"ICE leaves police in the cold." - by Lawrence Harmon

ICE leaves police in the cold
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by Lawrence Harmon
Boston Globe - OpEd - 7/16/2011

BOSTONIANS SUFFER more aggravation from neighbors who steal their parking spots during winter storms than they do from illegal immigrants. In a border state like Arizona, the term “unlawful immigrant’’ might conjure up the image of a drug smuggler. Around here, it’s more likely to evoke the valedictorian of a local high school whose parents entered the country illegally when the kid was 3.

The Boston Police Department blundered in 2006 when it rushed to participate in the federal Secure Communities program, which matches the fingerprints of anyone arrested locally with those in federal immigration data banks. At the time, officials from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement promised that the matches would be used only to take action against illegal immigrants charged or convicted of serious crimes. Mayor Menino, therefore, blew his stack when the Globe published a story earlier this month showing that 183 of 352 immigrants deported from Boston since 2008 had no criminal records.

On Thursday, ICE director John Morton came to Boston to clear the air. But it’s still a little hazy, like nearly everything connected to federal policy on illegal immigration. Morton apologized for his predecessors who gave the false impression that only violent criminals faced deportation under the Secure Communities program. But he was adamant that the program could not be restricted solely to “serious offenders.’’

He said that 55 percent of the 352 illegal immigrants deported from Boston had criminal convictions. The remainder fell equally into the following three categories: those arrested after illegal reentry into the country; immigration fugitives who had ignored deportation orders; and people who had overstayed their visas.

Morton also said that miscommunication between ICE and local police left the false impression that the Secure Communities program is voluntary. It’s not. The target date for nationwide implementation is 2013, he said.

This isn’t going over well in cities where immigrants make up a significant percentage of workers, customers, classmates, and friends. Urban dwellers don’t want their police force to be perceived as de facto immigration agents. It undermines the image of successful cities as expansive and accessible. And police worry that crime victims and witnesses in immigrant neighborhoods won’t come forward for fear of deportation.

Boston Police commissioner Edward Davis said he tried to communicate his concerns to Morton on Thursday, but the ICE director was “cavalier’’ and “pretty dismissive.’’ Now Davis wants to break with Secure Communities. But he isn’t sure how that is even possible.

There is no obvious way short of refusing to send the fingerprints of people arrested in Boston to the FBI data bank. And no police commissioner in his right mind would risk overlooking a minor offender here who might be wanted for a heinous crime in another state. ICE has cornered the local police, who can’t prevent the FBI from forwarding the prints to the immigration data banks.

But it may not be as grim as it appears. There is recent evidence that ICE has heard the complaints of police and public officials, including Governor Patrick, who wants no part of detaining illegal immigrants for ICE’s administrative purposes. A recent ICE memorandum to its field office directors and special agents states that “it is against ICE policy to initiate removal proceedings against an individual known to be the immediate victim or witness to a crime.’’

Another ICE memo on “prosecutorial discretion’’ lists 19 factors to consider when deciding if deportation is warranted. The agency looks to be in no particular rush to kick out primary caretakers of sick relatives, pregnant or nursing moms, victims of domestic violence, people with serious health conditions, immediate relatives of US soldiers, minors, the elderly, and others who fall into sympathetic categories.

This is a good start. But ICE is still undermining the credibility of the police and making city officials look small-minded by implicating them in the deportation of illegal immigrants for administrative violations.

“What part of the word ‘illegal’ don’t you understand?’’ is the usual comeback to anyone who see shades of gray on the subject of illegal immigration. Bostonians could confront these hardliners with a question of their own: “What part of the word ‘communities’ don’t you understand?’’
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Lawrence Harmon can be reached at harmon@globe.com. 

What Karl Marx Can Tell Us Now - by George Magnus

What Karl Marx can tell us now
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by George Magnus, Bloomberg News
August 29, 2011


Policymakers struggling to understand the barrage of financial panics, protests and other ills afflicting the world would do well to study the works of a long-dead economist: Karl Marx.

The sooner they recognize we're facing a once-in-a-lifetime crisis of capitalism, the better equipped they will be to manage a way out of it.

The spirit of Marx, who is buried in a cemetery close to where I live in north London, has risen from the grave amid the financial crisis and subsequent economic slump.

The wily philosopher's analysis of capitalism had a lot of flaws, but today's global economy bears some uncanny resemblances to the conditions he foresaw.

Consider, for example, Marx's prediction of how the inherent conflict between capital and labor would manifest itself.

As he wrote in "Das Kapital," companies' pursuit of profits and productivity would naturally lead them to need fewer and fewer workers, creating an "industrial reserve army" of the poor and unemployed: "Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery."

The process he describes is visible throughout the developed world, particularly in the United States.

Companies' efforts to cut costs and avoid hiring have boosted U.S. corporate profits as a share of total economic output to the highest level in more than six decades, while the unemployment rate stands at 9.1 percent and real wages are stagnant.

U.S. income inequality, meanwhile, is by some measures close to its highest level since the 1920s. Before 2008, the income disparity was obscured by factors such as easy credit, which allowed poor households to enjoy a more affluent lifestyle. Now the problem is coming home to roost.

Marx also pointed out the paradox of overproduction and underconsumption: The more people are relegated to poverty, the less they will be able to consume all the goods and services companies produce.

When one company cuts costs to boost earnings, it's smart, but when they all do, they undermine the income formation and effective demand on which they rely for revenues and profits.

So how do we address this crisis? To put Marx's spirit back in the box, policymakers have to place jobs at the top of the economic agenda and consider other unorthodox measures.

The crisis isn't temporary, and it certainly won't be cured by the ideological passion for government austerity.

Here are five major planks of a strategy whose time, sadly, has not yet come.

Demand

We have to sustain aggregate demand and income growth, or else we could fall into a debt trap along with serious social consequences.

Governments that don't face an imminent debt crisis -- including the United States, Germany and Britain -- must make employment creation the litmus test of policy.

Cutting employer payroll taxes and creating fiscal incentives to encourage companies to hire people and invest would do for a start.
* * *

Household debt

We must lighten the burden. New steps should allow eligible households to restructure mortgage debt, or swap some debt forgiveness for future payments to lenders out of any home price appreciation.
* * *

Banking

Well-capitalized and well-structured banks should be allowed some temporary capital adequacy relief to try to get new credit flowing -- to small companies especially.

Governments and central banks could engage in direct spending on or indirect financing of national investment or infrastructure programs.
* * *

Sovereign debt

To ease the burden in the euro zone, European creditors have to extend the lower interest rates and longer payment terms recently proposed for Greece.

If jointly guaranteed euro bonds are a bridge too far, Germany has to champion an urgent recapitalization of banks to help absorb inevitable losses through a vastly enlarged European Financial Stability Facility.
* * *

Deflation and stagnation

To build defenses against the risk, central banks should look beyond bond-buying programs and instead target a growth rate of nominal economic output.

This would allow a temporary period of moderately higher inflation that could push inflation-adjusted interest rates well below zero and facilitate a lowering of debt burdens.

We can't know how these proposals might work out, or what their unintended consequences might be. But the policy status quo isn't acceptable, either.

It could turn the United States into a more unstable version of Japan, and fracture the euro zone with unknowable political consequences. By 2013, the crisis of Western capitalism could easily spill over to China, but that's another subject.

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George Magnus is senior economic adviser at UBS and author of "Uprising: Will Emerging Markets Shape or Shake the World Economy?" He wrote this article for Bloomberg News.