Fed Up group plans counter Jackson Hole conference
The Fed Up coalition, made up of community activist groups, has rented a conference room in the same hotel where the...
The Fed Up coalition, made up of community activist groups, has rented a conference room in the same hotel where the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank will be holding its annual Jackson Hole conference starting Thursday.
The group said Monday it will bring in low-wage workers from around the country who are struggling to make ends meet to emphasize the need for the Fed to do more to attack income inequality.
"Our life is a constant struggle. We know we have to pay the rent, buy food and pay the utilities on a very limited budget," Dawn O'Neal, a teaching assistant at a day care center in Atlanta, told reporters on a conference call Monday.
The mother of four said she made $8.50 an hour at her job and her husband, who is currently unemployed, has been trying to earn money by lining up early in the morning to compete for part-time construction jobs.
Ady Barkan with the Center for Popular Democracy and campaign director for Fed Up said that before Fed officials "can have a real discussion of raising interest rates and slowing the economy, they should understand firsthand who it would effect."
Barkan joked that while the Kansas City Fed charges $1,000 per person for its conference, participation in the teach-in will be free. In addition to arguing that raising rates now would be premature, the group will hold discussions on ways to reform the Fed's current selection process for the presidents of the Fed's 12 regional banks.
The group has protested the recent selection of Robert Kaplan, a former top executive at Goldman Sachs and currently associate dean at the Harvard Business School, as the new president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, saying the selection process shut out input from community groups.
While the Fed announced in May that Yellen would not be attending this year's conference, Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer is scheduled to deliver comments on inflation during a panel discussion at Jackson Hole on Saturday.
Financial markets will be closely examining those comments for any hints about whether the Fed is still likely to boost interest rates at its Sept. 16-17 meeting despite a huge sell-off in recent days in stocks that saw the Dow Jones industrial average fall another 588.47 points or 3.6 percent on Monday.
Source: CNBC
Calls Renewed for Charter School Regulations
The Philadelphia Tribune - December 12, 2014, by Wilford Shamlin -A new report calls for tighter regulations of...
The Philadelphia Tribune - December 12, 2014, by Wilford Shamlin -A new report calls for tighter regulations of Philadelphia charter schools, concluding wasteful spending at the privately managed schools costs a yearly average of more than $1.5 million of taxpayers’ money, and more than $30 million since 1997.
“Pennsylvania lawmakers have not given oversight bodies the tools they need to detect that fraud and stop it early,” according to a report prepared by three nonprofit agencies, ACTION United, The Center For Popular Democracy, and Integrity In Education.
The three groups are part of the umbrella group, Philly Coalition Advocating for Public Schools (PCAPS), which continued to seek greater oversight of privately managed charter schools that are publicly funded like their district-run counterparts. The group’s members delivered copies of its findings and recommendations this week to the state Attorney General’s Office and the Philadelphia School Reform Commission (SRC), which oversees the city’s public school system.
ACTION United, which has criticized the school district for policies and practices it deems unfair, reported no significant action on the 20-page report released in September. The renewed push for increased regulations on charter schools comes as the state-controlled commission ended its seven-year ban on considering new charter school applications in an effort to control operating costs.
The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers union wants the moratorium reinstated until measures are taken to increase charter school regulation and improve transparency. The state Legislature required the school district to start considering new charter school applications as a condition to receive a sales tax on cigarette packs sold in Philadelphia.
Local activists and educators called for the state Attorney General’s Office to investigate whether all charter schools have appropriate levels of internal controls and policies to prevent fraud. Oversight agencies have inadequate resources to maintain staff needed to assess fraud and conduct targeted audits.
The nonprofit organization asked 62 charter schools to provide details about fraud prevention practices, but about half of the respondents replied and only four school districts had adequate fraud prevention practices on the books.
Earlier this week, the group called for providing additional funding to the SRC for improving oversight of fraud risk management practices in all publicly funded schools. They made calls for more leadership from the governor’s office, and for granting authority to city or county controllers to assess fraud risk and conduct audits of school district’s finances.
There are only two auditors for the school district, with more than 200 public schools. And implementation of charter school fraud risk management programs has been lacking in publicly funded schools and fraudulent activities aren’t typically exposed by the type of audits that are conducted, according to PCAPS.
“General auditing techniques alone don’t uncover fraud,” according to the report.
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For Many Americans, the Great Recession Never Ended. Is the Fed About to Make It Worse?
When the Federal Reserve considers raising interest rates on July 28—and then again every six weeks after—MyAsia Reid,...
When the Federal Reserve considers raising interest rates on July 28—and then again every six weeks after—MyAsia Reid, of Philadelphia, will be paying close attention. Despite holding a bachelor’s degree in computer science, completing a series of related internships, and presenting original research across the country, Reid could not find a job in her field and, instead, pieces together a nine-hour-per-week tutoring job and a 20-hour-per-week cosmetology gig. The 25-year-old knows that an interest-rate hike will hurt her chances of finding the kinds of jobs for which she has trained, and earning the wage increase she so desperately needs.
A Fed decision to raise interest rates, expected sometime this year, amounts to a vote of confidence in the economy—a declaration that we have achieved the robust recovery we need. “We are close to where we want to be, and we now think that the economy cannot only tolerate but needs higher interest rates,” the chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, told Congress during a July 15 policy briefing.
But for many millions of Americans, the recovery has yet to arrive, and for them, a rate hike will be disastrous. It will put the brakes on an economy still trudging toward stability; stall progress on unemployment, especially for African-Americans; and slow wage growth even more for the vast majority of American workers.
The general argument for raising interest rates is that it will prevent wage costs from pushing up inflation. However, there is no data suggesting price instability; nor is there any indication that wages have risen enough to spur such inflation. For the overwhelming majority of American workers, wages have stagnated or even dropped over the past 35 years, even as CEOs have seen their compensation grow 937 percent. During the same period, wage gaps between white workers and workers of color have increased, and black unemployment is at the level of white unemployment at the height of the Great Recession. Meanwhile, the labor-force participation rate is less than 63 percent, the lowest in nearly four decades, suggesting that many Americans have simply given up looking for work.
Yellen has herself often urged the Fed to look at the broadest possible employment picture. Yet, during her recent congressional testimony, shedownplayed the Fed’s ability to address racial disparities, saying that the central bank does not “have the tools to be able to address the structure of unemployment across groups” and that “there isn’t anything directly that the Federal Reserve can do” about it. She cited, rightly, a range of other factors, including disparate educational attainment and skill levels, that contribute to economic and social disparities between racial groups. But she also glossed over the importance of the economic environment in shaping workers’ unequal chances.
One defining metric in shaping workers’ chances is the unemployment rate. A high unemployment rate facilitates racial discrimination. When there are too many qualified job candidates for every job, employers can arbitrarily limit their labor pool based on unnecessary educational requirements, irrelevant credit or background checks, or straightforward bias. A tight labor market, by contrast, makes it much harder for employers to succumb to prejudices and overlook qualified workers simply because of bias. When the number of job seekers matches the number of job vacancies, African-Americans, Latinos, women, gays and lesbians, injured veterans, and formerly incarcerated workers finally get their due in the workforce.
The late 1990s, when unemployment was at about 4 percent, bear out this thesis. During that rosier era, black unemployment was 7.6 percent, and the ratio of black family income to white family income rose substantially.
As the guardian of monetary policy, the Federal Reserve has a number of tools for encouraging a tight labor market, and one of those tools is to keep interest rates low. By keeping rates low, the Fed creates a hospitable environment for job growth by lowering the borrowing costs for consumer and business spending—including hiring new workers. By contrast, raising rates deliberately suppresses spending by consumers and businesses. In the process, it slows job growth, holds down wages, and unnecessarily maintains racial disparities.
With so many workers still struggling, there is no need to cut off this recovery prematurely. Inflation remains below the Fed’s already-low 2 percent target, unemployment and underemployment are too high, and wage growth and labor-force participation are too low. In fact, the Fed should be doing everything within its power to keep nudging the recovery forward for the workers still caught in the slipstream of the Great Recession.
The Federal Reserve should not raise interest rates this week, nor when it meets again six weeks after that. It should not raise rates at all in 2015. Doing so would cause tremendous harm to the aspirations and lives of tens of millions of working families, and would disproportionately hurt African-Americans.
MyAsia Reid knows the difference that a full-employment economy can make. She is ready to participate in the economic recovery. And she will be watching as the Fed decides whether to hold to a strategy of strengthening the recovery or pursue a new strategy that jeopardizes her chances and her community.
Source: The Nation
Slew Of Organizations Denounce Civil Right Violations of Puerto Ricans on May Day and Demand Gov. Roselló To Stop Austerity Measures
05.03.2018 New York, NY - In response to the violent reaction of the Puerto Rico Police Department to a peaceful...
05.03.2018
New York, NY - In response to the violent reaction of the Puerto Rico Police Department to a peaceful assembly of students, families and activists on May Day protesting against austerity measures and the national debt, the Center for Popular Democracy signed on to an open letter to Governor Roselló and released the following statement through its Co-Executive Director, Ana María Archila, who was present at the event and recorded the state violence response in a video:
“This week, as teachers, students, and retirees in Puerto Rico were exercising their First Amendment rights with a peaceful march to demand dignity for their families, the police came out in riot gear and unleashed tear gas on the crowd. Children, elderly people, entire families were fighting to catch their breath. It was a scene that doesn’t belong in a democratic society.
But this scene is not new in Puerto Rico. The police are used to controlling and enforcing colonial rule on the island. And they are enabled by our silence stateside. The crisis confronting Puerto Rico is enormous, and it’s as much a crisis of democracy as it is an economic and climate crisis.
Governor Roselló must condemn the violence perpetrated against his own people. And he must address the root causes of the march: the austerity measures that prioritize banks over people and are putting the brakes on the island’s recovery. We will continue to stand in solidarity with the Puerto Rican people as they continue to demand dignity and a better life for themselves and their families.”
Below, the Center for Popular Democracy join several organizations in solidarity with the Puerto Rican people and sign on this open letter to Governor Ricardo Roselló demanding an investigation into the abuses perpetrated by the Police Department on May Day rally and demand a stop to austerity measures and cancellation of the debt:
Open Letter to the Governor of Puerto Rico Ricardo Roselló
Sign-On Letter Condemning the Actions of the Puerto Rican Government on May Day and Demanding Justice for the Puerto Rican People
We, the undersigned organizations, stand in solidarity with the Puerto Rican people and organizations that came together on May 1, 2018 to march against inhumane austerity measures that continue to drive a massive exodus of families in search of a better life. We stand with the millions of Puerto Ricans who remain on the island and fight every day to sustain their families and improve their collective quality of life. We write today to condemn the inhumane and violent police actions of the government of Ricardo Rosselló.
On May 1, 2018, thousands of Puerto Rican people, including elderly adults and children, who were exercising their First Amendment right to protest were met with state violence through the use of tear gas and violence at the hands of the police. Images captured at the event, corroborated by first-hand accounts, show crowds of people fighting to catch their breath as they ran away from police in riot gear. This type of scene has no place in a democratic society. The right to assemble and express frustration at the government is essential to the practice of democracy. We are deeply disturbed by Governor Roselló’s defense of the police brutality and demand that the local government take the appropriate actions to prosecute those who gave and executed the orders for these actions to take place.
On May 1, 2018, thousands of Puerto Ricans came out to protest the measures that the governor and the fiscal control board have put forward over the last two years. These measures adversely affect working class Puerto Ricans, and include:
1. Privatizing of the public school system and the power company;
2. Doubling the tuition costs in Puerto Rico's public university;
3. Closing over 300 schools;
4. Slashing labor rights;
5. Raising taxes; and
6. Cutting pensions.
This dire situation is forcing families to flee the island en masse. The Center for Puerto Rican Studies estimates that Puerto Rico could lose 14% of its population, 470,000 people, by 2019.
On May Day, the people of Puerto Rico came out with clear demands for their government. Today we stand with them and echo their demands in solidarity, and we commit to advocate for them in the United States.
We further demand immediate accountability for the May Day violence. Our demands are as follows:
1. Stop austerity: The Government of Puerto Rico should stop all austerity measures and invest in the working people of Puerto Rico by strengthening labor rights, raising the minimum wage, and promoting other policies that allow families in the island to live with dignity. Living with dignity includes rebuilding Puerto Rico’s power grid with 100% clean and renewable energy and keeping the power grid and power generation in public hands under community control, so as to mitigate the climate crisis and adapt for future extreme weather.
2. Cancel the debt: The Government of Puerto Rico should not make, and the U.S. government should stop promoting, any more debt payments to billionaire bondholders. Instead, all government efforts should focus on securing payments to pension holders. The Puerto Rican government should also prosecute any individual that has profited from the debt crisis.
3. Prosecute: The Government of Puerto Rico should conduct a full, transparent and impartial investigation into the police violence during the May Day actions and prosecute every police officer and civil servant who instructed and executed these acts of violence against the Puerto Rican people. We also encourage human right organizations to conduct their own independent investigations and oversight to guarantee that this process is done with full transparency.
We, the undersigned organizations, stand in solidarity with the Puerto Rican people and their demands, condemn the actions of the Puerto Rican government, and demand that the local government take the appropriate actions to prosecute those who instructed and executed these actions.
Sincerely,
SPACEs United for a New Economy Maryland Communities United Black Voters Matter Fund CT PR Agenda Progressive Caucus Action Fund The Bully Project Center for Popular Democracy Make the Road PA Make the Road CT 215 People Alliance Alliance for Puerto Rico-Massachusetts Make the Road NJ United We DREAM NYCC Chicago Boricua Resistance! OLÉ in Albuquerque, NM Organize Florida Delaware Alliance for Community Advancement CASA Mi Familia Vota Make the Road NY VAMOS4PR 32BJ Matt Nelson Action Center for Race and the Economy Refund America Proyect Massachusets Jobs with Justice DiaspoRicans DiaspoRiqueños New Haven Association of Legal Services Attorneys United Action CT Womens March Alliance for Quality Education National Economic and Social Rights Initiative Courage Campaign Action NC Harry Potter Alliance Blue Future Youth Progressive Action Catalyst Pennsylvania Student Power Network Movement Voter Project Student Power Networks About Face: Veterans Against the War Americas for Conservation Florida Immigrant Rights Coalition- FLIC One America Services, Immigrant Rights, and Education Network (SIREN) Arkansas United Community Coalition Make the Road NV Sunrise Movement Lil Sis American Family Voices Resource Generation Climate Hawks Vote The Shalom Center National Korean American Service & Education Consortium (NAKASEC) Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts Institute for Policy Studies, New Internationalism Project Korean Resource Center (KRC) HANA Center NAKASEC - Virginia Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN) Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (PLAN)
De Blasio, Chicago, L.A. Mayors Form Initiative to Help Immigrants
AM New York - September 17, 2014, by Ivan Pereira - Mayor Bill de Blasio and two of his national counterparts are...
AM New York - September 17, 2014, by Ivan Pereira - Mayor Bill de Blasio and two of his national counterparts are banding together to help immigrants become U.S. citizens.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti will join New York City in the Cities for Citizenship (C4C) initiative that helps streamline the citizenship process for foreigners. De Blasio said all three cities recognize that if they work on immigration reform the right way, it will be beneficial for all residents.
"From increased economic activity to larger voting and tax bases, the advantages of citizenship will not only expand opportunity to our immigrant families, but to all New Yorkers and residents nationwide," he said in a statement Wednesday.
Citi Community Development, the banking giant's wing that provides financial help for needy people, contributed $1.15 million to the initiative. Two national immigration groups, the Center for Popular Democracy and the National Partnership for New Americans, will coordinate the efforts among the three cities.
"Citi believes that citizenship is an asset that enables immigrants to gain financial capability, and building a national identity must go hand-in-hand with building a financial identity," Bob Annibale, the global director of Citi Community Development and Citi Microfinance, said in a statement.
New York City for NYCitizenship, the city's immigration aid group, will use the money to provide legal assistance for naturalization applications and help foreigners with any financial assistance during the citizenship process.
Naturalizing 684,000 immigrants will add up to $4.1 billion over 10 years to the city's economy, according to de Blasio.
"This win-win effort will help us create more inclusive cities that lift up everyone," he said.
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Conservatives May Control State Governments, But Progressives Are Rising
Common Dreams - March 13, 2015, by George Goehl, Ana María Archila, and Fred Azcarate - In November, conservatives...
Common Dreams - March 13, 2015, by George Goehl, Ana María Archila, and Fred Azcarate - In November, conservatives swept not only Congress, but a majority of statehouses. While gridlock in Washington is frustrating, the rightward lurch of statehouses could be devastating. Reveling in their newfound power, state lawmakers and their corporate allies are writing regressive policies that could hurt families by exacerbating inequality, further curtailing an already weakened democracy, and worsening an environmental crisis of global proportions.
From a law that would censor public university professors in Kansas to a governor who prohibits state officials from using the term “climate change” in Florida, ideologues in state capitols are wasting little time when it comes to enacting an extreme agenda. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Wisconsin officially enacted right to work legislation on Monday, a policy that’s shown to lower wages and benefits by weakening the power of unions. Missouri, New Mexico, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Illinois are all entertaining various versions of the law. In states like New York and Ohio, legislators are considering severe cuts to public education, while vastly expanding charter schools.
Of course, a look at key 2014 ballot initiatives shows voters held progressive values on issues like the minimum wage, paid sick days, and a millionaires tax. And just 36.4 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots in 2014, meaning that there is surely a silent majority sitting on the sidelines.
The path to policies that put families first is not short, but a bold coalition across the country took an aggressive step forward this week.
On March 11th, under the banner “We Rise,” thousands of people joined more than 28 actions in 16 states to awaken that silent majority and call their legislators to account. A joint project of National People’s Action, Center for Popular Democracy, USAction and other allies across the country, the message of the day was simple: our cities and states belong to us, not big corporations and the wealthy. We can work together and push our legislators to enact an agenda that puts people and the planet before profits. And at each local action, leaders unveiled their proposals for what that agenda would look like in their cities and states.
In Minnesota, grassroots leaders are fighting for a proposal to re-enfranchise over 44,000 formerly incarcerated people. In Nevada, our allies are agitating for a $15 minimum wage. In Illinois, we are organizing for closing corporate tax loopholes and a financial transaction tax (a “LaSalle Street tax”) that would help plug the state’s budget hole. With each of these proposals, we are moving from defense to offense and changing the conversation about race, democracy and our economy.
We’ve seen over and over again in American history, change starts close to home – in our towns, cities and states. On March 11th, we saw a fresh reminder of the power of local change. Our families and communities are defining this new front in American public life, and we will continue rising to challenge corporate power and win the policies that put people and planet first - not last.
If November was a wave election, then this Spring will be a wave of bottom-up people power activism. What starts with defending people and our democracy from an extreme corporate conservative agenda, will pivot to offense as grassroots organizations across the country fight to fundamentally reshape our government and our economy from the bottom up. Expect an unabashedly bold agenda that holds the potential for awakening the progressive majority and ushering in a new era in America, an era where our country works for everyone, not just the wealthy and well connected.
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Warren blasts Yellen for endorsing very white, very male regional Fed presidents
Warren blasts Yellen for endorsing very white, very male regional Fed presidents
Around this time last year, as another white male took the reins at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, the Fed’s...
Around this time last year, as another white male took the reins at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, the Fed’s archaic and opaque system of choosing its regional presidents started to come under fire. At first the criticism was over the way the system appeared to favor insiders. Patrick Harker, at the time the new Philadelphia Fed President, had sat on the regional Fed board that was tasked with filling that position. Later that summer the Dallas Fed would name Robert Kaplan, who is also white, as its president despite the fact that he was a director at the executive search firm that that regional Fed board hired to find candidates. When the Minneapolis Fed named Neel Kashkari its president later in 2015, groups like the Fed Up Coalition pointed out that while he was the only non-white regional president, he, like Harker and Kaplan, had former ties to Goldman Sachs.
Since these presidents have rotating votes on U.S. interest rate policy, many saw the selections as a critical failure to reflect the country’s diversity of gender, race and background. As it stands, 11 of the 12 regional Fed presidents are white, 10 of them are male, and none are black or Latino. Fed Up, a network of community organizations and labor unions calling for changes to the central bank, also points out that there has never been a black regional president in the Fed’s 102-year history.
To be sure, the central bank was set up in 1913 in this decentralized way to check the power of the Washington-based Fed Board, whose seven governors are nominated by the U.S. President and confirmed by the Senate in public hearings and votes. The Fed presidents scattered around the country, meanwhile, are quietly chosen by their regional directors (usually corporate, industry and civic heads) and then, again with little or no public input or transparency, approved by the Fed governors after a series of private interviews with them in Washington. All 12 presidents had their terms extended earlier this year.
So the stage was set on Tuesday for Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who some see as a potential running mate for U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, to make a point about diversity at the Fed while making things rather uncomfortable for Fed Chair Janet Yellen, who was testifying before the Senate Banking Committee – and who, it may be noted, is the first woman to lead the central bank:
Warren: “Does the lack of diversity among the regional Fed Presidents concern you?”
Yellen: “Yes, and I believe it is important to have a diverse group of policymakers who can bring different perspectives to bear. As you know, it’s the responsibility of the regional banks’ Class B and C directors to conduct a search and to identify candidates. The (Fed) Board reviews those candidates and we insist that the search be national and that every attempt be made to identify a diverse pool of candidates…”
Warren: “The Fed Board recently re-appointed each and every one of these presidents without any public debate or any public discussion about it. So the question I have is, if you’re concerned about this diversity issue, why didn’t you take (any) of these opportunities to say, ‘Enough is enough, let’s go back and see if we can find qualified regional Fed presidents who also contribute to the overall diversity of the Fed’s leadership’?”
Yellen: “We did undertake a thorough review of the re-appointments of the performances of the presidents. The Board of Governors has oversight of the reserve banks, there are annual meetings between the Board’s bank affairs committee and the leadership of those banks to review the performance of the presidents, and there were thorough reviews of…”
Warren: “But you’re telling me diversity is important and yet you signed off on all these folks without any public discussion about it. I appreciate your commitment to diversity and I have no doubt about it. I don’t question it. It just shows me that the selection process for regional Fed presidents is broken because the current process has not allowed you and the rest of the Board to address the persistent lack of diversity among the regional Fed presidents. I think that Congress should take a hard look at reforming the regional Fed selection process so that we can all benefit from a Fed leadership that reflects a broader array of both backgrounds and interests.”
As it happens, Clinton said last month that she, too, supports an ongoing push by Warren and other liberal members of Congress to exclude bankers from the regional Fed boards and to make the central bank more diverse.
By Jonathan Spicer
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Dreamers Deferred As Congress Lets DACA Deadline Pass
"For most of us, DACA was the only opportunity we had to come out of the shadows and show everyone what we are capable...
"For most of us, DACA was the only opportunity we had to come out of the shadows and show everyone what we are capable of doing, regardless of the legal status in which we stand in,” Aguilera said in a testimonial provided by the Center for Popular Democracy to ABC News...“With no clear path forward on the horizon to protect Dreamers, thousands of immigrant youth are left in limbo and in the sights of Trump’s deportation machine,” said Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy in a statement to ABC News.
Read the full article here.
Organize Florida activists protest Trump infrastructure plan
Progressive activists gathered on the shores of Lake Parker on Thursday to air their discontent with the Trump...
Progressive activists gathered on the shores of Lake Parker on Thursday to air their discontent with the Trump administration’s outline for a nationwide infrastructure improvement plan.
The plan, outlined broadly in a six-page memo released last month, amounts to placing heavy burdens on the poor through flat user fees like tolls, subsidizing private companies and ignoring public transportation, school facilities and clean energy, said activists with Organize Florida, a project of the Center for Popular Democracy, a left-leaning political advocacy group.
Read the full article here.
Should You Carry a Municipal ID Card?
OZY - April 29, 2014, by Pooja Bhatia - Comprehensive immigration reform is on again. No, it’s off again. No, it’s on...
OZY - April 29, 2014, by Pooja Bhatia - Comprehensive immigration reform is on again. No, it’s off again. No, it’s on again. Nope, it’s off again.
Take heart, CIR enthusiasts. As the back-and-forth over immigration reform enters its umpteenth year, a potential workaround might be coming to a city near you.
Since 2007, a handful of cities have issued municipal IDs to residents, regardless of their citizenship. The idea is to integrate undocumented immigrants by making it easier for them to open bank accounts, interact with the police, access city services and rent an apartment. Bringing the undocumented “out of the shadows” will improve civic life for everyone, proponents say.
It’s a warm-hearted move as well as a political calculation. The concept is generally popular in cities, which tend to lean liberal, and is sure to have long-range appeal among voters as national demographics shift. About a dozen cities are in some stage of the municipal ID process.
The line between protecting and branding residents can be a fine one.
But ID cards are not an easy way out of the immigration quagmire. Opponents argue that municipal IDs overstep local authority, could lead to fraud and lure terrorists. The earliest version won vicious backlash, including from federal authorities. Even those who support the cards stress the importance of sweating the small stuff, like card design and privacy controls. The big risk: Unless they’re popular with immigrants and non-immigrants alike, the ID cards can brand as outsiders the very people they attempt to embrace.
“It’s been trial and error for cities to even realize that it’s a risk and start guarding against it,” says Emily Tucker, an attorney at the Center of Popular Democracy who has studied the issue in depth.
This week, New York City will hold its first hearings on municipal ID legislation, a pet project of the new mayor, Bill de Blasio. If approved, New York’s program would be the most prominent of its kind. It would send a message, too, for New York City has a certain symbolic status in matters of security and immigration.
Proponents like Tucker are enthusiastic about New York’s foray into municipal IDs, if a bit wary. If not done right, they say, the ID cards won’t protect undocumented immigrants, but just sort and label them for easy deportation. The line between protecting and branding can be a fine one. The IDs tend to work best when other protections for undocumented residents are in place: confidentiality for city services, local law enforcement policies that limit interaction with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and other “sanctuary city” provisions. “Without those things, people won’t want to use the card — they’ll be too afraid,” says Tucker.
Cities vary enormously on this count: Some abide by the ICE’s “detainer requests,” holding suspected unauthorized immigrants in local jails until the federal authorities pick them up. Others refuse. Some jurisdictions allow police to act as ICE deputes. Others won’t allow police officers to inquire about immigration status.
California Highway Patrol officers lead an information session on obtaining a state driver’s license at the Mexican Consulate in San Diego, Calif., on April 23, 2014.
New Haven, Conn., was the first municipality to adopt local IDs, in 2007, after a robber stabbed an immigrant to death. According to reports, undocumented immigrants were dubbed “walking ATMs” — often, they carried cash, as they couldn’t open bank accounts. New Haven’s program faced some backlash, including, allegedly, from federal authorities: Less than two days after the city passed municipal ID legislation, the ICE raided homes in the area and detained 32 immigrants.
Although the city has stood by its program– it’s issued some 10,000 IDs– it’s not clear how functional the IDs are. Cashiers often don’t accept it, researchers found, and it served mostly to underscore the city’s pro-immigrant attitude.
Since 2007, Oakland, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and several localities in New Jersey have all joined suit. Programs in Richmond and Los Angeles have been approved, and local governments from Philadelphia to Iowa City and Phoenix are contemplating issuing cards, too.
The local ID programs are yet another instance of cities taking “an affirmative step toward securing interests of their residents in the face of congressional inaction,” says Peter Bailon, a lawyer at the progressive American Legislative and Issue Campaign Exchange. They also demonstrate cities’ ability to enact progressive agendas that likely wouldn’t fly nationally.
But are cities exceeding their authority? “It’s not just usurping but contravening federal law,” says Ira Melhman, spokesperson for the conservative Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). There’s controversy here. Although the federal government places control over immigration firmly within its authority, the law does not explicitly forbid the issuance of local IDs, proponents say. And the feds have tended to turn a blind eye to the programs.
Mehlman and others say they also worry about terrorism. They argue that municipal ID requirements are lax and could allow criminals to procure false identification. Official documentation, even if limited to a few municipal venues, could serve as “breeder documents” for other IDs, they say. New York state Senator Greg Ball blasted the municipal ID plan as the “de Blasio Terrorist Empowerment Act.”
ID proponents dismiss such fears as absurd. The IDs, they point out, have stringent eligibility requirements and limited jurisdiction. They don’t replace federal identification documents such as passports, social security cards or tax identification numbers. Their main concern is that the IDs actually be used.
It may not be so easy to circumvent the federal government though, even for cities that are relatively friendly to the undocumented, like New York. De Blasio’s administration has already issued notice that it could put out bid specifications for ID cards, but the City Council has lagged. Only 15 council members have come out saying they favor the legislation, short of the 26 needed for a majority.
Of course, with hearings starting tomorrow, that could change quickly. Are you ready for your New Yorker ID, New Yorkers?
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5 days ago
5 days ago