E-Verify: A Flawed Approach to Immigration Reform

By Suzanne Brown

The federal government has continually failed to address fundamental, structural problems with the country’s broken immigration system. Missouri’s leadership hasn’t done us any favors either by approving the Illegal Aliens and Immigration Status Verification law. This law does not adequately deal with Congress’ failures to provide options for employers to hire legal workers or to keep families together because an “enforcement-only” approach is not a viable solution.

There are three main problems with the new law.

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Railroading Immigrants…and the Constitution

By Kathleen Walker

Federal immigration officials swept into Postville, Iowa in May and detained nearly 400 workers at a kosher meat processing plant. Swiftly, local enforcement and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency arrested, charged with crimes, extracted pleas, and sentenced 297 of these individuals by the end of the following week. Apparently, this shock and awe strategy was specially designed to drop the hammer on undocumented workers doing backbreaking jobs under reportedly sub-optimal conditions.

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Eating American on the Fourth of July

By Rinku Sen

On this Fourth of July, I will be eating hot dogs. While I was trying to fit in as an Indian immigrant child throughout the 1970's, they represented the quintessential American food. I begged my mother to let me have them for dinner every night instead of chicken curry and rice. She nixed the hotdogs but sometimes allowed spaghetti and meatballs -- straight from a can. Hotdogs were "invented" by German immigrants serving their traditional sausages in the hustling streets of the new world, and spaghetti, everyone knows, came from Italy. If I had been celebrating Independence Day 150 years ago, however, neither would have been on the menu. In those days, Germans and Italians weren't considered Americans, or even white. When they fought over the most lucrative street corner for food vendors in the 1880's, the press reported these incidents as "race riots."

I'll be sharing this holiday with a group of restaurant workers, largely immigrants. Along with the hotdogs, we'll have tacos, samosas, falafel. According to one side of the immigration debate, we can keep our goodies to ourselves. America doesn't want them, or us.

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Immigration Raids Lead U.S. to a Moral, Legal Crisis

By Raquel Aldana

Postville, Iowa has been turned into a ghost town. Nearly a third of its residents, mostly undocumented workers from Guatemala and Mexico, sit in jail convicted of identity crimes or awaiting deportation. Hundreds more hide in fear. Their children, too scared to go to school, have left the town’s classrooms nearly empty. For this, Postville should thank their local police, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), and a failed immigration policy.

Aided by local law enforcement, ICE arrested 389 workers during the largest single-site immigration raid in U.S. history at the Postville meatpacking plant, the area’s major employer. In an unprecedented move, ICE criminally charged 302 of these workers with aggravated ID theft and/or using false social security numbers. Within days, ICE resolved their fate: 297 men and women pled guilty and were sentenced to prison and subsequent deportation. Only a few await criminal trials or immigration hearings.

Postville is one of the latest in a series of immigration raids that have intensified in the past three years. These raids are leading our nation to a moral, legal and humanitarian crisis.

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Juan’s Story: Undocumented But Not Un-American

By Sally Kohn

The first thing I noticed about Juan when I met him is his presence. For a young man, just graduated from high school --- that period when most of us were shy and awkward at best --- Juan is confident and vocal, the kind of person with clear potential to be a leader in whatever field he might choose.

The second thing you notice about Juan is the sadness in his eyes. His country, the only home he has ever known, decided his potential is irrelevant --- that no amount of talent and passion and vision and drive could ever overcome the fact that he and his family once crossed our nation’s borders without permission. It’s as though Juan the person doesn’t exist without Juan the paperwork. In our country, he’s treated as a number --- one to be reduced or feared.

Read more and watch a video of Juan telling his story...