Posts Tagged ‘Immigration’
Homeland Security’s New Bragging Rights : Denying Deferred Action & Deadly Force
8:32 am By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|mexico|Politics|Uncategorized · 21 Comments
14 Mar 2011While states across the country continue to push anti-immigrant legislation which seeks to criminalize the most basic rights of people, the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Janet Napolitano is being very clear about it’s policy of deportation and death on the Southern Border.
In hearings last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Napolitano bragged about the fact that the Obama administration granted deferred action in less than 900 cases last year. That was fewer than the Bush administration.
According to Immigration Equality‘s useful definition Deferred Action is:
a minimal humanitarian status which The Department of Homeland Security can grant in cases of extremely compelling humanitarian facts (such as a life-threatening illness). The status permits an individual to remain in the United States for a limited period of time (generally two years) after which point he or she must re-apply.
So essentially Napolitano is bragging about immigration policy becoming less humane under the Obama administration than under the last Bush administration.
Read more…
The Not So Silent ICE Raid in Mississippi
8:21 am By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|Mississippi · 16 Comments
24 Feb 2011There has been much talk of the Obama administration moving towards more “silent” immigration raids, that is targeting workplaces. The perception and narrative is that targeting immigrants and their employers in this way is kinder and gentler. But the reality looks more like what went down in the Jackson, Mississippi metro area this past weekend.
ICE agents were “knocking on doors, saying they were selling Avon or with Domino’s,” said Glenda Arevalo, who lives in the complex. “They said, ‘Come out, come out, y’all are going back to your country.’”
When some responded they were in the country legally, she said ICE agents replied, “We don’t care. You’re going with us.”
Angella Rector said she saw an ICE agent put a gun against the head of one Hispanic and say, “If you move motherf—er, we’re going to kill you.”
The father of her three young children was among those arrested by agents, she said. “He was in his boxers. They told him, ‘You’re f—ing illegal.’”
Her husband is being taken back to Mexico, she said. “Now I have to raise the kids by myself.”
Freedom from Fear Award
8:28 am By Maegan La Mala · Immigration · 4 Comments
20 Feb 2011Good Sunday morning!
A friend of VivirLatino wanted me to pass on information regarding the Freedom from Fear award, an award that seeks to honor fifteen ordinary people who have committed extraordinary acts of courage on behalf of immigrants and refugees—individuals who have taken a risk, set an example, and inspired others to awareness or action. The award seeks to honor unsung heroes who are not professional advocates. Based on nominations from people like you, awardees will receive a $5,000 cash award.
So this award is not for people who are in non-profits whose job it is to advocate but rather for people for whom struggle on behalf of immigrant communities is part of their very lives.
I am not a fan of scarcity models, that there isn’t enough for everyone but I do know that there are some people who have made their lives, not their living, around struggle. So I am gonna go ahead and make a few nominations and maybe you should too.
Released Documents on Secure Communities Reveals Possibilities for Opt-Out
12:19 pm By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|Secure Communities · 3 Comments
17 Feb 2011Have some time for reading? Today portions of 15,000 pages of documents were released following litigation by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, Center for Constitutional Rights and Cardozo Immigrant Justice Clinic, seeking documents from federal agencies related to the voluntariness of “Secure Communities,”.
Yesterday, I wrote on how some of the documents showed that the Department of Homeland Security was being purposely deceptive regarding if local areas could opt out of the program and how the program is slated for expansion under Obama’s 2012 Fiscal Year Budget. Today looking through some of the documents (and no I haven’t made it through all 15,000 pages), many of which are emails, we see that the “message” told to localities was that “opting out ” was not an option when it really may be. It also seems that I.C.E. was especially concerned about major cities, like my own NYC, opting out because of controversies, i.e. how the NYPD already has a huge racial profiling problem and the huge immigrant population in NYC.
I really recommend taking some time to read the documents. Just reading a few of them has my mouth agape at the blatant attempts at the federal level to manipulate local governments into adopting Secure Communities.
Mala’s Note : Originally I had written that all 15,000 pages had been released and that is not the case. Only a portion of the documents have been released. That correction is reflected in title change and edits to original body text
On the (Not So) Voluntary Nature of Secure Communities and it’s Expansion
10:04 am By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|Obama|Secure Communities · 3 Comments
16 Feb 2011Seems like immigration policy under the current administration is rooted in double-speak. How else to explain how a program named “Secure Communities” has proven to detain and deport not just the “bad” immigrants, but those without criminal backgrounds, making immigrant communities less safe. Now there are more reports showing just how “voluntary” the program which runs all “criminal” suspects’ fingerprints through an immigration database really is.
From the San Francisco Examiner:
A voluntary program to run all criminal suspects’ fingerprints through an immigration database was only voluntary until cities refused to participate, thousands of recently released documents show. The Obama administration then tightened the rules so that cities had no choice but to have the fingerprints checked.
The documents made public by the Homeland Security Department provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how the administration scrambled to quiet the criticisms and negative publicity surrounding the immigration enforcement program known as Secure Communities.
The administration rewrote the program’s participation rules, the documents show, considered withholding federal funding and FBI information from resisters and eventually dug up case law to justify requiring cooperation.
Update on Wilder Peña Case
11:54 am By Maegan La Mala · Colombia|Immigration · 1 Comment
13 Feb 2011
Thank you to all of you who signed your names to the letters in an attempt to stop the deportation of Wilder Peña, a 31-year-old Afro-Colombian male, I wrote about last week, originally from Jamundi, Department of Valle del Cauca, Colombia who fled to the U.S. to seek asylum in 2001.
Supporters set up a Facebook page on Wilder’s behalf and are calling for people, in an act of love for human rights, make calls tomorrow, Valentine’s Day, so that Wilder can stay with his familia in the U.S.
· If you are a Washington, DC resident or a member of a Colombia, human rights or solidarity organization please contact the office of Honorable Eleanor Holmes Norton at phone number: (202) 225-8050 and urge the Congresswoman to intervene on Wilder’s behalf. On Friday, the Congresswoman received a letter from U.S. activists, NGOs and constituents earlier today calling upon her to act. When you call say that you are greatly concerned about Wilder Peña’s safety and hope that she will intervene to protect Wilder’s life. If you are a Washington, DC resident you can also send your own letter to the Congresswoman via email through her site : https://forms.house.gov/norton/webforms/issue_subscribe.htm
You can also contact the following persons and ask them to take action:
· Contact Vincent Cochetel, Regional Representative for the U.S. and the Caribbean of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees at (202)296- 5191.
· Contact Eric Schwartz, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Population, Migration and Refugees, U.S. State Department by calling the State Department switchboard at 202-647-4000 and asking to be connected to his office.
· Contact Maria Isabel Castro, Consul, Colombian Consulate in New York, at (212) 798-9055 or maria.castro@cancilleria.gov.co
· Contact , Libia Mosquera Viveros, Consul, Colombian Consulate in Washington, DC, herself Afro-Colombian, at (202) 332-7476/(202) 332-7573 or consuladowash@gmail.com
For more information about Wilder and his case please keep reading.
Thank you/Mil Gracias
Urgent Action Alert : Afro-Colombian Faces Deportation
8:58 am By Maegan La Mala · Colombia|Immigration · 3 Comments
11 Feb 2011Late last night I received an urgent appeal asking for help to prevent the deportation of Wilder Peña.
Wilder Peña is currently detained in an immigration detention facility in Batavia, NY and scheduled for deportation to Colombia on February 28. His life was threatened following a massacre of ten persons and the assassination of three members of his family and several of his friends at the hands of illegal armed groups. Unfortunately, due to poor legal representation he was denied asylum. Two appeals, made by the same lawyer, were also denied. Pending deportation to a country where he could potentially be killed, Wilder fled to Canada, leaving his partner and their infant son behind. He was detained at the border and has been in detention ever since.
The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) is collecting names for letters to the United Nations High Committee on Refugees in DC and the local DC congresswoman.
Clicking below will show you the text of the letters.
LettertoHolmesNorton
LettertoUNHCR
If you would like to sign the letters in order to help keep Wilder alive and with his familia, please send your name and organizational affiliation (if any) to GSanchez@wola.org
Gracias
Who/Where Are the Undocumented in the United States and What About All Those Babies They Are (Not) Having?
3:03 pm By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|Media · 8 Comments
4 Feb 2011
I have been told that policy makers, the ones who keep making and passing the laws that have continuously criminalized immigrant communities, Latino communities, and all communities of color really, love statistics. They love numbers and charts (like Michele Bachmann’s following the SOTU?). It seems fitting then, that while anti-migrant bills get tossed around in both federal and state legislatures, the Pew Hispanic Center released a study that attempts to take a statistical snapshot of who the undocumented immigrants are in the U.S. and where they are.
As of March 2010, 11.2 million unauthorized immigrants were living in the United States, virtually unchanged from a year earlier, according to new estimates from the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center. This stability in 2010 follows a two-year decline from the peak of 12 million in 2007 to 11.1 million in 2009 that was the first significant reversal in a two-decade pattern of growth. Unauthorized immigrants were 3.7% of the nation’s population in 2010.
The number of unauthorized immigrants in the nation’s workforce, 8 million in March 2010, also did not differ from the Pew Hispanic Center estimate for 2009. As with the population total, the number of unauthorized immigrants in the labor force had decreased in 2009 from its peak of 8.4 million in 2007. They made up 5.2% of the labor force in 2010.
The number of children born to at least one unauthorized-immigrant parent in 2009 was 350,000 and they made up 8% of all U.S. births, essentially the same as a year earlier. An analysis of the year of entry of unauthorized immigrants who became parents in 2009 indicates that 61% arrived in the U.S. before 2004, 30% arrived from 2004 to 2007, and 9% arrived from 2008 to 2010.
Waiting for the State of the Union. Waiting for Connections between Jobs & Immigration
9:27 am By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|Politics · 2 Comments
25 Jan 2011Tonight is President Obama’s State of the Union Address. I haven’t decided if I am going to live blog/tweet it from VivirLatino’s twitter account, but what I have decided on is that I will likely be disappointed in the messaging and it’s failure to connect the dots for communities of color, especially immigrant communities.
You will have to excuse me for losing faith in the administration to do anything on immigration remotely looking like reform, this is including the alleged new push to pressure employers instead of the employed (more on that later). Instead of how continued raids and increased enforcement have broken more families apart than ever before, we have a President who waves the enforcement first flag along with the best among the GOP. Additionally, we have Latinos in the media saying that advocates and activists have a messaging problem, not a humanity problem, not a compassion problem, but a marketing issue, since we as Latinos, as immigrants, are commodities, bargaining chips.
Read more…
Defining Citizenship Based on Who You Are Born From
9:59 am By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|Politics · 18 Comments
5 Jan 2011When the rumblings re: birthright citizenship and the cries re: the scourge of anchor babies started to pick up some steam last year, many mainstream progressive organizations were pretty laid back, thinking the whole thing would blow over. Now we are in a new year with a Republican led House of Representatives taking over at noon est today and guess what? It hasn’t blown over.
Today, a coalition of at least 14 state legislatures is having a press conference to announce their legislative game plan to move to end U.S citizenship to the U.S.-born children of undocumented persons.
This is no surprise for many Latino activists and observers who have felt the danger rise around the countries. Hate crimes have gone up and Latinidad is being defined as immigrant, undocumented and largely Mexican.
Hola!
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