Talk Shows Influence Immigration Debate

Talk Shows Influence Immigration Debate
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NY TIMES: June 23, 2007, Filed at 10:20 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Immigration-Talk-Radio.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Immigration has supplanted Iraq as the leading issue on television and radio talk shows, complicating the prospects of a Senate bill desperately wanted by President Bush.

Conservative talk radio's impact on the immigration debate reached new heights last week, with one host effectively writing an amendment for when the Senate returns to the imperiled bill this week.

National talk show hosts have spent months denouncing the bill as providing amnesty for illegal immigrants. Some top Republicans who support the legislation have defied the broadcast pundits. Others GOP lawmakers have tried to placate them, even to the point of accepting their ideas for amendments.

Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., the key conservative negotiator behind the compromise bill, told reporters Friday that California-based radio host Hugh Hewitt ''had several ideas'' that ''we are trying to include'' in amendments to be offered in an upcoming series of crucial votes.

Hewitt, a conservative who has criticized many aspects of the bill, had Kyl as a guest on Thursday and asked: ''Does the bill provide for any separate treatment of aliens, illegal aliens from countries of special concern?''

Kyl replied: ''It's going to, as a result of your lobbying efforts to me.''

People seeking entry the U.S. from countries that the U.S. has designated as state sponsors of terrorism will get a higher level of scrutiny, Kyl said Friday.

Other Bush allies have tried more confrontational approaches to the talk hosts, sometimes with bruising results.

Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., told reporters last week, ''Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem.'' Some hosts, he added, do not know what is in the lengthy bill.

The comments incensed conservative talk show hosts who generally had supported Lott over the years.

Lott is ''upset that the American people got right into the middle of the conversation over the problem with illegal aliens and it didn't turn out all that well for the pro-amnesty forces,'' Atlanta-based talk show host Neal Boortz wrote on his Web site.

''If Trent Lott and his other buddies up on the Hill aren't listening to 'talk,' then what are they listening to? The answer is either their wallet or their legacy.''

Radio host Rush Limbaugh asked his audience: ''What are we going to do about Mississippi Senator Trent Lott?''

Lott's treatment contrasted sharply with that given to Kyl. In a column posted on his Web site, Hewitt called Kyl ''perhaps the single most effective and principled conservative in the United States Senate.''

The immigration bill would tighten borders and workplace enforcement, create a guest worker program and provide ways to legal status for many of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.

The legislation faces showdown votes this coming week that lawmakers on all sides agree will be close.

If the measure fails, talk radio and TV -- where CNN's Lou Dobbs has been especially critical -- will deserve substantial credit, academics and politicians say.

''Talk radio and talk TV are most effective when there's an immediate action pending,'' said Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the University of Pennsylvania, who is an authority on media and politics. ''It's a classic instance of mobilization with all the pieces in place and it's sure to have an effect.''

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., a leading opponent of the bill, said in an interview that ''talk radio has had a significant impact on this issue.''

A frequent guest of Dobbs, Hewitt and other conservative hosts discussing immigration, Sessions said, ''I think people have learned more from talk radio than from reading the newspapers.''

As for Lott, Sessions said: ''I can't imagine what Trent was thinking. Maybe his mouth was moving and his brain was in neutral.''

Michael Harrison, editor of the talk show industry magazine Talkers, said immigration has replaced the Iraq war as the most discussed topic and has led many conservative hosts to show more loyalty to the anti-amnesty issue than to the Republican Party.

''I think talk radio should be credited with possibly saving the American people from George Bush's immigration bill,'' Harrison said, adding that he and his magazine are nonpartisan.

Some Republicans who recently announced their opposition to the bill said constituent concerns were their main reason. But they acknowledged the intensity of talk radio hostility in their states.

''Neal Boortz, he popped us pretty good,'' said Lindsay Mabry, a spokeswoman for Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., who shifted from qualified support to opposition to the bill in recent days. She said Chambliss consulted with Boortz on immigration even though the senator was not an on-air guest during the debate.

^------

On the Net:

Information on the bill, S. 1348, can be found at http://thomas.loc.gov/

Immigrations update-Senate debates again June 26th

IMMGRATION UPDATE: On Tuesday June 26th the Senate will vote to invoke cloture on a Motion to Proceed to consider S. 1639 the Immigration Reform Bill. If 60 senators vote to invoke cloture, the Senate will then begin debate on the bill.



If we move to the debate of the immigration reform bill, we will consider about 24 amendments, with up to 12 amendments from Democratic Senators and 12 amendments from Republican Senators. Below is a tentative list of the 24 amendments. Some of the language in the amendments may alter.



I will send updates as I receive more information. I hope you all have a great weekend and I will be in touch soon.



Democratic Amendments

* Dodd-Menendez S.A. 1199: would increase the annual cap on green cards for parents and extend the parent visitor visa.
* Webb S.A. 1313: Community ties for Z visas
* Baucus-Tester S.A. 1236: would strike all reference to REAL ID.
* Sanders-Grassley S.A. 1332: prohibits companies that have announced mass lay-offs from receiving any new visas, unless these companies could prove that overall employment at their companies would not be reduced by these lay-offs.
* Byrd-Gregg-Cochran S.A. 1344: adds a $500 fee to obtain immigration benefits under Title VI and sets aside the revenues collected in order to fund border and interior enforcement.
* Menendez-Obama-Feingold S.A. 1317: increases family points in merit system
* Brown S.A. 1340: requires that before employers can be approved to employ Y-1 workers, they must have listed the specific job opportunity with the state employment service agency.
* McCaskill S.A. 1468: increases ban on federal contracts, grants or cooperative agreements to employers who are repeat violators of hiring immigrants who are not authorized to work
* Levin-Brownback S.A.1486: gives access to Iraqis to apply for refugee status under existing U.S. law.
* Leahy S.A. 1386: protect scholars who have been persecuted in their home countries on account of their beliefs, scholarship, or identity.
* Schumer: provides for tamper-proof biometric social security cards
* Boxer S.A. 1198: reduces Y visa cap by number of Y workers who overstay



Republican Amendments

* Alexander S.A. 1161: requires DHS and the Department of State to notify a foreign embassy when one of their nationals has become a U.S. citizen
* Bond S.A. 1255: prohibits green cards for Z holders
* Coleman S.A. 1473: outlaws state and local policies that prevent public officials — including police and health and safety workers (except for emergency medical assistance)—from inquiring about the immigration status of those they serve if there is “probable cause” to believe the individual being questioned is undocumented.
* Domenici S.A. 1335/1258: increases Federal judgeships
* Ensign S.A. 1490: redetermines work history for current beneficiaries of social security depending on their citizenship status
* Graham S.A. 1465: enforcement. Still being drafted.
* Grassley-Baucus-Obama S.A. 1441: strikes and replaces Title III on employer enforcement
* Hutchinson S.A. 1440: changes the “touchback” requirement from the time of applying for adjustment of status, as it currently stands in the Senate proposed bill, to the time of applying for the Z visa. Increases the number of individuals required to touchback
* Thune S.A. 1174: prevents undocumented immigrants in the U.S. from getting any kind of legal status until all triggers have been met.
* Chambliss S.A. 1318: Totalization agreements
* Isakson S.A. 1282: Preemption/Home Depot
* Graham: Criminal penalties/mandatory minimums for overstays

Who Killed the Immigration Bill, and Who Wants it to Come Back?

By David Bacon
Oakland, CA 6/9/07

Within hours of the Senate vote to kill its comprehensive immigration
reform bill, the lobbyist for software giant Oracle Corp. had already
declared that Silicon Valley's proposal for more guest workers was
still alive. "We don't think it's dead," Robert Hoffman told the San
Francisco Chronicle. Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer threatened to
move more high tech jobs out of the country if electronics
corporations didn't get more contract migrant labor. Other corporate
spokespeople also announced they were looking for ways to revive the
Senate bill in which they'd invested so much political capital.

Immigrant communities and union activists had been in the streets for
months, trying to stop the same bill. In San Francisco alone, seven
were arrested in the office of Senator Diane Feinstein, during the
recess that preceded the June 7 vote. Dozens more debated the
senator in front of her home the morning after the arrests. Around
the country, similar demonstrations did what they could to kill the
bill. The National Day Labor Organizing Network called it a "cynical
and mean-spirited effort of those Senators that seek to poison the
immigration reform debate yet again," and warned, "we are fearful
that an insufficient Senate bill cannot be adequately repaired in the
House of Representatives or in a conference session."

It was no surprise that many greeted the (perhaps temporary) death of
comprehensive immigration reform as a necessary move to protect
immigrants themselves. These groups saw in the bill a threat of more
contract labor programs, more enforcement and raids, greater
militarization of the border and erosion of basic due process rights.
Filipinos for Affirmative Action, voicing a criticism common in Asian
American and Latino communities, said the bill "moved away from
permanent, family-based immigration toward a temporary employment
system."

As debate in the Senate proceeded, even the bill's promise of
legalization for the nation's 12 million undocumented residents
proved so restrictive that only a small percentage eventually would
have qualified. Migrants without status would have had to place
their families in jeopardy just to apply.

After the vote in the Senate defeating cloture, killing the bill at
least for the moment, John Sweeney, head of the AFL-CIO, declared it
"plagued by anti-family, anti-worker provisions," and called it "
doomed at the onset. The bill abandoned long-standing U.S. policy
favoring the reunification of families and failed to protect workers'
most basic rights."

Despite the fact that the bill was brokered by the Bush
administration, many of its proponents were not Republicans, but
liberal Democrats, most prominently Senator Edward Kennedy.
Supporting it was a network of lobbyists referred to in the press as
"immigration advocates," large employers, and conservative think
tanks. For two years this alliance advocated a strategy of trading
legalization of undocumented immigrants for increased immigration
enforcement and guest worker programs. The National Immigration
Forum and the DC umbrella group it initiated, the Coalition for
Comprehensive Immigration Reform, were key players in this strategy.
Behind them was the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, which
brought together over 40 of the largest corporate trade and
manufacturing associations in the country, under the aegis of the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce. EWIC head John Gay, also head of the
National Restaurant Association, chairs the NIF board.

These Washington groups supported all the compromise bills embodying
the legalization/enforcement/guest worker tradeoff, beginning with
the original Kennedy/McCain bill in 2005. The same argument was used
to justify them all: "It's not possible to get legalization without
including more enforcement and guest worker programs." While the
groups occasionally disagreed with individual provisions of the
proposals that followed, they not only agreed with the basic
structure and architecture of these bills, but became their ardent
advocates in meetings around the country.

As the proposals moved through negotiations with the administration
and Congressional Republicans, legalization schemes became more
restrictive, enforcement provisions more ferocious, and contract
labor schemes more extensive. Yet the recently defeated Senate
compromise was greeted as a "good starting point." Even at the end,
the DC groups called on immigrant communities to urge defeat of "bad"
amendments to it, while continuing to urge Senators to support the
comprehensive immigration reform, or tradeoff, framework.

While Congress considered this series of proposals, the Bush
administration embarked on a series of highly publicized immigration
raids and workplace firings, to put pressure on immigrant communities
and unions to accept its reform program. The bills themselves called
for giving the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, part of
the Department of Homeland Security, more enforcement authority to
conduct these raids. The administration, for instance, proposed that
employers be required to fire any worker whose Social Security number
didn't match the agency's database. Although Bush never actually
issued this regulation, and the bills obviously hadn't passed, ICE
and employers began using it as the basis for enforcement actions.

Workers at the Woodfin Suites in Emeryville, California, were fired
after they tried to enforce the city's living wage ordinance. At the
Smithfield pork plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, hundreds were
fired, and many then deported, during the hardest-fought union
organizing drive in years. Similar raids and firings swept the
country, as the administration set ICE loose on immigrant
communities, implementing the very language in the comprehensive
reform bills. Beltway lobbying groups often expressed alarm over the
raids, but didn't withdraw their support for bills that would have
made such raids more widespread.

After coordinated raids at Swift meatpacking plants in November, in
which over a thousand workers were picked up for deportation,
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told reporters the
enforcement actions would show Congress the need for "stronger border
security, effective interior enforcement and a temporary-worker
program.'' Bush wants, he said, "a program that would allow
businesses that need foreign workers, because they can't otherwise
satisfy their labor needs, to be able to get those workers in a
regulated program." Within weeks of Chertoff's statement, the
Southern Poverty Law Center issued a report, "Close to Slavery,"
which provided exhaustive documentation that current guest worker
programs, like those the administration proposed, systematically
violated workers' rights. Abuse in H-2 programs was so extensive,
and government enforcement of existing labor protections so
completely absent, that SPLC called them "fundamentally flawed."

The SPLC and other exposes gave guest worker programs such a bad
reputation that DC-based groups took pains to disassociate themselves
from the term. The bills they supported would "break the mold," they
claimed, by creating contract labor programs that wouldn't exploit
workers. They invented new terms: "essential worker" or "new
worker" plans. Behind the semantic fog, however, the bills preserved
the two crucial characteristics of all employment-based guest worker
schemes: new migrants could only come if recruited by an employer or
labor contractor, and people had to remain employed to stay.
Migrants losing a job and unable to find another within a short time
would be deported.

To justify contract labor programs, the DC coalition asserted
constantly that U.S. corporations face dire labor shortages. The
Bureau of Labor Statistics, however, estimates the May, 2007
unemployment rate at 4.5%, and says over 7 million workers were
unemployed in 2006. Most unions believe these are serious
undercounts. Unemployment in African American and Chicano
communities is much higher, over double digits even during economic
booms.

Yet instead of raising wage and benefits to attract workers, or
paying more taxes to improve education and training in working class
communities, employers held that only huge guest worker programs
could meet their labor needs. In an joint oped piece for
Politico.com, Thomas Donahue, CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,
and Andy Stern, President of the Service Employees International
Union (one of two unions that supported the tradeoff bills) stated
that "we need legislation that will create a carefully monitored
essential worker program," and called it "a system that provides U.S.
businesses with the workers it needs."

Meanwhile, legalization proposals in the same tradeoff bills were
presented as the payoff for immigrant communities. Yet many of the
legalization schemes threatened to disqualify immigrants guilty of
document fraud. ICE now says this includes anyone who's given a
false SS number to get a job, something almost all undocumented
workers have done. Other proposals would have imposed employment
requirements, imposed high fines difficult for most working families
to pay, and required people to take an undetermined amount of time
off work to return to their home countries to apply for readmittance,
with no guarantee they could pass a host of bureaucratic checks.
Most proposals would have had people wait at least a decade before
they could get a green card for permanent legal residence (not
citizenship). Legalization programs wouldn't even take effect until
the U.S. gained "operational control" of the border, leaving the door
open for years of increased enforcement with no change at all in the
status of the undocumented.

Many organizations outside DC did not support this approach to
immigration reform. Instead they called for a positive agenda
focusing on human and workplace rights, legal status and equality.
They proposed reforms that didn't criminalize migration, work or the
border itself, and that instead protected families and communities.
The National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights urged that "we
work for a different "starting point" for immigration reform that
protects the rights of all immigrant families, workers and
communities."

The beltway lobbying strategy started by asking what employers and a
Republican administration would be willing to accept. Groups like
NDLON, however, proposed building a popular movement to change the
political terrain in Washington, like the civil rights movement of
the 1960s. Responding to lobbyists who called the Senate bill the
only chance to reform immigration law for years, NDLON said "We know
the struggle for justice and immigration reform requires a long view
of history, and we will not be pressured into accepting an
insufficient compromise simply for sake of political expediency. We
owe it to this and future generations to pass a bill that we can all
be proud of."

"The best way to guarantee the rights and wages of all workers in
this country," added the AFL-CIO's John Sweeney, "is to give every
immigrant the opportunity to become a citizen, with all the rights
and duties that entails. At the same time, Congress must revise our
immigration system so that in the face of labor shortages, future
foreign workers may enter this country not as dispensable units of
production but as permanent residents with the same rights and
protections as all other U.S. workers."

Basic differences have divided the immigrant rights and labor
movements, not just over tactics and strategy, but also over goals.
Should immigrant rights groups and unions support increased
enforcement? Should they allow employers to recruit hundreds of
thousands of workers a year, on visas which condition their right to
stay in the US on continued employment? Should temporary or contract
labor programs be the condition under which the undocumented are
allowed to stay?

This division, between Washington-based organizations, and grassroots
coalitions outside the beltway, has existed for over a decade. In
1996 many community-based coalitions around the country withdrew from
the National Immigration Forum when it insisted it was not possible
to save the rights of undocumented immigrants in the Clinton-backed
immigration bill. The DC-based strategy tacitly called for saving
the rights of legal immigrants by telling Congress that while the
country needed to do something about illegal immigration, legal
residents shouldn't be punished in the same bill. The strategy
failed, and according to Filipinos for Affirmative Action, "the
Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act
undermined the basic rights of all immigrants, denied their right to
due process, and expanded the reasons for detention and deportation."
The starting point for immigration reform should be instead an
agreement that "all immigrants have a right to be treated equally,
with full legal, employment, human and civil rights."

Today's disagreements are similar. They are in part over strategy
and tactics, but also raise a deeper issue: Should U.S. immigration
policy become a labor supply system for corporations, or should it
support families and communities? In the mainstream press, this
question gets little coverage because the framework proposed in
Congress so heavily sets the media agenda. Anger over exclusion from
the debate provoked the Mexican American Political Association to
declare that "We are totally opposed to the off-handed declarations
made by compromising individual Latino television commentators or
organizations that advocate - NOTHING IS WORSE [than failure to pass
an immigration bill]. In fact, NOTHING WILL BE WORSE [than the
proposed Senate legislation] in terms of the millions of individuals
and families who will be criminalized in perpetuity."

Moving from an effort to defeat anti-immigrant legislation to an
agenda that can win more progressive reforms requires an open debate
over those disagreements. As Silicon Valley and other employer
groups move to bring the Senate bill back, that discussion is more
urgent than ever.

Now is the time

Justice for Immigrants ACTION ALERT

Contact your Senators

Return to Immigration Reform

Background:

On Thursday, June 7, the U.S. Senate failed to invoke cloture (close off debate) on S. 1348, the Senate compromise immigration reform bill, 45-50 (with 60 votes needed to achieve cloture). The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) asked Senators to vote NO on cloture. The Committee on Migration of the USCCB decided to take this position because on the night previous, Senators adopted an amendment to weaken the legalization program by removing confidentiality provisions and defeated an amendment which improved family reunification in the bill.

The removal of the confidentiality protection in the Z-visa legalization program means that applicants for the program are at risk of deportation if their application is denied, for whatever reason. The confidentiality protection ensures that an applicant to the program cannot be deported because of information given in their application regarding their immigration status. The Committee on Migration views this protection as essential to a workable program, because otherwise eligible participants will not come forward.

Another amendment, offered by Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), would have moved the backlog reduction date on family reunification up to January 1. 2007. This amendment was blocked by Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) on a budget point of order and Senator Kyl offered another amendment which, in the view of the USCCB, harms certain families.

For those Senators who opposed cloture, consistent with the USCCB position, it is important to note that USCCB still supports the bill moving forward, provided that the confidentiality provisions and family reunification areas are improved.

It is our view that the bill will come back to the Senate floor before July 4th and that we will have the opportunity to fix these two amendments.

Action:

Please contact your Senators today and even everyday now with the following message:

You may

call your Senators local or national office.

call the general number and ask for your senators office 202-224-3121.

send a message through our website at: www.justiceforimmigrants.org/action.html

Thank you,

The Justice for Immigrants Campaign

Immigrants are not lawbreakers

Thanks: Elvira Arellano

Date: Jun 14, 2007 10:54 PM


STATEMENT OF ELVIRA ARELLANO TO LOU DOBBS

Dear Mr. Dobbs,

You say we are lawbreakers, but I say we know what it means to live under the yoke of a broken law.

You say you want to live in a nation of laws but how much more do we who have suffered under this broken immigration law long to live in a place truly governed by laws. In fact it is only our obedience to God’s law, which is never broken, which sustains us and our families.

The President says we must pay fines and wait in line while those who have employed us for their profit and those who have lived off of our taxes and benefited from our labor owe nothing – and we are willing to accept this because we long for a nation that lives up to its promise, a nation where everyone is equal under the law.

The “Grand Compromise” is not amnesty for us but it is amnesty for those who have benefited from our labor and our taxes and our purchasing power. I notice for instance that you have not refused advertising from Menards and Comcast although millions of dollars from undocumented families are accepted in their stores.

Out of the darkness of this broken law and this broken system, we join with the great majority of people that want to live in the light of a nation restored to its promise

And yet you would keep us in the shadows and the whole nation in darkness. You spread hate and fear. You would close your doors to your neighbors, to those who pick and prepare and serve your food and replace the brotherhood of democracy with the poison of selfishness and racism.

Today we appeal to the nation to reject the poison of fear mongering and the deceitfulness of hate and division. We are in the labor pains of giving birth to something new and whole. Don’t let the enemies of love and of families abort this delivery. I am not a criminal. I am not a terrorist. I am a mother of a U.S. citizen child. He is not an anchor. He is a child of God and a U.S. citizen.

Let us fix the broken law and be again a nation of laws.

Let us turn our ears away from the darkness of division and walk in the light of reconciliation while our moment is here.

Sincerely,

Elvira Arellano

I'm just a bill

why immigration legislation has to change

Agatha Joseph: A mother's battle to get her daughter out of dete

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A mother's plight revives the sanctuary movement

This is a really great article from the LA Times about the new sanctuary movement. Check it out.

Refusing to leave her U.S.-born son, an illegal immigrant from Mexico takes refuge in a Chicago church and leads a new crusade.
By Louis Sahagun, Times Staff Writer
June 2, 2007

Sanctuary, in antiquity the practice of providing refuge in a sacred place, has been revived in a rather dramatic fashion by an undocumented Mexican cleaning woman trying to evade deportation by holing up in a Chicago church.

Elvira Arellano, 32, said she invoked the ancient right of sanctuary in a desperate effort to avoid being separated from her 7-year-old son, Saul, an American citizen.

That was nine months and 18 days ago. Since then, her act of civil disobedience has helped spark a new sanctuary movement and transformed her into a leader in the effort to create a path to citizenship for the nation's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants.

Exactly how Arellano's case will end remains to be seen. In the meantime, her maneuver has focused renewed attention on a concept used through the ages to hold back the force of government.

In a telephone interview, Arellano said in Spanish, "I never planned for this.

"When the order for deportation came down, I was desperate," she said, "I remembered how Joseph and Mary were given sanctuary. I asked my church for sanctuary, and they agreed."

Arellano became a focus of international attention when, from the safe haven of the little church, she began dispatching high-profile rebukes of immigration authorities.

One of her first letters posted on the Internet said, "If Homeland Security chooses to send its agents on the Holy Ground to arrest me, then I will know that God wants me to be an example of the hatred and hypocrisy of the current policy of the government."

Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities issued a brief comment: "ICE has the authority to arrest illegal aliens in all locales and prioritizes its enforcement efforts based on investigative leads and intelligence."

In the distant past, the practice of religious sanctuary was common throughout the world.

In antiquity, cities and surrounding territories were dotted with religious sanctuaries surrounded by walls or border stones separating the abode of the divine from the world of human struggle, the sacred from the profane, the holy space within from the reach of local laws.

Fugitives of every stripe found refuge in certain sacred shrines of the Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans. Ancient Hebrews had "cities of refuge" described in the Bible's books of Numbers and Deuteronomy.

Numbers 35:9 through 11 of the King James Bible reads, in part: "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be come over Jordan into the land of Canaan, then ye shall appoint you cities to be cities of refuge for you."

These cities essentially were a way to prevent vigilante action against someone who had accidentally killed another person. But the refuge wasn't indefinite. The refugee was allowed to stay until he could face proper judgment by the community.

In the 4th century, Christian churches in Europe were considered sanctuaries. The practice continued through the Middle Ages as a check on vengeance during a time of social tumult.

"Around the 10th century, Catholic bishops instituted 'The Truce of God' as part of an effort to put a damper on the violence that was tearing society apart," said Daniel McGuire, professor of theology at Marquette University in Milwaukee. "The idea was that you could go into a church and be safe from the killing going on all over the place."

Felons who sought sanctuary in 13th century England could stay up to 40 days or, before that deadline, agree to leave the kingdom. If they stayed beyond 40 days, they risked being forced out of sanctuary by starvation.

In the 15th century, several parliamentary petitions sought to restrict the right of sanctuary in England. In the next century, King Henry VIII reduced the number of sanctuaries by about half.

Starting around 1750, various countries began abolishing sanctuary as civil judicial systems arose to try those accused of crimes. It took about 100 years for sanctuary to disappear.

Today, the right of sanctuary has no legal standing in the United States. Nonetheless, it was invoked in the early 1980s to prevent thousands of Central American refugees from being deported. Supporters believed federal officers were less likely to barge into a church and drag out undocumented people than to enter a home or a workplace.
READ MORE HERE

Pico Union: CENTRAL AMERICA TOWN

From the Los Angeles Times
A place to call their own
Many who fled war at home for refuge in L.A. seek designation of the MacArthur Park area as 'Central America Town.'
By Teresa Watanabe
Times Staff Writer

May 7, 2007

The first place Francisco Rivera headed to after fleeing war in his native El Salvador in 1980 was the MacArthur Park area of Los Angeles. There, churches and community volunteers had created a haven of shelter, support and sustenance for war refugees like himself, then a 28-year-old poet and writer whose literary group had been targeted by right-wing death squads.

Within a year, Rivera helped found El Rescate, or the Rescue, a community organization on Union Avenue and 8th Street that aids Central American refugees.

Another nonprofit, Clinica Msgr. Oscar A. Romero, named after the Roman Catholic archbishop assassinated by Salvadoran death squads, was established a few blocks away to provide free medical care. Other organizations offering legal aid, low-cost housing and other services have sprung up to serve the hundreds of thousands of Central Americans who have made Los Angeles their refuge.

Today, the area bustles with merchants hawking Central American music CDs, restaurants serving Salvadoran pupusas and bakeries offering Guatemalan pastries. A monument in MacArthur Park depicts the harrowing journeys of the war refugees; a mural nearby salutes the Central American diaspora with colors of blue and white, which are shared by the national flags of El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras.

Rivera and others are seeking formal recognition of the area's crucial role in giving new life to the war-weary refugees. They plan to submit a petition Tuesday asking the city to designate as "Historical Central America Town" an area bounded by the 110 Freeway, 3rd Street, Washington Boulevard and Hoover Street.

"This has been our dream for years," Rivera said. "We want to change our invisible community into a positive, visible one."

The petition, with 500 signatures of area residents and business owners, marks the first step in a recently adopted city process for naming districts. It was established last year to bring greater structure to addressing the profusion of requests for both ethnic monikers, such as Little Armenia, Little Ethiopia and Historic Filipinotown, and neighborhood names, such as Hancock Park and Larchmont.

The old policy rested primarily on the approval of the City Council member representing the area. The new one requires petition signatures, public hearings and review by transportation, planning and redevelopment officials; it also sets up a formal complaint process, said Avak Keotahian of the city's legislative analyst's office.

Rivera and others said that securing the Central American designation would help protect the area's distinct identity amid rapid gentrification and the arrival of residents and businesses with no particular connection to their heritage.

A few years ago, they said, a shopping center opened, featuring a Starbucks, Food 4 Less and Home Depot. It was a development they welcomed but feared could contribute to a fading of their community's history in the area, they said.

Celso Hernandez, an El Salvador native, opened Playa Las Tunas Restaurant in a strip mall on 11th and Alvarado nine years ago when the shopping center was nearly deserted because drug-dealing gang members in the area scared off vendors.

As better policing and gentrification have improved the neighborhood, Hernandez said, he has been approached by several non-Central Americans to buy him out. He has turned them all down, determined to keep his colorfully decorated restaurant a center for Salvadoran food and entertainment.

"The community has known me for years, and I want to stay here for them," he said.

Not everyone supports the Central America Town moniker. Restaurant owner Norm Langer said he was "100% opposed," noting that the area was largely Jewish when his grandfather opened his family's popular deli restaurant, Langer's, on 7th and Alvarado six decades ago. He said the area should remain known as the namesake of Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

"It would offend me to see signs calling this area Central America Town because it's not," he said. "It's Los Angeles. It's Westlake-MacArthur Park."

Rivera and others said the designation would not change any neighborhood names. It would, they say, simply give a historical nod to their community with signs on area streets; the advocates also seek to put markers on the 110 and 101 freeways.

During a recent tour of the area, representatives from El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala — including Tomas Zuñiga, a member of Central America's black ethnic group known as the Garinagu — shared their dreams and frustrations.

In the last 25 years, they say, the community has burgeoned to more than 600,000 Salvadorans, 100,000 Nicaraguans and about 30,000 Guatemalans and Hondurans each. Yet, they say, it is still too often associated with such violent gangs as the MS-13 and perennially overshadowed by the city's far larger Mexican American population.

They say that not one Central American has yet been appointed to any city boards or commissions, let alone elected to political office, in Los Angeles. And they said that they do not receive a fair share of the city's budget resources relative to the tax revenue they produce.

"Central Americans are the least represented community in California," said Rafael Nadal, chairman of the National Central American Roundtable, an L.A.-based group that promotes the community's civil rights and economic development.

City Councilman Ed Reyes, whose district includes the area in question, said he has worked hard to represent Central Americans. In the last six years, he said, the district has received three new libraries, two police stations, three schools and thousands of housing units.

Reyes said that it would take time for the relatively new Central American population to begin electing representatives of its own ethnic heritage but that he would "stand on my record" of producing benefits and an open-door policy for its people.

Reyes said he would withhold judgment on the petition pending the outcome of public hearings and completion of the required city process. But he said he generally supports ethnic district monikers as a way to celebrate the region's rich cultural history.

"The designations are markers of history, and there's no reason you can't have them," Reyes said. "It behooves us to acknowledge and revere all of the diversity in our great international city."

teresa.watanabe@latimes.com

Pico Union: THE HISTORIC "CENTRAL AMERICA TOWN"

PRESS CONF: Renaming Pico Union Central America Town Thurs
Body: National Central American Roundtable, Inc.
1501 W. 8th Street, Suite 101, Los Angeles, CA 90017 Telephone (213) 927-0992 Facsimile (213) 387-9189

News Advisory
A NEW TOWN IN TOWN: THE HISTORIC "CENTRAL AMERICA TOWN"


As of yesterday, the City of Los Angeles through the Office of the City Clerk has Received and accepted the petition and application of residents of the communities of Westlake/Pico-Union to have the designation of Historical Central America Town after receiving near 800 hundred signatures of residents and business owners of the area with other required documentes related to this petition, as it was reported on May 7 by the Los Angeles Times in a feature article in the California Section title: A place to call their own.

Among the petitioners there are Korean American merchants, Thai merchants, Afro-American merchants, Nicaraguan Business Owners, Salvadorans Business Owner, Guatemalan Business Owners. Mexican immigrants as Well as Mexican-Americans are supporting the designation. The Westlake Pico Union
Area has the largest concentration of Central Americans living outside their home countries.

As of tomorrow, Thursday, May 24, the City of Los Angeles will create a Council File and send the application and petition to the Departments of Plannning, Transportation, Community Redevelopment Agency and will go into communite wide consultation with stakeholders in the Designated area, including the neigh borhood councils.

Amid the debate of the immigration reform, amid the May 1 incidents at MacArthur Park, this community has decided to take a new approach about community rebuilding, from a maligned and criminal stigma, it would be renewed into one of the best latino areas for urban renewal, in a concept of gentrification with latino and Central American flavor. Welcome to Westlake Pico Union, the Historical Central America Town.

WHAT: PRESS CONFERENCE

WHEN: THURSDAY, MAY 24, 20007

TIME: 10 A.M.

WHERE: MacArthur Park, south corner of Park View and Wilshire Blvd.

WHO: Francisco Rivera, National Central American Roundtable
Julio Cardoza, President, Casa Nicaragua
Cecilia Rodriguez, President, Honduran Alliance of L.A.
Oswaldo Cabrera, President, Latin American Coalition
Teresa Tejada, Executive Director, Association of Salvadorans in L.A.
Representative from Councilmember Ed P. Reyes
Representative from State Senator Gil Cedillo
Representative from Congresswoman Lucille Royball Allard
Representative from Speaker Fabian Nuñez
Representative from Supervisor Gloria Molina
Representative from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa

Did you know even Permanent Residents are getting deported?

The deportations of undocumented or even permanent resident parents of citizen children is really shocking and never would have taken place before the "reforms" of 1996. Previously, this would have qualified as "hardship". Now the criteria is extreme hardship and the bar is so high that it can rarely be met. Furthermore, most judicial review has been taken away so in most cases, the judge in immigration court has little recourse but to deport people.

The sanctuary movement families are "poster families", undocumented parents of citizen children who are integrated into their communities and have exemplary records. The attorneys working with the movement are the best in the country and are hoping to create precendents that will help others.The Bill of Rights guarantees due process, etc. to persons, not citizens or legal residents. I am shocked at how many rights have been taken away and how little due process there is at the moment.

This cannot continue to exist! The rights of all of us are affected by the denial of rights to immigrants.
NC

Churches offer sanctuary to immigrants

L.A. cathedral among those making statement about U.S. immigration policy.
By Peter Prengaman, Associated Press
Long Beach Press Telegram
Article Launched:05/09/2007 09:33:45 PM PDT
LOS ANGELES - Churches gave sanctuary Wednesday to two men from Mexico and Guatemala to protect them from deportation and launch a nationwide effort to pressure lawmakers to create a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

More than 30 priests, pastors, imams and rabbis blessed the men during a raucous ceremony attended by 300 people at Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Church in downtown Los Angeles.

"We are here to raise our voices for those who can't raise their own," said Pastor Cesar Arroyo of San Pablo's Lutheran Church in North Hollywood, which will house the man from Guatemala.

Each of the immigrants had two children in tow as they sat in front of the altar.

The Guatemalan, a gardener who only gave his first name as Juan, said he worried about what might happen to his young daughters if he was deported. Both girls are U.S. citizens because they were born in this country.

"I want to ask the politicians to see the suffering of the immigrant families," he said.

The 44-year-old Mexican, who only gave his first name as Jose, will live at the downtown church. He sat next to his two teenage sons who dressed in the latest American fashion and spoke more English than Spanish. They are also U.S. citizens.

Jose said he had been in the country 17 years, working as a cook at Los Angeles International Airport until he was injured and his immigration status was revealed.

After the ceremony, he went to his room in the church, which has a single bed, sink and toaster oven.

"I'm going to stay here until this is resolved," he said, referring to his deportation order.

Organizers don't believe immigration agents will make arrests inside the churches.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has not tried to arrest Elvira Arellano, an illegal immigrant who has taken shelter at a Methodist church in Chicago since August.

ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice declined to say if agents would attempt to arrest others who take sanctuary in churches, but said agents have "the authority to arrest those who are in violation of our immigration laws anywhere in the United States."

Participating faith groups in San Diego, Seattle, Chicago and New York won't initially house illegal immigrants. Instead, leaders will provide legal council, accompany people to court hearings and prepare plans to house them in churches if authorities try to deport them.

Organizers said churches in more than 50 cities nationwide were planning to join the sanctuary effort.

Anti-illegal immigration groups called it misguided.

The faith groups "don't seem to realize that they are being charitable with someone else's resources, and that's not charity," said Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors limits on immigration.

The "New Sanctuary Movement" is loosely based on the sanctuary movement in the 1980s, when churches harbored Central American refugees fleeing wars in their home countries. Several activists in a handful of states were arrested, often while transporting illegal immigrants from one place to another.

MORE ARTICLES
New Coalition of Christians Seek Changes at Borders
Congregation to Give Haven to Immigrants
href="http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-sanctuary9may09,1,5723653.story">Giving Shelter from the Storm of Immigration

Women in Guatemala

The party of indigenous activist Rigoberta Menchu in Guatemala has begun supporting a great number of female candidates for top government positions.

Guatemala, May 13 (Prensa Latina) The coalition Winaq-Encuentro por Guatemala (EG), whose presidential candidate is Peace Nobel Prizewinner Rigoberta Menchu, will also nominate another 40 women for deputies and mayors, party sources said this weekend.

The list of deputies will be headed by EG Secretary General Nineth Montenegro and Winaq leader and ex Culture Minister Otilia Lux de Coti.

In the departments, other women will run for the posts of mayor, including Gladis Sandoval, for Jalapa; Judith de Paz, for Chiquimula, and Karina Flores, for Escuintla.

Rigoberta Menchu's presidential candidacy has raised hopes in Guatemala, where women and indigenous people have been marginalized from the decision-making process.

Menchu's ticket partner is Luis Fernando Montenegro, a businessman who was the president of the Committee of Commercial, Industrial and Financial Associations and the National Coffee Association.

Encuentro por Guatemala and Winaq will launch their campaign in the northern department of Alta Verapaz on Sunday.

La noche que supe que mi padre había muerto

Era el año 1975. Había terminado el segundo año de secundaria en la Escuela “Manuel Bisbé”, de Miramar, en La Habana. Estábamos de fiesta porque todo mi grupo había pasado de grado y con buenas notas. Mi grupo era un poco “discriminado”: nosotros éramos “los blanquitos cochinos”, es decir, los “hippys”, a los que les gustaba la música en inglés, por entonces prohibida en las radios cubanas.

Nos habíamos reunido en casa de Smyrna, mi fiel y eterna amiga venezolana. Bailábamos, tomábamos las primeras cervezas y los primeros tragos de ron, más bien, de “Coronilla”, que era el aguardiente que por entonces se vendía en Cuba, así como un vino Vermut y un coñac búlgaro.

Estábamos los de siempre: Moré, el novio de Smyrna, así como sus hermanas Sneyma y Yurinzska. Luisa, la mamá de Smyrna, y un grupo de amigos de ella que eran periodistas de diversos medios cubanos. Luisa trabajaba en Prensa Latina, la agencia internacional y oficial de Cuba, un lugar privilegiado donde llegaban noticias de todo el mundo. Yo hacía chistes y me burlaba de medio mundo. En fin, estábamos en gran jodedera, celebrando el fin de curso. Era finales del mes de junio de aquel 1975.

La fiesta fue terminando y nos quedamos un reducido grupo, casi la pura familia venezolana y yo. En eso, sin ninguna precaución, Luisa me pregunta: “Oíme Juan José, ¿en qué paró por fin esa noticia que llegó hace como un mes de El Salvador, en la que se decía que a Roque lo habían matado?”.

Yo sentí como un escalofrío que me atravesó el cuerpo. “No” –respondí inmediatamente y agregué lo que teníamos indicado decir para cualquier caso- “Mi padre está en Viet Nam, hace poco recibimos carta de él y está bien”. Lo cierto que sí sabíamos que estaba en El Salvador y que estaba integrado a la guerrilla.

Luisa quiso cambiar de conversación pero alguien le preguntó más. “No recuerdo muy bien”, explicó ella, “pero la noticia era rara, algo así como que lo había matado la propia guerrilla”. “Creo además que no era cierto porque de haber sido cierto, ya habría un gran escándalo”, finalizó Luisa.

La inquietud y la incertidumbre se apoderaron de mí; la alegría de la fiesta desapareció más de mi alma que de mi rostro; miré la hora y era de madrugada. Tenía que caminar yo solo como más de 10 cuadras: desde Paseo hasta la Calle J. Iba desesperado por llegar a casa.

Teníamos instrucciones de mi madre de contarle todo lo referido a mi padre, cualquier comentario. Así que llegué a la casa, la desperté y le conté todo lo que Luisa me había dicho.

Yo le vi el rostro a mi madre. Ella trataba de ser fuerte pero su mirada la delató. “Andá a acostarte, tranquilo. Mañana hablamos”. Me fui a llorar a mi cuarto, quién sabe cuánto tiempo. Desde entonces no aguanto la tristeza sin que se me salgan las lágrimas como cuando era un adolescente romántico y soñador.

Muy temprano mi madre y mi hermano mayor Roque, nos reunieron a Jorge y a mí en la mesa del comedor. Nos explicaron que había una enorme confusión y que se estaba investigando todo lo referido a mi padre porque las noticias eran que lo habían asesinado, pero que no había ninguna certeza.

Mi mamá y Roque tenían un mes de saber todo lo que estaba pasando pero no quisieron decirnos nada hasta que termináramos el curso.

Los asesinos de mi padre, es decir, la dirección de entonces del Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP) –encabezada por Edgar Alejandro Rivas Mira y Joaquín Villalobos-, ordenó el asesinato de mi padre el 10 de mayo de 1975, pero no lo dieron a conocer hasta finales de ese mismo mes en un pequeño comunicado lanzado en la Universidad de El Salvador (UES). Alguien después me contó que no tenían el valor de dar la noticia ni menos justificar el crimen, hasta que tuvieron la "gran idea" de decir que mi padre era “agente de la CIA”.

Ese mismo día que se supo de la noticia mi abuela paterna llamó por teléfono a mi mamá desde San Salvador a La Habana. La sufrida señora fue entrevistada por diarios y medios radiales; ella pedía evidencias, pero los criminales nunca quisieron entregar el cadáver y según una versión, sus restos fueron abandonados en un lugar conocido como “El Playón”; el mismo utilizado por los escuadrones de la muerte de ultraderecha para lanzar a sus víctimas.

Este mes de mayo, como todos los mayos desde 1975, en El Salvador y en varias partes del mundo se conmemora el asesinato de aquel gran intelectual revolucionario que fue Roque Dalton. Su vida fue azarosa: el odio, la envidia, la cárcel y el exilio lo victimizaron, pero su obra es un monumento a la inteligencia.

Su muerte dejó en nosotros una herida que no se cierra pero vivimos orgullosos de nuestro padre, a quien esta sociedad (la salvadoreña) y el mundo ha comenzado a reconocer y a apreciar como un talento incomparable y un pilar fundamental de lo mejor de la cultura latinoamericana.

En contraste, sus asesinos sobrevivientes: Rivas Mira, Villalobos y Jorge Meléndez, podrán vivir en Londres o en Oxford o San Salvador o en cualquier otro lado del mundo, pero cada vez más la historia los coloca como lo que fueron: los miserables asesinos de Roque Dalton, matones impunes y traicioneros.

Autor: Juan José Dalton
Fecha: 3 de mayo de 2007

New Sanctuary Movement Coverage

http://www.centerforhumanrights.org/
http://familiesforfreedom.org/

Roque Dalton-PRESENTE!

BY CLARIBEL ALEGRÍA

A scarce twenty years after his tragic, senseless death, the complex facts of Roque Dalton's life have been overlaid — or in many cases clarified and defined — by myth. Even among his closest friends it is nearly impossible to talk about Roque without falling into verbal chiaroscuro effects: superlative and anecdotal exaggerations. His prolific artistic production, cut off at the age of forty, remains a monumental artifact: testimony to his tortuous journey through the twentieth century, revealing his contradictory, dialectical, love-hate relationship with the country of his birth — El Salvador — both in and out of exile, and illustrating his profound conviction that the poet can and must, in his life as well as in his work, serve as the finely-honed scalpel of change, both in word and deed, when he lives in a profoundly unjust, stagnant society.

First, let's take the myth surrounding the undeniable fact of his birth in San Salvador in the year 1935. His father, one of the members of the outlaw Dalton brothers, after a career of robbing banks, disappeared from Kansas and settled in El Salvador with his ill-gotten fortune. He invested it in coffee plantations and grew even richer without ever being molested by the law. He left Roque his surname and a Jesuit education. Roque's mother was a registered nurse whose salary supported the family decorously, but Roque learned about class differences at an early age — in fact, during his first day of kindergarten at Santa Teresita del Niño Jesús, and I quote:

… where I took
my first steps in society
smelling faintly of horse shit:
"Peasant!" Roberto called me
that first day of class
in the Infantile section,
and he gave me a hard shove …
READ MORE HERE

Roque Dalton- May 12 5pm San Francisco

Legal Action against Police Brutality

From: JGGORGEOUS@aol. com [mailto:JGGORGEOUS@aol. com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2007 7:11 PM
Subject: Re: May 1 police attacks

As one of the attorneys that has agreed to handle cases of people victimized by LAPD officers during yesterday's May 1 rally, I wish to address the following subjects to organizers of the event.

1. We have recruited at least four lawyers to collaborate on litigation representing victims and organizations in a class action which will seek more than just monetary damages. All of us are associated with the National Lawyer's Guild, and have lengthy experience in handling police brutality and class action litigation.

The legal team will be headed by Robert Mann and Donald Cook of MANN & COOK. Their phone number will be publicly disseminated to victims, witnesses, and potential litigants. It is 213.252.9444. They have several staff members available to interview people, including in Spanish. We may need assistance with interpreters if other languages are needed.

Additionally, myself, Jorge Gonzalez (213.670.0063) and Cynthia Anderson-Barker (213.381.3246) will be on the team. Their may be others added to the list by tomorrow.

2. I will dedicate the next two days (Thursday and Friday) to be available to interview people, victims, witnesses, organizers, etc., at the offices of CARECEN. All people who have inquiries, were victimized, are potential witnesses, and who have photographic or video evidence of the events should be encouraged to contact me there. My office phone will forward calls to my cell phone (213.598.3278 - not for public dissemination) . I will meet at noon on Thursday with organizers as a group to discuss potential interviews by Internal Affairs or the Inspector General. DO NOT agree to be interviewed by anyone, not IA, the IG, or the media without talking with me first so that you are properly prepared. My suggestion is that all interviews be coordinated by myself so that an attorney is present and tapes each interview.

3. Everyone and every organization who has compiled a list of witnesses or victims, should forward this information to me. In other words, I will act as the liason with the lawyers and will serve as a clearinghouse for the information. We will need to interview everyone in a formal manner, and I will try to coordinate that. WE can use volunteers for this effort, and anyone interested and available should let me know. We will need to do at least a perfunctory training for this. Anyone who was present during the march should at least make an effort to write down their experiences. Do not worry about completeness, grammar, etc., the idea is to let us know who might have possible useful information.

4. Both CHIRLA and CARECEN will consider being a named plaintiff, and even if you did not suffer injuries, you may be a potential litigant also. The point to class action litigation is we intend to represent everyone who as a class (to be defined) might be injured in the same fashion in the future in any subsequent demonstration, march or rally.

5. It will be especially helpful to compile all known sources of recording of the events, particularly digital photographs and videos. We have already identified some, and people should be encouraged to provide it to us on cd. Emailing it may be alright, but I am concerned some files might be too big to exchange via internet, and a cd or flashdisk would be more practical. NOTE: for any such documentation to be useful in court, we need the identity, address, and telephone number of the person taking the photos or videos.

6. My mind is running a hundred miles an hour and I'm sure much is being left out, but I can be contacted the next couple days at CARECEN to discuss these issues more. Please encourage anyone who has information which might be useful to make an effort to contact me. Please disseminate this to all organizers, organizations, or persons of interest so that this message can get out as widely as possible.

Saludos y gracias.

Jorge Gonzalez

A PROFESSIONAL CORPORATION

Post Office Box 2739

San Gabriel, California 91778-2739

Tel. 213.670.0063

May 1-Police Brutality

House Tackles "Femicide" in Latin America

Subject: t r u t h o u t | Report - Monday 09 April 2007

House Tackles "Femicide" in Latin America
By William Fisher
t r u t h o u t | Report

Monday 09 April 2007

While headlines in the mainstream media front-page such controversies as Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Syria and lawmakers' standoff with the White House on timelines for American withdrawal from Iraq, the more mundane - but arguably no less important - work of the Congress goes on. Much of it continues under the radar, receiving little or no attention in the press. Some of it is actually bipartisan!

One example is an obscure measure known as H. Res. 100. What is House Resolution 100?

It is an effort by a large bipartisan group of representatives to try to end a deadly phenomenon known as "femicide" in Guatemala and elsewhere in Central and South America.

Introduced by Congresswoman Hilda L. Solis (D-California) and 84 co-sponsors, and unanimously approved by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, the resolution urges the US government to bring pressure on Guatemala to address the unsolved murders of more than 2,000 women and girls since 2001.

Representative Solis says, "Very few of these crimes have been investigated, and even fewer perpetrators have been brought to justice for their crimes. Families of victims deserve honest answers and investigations into the murders of their wives, mothers and daughters, instead of being ignored and intimidated. H.Res. 100 will raise awareness of the growing murder rate of women and girls in Guatemala, and increase the international pressure that is needed to stop the violence against women in that country."

It is not known whether President Bush raised the issue with Guatemalan leaders during his recent trip to Latin America.

Efforts to raise awareness of femicide have been spearheaded by numerous immigration and human rights organizations. Chief among them is the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, University of California, Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, working in partnership with Guatemalan groups.

Asked by Truthout why the US government should take an interest in this issue, the Center's advocacy coordinator and communications director, Felecia Bartow, noted that, in addition to human rights concerns, "The US has provided millions of dollars in aid for Rule of Law programs in Guatemala - and yet the murders and impunity persist. In 2006, the Guatemalan government created the National Institute of Forensic Science (INACIF) to improve criminal investigations and to prosecute those who commit crimes, including the murders of women. To date, the Guatemalan Congress has not provided INACIF with a budget and has not appointed any personnel - despite the fact that the State Department allocated $250,000 to INACIF in its FY2007 budget, and the institute has asked for another $250,000 that would come out of the FY2008 budget.

She added that the US government has thus "not done enough" to address the issue of femicide. "The State Department needs to make it clear to the Guatemalan government that this situation cannot persist. There has been concern expressed about violence against women in Guatemala generally, but there have not been steps taken to hold the Guatemalan government accountable for the state of impunity that exists for those who murder women," she told Truthout.

Femicide is also a problem elsewhere in Latin America. Last year, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Mexico and Guatemala sent a delegation of activists to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington to focus attention on the murders of innocent women.

The delegation asserted that, "In addition to the deaths in Guatemala, incomplete murder rates presented to the Commission cite 373 known murders of women in Bolivia from 2003 to 2004, and 143 in Peru during 2003. In Colombia, a woman is reportedly killed every six days by her partner or ex-partner. Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua City, Mexico, two cities where the femicide trend was first widely noticed, have suffered the murder of more than 500 women from multiple causes since 1993, according to press and other sources. Dozens more remain missing. Globally, the problem is no less severe. In many parts of South Asia and the Middle East, for example, so-called 'honor killings' usually go unpunished."

In a joint letter to prospective supporters of the Solis resolution, Karen Musalo, director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, and Barb Gottlieb, director of outreach and membership for the Women's Edge Coalition, said, "As of August 2006, 2,300 Guatemalan women had been murdered since the beginning of 2000, and only 17 cases had been resolved, including both convictions and exonerations. In fact, so few convictions have been handed down that there is almost complete impunity for those who murder women in Guatemala. Investigators mishandle crime scenes and officials blame the victims themselves, often deciding that their murders are not worth investigating because they are deemed to be 'nobodies.'"

The organizations said, "During Guatemala's decades of internal armed conflict, state-sponsored violence was widespread, and rape was commonly used as a weapon of war against women. Numerous investigations have concluded that the vast majority of these human rights violations were conducted by members of the Guatemalan Army or intelligence services. Today, a decade after the conflict's resolution, many of those responsible have escaped prosecution and now work with the police or private security forces. Perhaps it is no wonder that violence against women continues unabated, and that the perpetrators are virtually never brought to justice."

The original cosponsors of the House Resolution include Rep. Tom Lantos (D-California), chair of the full House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-California), chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, and Rep. Dan Burton (R-Indiana), ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. Representative Burton introduced a similar resolution in the 109th Congress last year, but it did not come to a vote before the end of the year.

Consideration of the Solis resolution by the full House is expected in the coming months. A similar resolution is expected to be introduced in the Senate.

The Solis resolution is endorsed by numerous human rights and legal organizations, including Amnesty International, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN), Human Rights First, and the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies.

The Hastings Center's Karen Musalo told Truthout, "The brutal murders of thousands of women with total impunity has gone on for all too long, and we are grateful that the House of Representatives has now gone on record calling for the Guatemalan government to bring an end to this disgraceful impunity."

The plight of women in Latin America and elsewhere is exacerbated by the absence of US immigration regulations that would grant asylum to victims of domestic violence.

In a highly publicized case, a Guatemalan refugee named Rodi Alvarado became the poster child for this immigration dilemma. Mrs. Alvarado's husband, a former soldier in the Guatemalan military, brutally beat her over a period of 10 years while the Guatemalan police and courts ignored her repeated attempts to get help. When she ran away, her husband found her and beat her unconscious. Finally, in 1995, she fled to the US in search of safety.

An immigration judge granted her asylum, but that decision was reversed by the Board of Immigration Appeals. Two successive attorneys general - Janet Reno and John Ashcroft - have personally intervened, but her case has yet to be decided.

Ashcroft said a decision should await new regulations from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which supervises most immigration matters. But DHS and the Department of Justice have been unable to agree on a position.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Alvarado remains in legal limbo. She continues to work as a housekeeper at a convent in San Francisco. The DHS says it will not press for her deportation regardless of how much longer it may take the agency to finalize the new regulations. But while she can remain in the US, she cannot be reunited with her children, who remain in Guatemala.

The government started working on such regulations many years ago, long before the DHS was created. Under US law, asylum applicants have to show they can't go home because they face persecution because of religion, race, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. In a regulation proposed during the Clinton administration by Attorney General Janet Reno, battered women would have been considered members of a social group.

But with the change in administrations and the September 11, 2001 attacks, the proposal languished. Opponents have said new asylum rules would lead to a surge in claims - an assertion disputed by advocates.

According to Human Rights First, an advocacy group that has worked on the Alvarado case for several years, "The DHS has been very sympathetic to the plight of abused women and girls. It believes this very narrow category of asylum-seekers should be able to enter the US to escape abuse."

HRF adds, "For reasons that are difficult to understand, the Justice Department has seemed to be dragging its feet on completing new regulations to make this possible, although they have received a lot of positive bipartisan support, including support from conservative advocacy and religious groups."

_______________________________________________
William Fisher has managed economic development programs in the Middle East and in many other parts of the world for the US State Department and USAID for the past thirty years. He began his work life as a journalist for newspapers and for The Associated Press in Florida. Go to The World According to Bill Fisher for more.