take action - Stop Torture! & Let your Senators hear

National Immigrant Solidarity Network

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9/25: The Immigrant Battle Shifts to the Senate - More Calls Needed!!!!!

Urgent Alerts from National Immigrant Solidarity Network
http://www.ImmigrantSolidarity.org

Dear immigrant activists:

The coming week will be the critical moment for the immigrant struggles, despite the opposition from the immigrant activists, the U.S. House last week passed several outrageous racist anti-immigrant bills:

H.R. 6061 - Border Fence Bill

H.R. 4844 - Federal Election Integrity Act of 2006 ("Voter ID bill")
H.R. 6089 - Illegal Immigrant Deterrence Act
H.R. 6090 - Immigration Enforcement Act
H.R. 6091 - Border Security Enhancement Act

The next struggles will be at the Senate, we need to spare no time to non-stop calling the Senate:

- Tell your Senator that he or she should not allow enforcement-only legislation to be attached to spending bills.

- Also tell your Senator that the enforcement-only approach taken by the House will only make matters worse, and that only comprehensive immigration reform will fix our broken immigration system.

- Tell your Senator to vote no on the Fence bill, H.R. 6061.

The following Senators are key, as they are on the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee:

Senator Judd Gregg (Chairman) (NH)
Senator Thad Cochran (MS)
Senator Ted Stevens (AK)
Senator Arlen Specter (PA)
Senator Pete Domenici (NM)
Senator Richard Shelby (AL)
Senator Larry Craig (ID)
Senator Robert Bennett (UT)
Senator Wayne Allard (CO)
Senator Robert C. Byrd (Ranking Member) (WV)
Senator Daniel Inouye (HI)
Senator Patrick Leahy (VT)
Senator Barbara Mikulski (MD)
Senator Herb Kohl (WI)
Senator Patty Murray (WA)
Senator Harry Reid (NV)
Senator Dianne Feinstein (CA)

You can find contact information for all Senators here:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Please tell us what happened by send us a copy of your messages to: info@ImmigrantSolidarity.org

Please read the following excellent analysis from the National Immigration Forum:

The Battle Shifts to the Senate - More Calls Needed

National Immigration Forum

September 21, 2006

With the House having passed their anti-immigrant legislation, it is now up to the Senate (where there is not as much of the panic about the low regard of the public for Congress that is driving the House to spend so much time creating fear of immigrants) to stop enforcement-only legislation from passing. Still, it will take an intense battle to stop the House effort to ram through enforcement-only legislation at the end of the session.

The good news is that at least in some offices we have heard that Senators are hearing from pro-immigrant voices, and there have been positive signs from some Senators that the Senate will not go along with what the House has done.

For example, Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), a key player because he is Chair of the Judiciary Committee as well as a member of the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, told reporters today that House Republicans would have no incentive to work out differences with the Senate on a comprehensive immigration overhaul if senators go along with the piecemeal approach of the House. "We have to take care of a guest worker program, we have to take care of employer verification, we have to take care of 11 million undocumented workers," Specter said.

Other Senators who have made positive comments expressing concern about what the House has done, or about the need to reform the immigration laws in a comprehensive manner, include Senators Larry Craig (R-ID) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).

House Measures May be Attached to Spending Bills

The fence bill may pass when it is considered on Monday. The more worrisome scenario is that the state and local enforcement and anti-due process bills will be attached to bills allocating money for the Department of Homeland Security (or possibly for Defense). Once that is done, it becomes extremely difficult to stop, because that requires Senators to vote against funding for the entire Department of Homeland Security-a politically difficult move.

The object, then, is to prevent the House measures from being attached to the Spending bills in the first place. That will take calls to your Senators and to Senate appropriators.

Continue your calls to Senate offices!!!!!

§ Tell your Senator that he or she should not allow enforcement-only legislation to be attached to spending bills.

§ Also tell your Senator that the enforcement-only approach taken by the House will only make matters worse, and that only comprehensive immigration reform will fix our broken immigration system.

§ Tell your Senator to vote no on the Fence bill, H.R. 6061.

The following Senators are key, as they are on the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee:

Senator Judd Gregg (Chairman) (NH)

Senator Thad Cochran (MS)

Senator Ted Stevens (AK)

Senator Arlen Specter (PA)

Senator Pete Domenici (NM)

Senator Richard Shelby (AL)

Senator Larry Craig (ID)

Senator Robert Bennett (UT)

Senator Wayne Allard (CO)

Senator Robert C. Byrd (Ranking Member) (WV)

Senator Daniel Inouye (HI)

Senator Patrick Leahy (VT)

Senator Barbara Mikulski (MD)

Senator Herb Kohl (WI)

Senator Patty Murray (WA)

Senator Harry Reid (NV)

Senator Dianne Feinstein (CA)

You can find contact information for all Senators here:

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

You can also check out this action alert from the American Immigration Lawyers Association:

http://capwiz.com/aila2/issues/alert/?alertid=9036716&type=CO

More on what can be done, from AILA:

http://www.aila.org/content/default.aspx?docid=20623

If you can make additional calls other that to the offices of your Senators, call the Senators on the Appropriations Committee listed above. It would be good especially to thank Senators Specter, Feinstein, and Craig, for their comments in the press supportive of a comprehensive approach.

House Passes Anti-Immigrant Legislation

This afternoon, the House passed two enforcement bills that would, among other things, allow state and local police to enforce civil immigration laws and would shield the government from accountability for misdeeds or misapplication of immigration law towards certain immigrants. Since these bills were taken from the Sensenbrenner bill, H.R. 4437, which passed the House last December, it was not a surprise that the House voted for these measures again.

Click on the links below to see how your member voted

§ Community Protection Act

§ Immigration Law Enforcement Act

With no provision for increasing legal channels for immigration, and having passed a bill to construct fencing on the U.S./Mexican border, House leaders figured they would need an anti-tunneling bill. That bill, the Border Tunnel Prevention Act, also passed, by a k.house.gov/evs/2006/roll469.xml onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll469.xml" target=_blank rel=nofollowvote of 422 to nothing.

Background Information About
H.R. 4844, H.R. 6089, H.R. 6090 H.R. 6091

9/21: AAJC DENOUCES PASSAGE OF MORE ANTI-IMMIGRANT LEGISLATIONS BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

9/21: Republicans Reach Deal on Detainee Bill

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg - New York Times

9/18: Congress Aims to Require Voter ID H.R. 4844

9/19: Analysis of H.R. 6089, H.R. 6090 and H.R. 6091
Immigrant Legal Resource Center

9/14: Immigration Policy Update
National Immigration Forum

9/14: CLEAR Act on House agenda; information and ideas
National Immigration Forum

9/15: URGENT: Stop U.S. Authorization of Indefinite Detention
Center for Constitutional Rights

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9/25: Silence in a Time of Torture is Complicity

From: World Can't Wait

We have now come to a defining moment, where before the world's eyes the U.S. Congress is poised to legalize torture. We reject such a course outright. It does not represent us.

We remember the images from Abu Ghraib prison -- photos of depravity, even death. And what of the images we have never been shown from a world of even more disturbing and more "professional" horrors that have been concealed in secret prisons around the world?

To anyone of conscience, this is unacceptable. But this is exactly what your government will be making legitimate. With bi-partisan support, the "Military Commissions Act of 2006" will be made law unless people act to stop it.

Sold as a "compromise," this bill is fundamentally worse than what has gone before.

The bill takes what has existed in the shadowy world of clandestine action and now gives it the openly declared mantle of official, legal approval. While the compromise is being sold as complying with the Geneva Conventions, it gives the President huge freedom to, by executive order, define "special methods" of interrogation that HE feels "fit" that Convention. It removes the right of anyone to raise the Geneva Conventions in federal court to challenge government action against them.

The compromise allows the government the power to use confessions and other testimony derived from torture as evidence in criminal proceedings. The compromise officially, and legally, puts Congress on record approving that the president may, at his own discretion, declare anyone an "enemy combatant." This means the president can name anyone anywhere as such and remove them from the reach of family or legal counsel and hold them indefinitely without trial. It ends the Constitutional right of habeas corpus.

All this is now to be done openly, and in our name. All these actions -- and the Bush Regime which has commissioned war crimes -- must be brought to a halt. What is being met with silence in the halls of power must be manifested as a real opposition in the streets. At stake here is what kind of country and what kind of people we choose to be.

Let it not be said that the people did nothing when their government moved to make torture lawful. Let the world know that the people of this country did not acquiesce, but instead stood up and said

"TORTURE DOES NOT REPRESENT US!
THIS REGIME DOES NOT REPRESENT US!
WE WILL DRIVE IT OUT!"

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Send this message with your comments to comments@whitehouse.gov

with a cc: to notorture@worldcantwait.org

and contact key members of the Senate Armed Forces Committee:

Sen. John Warner (Chairman), VA , Phone: (202) 224-2023 Fax: (202) 224-6295
Sen. John McCain, AZ, Phone: (202) 224-2235 Fax: (202) 228-2862
Sen. Carl Levin, MI, Phone: (202) 224-6221 Fax: (202) 224-1388
Sen. Susan Collins, ME, Phone: (202) 224-2523 Fax: (202) 224-2693

Sen. Edward Kennedy, MA, Phone: (202) 224-4543 Fax: (202) 224-2417
Sen. Lindsey Graham, SC, Phone: (202) 224-5972 Fax: (202) 224-3808
Sen. Robert Byrd, WV, Phone: (202) 224-3954 Fax: (202) 228-0002
Sen. Hillary Clinton, NY, Phone: (202) 224-4451 Fax: (202) 228-0282

Send this letter to all your friends and have them send it to their friends. Tell them THIS MUST NOT PASS and that you are pledging to be in the streets on October 5 because The World Can't Wait. Drive Out the Bush Regime!

In the next week we intend to send over 50 thousand of your responses to President Bush and the Congress. Send a copy of your messages to notorture@worldcantwait.org

Excellent opinion pieces against torture:

Ariel Dorfman in the Washington Post Sunday 9-24-06

[posted to this list-serve Sun, 24 Sep 2006 7:24 PM]

Molly Ivins in TruthDig.com

=================================================================

[the above two, courtesy:]

National Immigrant Solidarity Network
No Immigrant Bashing! Support Immigrant Rights!
webpage: http://www.ImmigrantSolidarity.org
e-mail: info@ImmigrantSolidarity.org
New York: (212)330-8172
Los Angeles: (213)403-0131
Washington D.C.: (202)595-8990

==================================================

Fwd - courtesy another NLG member:

1. Humane Treatment Standard Maintained, But Serious Concerns Remain
HRF Analysis of Compromise on Detainee Interrogation and Prosecution
Press Release
09/22/06 - Updated

2. 'Different spanks for different ranks': reject the compromise or pardon the
Abu Ghraib offenders


http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/hotline/2006/09/different-spanks-for-different-ranks.php


Friday, September 22, 2006

'Different spanks for different ranks': reject the compromise or pardon the Abu
Ghraib offenders
12:45 PM ET

Ben Davis [University of Toledo College of Law]: "There's an old adage in the
military entitled "different spanks for different ranks" (see James W. Smith
III, "A Few Good Scapegoats: The Abu Ghraib Courts-Martial and the Failure of
the Military Justice System", 27 Whittier Law Review 671, 677, 693 (2006)):
persons at lower levels in the military receive more severe punishment then
those at higher levels.

The classic case of this is the Abu Ghraib scandal in which no general or high
level civilian authority was court-martialed and Brigadier General Karpinski was
given nonjudicial punishment that was specifically said to not relate to the
prisoner abuse.

Army Reserve Specialist Charles Graner, Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick II, Spc.
Jeremy Sivits, Spc. Megan Ambuhl, and Army Reserve Pfc Lynndie England were all
court-martialed. They should all be seeking review and a Presidential pardon if
the compromise detainee bill is made law.

Under the compromise detainee bill, nothing in any of those infamous Abu Ghraib
pictures that shocked the world would be prohibited. The basic rule of the
compromise detainee bill is "don't kill or rape them". With the assistance of
creative Office of Legal Counsel lawyers that brought us this bill we can expect
definitions of "severe" and "serious" and "cruel, inhuman and degrading" to
allow the dogs and everything else.

As part of the Program, we can expect the President (in the role of the sole
arbiter of Geneva Conventions compliance as foreseen in the bill) to feel
comfortable that no technique short of death or rape "shocks the conscience"
(the implicit residual standard).

The offenders at Abu Ghraib were held to a different standard - the Uniform Code
of Military Justice which embodies the Geneva Conventions.

If they did what they were asked to do and Congress now says that we can
continue the Program (which appears much worse then what the Abu Ghraib
offenders did) then it seems extremely unfair for the Abu Ghraib offenders to be
languishing in prison if this is the legislation.

At a minimum, the President should pardon all of them so that we do not appear
to be hypocritical. After all, it has been made clear that the torture that has
been going on will be allowed to continue as part of "the Program." It is
patently clear that our domestic law as proposed by this compromise and as
expected to be practiced will be in breach of the United States obligations
under Common Article 3.

Now, if, as we all felt, there remains some revulsion about the Abu Ghraib
pictures then it seems to me that whether those acts are done by soldiers or
intelligence persons we should object - they are torture no matter what the
euphemisms proposed and are "outrages against human dignity". And to make that
objection clear we should reject this detainee bill compromise. That is, if we
still have consciences that can be shocked.

This does not mean we have any sympathy for the detainees like Khalid Sheik
Muhammad. But, what disturbs me is that the manner in which this bill is going
forward reminds me of how lynch mobs work - they would torture the person before
they burned him. A structure is being put in place that embraces the kind of
unlawful command influence that caused dysfunctional proceedings in World War
II. We had a Vanderbilt Commission which examined those proceedings and that
work led to the kinds of adjustments to military law and military commission law
embodied in the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

A further concern is that the lesson of this is to (1) select lawyers to make
fanciful interpretations of the law, (2) as President sign off on orders that
are made pursuant to those fanciful interpretations, (3) have members of the
military and intelligence community compromise themselves by working under those
fanciful interpretations, (4) when it all explodes, prosecute a few of the low
level military under tough UCMJ standards and one civilian contractor
(Passarro), (5) for the core employees press Congress to amend the law for
"clarity" to protect them (6) and then push Congress to "not look weak" by
enshrining in law the procedures based on the original fanciful interpretations.

Please note, in the context of international law, this type of process is
precisely why the rule has developed that a state can not avail itself of its
internal law to extract itself from its international obligations. Thus, those
amateurs of U.S. foreign relations law who may succeed through this compromise
in immunizing themselves from domestic court proceedings (and the language as
presented does not prevent federal conspiracy or state charges) will not have
absolved themselves of individual responsibility as a matter of international
criminal law.

Clearly, these actors in the Executive and Legislative are willing to take that
risk.

One possible glimmer is whether Congress delegation of authority to the
President here will be considered too broad. But that would require a challenge
in the courts, and that will take some time. In the meantime, the Program would
continue.

So reject this compromise or be consistent with the compromise language and
pardon the Abu Ghraib offenders. In other words, demonstrate what we think
America stands for. After all, now we have the pictures. I hope we would reject
the compromise - that's what America is to me."

---

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