Tag Archives: Utah

Agents decide who are illegal immigrants (raid in Utah) by skin color

In Utah, DHS Raids Raise Concerns
By Justin Rood – December 13, 2006, 1:16 PM

A troubling report from the DHS immigration raids yesterday, from the Salt Lake (Utah) Tribune. In this case, DHS agents allegedly separated workers by their skin color — light-skinned were considered citizens, dark-skinned got scrutiny. Predicatably, they swept up at least one dark-skinned U.S. citizen up with immigrant workers:

If only for a few minutes, Maria felt like an ”illegal alien” in her homeland – the United States of America. Continue reading

It’s the Rich Entrepeneurs, Stupid

All across the U.S., including here in Utah, thousands of arrests of immigrants have been made this week in a Homeland Security Secretary “Operation Wagon Train”.

While poor working people have been carted off, leaving their small children and other family members frightened and alone, the rich owners of the companies that employed the immigrants, who are claimed to be undocumented, sit comfortably in their homes without facing any penalties for not following proper procedure in hiring workers.

To top this off, the owner had been told of the upcoming raid, but was told not to inform the workers.

Further, families are not being allowed contact with their arrested loved one. Workers in the raids were placed on “administrative arrest”. A day after his wife was arrested in the Hyrum raid at Swift & Co., Tony Ivarra hadn’t heard about her. The couple has a 9-year-old daughter. “I don’t know how she is, I don’t know anything,” he said in Spanish at a community informational meeting, which was conducted mostly in Spanish, for families affected by Tuesday’s raid. Leo Bravo, director of the Multicultural Center of Cache Valley, said that the arrests had left many broken families and his Logan center will be open 24 hours a day to help those in need. Families and friends took in children who were left stranded when their parents were arrested.

It’s likely that many of those arrested will face deportation.

Now there’s some passionate conservatism for you – good ‘ol family values. Protect the rich business owner and hisfamily while his workers and their families incur inhumane charges and detainment.

More on salary increases

Also in today’s news is this item:

Utah County leaders’ salaries rising: Growth to help cover increases
By the end of 2007, Utah County commissioners will have received nearly $20,000 in salary increases in just three years.
      But they’re not alone. Other elected officials in Utah County benefited from a pay raise at the start of 2005 and will receive a collective 9 percent pay increase next year as part of the new $73.8 million budget county commissioners recently adopted for 2007.

Nine percent?  Why do these officials get such a significant increase when Utah can’t even decide on raising its minimum wage?

Photo
Deseret Morning News graphic

Commissioners determine raises for the county’s elected officials by following the advice of the Career Service Council. The council is a board of three people — none of them county commissioners — who compare like positions and salaries in the county to those across the country.

Sort of like the 12 person panel that spent $50,000 to determine if Utah should raise its minimum wage (not!)?

      According to White, the council found that a comparative composite salary for county commissioners elsewhere is about $103,000.
      County employees are generally given a cost-of-living salary increase of about 3-4 percent annually. However, elected officials are not, and they most likely won’t receive another raise next year.

I realize that each county decides how to spend its money but this is provided to point out as an example how fiscal decision making regarding income/salaries is not equitable.  Elected officials and other “leaders” seem to always get the big pay increases while the folks who work to pay their salaries have to work two and three jobs to put food on their tables. 

There’s something wrong with this picture.

Why is Raising Minimum Wage a Question?

The Utah Governor’s Office is going to release a “study” on raising minimum wage this Thursday. The “study” cost $50,000 and had 12 people on the “study” panel. The “study” resulted in no conclusive recommendations, therefore waiting until Congress raises the federal minimum wage (which hasn’t been done in eight years).

Why is it that it takes a panel and tens of thousands of dollars to decide to raise incomes to liveable (from poverty) standards? Other fiscal issues that do not impact human needs don’t experience the same process. Whenever legislators and other officials have a vote on raising their salaries, there is no panel or special funding involved to conduct a study.

Republicans, according to the article, “suspect” that most minimum wage earners are teens. But an organization that advocates for the homeless and low income has done studies that show less than 20% of minimum wage earners are teens. And so what if they are? Most teenagers I know have jobs because their families need them to help support themselves because of the low family income.

There should be absolutely no question that the ordinary working citizen’s income needs to be raised. End of story.

HUMAN RIGHTS DAY EVENTS

TODAY – Sunday, December 10 – Human Rights Day

Human Rights Education Center of Utah
United Nations Human Rights Day Website
AfterDowningStreet.org’s Human Rights and Impeachment Day
Human Rights Watch

Impeach for a change!
Meet and discuss ways to recruit others in our community to sign the petition to have Bush and Cheney impeached for the crimes that they have committed.
2:00 PM until 3:00 PM
451 East 400 North Reeves Building, Room 250
Directions
Locate the College of Eastern Utah Campus in Price, Utah and go to the Reeves Building. Come to room 250 at 2:00pm.

Amnesty International Holiday Write-A-Thon
1-5pm
4th Floor of the City Library (SLC)
Join us in this nationwide event to write letters on behalf of individuals at risk of urgent human rights abuses and send letter and cards of hope to prisoners of conscience around the world. You are encouraged to bring writing materials and stamps to this event, or drop off materials beforehand. Coming together to write holiday greetings to prisoners of conscious.
More information

In Honor of UN Human Rights Day
Salt Lake City Public Library
210 East 400 South, Main Auditorium
1:30 pm “The Iron Wall”
A must see documentary recommended for anyone concerned with the quest for a just and peaceful resolution of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict – a film that takes a clear stand while showing genuine empathy for both
2:30 pm Anna Baltzer “Witness in Palestine”
Anna is a Jewish American, grand daughter of a Holocaust survivor, Columbia University graduate, Fulbright scholar and volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service. Anna is currently touring the US with her first book: “Witness in Palestine: Journal of a Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories.”
Sponsored by Utahns for a Just Peace in the Holy Land

More on Iraq Study Group Report

In today’s news:

Iraq Group Study Report.

Utah Iraq vets perceptions of the report.

Iraq Report

Hatch: We can’t go home losers
Even though an Iraq Study Group’s report has concluded that the president’s Iraq policy has failed and must be changed and has assessed the situation in Iraq as bleak until changes for withdrawal are implemented:

Sen. Orrin Hatch cautioned that America needs to stick with the fight, saying “we can’t go home losers.”
Hatch said it was worthwhile to have the bipartisan panel study the issue, but reserved judgment on some recommendations, particularly the study group’s key suggestion that combat troops be withdrawn by early 2008.
“Losing is not an option,” Hatch said. “This is not just an Iraq war, this is a war against worldwide terrorism where Iraq is one area of conflict. We can’t ignore it’s an important area of conflict and we can’t just pick up and leave because the Democrats want to.”

Meaning if we can’t have total control over the resources there, those that are financially benefiting from that control “lose”.

The rest of the article delves into the rest of Utah’s delegation’s responses to the report. No member of Utah’s delegation is making a commitment to U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

Yet a recent survey conducted by the The Iraq Center for Research & Strategic Studies shows that Iraqis want the Troops to leave

iraqpoll-us-out.jpg

More than half of the 2000 participants said they want all the US troops out now, the remainder want the withdrawal to begin immediately. The economy is a big problem for most Iraqi’s as well which isn’t surprising—The Iraqis also feel that since the Democrats won big time in November they are hoping that they’ll be able to help change policy.

See the video here.

Mobile Home Residents Running Out of Time

The Salt Lake Tribune has a piece today regarding the eviction of residents in a Midvale Mobile Home Park, resembling the simlar continuing saga of the Cottonwood Heights Mobile Home Residents being evicted. A developer has bought the land (sound familiar?) and plans to build townhomes on it. Residents have until January 31 to leave. Many are on fixed incomes and cannot afford to move their mobile homes. And they don’t know where they will be able to find housing.

What a travesty. I think that if developers are going to be permitted to purchase such land, there should be a clause that requires the developer to provide aid to the residents to move into affordable housing instead of leaving residents “out in the cold”, so to speak.

Getting messages out

The Deseret News today has an article about a woman in a wheelchair stopping traffic on a highway to call attention to the lack of health insurance her husband is able to get for treatment of a medical condition. Medicare won’t pay for the treatment that he needs.

Police met the woman and her supporters at the intersection of the protest and compromised on escorting her around the intersection with her signs.

I had to cringe, however, at this:

….traffic speeds on Bangerter are too high in early evening hours to ensure Landers’ safety and that she would more effectively call attention to her story if she told it to a nearby newspaper reporter.
If she had wanted to stay on the sidewalk and hold a sign, officers said, they had no problem with that.
“I’ve tried everything else,” Landers said with tears in her eyes.

Uh, we all know that the media does not cover everything and when this woman says she has tried everything, I believe her. I’ll bet she has written letters and contacted newspapers and this was a desperate measure on her part.

And guess what – it made the news.

Miller Defends the New Arena Name

Today’s Salt Lake Tribune has an article in which Entrepenuer Larry H. Miller Defends the name of the Center formerly known as Delta.

I find these comments of his particularly disturbing:

Miller said he has heard complaints from Utahns, but when he asks them about nuclear waste and storage, they cannot provide answers.
“I would ask them before they just hit a panic button when they hear the word ‘nuclear waste’ that they at least understand what it is that’s done there, stored there, what that business is about,” he said.
He later added: “I want to listen and learn and see what [people have] got to say if it’s rational.”

Every Utahn I have spoken to does have a rational solution and explanation. I haven’t run into anyone yet who hesitates at what the solution is for storing toxic waste:

Keep it in the state in which it is generated. Stop generating it if there is nowhere to store it in your state

.

I question what people Miller has talked to (and how many). He needs to look at and read the polls.

Meanwhile, I still support the boycott of all Miller holdings, since he has chosen a name for our state basketball team center that portrays Utah as a nuclear waste dump. That should do wonders for tourism in our state.