By Brendan T. Campbell, David S. Shapiro and Chief James C. Rovella

Firearm violence is more than a city problem where it glares brightly under the television lights. It is a regional problem no different than drunken driving, burglaries, and outbreaks of communicable diseases. Yes, it is both a public safety and public health problem because guns also get into the city from many different places. People come into the city from many different suburbs to work. We have formed the Capital Region Gun Buyback Coalition to broaden the message that gun violence is everyone’s concern, and we can all do something about it

A small cooperative effort driven by the Hartford Police and Hartford’s three trauma centers for the last four years is now expanding. The Stop & Shop Corporation, the Connecticut Trial Lawyers Association, Connecticut Transit, Lamar and Hope Street Ministries are among the new partners understanding the need for a regional solution to what is often perceived as only a city problem. And this is more than just a reaction to the shootings at Sandy Hook, which has brought renewed interest in understanding and preventing gun injuries and deaths. Gun violence has been a problem in American cities for decades and is now getting the benefit of increased attention to its devastating effects across cultural, economic and social boundaries.

Opponents will say that gun buy-back programs have not been proven to lower the incidence of firearm violence, but we believe that buybacks can work in cooperation with other law enforcement efforts that make it harder for criminals to obtain firearms. Buybacks take in unwanted firearms, they promote publicity around them to raise awareness about violence and they bring together community members to work together to address a complicated problem. With summer starting and the potential for random acts of violence to increase, a buyback gives that extra push to remove guns that all too often turn hot summer streets deadly.

To show how this can augment existing programs, let’s look at some established accomplishments. The Hartford Shooting Task Force was created to address increased gun violence in the city. Its one-year report last August showed: a 42 percent reduction in murders with a handgun or shotgun, a 30 percent reduction in gun assaults, 51 fewer gunshot victims than last year at the same time, 76 firearms seized and a homicide clearance rate of 67 percent. (The annual average is 20 percent and has been flat for 40 years.)  Moreover, the guns collected at recent buybacks in Hartford have been nearly identical to the guns confiscated from criminals by the Hartford Shooting Task Force.  Removing these unwanted guns from the community prevents them from being obtained by criminals.

Irresponsible individuals and accessible firearms are a dangerous combination and can result in a shooting, a suicide, and in those worst of cases, a mass shooting. Gun violence, when compared to disease, can be easily prevented with effective, common-sense measures. Suicide accounts for about half of all firearm deaths in our state. Firearms are the method used by more than half of older teen suicide victims, and suicide attempts with a gun are more likely than other means to be successful. Lethal means restriction is a tool physicians employ with patients contemplating suicide. Public health research has clearly established that unsafe storage of guns and ammunition is associated with an increased risk of suicide and unintentional gun injuries.

Gun violence is a community problem. Hartford is our community; it includes teachers, elected officials, parents, police officers, churches, parole officers, businesses, state and local officials, and everyone in between who calls Connecticut’s capital home. But this community needs to invest in the idea that meaningful change can happen through community engagement and responsible gun ownership. The Capital Region Gun Buyback Coalition is a strong forward step in that direction. On Saturday it will hold the first of three buybacks for planned for 2013.

Last December, two weeks before Sandy Hook, the smaller collaborative collected 181 unwanted working firearms, a 53-percent increase over the year before. This included 148 working handguns from Hartford and the surrounding suburbs. In the aftermath of the Newtown shootings and the renewed interest in gun violence prevention, additional buyback programs have been held in New Haven, Bridgeport and New London. New Haven even collected 21 assault rifles.

In the Capital Region, we embrace the idea that a gun buy-back program should be a part of the multifaceted public health and law enforcement approach to preventing firearm violence. Simply put: Removing unwanted guns from the community can only make Connecticut a safer place. A gun removed cannot be used.

Brendan T. Campbell, MD, MPH is a pediatric surgeon and the Medical Director of the Trauma Program at Connecticut Children’s; David S. Shapiro is a trauma surgeon and Associate Director of Surgical Critical Care at Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center; and James C. Rovella is Hartford’s Police Chief. From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Connecticut residents can drop off unwanted firearms at the Community Renewal Team’s office, 555 Windsor St., Hartford, in exchange for gift cards of $25 to $75.

HARTFORD — Leadership at Foodshare said they are outraged by the House Agriculture Committee’s vote to slash spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly Food Stamps) by $21 billion.

Foodshare and other local charities are already stretched to the breaking point trying to keep up with increased need as families in our state continue to feel the impact of the recession. Cuts to SNAP, or food stamps, would be devastating to our community, and charities like Foodshare cannot make up the difference.

“Make no mistake,” said Gloria McAdam, president and CEO of Foodshare, “these cuts to SNAP will take food from the refrigerators and kitchen tables of vulnerable low-income families struggling to get back on their feet in the wake of the recession.”

According to Foodshare,  two million people will lose benefits entirely, 210,000 kids will lose access to free school meals and another 850,000 households will see their benefits cut by an average of $90 per month.

These cuts come on top of across-the-board cuts for all SNAP beneficiaries beginning in November that will lower benefits by about $25 for a family of three. “That may not seem like much to you or me,” said McAdam, “but for a family scraping by, it matters a lot.”

McAdam said SNAP spending will constrict automatically as the economy recovers and people go back to work. Until then, the nation needs to ensure that families who have fallen on hard times can still put food on the table.

Foodshare serves 128,000 people each year, an increase of 30 percent since 2007, largely due to increased need in the recession. Food bank clients include households who have too much in income or assets to qualify for SNAP but who still struggle to feed their families, as well as SNAP participants whose benefits are inadequate to get them through the month.

SNAP benefits average less than $1.50 per person per meal, and over 90 percent of benefits are spent by day 21 of the month, leaving many families to turn to local charities to make ends meet. SNAP is targeted at our most vulnerable: 76 percent of SNAP households include a child, elderly person, or disabled person, and 91 percent of benefits go to households with gross income gross income at or below the poverty line.

The he issue now moves to the Republican-led House floor.

By Ann-Marie Adams, Op-Ed

HARTFORD – School reform is like baking a cake. You need all the ingredients to make it work, many experts say. So if state and city officials wonder why closing the achievement gap is moving slowly, perhaps they should revisit numerous reports that gave them a solid blueprint for progress.

In Connecticut, where Gov. Dannel Malloy has taken a leadership role in transforming urban education, diversity is the missing ingredient that has likely resulted in the tepid result unveiled at Hartford Public School’s 2013 State of the Schools symposium at the Bushnell Theater earlier this month. This news comes after the excitement of an educational reform bill passed in the General Assembly last year. However, teacher diversity has been marginalized in discussions about ed reform and submerged in contentious debates over testing, privatization, or charter vs public schools.

At the school district’s symposium, we were reminded of what works. The very first panel with Janice Brown of the much touted success story, the Kalamazoo Promise, made it clear: children do what they see. And if they don’t see images of themselves in the classroom, it is difficult to imagine beyond that.

Other experts have confirmed this idea. According to a 2004 study by the National Education Association, increasing the racial and ethnic diversity in the teaching workforce is directly linked to closing the academic achievement gap. Teacher diversity is about having culturally responsive teachers who understand students and adapt to different learning styles.

The NEA’s report also states that although teacher quality has been noted as an imperative for successful reform, the notion of diversity “is often marginalized rather than accepted as central to the quality of education.”

In Hartford, one of the state’s turnaround districts that received money and flexibility to make substantial changes, officials said the teaching force is almost 25 percent.That figure is questionable. Too many parents in the Hartford school district are seeing schools with nearly an all-white teaching staff “clueless” about their children’s needs and who lack cultural competency to interact with their parents.

Many parents have been encountering this problem before the early 2000 when Hartford started, in earnest, to close the achievement gap. Former Hartford Public School Superintendent Anthony Amato, hired to lead what some dubbed the most dismal school district in Connecticut, said on April 17, 1999: “We will never be last again!”

In 2000, Hartford schools surpassed New Haven’s school district on the Connecticut Mastery Test scores. Since then, Hartford has been inching its way upward on standardized tests, a unit used by administrators, politicians and parents to measure academic improvement.

Three school superintendents later, Hartford Public School is still inching along toward closing the achievement gap. But this time, the progress is highly scrutinized. There are more stakeholders—business partners, foundations, and savvy school reformers—who want accountability and quick results. This time, its even more of an imperative that the state, last in job creation, prepares a workforce for the future and to make every student college ready. The nation’s standing in the world also depends on this singular fact, and many politicians conceded that much.

“We didn’t get into this problem in a short time,” said Malloy during his remark at the symposium. “It took a long time to get into this situation. It’s going to take time to get out of it. Change is hard.”

Yes, we know change is hard and it takes time—especially in the state with the tag line: “land of steady habits.”

But like the governor concluded himself: that line made popular by Mark Twain in the gilded age, a period when the city was the richest in the country, doesn’t work anymore. Hartford is now the second poorest city of its size. And Connecticut has “lost its edge” as a leader in education. So clearly, we can’t keep going in that direction.

And if we don’t hold everyone accountable for real results then, as many recognized, “we’re simply using words to describe what makes us feel best.”

Therefore, we should hold districts accountable for marginalizing the issue of diversity. We know this is the missing ingredient. The human resource is abundant in Connecticut with many unemployed teachers of color. School officials should stop making excuses as to why they cannot add that missing ingredient and hire more teachers of color.

We already know that diversity works.

Dr. Ann-Marie Adams is completing a manuscript about race, reform and education in Connecticut. 

By Christopher R. Stone, Op-Ed

Connecticut’s flagship University is blessed with a top-notch faculty, cutting edge research facilities, stand-out sports, dedicated administrative staff, and an intelligent, enthusiastic student population; but it needs sustained, reliable public utilities to sustain itself.   It needs water.

That’s why the plan to have the Metropolitan District (MDC) provide much needed water to the University of Connecticut in Storrs is a win-win. Despite UConn’s effective conservation efforts in recent years, its water supply cannot meet either its present or future needs.

Fortunately, the MDC has both quality and quantity of water to offer.  Serving the communities of the Greater Hartford region – 400,000 people in 11 towns – with abundant, clean and reliable drinking water, the MDC is perfectly-suited to respond to the diminishing supply and dire need of the University and the Town of Mansfield.

Water is surely a scarce and precious resource across the country.  But in this region, geography, technology and foresight has placed the MDC in an enviable position. The numbers tell the story.

Total water consumption by MDC customers has gone from approximately 66 million gallons per day in 1988 to just under 49 million gallons per day now. Water-efficient washing machines use only 10 gallons of water per load as opposed to the 40 gallons used by older models.  Shower heads have decreased flows.  Toilets use less water.  Industrial facilities are using recycled water for manufacturing purposes.

The bottom line – the MDC has more than 12 million gallons of drinking water per day within its existing reservoir system available to meet the current and future needs of its existing customer base and other areas of the State where water supply is scarce. Why not step up to help?

As the owner, and arguably trustee, of the state’s largest reservoir system, the MDC was obliged to respond to the request to submit a proposal to share a small portion of this valuable natural resource while preserving the treasured Farmington River. The MDC option to respond to our state’s flagship university balances this commitment with the desire to stabilize water rates by expanding the customer base.  Unfortunately, the common sense facts have not detracted our critics from casting doubts on an otherwise solid plan.

The MDC has developed two alternative plans to bring up to 5 million gallons per day of water to Storrs and Mansfield from the terminus of the distribution system in East Hartford.  With either plan, there will be absolutely no detrimental effect on the Farmington River (West or East Branch) or the Farmington River Watershed Basin.

Also eclipsed in the unnecessary acrimony is the fact that this is not the first time the MDC has sought to expand its client base by selling excess capacity.  Just over a decade ago, there was an MDC proposal to sell water to Portland.  Initially, vocal critics stepped forward.  Ultimately, however, cooler heads prevailed, the critics withdrew their opposition, and Portland became an MDC customer.

Some individuals have suggested that rather than share its designated drinking water resources with a state institution and fellow municipality in need, the MDC should simply dump any excess drinking water into the Farmington River. Practically, dumping five million gallons of water a day into a river with flows of between 400 and 1200 million gallons of water per day is inconsequential.  From a public policy standpoint, why lose perfectly good drinking water when there are communities in need?

The Root, News Report

The FBI’s recent addition to its Most Wanted Terrorists list has reopened long-dormant wounds from America’s racial past. Assata Shakur’s (formerly Joanne Chesimard) distinction of being the first woman on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists List evokes the triumphant and tragic legacy of the black power movement.

It was during an era whose high point, between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s, witnessed the exhilarating highs of Stokely Carmichael’s defiant declaration of “black power” and the street-swaggering bravado of the leather-jacketed Black Panthers, as well as the low points of fratricidal violence among militants. That violence was aided and abetted by illegal surveillance of law-enforcement agencies, most notably the FBI’s notorious Counterintelligence Program, or COINTELPRO.

For almost 30 years, Shakur has resided in an undisclosed location in Cuba. She is recognized by its government as a revolutionary fugitive in exile, even as U.S. authorities have sought to extradite her as a cold-blooded cop killer. Shakur’s life in Cuba has been marked by a tenuous duality: She is at once venerated by supporters — including the Cuban government, which contributes to her living expenses — and increasingly vilified by U.S. officials, who have placed a $2 million bounty on her head.

Read more

Ponte Al Día, Op-Ed

If there are any winners in the immigration reforms set out by the bipartisan Senate “Gang of 8” in the 844-page bill they released Tuesday night, it would have to be big business — which will see a significant increase in visas allotted to high-skilled workers and a new system of temporary visas for agricultural workers and low-skill laborers — and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — which not only is entrusted with all aspects of border security but gets a hefty chunk of the bill’s $17 billion price tag to do it.

The bill satisfies few on the left or the right. Republican Rep. Lamar Smith has already slammed the legislation, and hours after the bill was released anti-immigration activists were already protesting outside Sen. Marco Rubio’s office. The conservative Republican and Tea Party favorite quickly released a statement saying the legislation will implement the toughest border security and immigration law enforcement in U.S. history before “a single” undocumented immigrant is able to apply for permanent residence in the U.S.

And that is one of the concessions of the bill that concerns immigration advocates. The bill requires DHS to submit (within six months) a “Comprehensive Southern Border Security Strategy” to achieve the agreed effectiveness rate (90 percent of entries at high risk border sections are apprehended or turned back). Presumably the enhanced security measures would include double-layer fencing, use of unmanned drones and deployment of thousands of new border patrol agents. No undocumented immigrant already resident in the U.S. will be able to file for registered provisional status until this security strategy is approved.

After that, provided the undocumented immigrant has a clean legal record, can pay a $500 fee and the assessed taxes, he or she can register for the provisional status (which does not permit access to any of the benefits of permanent residency but does prevent summary deportation).

Provisional status can be renewed after six years, with payment of another fee. After 10 years, those with provisional status should be able to pay a $1,000 penalty and apply for permanent resident status, which would not be accorded until all existing family and employment green cards have cleared the system.

All of which means undocumented immigrants would have close to a 15 year wait for the possibility of permanent resident status. (DREAM-Act eligible young immigrants and agricultural workers would have an expedited 5-year wait until they can apply for permanent residence.)

And that’s in the ideal.

If the DHS were unable to complete the security strategy to Congress’ satisfaction within the allotted 180-day period, however, a “Southern Border Security Commission” would be appointed (consisting of the governors of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas and border security experts designated by the President, the Speaker of the House, the House minority leader, the Senate Majority Leader, and the Senate Minority leader) and registry for provisional status would start only after this body could agree on a security strategy for the border. Right now that would mean Jan Brewer, Rick Perry, Susana Martinez and Jerry Brown would play a huge part in whether undocumented immigrants ever see the possibility of a green card.

The Gang of 8’s bill has satisfied neither LGBT advocates (it does not include same-sex spouses in family visas) nor faith-based advocates (who decry the exclusion of siblings and adult children). But the switch from family-reunification priority to skills-based merit visas fits the Gang of 8‘s materialistic approach to reforming immigration. There are benefits to extending the length of time undocumented immigrants stay at provisional status — namely, they continue to generate revenue (rent, food, sales tax and automatic payments into social security, among others) without any access to social security benefits, or government-assisted health care or educational aid. Moreover, the fees, penalties and back taxes to be levied on the road to a green card, no less citizenship, would provide a revenue stream of its own.

Low-skill guest workers also generate income for the municipalities that host them, and under this plan (which creates a new bureau to administrate the W-visas) they would conveniently be sent home after a three-year stint.

In many ways, the practical proposals in the bill are fitted to what we’ve learned from Georgia, Alabama and Arizona: economies are devastated when we institute punitive immigration measures.

But the Gang of 8’s approach is hard to love. And the message it projects couldn’t be more different than the one we are fond of quoting from the Emma Lazarus poem on the Statue of Liberty. No huddled masses for us, thanks, unless they’re temporary and go home after three years. And breathing free? That’s got to wait another 15 years.

New America Media Andrew Lam, Helen Zia and Chitra Divakaruni, Commentary
Ed. Note: In early April the Associated Press announced that it would no longer use the word “illegal” when referring to undocumented immigrants. The decision has been hailed by immigrant rights groups and others, who say the term is a pejorative that dehumanizes large swaths of the U.S. population, immigrant and native-born alike. Below, authors Andrew Lam, Helen Zia and Chitra Divakaruni offer their own views on the term “illegal” through the lens of the immigrant experience. 

My Americanization, A Love Story 
Andrew Lam

When the Cold War ended and refugees from Vietnam fled en masse, western countries agreed on a cutoff date for hopeful entries. Up until then, anyone who escaped from communist Vietnam was given automatic political refugee status.

After July 2, 1989, however, most were deemed “economic” migrants – or what we refer to as “illegal” — and forcefully repatriated.

For one family, the sudden shift proved a cruel twist of fate.

They came in two boats. One – carrying the father and two sons — reached Hong Kong before the cutoff date. The other – with the mother and two more sons — came a few days after. They became “illegal immigrants” and were sent back to Vietnam.

That experience showed me how labels can hold out the promise of a future, or rob you of it. In America, the two boys grew to become an engineer and a doctor. The mother and her two sons in Vietnam, however, were forced to depend on relatives to get by. Neither boy went to school.

I think of them when I hear the word “illegal.” And I think of my own experience.

My family left Vietnam in the aftermath of war. We fled without passports, entering the Philippines illegally, without entry permits or visas. We later arrived in America.

My Americanization story is a love story, a success story. Had I not been granted a place here, I cannot think of where I might have ended up. Perhaps sent back to Vietnam to toil in the new economic zone set up for children of the bourgeois class.

I certainly would not be on a book tour around the United States, speaking of the Vietnamese American experience and the transformational power that comes with giving immigrants in this country a fighting chance.

All Criminals from Mars Report to the INS!
Helen Zia

There’s a TV commercial I remember from my early childhood, more than half a century ago. It was a US government public service announcement, of all things — a grainy, black-and-white cartoon ordering “aliens” to report their whereabouts or face dire consequences.

The faces of the cartoon figures were featureless, almost inhuman, making it clear that an alien had more in common with a Martian than an American. That PSA appeared every year for most of my childhood, popping up while I watched Star Trek or the Three Stooges — and I hated it.

There was something creepy, even shameful about the ad. Still, I didn’t connect the faceless cartoon aliens to my mother and father, who were immigrants from China.

I was born in the US and therefore an American, thanks to Wong Kim Ark’s lawsuit that was decided by the Supreme Court in 1898. But not my parents, they had not yet become naturalized Americans. It took me several years before I realized that the creepy “aliens” in the PSA were people like my mom and dad.

My parents never talked about this PSA with their children, nor did they ever tell us that they had once been threatened with deportation for overstaying their visas at the time of China’s Communist revolution. Because they had some American-born infants, including this writer, the INS allowed them to stay.

But the stain of being “aliens” never washed away, especially during the austerity years of the Reagan administration in the 1980s. Suddenly the issue of “aliens” turned even uglier. An extremist, histrionic wind stuck the word “illegal” onto the word “alien,” turning my Martian parents into something worse: “illegal aliens,” criminals from Mars.

For the last three decades, these dehumanizing words have been applied to people like my parents. It’s about time to call out this degrading language for what it is, and to return humanity back to those people, who, for whatever reason, are without documents. Now maybe some reasonable immigration policies can be made for human beings, not Martians.

The Words That Hurt Us
Chitra Divakaruni

I came to this country in the 1970s as the holder of a coveted “green card,” the official name of which was (and still remains) the Alien Registration Card. For years, every time I looked at that card, it made me cringe. I felt strange and un-American, of a different species. It took years of living around kind, helpful Americans for that term to stop stinging.

Thus it is with pleasure that I read of the Associated Press’s decision to drop the term “illegal immigrant” from its stylebook.

The term had several technical problems associated with it. It was an oxymoron (since an immigrant is a person who has entered a country legally); it was inaccurate (an action is illegal, not a person). But most of all, it was a term rife with prejudice. It lumped thousands of people into a single, negative category and made it easy for us to judge them as some kind of parasite feeding stealthily upon America’s bounty. It allowed us, through two brief words, to de-humanize them.

The term “illegal immigrant” harmed the people to whom it was applied, yes, but it harmed the rest of us, too, by promoting attitudes of superiority — and racism. It is easy to turn such attitudes — once condoned by law — on anyone who looks different from us, by whom we feel threatened. It is easy to blame them for the troubles of the nation. Ultimately, this can only weaken America.

Andrew Lam is an editor with New America Media and the author of three books, including his latest, Birds of Paradise Lost. Helen Zia, author of Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People, is an American journalist and scholar who has covered Asian American communities and social and political movements. Chitra Divakaruni is an award-winning author, poet and teacher. Her books include The Mistress of Spices and Sister of My Heart.

Dear Editor

I read that Gov. Dan Malloy appointed Andrea Comer to the State Board of Education and the General Assembly will vote on it soon. I vehemently oppose this move by the governor. Ms. Comer, I’m sure, is an intelligent and civic- minded woman. But as a parent of three children in the Hartford School system, I feel strongly about the governor’s latest appointment.There is no way I feel Ms. Comer should be on the state board that actually voted to giver her school money and might probably do so again.

I didn’t say anything when they put her in charge of Jumoke Academy at Milner School—even though she has no experience educating students. I saw that as a political appointment for the work she does for politicians. And I figured the move served her political ambition.

Besides, I read somewhere that the same board that she was appointed to approved funding for the school that she runs. Please. What kind of message are you sending those children and people in Connecticut? We might not be as visible and vocal Mr. Malloy. But you best believe we are not stupid.

There are plenty of other black people, especially educated and compassionate black females who are well qualified for the position on the State Board of Education. And they are not hard to find in Connecticut.

Do the right thing. And find individuals who are not politically connected in the same North End group with Abe Giles and whose only political agenda is the welfare of kids. Thank you.

Simone B.

 Hartford

By Patrick Osio, Special to The Hartford Guardian

In the coming immigration reform debate the nation must return to the doctrine which governed through the 19^th and much of the 20^th centuries. To wit: Immigration policy must be based on what is good for the nation, not the immigrant.

Congressional representatives of both Houses must stop blaming illegal immigration on the immigrant who illegally crosses the border in search of economic opportunities not present in their home country. The blame lies with political decisions made by past and present members of the House and Senate.

Ignoring the issue for the benefit of political campaign contributions and favoritism to business interests since the early 1940’s caused the abandonment of the most successful immigration policy that made the nation great by supplying it with dedicated and fully committed loyal citizens from all countries in the world.

As early as 1947, then President Harry Truman noted that the undocumented entry along the nation’s southern border was becoming epidemic asking Congress to pass laws prohibiting such hiring. Congress ignored his request allowing the unrestrained flow and hiring to continue.

President Eisenhower guided in part by a New York Times article reading, ”The rise in illegal border-crossing by Mexican ‘wetbacks’ to a current rate of more than 1,000,000 cases a year has been accompanied by a curious relaxation in ethical standards extending all the way from the farmer-exploiters of this contraband labor to the highest levels of the Federal Government” in 1954, launched Operation Wetback deporting over one-million illegal entrants. The operation was hailed as a success, but in reality  the southern border had been turned into a turn sty. An again, nothing was done about the hiring practices that was the invitation for illegal entries.

Politicos became adept at blaming Mexico and Mexican citizens for the illegal immigration phenomenon while taking their cue to say much but do nothing from their business political contributors and gaining favor with the nation’s nativist of which many Congressional members are among their ranks. There was little care about the animosity and resentment citizens held against these economic opportunity seekers. This led to the wide held belief that it’s not the jobs that attract; rather it is the lawlessness of Mexicans because after all, the U.S. is a nation of laws.

President Ronald Reagan showed the necessary resolve to tackle the issue. And tackle it he did. He pushed and had Congress pass the first truly immigration reform, which for the first time made it a Federal offense to hire illegal immigrants. The passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in 1986, was to hail a new era on immigration policy and bring back the nation on course returning to an immigration policy that was best for the country.

But politicos guided by and influenced by special interests gutted the sections pertaining to illegally hiring and in many cases when the then Immigration and Naturalization Service attempted to enforce illegal hiring of undocumented workers, Congressional members steped in to stop them. It was a shameful practice but no one spoke up against those Congressional representatives.

So IRCA was blamed as a failure. The failure was not the law; it was the political hypocrisy of our elected body. Had IRCA been properly enforced, illegal immigration would not be the problem it is today.

So now we are leaving it up to Congress to once again come to the table and provide us with WHAT? More of the same?  If so, we will be no further ahead than we were in 1986.

There is no need for long and prolonged debate on the issue. It is as simple as revisiting IRCA and adjust it but with clear mandate for strict adherence to the sections prohibiting hiring of undocumented workers, and forcing the agricultural sector to comply with IRCA’s mandate regarding the use of the H-2A Temporary Agricultural Guest Worker Program. IRCA’s probation section, wrongly labeled Amnesty, can be duplicated as written but with stricter controls and enforcement. It’s all there.

Once this is done, the work can begin on making the other changes to keep the flow of highly skilled and educated immigrants that are in high demand and needed to continue the nation’s growth.

It is simply a matter of doing right by the nation, not the politicians and their patrons.

_____________________________________________________

Patrick Osio is the Editor of HispanicVista.com. Contact at: PosioJr@aol.com 

The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), Pub.L. 99–603, 100 Stat. 3359, enacted November 6, 1986, also Simpson-Mazzoli Act, is an Act of Congress which reformed United States immigration law.

In brief the act:^[1]

• Mandated stronger border enforcement
• Required employers to attest to their employees’ immigration status.
• Made it illegal to knowingly hire or recruit unauthorized immigrants.
• Amended the H-2 temporary agricultural guest worker visa creating the H-2A visa
• Legalized certain seasonal agricultural illegal immigrants.
• Legalized illegal immigrants who entered the United States before January 1, 1982 and had resided there continuously with the penalty of a fine, back taxes due, and admission of guilt. About three million illegal immigrants were granted legal status.

Introduced in the Senate as S. 1200 by Alan K. Simpson on May 23, 1985

Committee consideration by: Senate Judiciary, Senate Budget

Passed the Senate on September 19, 1985 (69–30)

Passed the House on October 9, 1986 (voice vote after incorporating H.R. 3810, passed 230–166)

Reported by the joint conference committee on October 14, 1986; agreed to by the House on October 15, 1986 (238–173) and by the Senate on October 17, 1986 (63–24)

Signed into law by President Ronald Reagan on November 6, 1986