(Nashville) by Jan Snider
She looked so tiny holding the calloused hand of her young uncle, just 5 years old and excited about starting kindergarten. But as she shuffled down the polished floors of the church hallway toward our immigration legal clinic, there was worry in her big brown eyes.
EDITORIAL
LA Times - October 29, 2009
Operation Gatekeeper started in October 1994, focusing federal border security efforts on the five-mile stretch from the Pacific Ocean to San Ysidro. Within three years, the budget of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service — since split into two agencies — doubled to $800 million. The number of Border Patrol agents also doubled, along with the miles of fencing. Underground sensors nearly tripled.
In the 15 years since its inception,Gatekeeper, now shorthand for all federal enforcement efforts at the Mexican border, has had a range of consequences, some expected and others grimly surprising. For example, attempted crossings and apprehensions where enforcement is heaviest plummeted, just as officials had hoped. But migrants didn’t stay home. Instead, thousands attempted to cross in the dangerous desert lands to the east, in Arizona and Texas — and as many as 5,600 have died, according to a recent report by the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego and Imperial Counties and Mexico’s National Commission on Human Rights. Illegal immigrants are now 17 times more likely to die while crossing the border than they were in 1998, according to the report.
To read more:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-gatekeeper27-2009oct27,0,5467269.story
The West Michigan Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform has developed a House Party Kit to help advocate and educate the public on the issues with the current immigration policies. The kit includes: a 10 minute video, a discussion guide, resource to support the discussion, materials to make your voice count, and directions on how to host the party. We suggest downloading the materials
You can download this kit: WMC-CIR House Party Kit
and the video are available on GRIID website:
by Tom Rademacher | The Grand Rapids Press
Sunday August 30, 2009, 6:00 AM
In a child’s handwriting, the letter begins simply: “Dear President Obama, I am writing to tell you how I feel without my dad and my little twin brothers.” Thus begins Pablo Aguilar’s plea for help, help to be reunited with his stepfather and twin stepbrothers after a year apart, help for other families like his.
His family was separated when his father tried to receive permission to work legally in America, after living illegally in Grand Rapids for years. He prays every night that they will be reunited.
But just in case, Pablo has also written a letter to perhaps the only person who can intercede for him: the president of the United States.
With 65,000 others sending letters to the White House every week, Pablo likely doesn’t stand a chance Barack Obama will even see his.
Then there are the 100,000 e-mails, 1,000 faxes and 3,000 phone calls dispatched each day to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
But when you’re 12 and you miss with all your heart the most important man in your life, you aim high.
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June 10, 2009
By MIRIAM JORDAN - The Wall Street Journal
The Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday it is temporarily freezing a policy of deporting widows and widowers of U.S. citizens, a sign of the Obama administration’s interest in new approaches to immigration.
Only a few hundred people were at risk of deportation under the policy, but critics viewed it as one of the most painful consequences of President George W. Bush’s immigration crackdown.
Under the current interpretation of federal law, some immigrants whose American spouses had died faced possible deportation because their legal status was in limbo. The rule applied to immigrants who had been married for less than two years or whose green-card process hadn’t been completed when their spouses died. The clause, known as the “widow penalty,” had resulted in a spate of lawsuits.
On Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that her agency was freezing any action against such widows and widowers for two years. “Smart immigration policy balances strong enforcement practices with common-sense, practical solutions to complicated issues,” Ms. Napolitano said.
A Department of Homeland Security statement said U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that oversees immigrant petitions, would give favorable consideration to requests for reinstatement of cases that previously had been revoked under the law.
Ms. Napolitano’s directive offers relief, if only temporary, to some 200 widows and widowers. However, it suggests the Obama administration could be testing a softer approach to other contentious aspects of immigration policy.
“It’s a good sign, and it hedges Obama’s bets: If comprehensive [immigration] reform advances, this will help pave the way. If not, at least he can say he tried,” said Dan Kowalski, an Austin, Texas, immigration attorney and editor of Bender’s Immigration Bulletin.
To read more of this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124460396702601095.html
For more info on this policy: http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/pr_1244578412501.shtm
On May 20, Senator Menendez (D-NJ), Senator Gillibrand (D-NY), Senator Kennedy (D-MA), and Senator Schumer (D-NY) re-introduced the Reuniting Families Act (S.1085) which contains practical solutions for reducing family immigration visa backlogs and promoting humane and timely reunification of immigrant families. Specifically, the bill includes provisions that would ensure that visas are allocated efficiently; alleviate lengthy wait times that keep legal immigrants and their overseas loved ones separated for years; and decrease measures that prevent family members from obtaining visas.
Three QUICK ACTIONS you can DO TODAY to support family unity:
May 13, 2009
Washington D.C. - Tomorrow, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Congressmen Adam Putnam (R-FL) and Howard Berman (D-CA) will introduce, in the Senate and House, the Agricultural Job Opportunities, Benefits, and Security (AgJOBS) Act. AgJOBS is a bipartisan, compromise bill that is the result of years of negotiations among farmworkers, growers, and Members of Congress. The legislation has two parts: 1) an earned legalization program for unauthorized farmworkers who meet certain eligibility requirements; and 2) a revision of the H-2A temporary foreign agricultural worker program. Numerous organizations from across the political spectrum believe that the bill is necessary to create a stable agricultural workforce, improve the lives of farmworkers, and give employers access to the workers they need.
AgJOBS also serves as a blueprint for comprehensive immigration reform. AgJOBS demonstrates a successful model for compromise where workers and employers have come together to resolve their differences. The dysfunctional U.S. immigration system is currently standing in the way of addressing deeper structural problems that impact U.S. workers and U.S. competitiveness in a globalized market. The Immigration Policy Center has produced a fact sheet about the current challenges found at the intersection of immigration policy and agriculture, and why addressing these issues is critical to the nation’s economy.
April 6, 2009
NY Times Editorial
It is more than bank failures and rising unemployment that give these troubled times echoes of the 1930s. An unfinished labor battle from the New Deal is being waged again.
The goal is to win basic rights that farm and domestic workers were denied more than 70 years ago, when the Roosevelt administration won major reforms protecting other workers in areas like overtime and disability pay, days of rest and union organizing.
That inequality is a perverse holdover from the Jim Crow era. Segregationist Southern Democrats in Congress could not abide giving African-Americans, who then made up most of the farm and domestic labor force, an equal footing in the workplace with whites. President Roosevelt’s compromise simply wrote workers in those industries out of the New Deal.
They were thus sidelined from the labor movement, with predictable results. Though the Dixiecrats have all long since died or repented, the injustice they spawned has never been corrected. Poverty, brutal working conditions and legally sanctioned discrimination persist for new generations of laborers, who are now mostly Latino immigrants.
For more:
Last year on Monday, May 12, as spring was just beginning, “Irma” and “Jose” were on their lunch break at the meatpacking plant, Agriprocessors, in Postville, Iowa, just 20 minutes from campus; “Rosita” was waiting in line to go out to recess with her other first grade classmates at the Postville Elementary School; Sister Mary was just arriving to the small office in St. Bridget’s, one of the three parishes where this seventy year old Catholic Sister served as Pastoral Administrator. Then at 10 a.m., their worlds collapsed, and they have not been the same since….
On Monday, May 12, 2008, at 10:00 a.m., the small town of Postville, Iowa, population 2,300, was the site of one of the most brutal, most expensive, and largest immigration raids in the history of the US. 389 undocumented workers who had made Postville their home-contributing to the economy, enrolling their children in school, participating in local faith communities-were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. As black hawk helicopters flew overhead, a force of 900 heavily armed operatives plus personnel from 11 other agencies shackled and detained close to a fifth of the town’s population. The raid gained national attention for its devastating impact on the community, its excessive use of force, and especially for the unprecedented prosecution that followed.
A year later, the raid in Postville has meant…
Join with hundreds in our community and the nation who have dedicated countless hours to the humanitarian response. Take the time to be informed and advocate. Our nation needs to engage this complex, and important matter. By our location and our education, we can help lead the nation toward comprehensive, immigration reform that serves our national economic and security interests, without destroying our communities and contradicting our deeply held values.
By NINA BERNSTEIN Published: February 3, 2009
New York Times
The raids on homes around the country were billed as carefully planned hunts for dangerous immigrant fugitives, and given catchy names like Operation Return to Sender.
And they garnered bigger increases in money and staff from Congress than any other program run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, even as complaints grew that teams of armed agents were entering homes indiscriminately.
But in fact, beginning in 2006, the program was no longer what was being advertised. Federal immigration officials had repeatedly told Congress that among more than half a million immigrants with outstanding deportation orders, they would concentrate on rounding up the most threatening — criminals and terrorism suspects.
Instead, newly available documents show, the agency changed the rules, and the program increasingly went after easier targets. A vast majority of those arrested had no criminal record, and many had no deportation orders against them, either.
To read more: