The ironically named “Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act” passed out of Committee with nary a peep of opposition from its fiercely anti-immigrant members.  Chairman Lamar (“Deport ‘Em All) Smith himself waxed eloquent about the need for immigrant “professionals with advanced degrees and aliens of exceptional ability”; Iowa’s Steve King raised obligatory questions to varnish his anti-immigrant credentials, but eventually kept his quiet.  Democrats joined the Republican choir, and thereby made the… Read more

Defending his support of in-state tuition for children of undocumented immigrants during the Tampa tea party debate last month, Perry pitched his own mantra to an audience and a movement wedded only to the Jim Crow version of states’ rights—the version aimed at keeping immigrants and people of color out of voting booths and, ideally, out of the country. Alabama, “Yes!”—states have the right and obligation to kick out and keep out undesired immigrants. Texas, “No!”—states do… Read more

Minnesota has the largest number of Somali refugees in the U.S., with thousands living in Michele Bachmann’s Sixth Congressional District. African and Muslim, the Somali community is here thrust into the crucible of race and religious bigotry, mirroring daily the challenges facing Muslims across the country in the post-9/11 era.  While Bachmann stirs up the struggle taking place in that dangerous crucible, her Muslim, African American, Congressional colleague next door—Keith Ellison of Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District—seeks a more democratic and racially just future.

Self-proclaimed head of the Congressional “Tea Party Caucus,” Bachmann’s run for the White House has thoroughly revealed the hardened conservative politics that have kept her in office.  Her evangelical… Read more

Perry tapped Arpaio for his advice on immigration enforcement beginning with a phone conversation early on in his campaign. The President noted that he “had always admired Sheriff Joe’s tough enforcement practices and his mass jailing of illegals.”   The Sheriff’s practices were the subject of a US Department of Justice lawsuit in 2010, focusing on alleged national… Read more

Seriously? Yes, seriously.

The ever-diligent Minutemen are pushing a Springfield city ordinance to prohibit local businesses “specifically” from hiring “illegal aliens” and to require businesses to participate in the federal E-Verify program.  Based on certification of some 2,400 petition signatures, the ordinance has been considered at packed Council meetings in recent weeks and is scheduled for a… Read more

On August 11 the obscure Board of Immigration Appeals at the Department of Justice ruled that immigrants arrested without warrants no longer have to be told of their basic rights to remain silent or to an attorney until they are put into the formal deportation process, which is a reversal of policy in place since 1980. As a colleague at the American Immigration Council declared, “The decision epitomizes the substandard system of justice that’s been created and imposed on immigrants in the United States.”

On August 9 the National Labor Relations Board Read more

It took Maria Rivas forty years of hard work to earn her way up to $11.40 an hour at the turkey processing plant in West Liberty, Iowa. Forty years. $11.40 an hour.

For over fifty years the unemployment rate for Blacks has held fairly steady at twice the unemployment rate for whites. Fifty years. Twice the unemployment rate.

The story is endless. As the inane debt debacle in Washington draws to a close, and as the Tea-Partied Congress fails once again to do anything about the nation’s economic travails, there is… Read more

In a frenzy of political deconstruction four decades after President Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 signing of both the Voters Rights Act and the Immigration and Naturalization Act – laws that Johnson saw as inseparable – the Republican Party is pursuing the most brazen and widespread voter suppression strategy since the demise of Jim Crow.

With deep roots in anti-immigrant fervor, steeped in blatant racism and fueled by corporate interests and conservatives’ money, said strategy has already resulted in strict new voter identification requirements in five states this… Read more

To Mitt Romney: You have expressed untold times that job creation is the primary issue before the nation.  Black unemployment stands at an unconscionable level of 17%, double the rate for whites, and Black teenage unemployment is at 38%.  What would you do as President to address this crisis?

To Tim Pawlenty:  The high school graduation rate for Black students in Minnesota is 32% compared with the white graduation rate at 74%, and… Read more

Organized by Centro de Tabajadores Unidos en Lucha, the workers are taking on one of the largest food chains in the metro Twin Cities, calling it to accountability for its contact with Carlson Building Maintenance, the janitorial service that employs the floor cleaners.  The company, not surprisingly,… Read more

He could wait no longer; the discomfort was overwhelming. Once again he urinated in his clothing, standing there on the line as the meat flew by.

For generations of meatpacking and poultry processing workers the right to go to the bathroom has been a deeply contentious issue.  In the 1930s a packinghouse supervisor reportedly told workers “If you have to go to the can you’d better not be gone for more than seven minutes.”  Keeping the line… Read more

NumbersUSA’s Roy Beck, for example couldn’t resist falling back to his whiny, poor me, “some of my best friends are (fill in the blank)” response to matters… Read more

Taconite.  Tantonite.

As the aging John Tanton, patriarch of the contemporary anti-immigrant movement, is slowly nudged by his successors toward the “uneconimcal in the nativist process,” it is clearer than ever that his followers just don’t get the fact that they are, indeed, the bearers and purveyors of Tanton’s white nationalism.  As much as they try to deny that reality, as much as they try to distance themselves from Tanton, the more they become his disciples, Tantonites.

Let’s name… Read more

King’s infamous House hearing on “radical Islam” launched the March of political and religious madness, which Jones rounded out on the 20^th. A self-proclaimed “Christian pastor,” Jones’ burning of the Qur’an that day marked one of the most despicable acts of religious bigotry and hatred in some time, with deadly consequences.  To… Read more

King, Iowa’s Fifth District Congressman, is hosting his “Conservative Principles Political Action Committee (CPPAC) gathering on March 26 in Des Moines, where anti-immigrant stars Pearce and Beck will laud him for his own aggressive efforts to curb immigration by gutting the Fourteenth Amendment’s provision for birthright citizenship.

That King is so publicly aligning with Russell Pearce is yet another indication of his deep-rooted, anti-immigrant views. Pearce is a bigot, pure and simple.

Read more

Iowa’s Fifth District is rock-solid conservative, returning King to Congress five times by significant margins. His hard stances on immigration and race are infamous, and so far afield that last summer even… Read more

In an unsent press release found on a back room floor, House leaders stated that “Our intent is to be more inclusive, in the spirit of our new role here.  “Workforce” is a term that embraces all employees, not just those involved in “labor.”  And… Read more

These three workers were, however, unusual.  For the past year they have organized their own crew and other restaurant workers in the community for better wages and working conditions, and have stood fast in… Read more

During the Great Depression populist farmers rebelled against foreclosures in the north of the District, prompting a 1933 call-up of the National Guard to quell the uprising; beginning in 1984 farmers in the south led the Iowa Farm Unity Coalition that swept the… Read more

Before you carve into your Thanksgiving turkey, please pause to reflect on the workers who brought the holiday feast to your table.

After twenty-one years of grueling, hard labor at the same Midwest turkey processing plant, one worker — let’s call him Alberto — is today earning $12.45 an hour.

He handles as many as thirty turkeys a minute as they speed along the processing line. Every shift, he makes some 20,000 cutting motions.

Alberto and thousands of other poultry workers — mostly immigrants, refugees and workers of color — feed the nation this Thanksgiving — and every day of the year.

… Read more