Placating the GOP base or protecting the workplace?

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 12:48:00 +0000

On the morning of March 6, 2007, swarms of armed federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, gathered in the blistering cold outside the Michael Bianco Inc. leather goods factory in New Bedford, Mass. At about 8 a.m., as a helicopter circled overhead and police kept watch in Coast Guard boats in the nearby harbor, the agents rushed the building military-style, blocked the exits, and ordered the employees to turn off their sewing machines, where most were busy stitching backpacks and vests for the U.S. military. By evening, 361 workers -- mostly from Guatemala and El Salvador -- had been taken into custody after they were unable to prove they had legal status to work in the United States The factory owner and three managers were also arrested and charged in connection with hiring illegal aliens.

No child left unrecruited

Mon, 21 Mar 2005 22:01:00 +0000

One day in the next two weeks, a uniformed colonel from the U.S. Army is expected to pay a visit to William Cala, the superintendent of the Fairport Central School District in Fairport, N.Y., east of Rochester. While Cala has not been told exactly what's on the agenda, he knows why the colonel is coming: to try to talk some sense into him about how he's handled the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act. It might seem strange that the Pentagon is sending an emissary to a school district, but it's actually the law.

The colonel's visit is the latest move in a three-year dispute between the Fairport school district and the government over a little-known provision of No Child Left Behind, the controversial landmark education legislation passed in 2001. The provision, under Section 9528 of the law, requires districts that receive federal funding to share students' names, addresses and phone numbers with military recruiters. This is where Cala, an outspoken critic of NCLB, has run into problems with the law -- he doesn't want to hand over student data to military recruiters without explicit permission from parents. "The Fairport Board of Education has a very long-standing policy that we don't share student information with anybody, period," says Cala, who has run the Fairport schools for eight years. "We're being forced to reverse this policy because the military says so, and we don't think that's fair or right."

Salon.com > Aimee Molloy

Placating the GOP base or protecting the workplace?

No child left unrecruited