered. So I had to go back to Mexico. Just to make me go, they offered
me $3,500," he says. The consulate in Toronto told Gutierrez he would
receive health care in Mexico if he returned. "I told them I want to first
see something in writing, and then they never called me back," Gutierrez
says.

Sikking knew Gutierrez worked in between his Canadian contracts as a
part-time farm labourer, or jornalero, with no medical insurance, little
money and no car to drive to the nearest hospital in the city of Pachuca.
So he put up $1,000 to retain a Toronto lawyer and Gutierrez submitted a
refugee application.

"Those guys, we treat like a human, like we are. Like Canadians," says
Sikking, 61, whose seven acres of greenhouses produces flowers and bulb
stock and supplies the Ottawa Tulip Festival. "I told him, `I won't let
you go. We'll find something.'"

RBC Insurance said it would not comment on Gutierrez's case.

In a boardroom on the 44th floor of the Commerce Court West building at
Bay and King Sts., Mexican consul general Carlos Pujalte says the anger
felt at Pioneer Flower Farms is simply the result of a misunderstanding.

He denies his office tried to push Gutierrez out of Canada or doing
anything without his health foremost in mind. "He (Gutierrez)
misunderstood. My feeling is that the guy (from my office) who called him
was trying to explain to him that there is a limit on insurance over here
and that there will be some that would be given to him by RBC," Pujalte
says.

The workers' OHIP card covers them for the duration of their contract, and
if an illness takes them out of the fields, RBC will pay a portion of the
worker's lost income for no longer than eight weeks. When a worker is
unable to work but deemed medically fit for travel, the worker returns
home or forfeits the benefits offered by the RBC policy. So if a worker
like Gutierrez suffers an illness that could require extended care,
Pujalte says it's the consulate's job to look out for the worker's
long-term care.

Plus, Pujalte adds, Mexico can provide whatever treatment a worker could
find here in Canada.  "They can choose to stay, but what we try is to get
the better way to have them treated," he says. "In Mexico we have a health
system like in Canada." As for the fact that Gutierrez lives more than an
hour's drive from Pachuca, the nearest city that offers more than a
rudimentary rural clinic, Pujalte says, "That's a problem."

But it's not free. The patient shares the cost, the portion determined by
a social worker's evaluation of his or her earnings and other factors.
"Here's another problem: People from (rural areas) come to the city to get
the attention that they need. Sometimes they don't have money to come to
Mexico City," says Esteves. Worse yet, since patients must pay some
portion of the care, they often cannot afford the entire round of
treatment.  "You won't have the money to buy the medicine that was
prescribed. You won't have the money to pay for chemotherapy, which is
very costly, and you won't have the money you need to perform dialysis."

That is why another migrant worker Alberto Garcia, despite the consulate's
desire to ship him home, decided to stay in a London, Ont., hospital,
where he has been battling a pernicious tumour near his intestines.

The 36-year-old, who travelled from the village of Cuijingo in Mexico
State to work on a flower farm in Simcoe, fell ill in mid-May. Doctors
initially thought the cancer was terminal — four to six weeks to live,
according to the consulate. That was three months ago.

Consular officials say they wanted him home, where he could continue to
receive care and die with his family.

Sitting on his hospital bed, with bare scalp and sallow skin, Garcia says,
"I think I wouldn't be telling this story in Mexico. There's advances
here."

The migrant worker program started in 1966, drawing labour from Caribbean
nations, and in 1974 included Mexico, which provides 8,000 to 10,000
farmhands to Canada each year, the majority — 80 per cent — in Ontario.

For Mexico alone, that means $68 million (U.S.) annually in remittances,
money that by one estimate benefits about 50,000 people in rural areas
like Gutierrez's home state of Hidalgo. Many workers say they can make up
to 10 times the money earned doing a similar job back home.

"There are a lot of small farms that are able to keep on going here in
Canada thanks to the Mexican labour," says consul general Carlos Pujalte.
"Because most of the farms wouldn't be able to compete against the big
producers." Gutierrez's long-time boss Henk Sikking puts it more bluntly.
"If I were to hire 30 Canadians, some guys would do the job for the month,
some for a week, some for two days, some for one day. Those guys, they
won't stick to the job."

Gutierrez grew up the youngest of 10 brothers and sisters, and to keep
things simple, because he was the smallest and carried the first name as
his father, everyone called him "chiquito." "We lived in a very
impoverished condition," he says. "We didn't have but a room to live in.
Our parents were only able to feed us with tortillas, beans, soup." His
annual journey to Canada was not only an escape from poverty, but a safer
and cheaper alternative to the perilous and illegal migration so many of
his countrymen still make to the U.S. for work. Gutierrez tried that route
in 1998, paying $2,000 to be smuggled across the Rio Bravo and into the
U.S. He hopped a train and eventually made it to Florida, where he picked
oranges and worked as a carpenter for 10 months.

Now, staring at his Reebok shoebox filled with 30 different pill bottles,
this young man's body has betrayed him — either he will be on dialysis for
life, an organ donor recipient, or dead. "It's crazy," he says. "All we've
gone through and then I come here and get sick." He used to make the
15-minute trip to and from the hospital in St. Catharines on his bike.
This past winter, some of his fellow migrant workers at Pioneer Flower
Farms started a collection. "Some people give me $10, $50, $100. In total
it was $1,600."

With that, Gutierrez bought a 1992 black Nissan Maxima. "When you're in
this situation, they're the only family you have. They're the ones who
help you with everything." After the diagnosis, as his future grew more
uncertain and his family waited at home, Gutierrez started writing in a
notebook. "I was alone. I didn't have anything. I thought I was going to
die. I started writing all the things that I had wanted to do. All the
dreams. "I had wanted a house and now the house is unfinished. I had
wanted a car, but then I got sick. They're all left to be forgotten. The
only thing God has given me is that baby."

Fanny is due next week. She and the two kids live at her father's place, a
couple of blocks away from Gutierrez's unfinished house.

Foreign help wanted. Must have agricultural experience, be married or have
a common-law partner, preferably with children, live in a rural area and
be between 22 and 45 years old. Must have a minimum third grade education
but no more than a ninth grade education.

To anthropology professor Avis Mysyk, this list of requirements, as posted
on the Mexican consulate's website, is a prescription for loneliness,
confusion and vulnerability.

Add the physical stress of working all day, nearly every day, and visits
to the hospital are not uncommon, says a program official in Leamington,
where there are three consular workers to help 4,000 migrants.

"My heavens, these men really could use certified interpreters," Mysyk
says. "Have you ever been to another country, gotten ill and don't speak
the language?" The language barrier extends to most Canadian government
offices, where service is only available in French or English, and
business hours typically start and end while workers are usually in the
fields.

The migrant worker program does not provide translators, Spanish-speaking
doctors or lawyers, or English-language training. "The government, they're
taking away from these guys and they're not giving it back. It's not
really fair to them," says OPP Const. Hector Jibbison, who has first-hand
knowledge of the migrant worker's plight. The native of Jamaica, who spent
years toiling in the tobacco fields of Norfolk County, met and married a
Canadian woman about a decade ago.

"With all the red tape, with all the documentation involved, (the worker)
has to have somebody there guiding him through the process," adds
Jibbison, whose job now includes teaching bicycle safety to the Jamaican
migrant community. "That's a huge issue with the guys."

Since workers cannot unionize and farmers can always refuse to renew a
migrant's contract for the following year, many workers say they have
little or no opportunity for redress. They fear that speaking out will
result in a plane ticket home to a family that desperately needs the
money.

"If you want to go to Canada, if you can take shit, well, stay," Roland
Mitchell, who worked on a tobacco farm near Tillsonburg until throwing out
his back on the job last year, says in a telephone interview from his home
in Trinidad. "There should be a union. Some people should come and try to
see if they can get some unity."

At Human Resources and Social Development Canada, the federal agency
charged with managing the program, spokesperson Jorge Aceytuno says
workers benefit from the help of consular officials, who can answer
workers' questions, and Spanish-language pamphlets that inform workers of
labour standards and provide phone numbers to call for information.

"Slowly we do try to address as many as the program-wide problems that we
may find," he says. "We try to find solutions that can work. We know it's
not perfect yet.  But we have put in place changes even when advocacy
groups raise problems, and we'll continue to." Mexican consular officials
say they don't have enough staff to reach all the workers in need.
Meanwhile, they suggest a couple of possible solutions:

Hospitals located near clusters of migrants could hire Mexican doctors or
nurses, or at least provide a pamphlet depicting the human body with
Spanish and English words the patient and doctor can refer to. (Leamington
District Memorial Hospital acknowledges the problem and says it hopes to
offer Spanish/English pamphlets within a few weeks.)

And consul general Pujalte notes that when program administrators and farm
owners meet once a year to discuss the state of the program, absent from
the table is anyone representing the workers' interests.

Perhaps a Mexican-based union with representatives stationed in Canada, he
says, could fill that void.

Gutierrez, meanwhile, continues his own fight with help from people like
graduate student Janet McLaughlin.  He awaits a hearing before the refugee
board, where he will argue that he must stay in Canada or risk dying under
the care of Mexico's health system. Since making the refugee claim, the
federal government has paid his rent for an apartment in St. Catharines
and covered his medical expenses, as would be the case for any refugee
claimant, his lawyer says.

McLaughlin says Gutierrez's nine brothers and sisters are all willing to
donate a kidney, but it is not yet clear whether the federal government
will pay to test their donor compatibility before his refugee claim is
decided. Fanny Romero gently eases into a straight-back chair, her cheeks
flush from padding through her parents' cramped house to the dining room.
A postcard-size image of Jesus watches over the table and the baby in her
belly. She expected this to be an emotional visit with the visitor
bringing news and gifts from her husband Hermelindo. Still, Fanny's breath
catches as she slides the picture out of the envelope.

Gutierrez is smiling back at her from the 4-by-6 print. He's crouching
over a small carry-on suitcase of gifts, topping it off with a blue baby's
jumper. "Oh, I'm going to cry," she says, jamming balled fists into her
eyes. "I'm sorry." But son Sergio goes at the pile of gifts wide-eyed,
ripping the package holding a mini remote control car.  His sister Sayuri
unzips a black leather case and pulls out a used Sony laptop bought at a
flea market. Her father's gift for graduating elementary school. Stunned,
the lanky girl says, "I have no idea how to use it."

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Kurdish refugee suing Ottawa over delays
Last updated Nov 9 2005 09:05 AM EST
CBC News

A Kurdish refugee living in Toronto is suing the federal government for
denying him permanent-resident status because of alleged terrorist
associations.

Suleyman Goven came to Canada in 1991, claiming he'd been tortured in
Turkey because he was a Kurd and a trade union leader.

A year later, he helped set up a cultural organization, the Toronto
Kurdish Community Information Centre.

However, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service considered it an
organization that supported the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers Party.

The PKK is on the federal government's list of outlawed organizations
because of its terrorist activities. Goven denies the allegations, and
said they have never been proven, even after a CSIS review.

Goven's lawyer said it's time for the government to move ahead with his
application for permanent residency.

"If they actually had evidence to support this (allegation) they should
have moved against Suleyman a long time ago," said Andrew Brougher.

"He's been walking the streets for 14 years. They clearly don't think he
represents any kind of a threat, otherwise they would have done something
about it."

Goven said he's shocked to have to defend himself from allegations so many
years later, something he was forced to do in more oppressive countries.

"You feel once, you escape from persecution or oppression, then you meet
new oppressors in this democratic country," he said.

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Airline Passenger Wearing Arabic Script on Shirt Forced to Cover it Up
30/08/2006 9:01:00 PM - Canadian Press

NEW YORK (AP) - An Arab human rights activist was prevented from boarding
a plane at Kennedy Airport while wearing a T-shirt that read "We will not
be silent" in English and Arabic.

Raed Jarrar was at the gate to board a JetBlue Airways flight to Oakland,
Calif., on Aug. 12, when four officials from the airline or a U.S.
government agency stopped him and told him he could not board with the
shirt on, he said Wednesday.

One official told him: "Going to an airport with a T-shirt in Arabic
script is like going to a bank and wearing a T-shirt that says: 'I'm a
robber,"' he said.

Jenny Dervin, a JetBlue spokeswoman, acknowledged the dispute and said the
airline was investigating. She noted the incident came two days after
British authorities announced they had foiled a plot to blow up jetliners
over the Atlantic.

Though rules banning liquids and gels in carry-on baggage went into
effectat U.S. airports, Dervin said there are no specific rules governing 
clothing.

Jarrar, who directs the Iraq project for Global Exchange, a
SanFrancisco-based human rights organization, said he refused a
suggestionfrom the officials that he turn his shirt inside out. In the
end,officials gave Jarrar another shirt to wear over his and he put it on
rather than miss his flight.

Jarrar said he was forced to give up his seat near the front of the plane
and was issued a new boarding pass for a seat in the rear.

It was unclear whether it was officials from JetBlue, the U.S.
Transportation Security Administration or the Port Authority of New York
and New Jersey, which runs the airport, who told Jarrar to remove his
shirt, Dervin said. Officials for the TSA and Port Authority said the
agencies were
investigating.

Jarrar, 28, is half-Iraqi and half-Palestinian and moved to the United
States last year from Jordan, where he was studying. The slogan "We will
not be silent" has been adopted by opponents of the war in Iraq.

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Give migrant workers citizenship, B.C. labour group urges
Monday, September 4, 2006
CBC News

Temporary farm workers brought to British Columbia from other countries
should be made Canadian citizens, says the president of the province's
largest labour organization.

Jim Sinclair of the B.C. Federation of Labour has warned that too many
Mexican berry pickers working in the Fraser Valley under the federal
Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program have been threatened with
deportation because of disputes with their bosses.

Sinclair, whose group represents more than 450,000 workers through
affiliated unions, said making the farm workers Canadian citizens would
solve the problem.

"The boss can't send them back if they get angry with them," Sinclair
said. "Being fired is one thing, but you get fired and then lose your
right to work here, then you got to go home. That's a pretty big stick to
give an employer."

In April, 32 farm workers in the Fraser Valley wrote a public letter
outlining their concerns about their workplace and living conditions,
including a call for washrooms, clean water and a place to eat out of the
rain while in the fields.

Soon after, one of the workers received a notice from his employer saying
his contract had been terminated and he had to leave the country. His
employer told reporters he was fired for just cause, but wouldn't go into
details.

Mandeep Dhillon, of the group Justice for Migrant Workers, said the
temporary workers face terrible conditions on some farms but don't
complain because they're afraid.  Dhillon said federal government
officials have argued that the workers don't fall under their
jurisdiction, while the Mexican consulate tends to side with the employers
to ensure the program keeps running. But Dhillon said that leaves the
workers out of luck.

The Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program brings more than 11,000 Mexicans
to Canadian farms each year under an agreement between the two countries
meant to fill labour shortages. They are mostly employed during peak
harvesting and planting periods when there are traditionally shortages of
qualified Canadian workers. The federal program currently operates in
British Columbia, Alberta,
Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and
Prince Edward Island.

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http://straight.com/content.cfm?id=20122
By Harsha Walia
Publish Date: 31-Aug-2006

On July 31, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Monte Solberg announced a
federal initiative aimed at speeding up recruitment of foreign workers by
establishing “temporary foreign worker units” in Calgary and Vancouver.
Effective Friday (September 1), these units will provide hiring advice to
employers.

The issue of temporary or “guest” worker programs erupted into major
protests in the U.S. this year. Temporary foreign workers in Canada
include those under the Live-in Caregiver Program and the Seasonal
Agricultural Workers Program, and those who qualify under certain
exemptions.

Though popular with employers, unions and civil-rights activists oppose
guest-worker programs. Food First/Institute for Food and Development
Policy has declared that migrant farm workers are “America’s New
Plantation Workers”.

Business groups in Alberta and B.C. are welcoming Solberg’s announcement,
saying it will help address labour shortages. However, it is unclear
whether the shortage is due to difficult working conditions in certain
sectors or whether there is even a shortage of available labour. On
November 13, 2004, the London Free Press reported: “In Canada, farm-
related deaths per 100,000 are nearly four times higher than the rate for
all industries combined.”

On May 19, 2006, the B.C. Federation of Labour issued a news release
concerning the contract termination and forced repatriation of a Mexican
farmworker after he made allegations about dangerous working conditions at
Golden Eagle Farms in Pitt Meadows. Marcos Baac was employed under the
SAWP, which brings 18,000 migrant workers to Canadian farms every year.

Around 1900, as family farms expanded into larger commercial operations,
the Canadian government began accepting British children, mostly orphaned
boys, to provide farm labour. From 1942 to 1946, many prisoners of war and
interned Japanese Canadians were forced to work on farms. In 1968, the
federal government implemented the SAWP.

A 2006 study by the Ottawa-based North-South Institute concluded that
although Canadian law theoretically protects foreign workers, in practice
it is difficult for investigations to occur given the workers’ temporary
status. Common problems documented amongst SAWP workers included low
wages, long hours with no overtime pay, unsafe working conditions, and
unhealthy accommodations.

Nandita Sharma, author of Home Economics: Nationalism and the Making of
“Migrant Workers” in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2005), told the
Straight, “What motivates the Canadian government to recruit temporary
workers is that migrant workers are essentially indentured servants bound
to specific employers and do not have minimum-wage and work-condition
protections, cannot effectively unionize, and cannot access most social
programs.”

On June 1, 2006, the British Columbia and Yukon Territory Building and
Construction Trades Council issued a statement to then–labour minister
Mike de Jong detailing the treatment of 60 temporary foreign workers
employed for the Canada Line (RAV) construction. The letter claims that
workers were paid less than $5 per hour and were required to work 54-66
hours per week with no overtime pay. In an interview with the Straight,
BCYT-BCTC executive director Wayne Peppard stated, “The government is
listening to business communities, who have asked for the door to be open
to lower wages.”

Adriana Paz with Vancouver’s Justice for Migrant Workers believes it is
crucial for Canadians to examine the root causes of migration. “It is not
simply about immigration or labour policy,” she told the Straight. “We
must look at global economic policies. NAFTA, which required Mexico to
eliminate subsidies and privatize communal lands, has displaced 1.5
million Mexican farmers. At the same time, NAFTA has solidified the SAWP
in Canada. These parallel processes have created a sector of dispossessed
and exploitable migrant workers with limited rights and precarious legal
status.”

The UN introduced the International Convention on the Protection of the
Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families in 1990.
Canada has not yet signed it.

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Immigration News Briefs
Vol. 9, No. 32 - September 2, 2006

1. New Round of Marches Begins
2. Multiple Raids in Florida
3. Raid at Arkansas Country Club

Immigration News Briefs is a weekly supplement to Weekly News Update on
the Americas, published by Nicaragua Solidarity Network, 339 Lafayette St,
New York, NY 10012; tel 212-674-9499; fax 212-674-9139; wnu at igc.org.
INB is also distributed free via email; contact nicajg at panix.com for
info. You may  reprint or distribute items from INB, but please credit us
and tell people how to subscribe.

*1. NEW ROUND OF MARCHES BEGINS

On Sept. 2, about 5,000 immigrant-rights supporters marched through
downtown  Los Angeles to City Hall as part of a series of events planned
through Labor  Day weekend. The march was organized by the March 25th
Coalition. [CBS2.com  (Los Angeles) 9/2/06]

In Chicago, at least 400 supporters of immigrant rights kicked off a
four-day march from the city's Chinatown at noon on Sept. 1. The marchers 
will end their 45-mile journey, dubbed the Immigrant Workers Justice Walk,
 on Sept. 4 at the office of US House Speaker Dennis Hastert in Batavia, a
suburb west of the city. The march demands include legalization for
undocumented immigrants and a moratorium on raids and deportations. 
Catherine Salgado of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee
Rights  said she expects a few hundred supporters will walk the entire
distance, and  thousands more would show up at the route's various
rallies. [Chicago  Tribune 9/2/06] Marches are also planned for Sept. 4,
the Labor Day holiday,  in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Phoenix,
Arizona, and a national march  is scheduled for Sept. 7 in Washington, DC.
[San Jose Mercury News 9/2/06]

On Sept. 1, Miller Brewing Co. denied reports in that day's Chicago
Tribune  that it had contributed over $30,000 to "a planning convention,
materials  and newspaper ads" for the Chicago march. Miller isn't
sponsoring the march  and didn't authorize use of its trademarks in
association with the event, said Miller spokesperson Peter Marino. "The
money supported a recent convention on immigration issues in Chicago,
which provided attendees with information on how to become legally
naturalized citizens of the US," Marino claimed. A coalition of Midwestern
Latino community organizations had threatened to boycott Miller because
the company's political action committee made $2,000 in campaign
contributions to Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), sponsor of anti-immigrant
bill HR 4437, which the House passed last December. The boycott was
canceled after the two sides met in Chicago, and Miller agreed to run
newspaper ads against the bill and help the group fight it. [Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel 9/1/06]

The presence of the "Miller Girls," the company's public relations
ambassadors and a display of Miller logos at a welcoming reception the day
before the Aug. 12-13 planning convention in Chicago was defended by some
of the organizers. "We would love to have 20 corporate logos. It doesn't
mean we are selling the movement out," said Jorge Mujica, a member of the
March 10 Committee. "The principles and demands remain the same. They are
helping out this movement and we are happy with that." [CT 9/1/06]

*2. MULTIPLE RAIDS IN FLORIDA

On Aug. 26, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested 55
immigrants from Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala who were working as
janitors in state government buildings in Tallahassee, Florida. All 55
were employed by General Building Maintenance, Inc. (GBM), a janitorial
services company contracted by the state of Florida. The US Attorney's
Office for the Northern District of Florida will criminally prosecute
three of the workers, two for illegally re-entering the US after being
deported and one for document fraud. Another 21 workers have accepted
"stipulated orders of removal" and will be deported. The other 30 workers
have been charged administratively for being in violation of the
Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Six were released under orders of
supervision because they were juveniles or "families with young children,"
ICE said; the rest are detained. "A potential vulnerability has been
neutralized," said Robert Weber, special agent-in-charge of ICE
investigations in Tampa. Agencies assisting the operation included the
Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Florida Department of
Management Services, the Tallahassee Police Department, the Social
Security Administration Office of Inspector General, the US Marshals
Service and Leon County Sheriff's Office. [ICE News Release
8/30/06]

A federal judge ruled on Aug. 25 that ICE agents had probable cause in
arresting six men the previous week in Tallahassee on a criminal complaint
that they were carrying fake immigration papers. Five men were arrested at
a trailer park; the sixth was picked up at a Wal-Mart. William Clark, a
federal defender representing the man arrested at Wal- Mart, said it was
rare to see such cases where a person was "picked up on the street for
being illegal, you don't ordinarily see that." In the courtroom, Clark
grilled an ICE agent on what criteria was used to identify his client as a
suspected undocumented immigrant. US Magistrate Judge William Sherrill cut
short Clark's questioning and ruled the agents had probable cause for the
arrest. [Tallahassee Democrat 8/26/06]

ICE arrested another 82 immigrants--all but three of them described by an
ICE news release as "fugitives" who had ignored deportation orders--in
Miami, Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa over a two-week period ending Sept.
1. [ICE News Release 9/1/06] Over the weekend of Aug. 26 in Apopka, 12
alleged Mexican gang members and "associates" were arrested in a joint
operation between ICE, the Orange County Sheriff's Office and the City of
Apopka Police Department. The arrests were part of "Operation Community
Shield," targeting "criminal street gangs with foreign-born members."
Since the operation was launched in March 2005, ICE claims to have
arrested more than 3,450 alleged "street gang members and associates"
nationwide. In the same news release, ICE reported six "non-gang related"
arrests over the same weekend (presumably in the same area), of Mexican
nationals who were detained and charged administratively for violating
immigration laws. [ICE News Release 8/28/06]

*3. RAID AT ARKANSAS COUNTRY CLUB

On Aug. 23, ICE agents arrested 11 employees of the Country Club of Little
Rock, Arkansas, as part of an identity-theft investigation. US Attorney
Bud Cummins said the workers were to be arraigned in federal court on Aug.
25. Social Security investigators and the US Marshals Service assisted in
the operation. Cummins said the club's management had cooperated with
authorities in the investigation. [AP 8/24/06]

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Immigration agents raid Bellingham company, arrest  26
September 2, 2006
The Associated Press

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/6420AP_WA_Immigrants_Raid.html

BELLINGHAM, Wash. -- Federal agents raided a Bellingham company and
arrested 26 Mexican nationals for investigation of illegal immigration.
The raid took place Wednesday at Northwest Health Care Linen, The
Bellingham   Herald reported Saturday.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents entered the business to  
question employees, said ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice. Agents arrested 26
workers at the business, 21 of whom remained in custody Friday at the
federal   Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. The other five were
released to care for children, Kice said. All face possible deportation.

The arrests came after an audit of the company's employment records,
focusing on its I-9 forms, Kice said. The forms, required for every
employee of a company, document citizenship or employment status. Jim
Hall, owner of Northwest Health Care Linen, said all of his 90 workers pay
taxes and completed I-9 forms.

An agent investigating his business promised to give him a list  of
employees  with questionable documents, but instead, agents conducted the
raid, Hall  said. "It was just too bad that it was handled this way," he
said. "It sure leaves   a lot of questions for Whatcom County with what
Homeland Security is doing."  Kice declined to comment on Hall's
allegation. "We see this as a very important part to restore the integrity
to our nation's immigration system," Kice said. "We need to ensure people
who are coming  here are who they say they are."

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Immigration agents arrest 34 at tomato farm

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny-brf--illegalaliens083
0aug30,0,1689122.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork_

NORTH  TONAWANDA, N.Y. (AP) _ Immigration agents arrested 34 suspected
illegal workers  at a tomato greenhouse Wednesday in the latest in a
series of  workplace raids. The workers each face criminal charges of
using a fraudulent green card  and  false use of a Social Security number.
They were arrested around 8  a.m. at the Fortistar Hydroponic Tomato 
Greenhouse in this city north of  Buffalo.

A call to Fortistar's corporate office was not immediately  returned.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have stepped  up worksite 
enforcement efforts. Earlier this month, 41 alleged illegal aliens  were
arrested  after being hired to clean at the Erie County Fair.

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Tuesday, September 5, 2006 - 12:00 AM
By Jennifer Sullivan
Seattle Times staff reporter

At the beginning, the activists demanding immigration rights numbered only
a few hundred. But block by block, as marchers crept through Seattle's
Central   Area on Monday night, the crowds grew and the signs diversified.

Marchers demanded an end to the war in Iraq, called for abortion rights
and even used the March for Human Rights and Economic Justice as a chance
for some political campaigning.

By the end of the two-mile march, more than 1,000 people wound into  the
Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Park. They spent much of the evening
listening to speeches about immigration rights and heard from 1st Lt.
Ehren Watada, a Fort   Lewis soldier who faces possible court-martial for
refusing to   return to Iraq because he believes the war is illegal.

"We're looking to renew the civil-rights movement," said Jorge   Quiroga,
of El Comité Pro-Amnistia General y Justicia Social, an
immigrant-advocacy group that organized the march. "It's about   social
justice. This march is a call for solidarity."

Quiroga, who has been behind several of the city's recent
immigration-rights marches, said his group sees the power in uniting with
others who are upset over U.S. foreign policy, poverty, racism and other
political causes. The immigration-rights marches were triggered by
proposed federal   legislation that would tighten the borders and make
being in the   country illegally a felony.

Armando Ramirez, whose 4-year-old nephew, Kevin Jimenez, rode on   his
shoulders as he walked, said he wants equality for Mexican   immigrants.
"We need to get fair rights, to get a better life for everyone,"   said
Ramirez, who moved to Seattle from Mexico seven years ago. Ramirez, a
manager at a First Hill McDonald's, said more than a half-dozen of his
co-workers also were marching.

Eleven grandmothers, members of The Raging Grannies Action League,   sang
nursery rhymes and children's songs rewritten to reflect their   call for
better mental-health care and opposition to the war in Iraq. The
grandmothers, dressed in long floral skirts, hats, boas and   shawls,
caused a bottleneck at East Cherry Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way
as people photographed and videotaped their performances. "We sing for
peace and justice for all," said Carolyn Hale, 72, of
Seattle. "We have a lot to sing about."

While the marchers pressed through the Central Area, neighbors   clustered
on porches and yards and cheered in support. Marchers  carried signs that
read "God doesn't make borders" and yelled into  megaphones in both
Spanish and English. Several marchers said they didn't know what they were
saying in Spanish, but recited the slogans regardless.

"I agree with all of the things this march is about," said Linda
Ellsworth, a preschool teacher from Bellevue. She carried a rainbow  peace
flag. Ellsworth said she marched in support of "putting money  toward
human resources and not war."

Though dozens of police officers on bicycles and motorcycles rode   with
the procession, private security also was on hand for the march. Seattle
police spokesman Rich Pruitt said no arrests were made.

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The report is at:
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14004

The Independent 20 August 2006
Katrina: disaster profiteers pocket millions in deals
'Downright criminal.' That's the verdict of a report into New Orleans'
reconstruction, and the huge contracts handed to non-local firms
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington

A year after Hurricane Katrina, the reconstruction of the devastated Gulf
coast is being severely hampered by waste and inefficiency overseen by
"disaster profiteers" who are making million of dollars, according to a
watchdog group. The group claims the inefficiency - along with the
companies' political connections - follows a pattern similar to what
happened in Afghanistan and Iraq.

With much of New Orleans still in ruins and its population half of what it
was before the hurricane, a new report claims millions of dollars has been
squandered by wasteful processes that have seen 90 per cent of the first
wave of reconstructioncontracts awarded to firms outside Louisiana,
Mississippi and Alabama. Local firms have been frozen out while immigrant
workers have been exploited and often unpaid.

"One year after the disaster, the slow-motion rebuilding of the region
looks identical to what has happened in Afghanistan and Iraq," said Pratap
Chatterjee, the director of Corpwatch. "The process of getting
Katrina-stricken areas back on their feet is needlessly behind schedule,
in part, due to the shunning of local business people in favour of
politically connected corporations from elsewhere in the US that have used
their clout to win lucrative no-bid contracts with little or no
accountability."

When President George Bush addressed America from floodlit Jackson Square
in New Orleans on 15 September last year, he said: "Our goal is to get the
work done quickly. And taxpayers expect this work to be done honestly and
wisely.... And in the work of rebuilding, as many jobs as possible should
go to the men and women who live in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama."

Yet the report details how the overwhelming majority of initial contracts
for construction went to companies - "usually large, politically connected
corporations- based outside these three states". Among the biggest winners
of contracts were Florida-based Ashbritt, which received a $500m contract;
Bechtel of San Francisco, which has received $575m worth; and Texas-based
Fluor Corp - $1.4bn. One Louisiana company that received a large contract
was the Shaw Group, which was awarded $950m worth.

There is no suggestion that any of these companies has acted illegally or
stepped outside acceptable commercial practice. The report's author, Rita
King, said: "The devastation of the Gulf coast is tragic enough but the
scope of the corporate greed that followed, facilitated by government
incompetence and complicity is downright criminal. Sadly, disaster
profiteering has become commonplace in America. Corporations are growing
rich off no-bid contracts while the
sub-contractors [get] peanuts."

Another aspect highlighted is the failure to pay immigrant workers, who
did much of the reconstruction work. It details the efforts of the
Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance which has had to fight for $300,000
in wages owed to immigrant workers.

Rosana Cruz of the National Immigration Law Centre said: "The level of
assault against workers feels like war. There is vulnerability in each
successive layer of sub-contracting. This is a microcosm of what is
happening around the world. If you're poor and you're brown we can do what
we want with you."

Companies named in the report dismissed its findings. Bechtel quoted the
Federal Emergency Management Agency's (Fema) assessment of its work as
"remarkable" and said its rate of providing emergency housing was "faster
than at any time in Fema's history". It said 70 per cent of its
sub-contracts went to local firms. A Fluor spokesman said it had provided
temporary homes for 150,000 people and had used 30 local vendors: "We are
very proud of the work we have been able to do in Louisiana."

Federal authorities have issued $9.69bn in Katrina reconstruction
contracts. The Department of Homeland Security's inspector general,
Richard Skinner, told Congress in April: "The federal government, in
particular Fema, has received widespread criticism for a slow and
ineffective response. Unfortunately, much of the criticism is warranted."

The report claims many large companies established 'contracting pyramids',
with each layer skimming money. It highlighted the $500m contract awarded
to Ashbritt to remove debris, which worked out at $23 per cubic metre of
rubbish moved. In turn, it hired C&B Enterprises to do the work for $9
per cubic metre, which in turn hired Amlee Transportation which was paid
$8 per cubic metre. Amlee hired another company for $7 a cubic metre.
Finally, the work was done at $3 per cubic metre by a haulier from New
Jersey.

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Macleans
CIDA goes for the gold
Is the aid agency helping the poor -- or our mining companies?
COLIN CAMPBELL

These are boom times for gold miners in Colombia. President Alvaro Uribe,
a hardline conservative, was re-elected last month, bucking Latin
America's leftist trend and clamping down on rebels that once made mining
exploration too dangerous. Gold prices have been high, and the country,
with its vast untapped resources, is wide open to foreign investment. Last
month, AngloGold Ashanti Ltd., the world's third-largest gold miner,
partnered with Canada's Bema Gold Corp. to begin exploring in Colombia --
the first major producer to enter that country in decades and a sign, many
say, of things to come. "I started to look in 2002, and by 2003, 2004, it
was pretty clear this was going to be a changed location for investment,"
says Ian Park, a consulting geologist for Colombia Goldfields Ltd., a
U.S.-based gold exploration company operating in Colombia, but run by a
group of Canadians. And while companies credit Uribe for this change, they
also point to a new, liberalized mining code encouraging foreign
investment, that was in part drawn up -- controversially -- by Canada's
foreign aid arm, the Canadian International Development Agency, in 2001.

Mining companies love the new environment, and Colombia is no longer the
mining world's Wild West. Vancouver-based Greystar Resources Ltd. returned
to the South American country in 2003, after pulling out in the late '90s,
and this year alone plans to spend $14 million on advanced exploration in
the country. "All in all, we are seeing a much greater level of investment
and it's been growing more so every year since 2004," says Greystar
vice-president Frederick Felder, reached at his company's office in
Bucaramanga, Colombia. But indigenous and labour groups across Colombia,
while acknowledging that foreign investment brings wealth, say the new
code has been a major step backwards. "These policies have been a disaster
with respect to our sovereignty over our natural resources," says
Francisco Ramirez, the head of Colombia's energy workers union.

CIDA certainly isn't gloating -- far from it. Within the agency, the
mining code project elicits a chilly response (the agency refused repeated
requests over a two week period for an interview). In recent years, CIDA
has come under harsh criticism for its realpolitik tinkering with
Colombia's mining laws (some would call the process "Canadianizing"),
which helped create a more competitive tax and royalty structure for
foreign companies. Why, other aid groups ask, was CIDA, a publicly funded
humanitarian organization, promoting outside investment to the benefit of
mining companies? And local groups complain that the laws were ultimately
drawn up and passed without their input -- although they had been promised
a voice -- stripping away earlier provisions that protected their land
rights. "Just as the Canadian government has given money to 'reform'
Colombia's laws to favour North American companies, they should now
provide money to return the laws to their previous state so that our
sovereignty over our natural resources can be respected," Ramirez says.

CIDA embarked on the wide-ranging $11-million project in 1997, in
partnership with the Calgary-based Canadian Energy Research Institute, an
energy industry think tank representing about 100 companies in Canada. For
several years, CERI and CIDA canvassed the mining communities in Canada
and Colombia, looking for input about how to make Colombia's mining sector
more environmentally friendly, and more in line with the industry in
developed countries. From the beginning, the aim was far from altruistic.
"Canadian energy and mining sector companies with an interest in Colombia
will benefit from the development of a stable, consistent and familiar
operating environment in this resource-rich developing economy," read
CIDA's summary of the project.

Greystar, one of the few foreign companies still in Colombia at the time,
was involved in the effort for close to two years, says Felder, providing
"input that reflected the mining industry's point of view as to what was
important in such legislation to encourage mining." Another aspect of the
project involved training Colombian mining officials, and was aimed at
putting a "globalized perspective" on future mining activity, according to
CERI-CIDA documents from 2001.

Historically, the country's gold and silver mines have been run only by
small, local operators, unlike the coal and nickel sector, which is
dominated by large-scale, modern operations. So foreign investment (and
the jobs and wealth it brings) is welcome, but the transition to modern
mining has not been smooth or well-managed by officials, local opponents
say. In Canada, criticisms of CIDA's role were raised in 2002 by Ottawa's
North-South Institute, an independent international development
organization that had been working in Colombia at the time of the CIDA
project. "Our project partners in Colombia regard CIDA as having played a
large role in supporting and promoting a 'regressive' mining code that has
weakened -- rather than strengthened -- democratic procedures," the
institute's president, Roy Culpeper, told a foreign affairs committee. The
project "has left a vital element of Colombian society feeling that their
interests are excluded from the new mining regime," he added.

Such charges have raised broader questions within the aid community about
CIDA's objective to improve economic conditions through promoting freer
trade and foreign investment -- especially when it doubly acts to promote
Canadian industry. Foreign investment is widely considered an important
aid tool for poorer countires, but is not a cure-all. "It's surprising to
look at what CIDA's doing abroad," says Viviane Weitzner, a senior
researcher at the North-South Institute. "Why aren't they also bolstering
the social side of things and not just looking at economics or the
environmental side? It's a gap that we've noticed."

In an email response, a CIDA spokesperson said the agency's Colombia
project did involve the "development of a plan for consultations with
indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities regarding the new mining code."
CIDA's help in developing the code was also a "relatively minor" part of a
broader project to strengthen Colombia's mining sector. Also, "the project
itself did not draft mining-related legislation, which was of course the
purview of the Government of Colombia." The trouble, says union leader
Ramirez, is that the consultations simply never took place. Rightly or
wrongly, CIDA's image has taken a beating. Colombia may be booming, but
the bad taste from the project lingers in the mouths of many Colombians.

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Counterpunch
Fear of War Crimes Tribunals and Impeachment
Why Bush Really Came Clean About the CIA's Secret Torture Prisons
By MARJORIE COHN

With great fanfare, George W. Bush announced to a group of carefully
selected 9/11 families yesterday that he had finally decided to send
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and 13 other alleged terrorists to Guantánamo Bay,
where they will be tried in military commissions. After nearly 5 years of
interrogating these men, why did Bush choose this moment to bring them to
"justice"?

Bush said his administration had "largely completed our questioning of the
men" and complained that "the Supreme Court's recent decision has impaired
our ability to prosecute terrorists through military commissions and has
put in question the future of the CIA program."

He was referring to Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, in which the high court recently
held that Bush's military commissions did not comply with the law. Bush
sought to try prisoners in commissions they could not attend with evidence
they never see, including hearsay and evidence obtained by coercion.

The Court also determined that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions
applies to al Qaeda detainees. That provision of Geneva prohibits
"outrages upon personal dignity" and "humiliating and degrading
treatment."

Bush called on Congress to define these "vague and undefined" terms in
Common Article 3 because "our military and intelligence personnel"
involved in capture and interrogation "could now be at risk of prosecution
under the War Crimes Act."

Congress enacted the War Crimes Act in 1996. That act defines violations
of Geneva's Common Article 3 as war crimes. Those convicted face life
imprisonment or even the death penalty if the victim dies.

The President is undoubtedly familiar with the doctrine of command
responsibility, where commanders, all the way up the chain of command to
the commander in chief, can be held liable for war crimes their inferiors
commit if the commander knew or should have known they might be committed
and did nothing to stop or prevent them.

Bush defensively denied that the United States engages in torture and
foreswore authorizing it. But it has been well-documented that policies
set at the highest levels of our government have resulted in the torture
and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of U.S. prisoners in Iraq,
Afghanistan and Guantánamo.

Indeed, Congress passed the Detainee Treatment Act in December, which
codifies the prohibition in United States law against cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment or punishment of prisoners in U.S. custody. In his
speech yesterday, Bush took credit for working with Senator John McCain to
pass the DTA.

In fact, Bush fought the McCain "anti-torture" amendment tooth-and-nail,
at times threatening to veto the entire appropriations bill to which it
was appended. At one point, Bush sent Dick Cheney to convince McCain to
exempt the CIA from the prohibition on cruel treatment, but McCain
refused.

Bush signed the bill, but attached a "signing statement" where he reserved
the right to violate the DTA if, as commander-in-chief, he thought it
necessary.

Throughout his speech, Bush carefully denied his administration had
violated any laws during its "tough" interrogations of prisoners. Yet, the
very same day, the Pentagon released a new interrogation manual that
prohibits techniques including "waterboarding," which amounts to torture.

Before the Supreme Court decided the Hamdan case, the Pentagon intended to
remove any mention of Common Article 3 from its manual. The manual had
been the subject of revision since the Abu Ghraib torture photographs came
to light.

But in light of Hamdan, the Pentagon was forced to back down and
acknowledge the dictates of Common Article 3.

Bush also seeks Congressional approval for his revised military
commissions, which reportedly contain nearly all of the objectionable
features of his original ones.

The President's speech was timed to coincide with the beginning of the
traditional post-Labor Day period when Congress focuses on the November
elections. The Democrats reportedly stand a good chance of taking back one
or both houses of Congress. Bush fears impeachment if the Democrats
achieve a majority in the House of Representatives.

By challenging Congress to focus on legislation about treatment of
terrorists - which he called "urgent" - Bush seeks to divert the election
discourse away from his disastrous war on Iraq.

Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, is
president-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the U.S. representative
to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists.

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Counterpunch
Racism, Divided Families and Deportation
The Case of Elvira Arellano
By LEE SUSTAR

Moises Duarte may not be the best known among the 5,000 people who've come
to a Chicago church to show support Elvira Arellano's vigil against a
deportation order.

A given day might see elected officials, diplomats from the Venezuelan
consulate, journalists from the New York Times or European national radio
services, or representatives of the Latino and left-wing press.

But during a church service on a humid, cloudy Saturday afternoon in late
August, it was Duarte, a 65-year-old immigrant from the state of Guerrero,
Mexico, who best expressed the widespread feelings of solidarity, dignity
and defiance aroused among immigrants and their supporters by Arellano's
public refusal to return to Mexico with her U.S.-born son, 7-year-old
Saul.

After a raspy prayer of thanks offered by Arellano--her voice worn down by
interviews and bronchitis--Duarte responded to the pastor's invitation for
others to speak. As often is the case at the Adalberto United Methodist
Church, the service blended into a discussion of the struggle for social
justice, as Duarte recounted the rising death toll on the U.S.-Mexican
border.

His voice barely audible over the six ceiling fans that strained to cool
the small storefront church, Duarte described how increasing numbers of
undocumented immigrants are forced to cross the Arizona desert to avoid
the increasingly militarized U.S. Border Patrol.

Meanwhile, Arellano's son Saul, who has been diagnosed with Attention
Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, was in the corner behind the pulpit,
slowly turning a sign that read, "Stop The Racist Deportations!"

After the service, Duarte showed Arellano his meticulously organized
clipping book, with articles from Spanish language newspapers documenting
the lives lost on the border. He pointed to one story in La Raza newspaper
that he finds especially disturbing: the death of Herminia Silva, a
35-year-old Mexican immigrant who passed after suffering a spinal injury
while crossing the border in the Arizona desert along with her 10-year-old
daughter, Adriana.

It was an example, Duarte said, of how people are dying because of the
"foolishness" of immigration laws. Given prompt medical attention, the
injury wouldn't have been life-threatening. But the immigrant smuggler, or
coyote, who got mother and daughter over the border did nothing to help.

Thus, soon after reuniting with her husband in Chicago, Herminia Silva lay
dying in a hospital bed--where she was pictured in a news photo, along
with daughter Adriana, somehow managing a smile. Elvira Arellano took a
long look at the photo, drew in a deep breath, and thanked Moises Duarte
for coming.

The tragedy of Herminia Silva and other immigrant families separated by
the maze of U.S. immigration laws is the reason that Elvira Arellano says
that her struggle about her alone.

"I'm not the only one affected. I'm part of the struggle for the
legalization," she said in an interview at the National Immigrant Rights
Strategy Convention, held just outside Chicago, a couple days before she
began her vigil August 15. "I want my community to be able to be legalized
and remain here with their families."

It isn't the first time that the border has divided Arellano's family. Her
grandfather was a guest worker in the bracero program, a system which
brought "temporary" Mexican workers into the U.S. to do agricultural labor
from 1942 to 1964.

Now, she says, economic conditions in Michoacan and throughout Mexico are
driving immigration out of the country. "In my town, the principle base of
the economy is farming," she said. "My father is a farmer, and
disgracefully, the free trade agreement has hurt them. They can't compete
with the grains and corn that the United States exports into my country.
It's sad, but they have no resources with which to keep working on the
land and produce."

Adding to the pressures on Arellano's family is the fact that her father
has muscular dystrophy and can't walk. "I wanted to come to the United
States because I wanted to give something better to my parents, in order
to help my father," she said. If she were to accept deportation and return
to Mexico with her son Saul, "I would not be able to offer him a dignified
future," she said.

Arellano's determination to escape rural poverty led her to return to the
U.S. without papers after having been deported previously.

Arellano's second arrest by immigration authorities took place back in
2002, at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, where she worked as a janitor. Billed
as a step toward improved airport security following the September 11,
2001 attacks, the raid not only cost Arellano her job, but also led to
charges that she violated immigration law.

Today, workplace raids and deportations are once again making headlines as
the beleaguered Bush administration tries to appease the Republican right
with a crackdown, while trying to push legislation with a guest worker
program demanded by Corporate America.

In what was seen by many immigrant rights activists as a response to the
mass protests for immigrant rights in March, the Bureau of Immigration
Control and Enforcement (ICE) carried out raids at the IFCO paper
packaging company near Chicago on April 19, arresting 26. Eleven were
given orders of deportation, but won a one-year stay after activists
rallied to their support.

However, immigration raids in smaller cities with more recent immigrant
populations have gone unchallenged. In Whitewater, Wis., for example, ICE
agents and local law enforcement arrested 25 undocumented Mexican workers
August 8 at the Star Packaging plant and issued orders of
deportation--including several mothers of citizen children.

What's exceptional about Arellano isn't her situation, but the fact that
she got in touch with organizers--and became an organizer herself. Now
with a small child, Arellano was determined to fight a second deportation.
She soon joined Adalberto Church, known for its ties to social movements.

Working with the veteran Chicago Latina organizer Emma Lozano of Centro
Sin Fronteras, she founded the group La Familia Latina Unida. Its aim is
providing assistance for the families of an estimated 5 million children
of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. Of those kids, an estimated 3.1
million are U.S.-born, and therefore are citizens.

There's a phrase that the anti-immigrant right uses for these citizen
children of the undocumented: "anchor babies," a term that echoes,
intentionally or not, an old racist term for African American kids.
According to immigrant-bashing Rep. Tom Trancredo (R-Col.), "anchor
babies" are borne by immigrant mothers like Arellano so the mothers can
remain in the U.S. without the risk of deportation.

It's not just Tancredo and the right that makes this argument. Liberal
Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn wrote of Arellano: "She's not a
particularly good cause celebre, as these things go. She has twice entered
the country illegally, has been convicted of carrying a false Social
Security card, speaks very poor English for someone who has been in this
country nine years, and she plays her so-called 'anchor baby,' a
7-year-old son who is a U.S. citizen because he was born here, as her
trump card."

The reality is that only in rare cases do the undocumented avoid a
deportation order because they have U.S.-born children, according to
Subhash Kateel, a founder of Families for Freedom, a New York-based group
formed after the September 11, 2001 attacks to fight the subsequent wave
of deportations in an effort to keep immigrant families together.

The rise in deportations--including mothers of citizen children--long
predates 9/11. It began with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant
Responsibility Act of 1996, passed by the Republican-controlled Congress
and signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton. "The enforcement
has been increasing exponentially since 1996," said Kateel, "and just got
that much worse [after 9/11]. That came from a Democratic president."

Between 1996 and 2004--the latest date for which government statistics are
available--more than 1 million people were deported. Most of those
deported had children, Kateel said.

"There is a longstanding rumor that if you've been in the country for 10
years and you have U.S. citizen children, they can't deport you," he said.
"What the law really says, is that...they have a choice to deport you if
[deportation] will mean an extreme or unusual hardship for a U.S. citizen
child"--typically, a severe or terminal illness.

If mothers of citizen children are already routinely deported, the
question arises as to why Tom Tancredo seeks to remove automatic
citizenship for U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants.

The proposal--which can be found under the "Anchor Babies" heading on
Tancredo's Team America Political Action Committee Web site--would involve
changing the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the measure that
outlawed slavery and guaranteed equal protection under the law, the
cornerstone of subsequent civil rights legislation.

Of course, it took the U.S. government nearly a century to enforce the
14th Amendment by outlawing legal segregation of African Americans. If
Tancredo and his allies have their way, though, a new second-class
citizenship--or worse--for millions of working people would again be the
law of the land once again.

The right's agenda of rolling back civil rights has created common ground
for the immigrant rights movement and African Americans. Black leaders,
including Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, have been public supporters
of immigrant rights. Members of the Nation of Islam regularly come to the
Adalberto Church to support Arellano's vigil.

Some Black voices, however, have joined the anti-immigrant backlash. Among
them is Mary Mitchell, a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, who
denounced Arellano's comparison of her struggle to that of Rosa Parks, who
defied segregation in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955. "As they say in the
streets, Arellano is pimping the system," Mitchell wrote. "She is using
Rosa Parks' name to buy herself more time, and that disgusts me."

In fact, said Beti Guevara, associate pastor at Adalberto, Arellano first
learned about Parks at a memorial service held for her last October at
Chicago's Beloved Community Christian Church, where U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush
(D-Ill.) is pastor. The keynote speaker was Mary Mitchell. "Elvira learned
Rosa Parks 101 from Mary Mitchell," Guevara said.

Just days after Mitchell's column appeared, Clergy Speaks
Interdenominational, a group of leading Black clergy, visited Adalberto to
pray with Arellano. Rush, who first rose to prominence as a leader of the
local Black Panther Party in the 1960s, has also publicly supported
Arellano.

Other leading Democratic politicians' letters of support for Arellano are
displayed prominently all over Adalberto Church.

There's a letter to immigration authorities from Gov. Rod Blagojevich, the
son of a Serbian immigrant, who's facing a tough reelection campaign,
backing Arellano and others in a similar plight.

There's also a letter from Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, who's tried to
refuel his father's Democratic Party machine with the help of loyalists in
the Hispanic Democratic Organization--although some of these backers
currently face corruption charges.

There are several letters from Rep. Luis Gutierrez, the city's most
prominent Latino politician. An activist in the Puerto Rican community
before entering electoral politics, Gutierrez years ago assumed the role
of advocate for Chicago's burgeoning Latino community.

Although his support for the proposed guest worker program has alienated
many immigrant rights activists in Chicago, Gutierrez remains popular
among the Mexican community, whose votes would be key for his possible
challenge to Daley in next year's mayoral race.

Conspicuous by its absence are letters from Illinois' liberal Democratic
senators, Dick Durbin and Barack Obama--themselves the sons of immigrants,
as they often point out in speeches at immigrant rights rallies.

Durbin, who earlier sponsored a private bill to delay Arellano's
deportation because of her son's medical condition, now refuses to support
Gutierrez's private bill to win her a new stay. "We cannot fix the
injustices of this system with private bills," Durbin said in a statement.
"Only comprehensive immigration reform can permanently remedy this
situation."

Obama made took a similar line. "I don't feel comfortable carving out an
exception for one person when there are hundreds of thousands of people
just in the Chicago region alone who would want a similar exemption," he
said in a speech.

The claim that Arellano is seeking help for only herself is completely
mistaken, said Rev. Walter "Slim" Coleman, pastor of Adalberto Church, a
longtime community activist and an informal adviser to the late Chicago
Mayor Harold Washington. "She is not holed up, she is not hiding, she is
taking a position of conscience," Coleman said. "Our demand is for a
moratorium on deportations, raids, arrests and sanctions until they fix
the law--until they complete the process that the Republican Congress has
stalled."

However, Subhash Kateel of Families for Freedom rejects the notion that
the current legislation--the amended version of Hagel-Martinez, or S
2611--would help immigrant families remain united.

On the contrary, by excluding some 2 million people from any legal status
and forcing millions more into a guest worker program, it further
complicates the already labyrinthine process of uniting immigrant
families. What's more, S 2611 would expand the border wall and increase
enforcement by expanding the list of "aggravated felonies" that are
deportable offenses for green card holders.

"Most people think aggravated felonies are something violent, like
murder," Kateel said. "But it could be shoplifting." He added, "Nothing in
the immigration reform bills on the table right now, whether the most
liberal or most conservative, do anything to protect Ms. Arellano."

In fact, a growing number of immigrant rights groups that initially
supported Hagel Martinez have concluded that no legislation this year is
better than further restrictions on immigrant rights packaged as
"comprehensive reform," as its supporters call it.

In this context, support for Elvira Arellano has emerged as a rallying
point for the planned weekend of Labor Day protests coordinated by the new
National Alliance for Immigrant Rights (NAIR), founded in Chicago in
mid-August by a collection of grassroots local groups and representatives
of labor organizations.

In Los Angeles, the March 25 Coalition will hold a women's march to
highlight the struggle of Arellano and other mothers facing deportation
and being forced to choose between uprooting their children and leaving
them behind. Arellano's son Saul will attend the march.

Meanwhile, a lawsuit filed in federal court on behalf of Saul aims to
challenge the government's policy of effectively deporting the citizen
children of undocumented immigrants by ordering their mothers to leave the
country. Resolution of the lawsuit for Saul seems a long way off, and the
GOP-run Congress will likely dig in on any attempt to pass a private bill,
even if Sens. Durbin and Obama feel pressure to back it. For her part,
Arellano urges immigrants who are citizens to register and vote.

In any case, Arellano's vigil has already become a national issue, with
NAIR calling for a moratorium on raids and deportations. It's an important
focus for a new movement that is seeking to turn the mass immigration
marches into rooted, local organizations that can function day to day.

The need for such organizing was in evidence in Whitewater, Wis., scene of
the August 8 ICE raid at Star Packaging.

It fell to Rev. Kenneth Abarca, pastor of Hispanic Ministries at
Whitewater Community Church, to organize the initial support for some of
the 25 workers arrested--including finding a place to stay for the
1-year-old son whose parents were arrested and detained.

After nine days behind bars, the parents were able to post the $6,000 bail
for the woman and $7,000 for the man by selling their car and most of
their belongings and taking out a loan. Her sister--who also has a
child--was also detained.

Defending Latino immigrants is a new challenge for Whitewater Community
Church, which launched its Spanish ministry just four years ago to support
the new and growing community. Where the Adalberto church has long been a
political hub in the heart of Chicago's Puerto Rican community, the
Whitewater church currently meets in a high school while its new building
is being constructed.

Now it's trying to support the women, who have been ordered to leave the
U.S. within six months, after building a life in Whitewater for the past
five years.

"It's difficult here," said the mother of a 1-year-old and 5-year-old.
"There is much racism here against Mexicans. We can't work [while under an
order of deportation], because to do so would have consequences."

"We have to continue to struggle," she said, for the rights of Mexicans to
come to the U.S. and work. "There's been enough suffering and dying in the
desert."

Lee Sustar is a regular contributor to CounterPunch and the Socialist
Worker. He can be reached at: lsustar at ameritech.net

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http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.aspedition_id=1&categ_id=5&article_id=75230

New Orientalism's 'barbarians' and 'outlaws'
By Alastair Crooke
Commentary by
Tuesday, September 05, 2006

It's unconscious. It slips out almost inadvertently. It is not deliberate
but, rather, a reflex: an Israeli commentator discusses options for
clearing Hizbullah from the area south of the Litani River in the context
of the war in Lebanon. After reviewing the options he adds, in an almost
despairing note, that probably whatever Israel does, almost certainly a
"Hizbullah terrorist will pop up somewhere on the back of a donkey with a
rocket."

The imagery is clear, but paradoxical. Clear because his report implies a
grudging and bemused respect for a foe that unexpectedly is not being
crushed by the Israeli onslaught (as every Western and Israeli analyst had
assumed), paradoxical, because whatever the force that was frustrating
this
mighty military machine, it was certainly something more than "a man on a
donkey." Why the donkey? Because this foremost proponent of modern
asymmetrical guerrilla warfare - Hizbullah - must nevertheless somehow be
associated with obscurantism, with a reaction against Western modernity
and a desire for a return to a pre-modern age. It's just how we see
things.

Edward Said rightly identified this Western unconscious prejudice as
"Orientalism." He suggested that the West sees the Orient as that
mysterious "Other" that eludes rational analysis. Western academics and
observers continue to see the Orient, and to define it, in polar
opposites: We in the West are rational, the Orient is violent and
inexplicable; we are moderate, they are extreme; we practice good
administration, they live under oppression and tyranny.

This flawed Western analysis is entirely self-serving: The language of
Orientalism, Edward Said noted, was a construct of power. For the previous
300 years, Europeans have regarded the Treaty of Westphalia (an agreement
that shattered the Christian "caliphate" in secular nation states) as
laying the foundations of modernity. The separation of church and state,
the belief in the inevitability of progress through science, a faith in
reason as a solution of social problems, everything that we think of as
the "Enlightenment" ideal, became our mantra however much European reality
differed from this ideal.

The Enlightenment grew from a simple concept to become, irretrievably, a
synonym for "modernity" itself; the Orient became its antithesis. The
ideals we believe are reflected in the Enlightenment became the device
that allowed us to use the language of European modernity not only as a
tool to "domesticate" the Orient but also as an interpretative template
from which  to offer a critique of the Orient's "backwardness." The
Enlightenment mindset of European modernity became sedimented in Western
thinking at the same time that it served Western colonial and economic
interests.

In the years since Edward Said published his classic, the West has
elevated Orientalism into something more serious: an inexorable
self-fulfilling reality. The global "war on terror" has allowed Western
leaders to cast "our" struggle as one for civilization itself - "we" have
values, they have none, we want to spread democracy, they hate our
freedoms. The West is now defined by its opposition to terrorism and as a
defender of civilization. The war on terrorism has transformed
orientalism, from a European-based vision of modernity that could be used
to "domesticate" non-Europeans, into a program that establishes a frontier
between "Civilization" and "the new Barbarism".

The new "Orientalism" offers us new political tools. Since the "new
barbarians" live outside of civilization, civilized rules no longer apply
to them: if "they" win elections they can still not be part of "us" -
office holders and parliamentarians can be abducted and interned without a
murmur; members of "barbarian" movements can be arrested and taken away
for imprisonment and torture in other countries, and barbarian leaders,
whether or not legitimately elected, can be assassinated at the pleasure
of Western leaders. They "abduct" us, we "arrest" them.

The underpinning of our worldview is based on our idea of what constitutes
the legitimate use of power - and, therefore, on the use of violence. It
is the bedrock of the Enlightenment. Violence practiced by the nation
state is legitimate; violence used by non-state actors is a threat to
civilization and the existing world order. The barbarians do not have
resistance movements, they are not for liberation, and they are not
fighting oppression. To admit so is to admit that we are oppressors, and
that cannot be. They are not fighting for their homes: they are
"unauthorized armed groups."

Non-state actors who use violence - defined now as "terrorists" in the new
lexicon of the Bush-Blair world view - face a double proscription: Not
only are they outside of civilization and undeserving of having civilized
standards applied to them (such as respect toward elected
representatives), they are excluded from international law too. Their
challenge to "our" Westphalian rules on the use of violence permits us to
cast them as barbarians and outlaws. Nor are we constrained by our own
rules of war in the military struggle to be waged against them. Why are we
bombing them? Because they don't have our values.

As these "Others" - these barbarians - find themselves isolated and
excluded from civilization, as well as from the safeguards of
international law, they respond by assuming the characteristics we
attribute to them. If we do not apply civilized standards to them, and use
unrestrained military force against them, is it any wonder that they
respond in kind? And so this "new Orientalism" becomes self-fulfilling:
Since their violence is "terrorism" and our violence is "self-defense," we
propound a reasonable solution - we get to keep our guns, but they must
disarm.

[Alastair Crooke is a founder and director of Conflicts Forum. He was
formerly an EU mediator who facilitated a number of cease-fires with
Islamist movements. This text is reprinted with permission from
bitterlemons-international.org, where it first appeared.]


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