Whether or not the Bush administration’s stepped-up immigration raids are a political stunt to soothe angry Republican voters, they still carry a human price tag.

Placating the GOP base or protecting the workplace?
By Aimee Molloy

On the morning of March 6, 2007, swarms of armed federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, gathered in the blistering cold outside the Michael Bianco Inc. leather goods factory in New Bedford, Mass. At about 8 a.m., as a helicopter circled overhead and police kept watch in Coast Guard boats in the nearby harbor, the agents rushed the building military-style, blocked the exits, and ordered the employees to turn off their sewing machines, where most were busy stitching backpacks and vests for the U.S. military. By evening, 361 workers — mostly from Guatemala and El Salvador — had been taken into custody after they were unable to prove they had legal status to work in the United States The factory owner and three managers were also arrested and charged in connection with hiring illegal aliens.

Over the last several months, as immigration reform has been debated on Capitol Hill, massive arrest and deportation operations like this have become a key component in the enforcement of existing laws. In the first five months of 2007, 3,226 undocumented workers were arrested on the job, compared with just 485 in all of 2002. Recent raids have included an operation that netted 62 sanitation workers at an Illinois pork plant, 21 employees of a Mexican restaurant chain in Arkansas, and 31 workers at a Dallas factory that repairs Fossil watches.

Government officials says that these operations are designed to pursue employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers, and to “reverse the tolerance of illegal employment and illegal immigration to the United States.” But a growing number of critics on both sides of the immigration issue argue otherwise. They view the raids — which have proven especially costly in terms of taxpayer dollars and human suffering — as a political maneuver designed primarily to make the administration appear tough on enforcement, in hopes of mollifying Republicans opposed to Bush’s recent immigration reform plan.

The bipartisan legislation favored by Bush, which eventually collapsed in the Senate in late June, included a path to citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants currently residing in the United States. This idea of granting what critics came to refer to as “amnesty” was opposed by many Republicans and was sharply, and unrelentingly, attacked by right-wing talk show radio hosts, who viewed it as a means of rewarding scofflaws. So many people opposed to the idea of amnesty sent e-mails to their representatives in Washington that the Senate’s server was twice shut down, and the phone system was flooded beyond capacity. Capturing the grass-roots GOP concern, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., declared, “Rewarding illegal immigrants with amnesty without taking adequate steps to secure our borders is the wrong way to address this problem.” It now appears doubtful that any comprehensive reform measure will be attempted prior to the 2008 elections.

It light of these sentiments, some critics argue, workplace raids became a convenient (and headline-capturing) means of appeasing critics within the Republican Party. “President Bush was at odds with his own people and had to appear as if he was doing something,” says Joe Garcia, director of the Hispanic Strategy Center of the New Democratic Network. But, he points out, it’s unrealistic to believe that such raids could ever begin to make a dent in fixing the problem. “What are they going to do? Bust into every workplace and eventually arrest 12 million people? [These raids] were, and are, pure and simple grandstanding and prove nothing except that this administration is a master of propaganda.”

“A lot of people on our side are saying the same thing,” says Roy Beck, director of NumbersUSA, an “immigrant reduction” organization opposed to granting citizenship to illegal immigrants, which processed more than 2 million faxes to Congress in opposition to the Senate bill. “We believe these very public and dramatic raids were designed to create a situation where we’d come to believe President Bush will carry out enforcement, so that we would support his amnesty plan. It obviously didn’t work.”

For the rest of the story, click here.

Consumers of counterfeit branded products may be dupes or they may be shrewd shoppers, but they are also communicators; people who demonstrate literacy in the meanings attached to certain symbols in the marketplace both of goods and ideas.

Confidence Games On Canal Street
By Vincent Carducci

One sunny Sunday afternoon in May a well-dressed woman in her late 60s shops on Canal Street in New York City. She’s with what appears to be her granddaughter, a girl of 10 or 12. She stops to look at leather purses being sold out of a large black plastic trash bag by a vendor at the corner of Greene Street. The woman looks at different colors—black, blue, red and white—slinging the purses over her shoulder, turning one way and then other, asking the child’s opinion of each.

After a bit of imaginary play as to what the various bags might look like while being carried, she selects the white one. It features the distinctive diagonal stitching and opposing interlocked double Cs of the Chanel trademark design. The woman haggles with the vendor, eventually handing over a $20 bill. With the new purse safely tucked away in a small plastic bag, the woman takes up the child’s hand and they go off in search of ice cream.

Tourist guides tout Canal Street as a free-wheeling shopper’s paradise, overflowing with goods available at below-bargain-basement prices that are always negotiable. It’s especially noted as a place to find designer products: purses marked with the Louis Vuitton and Coach logos, perfume identified as Chanel or Calvin Klein, and all manner of accessories bearing the distinctive Burberry plaid. But for the most part, these items are counterfeit, and violate US intellectual property law governing the use of trademarks, patents and copyrights.

Taking Stock of the Field
Canal Street cuts clear across lower Manhattan, connecting the Manhattan Bridge on the east with the Holland Tunnel on the west, providing a direct route from Brooklyn, Queens, and farther out on Long Island to New Jersey and then beyond to the rest of the American continent. Midway between the bridge and the tunnel, Canal intersects with Broadway, one of the world’s most celebrated avenues. The area surrounding the corner of Canal and Broadway is gritty, filled with the noise of traffic and the sounds of human activity. The smell of diesel exhaust mingles with the scent of grilling meat. The streetscape is a montage urban decay and renewed metropolitan life.

The intersection is a threshold for two of New York’s more affluent neighborhoods, Tribeca and SoHo, and one of its enduring and still growing ethnic enclaves, Chinatown. Laurie Anderson’s loft is down on Canal to the west, Bono’s is a few blocks north. To the east, illegal immigrants sleep in shifts, sometimes in bunks stacked three high, with only a rucksack hung by a nail containing all that they own.

The main market for counterfeit branded goods on Canal extends one or two blocks on either side of Broadway, depending upon whether you’re on the north or south side of the street. The area is accessible via the entire New York City subway system with one transfer. There are also municipal and tour-groups buses that serve the area throughout the day. People come from all over to shop among the neighborhood stalls and street vendors, attracted in part by the area’s carnival-like atmosphere. The market offers relief from the “McDonaldized” nature of modern consumer society, a place to escape the predictability of brightly lit, climate-controlled suburban shopping malls.

For the rest of the article, click here. 

U.S. City Issues IDs To Illegal Immigrants

New Haven, CT is the first city in the nation to offer ID cards to illegal immigrants, thus granting them privileges such as library cards and bank accounts. What do you think?

Carl Richmond,
First Aid Instructor
“But I have always been told that immigrants have no identity.”

Waylon Helstrom,
Baker
“Oh, great. Now the library waiting list for The Secret will be months.”

Patty Walker,
Drywaller
“It’s bad enough they’re taking the jobs I don’t want, but now they’re getting the services I don’t use!”