Message to Fellow Latinos and Humanitarians: Republican Congress Planning ANTI Latino / Racial Profiling Bills in 2011!

Fellow Latinos and Humanitarians,
We may be upset by the Dream Act not passing and no movement with Comprehensive Immigration Reform, but if even half of the rhetoric I've been reading on the ANTI blogs comes to fruition, we are in for very tough times in 2011. The ANTI blogs are giddy with anticipation as their Tea Party Republican thugs are taking over the reins of Congress. These ANTI-Latino zealots are rubbing their hands together, making plans to propose racial profiling bills that make Arizona's racial profiling sb1070 look like a "tea party."
What bills are they planning on proposing in 2011?
1. Changing the 14th Amendment, ending Birthright Citizenship
2. Mandatory e-Verify
3. Official English
4. End to Sanctuary Cities
If you look at each of these proposed bills, something immediately jumps out at you. Each will blatantly and outrightly racially profile Latinos. It will be a witchhunt. Bad times for Latinos are clearly in the forecast ahead, especially with extreme right wing Tea Party Republicans like Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, who will chair the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Steve King of Iowa, who is expected to chair the committee's immigration subcommittee, leading the charge!
Guest Voz Suzanne Gamboa provides additional insights:
The end of the year means a turnover of House control from Democratic to Republican and, with it, Congress' approach to immigration. In a matter of weeks, Congress will go from trying to help young, illegal immigrants become legal to debating whether children born to parents who are in the country illegally should continue to enjoy automatic U.S. citizenship. Such a hardened approach -- and the rhetoric certain to accompany it -- should resonate with the GOP faithful who helped swing the House in Republicans' favor. But it also could further hurt the GOP in its endeavor to grab a large enough share of the growing Latino vote to win the White House and the Senate majority in 2012.

Legislation to test interpretations of the 14th Amendment as granting citizenship to children of illegal immigrants will emerge early next session. That is likely to be followed by attempts to force employers to use a still-developing web system, dubbed E-Verify, to check that all of their employees are in the U.S. legally. There could be proposed curbs on federal spending in (Sanctuary) cities that don't do enough to identify people who are in the country illegally and attempts to reduce the numbers of legal immigrants. Democrats ended the year failing for a second time to win passage of the Dream Act, which would have given hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants a chance at legal status.

House Republicans will try to fill the immigration reform vacuum left by Democrats with legislation designed to send illegal immigrants packing and deter others from trying to come to the U.S. Democrats, who will still control the Senate, will be playing defense against harsh immigration enforcement measures, mindful of their need to keep on good footing with Hispanic voters. But a slimmer majority and an eye on 2012 may prevent Senate Democrats from bringing to the floor any sweeping immigration bill, or even a limited one that hints at providing legal status to people in the country illegally.

President Barack Obama could be a wild card. He'll have at his disposal his veto power should a bill denying citizenship to children of illegal immigrants make it to his desk. But Obama also has made cracking down on employers a key part of his administration's immigration enforcement tactics.

Hispanic voters and their allies will look for Obama to broker a deal on immigration as he did on tax cuts and health care. After the Dream Act failed in the Senate this month, Obama said his administration would not give up on the measure. "At a minimum we should be able to get Dream done. So I'm going to go back at it," he said.
The president has taken heavy hits in Spanish-language and ethnic media for failing to keep his promise to address immigration promptly and taking it off the agenda last summer. His administration's continued deportations of immigrants -- a record 393,000 in the 2010 fiscal year -- have also made tenuous his relationship with Hispanic voters.

John Morton, who oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in a recent conference call that there are no plans to change the agency's enforcement tactics, which are focused on immigrants who commit crimes but also have led to detaining and deporting many immigrants who have not committed crimes. The agency also will continue to expand Secure Communities, the program that allows immigration officials to check fingerprints of all people booked into jail to see if they are in the country illegally. Both illegal immigrants and residents can end up being deported under the program, which the Homeland Security Department hopes to expand nationwide by 2013.

Many of those attending a recent gathering of conservative Hispanics in Washington warned that another round of tough laws surrounded by ugly anti-immigrant discussions could doom the GOP's 2012 chances. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a possible 2012 candidate, cited Meg Whitman's failed gubernatorial bid in California despite her high spending. When 22 percent of the electorate is Latino, candidates can't win without a vigorous presence in the Hispanic community and a "message that is understandable and involves respect," Gingrich said. Even so, Gingrich was unwilling to call on his fellow Republican senators to drop their opposition to the Dream Act, saying the legislation should not have been considered without giving lawmakers a chance to amend it.

The next Congress will be populated with many newcomers elected on a platform of tougher immigration enforcement. They'll have ready ears in Republican Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, who will chair the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Steve King of Iowa, who is expected to chair the committee's immigration subcommittee. That's a recipe for more measures aimed at immigration enforcement, including requiring businesses to use E-Verify rather than eyeballing paper documents to check workers' citizenship and legal residency status.

"I've already told the business community it's going to happen," said Beto Cardenas, executive counsel to Americans for Immigration Reform, a coalition of business leaders who support overhauling immigration laws. Changes to immigration law contained in appropriations and authorization bills, where immigration enforcement hawks are likely to tuck some measures, would also be tough to reject. But more controversial measures such as attempts to deny citizenship to children of people who are in the U.S. without permission could be tempered by GOP leaders aware of the need to curry more favor with Hispanic voters.

New E Verify Bill Due for Vote! What Do YOU Think?

A new e-Verify bill is due for a Vote in Congress. The bill is HR6633. The Employee Verification Amendment Act of 2008. (Go to Thomas to review it).

Congress Daily Reports: House Lawmakers Reach Deal On Bill To Renew E-Verify
Thu. Jul 31, 2008by Chris Strohm
House lawmakers have reached an agreement on legislation that would renew a program that allows employers to verify the legal status of their workers, breaking a stalemate between two committees over concerns about funding for the Social Security Administration. The bill emerged from behind-the-scenes negotiations among lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee and the Ways and Means Committee. The two sides had been at odds over writing language that would both reauthorize the Homeland Security Department's E-Verify program and preserve Social Security's ability to meet its core mission of providing services to seniors and the disabled. The bill would reauthorize for five years the E-Verify program, which is an online tool that employers can use to confirm a worker's information against Homeland Security and Social Security databases. The Senate still must come to an agreement on companion legislation. Without congressional action, the program will expire in November. The House bill would maintain E-Verify as a voluntary program, even though some states have mandated its use....The bill, which was discussed briefly on the floor Wednesday night, might come up for a vote as early as today. "I think that this bipartisan bill is necessary to pass," said House Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee Chairman Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif. Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Calif., chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus, said E-Verify has proven to be an effective tool in stopping illegal immigrants from getting jobs.

I am hearing there is bi-partisan (Rep, Dem, ANTI and PRO) support for this bill and that some in the Business Community support it as well. I am very curious as to why. I am going to leave my opinion out of it and let you, the viewers, tell me why it should or should not be supported.

e-Verify Flaws

AZ Bill 2779, effective Jan. 1, 2008, requires mandatory E-Verify participation for ALL new employees hired!

FLAWS WITH E-VERIFY:

"E-Verify has at least one significant flaw – its treatment of naturalized U.S. citizens. Between October 2006 and March 2007 about 3,200 foreign-born U.S. citizens were initially improperly disqualified from working by E-Verify. Their status was later corrected. Because many did not register their citizenship with the Social Security Administration, they are often listed as possible illegal workers.That's what apparently happened to Ochoa, 47, who became a citizen in 2000 but has since lost his naturalization certificate. He quit his job as a car salesman at the end of last year and got hired by a local Dodge dealership in February. Days later, his new employers called him with bad news – E-Verify classified him as a possible illegal immigrant. He only had a couple of days to convince the Social Security agency otherwise.Ochoa took his U.S. passport, Social Security card, driver's license and Arizona voter identification card to the local Social Security office, but was told he'd still have to request new papers from the Department of Homeland Security, which could take up to 10 months."I love this country, I'm happy in this country," said Ochoa, a father of two, who escaped eviction this month only because a church group paid his rent. "The guy who made this law, I don't know him. He's started destroying a lot of families."Katherine Lotspeich, acting chief of the agency that runs E-Verify, said officials will introduce a number of changes, starting in May, to make it easier to fix the problems that Ochoa and other naturalized citizens have encountered."The last thing we want is to have people who are naturalized citizens deal with this cumbersome process," Lotspeich said of the lengthy wait to get proper paperwork. She added that Social Security should have accepted Ochoa's passport as proof of citizenship."