Archive for 2009

Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century

By
Simon Rosenberg
Published: October 8, 2009

Demos, a London-based think tank, asked me to contribute a short essay on what it means to be on the center-left today.  It is one of a series of essays running as a part of a new Demos project called Open Left.  You can find the essay, Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century, and other interesting essays here.

I’m on the left because only the progressive moments in our history, and the progressive leaders who forge them, ensure that prosperity is shared more broadly and our country more prepared to face the future. The last century has seen an ebb and flow between right and left. In America we’ve had three broad periods. The first ran between the two Roosevelts: a battle to lock-down a new reform-minded politics born in the aftermath of economic upheaval in the “progressive era.” It was eventually captured by the Democrats. The second went from FDR to Reagan: an era of Democratic consolidation, which built America’s (still unfinished) social contract. The third began in 1980: a conservative ascendancy that saw its greatest triumphs in 1994 and 2004.

It’s worth remembering that until 2007 the conservative movement had achieved more political and ideological control over my country than at any time since the 1920s. Under President Obama that moment is passing, we hope for good – although battles, such as those being fought over the economy, healthcare, climate changes and immigration as I write, must be won to truly turn back the two-decade march. But the most important question from America’s recent past was – would conservatism mature to provide a credible alternative governing philosophy to replace 20th century progressivism? The Bush era answered that question. The answer is no. It is a lesson that the United Kingdom should learn carefully, as it toys with returning a once-discredited party of the right to political office.

But this next progressive era will not be dominated by the two-tired conservative and liberal ideologies of the past. So it falls to the progressive side to build a reinvented governing agenda capable of tackling the challenges of our time, and new political arrangements built around the capabilities of our fast-changing economy, media and people. Three challenges standout; three that are quite different from those we faced even a few decades ago when Bill Clinton and Tony Blair rethought what it meant to be on the centre-left.

Just as FDR tamed America’s industrial society, so now we must make the transition to a low carbon society-a societal transformation which if anything has been understated by our leaders. Everything from how we build and drive to how we power our mobile devices must change. This transformation will requires a great deal of money, innovations yet unimagined, and a public ready and willing not just to follow but to lead. It also needs a strong moral vision, and a role for the state unsuited to conservativism. And while the proposals offered by Ed Miliband and the Brown government this month are a good start, managing this transformation over the next three decades will make or break political careers and parties. Getting this right is a prerequisite for center-left success in the 21st century.

Second, we must re-imagine politics and government for an age when we are all connected. At some point in the next ten years just about everyone in the world will become knitted together through mobile devices and online. All that we know – communications, commerce, learning, socialising, politics, governing, even the concept of free and open societies themselves-will be changed by this powerful and ever more ubiquitous network. Harnessing the promise of this new age of mobile, and the radical democratization of information, knowledge and power it offers will be one of our the great projects of the center-left in the years to come.

Finally, we must come to terms with “the rise of the rest” as Fareed Zakaria has defined the emergent geopolitical reality of our day, this inexorable trend of developing nations like China, India, Mexico and Brazil taking their seat at the global table. In the years ahead these countries will surely produce Chinese Microsofts and Indian Nokias. Their economic maturation will mean that our countries will compete with both their inexpensive workers and a whole new set of globally competitive corporations, further intensifying already virulent global competition for our businesses, workers and students. Producing rising standards of living in the West will require much more investment in infrastructure, knowledge, skills and schools, and our people’s full partnership in understanding that success will require us to do more, to raise our game, or risk being left behind.

This “rise of the rest” will also require a remaking of the global institutions of governance and power. We have seen this process play out this year as the G20 begins to replace the G8, and the debate over how to remake the International Money Fund has begun in earnest. With only about 15 percent of the world’s people today of European descent, the ability for the governments of the West to be the primary managers of global affairs is coming to an end, a process that will not be easy for our governments to manage, or perhaps our people to accept.

The challenges in front of the center-left political parties of the West today are extraordinary, the greatest we have faced since the rise of European fascism seventy years ago. Today, as in the past, only a progressive vision is fit to meet them. Facing them forthrightly, and showing the courage to tackle them head-on will be perhaps the greatest test of them all.

Images of Violence in Guinea

By
Sam duPont
Published: October 7, 2009

If you’ve been keeping an eye on the junta running Guinea (that’s just regular Guinea, not to be confused with Guinea Bissau or Equitorial Guinea), you’ll know that the current iron-fisted military leader has fulfilled none of the promises he made upon taking power a year ago, and has seen public opposition to his rule grow. A week and a half ago, a rally against his government turned into a bloodbath, as soldiers killed as many as 157 people, and viciously targeted women for rape and sexual abuse.

As it turns out, a number of protesters snapped photographs of the violence on their cell phones, and the images of sexual violence– seen as particularly heinous in this Muslim country– have further grown and solidified opposition to the government.  From the NYT:

Violence in GuineaCellphone snapshots, ugly and hard to refute, are circulating here and feeding rage: they show that women were the particular targets of the Guinean soldiers who suppressed a political demonstration at a stadium here last week, with victims and witnesses describing rapes, beatings and acts of intentional humiliation… The cellphone pictures are circulating anonymously, but multiple witnesses corroborated the events depicted.

As in Iran earlier this year, mobile phones have empowered the citizenry to witness atrocities committed by a repressive state, and to share what they saw– not just with the few thousand other people who were there, but potentially with millions of people across the country and around the world. 

Also as in Iran, with opposition growing, the government in Guinea faces a choice: Crack down harder to ensure control, or yield to popular demands.  It’s hard to know how this will play out, but at a certain point, repressing a vocal, active, networked population of 10 million becomes very difficult.

The Time is Ripe for Immigration Reform

By
Mike Hais
Published: October 1, 2009

The current attentions of the Obama administration and the progressive political community, not surprisingly, are focused on putting the U.S. economy fully back on course, passing meaningful health care reform, determining ways to deal effectively with a worsening military situation in Afghanistan, and the looming threat of a nuclear Iran. At the same time, the results of several recent polls conducted in both Mexico and the United States suggest that this is also a propitious moment to move immigration reform to the front burner, not simply because it is a positive value in its own right, but because of its potential to impact other issues of concern.

A national survey conducted in Mexico by the Pew Global Attitudes Project points to rising economic and social pressures within that country that make emigration to the United States an increasingly appealing alternative for Mexicans, but also to improved attitudes toward America and its leaders that should encourage Mexico to endorse positive steps taken by the United States takes to reform its immigration policies.

According to Pew, large majorities of Mexicans believe that crime (81%), economic problems (75%), illegal drugs (73%), and political corruption (68%) are very big problems facing their nation. Most everyone else perceives these to be at least minor problems. All of these numbers, especially the concern with crime and drugs, have increased significantly since Pew’s last survey of Mexico in 2007. In addition, only about a third believe that the courts (37%) and police (35%) have a positive impact on the country. A slight majority (51%) claims that they had to offer a gift or bribe to an official within the past year in order to receive a government service or document. Overall, more than three-quarters (78%) are now dissatisfied with Mexico’s direction, up ten percentage points over the past year.

It is true that not all of the survey results are negative. Solid majorities give the Mexican military (77%), President Felipe Calderon (75%), the national government (72%), and the media (68%) favorable evaluations. Virtually everyone supports Mexico’s aggressive war against drug traffickers (83%) and most also believe that the country is making real progress in that effort (66%). Additionally, a large majority (76%) approve of the Mexican government’s handling of the H1N1 (swine flu) outbreak that began in the country last spring.

Still, a significant number of Mexicans are unhappy enough with conditions in their country that they would consider moving elsewhere. A clear majority (57%) believe that Mexicans who move to the United States have a better life in America than in Mexico, a number that is up by six-percentage points over the past two years. Those who have friends or relatives in the States with whom they communicate or visit regularly especially feel that way and most of those (70%) also believe that their acquaintances have “achieved their goals” in emigrating north of the border. As a result, a third of Mexicans (33%) say that, if they had the means or opportunity, they would go to live in the United States. Of these, more than half (18% of all respondents) says they would do so without “authorization.”

Of course, relatively few of those saying they would move to the United States will actually cross the border. It is very easy for someone to tell a survey interviewer that they are willing to take such a major step. It is far more difficult to actually do so.  And, in fact, as a result of America’s own economic difficulties immigration from Mexico and other Latin American countries, both documented and undocumented has declined over the past year. Still, if even five- or ten percent of those Mexicans indicating an interest and willingness to move to the U.S. were to do that it would represent between 2 and 4.5 million people, a number that would have significant impact on the societies, economies, public safety, and national security of both nations.

Given this, reform of U.S. immigration policies is crucial. This reform must both regularize the flow of new immigrants into the United States and clarify the status of those who are already here, and it must do so consistent with the most humane and tolerant American and progressive values.

Fortunately, there are clear indications that both Mexicans and Americans may be open to such an approach. Since the election and inauguration of Barack Obama Mexican attitudes toward the United States and willingness to cooperate with it have improved significantly. A majority of Mexicans have confidence that President Obama will do the right thing in world affairs (55%). This is well above the 16% who had similar confidence in George W. Bush in the last year of his administration. It is also far better than the scant 9% who have confidence in Venezuela’s America-baiting president, Hugo Chavez. As a result, the number of Mexicans who have favorable impressions of the U.S. has risen from 47% in 2008 to 69% now; the highest level since Pew first researched the matter in 1999. Most Mexicans also support a range of interactions between the two countries. Three-quarters (76%) say that the economic ties linking Mexico and the United States are a good thing, something that benefits both nations. Moreover, a large majority supports U.S. assistance in training the Mexican police and military (78%) and providing weapons and money (63%) to aid Mexico in its war against drugs. Almost a third (30%) would go so far as to permit the deployment of American troops in Mexico to assist in the anti-drug effort.

Finally, while many Mexicans are personally willing to move to the U.S. and believe that the experiences of their countrymen in America have been good, most also sense that continued large-scale emigration may not be in Mexico’s best interests. An overwhelming 81% believe that the fact many people leave Mexico for jobs elsewhere is a significant problem for their country and a plurality (48%) say it is bad for Mexico that so many of its citizens live in the United States.

Pew research also indicates an increased willingness north of the border to support humane and progressive immigration reform. Led by the emerging Millennials (born 1982-2003), a generation that is 40% non-Caucasian, and among which one in five members has at least one immigrant parent, the percentage who support increased restrictions and controls on immigration into the United States has declined from 80% in 2002 to 73% now. Millennials in particular reject the contention that the increased number of newcomers from other countries threatens traditional American customs and values (35% vs. 55% for older generations). Most important, support for an immigration reform policy that would provide a way for undocumented immigrants currently in the U.S. to gain legal citizenship by passing a background check, paying a fine, and holding a job increased from 58% in 2007 to 63% this year.

While the political community’s current focus on economic recovery, health care reform, Afghanistan and Iran is certainly understandable, the need for immigration reform remains. It is crucial that progressives take the lead on this issue. As Joe Wilson’s “you lie” reaction to the president’s assurances that health care reforms would not apply to undocumented immigrants demonstrates, the radical right is more than willing to exploit fear and prejudice on this issue and to use them in its efforts to derail key items on the Democratic agenda. Fortunately, recent polling suggests that the time is ripe and the public on both sides of the border receptive to progressive policies that would finally reform America’s broken immigration system.

The Latest Attack on the Census is an Attack on All of Us

By
Rob Shapiro
Published: October 1, 2009

The latest fight over the Decennial Census is part of a 30 years’ war over efforts to count everyone in America, including immigrants, minorities and poor people.  It’s become an ongoing war, because the results carry such large consequences.  The Constitution mandates a census every decade, because the founders saw a regular, state-by-state population count as the best way to determine how many seats each state gets in the House of Representatives.  Beyond that, as Washington’s role has expanded, the Census provides the data used to distribute a growing slice of federal spending among the states and their cities and counties – nearly $400 billion worth these days – and to build the baselines and updates used to evaluate the effectiveness of hundreds of federal programs. 

Until this year, the fights over the Decennial Census have focused not on who should be counted – the answer has always been everyone – but on how hard the government should try to find the one to two percent of us who are often overlooked.   It matters, because people who don’t return their Census forms and then avoid Census workers trying to follow up – the Bureau calls them the “undercounted” – are predominantly poor minorities, recent immigrants, and American Indians.  So, they’re not distributed randomly across the states but rather concentrated in certain places – and this undercount costs those places part of their fair share of federal funds for roads, schools, medical care, parks and other things based on population.  If the count were accurate, a number of big cities and states might be a little less financially strapped. 

I follow all of this pretty closely, because as Under Secretary of Commerce in the late 1990s, I oversaw the Census Bureau planning and operations for the 2000 Census.  The fight that time was over our plans to use a huge sample – some 1 million households – to find out exactly where and to what extent the undercounts happen, and then use that information to adjust the head count and make the final results more accurate.  That was just what the National Academy of Sciences had recommended for the 1990 Census, which the first Bush White House rejected.  When the undercount grew worse that time, the Academy came back with the same recommendation for 2000.  This time, the Clinton administration approved, and the Census Bureau did it.  But between the counting and the reporting, George W. Bush took office.  The sample was discarded, and the undercount grew even worse. 

The opposition to sampling in 2000 certainly seemed to be motivated by purely political concerns that counting all minorities would cost them federal funding or even seats in Congress.  But that opposition wasn’t completely shameless: They balanced their attacks on sampling with support for spending as much as we asked for to assemble the largest workforce of census counters in history and mount major advertising and civic outreach campaigns targeted to communities with large undercounts. 

It will be worse this time.  The 2010 Census planned by the Bush administration has no sample, and it’s too late now for the Obama team to design and carry out one in time.  It’s also almost certain that the undercount will be even larger: The numbers of recent immigrants are way up, and the advertising campaigns aimed at minorities and the outreach to civic groups have been scaled back. 

But now it’s getting truly ugly.  Senator Bob Bennett, backed by the Wall Street Journal and right-wing cable TV and radio, has proposed to use the census to identify undocumented people, who would then be deliberately excluded from the count.   In more than two centuries of the U.S. Census, it has always counted whoever is physically here – “inhabitants” in the term used in the first census of 1790 – regardless of their citizenship or other legal status.  One reason is that everyone is protected by the law, so everyone should be counted in determining how many seats a state gets to write those laws.  And whether or not someone has citizenship or residency papers, they still put claims on public services which the funding for those services should reflect.    

The political and social implications of Bennett’s radical idea are enormous.  California, for example, may have as many as 4 or 5 million undocumented inhabitants – exclude them and the state could lose perhaps a half-dozen seats in Congress and tens of billions of dollars in federal funds.  Texas and other states with large Hispanic populations would lose seats and funding as well.

This change also could destroy the Census process, with incalculable costs for everyone.   The Census doesn’t collect any information beyond people’s demographic characteristics – no names or data about their legal circumstances – and it’s so fastidious about people’s confidentiality that it won’t share any specific data with police, the FBI, or anybody.  In 2000, for example, a form came back with a threat against the president scrawled across it – and the Census Bureau refused Secret Service demands to share the address.  (It turned out to not matter, since the respondent was safely tucked away in a state prison.)  The Bureau also knows that if the census process goes beyond demographics, tens of millions of people may assume that their information might be turned over to other parts of government, and the undercount would skyrocket.  People would begin to worry that the IRS might compare the number of people counted in a household against the number of dependents claimed,  or that child welfare services might discover that somebody is taking care of a cousin’s child and disapprove of it, or, most obviously, that the Immigration and Naturalization Service would come knocking. 

The Census is the world’s largest scientific exercise and provides the basis not only to allocate federal funds and seats in Congress, but also to evaluate the effectiveness of countless federal, state and local programs.  All of that would be at risk if the latest expression of anti-immigrant bias were ever to take hold of the decennial Census.

Waking Up To the Coming Battle Over the Census

By
Simon Rosenberg
Published: September 24, 2009

Tonight’s reports of the murder of a US Census worker will bring national attention to the emerging politics of the Census count, something that we’ve long been worried about.

In August I posted the following about a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed which signaled the beginning of a new campaign by the right to disrupt the vital Census count next year:

For many months now NDN has been making the case that inevitably the right would make a spirited case to prevent the Census, to be conducted next year, from counting undocumented immigrants, or at least using their numbers to influence reapportionment or the allocation of resources by the government (the primary purpose of the every ten year count).

Today the Wall Street Journal is running a well-articulated early salvo in this coming battle by John S. Baker and Elliot Stonecipher.  It starts off……

“Next year’s census will determine the apportionment of House members and Electoral College votes for each state. To accomplish these vital constitutional purposes, the enumeration should count only citizens and persons who are legal, permanent residents. But it won’t.

Instead, the U.S. Census Bureau is set to count all persons physically present in the country—including large numbers who are here illegally. The result will unconstitutionally increase the number of representatives in some states and deprive some other states of their rightful political representation. Citizens of “loser” states should be outraged. Yet few are even aware of what’s going on.

In 1790, the first Census Act provided that the enumeration of that year would count “inhabitants” and “distinguish” various subgroups by age, sex, status as free persons, etc. Inhabitant was a term with a well-defined meaning that encompassed, as the Oxford English Dictionary expressed it, one who “is a bona fide member of a State, subject to all the requisitions of its laws, and entitled to all the privileges which they confer.”

Thus early census questionnaires generally asked a question that got at the issue of citizenship or permanent resident status, e.g., “what state or foreign country were you born in?” or whether an individual who said he was foreign-born was naturalized. Over the years, however, Congress and the Census Bureau have added inquiries that have little or nothing to do with census’s constitutional purpose.

By 1980 there were two census forms. The shorter form went to every person physically present in the country and was used to establish congressional apportionment. It had no question pertaining to an individual’s citizenship or legal status as a resident. The longer form gathered various kinds of socioeconomic information including citizenship status, but it went only to a sample of U.S. households. That pattern was repeated for the 1990 and 2000 censuses.

The 2010 census will use only the short form. The long form has been replaced by the Census Bureau’s ongoing American Community Survey. Dr. Elizabeth Grieco, chief of the Census Bureau’s Immigration Statistics Staff, told us in a recent interview that the 2010 census short form does not ask about citizenship because “Congress has not asked us to do that.”

Because the census (since at least 1980) has not distinguished citizens and permanent, legal residents from individuals here illegally, the basis for apportionment of House seats has been skewed. According to the Census Bureau’s latest American Community Survey data (2007), states with a significant net gain in population by inclusion of noncitizens include Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, New York and Texas. (There are tiny net gains for Hawaii and Massachusetts.)

This makes a real difference. Here’s why:

According to the latest American Community Survey, California has 5,622,422 noncitizens in its population of 36,264,467. Based on our round-number projection of a decade-end population in that state of 37,000,000 (including 5,750,000 noncitizens), California would have 57 members in the newly reapportioned U.S. House of Representatives.

However, with noncitizens not included for purposes of reapportionment, California would have 48 House seats (based on an estimated 308 million total population in 2010 with 283 million citizens, or 650,000 citizens per House seat). Using a similar projection, Texas would have 38 House members with noncitizens included. With only citizens counted, it would be entitled to 34 members.”

….You get the idea.

We’ve been arguing, aggressively, that it is important for the Obama Administration to pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform by March of 2010 (the count begins in April, 2010) in order to avoid what could become a very nasty debate indeed – in the middle of a very important election – about who exactly is an American.   To me the need to conduct a clean and accurate census, so essential to effective governance of the nation, is one of the most powerful reasons why immigration reform cannot wait till 2011, as some have suggested.

In launching DropDobbs.com along with 14 other groups this past week, I cited my own personal weariness with the summer’s angry talk and the still all too virulent politics of intolerance.  We have long believed the debate over the Census would unleash the reactionary hounds, so to speak, and rather than letting them gain the upper hand in a debate over who we are and who we are becoming, it is essential now for reasonable people of both parties to stand, together, to prevent an angry few to hijack what is, in this case, a process so integral to the very functioning of our democracy.

Next year is shaping up to be an extraordinary one in US history.

Message to World at the G-20 Summit: Don’t Depend on a Strong U.S. Recovery to Bail You Out

By
Rob Shapiro
Published: September 23, 2009

This week’s U.N. General Assembly and the countless, private discussions between presidents, premiers and prime ministers will range from climate change to terrorism, but most of the leaders are more preoccupied with the outlook for their economies.  In this sense, the UN meeting is an opening act for the main attraction, the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh at the end of the week.  There, the leaders will focus on new regulation for global capital flows and the institutions behind them, with some good doses of finger-pointing at the United States.  (Christina Kirchner of Argentina, the world’s largest debt defaulter, couldn’t wait: She led yesterday with America-bashing at the UN.)   But the blame game is really a plea that the United States help pull the rest of the world out of its ditch.

America, with 23.5 percent of worldwide GDP – Japan is second at 8.1 percent, followed by China with 7.3 percent – is the only country with the economic heft to move other nations.   Much of our impact comes from our annual imports of $2.5 trillion, which help keep employment up in most other large economies.  If we could get our imports growing strongly again, the world’s finger-pointing would turn into high-fives.  But that depends on reviving American consumption and investment, and the outlook for that is mixed at best.

Washington’s optimists point to recent gains in a number of important indicators – but look closely, and they’re less encouraging.  Retail sales in August were up 2.7 percent over July, for example.  But that’s 5.3 percent below levels a year earlier, when things already were pretty grim.  It’s the same story with other measures.  Housing starts were up 1.5 percent in August, but down 29.6 percent from a year earlier; and industrial production was up 0.8 percent, to a level still nearly 11 percent below August 2008.  These are the numbers that led Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen to caution that while the recession may be technically over, hard times could be with us for another year or longer.

The bottom line for most Americans is that the steep decline in the value of their investments and homes is driving them to cut back their spending and restore some savings.  Mostly, they’re paring down the record credit card debt they ran up during both the first stage of the recession and an expansion before it which didn’t produce income gains.  This spending slowdown is unlikely to change soon.   And as we have argued here for more than a year, jobs will probably continue to contract for two or three years after this recession ends, just as they did after the 1990-1991 and 2001 downturns.  It’s hardly a recipe for a recovery strong enough to lift U.S. incomes or the prospects of other economies.

Nor can we expect help from other countries boosting our exports.  Of our five largest foreign markets, U.S. imports are still falling in three of them (Canada, China, and the UK); and American imports in all five (Mexico and Japan, plus the other three) are still running 17 percent to 27 percent below their levels a year earlier.

What if the modest pick-up we’re seeing now only reflects the President’s stimulus package finally kicking in?  Republicans had some cynical fun a few months ago charging that the stimulus had failed, since everything was still headed down.  Now, it’s the Democrats’ turn, as its effects increase over the next several months.  The hard question is whether the economy will keep growing once the stimulus runs out.  The administration’s economic strategy depends on the stimulus triggering self-sustaining growth – by creating jobs, which boost spending and then, in turn, lead to more jobs, more demand, and finally more investment.   That’s also the basis of their financial strategy, hoping that expanding growth will bring down foreclosures and bankruptcies, easing the pressures on banks so they can lend more.

Their economic logic is perfectly reasonable; but it may be a long shot in the world where we now find ourselves.  And it certainly doesn’t take account of the possibility of yet another nasty shock to the economy.  The most likely candidate is an implosion of securities based on commercial real estate.  Price movements in commercial estate have been running 12 to 16 months behind those in residential housing.  So, they remained strong for more than a year after the housing bubble began to deflate – and then began to fall sharply in the last six months.  Now, more and more commercial developers can’t keep their properties sufficiently occupied to service the loans they took out to build them.  As they default, the securities and derivatives based on those loans also go bad.   It could be another very nasty hit, with most of the impact falling on the regional and local banks across the country that made the loans.  That’s why we’re already seeing a sharp rise in bank failures.

The good news is that the Fed and the Treasury have more advance notice this time, and they have a better idea of what works and what doesn’t.  The bad news is that at after what we’ve already been through, Washington couldn’t borrow the money required to manage the failures of large numbers of big commercial banks, with all of the fallout, without risking the credit of the United States.

There’s a good chance we’ll dodge that particular bullet.  But even if we do, the prospects for a strong U.S. recovery are slim, especially one strong enough to help the rest of the world.  And that will be the biggest, unspoken disappointment at this week’s G-20 meetings.

What Will the President Say Tonight? CHCI Policy Conference In the Midst of Health Care Debate

By
Zuraya Tapia-Alfaro
Published: September 16, 2009

It will be interesting to see what President Obama says this evening given the tension and confusion surrounding the health care debate, turned immigration debate.  At the policy plenary discussion that launched the CHCI conference, on immigration reform, Sen. Bob Menendez hit the nail on the head when he said, “if we had passed immigration reform first, all these would have been moot points,” referring to Mr. Joe Wilson’s recent outburst and the anti-immigrant campaign that has taken the health care debate as their most recent tool through which to spew anti-immigrant propaganda.  We have long talked about these “immigration proxy wars” and made the case that immigration reform would have left a clear playing field for the rest of the items on the domestic agenda.

Factually, what is included in the Senate health care bill in regards to immigrants is that a verification for eligibility for the exchange and other benefits would essentially be the same as those in existing law, i.e., proof of legal status, not citizenship (although even legal immigrants do have restrictions for certain programs, like Medicaid).  There has been much confusion on this by the employment of the term “citizenship” verification. As you all probably know there is an ocean of LEGAL status possibilities that lie between “illegals” and “U.S. citizens.”  Sadly, these differences are not always understood, as we saw this week by the absence of an acknowledgement of legal immigrants during a White House press briefing, and even on news shows like that of Dylan Ratigan, who qualified those eligible as “American citizens,” when in fact, “legal immigrants” who are not yet citizens are also eligible.

But these are all semantics.  The bottom line about what has happened this week is that regardless of whether we want to be defined by race or by the issue of immigration on policy issues, we will be.  Those who seek to divide the country and foster hate against a certain sociological other will not go away, so they must be preempted and defeated.  As Sen. Menendez also stated at CHCI this week, “make no mistake about it, when they talk about ‘those people’, they are talking about you, about us.” And until we recognize this, we will have no progress.  For example, in the case of health care, from strictly a policy standpoint (not humanitarian or liberal, etc.) what if we DID cover the “illegals”?  What if we suddently acknowledged that “those people” are actually part of all of us? That their kids go to school with our kids and get sick the same as our children?  That they live next door? That they work in our offices?  Please read this analysis in Newsweek of what could actually be achieved if we made a conscious decision on the basis of a strategic, policy-oriented argument and covered “those people.”

The tone taken by the debate this week is – to say the least – disappointing considering that the election of President Obama was supposed to be a sign of progress in America’s attitudes towards race. But, we saw this coming. We saw it in the old woman who expressed how “afraid” she was because Obama looked likely to become president.  And in the man who said he feared for his unborn children if Obama became president. We had a preview of this with the people who linked Obama to terrorism and terrorists, and in the suggestion that he was a foreigner and that he wasn’t one of “us.” All this did not suddenly disappear on November 4th last year, nor will it in a near future.  No doubt, there are some who genuinely disagree with some government policies, the problem is that in light of the tone taken by the debate right now, it is hard to know who is who. Those who genuinely do disagree with the president should discuss their opinions based on policy, not on codes that appear to carry racist implications. But there is certainly something ugly going on. And that needs to be discussed – and most importantly, confronted.  And the first major stand we can take on this front is to pass comprehensive immigration reform and take much of the air our of this balloon of hate.

I close by highlighting that these negative attitudes do not discriminate on the basis of party – hate and fear mongerers are both Democrat and Republican.  On that note, I congratulate Sen. Judd Gregg who called this debate of immigration in the context of health care what it is – a “sideshow.”  And acknowledged that doctors will treat whoever walks into an emergency room, regardless of legal status (which, by the way, taxpayers are paying for – and thanks to not including “illegals” in reform, will continue to pay for).

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Mobile Internet Narrows the Digital Divide Domestically

By
Dan Boscov-Ellen
Published: September 4, 2009

My colleague Sam duPont has been doing excellent work writing about how mobile technology is helping to provide information services and access in deveoping countries. As a recent Pew Internet and American Life survey helps to illustrate, the same is true within our own country, where socio-economic conditions have traditionally prevented many from accessing the internet, and thus put the less fortunate at an even more profound disadvantage in today’s data-centric world.

Here are some of the most important findings of the study:

  • 48% of Africans Americans have at one time used their mobile device to access the internet for information, emailing, or instant-messaging, half again the national average of 32%.
  • 29% of African Americans use the internet on their handheld on an average day, also about half again the national average of 19%.
  • Compared with 2007, when 12% of African Americans used the internet on their mobile on the average day, use of the mobile internet is up by 141%.

The high level of activity among African Americans on mobile devices helps offset lower levels of access to tools that have been traditional onramps to the internet, namely desktop computers, laptops, and home broadband connections.

The study found that, “by a 59% to 45% margin, white Americans are more likely to go online using a computer on a typical day than African Americans.” However, “when mobile devices are included in the mix, the gap is cut in half; 61% of whites go online on the average day when mobile access is included while 54% of African Americans do.”

Of course, even with high-end mobile devices like the iPhone, there are still very significant differences in functionality between your typical internet-enabled mobile device and a notebook or desktop. And, especially if data is being accessed over carrier networks instead of WiFi, there is a pretty big difference in speed. There were several columns this week, including two in the New York Times (1 | 2), about how iPhone users (particularly those in dense cities, where bandwidth issues are the most glaring) are angry about how slow their download speeds are. Indeed, in explaining why they’re so far behind schedule in allowing iPhone users to use MMS, AT&T admitted that their network was struggling to keep up with the demand for data:

We’re riding the leading edge of smartphone growth that’s resulted in an explosion of traffic over the AT&T network. Wireless use on our network has grown an average of 350 percent year-over-year for the past two years, and is projected to continue at a rapid pace in 2009 and beyond. The volume of smartphone data traffic the AT&T network is handling is unmatched in the wireless industry.

It is true that at this point mobile internet alone cannot totally bridge the digital divide (it’s still pretty hard to apply for many jobs, or do word processing or website work, without a real computer). However, with the implementation of 4G networks over the next few years, and the exponential increase in smartphone sophistication we’re likely to see – in particular, the app ecosystem is still in its infancy, and is likely to explode in utility much as the internet did – this report should still be read as an essentially positive sign.

Shapiro discusses Immigration and Health Care Reform on CNBC

By
Zuraya Tapia-Alfaro
Published: September 1, 2009

Last week I wrote about how Immigration Reform is NOT Health Care Reform. Yesterday, Dr. Rob Shapiro was on CNBC discussing undocumented immigrants and health care reform, and set Mark Krikorian from CIS straight:

Honoring Kennedy by Taking Action on Comprehensive Immigration Reform

By
Andres Ramirez
Published: August 28, 2009

Much has been written about the contributions and legacy of US Senator Edward Kennedy in the short time since his passing, and I am sure that much more will be written in the years to come as there was much that Senator Kennedy fought for and championed. 

However, I don’t want to focus on the issues that defined him, I want to focus on his character.  Senator  Kennedy was a man of action, a tireless advocate and campaigner, a consensus builder and a deal maker.  These traits contributed to his success in the Senate, and showcased him as a Statesman.  As many of us ponder how best to pay tribute to such a great man, I would ask you to stand up and take action.  There is no one person who can take up the torch for where he left off, but if we all jump in and carry the torch together to show America how many lives he touched, then I think we can muster the momentum needed to complete his life’s work.

Over the past several years, NDN has been active in the efforts to encourage Congress to fix our broken immigration system by passing legislation to enact Comprehensive Immigration Reform.  Through these efforts, NDN has had the fortune of working with Senator Kennedy, as this was one of his signature issues.  Kennedy had been involved with every major legislation regarding immigration throughout his entire career in the Senate. 

My colleague Zuraya Tapia wrote in her recent post,  

On the day the immigration reform legislation failed in 2007, Kennedy predicted its backers would be vindicated. “We will be back and we will prevail,” he said.&

It is very clear again that Senator Kennedy’s choice of the word “we” was because he knew he was talking on behalf of so many people. It is important that “we” now take action and move forward on this effort. 

I want to share with you a video clip of a speech that Senator Kennedy gave at a bipartisan panel that NDN hosted before the 2007 debate on immigration reform.

NDN is committed to continuing to work on this issue, and to encourage that the upcoming bill bear Senator Kennedy’s name.  Rest assured Senator Kennedy, “We will be back and we will prevail.”

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