Guest Column
Why I Support Obama
By Andrea Guerrero- March 17, 2008
I'm taking off all my institutional hats to endorse Barack Obama for president. I support Obama because I am inspired by his energy, his vision and his demonstrated capacity to heal divisions and bring about change. I aspire to be like Obama in bringing agents of change together to pursue innovative ideas that resolve seemingly intractable problems. On the issues that I care most deeply about (civil rights, education, immigration, and poverty) and on many other issues, Obama has a vision to move us forward. His positions are not only smart, but they are also humane. I invite you to learn more about Obama's
positions on issues at on his campaign site.
Why I Am Not Supporting Clinton and What You Should Know
As an attorney and a civil rights advocate I am deeply concerned about the apparent willingness of Hillary Clinton to forsake due process and other protections for immigrants (legal and illegal) in her attempted ascendancy to the presidency. As described in the article below, Clinton wants to strip due process rights (the right to defend oneself from deportation in court) from legal permanent residents who have committed a criminal offense, no matter how minor. She would make an already exceedingly punitive deportation system that rips apart families even more punitive and inhumane.
I have spent the last seven years trying to challenge the laws signed by Bill Clinton which expanded the list of crimes for which legal immigrants could be deported and stripped due process rights from them. As a result I have seen families torn apart because of punitive deportation laws that far exceed the criminal consequences of a crime.
For example, I have seen young people who were on the path to citizenship, who committed the offense of a simple drug possession (sometimes as college students alongside their American peers), who were released on probation by the court without jail time, and were deported forever as a result of their offense without the opportunity for a second chance to remain in this country, separating them from their families and ending a promising future.
I have also seen a young man deported without an opportunity to defend himself against deportation for having engaged in sexual relations with an American high school student while in high school himself, even though the young man went on to marry his high school sweetheart, put her through college, and raised four children with her, before he crossed paths with immigration agents and was deported only months after his youngest child was born. His deportation destroyed a family, an American family.
Bill Clinton acted out of political expediency when he signed these laws, some of the most punitive laws we have ever seen in this country. Hillary Clinton proposes going one step further by significantly expanding the list of crimes for which deportation would be automatic for legal permanent residents regardless of the disproportionately lesser consequences in criminal law and regardless of family circumstances. I fear she also acts out of political expediency.
In addition to forsaking protections for immigrants, Hillary Clinton has also attempted to undermine the rights of African Americans who are subject to excessive sentencing for crack cocaine. For the last 20 years, users of crack (primarily African Americans) have suffered from sentencing laws that, for example, mandate 5 years for 5 grams of crack, while users of powder cocaine (mostly Whites) have received only probation sentences for 5 grams of powder cocaine. Although the physical effects of the two types of cocaine are the same, the disparate sentencing laws were implemented as part of a "tough on crime" response to drug use in poor communities.
The result has led to a significant increase in the incarceration of African Americans. When the Democrats in Congress recently introduced legislation to correct the sentencing disparities, Clinton broke rank with her party and opposed the legislation. Another political calculation of who is expendable in her bid for the presidency. (For more information on this issue, go to www.sentencingproject.org)
What is perhaps most disturbing and most disheartening about Clinton is her use of racially divisive tactics. For example, in the recent debates in Los Angeles, the moderator asked the candidates if inner city African Americans were suffering as a result of illegal immigration. Obama answered that America's working poor were feeling economic uncertainty before the latest round of immigrants showed up and cautioned against scapegoating. Clinton, on the other hand, stated that African Americans were indeed suffering and that people were losing jobs.
The facts don't support her arguments, but I imagine she knows that and opted to say this to fuel black-brown tensions and appease conservative voters. I could go on about other distasteful tactics ... push calls to voters suggesting Obama is Muslim and repeatedly using Obama's comments about Reagan out of context ... but suffice it to say that Clinton has crossed ethical lines that I cannot stomach.
I hope you will join me in rejecting these tactics and vote for the voice of intelligent change.
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Andrea Guerrero is an attorney in San Diego who has practiced law and written extensively on immigration, education and civil rights. She is the author "Silence at Boalt Hall: The Dismantling of Affirmative Action," published by the University of California Press in 2002. Andrea can be reached at andiguerrero@gmail.com.
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