interview on immigrants rights:
AMY GOODMAN: What difference has it made that Democrats are now in power in Congress?
JAVIER RODRIGUEZ: Very little, at this time. Very little. Yes, last year the Congress was controlled by the extreme right. We were able to participate in the overall electorate that defeated, especially the antiwar sentiment. And now, we have, let's say -- the first proposal came from the Democrats, the Gutierrez-Flake bill, but it's essentially corporate-designed. It is designed to make a worker who has been here seven years, fourteen years, even up to thirty-eight years, which is my mechanic -- the project -- the proposal calls for a wait of approximately fourteen years to be able to get your green card, besides having a guest worker program, besides having a totally enforcement, let's say, section very similar to the Sensenbrenner bill.
(...) AMY GOODMAN: The significance of immigrants fighting in Army being sent to Iraq?
JAVIER RODRIGUEZ: Let's say, it's a shame. It is making criminals, murderers, mercenaries out of immigrants in exchange for a green card. And it is making -- what is it? -- an estimated 40,000 immigrants, human beings, that it's going after human beings in another country in a war that should not be a war, that it’s totally a war of occupation of, let's say, with politically designed rationale, as it is known now. It was totally fabricated. So if immigrants are going with a sense of patriotism, with a sense of getting in exchange their green card, or rather citizenship, it is totally wrong.
(...) AMY GOODMAN: What about these detention facilities around the country? I think now a record of more than 26,000 immigrants currently in prison in the United States...
JAVIER RODRIGUEZ: It is what we consider now the immigration-industrial complex. Prisons are on the -- let's say are on the vision of government and also industry, the enterprise. And along with the wall, it is nothing but a money-making scheme, the building of prisons, the building of detention centers. And it is totally also in violation of human rights to imprison children in this country, immigrant children, just for so the-called crime of crossing into the United States, just as adults.