Deporting the best and the brightest

March 7, 2012 By Fred Clark 72 Comments

Two recent stories that I find equal parts confounding and infuriating.

First, from Raw Story/Reuters, “Miami students rally for valedictorian facing deportation“:

A judge on Monday denied a green card request by Daniela Pelaez, an 18-year-old who was born in Colombia and brought by her parents to the United States when she was four. Her lawyer is appealing the decision.

Pelaez grew up in the Miami area after she and her family overstayed their tourist visas. A high school senior, Pelaez said she has applied to several Ivy League universities.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Pelaez told Miami’s WSVN Channel 7 TV station. When she heard the judge’s decision, she said, “I thought, what am I going to do in Colombia?”

And Charles Kuffner directs us to the story of Jose Luis Zelaya, as reported by the Houston Chronicle’s Susan Carroll:

That [Jose Luis] Zelaya is an illegal immigrant is no secret.

In April, he stood in a plaza on [the Texas A&M] campus, in the same spot where the elections commission will announce the results … and shared his story of coming to the U.S. illegally at age 14 from Honduras to escape an abusive, alcoholic father.

It was a bold move on one of the nation’s most conservative campuses, where some student leaders have attracted national media attention for vocal opposition to a Texas law that allows certain illegal immigrants to qualify for in-state tuition. But it may not stop Zelaya from becoming the first openly undocumented illegal immigrant to lead the student body at A&M.

Kuffner’s response to Zelaya’s story applies to Daniela Pelaez as well:

What exactly is the public policy rationale for kicking a guy like that out of the country, instead of helping him become a citizen and reaping the benefits of his talent and work ethic? I mean, I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have made my way from Honduras to the US by myself at the age of 14. Yeah, sure, he cut ahead of some people in line. I say that’s more a problem for us to fix than for him to be punished for, but whatever. Fine him some appropriate amount, make him do some community service (I’m going to step out on a limb here and guess that he’s already doing that), have him write 100 times “I will not cross international borders without having all my papers in order”, etc etc etc. But seriously, isn’t Jose Luis Zelaya the kind of person we want in this country?

To the extent that I can discern any argument for not allowing America to benefit from the presence of determined, gifted young people like these two, it seems to be that it would encourage others to “cut in line” by breaking our opaque and labyrinthine immigration laws. So it would create a kind of moral hazard.

But I’m still not seeing the downside. Let’s assume the worst-case scenario this moral-hazard concern imagines — that thousands of other determined, gifted young people come to America, study hard, earn the respect of their peers and their teachers, and commit themselves to benefiting America as their own home.

How would that be a bad thing?

Some more good links on immigration:

Update: Good news — “Miami high school valedictorian avoids deportation“

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‘Resident Alien’ bishop supports rights of immigrants in Alabama

December 14, 2011 By Fred Clark 42 Comments

William H. Willimon may be best known as the co-author, with Stanley Hauerwas, of Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony.

Love it or hate it (I loved it, mostly), that’s a book that requires readers to contend with what it has to say. The main point there being, roughly, that Christianity took a wrong turn around about the time of Constantine and still has a lot of work to do disentangling itself from Empire.

Willimon is also the bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church. In that capacity, Willimon says, he came up short, as Ethics Daily reports: “Methodist Bishop Repents on Immigration, Calls for Action.”

An Alabama United Methodist bishop told almost 300 middle-Tennessee leaders of faith in late November that he was sorry for being inactive while an anti-immigration bill moved into law in Alabama.

He also called on Tennessee clergy to speak up.

“I’m up here in Tennessee … to repent,” said William Willimon, bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church, who added he was wrong not to take seriously Republican Gov. Robert Bentley’s anti-immigration campaign promises.

… Signed into law in June by Bentley, Alabama House Bill 56 is considered the nation’s harshest anti-immigration law.

Federal courts have ruled against sections of Alabama’s law.

“I’m sorry that those of us faith leaders in Alabama, with the exception of the Catholics, were slow to realize how nefarious this immigration legislation would be for us and for our state,” said Willimon.

William Willimon blogs at “A Peculiar Prophet.”

See also:

And, from the Center for American Progress, see:

Taken together, those lists might be summed up as “90 Reasons Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley Is an Inhospitable Jackass.”

The sort of people who sometimes get upset with me for being “mean” or “rude” will be upset by that word. But they’re upset about the wrong word. “Jackass” is mere derision, and far more polite than Bentley deserves, given the grievous indictment entailed by that other word: “inhospitable.”

For most of human history, inhospitality was regarded as a monstrous, unforgivable crime. It still is such, whether or not we still choose to view it that way. And Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley is, clearly, deeply guilty of it.

In that the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah is an archetypal account of monstrous inhospitality, we can say with perfect accuracy that Robert Bentley is a sodomite. He has taken on the part of Procrustes and of a thousand other monsters from a thousand other stories that we humans have told and retold for thousands of years as a reminder of the fundamental human obligation of hospitality — the very same fundamental human obligation that Gov. Robert Bentley has perversely sought to criminalize in Alabama.

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Judge says Alabama cannot steal immigrants’ homes

November 24, 2011 By Fred Clark 36 Comments

This is good news: “US judge stops Ala. from enforcing part of law.”

A federal judge in Montgomery has stopped state officials from using Alabama’s [harsh]* new immigration law to prevent immigrants from renewing required permits on manufactured homes.

U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson issued a temporary restraining order Wednesday evening that allows Alabama residents to renew registration of manufactured homes without requiring that they prove that they are in the country legally. The deadline for renewing the registration without being fined is Nov. 30.

Attorneys for a coalition of civil rights groups said earlier that by refusing to renew the permits, state officials could force people to abandon their homes.

Many of Alabama’s Sooners own manufactured homes. They bought them and paid for them. They own them. But under Alabama’s clumsily harsh new immigration law, Sooners are not allowed to renew the annual registration the state requires for such homes — allowing the state to, well, steal their homes.

Let me say that again: Alabama has passed a law allowing it to steal people’s homes. Thankfully, Judge Thompson has suspended that part of the new law — at least for now.

Iulia Filip of Courthouse News reported on the civil rights groups’ lawsuit earlier this week:

A federal class action claims Alabama’s harsh new immigration law unconstitutionally denies state-required registration to mobile-home owners who cannot prove they are legally in the United States. The plaintiffs say Congressman Mo Brooks personified his state’s animus against undocumented immigrants, saying, “As your congressman, on the House floor, I will do anything short of shooting them.”

The class claims the law denies essential housing services to Alabamans and violates federal housing and immigration policies.

Named plaintiffs, the Central Alabama Fair Housing Center, the Fair Housing Center of Northern Alabama, the Center for Fair Housing and two John Does, sued Alabama Revenue Commissioner Julie Magee and Elmore County Revenue Commissioner William Harper, in Federal Court.

The Does sued on behalf of all Alabama residents who own mobile homes and lack proof of U.S. citizenship or legal immigration status, with a subclass of Latino homeowners.

Under Alabama law, people who own or maintain a manufactured home must pay an annual registration fee and display a current identification decal on the home. Stickers must be renewed every year by Nov. 30. Violators face progressive fines and jail time.

But the plaintiffs say Alabama’s new immigration law makes it impossible for undocumented homeowners to register their homes and avoid the penalties.

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* The original word there, the standard adjective in most news reports on Alabama’s law, was “tough.” I call BS on describing harsh and punitive laws as “tough.” That’s a word with generally positive connotations and it’s routinely being applied to measures that don’t deserve such praise.

Toughness is a Good Thing, readers think. After all, what would the opposite of a “tough” law be? And so politicians grandstand with new measures that promise to be even “tougher” on immigration or on crime.

Those measures aren’t tough — they’re simply blunt, clumsy, recklessly indiscriminate and counter-productive. Let’s stop pretending that’s the same thing as “toughness.”

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Other voices: Evangelicals outside the right wing

November 12, 2011 By Fred Clark 24 Comments

“Regent University president, evangelical church leaders denounce Alabama’s immigration law“

Regent University President Carlos Campo and several people identifying themselves as national evangelical Christian leaders held a press conference in Kelly Ingram Park today to denounce Alabama’s new immigration law.

“We believe Alabama is a better place if they rescind this law,” said Campo. Regent University, a Christian school in Virginia Beach, Va., was founded by TV Evangelist Pat Robertson. Campo said he’s not aware of Robertson’s stance on the Alabama law, described by many as the harshest state immigration law in the nation. “I have not heard him take a stance on this issue,” Campo said.

Campo, whose father came to the United States from Cuba in 1940 and was welcomed into the country, said evangelical churches have been slow to oppose the law.

“It’s to the shame of many evangelical congregations,” he said.

Dave Gushee: “Christian politics, unholy alliances“

Once again, a presidential race is becoming a piety contest.

As an American and also as an evangelical Christian, I can hardly bear to watch this nightmare unfolding all over again. It’s bad for America. It’s bad for Christianity. …

It’s not just the politicians’ fault. If church leaders and rank-and-file Christians were not susceptible to these appeals, they would not work. Head fakes in the direction of Christian symbols still make many Christians swoon. Religious tribalism gets out the votes. It helps that the promise of access to power still intoxicates. When every Republican presidential candidate can be counted on to turn out for the Values Voter Summit, perhaps our current best symbol of everything that’s wrong with evangelical politics, the old formula of support in exchange for access appears alive and well.

Rich Cizik: “The values debate we’re not having“

As an evangelical Christian who believes the Republican Party does not have a monopoly on moral values, I believe this discussion is long overdue. The “compassionate conservatism” espoused by President George W. Bush and many prominent evangelical leaders has been supplanted by a Tea Party ideology that bears more resemblance to the anti-Christian philosophy of Ayn Rand than it does to the Gospel.

Whether the Christian duty to love our neighbors is compatible with a political movement that embraces radical individualism and rejects the ethic of collective responsibility is a central question as the GOP attempts to cement the Tea Party and the religious right into a cohesive base. Tea Party activists and Republican leaders have consistently targeted for cutbacks vital government programs that protect the poor, the elderly, children and other vulnerable Americans. Yet calls for shared sacrifice and proposals to modestly raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans in order to fund investments and protections that promote the common good are derided as “class warfare.” This is what passes for family values?

Joni Eareckson Tada: “Elections 2012: Who is Really ‘Pro-Life?’“

If you truly believe in the value of life, you care about all of the weakest and most vulnerable members of society.

In these days of economic turmoil, it’s easy to look at programs for the elderly, disabled and others with special needs as line items in a budget. But the effects of cutting them can be far-reaching and sometimes just shift the expense from one column on a spreadsheet to another.

Virtually every state is cutting services for special-needs families and with regulations currently being written for the new health care law, the federal government is headed in the same direction. The Super Committee Senators and Congressmen also are looking at cutting funds for Medicaid as a way of reducing the federal debt.

Unless society holds accountable those who are defining “waste-reduction measures,” the disabled and elderly will lose services and in-home support that are critical to their basic needs.

Drew Smith: “Self-Appointed God-Protectors Hinder God’s Work“

While well-meaning and thoughtful people have zealously protected the traditions, the church and God by continually excluding gays and lesbians from full participation in the church, they have declared them unclean.

In doing so, they look and act very much like the self-appointed God-protectors of Jesus’ day.

I am not God’s protector on this issue, or on any issue, and I cannot and will not hinder what God is doing.

Peter’s evidence for the inclusion of the Gentiles was that he witnessed the spirit of God in them, and thus he could not reject the people he once rejected.

People with sexual orientations other than my own are living out the power of the spirit in their own lives through caring for justice and goodness in the world.

How can I hinder what God is doing by pretending I am a self-appointed God-protector?

 

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The Romney Factor

November 3, 2011 By Fred Clark 63 Comments

The Atlantic’s Molly Ball reports, “Religious Right Still Lacking a Champion in 2012 Field.”

Ball attended a public discussion between Sojourners’ Jim Wallis, a standard-bearer for progressive evangelicals, and Richard Land, the conservative head of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

It’s somewhat encouraging to hear Land criticizing the Republican primary field for their one-upmanship in scapegoating Sooners:

Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, said the GOP candidates’ tough talk on illegal immigration, as well as their anti-government fervor, are alienating Christian voters. …

Land insists evangelicals will be motivated to vote for the Republican nominee, whoever it is, by their antipathy toward President Obama and his policies. But in a panel at the National Press Club on Wednesday, Land’s criticisms of some of the rhetoric and positions that have become commonplace in today’s GOP were striking.

Asked whether the “compassionate conservatism” of George W. Bush has fallen by the wayside, Land said, “It existed, and it exists. One reason there’s a lot of frustration on the part of evangelicals is we don’t see anyone who’s running who fits that model.”

He added, “I am more of a Bushie than a Reagan or Perry on these issues. Reaganism believed that government is a necessary evil and we should have as little of it as possible. I happen to think government can be used as a way of empowering people to make good, positive decisions for themselves.”

Land cited the post-World War II G.I. Bill as an example as well as a robust commitment to foreign aid. In addition, he bemoaned the demonizing of illegal immigrants.

“There has been shameless politicking on this issue from both sides of the aisle,” he said. In their cynical jockeying for political advantage, he said, “One side has ginned up nativism, while the other side has ginned up fear in the Hispanic community.” Meanwhile, the majority of Americans support some kind of comprehensive immigration reform.

I think Land overstates the case for “compassionate conservatism,” which seemed more slogan than substance — and was confirmed by John DiIulio, David Kuo and others as all-slogan and no substance. Land’s “both sides do it” false equivalence on immigration is also just silly. But still it’s good to see his Huntsman-esque refusal to cater to the pressure to take ever-more extreme stances to please the tea party base of his Republican constituency.

As for the lack of a “champion” for the religious right referred to in Ball’s headline, I think there’s a bit of a Mitt Romney effect happening, and I think that explains part of what Land tells Ball about why “conservative evangelicals are frustrated with their choices in the Republican presidential field.”

The key to winning over such conservative evangelical Republicans used to be saying all the right things about their key social issues. Any candidate who could recite the proper formulation expressing opposition to abortion and homosexuality could be deemed acceptable.

Yet here is Mitt Romney saying all the things that they want to hear in precisely the formulation of those sentiments that they prefer. But they still don’t trust him. They don’t believe him because they remember that, as governor of Massachusetts, Romney used to say all the things that liberals wanted to hear too.

Romney thus serves as a constant reminder that just because a candidate says he or she supports all the litmus-test issues that matter preeminently for conservative evangelical voters it doesn’t mean that candidate is really on their side. Their suspicion of Romney reminds them of the possibility of viewing Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain with a similar suspicion.

And because of that, just parroting the right applause lines is no longer enough to make a candidate a “champion” who can rally the religious right.

That may create a bit of an enthusiasm problem, but as Richard Land notes, it won’t change how these partisans will be voting next year due to their “antipathy toward President Obama and his policies.” That antipathy isn’t generally based on reality, but it remains firm due to having been carefully, studiously cultivated by people like Richard Land, who despite his more reasonable comments above, also displays an ugly willingness to tell bald-faced lies.

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Welcoming the stranger

October 21, 2011 By Fred Clark 18 Comments

Separate items, common thread:

1. “Evangelical conference preaches support of immigrants”

Evangelicals are gathering at Cedarville University to talk about the importance of showing compassion to immigrants, whether they are documented or not.

The evangelical Christian college in Greene County, east of Dayton, is hosting the G92 Immigration Conference, headlined by a list of high-profile evangelicals.

The conference began last night and continues today and Saturday.

The name G92 comes from the 92 passages in the Old Testament in which the Hebrew word ger occurs. The word is translated into stranger, alien and sojourner.

The idea is that, “as Christians, principles of Scripture should guide how we think about immigration,” said Carl Ruby, vice president for student life at Cedarville University. He hopes the conference encourages “a mindset to minister to these people,” he said.

2. Colin Harris, “Immigration Issue Far More Than a Legal Problem”

“What part of ‘illegal’ don’t you understand?” is a popular piece of the narrative that supports the hard-line perspective of the legislation.

One wants to reply, “What part of the Gospel’s clear admonition to offer hospitality to the stranger don’t you understand?”

Is it a legal issue, or a faith issue? If both, then which should have priority among people of faith?

Reducing the issue of immigration to a matter of legality (as in the prevalence of referring to our undocumented neighbors as “illegals”) seriously oversimplifies the economic, social and theological dimensions of this arena of our common life.

3. Timothy B. Lee, “America’s Illegal Pioneers”

Today’s undocumented immigrants exemplify the American character far more than those who angrily insist that they wait in line until we fix our immigration system. Like generations before them, they have followed the American dream and are waiting for the law to catch up with them. It would be un-American to hold that against them.

 

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The Big Yanoski

October 20, 2011 By Fred Clark 33 Comments

“Backlash from man’s remarks making namesake miserable,” reports the Standard Speaker of Hazleton, Pa.

A former Hazleton man says his life has become a nightmare after racially insensitive remarks made by another man with the same name went viral on the Internet this week.

Richard Peter Yanoski Jr., 39, said he had to take down his pages on Facebook and LinkedIn, and his company received derogatory emails because of the remarks.

A different man, Richard Mark Yanoski, 53, of McAdoo, made the remarks on Aug. 15 in “Know Your Neighbor,” a daily Standard-Speaker feature that asks local residents to comment briefly on their lives and impressions about the community. His answer to the question asking what’s worst about the Hazleton area was, “All the Hispanics who moved here.”

The comments drew criticism from readers in the days following publication. People began talking about them again Monday when the article and photo received wider circulation on the Internet and social media after they were posted on the website for the Comedy Central program Tosh.0.

That’s when Richard Peter Yanoski Jr. began to take flak for something with which he had nothing to do.

… Richard Peter Yanoski Jr., a Hazleton native who now works in the Harrisburg area, said people reading on the Internet mistakenly think he made the remarks, which he said are the opposite of his views. … He said his father, Richard Peter Yanoski, 67, who lives in Hazleton, doesn’t want people to think that he made the comments either.

Richard Mark Yanoski, 53, of McAdoo, Pa., also responded to the question “How would you improve the quality of life in Hazleton?” by answering, “Get rid of the Hispanics.” (Joe.My.God. has the full Know Your Neighbor feature posted.)

It’s remarkable that the paper chose to run such a feature on the Other Yanoski, Dick Mark, even after he gave such responses to its questions. Dick Mark is free to say whatever odious, ignorant things he chooses, but the newspaper isn’t compelled to print them and provide him a wider platform. The feature is called “Know Your Neighbor,” not “Say Hateful Things About Your Neighbors While Making Trouble for Any Other Neighbors Who Share Your Name.”

It’s also remarkable that Richard Mark Yanoski, 53, of McAdoo, Pa., chose to express such stupid, ugly sentiments so proudly and publicly, in a forum in which he knew his name and photograph would be attached. I’m accustomed to seeing that sort of reveling in bigotry in the cesspool of reader comments at newspaper sites, where anonymity allows a handful of vocal morons to drive away everyone who’s not a moral imbecile. As Tara Murtha writes of the commenters for Philadelphia’s largest newspaper sites:

Not every single Philly dot commenter is a racist spewing (woefully predictable) hate speech from behind the cloak of anonymity.

But most are.

Yet here we have Dick Mark proudly affixing his own name and photograph to the same kind of repugnant bigotry. In doing so, he doesn’t just display a vicious inhospitality to his Hispanic neighbors and cause a major headache for the poor guy who shares his name, he also harms the entire community. I don’t imagine, for example, that the Hazleton Area School District is thrilled to have Dick Mark as the new poster-child for its school system.

I’m of two minds about the news that poor Richard Peter Yanoski Jr. has been “taking flak” for Dick Mark’s comments. On the one hand, it’s encouraging that such sentiments do encounter some push-back. That’s appropriate and necessary. When remarks like Dick Mark’s go unchallenged, others are emboldened to express such ideas proudly and publicly, and then emboldened to act on them. And that winds up with real consequences, and often those consequences include both illegal violence and legislated violence. On the other hand, I can guess at the tone and substance of such push-back when it’s led by fans of Tosh.0, and that approach is probably sub-optimal.

The Standard Speaker doesn’t tell us whether or not the man actually deserving of this approbation has also been “taking flak” since boasting of his bigotry and ignorance to everyone who reads the paper. I find myself again wondering: Does Richard Mark Yanoski, 53, of McAdoo, Pa., attend church? And, if so, shouldn’t there be some conditions placed on his continued attendance and/or some repercussions for the clerical malpractice of that congregation’s leadership?

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