By Milan Bhatt
The New Jersey leg of our road trip to the conventions has revealed that the state is a mixed bag in dealing with its immigrant population. We interviewed Council Member at Large Manny Segura from Trenton, who championed a "don't ask, don't tell" policy in the state capital that prohibits police from asking crime victims or witnesses about immigration status or reporting them to immigration authorities. Shai Goldstein, executive director of the New Jersey Immigrant Policy Network, applauded the efforts of the Councilmember and laid out a vision for additional initiatives that both he and Segura have been calling for from their positions on Governor Corzine's Blue Ribbon Panel on Immigrant Affairs, created to promote positive solutions. Goldstein alluded to Mayor Bloomberg's recent language access executive order as the type of the policy that the Panel should recommend, along with the formation of a state immigrant commission.
But news for immigrants in the Garden State has not been positive across the board. When Attorney General Milgram last year issued a directive that requires state and local police to ask for immigration status of suspects arrested for certain crimes and report those believed to be without legal status to federal immigration authorities, many police around the state have taken the order as a carte blanche to enforce immigration law at will.
And some local anti-immigrant policies have devastated local economies and torn apart communities. Consider the case of Riverside, NJ. Two years ago, the town passed an ordinance cracking down on employers who hired or rented to undocumented immigrants. Immigrants in droves left the town. We spoke with restaurant workers, who said the impact of the ordinance was a tragedy, and with the owner of a corner cafe called Boost, who summed up the consequences of the measures in this way: "I went to all the meetings, I told them they�re gonna mess things up, be careful what you wish for. And now it�s a ghost town."
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