Ridge: Give illegal entrants 'status'
12/10/2003. The Miami Herald
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Tuesday that he believes the vast majority of illegal immigrants in the United States are not a threat to national security and should be given ``some kind of legal status.''...

Homeland security chief endorses legalizing undocumented immigrants
12/10/2003. Sun-Sentinel
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge told a Miami audience Tuesday that the country should legalize millions of undocumented immigrants living in the country. "The bottom line is, as a country we have to come to grips with the presence of 8 to 12 million illegals, afford them some kind of legal status some way, but also as a country decide what our immigration policy is and then enforce it," Ridge said at a town hall meeting at Miami-Dade Community College....

Protecting the right to unionize
12/8/2003. The Boston Globe
IMAGINE A PLACE where you were spied on just for speaking your mind. Imagine a place where you were forced to attend meetings pushing a line you disagreed with and weren't even allowed to speak. Imagine a place where you were fired just for signing your name. Does this sound like another country or something out of the distant past?...

Knock on door: Is this Iraq?
12/4/2003. The Orlando Sentinel
He was only 8 years old and his little brother was barely 6 months born when Iraqi goons kidnapped their pharmacist-father from Kuwait and began torturing the man. It was a case of mistaken identity, Iraqi officials admitted years later....

One Answer for Farmingville Day Workers: Unions
12/2/2003. New York Newsday
Of all the approaches to the vexing problem of immigrant day workers clustering in Farmingville, one of the most positive and constructive is the one that the Empire State Regional Council of Carpenters has taken: trying to organize some of them as members of a union....

End of Special Registration Welcome but Will it End Discriminatory Treatment
12/2/2003. US Newswire
Amnesty International USA Senior Deputy Executive Director, Curt Goering, released the following statement regarding today's announcement by the US Department of Homeland Security that it would no longer require the "special" registration under the National Security Entry Exit Registration System (NSEERS) of Middle Eastern, South Asian and Muslim men: The end of NSEERS, as we know it, is a welcome step toward closing the gap between recognizing basic human rights principles of non-discrimination and the disparate treatment of a selected group of non-citizens in US policy. But today's announcement does not guarantee individuals targeted under NSEERS will not continued to be singled out for scrutiny in the "war on terror."...

The new civil rights movement
11/29/2003. The Plain Dealer
They stood in khakis and work shirts on Cleveland's near West Side and in the streets of downtown Toledo, a bus idling nearby, and made their demands: College aid. Health care. Union membership. Legal status. ...

At What Cost Bargains?
11/26/2003. The Los Angeles Times
Las Vegas hotel worker Chastity Ferguson earns $400 a week and depends on Wal-Mart's low prices to feed and clothe her four children. Isabel Reyes, a Honduran laborer who struggles to push fabric through a sewing machine 10 hours a day, makes the bargains possible with her low salary, equal to $35 per week....

Licenses for Illegal Immigrants
11/26/2003. The New York Times
America's whole immigration policy is currently such a mess that communities are forced to try to regulate an irrational status quo. A perfect example is the current controversy over whether an illegal immigrant should have a driver's license. ...

Europe's Cheap U.S. Labor
11/25/2003. The Washington Post
In Europe, they pay their workers decently, tend to health and safety concerns and actually encourage their employees to unionize. When they cross the Atlantic, however, they find themselves in a brave new world where wages have eroded (a new Russell Sage Foundation study concludes that 24 percent of U.S. workers make less than $8.70 an hour) and employees' rights to unionize have been effectively abolished. ...