ustxtxb_obs_2000_02_04_50_00017-00000_000.pdf

heh-heh. “We want to redefine how wars are fought.” Along with the all-important list of campaign contributors, Bush seems to have inherited his father’s little problem with the vision thing. His campaign slogan is “Prosperity with a Purpose,” but as far as anyone can tell, the only purpose of the prosperity is more prosperity. “The role of government” in that noble project, “is to make an environment where entrepreneurship can flourish.” One can hear the ghost of Tom Paine retching in the corner of the room. But at least the Governor has finally, mentioned the environment. As the press corps returns to the buses, I notice a knot of workers to the side of the Cabletron facility. Dressed in sweatshirts and jeans, they are snatching a cigarette break. I ask why they didn’t go to the event. “The little peons weren’t invited,” says a middle-aged woman with limp grey hair and exhausted eyes. “Only one person from the floor was allowed to attend.” The woman is a floor supervisor. In the dozen years she’s worked for Cabletron, the company’s worth has soared from under $100 million to $1.5 billion. She earns about twelve dollars an hour, $25,000 a year. The other workers tell me they earn less.. To make ends meet, almost everyone has a working spouse or a second job. No, the company has no day care. I mention the $20,000 “per employee” that the company says it donates to educational programs, and am met with a derisive snort. “So, what did you think of Bush’s visit? “I ask. “Another politician, another liar,” says heavyset man over his shoulder as he grinds out his cigarette and heads back to work. The only sound in the deserted parking lot is the fading roar of buses ferrying the press corps and candidate team, heading to South Carolina to do it all again. Terry J. Allen is a Vermont journalist who has reported for the Boston Globe, Vermont’s Times Argus -Rutland Herald, and In These Times. In the Globe, she recently broke the story of the University of Vermont training program for the Indonesian military. In response to the unfavorable publicity, the University ended the program. “Dateline,” from page 7 filings, despite an unambiguous provision in the law that requires an alien to receive notice of a hearing before deportation can be ordered. When Gibson took the case before a federal judge, he bumped up against another legacy of the eighties: over half of the current federal judiciary are appointees of the Reagan-Bush administrations. A district judge rejected Gibson’s habeas corpus plea \(a legal argument arguing that a citizen is being illelaw to the contrary, that a deportation order did not constitute enough “custody” for Proctor to have a case. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals declined to hear the case. In the months that followed, members of Proctor’s church petitioned the I.N.S. for mercy. Her own daughter made a desperate phone call to the district office, begging them not to deport her mother. Proctor was ordered to report for deportation on December 20. Gibson appealed one final time to Harrington, but could not even get his call returned. He advised his clients to take the extraordinary step of purchasing a ticket for the Philippines, in the hopes of cooperating with the deportation order and receiving a waiver of the ten-year prohibition against re-entering the country. After thirteen years in the U.S., Emilyn Proctor was scheduled to return on January 4 to the island on which she was born. Two days before Emilyn’s deportation, John Gibson’s relentless and impassioned faxes to the news media paid off: her story was reported by Channel 4 News in Dallas. Her two children at her side, Emilyn explained her situation. The decision, Gibson told reporters, rested in the hands of the District Director, to whom he appealed by name: William C. Harrington. The next morning, Harrington phoned Gibson: Let’s talk, he said. After nearly ten years and over $25,000 in legal fees, Harrington and Gibson settled the case in a thirty-minute meeting in the director’s office. Proctor’s case will be reopened, the I.N.S. will support her appeal, and the Board of Immigration Appeals will almost certainly rescind her deportation order. t Ken’s Salvage on January 3, which would have been Emilyn’s last full day with her family, everyone is elated. Amazingly, the couple is not in’ dined to blame the I.N.S., nor to assign malice to the bureaucrats who refused to listen to their pleas. More than anyone they blame their original attorney. Gibson is representing the Proctors in state court, in a lawsuit against Rombaugh. K3enneth waves a stack of unpaid bills, which temper his good cheer. ut business at the store has picked up a little. “That was the first time we ever got the store on the news,” he says. The customers who stop in are all familiar with Emilyn’s case, now that it is over. When she was under the cloud of deportation, her condition was necessarily a secret. A record 112,000 people were deported from the U.S. in 1997, a direct result of the 1996 reforms. With no one to vouch for them in Congress, no one to protect them from the unscrupulous or the just plain callous, it’s an inexorable migration of the invisible. They are as silent as the stacks and stacks of files that line the halls of every district I.N.S. office in the nation, each file a story just waiting to be heard. ANDERSON & COMPANY COFFEE TEA SPICES TWO JEFFERSON SQUARE AUSTIN, TEXAS 78731 512-453-1533 Send me your list. Name Street City Zip FEBRUARY 4, 2000 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 17