This week, it’s the 104th anniversary of Ellis Island’s one-day peak – the day when more immigrants were welcomed than any other in American history. On April 17, 1907, 11,747 immigrants became Americans – and that was just at Ellis Island.

Today, 104 years later, America is stuck in the mud with a broken immigration system. Americans want reform that unites families, promotes fair employment practices, and restores America’s place as a nation that welcomes those seeking freedom from persecution and a better way of life.

This week, Immigrants’ List — a bipartisan political action committee dedicated to electing pro-immigration lawmakers – unveiled the 2011 inductees into the Immigration Hall of Shame. In the Hall of Shame are California’s own, Reps. Ed Royce (#3) and Brian Bilbray (#6), who have earned places alongside the likes of Michele Bachmann and Steve King.

Hall of Shame – April 2011 Inductees

1. Rep. Steve King (R-IA) – A man who cites the Bible in his opposition to immigration reform, King favors an electrified wire border fence, arguing “we do that with livestock all the time.” King believes that undocumented immigrants can be detected from their clothing and “the type of grooming they might have,” and labeled the DREAM Act “amnesty.” Alarmingly, King vice chairs the House Immigration Subcommittee – the first stop for every immigration bill.

2. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) – According to Lamar Smith, the guaranteed 14th Amendment right to birthright citizenship is a “misinterpretation,” which Smith plans to remedy with a ban on that right that can “get five votes” on the Supreme Court. Such a posture would be troubling enough from any member of Congress, but coming from the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, it’s downright dangerous.

3. Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) – After calling for a national version of the Arizona SB 1070, Royce has announced new legislation to give local police Arizona-style powers over immigration. An active leader in the House’s leading anti-reform caucus, Royce supports forcing hospitals to gather information on possible undocumented immigrants, and opposes increasing visas for skilled workers.

4. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) – Always a lightning rod of controversy, Peter King has been in the headlines recently for scapegoating Muslim citizens. But we should remember that King has a long history of scapegoating and marginalizing all immigrants; he fought to ban the use of Spanish by government agencies and authored a bill to ban drivers’ licenses for undocumented workers because they are “potential terrorists.” King chairs the Homeland Security Committee, which has a major role in immigration reform legislation.

5. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) – The potential presidential candidate has a history of inflammatory statements which go along with her outlandish voting record. She’s spread the widely-debunked rumor that Phoenix is “the kidnap[ping] capital of the United States,” using that myth to justify her support for an armed presence on the border. She’s advocates Arizona SB 1070, and told Bill O’Reilly that all local law enforcement should be required to ask for proof of immigration status. Bachmann chairs the House Tea Party Caucus.

6. Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-CA) – Having built a career spreading fear about our broken border, Bilbray now helms the House’s anti-immigration reform caucus, where he’s leading the fight for an Arizona SB 1070-style bill. Discontent with mere anti-immigrant legislation, Bilbray has spread rumors that President Obama will issue amnesty by decree, and “the human smuggling, prostitution, murder and virtual enslavement of human beings” is happening because immigrants are “drawn to this nation by… taxpayer-funded jobs.”

7. Sen. John Boozman (R-AR) – While campaigning for Senate last year, Boozman wrote that “our schools, our hospitals and our jobs are being compromised by the influx of illegal immigrants.” His solution? Eliminating the Constitutional right to birthright citizenship, reducing overall legal immigration, and spreading rumors that President Obama “may grant amnesty through an Executive Order.”

8. Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC) – In word and deed, Shuler is eager to prove that obstructionism is bipartisan. The top Democrat in Congress’s largest anti-reform caucus, he worked with Tom Tancredo to author the SAVE Act, which would deport 12 million undocumented immigrants, was backed by NumbersUSA, and would’ve taken a large step towards militarizing America’s border.

9. Rep. Candice Miller (R-MI) – One of the leading proponents of the baseless rumor that the Obama administration is behind a “backdoor amnesty” program, Candice Miller chairs the Homeland Security Border Subcommittee. She co-sponsored the deportation-only SAVE Act, and won the support of Lou Dobbs for her fear-mongering that undocumented workers will gain political power due to the 2010 Census counting “persons,” not “citizens.”

10. Rep. Ben Quayle (R-AZ) – Heralded as a “true reformer” by the notoriously anti-immigration NumbersUSA, Ben Quayle exemplified the worst political impulses when it comes to immigration, exploiting fear and misinformation to ride into office. Quayle made election promises to reduce the overall number of immigrants allowed in America, erect a Pacific-to-the-Gulf electrified fence, and send the National Guard to patrol the border. These efforts may have won him the support of Chuck Norris, but here’s a fact for Chuck Norris and Ben Quayle: your scare tactics draw out the status quo – preventing meaningful reform, breaking up families, and putting America at risk.

Immigration is a fundamental part of America’s heritage and is essential to the growth and prosperity of our nation. That’s a fact. It’s central to our American character.

And it’s something these ten have forgotten.

View the Hall of Shame, share with friends, and sign-up for more information at our website.

Rep. Elton Gallegly is the Chair of the House Subcommittee on Immigration. He’s also one of the most egregiously anti-immigrant leaders in Congress, pushing a strategy to force a mass deportation, cleverly couched as “attrition through enforcement.”

Unfortunately, Gallegly’s zeal to get tough on immigrants would have profound consequences for California and the rest of the United States.

California’s agriculture and food production are the envy of the world.  The state’s farmers not only help feed the world, but keep prices low and jobs here in the United States.  Yet this great agricultural machine is under assault by one of California’s own members of Congress: Elton Gallegly.  Instead of embracing the business-labor compromise bill known as AgJOBS that would legalize farm workers and make changes to the H-2A guest worker program, Gallegly is trying to divide the business community from labor leaders and destabilize the agriculture industry in the process. 

Gallegly has already held hearings that tried to pit Latinos against African Americans. (His hometown paper, the Ventura County Star, reported on March 1, 2011 “Immigration hearing turns into racial battle”) and designed to create tension between native-born citizens and naturalized citizens, which Rep. Xavier Becerra (CA-31) blasted as “scapegoating on steroids.” 

Gallegly’s next hearing is titled, “The H-2A Visa Program – Meeting the Growing Needs of American Agriculture?”  His approach is to insist that the solution to our farm labor crisis is an employer-friendly guest worker program, instead of the thoughtful, realistic, bipartisan approach embodied by AgJOBS that includes stronger labor rights for workers, changes to the visa program desired by employers, and a way for undocumented farm workers to earn legal status if they have worked in the agriculture industry.

Gallegly knows that California’s agriculture industry is dependent on a foreign-born and mostly unauthorized workforce.  Yet, due to our broken immigration system, the foreign-born workers who comprise the overwhelming majority of our agricultural workers have few avenues to become legalized and, without them, farmers have few avenues to keep their farms operating at full capacity.  It’s already bad enough. But, Gallegly is intent upon making a bad situation worse.  Importing new workers through a revised H-2A program, and deporting the seasoned workers who have been here for years, is not the answer.  A reasonable approach, like the AgJOBS legislation, is.

But the impact of Gallegly’s policy prescriptions will not just hurt agriculture.

Not too far north of Gallegly’s district lies another of California’s economic crown jewels: Silicon Valley.  According to Tech Crunch, the U.S. immigration policies are having a devastating impact on entrepreneurship:

NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw visited Silicon Valley last month to meet immigrant entrepreneurs. At Microsoft’s Mountain View campus, he met with a dozen of them. More than half said that they might be forced to return to their home countries. That’s because they have the same visa issues that Kunal Bahl had. Unable to get a visa that would allow him to start a company after he graduated from Wharton in 2007, Kunal returned home to India. In February 2010, he started SnapDeal—India’s Groupon. Instead of creating hundreds of jobs in the U.S., Kunal ended up creating them in New Delhi.

At a time when our economy is stagnating, some American political leaders are working to keep the world’s best and brightest out. They mistakenly believe that skilled immigrants take American jobs away. The opposite is true: skilled immigrants start the majority of Silicon Valley startups; they create jobs.

Meanwhile, entrepreneurship is booming in countries that compete with us. And more than half a million doctors, scientists, researchers, and engineers in the U.S. are stuck in “immigration limbo”. They are on temporary work visas and are waiting for permanent-resident visas, which are in extremely short supply. These workers can’t start companies, justify buying houses, or grow deep roots in their communities. Once they get in line for a visa, they can’t even accept a promotion or change jobs. They could be required to leave the U.S. immediately—without notice—if their employer lays them off.  Rather than live in constant fear and stagnate in their careers, many are returning home.

Constant fear is what Gallegly is instilling in immigrants across the economic spectrum.

California’s economy, from Silicon Valley to the Central Valley and much of the rest of the state, relies on the labor of immigrants. And, it’s no secret that California’s economy is already in a precarious state.  A report from the Immigration Policy Center documented the positive economic effect immigrants have on the state:

A 2008 study by the California Immigrant Policy Center concludes that immigrants in California pay roughly $30 billion in federal taxes, $5.2 billion in state income taxes, and $4.6 billion in sales taxes each year. In California, “the average immigrant-headed household contributes a net $2,679 annually to Social Security, which is $539 more than the average US-born household. Additionally, “immigrants are among California’s most productive entrepreneurs and have created jobs for tens of thousands of Californians. By 2000, immigrant owners of Silicon Valley companies had created 72,829 jobs and generated more than $19.5 billion in sales.”

A report from the Congressional Budget Office, The Role of Immigrants in the U.S. Labor Market: An Update, noted the major role of immigrants in California:

The foreign-born labor force is disproportionately located in certain states, and in those states, its members make up a substantial share of the total labor force. In 2009, 6 million of the 24 million foreign-born members of the labor force resided in California alone, and another 9 million lived in just five additional states—New York, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, and Illinois. A third of the labor force in California was foreign born, as was over a fifth of the labor force in the other five states. By comparison, in the remaining 44 states, the foreign born made up less than 10 percent of the labor force.

Instead of creating jobs, Gallegly is scaring workers with the threat of deportation. Instead of bolstering his state’s economy, Gallegly’s obsession with deporting immigrants or hiring replacement workers through an employer-friendly guest worker program could seriously damage it.

Cross-Posted at America's Voice. 

On September 15, 2010, life as Shing Ma “Steve” Li knew it ended suddenly. On that warm summer morning about a month and half ago, two men knocked on the door of his San Francisco apartment. Inside, 20-year-old Steve was getting ready for a full day of classes at the City College of San Francisco. He could not have imagined that within the next couple hours he would be arrested and detained as a fugitive criminal. In the ensuing two days, Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) processed Steve and his mother and sent them to their detention facility in Sacramento. Several weeks later, he was moved to the ICE detention center in Florence, Arizona, where he now awaits deportation.

Steve had no idea of his family’s status. Though he was born in Lima, Peru on July 3, 1990, Steve grew up right here in San Francisco. He attended Francisco Middle School and graduated from George Washington High School in 2008. Of ethnic Chinese dissent, Steve’s family arrived in San Francisco in 2002 after escaping from hardships in Peru. His parents came to America hoping for a fresh start. Steve was currently enrolled at the City College of San Francisco and was preparing to transfer to San Francisco State University where he planned on studying to become a nurse.

Sadly, Steve could have been spared this awful situation if Congress had passed the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, also known as the DREAM Act. This bill provides relief for certain inadmissible or deportable alien students who arrived in the U.S. as children, who graduate from US high schools, who are of good moral character, and have been in the country continuously for at least five years prior to the bill’s enactment. Qualifying students have the opportunity to earn conditional permanent residency if they complete two years in the military or two years of schooling at a four-year institution of higher learning.

The DREAM Act will get another vote later this year, as an amendment to the National Defense Reauthorization Act. The DREAM Act has bipartisan co-sponsors, and majority of the Senate has voted for it in the past. We hope and pray that Congress will pass the DREAM Act this year.

I was Steve’s professor at City College of San Francisco, and along with Steve’s other teachers and friends, we are writing to everyone we know to publicize Steve’s unjust detention, to educate people about the DREAM Act, and to try to forestall Steve’s deportation in the hope that the DREAM Act will be passed through Congress this year.

Steve Li had a bright future ahead of him. He was a good student at the City College of San Francisco. He was well on his way to achieving his dream of becoming a nurse and helping others. As I said, he began preparing to transfer to San Francisco State University by enrolling in San Francisco State’s Summer Science Institute, an intensive program that supports undergraduate students pursuing a career in health care. This past summer, he was at the Summer Science Institute at 8am every weekday working on his Biology, Chemistry, and Physics prerequisites.

However, Steve’s dreams and his life were shattered into a million pieces when ICE came knocking at his door. His parents had applied for asylum in 2004, but were denied and their visas eventually ran out. Steve was not even aware that he had overstayed his visa until the ICE agents raided his home last month. Steve and his parents were all initially incarcerated in San Francisco, but Steve was forcibly separated from his family when his parents were subsequently released on October 4th. His parents are Chinese nationals, but because Steve was born in Peru, he was transferred to a detention center in Arizona to be processed for immediate deportation. He is only 20 years old, and has never lived away from home. Nevertheless, the U.S. government and ICE has ripped this child away from his family and locked him up like a criminal for something over which he had no control.

Steve has no family or friends in Peru.  If he were deported, he would be homeless and alone upon arrival. Sadly, he will be deported soon unless we can mobilize our elected officials to do the right thing. America is Steve’s home. It is no fault of his that he finds himself in this situation. Why would we send this young man to a country he hasn’t lived in since he was in elementary school? Steve is a young man with immense potential, and he has never been in trouble with the law. He has worked hard to help support his family and pay for his own education. He only wants the opportunity to complete his education and give back to the country that he has called home for most of his life. Isn’t this the exact type of person we want to keep in our country?

Please help us circulate Steve’s story: Send online petitions (links below) to our California senators and representatives in support of Steve and the DREAM Act, and write about Steve on blogs, Twitter, or Facebook. We need to get the word out!!!! If you have media contacts, let them know about this story.

UPDATES:

1) SF City Council Member Eric Mar is introducing a resolution on behalf of Steve to the SF Board of Supervisors next week.

2) On October 28, 2010, the CCSF Board of Trustees passed a unanimous resolution demanding officials stop Steve’s deportation.

3) SF Chronicle was set to run a story on Steve’s case. We are unsure when though we were told last Saturday

4) World Journal has done a story.  

5) Sing Tao is also working on a story

6) Contra Costa Times ran a story last Friday, and they are working on a follow up:

http://www.contracostatimes.co…

7) Univision radio and television has also picked up on the story

Radio:

http://radioinformativa.univis…

TV:

http://radioinformativa.univis…

WHAT ELSE YOU CAN DO!!!!!

1) Please support Steve by directing your friends, family, and colleagues to our online petition at: http://bit.ly/bringstevehome

2) We are organizing Call-In parties across several California college campuses for this Tuesday and Wednesday.

Even if you’re not attending a “call in party,” still show your support by calling:

Senator Feinstein: (415) 393-0707

Senator Boxer: (415) 403-0100

For John Morton (ICE Director): (202) 282-8495

If voicemail box full, call live line (202) 732-3000

SCRIPTS BELOW

Senator Scripts – “Hi I’m calling to urge Sen. Feinstein/Boxer/Director Morton to sponsor a private bill for Shing Ma “Steve” Li, who faces deportation any day now. He is an asset to our community. I ask that Sen. Feinstein/Boxer intervene today.”

If asked Steve’s A# (Alien Registration Number) is 076-143-010

Morton Script – “Hi, I’m calling to leave a message of support for Shing Ma “Steve” Li A#076-143-010 who is going to be deported any day know. Steve is pursuing a degree in nursing and he is an asset to our community. I ask that John Morton please step in and defer his deportation, thank you.

If asked Steve’s A# (Alien Registration Number) is 076-143-010

3) GET the WORD OUT! We have gotten some press from the media outlets listed below, but we need to get some serious media attention on this case or Steve will be deported! Please circulate Steve’s story in the blogosphere and beyond! We are holding a press conference/rally next Friday Nov 5th (12 pm) on the City College of San Francisco’s Ocean campus. Pass this info onto to interested individuals in the Bay Area who might want to come out to support Steve Li.