{"id":2540,"date":"2007-03-15T13:53:54","date_gmt":"2007-03-15T13:53:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/the-new-bedford-raid.html"},"modified":"2007-03-15T13:53:54","modified_gmt":"2007-03-15T13:53:54","slug":"the-new-bedford-raid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/the-new-bedford-raid.html","title":{"rendered":"The New Bedford Raid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, there was a federal immigration raid on a leather-goods factory in New Bedford, MA. Here is a timeline of the raid<\/a> . <\/p>\n

Jeff Jacoby:<\/a> <\/p>\n

\n
\n

SUPPOSE YOU LEARN that a New England manufacturer is exploiting its
\nemployees, many of them illegal immigrants, with wretched working conditions. It
\nfines them for talking on the job, refuses to pay overtime, and penalizes them
\nfor bathroom breaks of more than two minutes, all in addition to low wages, long
\nhours, and squalid facilities. What do you do?<\/p>\n

Well, if you’re the United States government, you send armed agents to haul
\nthe workers off in shackles to a military base 100 miles away, then fly scores
\nof them more than 2,000 miles to a holding pen in Texas. You provide the
\nfrightened detainees with little information and no access to lawyers. You act
\nso rashly that many of those you seize are separated from their children and
\ncan’t get word to spouses or babysitters. You display such ineptitude, in fact,
\nthat babies end up in the hospital, dehydrated, after their nursing mothers are
\ntaken away.<\/p>\n

The company’s owner and managers, meanwhile, you arrest, charge, and release
\non bail. They reopen for business the next day.<\/p>\n

That pretty much sums up last week’s federal immigration raid on Michael
\nBianco Inc., a leather-goods factory in New Bedford, which has been deservedly
\ncondemned as a humanitarian fiasco. But it is more than that. It is also an
\nobject lesson in the incoherence of American immigration policy, and in the harm
\nbeing caused by the national obsession with, and hostility toward , illegal
\nimmigrants.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

snip<\/em><\/p>\n

If tens of millions of drivers consistently break the interstate speed limit, do
\nwe assume that they are all criminals who should lose their licenses and be
\nbanned from the highways? No: A more plausible explanation is that the speed
\nlimit is too low for safe highway driving and ought to be raised. By the same
\ntoken, if hundreds of thousands of immigrants come here illegally each year, is
\nit realistic to conclude that we have a massive crime problem for which a
\nferocious crackdown is the only solution? Perhaps it is the case instead that
\nAmerica’s immigration quotas are simply too low for the world’s most dynamic
\neconomy. And perhaps the persistent influx of industrious workers is not a
\nplague to be cursed, but a blessing to be better managed.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Cardinal O’Malley, in today’s Globe:<\/a> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n

The other issue that demands attention is the fact that, while immigration
\nreform is urgent, the needs of the women and children in New Bedford are
\ndesperate. Their condition is partly the result of a "broken system," but the
\nconcrete, crying needs of the most vulnerable people impacted by this raid must
\nbe addressed before we set out to fix the system.<\/p>\n

It is good that steps have been taken by federal and state agencies to
\nrespond to the needs of the families that were impacted and that the courts are
\nreviewing this matter. But I am concerned about some of the principles guiding
\nthe response. For example, in order to be released from custody those arrested
\nin New Bedford had to assert that they were "the sole caretaker" of their
\nchildren. The question is intended to guarantee one parent or caretaker for each
\nchild, but reports indicate that this goal has not been met.<\/p>\n

More important, the question fails to produce an acceptable humanitarian
\npolicy. Mothers can be separated from their children, and perhaps deported, as
\nlong as there would be a caretaker for the children remaining in Massachusetts.
\nImmigration law and policy are complex, but a test of "sole caretaker or parent"
\nas the determinant of being able to remain united with one’s children fails the
\ntest of humane response. That failure is all too well known by the families
\nimpacted by the events of last week.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, there was a federal immigration raid on a leather-goods factory in New Bedford, MA. Here is a timeline of the raid . Jeff Jacoby: SUPPOSE YOU LEARN that a New England manufacturer is exploiting its employees, many of them illegal immigrants, with wretched working conditions. It fines them for talking on the job,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe New Bedford Raid - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/the-new-bedford-raid.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The New Bedford Raid - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Last week, there was a federal immigration raid on a leather-goods factory in New Bedford, MA. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}