I got into Minneapolis at one o’clock and went right to the convention hall. This discussion on the Dream Act, led by Markos and Lily Eskelsen, was already underway.
Here’s a brief summary of the Dream Act:
The DREAM Act is bipartisan legislation that addresses the tragedy of young people who grew up in the United States and have graduated from our high schools, but whose future is circumscribed by our current immigration laws. Under current law, these young people generally derive their immigration status solely from their parents, and if their parents are undocumented or in immigration limbo, most have no mechanism to obtain legal residency, even if they have lived most of their lives in the U.S. The DREAM Act would provide such a mechanism for those who are able to meet certain conditions.
The DREAM Act would enact two major changes in current law:
• The DREAM Act would permit certain immigrant students who have grown up in the U.S.
to apply for temporary legal status and to eventually obtain permanent legal status and
become eligible for U.S. citizenship if they go to college or serve in the U.S. military; and
• The DREAM Act would eliminate a federal provision that penalizes states that provide instate tuition without regard to immigration status.
Here’s the short version of the discussion:
Markos: President Obama has not kept his promise on immigration. Politicians always promise Latino voters the world around election time, and then they don’t deliver. If we take back the House, keep the Senate and Obama, are we then going to be able to get this passed?
Lily: We need a broader coalition of grass roots to push for this, including people of faith and young people.
I’ve been to state conventions and one national convention, and based solely on my mad sprint through the convention hall this afternoon, this appears to be well-organized. The weather is absolutely beautiful.
Russ Feingold is up next, so I’m off to that.
We’re having a Ballon Juice Meet up Friday at 6:30 at Brit’s Pub, at the suggestion of a commenter who emailed me. That’s at 1110 Nicollet Mall. Any of you are more than welcome to join us. I’ll be the one wearing the huge orange convention badge that says “Balloon Juice”.
Elizabelle
So glad you are there, Kay. I look forward to your reporting.
SIA
Way to go Kay! Looking forward to your posts. And punch a couple firebaggers for us!
BGinCHI
Kay, if Breitbart tries to film you either run away or beat the shit out of him.
Your choice.
And if you see Prince don’t mention his height or play basketball with him.
Cat Lady
Go kay! You’re the only one I trust to tell us the real deal. I’m really glad you’re the chosen one!
Villago Delenda Est
The DREAM act, as outlined above, seems to be perfectly reasonable. It doesn’t give away legal status, or citizenship; there are preconditions that to me seem to be quite appropriate.
Of course, perfectly reasonable to me seems to be an outrageous surrender to the “illegals” by people descended from those who my ancestors considered to be totally inappropriate to be allowed into this country in the first place (I’m thinking that Tancredo guy here…you know, the old “ends in a vowel” thing?) so wtf do I know…
jl
Thanks for the report
Glad you are there.
I look forward to more posts on the meeting.
Did Balloon Juice spring for some gear?
Never mind, probably better not to talk about that. You will get into trouble with commenters over whether you are wearing Tunch, Rosie or Lily gear too much.
kay
I thought I saw him in the Chicago airport.
Or, I was just staring menacingly at some random middle-aged man in the Chicago airport, because it turns out I’m not 100% sure what Breitbart looks like.
One of those two things definitely happened :)
arguingwithsignposts
So he’s worse than Bush(!)?
(someone had to say it)
BGinCHI
Kay, I think Breitbart’s pic in on this site:
http://www.threestooges.com/bios/bios.asp?intStoogeID=3
Valdivia
yay Kay! so happy you’re there to keep us up to date.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
For years Markos has mocked single issue votes, especially Pro-Choice voters. Which makes it rich how hypersensitive he’s become on a single issue (immigration).
Mike Kay (True Grit)
Kay, how are the people at NN taking the Weiner resignation?
Over at DKos, the commentators are throwing a predictable tantrum, screaming about Pelosi.
MizB
Wonder if there will be any surprise guest speakers? KO has been all over the place promoting the show’s return on Monday & Markos IS one of his regular contributors. Want photo’s if this happens.
Calouste
Would be nice if there was a third option for kids who can’t afford to go to college and don’t want to fight someone else’s war in Afghanistan. Either emergency services or community service or something like that.
Violet
Thanks for the report, Kay! Glad the weather is great and you’re having a good time.
The DREAM Act is such a good thing. Of course that’s why Republicans must oppose it. Sigh.
Whiskey Screams from a Guy With No Short-Term Memory
How is this Obama’s fault? The House wouldn’t pass it out.
Oh yeah, I forgot, the Magickal Bully Pulpit Of Unlimited Presidential Power was going to get the job done. Fuck the political process, Obama, just make it so!
I loathe Markos with the fire of a thousand suns. He’s solely in it for the money and the fame. Sadly for him, but I guess luckily for us, the fame has failed to materialize.
Poopyman
Hi Kay! Feingold’s keynote at 7, preceeded by AFSCME happy hour.
I thought I saw Broder at breakfast, and not even a Zombie Broder. He was pretty spry. He wore jeans and running shoes.
Actually, I thought I saw Breitbart on the flight from dc last night. Ya never know.
Dee Loralei
I read somewhere, sorry can’t remember but Breitbart is there at NN. He either tweeted or called in to Fox when news of Weiner’s resignation hit.
I don’t know why Markos is blaming the lack of Dream Act on the President, and not on the Senate which couldn’t pass it. ( Overcome the filibuster.)
Have a blast Kay!
Lolis
TPM reported that the Dan Choi bitchfest about Obama was jam packed and the discussion of the netroots and the WI protests was not close to full. Kind of sad.
Mary Jane
Have a fun time, Kay!
Hopefully you avoided the panel “What to Do When the President is Just Not Into You” starring Dan Choi and Jane Hamsher. Although I hear they performed a delightfully dramatic tour de farce.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
most of our immigration laws are dumb.
but since most americans aren’t exactly sure how whomever in their lineage came here, much less what it was like for them, they have no reason to relate to immigrants.
one thing about what markos said, if the dems need the latino vote, as in the turnout is so great, that losing it was a catastrophy, they would have more power and leverage. even if the promises made in the past have been less than satisfied, the way to win as a voting block is to be crucial, not wait to be courted.
then of course some leader who can deliver or take away that block of votes has to step forward to make demands on their behalf, and make sure those demands are met. to me, it seems like markos is asking why there isn’t more romance involved?
MizB
This sounds fun-from twitter…..
Join @mudflats & @shannynmoore 2night @ Nick&Eddie 1612 Harmon Pl 9PM-12AM 2 celebrate wild Alaska Salmon! Yum! #nn11
arguingwithsignposts
I hope there is a panel at NN about the disappearance of the “Reply” Button on Balloon Juice. This injustice will not stand! Internet puppet head protesters unite!
Steve
What #23 said!
Mike Kay (True Grit)
Someone ask Feingold why did he support John Roberts for Chief Justice, why he declined to support the Public Option, why he voted against Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and why did he decline to sponsor the repeal of DADT.
schrodinger's cat
@23aws
I made you a reply button, but I eated it.
Kthxbai
-Tunch
Dennis SGMM
As far as I can tell, Latino voter turnout is still low in comparison to their numbers. Until they start showing up on election day their demands will continue to be ignored.
Chat Noir
You go, Kay! Look forward to reading your reports. Your posts and comments are always full of good information.
4jkb4ia
@Mike Kay:
See the last two ABL threads for why Markos might be a little sensitive on immigration. Markos is the most high-profile Latino blogger out there and if he doesn’t denounce these things people might be encouraged by his silence.
I was here today essentially for this post, and I don’t feel any better about not being able to go now.
Nethead Jay
No open thread around so I’ll just drop this here. It’s rare but sometimes a Republican says something great. Here’s New York State Senator Roy McDonald, in support of gay marriage:
Good on him.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
4jkb4ia:
you miss the point. It doesn’t bother the least that he’s a de facto single issue voter, it’s that he hypnotically condemns others, most famously Pro-Choice voters, for being hypersensitive about one issue.
geg6
kay, I haven’t been around this week. Too, too busy at work and I must say I’m glad to have missed the lily white bully boyz piling on the most awesome ABL…again. But I specifically stopped by to see if you’d posted from NN. Having attended NN when it was here in ’09, I hope you get as much out of it and have as good a time as I did. Oh, and if you actually do run into Breitbart, kick him in the shins a few times for me. I hate that fat fucker (and I can call him fat because I, myself, am getting a bit fat).
Steaming Pile
Maybe if they didn’t spend 2009 and a fair chunk of 2010 dicking around with the holdouts on HCR, they might have gotten around to the DREAM Act. If it were me, I would have just put the bill on the floor and double-dog dared the five or so corrupt Dems to “filibuster” it. There is a time for cooperation and a time for compromise and a time for negotiation, and then there’s a time to fish or cut bait. The time to fish or cut bait was before the August 2009 recess.
I just hung up on another fundraiser this afternoon. I flat-out refuse to pay for incompetence. When they can convince me they’ve brought their A game, they can give me a call.
Mike M
I stronly support the Dream Act, but I think the opportunity to pass it disappeared with last year’s lame duck session. I don’t see how it has any chance of passage whatsoever during the current session.
I’m just hoping that the economy doesn’t crash again between now and 2012 with the Republicans doing everything they can to keep unemployment high and economic growth slow. I’m afraid that whatever compromise is made to get the debt ceiling lifted will be a disaster for social programs and other progressive priorities.
Nethead Jay
Wow, xenophobic troll dumps wall of text.
Friend of mine had some experience with E-Verify, disastrous kludge would be the polite description…
WereBear
Represent, kay!
I used to love Dkos, and I’m sorry it is such a hysterical place these days. At least back when everyone had something in common.
Still, it serves a good purpose; who else is putting in such panels, and serving as a rallying point? And if we are stupidly draining our talent pools and leaving the country to the tender mercies of “legacy rulers” then we deserve the idiocies they would visit on us.
Mnemosyne
Which companies are those? As far as I can tell, contractors, restaurants, chicken processors, and farms are plenty happy to use illegal labor. Tyson Chicken has been busted multiple times for using illegal workers. Wal-Mart outsourced their use of illegal workers rather than do it directly.
Georgia cracked down on illegal workers and discovered they don’t have anyone to pick their crops. Are they going to pay minimum wage? Hell, no — they’re going to get prisoners to do it so they can continue to pay slave wages.
Here’s my proposal: if a company is found to have an illegal worker on the payroll, their CEO or president goes to jail for one (1) year. No exceptions. No weaseling out of it with a slap-on-the-wrist fine. Jail time if you employ illegal workers.
Doesn’t matter if s/he claims s/he didn’t know there were illegal workers at the company — if one is found there, the boss goes to jail for a year. Period. Are you on board with that?
Dennis G.
And for those who meet up at Netroots… I offer a toast from the streets of Baltimore: Have fun!
Cheers!
Dennis G.
And for those who meet up at Netroots… I offer a toast from the streets of Baltimore: Have fun!
Cheers!
stuckinred
Probationers are not “prisoners”.
FlipYrWhig
@ Steaming Pile:
IMHO, they would have, by making speeches about how they supported reforms to the health care system, but not like this, because, gosh, it just went too far. So then there’d be no HCR… and then there’d _also_ be no DREAM Act, because the failure of HCR would prove to the consultants and strategists that the thing to do was to hunker down and do nothing else controversial.
boss bitch
@Mike Kay:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/06/markos-on-weiner-the-guys-an-idiot-no-sympathy.php
boss bitch
might that broader coalition include other minorities?
Mnemosyne
Sorry, I was mixing up Georgia and Colorado. But I suspect the probationers idea won’t last long when the farmers find out that US citizens have to be paid minimum wage unless the employer meets the qualifications for a “small farm” (less than 500 man-hours used in the previous quarter).
stuckinred
What’s up with the “reply” button?
Cain
@Mike Kay
Because of
Obamayo mama, that’s why!HRA
Have a good time, Kay. Thanks for the great posts.
gbear
I might suggest that if you’re in a mood for the best burger in town and want to visit the fair city on the other side of the river, visit The Shamrock at West 7th Street and Randolph Avenues. Incredibly good burgers.
So can a non-imbiber join you at Brit’s?
Fledermaus
Check out the minneapolis institute of art. Its free and amazingly awesome
Anne Laurie
Glad you’re there to report for us, Kay!
‘Higher education’ being one of our leading industries, the the DREAM Act got quite a bit of attention here in Massachusetts. Much of the response, tragically, ran along the lines of ‘My kid can’t afford to go to college, why should we give those people a free ride?”
Between the continuing unemployment crunch and the upcoming GOP attack on senior citizen “benefits”, I think the Obama administration needs to come up with some form of 21st-century CCC, fast. Giving jobseekers under age 26, say, a stipend to perform all the public infrastructure / social-service minimum-wage tasks that are going undone because towns & states can’t afford them would,IMO, deflate a lot of the anti-incumbent, anti-immigrant, retrogressive rumblings. The newborn anti-deficit warriors of the GOP would scream bloody murder, of course, but one of the standards of American politics is that voters whose personal economies are “rescued” by one party will support that party ferociously for the next several decades.
4jkb4ia
@Mike Kay:
Is identity voting/supporting single issue voting/supporting? The discussion about Jewish Americans and Israel shows it doesn’t have to be.
For Markos circa “Crashing the Gate” and 2006 when I was actually reading the main page, the problem with single issue voting is that the party splinters into a bunch of subgroups who care about nothing but their pet issue. Then when it is a matter of saving the country they can’t see it. Also too, there is a difference between immigration and pro-choice. The Democratic Party owns pro-choice, so when a Democratic candidate is pro-life or a Republican candidate pro-choice, they end up doing things like voting on judges that really support the other side for the sake of party unity. No one owns immigration. Even the Republican Party has plenty of non-bigots in it. But eventually someone will step up and own immigration because something besides bigotry will have to be done and because there will be enough Latino voters to make it worthwhile. If you are Markos you desperately want that to be the Democrats, because of the aforementioned Latino voters who are some party’s future.
OzoneR
Is this like how David Paterson didn’t keep him promise to gay people in New York because Shirley Huntley refused to vote for gay marriage?
OzoneR
@Steaming Pile
Um, that’s what happened, and they filibustered it, probably because they knew President Obama would be blamed and not them.
(another) Josh
But the Republicans didn’t useta oppose the DREAM act—IIRC, Senator Hatch proposed it. But at some point, they started lying and propagandizing against it. Wonder what happened?
Steve
By the way, the best reason not to impose draconian penalties upon employers who hire illegal immigrants is that such a rule strongly encourages racial profiling and discrimination. This is the actual reason why the Feds keep their penalties reasonable for this sort of violation and it makes an unfortunate sort of sense. If you have a rule that says “hire an illegal immigrant and the CEO goes to jail, no excuses,” it’s true that companies would probably get a lot more diligent about checking IDs. But another thing they’d do in many cases is simply refuse to hire Hispanics and other minority groups who have a high incidence of illegal immigration. Since jail is such a harsh penalty, they’ll minimize their risk by hiring people who look like they grew up down the street.
Mnemosyne
@ Steve:
Whenever I outline that modest proposal, you would be surprised how many people howling about evil illegal workers suddenly start hemming and hawing about how we can’t punish companies for their illegal actions because argle bargle free enterprise communism.
Not saying that you’re not right about what the practical effect would be of throwing CEOs in jail, but the proposal is a pretty good way to figure out who wants actual immigration reform and who just wants to dump on brown people.
Comrade Kevin
I will be there! I wore my Tunch t-shirt today, so I’ll have to think of something else.
Tim, Interrupted
Kind of awesome, I’d say.
Nice to hear NN isn’t totally Obot central.
FlipYrWhig
@ Anne Laurie / 50:
Because it would be a good idea, and helpful, and sensible, the GOP won’t allow it, and because it wasn’t allowed to happen, no one will get rescued, and most of the people who weren’t rescued won’t know whose fault it was that they didn’t, and thus probably half of them will blame Obama, being that he’s the president and is supposed to be able to do stuff. So it won’t happen, and the people who you’d want to hear about it either way… won’t, and thus there’d be no reward for it.
ruemara
That’s awesome. Netroots Nation an Obot fest. You think this stupid tantrum by these ineffective poseurs was a worthwhile expenditure of actual news coverage and education for attendants, over events covering what’s happened in Wisconsin and is spreading. Amazing. Fucking amazing. At this point, the whole progressive movement can DIAF. Workers rights and the middle class are suborned to what amounts to a public slam book written by twits. Progressives shouldn’t be mad at Obama, they should just keep firing away in a circle. That’ll show us all.
Triassic Sands
Take back the House? Keep the Senate and White House?
That would take a real Dream Act.
The American people are simply much too fickle and far too stupignorant to allow that to happen.
OzoneR
or, you know, care about workers right in Wisconsin.
JoyousMN
Is anyone from MN planning to go to Brits Pub tonight? I was thinking about going.
Wily Jalapeño
Holy shit – Brit’s, at 6:30, on a beautiful Friday? That’s a great spot, especially if you can get up on the roof. I’ll raise a bottle of something frothy (haha…fuck you Santorum) from South Minneapolis at that time, and hope like hell that you’ll be able to get a table.
Enjoy our fair city! It really is a great place.
Brachiator
@Steve:
This is nonsense. Employers in California (and probably elsewhere) go out of their way to hire illegal immigrants and can easily identify them.
In Westwood (home to UCLA) I noticed a sign outside a restaurant advertising for waiters, busboys, etc. The sign was entirely in Spanish. Wanna bet that the employer was targeting illegal immigrants? I’ve also seen businesses deliberately reduce the wages of legal workers so that they can hire illegal immigrants at the lower wage and avoid discrimination suits.
And then there are all the people, including liberals, who hire illegal immigrants as housekeepers, nannies, etc. They lie to themselves that it’s OK because they are paying a pretty good wage. And they are. But they don’t pay overtime or employment taxes or schedule raises appropriately.