What Obama Could Learn from Jimmy Kimmel

During the last two days, pop culture has witnessed two tours de force. One featuring Barack Obama taking on Republican House members in Baltimore, the other is Jimmy Kimmel taking on Jay Leno.

By the way, as much as Obama’s virtuoso performance deserves rave reviews, Jimmy Kimmel’s latest cut down of Jay Leno gets closer to the American zeitgeist.

Here’s the difference: Kimmel cut to the quick, his finger jiggling with a hot and funny political nerve. Obama reasoned and countered effectively but let his opponent walk away. What’s missing is the verbal conversation ender, the knock out.  What’s frustrating is that Obama deliberately wants the conversation to continue; he wants deliberative discourse in a very Habermasian way. But in the time it takes to teach his opponents the rules of deliberative discourse, his party might well lose the next election or two.

We know the set-up. For the last year, the GOP has taunted President Obama and given him barely a vote from stimulus to healthcare. People without health insurance quite literally are dying while HCR lingers in congress’ chambers. In the meantime, the GOP questions the legitimacy of Obama’s leadership, suggesting he wasn’t born proper in the USA– now compare that with questions of the legitimacy of the Bush presidency in 2000. Bush stole the 2000 election; Obama was born. get the difference?

Obama showed some pluck as he strategically and effectively– I think– boxed Republicans into working with him or being hi-jacked by Tea partiers.  It was a job well done, but was so subtle as to have been lost on many viewers whose support he was courting.

Switch to Kimmel who just slams Jay Leno over the frivolous late night wars. No comparison in gravity of situation. yes comparison in how it was handled. If Obama had only had a little more Kimmel in him, he would have registered a sharp warning to an equally infantile audience that he knows how to dance his finger on the nerve of the  GOP. Case in point: Obama could have and should have reminded Jason Chaffitz, a patronizing questioner of the president, for hissuccessful efforts to remove full body scanners from airports before the underwear bomber incident. Were it not for Chaffitz, the president should have said, people like the underwear bomber would not be able to board commercial aircraft.,

Kimmel would have done that mercilessly and with humor. Obama won the exchanges and the others too– he showed he was the smartest person in that Baltimore ballroom; but he almost invited infantile GOP behavior to continue. Kimmel’s warning to Leno was clear. I am going to eviscerate you. would have worked in that Baltimore ballroom, especially once the cameras started rolling.

ICE & Immigrant Detention Reform

As the Obama Administration enters its second year, and as comprehensive immigration reform struggles to remain a viable policy initiative for 2010, Assistant Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security and head of ICE, John Morton spoke recently at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington DC.

In his remarks, Morton emphasized his commitment to reform immigrant detention, which remains a laudable if overdue goal. The Administration has been advocating detention reform for most of 2009 (in August and October) and most of its initiatives remain unimplemented.  According to Morton, ICE detains about 32,000 immigrants on any given day. Immigrants are held in a vast network of over 300 most penal detention facilities (private, county, state and federal) around the country.

This is the nut of the problem: the federal government has lost control over an immigrant detention system that incarcerates a father of five whose visa expired along with a violent felon who happens to be an immigrant. Violent criminals sit alongside nonviolent offenders, and felons sit along side persons who merely violated civil (administrative) law provisions.

In violation of its own bail standards, ICE continues to detain immigrants whose record shows they are neither a flight risk nor a risk to their community. These immigrants should not be detained.

Thousands of detained immigrants should not be detained, and thousands more who are detained are being held under abusive conditions that imperil their safety and violate due process in conditions that are cruel and unusual.

A big part of the problem has to due with private prisons and the neo-liberal logic that informs detention practices even in public facilities. The logic encourages detention of immigrants for the purpose of keeping beds filled, even for immigrants who pose no risk. The logic condones secrecy and discourages public accountability.

According to John Morton, ICE endeavors to change this logic; it has plans to render a more transparent and accountable detention system; it plans greater oversight and monitoring of private detention practices and more vigilant review of contracts. But, and this is a big but, Morton suggests no concrete effort to terminate contracts with private facilities nor turn away from this underlying action opriented system of ideas that has rendered the system so unaccountable and secretive.

In other words, as extensive as John Morton’s plans for reforming immigration detention sound, they remain glued to a logic that is bound to socially reproduce these same shortcomings down the road.

Immigrants deserve better.

Support Tom Udall’s “Constitution Option”

This post is a quick follo-up from my post 2 days ago. Last evening Senator Tom Udall told Rachel Maddow that the Senate can indeed change the filibuster rule with 51 votes, and that this could occur at the start of the next legislative session.

Citing Article I. Sec V of the Constitution, Udall refers to this change as the “Constitution Option” (Udall\’s Constitution Option

I would like to urge members of the senate to go on record supporting the Udall option. Any  senator up for re-election this year who opposes it should be primaried.  It’s that important.

Could Senate kill Filibuster w/ 51 votes?

During the last couple days I have been talking socially with lawyers, policy analysts and scholars about the possibility of the Senate revising the filibuster 60vote rule with only 51 votes.

Here’s the theory. Please tell me what you think and help flesh this out? Facts appreciated please!

At the start of every new congress, the senate votes on its organization rule which deals with committee assignments and breakdown between dems and repubs., and other procedural business dictating how the new senate will conduct business.

Prior to its organizing rule, however, the senate can vote on other matters– And such votes cannot be filibustered.  What is this called?  The votes are enacted by a 51 vote majority, which means the senate can change the 60 vote filibuster rule with 51 votes.

Right?

Question: Is this real?

And, if this is real, should it not be publicized, trumpeted by Olbermann and Maddow.

Of course there is a political discussion to be had here about whether such a change in the filibuster rule really is in the democrats best interest. Of course, it doesn’t work for them politically once they lose their majority. Of course.

But still,

Assuming the desire to overcome the current impasse in the senate, shouldn’t we consider primarying any democrat who doesn’t sign on to this vote.

Citizens United increases challenge facing CIR

It seems pretty clear to me that the lone beneficiary of the Citizens United decision yesterday when it comes to CIR is the Chamber of Commerce and big business.

The biggest elephant in the immigration debate room was just injected with steroids. The CoC position is going to be hard for progressives to beat.

It would like to grow guest worker programs and social controls that socially reproduce a docile immigration labor force. On the plus side, it is likely to oppose the harshest draconian enforcement measures, and anything else that tends to mitigate the likelihood of a free flowing immigrant labor force.  The CoC favors a path to citizenship, if for no other reason than to prime the pump and relieve the social tension that surrounds having millions of undocumented workers and immigrant enforcers creating flak and bad press  around post industrial tourism industries around the country.

For people on the left, like me, who oppose an immigrant social control state, and favor immigrant and human rights, this decision makes our work that much more challenging.

Kucana v Holder: Just a Bit Less Court Stripping

This week the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Kucana v Holder. The Court unanimously recognized the right of judicial review in motion to reopen immigration removal decisions. (Justice Alito wrote a separate concurrence) The decision is a victory for immigrant rights, the rule of law and the principle of judicial review.

The decision is also a delusional win of sorts because the case revolved around a provision that was never written into statute. In short, the Court is really just saying the 7th circuit had no business reading discretionary powers that congress never intended.

And I dare say these aspects of the Court’s decision were incidental to the Roberts’ Court commitment to the principle of judicial restraint.  After a broad defense of the principle of judicial review, the opinion really emphasized the notion of judicial deference to congress.

The Court reversed the seventh circuit in part because even the administration wanted it to (almost a case w/o a controversy). In larger part, it reversed because  almost reactionary court stripping provision in the 1996 IIRIRA immigration law forgot to include motions to reopen removal decisions by the BIA. According to the Court, it could not read into Congress’ intent in the absence of specific wording in this IIRIRA provision. Thus, even though AG regulations  subsequently included motions to reopen, the Court refused to read these regulations into the statute.

Of concern is that the Court would likely have reached a different conclusion and permitted court stripping in motions to reopen removal decisions if only congress had included these words back in 1996.  Further, this decisions leaves open the question about the constitutionality of the enumerated court stripping provisions in IIRIRA as well as in AEDPA (1996) and in Real ID.  The larger outcome of jurisdiction stripping in many immigration cases remains on the books. And, immigrants possess no additional rights under the constitution after Kucana.

It is also regrettable that it was incidental to the Court that but for congress’ likely omission in 1996, Mr. Kucana, an Albanian refugee, might well have been returned to an uncertain fate in his homeland. Since the real issue had to do with the Court’s deference to the political branches/ congress, had the IIRIRA included motions to repon in its court stripping provision, Mr. Kucana likely would be back in Albania.

Although the correct decision was made in this case, the Court’s reluctance to include immigration as a constitutional issue keeps immigrants hostage to the whims of poorly scrutinized and often draconian immigration statutes, and an all too deferential court.

The Message from Massachusetts: Go Balloon Boy!

Does anybody realize yet that the state of Mass just elected balloon boy to the U.S. Senate to replace the Senate’s most effective legislator of the 20th century?

Yep. Scott Brown is the shiny tricket de jour that distracts folks from having to seriously deal with the worst recession of our lives, 2 wars, and on and on.

Last evening I saw the first 10 minutes of Scott Brown’s acceptance speech, and it sounded part American Idol and part Sarah Palin Tea Party. After telling his supporters how “available” his daughters were (aren’t we fathers supposed to protect their daughters instead of auctioning them off?), he wanted everyone to know how much he wants to show the president his truck and that he wants to play basketball with the commander in chief. Pretty serious guy, I’d say.

And democratic strongholds, which voted Obama by double digits, also voted for this fellow. What’s up?  Well, I think on one level Mass voters are sorry to see Simon Cowell leaving Idol after this season, and they carried this frustration into the voting booth.

I think they also registered a protest vote. they voted for Obama to create change and so far he hasn’t, and they are saying they are very impatient. Now on the one hand change takes time. 8 years of Bush put america into a pretty deep hole.  One year of Obama is simply not long enough to reach the surface let alone change the trajectory of future politics. fair enough. But there is something more serious going on.

Massachusetts voters are pretty serious about their politics. In my opinion, the vote was a protest against the timidity of the Obama Administration, which is quite evident in terms of several different issues, but is most visible w/ health care.

Thus far, the President has shown poor leadership and he has shown an unwillingness to fight for the progressive core that was responsible for his nomination and election. Say what you will about whether they should have stayed home but stay home they did.

Here’s what we progressives see. A president who was more interested in enticing olympia snow, ben nelson or joe lieberman over to the dem. side than he was interested in creating what could have been landmark legislation, getting close to universal coverage.

Obama never fought for the public option, and he appeared to many of us, to have never fought on hcr at all. Obama said he would roll up his sleaves once the house and senate voted out bills. He has yet to do so visibly.

If Dems are going to hold on the the House and Senate and if Obama is going to be a 2 term president, he needs to show some fight (more than just being able to laugh off a good punch).

The president needs to set a progressive vision and offer up a discourse that can compete with the tea-bagging right.  He needs to show democrats he will not abandon them just to bring joe lieberman or olympia snowe aboard.

Again. It is time to show 1) some fight and 2) some fight for progressive issues and progressive versions of social issue.

Voting for scott brown balloon boy was a protest vote. Had nothing to do with scott brown or the Tea-baggers or martha coakley for that matter. but it was a wake up call!!!

Obama Must Break w/ past on Immigration Parole to Haitians!

The Obama Administration made two symbolic moves regarding Haitian immigrants since the Tuesday earthquake. It granted TPS to Haitians already in the U.S. It also gave former president’s Clinton and Bush highly visible roles in the Haitian relief efforts. Looking at immigration history during their administrations,  I get a queasy feeling that Obama is not going to extend immigration relief to Haitians fleeing the current catastrophe, which might well taint Obama beyond the initial generosity of his response to this crisis.

When DHS granted TPS status to Haitians who had been in the U.S. on or before January 12, it was the latest act in a long running drama about Haitian refugees in the U.S.

Like most immigration programs directed at Haitians, TPS is– in itself– insufficient to address the much larger need that Haitians have had since the earthquake for safe haven in the U.S.  So, don’t get excited by TPS, which the Administration was correct in awarding.  It doesn’t go far enough; it ignores the needs that tens of thousands of Haitians are going to have in the coming days, weeks, months, for safe haven.

During the Carter Administration, Haitians, along with Marielitos from Cuba were labeled “Cuban-Haitian entrants.”  Awarding such status was a discretionary act of the AG.  In 1986, Congress added an adjustment of status provision in IRCA, which allowed Haitian-Cuban entrants to become legal permanent residents, on path to citizenship.

But once Reagan entered office in 1981, he implemented a Haitian interdiction program. Rather than permit Haitians to stay, Reagan instructed the Coast Guard and INS to board Haitian vessels, interrogate the passengers and send them back to Haitian ports. This was the agreement Reagan made with Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier.

Following the 1991 coup that overthrew Haiti’s first democratically elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide, President Bush (41) worked w/ the UNHCR to have other countries (incl. Honduras, Belize…) take in the interdicted Haitians and provide temporary safe haven. The number of Haitians fleeing during overwhelmed resources, which led the US to take them to Gitmo for an asylum prescreening. Haitians with a credible fear of persecution were paroled in the US (about 10,490 Haitians).  By summer 1992, Bush compassion fatigue led him to reverse course, interdict Haitians at sea and once again return them to port. The Bush Administration established in -country refugee processing but never provided adequate resources nor a commitment to bring eligible Haitians to the U.S.

The Clinton Administration continued interdiction and forced repatriation, and helped Haitians with a credible fear of persecution to leave for third countries– not the U.S..

In 1998, Congress enacted the Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act (HRIFA), which enabled Haitians who had been paroled in the US or received asylum to adjust their status to become permanent residents.

Following enactment of IIRIRA in 1996, undocumented Haitians were subjected to expedited removal. Haitians with a ‘credible fear” of persecution would be detained until an immigration judge could examine their case (asylum and removal hearing)

In 2002 and 2003, The Bush (43) Administration issued a notice that declared Haitians– and others interdicted at sea — a risk to national security.  Since 9/11 it has been Administration police to not parole Haitians into the United States. The voiced concern has been that paroling some Haitians will encourage others to make the life-endangering voyage to get to the U.S., which the US government opposes.  Thus thousands of Haitians in fear for their life have been returned to Haiti.

Hence the past’s challenge to the present.

This policy is even more restrictive than already restrictive laws are against other groups of migrants and asylum seekers.

Now, several days after the Haitian earthquake, it is becoming apparent that the Obama Administration wants to play by the same rules as his predecessors Bush (41/43) and Clinton and Reagan.

In part, the symbolism of naming Clinton and W. to help raise money and concern for Haiti helps suggests approval of past policy. . Comments made by DHS Secry Napolitano when TPS was announced implies the Obama policy is not likely to change much from previous program.  The pattern of 3 decades of unfair immigration treatment of Haitians makes this concern of vital importance.

Perhaps more than at any time since 1981, the US government has a moral and international law obligation to end its embargo of Haitians, and to parole Haitians into the country. Whereas TPS was a good start, it looked into the rearview mirror at immigrants already here. Parole is forward looking.  As the Administration endeavors to rebuild its reputation in the international community; parole would dovetail nicely with USAID’s relief programs.

TPS for Haiti a no-brainer

With tens of thousands of Haitians feared and now presumed dead, with much of Port au Prince destroyed, an issue on President Obama’s desk is whether he will sign off on granting Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to Haitians already in this country. It’s a non  brainer, something he should have been done 3 days ago.

The Obama Administration noted that it would cease deporting deportable Haitians back to Haiti.  This means that about 30,000 Haitians can remain in the U.S. for the time being— a good thing– albeit with no rights, no work authorization with which to work and send remittances back to their country in crisis,  and with many in detention—a bad thing–.

Since news of the earthquake, President Obama said the people of Haiti will not be foresaken, yet his administration is foresaking these 30,000 Haitians now in legal limbo in the U.S.

TPS would provide a temporary (18 month) legal status to Haitians in this country. With such status they could find jobs and send remittances home, something Haiti desperately needs.  This does not even come close to the bare minimum of what should be done to not forsake the people of Haiti.

TPS is a form of relief that Congress enacted into law back in 1990. Relief is to be granted to people in this country from homelands that have been struck by political upheaval–armed conflict–, earthquakes and other natural disasters.  Since 2004, Haiti has faced each of these conditions.

Currently, citizens from Honduras, Nicaragua, el Salvador, Somalia, and Sudan have TPS status. Salvadorans were granted TPS in March 2001 because of a series of earthquakes that left about 1/4 of the country with  adequate housing.

The situation in Haiti is MUCH MORE SEVERE!

The right wing Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has announced opposition to granting TPS for Haiti. The reason they give is that they assume Haitians won’t leave after TPS is lifted. They also say the Haiti situation does not meet TPS criteria. FAIR’s opposition is dishonest and wrongheaded. It is also racist.

I hope President Obama is not over-calculating his chances for comprehensive immigration reform later this year by appeasing the FAIR constituency on this crucial humanitarian issue.  Such a non-response would indeed forsake Haiti in its time of need.

update: on fri. evening, DHS announced TPS to unauthorized Haitians in US , 30,000 and possibly up to 200,000 persons.

Obama’s Corporatist Virtual Fence

This evening 60 Minutes is scheduled to air a segment about the virtual fence at the U.S. Mexico border. The piece is likely to focus on the immense cost overruns and the ineffectiveness associated with the fence. By almost all counts, the virtual fence has become a multi-billion dollar failure.

The bigger question—beyond effectiveness and cost overruns– has to do with corporate control over sovereign borders. The Bush Administration handed Boeing the keys to the sovereign border by hollowing out the SBI project (almost a billion per year) and delegating immigration powers to Boeing.  Back in 2006, the Bush DHS forged agreements that allowed Boeing to make important decisions over design and implementation of the SBInet project as well as control over oversight. While Boeing entered into a power sharing agreement with the CBP, it also excluded the CBP from input (something that has since been modified). The result: Boeing had hegemony over sovereign borders. wow!

In addition, according to Rep Loretta Sanchez during September ’09 hearings, Boeing was given the power to blackmail the feds.  Were the federal government to end the Boeing contract, Boeing would own and control the virtual fence.  At the least, Boeing would dissemble its virtual fence and retain control over the technology the component parts and the federal government would be forced to start from scratch.

Not even neoliberal free market theorisist Milton Friedman went so far as to give the market control over sovereign borders, yet that is exactly what is at stake.

This is the real story of the virtual fence that 60 Minutes ought to be covering. The DHS’ SBInet is a gross distortion of democratic governance. Boeing continues to be unaccountable to the rule of law and the federal government. Obama’s White-House has enabled this system by extending the contract and giving it $100 million in stimulus funding last March.

The only choice is to scrap the virtual fence and rethink the government’s approach to border control. This new start must consider the fundamental role of government in controlling sovereign borders, the rule of law and operating policy pursuant to the constitution.