Cincinnati to host March for Immigration Reform

Cincinnati will be the host city of a Midwest rally for Immigration Reform. The march comes in response to the recent anti-immigrant laws in Arizona, to the anti-immigrant propaganda utilized by WTVN610 in Columbus, OH and to the growing failures of a broken federal immigration system. This latest manifestation of the growing dissatisfaction with both the broken immigration system and anti-immigrant sentiments will begin: 

Saturday, June 5 at 1:30 p.m. at Hamilton County Courthouse (1000 Main St., downtown Cincinnati)

Para preguntas en español contactar a Alma Diaz: alma.diazdf@yahoo.com o llama (859)816.3614.
For questions in English, contact sbeckborden@gmail.com or call 513-545-1015.

Attempt to Respond to WTVN610's Anti-immigrant Propoganda

WTVN610's Mr. Corbi, while on air, invited the Latino community to come to speak to him regarding his station's anti-immigrant propaganda. In these clips, Reform Immigration for America's Ohio State Director, Rubén Herrera, attempts to confront station directors. Nick Torres gives thoughtful narrative as to why this action is necessary. Here are two unedited clips of the events as they take place. Check out more clips at OAC's NEW YouTube CHANNEL!

Attempt 1:




Attempt 2:

Ohio S.B. 238: Political Grandstanding at the Expense of Public Policy

Original Post at AILA Leadership Blog

May 25

Written by: David Leopold

Tuesday afternoon the Ohio Senate Insurance, Commerce, and Labor Committee held a final hearing on S.B. 238, a bill that prohibits undocumented foreign nationals from receiving workers compensation benefits.  The proposal is the brain child of Senator Bill Seitz (R-Cincinnati) and squarely aimed at Ohio’s most vulnerable population; undocumented immigrants. But, S.B. 238 is an unnecessary and mean spirited bill which will do nothing to fix the broken immigration system which plagues Ohio and the rest of the nation.  In fact, if it becomes law, it will make things worse.

To start with, it appears that neither Senator Seitz nor his co-sponsors did their homework before introducing S.B. 238. No one knows how many unauthorized foreign workers have recovered workers compensation in Ohio and, therefore, whether such legislation is even necessary.  The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that only 1.1% of Ohio’s workforce is undocumented, making it highly unlikely that there is even much of a problem that needs fixing.  Wouldn’t it have made more sense to have first commissioned a study to determine whether a problem exits?

How would S.B. 238 work in practice?  Under the immigration law an employer is not required to test the authenticity of employment authorization documents and can accept them from an employee as long as they are not obviously fake.  Thus, under S.B. 238 an employer could conveniently look the other way when hiring an unauthorized immigrant and “learn” of his unauthorized status only after the employee is injured on the job.  S.B. 238 then burdens the employee with the daunting task of proving in a court of law that the employer knew he or she was an unauthorized immigrant when she was employed.  The law essentially rewards employers for suddenly “discovering” that a worker is unauthorized after a catastrophic injury.

Or suppose an undocumented employee is the victim of an unscrupulous employer who hired her knowing she was unauthorized to work, paid her sweat shop wages, and placed her in an unsafe work environment where she was badly injured.  Under these circumstances S.B. 238 permits her to sue her employer, but includes a strong disincentive to do so.  Does anyone really expect an undocumented immigrant to file a lawsuit against her unscrupulous employer under the threat of removal from the U.S.?  True, she may have no legal right to be here, but her undocumented status doesn’t justify creating a legal structure which effectively encourages her abuse.

What’s more, echoing the recently enacted anti-immigration law in Arizona, S.B. 238 arguably runs afoul of the federal immigration statute which provides for the protection of victims of human trafficking, violent crime, and domestic violence.  Many such victims have entered the country illegally but are nevertheless entitled to protection under the law, including the right to work in the US.  But S.B. 238 prohibits such victims from receiving workers compensation by excluding them from coverage as “illegal aliens”.

Nor is it clear that S.B. 238 will save Ohio taxpayers money as a result of reduced workers compensation insurance premiums.  The bill creates a burden on the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation and will likely generate other costs that will more than offset any savings in reduced workers compensation premiums.

Ohio and the rest of the nation need a functional, orderly, and fair immigration system designed to meet the needs of American business and families. Bills like S.B. 238 do nothing of the sort.  They merely create a climate of fear designed to intimidate a vulnerable population.  Unfortunately, Washington’s failure to enact comprehensive immigration reform has left a void which cynical politicians are all too willing to fill.  Their actions are an appalling symptom of a broken immigration system.  As responsible citizens we must demand that the Obama Administration and Congress get to the hard work of enacting comprehensive immigration reform.

In the meantime we deserve better from state and local government.

About the Author: David Leopold is an immigration lawyer and President Elect of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. David can be reached at dleopold@immvisa.com .

The Link Between Crime and Immigrants

May 24

By LEO J. PIERSON

Due to Arizona's new draconian laws, I have had to have this discussion with many people recently. It is the case that native born citizens often believe that immigrants bring crime (especially violent crime) with them to their host communities. It's what many of us immigration researchers refer to as the holy trinity of anti-immigrant sentiments: Drugs, Litter and Violent Crime. 

One excellent example of this is in the film 9500 Liberty, where one native born woman claims that her 83 year old grandmother no longer feels safe enough to take her trash out at night because of the presence of a newly arrived (and presumably violent) Latino immigrant population. Taken from my own research, I captured the following quote during a brilliant interview with a native born resident living in a new immigrant destination: "The ethnic groups that are living here have changed. The crime rate is high now versus even 5 years ago. I would feel comfortable when my children were small. Not any more!" (actual crime rate decreased in interviewee's community over the cited time period).

For the reasons that are highlighted in such public discourses, this is an excellent discussion for us to be having in more public settings. Put in the form of a question, one asks: is it true that increased rates of in-migration bring increased rates of crime—especially violent crime?

Based on commonly held beliefs, the answer is not what most would expect it to be and thus requires a bit of explanation.

While it is true that larger urban areas—which are the principal destinations for most newly arriving immigrants—have higher crime rates than the average small town in Ohio, when we look at the numbers over time, what we find is that of all the variables that lead to this "social fact," there is no (as in 0) correlation—i.e. relationship—between increases in violent crime rates and increases in patterns of in-migration.

In fact, recent research suggests a causal inverse relationship between the two—that is to say, over the course of time, increased rates of in-migration partially explain observed decreases in rates of violent crime!

A just released study* by Tim Wadsworth, a sociologist at the University of Colorado, shows that between the years 1990 and 2000, the U.S. urban areas that experienced the largest rates of in-migration also experienced either significantly decreased rates of violent crime or significantly smaller increases when compared to similar urban areas that experienced lower rates of in-migration. These findings might begin to help us understand why many law officials in Arizona have flatly contradicted Arizona politicians by stating that there is no "crime wave" on our side of the border. In fact, when we look at the numbers, Arizona's violent crime rates (including the border zones) have declined significantly over the past decade, even as their rates of net in-migration have gone up!

There are various explanations given in the research literature on immigration to suggest why this might be the case (While Wadsworth's research could not test the theories, it does lend them plausibility). One oft-given reason is that—contrary to popular belief—the choice to immigrate to the U.S. is not an individual decision. Rather, the decision to leave one's home for a new destination of opportunity is one that is made collectively. Decision making involves both immediate and extended family members, as well as friends and "community elders."**

The idea is that if home societies are deliberating on who to send to a new country in order to find work and new opportunities, those who are sent are not hardened criminals; they are trusted members of their home communities. Indeed my own research—though tangential to this particular topic—does directly imply the validity of such an argument.

So to the question: are immigrants also most often violent criminals? As many advocates and academics have long suspected, the answer is NO, and now we have the data to prove it.*** In actual fact, negative stereotypes rooted in false ideas of criminality serve to further stigmatize already economically, racially, and culturally marginalized immigrant communities. 

The outstanding thing about Wadsworth's data analysis is that it indicates one other important point. Not only is it the case that immigrants do not contribute to increased rates of violent crime, but it seems also to be the case that immigrants positively contribute to decreasing violent crime in the communities in which they—quite literally—settle.****

About the Author: Leo Pierson is a sociologist and instructor at Cincinnati State Technical and Community College. His research focuses on local and state level immigration policy, and immigration conflict in the U.S. Leo is also the Ohio State Director of Civil Rights for the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).

__________________

*Wadsworth, Tim. June 2010. Is Immigration Responsible for the Crime Drop? An Assessment of the Influence of Immigration on Changes in Violent Crime Between 1990 and 2000. Social Science Quarterly. Vol 91 (2): 531-53. 

**For interesting discussions on immigrant decision making processes see Peggy Levitt's work on The Transnational Villages. See also Saskia Sassen's insights in Chapter 6 of Territory, Authority, Rights.

***"Computing estimates based on the pooled cross-sectional time-series models discussed above suggests that, controlling for a variety of other factors, growth in the new immigrant population was responsible, on average, for 9.3 percent of the decline in logged homicide rates, and that growth in total immigration was, on average, responsible for 22.2 percent of the decrease in logged robbery rates." (see p. 549 of above cited article by Wadsworth.)

****Special thanks is owed to Tim Wadsworth, of the University of Colorado, for directly providing me with his journal article, which I heavily leaned upon in order to write this post. In the concluding remarks of his article, Tim asks that his and other such research "play an important role in challenging the public discourse as we begin to shape new immigration policy for the 21st century." It is the sincere hope of OAC that in the "strong and slow boring of hard boards," we might begin to help accomplish precisely this task.

Offensive Promo Mocks Mayor, Immigrants

Below is a screen shot taken of a current promotion from Columbus radio station 610 WTVN. I am continually astonished by conservative media's depiction of immigrants, especially of Latin@ immigrants. I'm not sure which is worse-- implying that Arizona is the land of "proud Americans" and "scared illegals" or that "chasing aliens" is somehow recognized as recreation. You know what else Arizona is home to? Hate groups.

Interestingly enough, however, Arizona's 16 documented hate groups pale in comparison with Ohio's 27. According to the FBI, hate crimes against Latin@s have spiked in recent years, corresponding with a rise in anti-immigrant inflammatory rhetoric. Anti-Latino perceptions created and legitimized by the main stream media have sought to dehumanize immigrants, and have certainly played a role in the rise in hate crimes.

This is not the first time we've seen such an ad from conservative talk radio; in fact, this is reminiscent of promotion from 700 WLW a few years back. Thanks to the efforts of several of our Action Circle Members, that billboard was removed, and the station publicly apologized.

Call WTVN's main office at (614) 486-6101 to voice your disgust at their offensive marketing.

Support Mayor Coleman in His Stand Against Hate!!!

Dear community leaders,

As many of you know, the City of Columbus, under the direction of Mayor Coleman issued a ban on city travel to Arizona. Unfortunately, his stance has caused an overwhelming negative response and we, who are supportive of his actions need to call or email TODAY. Join me in applauding Mayor Coleman for standing up for immigrant rights!

614-645-7671
or
MAC@columbus.gov
.

Columbus City Ban on Arizona Travel Stokes Immigration Debate

(May 20, 2010) Mayor Michael B. Coleman has banned city workers from traveling to Arizona on government business, a decision that plunged Columbus yesterday deep into the nation's emotional debate over illegal immigration.

Coleman, who opposes a new Arizona law allowing police to demand documentation from people who they suspect are in the country illegally, has told city department heads that he will not authorize travel to the state and will review contracts with businesses based there on a case-by-case basis.

"He agrees with those who want to send a message to the state of Arizona that this is not the American way," Williamson said.

But the decision brought swift calls for retaliation from supporters of the Arizona law, who insist the state is not targeting people based on race or ethnicity but simply reacting to a lack of federal action to enforce existing immigration laws.


To read full dispatch article, click here.
Please VOTE  and comment on the dispatch's "hot issue:"
Do you think the mayor should have banned city-funded travel to Arizona? Click here to vote and comment.

Arizona immigration law akin to Fugitive Slave Act

Ohio has lived through a time when the criminal law was used to turn us against one another.

Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones wants us to go back to those dark days.

Under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, any citizen who gave a ride in Ohio to a black person escaping from slavery could be fined $1,000 and jailed for up to six months.

Fast-forward 160 years. Under Arizona SB 1070 as amended on April 29, any citizen who gives a ride in Arizona to an undocumented Latino person can be fined $1,000.

To read the full opinion piece and learn more about the author, click here.

Cleveland City Council Opposes AZ SB 2070 and Supports Immigration Reform

On May 17, 2010, Cleveland City Council passed Emergency Resolution 675, a resolution opposing Arizona's SB1070, supporting CIR, and affirming the contributions of all immigrants. Latino community members who were present have reported that the testimony advanced was overwhelmingly positive and empowering.

The resolution will likely not be available on the City's website until next week.

Generation Gap Over Immigration Debate Rooted in Culture

 Below taken from NYTimes article published May 17, 2010.  See entire article here

"In the wake of the new Arizona law allowing the police to detain people they suspect of entering the country illegally, young people are largely displaying vehement opposition"...

That very different makeup of the young and the old can lead to tensions. Demographers say it has the potential to produce public policy that alienates the young because older people are more likely to vote and less likely to be connected to the perspectives of youth — especially the perspectives of young people of different races and national origins...

Still, in interviews across the nation, young people emphasized the benefits of immigrants. Andrea Bonvecchio, 17, the daughter of a naturalized citizen from Venezuela, said going to a high school that is “like 98 percent Hispanic” meant she could find friends who enjoyed both Latin music and her favorite movie, “The Parent Trap.”  

Nicole Vespia, 18, of Selden, N.Y., said older people who were worried about immigrants stealing jobs were giving up on an American ideal: capitalist meritocracy. 

“If someone works better than I do, they deserve to get the job,” Ms. Vespia said. “I work in a stockroom, and my best workers are people who don’t really speak English. It’s cool to get to know them.”

Her parents’ generation, she added, just needs to adapt. “My stepdad says, ‘Why do I have to press 1 for English?’ I think that’s ridiculous,” Ms. Vespia said, referring to the common instruction on customer-service lines. “It’s not that big of a deal. Quit crying about it. Press the button.”

Film illustrates what anti-immigration sentiments can do to a community

Email Ohio Action Circle if you are interested in screening this film: ohioactioncircle@gmail.com




These two women helped beat the anti-immigrant legislation in Prince William County, VA.

Hate Group Lawyer Drafted Arizona’s Anti-Immigrant Law

Hate Group Lawyer Drafted Arizona’s Anti-Immigrant Law


Arizona’s controversial anti-immigrant law was written by a lawyer at the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which the Southern Poverty Law Center has listed as an anti-immigrant hate group since 2007. The law, a recipe for racial profiling, would make the failure to carry immigration documents a crime and give the police broad power to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. (See statement by SPLC.)

Kris Kobach, the author of the Arizona law and a lawyer at FAIR’s Immigration Reform Law Institute, has been the prime mover behind numerous ordinances that seek to punish those who aid and abet “illegal aliens,” including laws adopted in Farmer’s Branch, Texas, and Hazelton, Pa.

A New Poll Says Ohioans Back Immigration Reform

By Robert L. Smith, The Plain Dealer
May 12, 2010, 11:22PM

To the surprise of immigrant advocates, Ohioans back sweeping immigration reform and are ready to engage in a debate they know could get ugly.

A poll released this week found that nearly 70 percent of likely Ohio voters would support a plan that brings illegal immigrants out of the shadows and makes them tax-paying citizens.


Entire Article Here

So You Want to Learn about Immigration?

Start with the following reading list:

Castles, Stephen and Mark J. Miller. The Age of Migration (4th ed.): International Population Movements in the Modern World. 2008: ISBN 978-1-60623-069-5

Portes, Alejandro (Editor), Forward by Robert Merton. Economic Sociology of Immigration. 1995. Russell Sage Foundation: ISBN 0-87154-681-7

Swain, Carol (Editor). Debating Immigration. 2007. Cambridge University Press: ISBN 978-0-521-69866-5

Bales, Kevin. Disposable People. 2004. University of CA Press: ISBN 0520-24384-6

Levitt, Peggy. The Transnational Villagers. 2001. University of California Press: ISBN 0520-22811-1

Also see the following website for substantive, scholarly journal articles that have been made available to the public. These articles begin to unpack the complex questions and debates relevant to immigration in the United States. What's new about contemporary immigration patterns?  Are immigrants taking "American" jobs? How should we best enforce our borders? These articles address these questions and more!

http://borderbattles.ssrc.org/

Immigration Debate: David Leopold v Kris Kobach

Click the link below to listen to David Leopold of Cleveland (President Elect of American Immigration Lawyers Association) debate Kris Kobach, co-author of Arizona's anti-immigrant laws.


The Great AZ Debate!

How Many Undocumented Immigrants are in Ohio?

In terms of the share of the population that is taken up by undocumented immigrants, Ohio ranks among the lowest of all 50 states. While many Ohioans perceive that up to 30% of Ohio's population is undocumented—fortunately—the truth is much less distressing. In reality, less than 1.5% of all Ohio residents are undocumented.* 

So what are the actual numbers? 

Our closest estimates tell us that Ohio's undocumented immigrant population makes up 8/10 of 1% (or .8%) of Ohio's total population. In other words, approximately 99.2% of all people living in Ohio are either citizens or legally documented immigrants.

What about the workers? Are immigrants taking jobs that Ohioans would otherwise be working?

No. Since most immigrants that move to the United States do so for economic purposes, we should expect the number of workers to reflect the overall population estimates. And in fact they do:  as only  0.8% of all residents are undocumented, only 0.9% of all working people in Ohio are undocumented.  

Conversely stated: 99.1% of all people working in Ohio are either citizens or documented immigrant workers. 

Conclusions: Nearly everybody living in Ohio is here because they're supposed to be. Undocumented immigrants don't seem so scary once we see that there simply are not that many to be afraid of.

*Augmented March Current Population Surveys for 2006-2008, Pew Research Center.

do people in states like AZ agree that 3.5% is a small number?

Or does that percentage seem much larger to them in their day-to-day lives due to their higher rate of exposure to undocumented immigrants?

This is a fair question to ask because it is true that the percent of residents in states like AZ that are undocumented immigrants is a larger portion of the population than say the percent of residents who are undocumented across the landscape of the entire country.

An interesting point that needs to be articulated is that people in states like AZ (NM & CA for example) see a lot of "immigrant looking" people period. Overwhelmingly, people in those states see many more Hispanics/Latinos in particular, as compared to populations in other states (like Ohio). However, the vast majority of those Hispanics/Latinos are not undocumented; they are either citizens or documented immigrants. According to the PEW RESEARCH CENTER, there were approximately 2 million Hispanics living in Arizona as of 2008 data. 1/4 of those 2 million (about 500,000) people are believed to be undocumented residents. In other words, 75% or 3 out of every 4 Latino persons seen in Arizona are either citizens or documented residents.

So the question becomes - how do the (non-immigrant) people in those states ever actually know if the person in front, beside or behind them is documented or undocumented or even an immigrant at all?

They don't... there is no efficient way for a person to have such information. However, since nearly all (94%) of Arizona's undocumented immigrants are from Mexico, people assume that all Mexican looking people they see are undocumented. It's a confusion between perceived reality and actual reality. When people make these assumptions, they can only do so based on phenotypical (physical) characteristics or by listening to speech/linguistic patterns.

One other way is by doing spot paper checks, which is what the legislation passed says officials must do (after beginning an investigation on supposed other crimes, eg. jay walking, having a car parked in the front yard, etc). Insightfully, similar practices were enacted against freed black slaves in antebellum U.S. and against Jews stripped of their German or Austrian citizenship during the 1930s.

The Question: do people in states like AZ agree that 3.5% is a small number?

The Answer: this is the wrong question to ask since people in states like AZ (or OH, ME, PA, KY, etc) have no efficient way of knowing whether the people to whom they are exposed in day-to-day lives are even immigrants at all, regardless of their status. 

Immigration Fact

Roughly, there are somewhere between 11 and 12 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.

(Q): Is that a lot of people?

(A): Yes and No. 11 mil is a lot numerically. However, if we consider this as a percentage of the entire U.S. population (apx. 310 million) then we see that this represents apx 3.5% of the total population of the United States. I.E. 96.5% of people in the U.S. are either citizens or documented immigrants.

When seen in this light, terms like "invasion" or "crisis" suddenly become highly suspect within the context of U.S. immigration.

Just a thought.