Review: The Right to Stay Home

By Teófilo Reyes, Labornotes
January 17, 2014

While immigrants were fasting on the Mall near the U.S. Capitol last month to pressure for immigration reform, the Mexican Congress was allowing privatization of the country's public oil corporation, PEMEX.

Separated by 2,500 miles, these events might seem a world apart.

But David Bacon's The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration shows how the two are intertwined. Bacon weaves narratives across borders, following communities as they struggle at home, migrate, and then struggle again in their new homes.[...]

Read the full article:
http://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2014/01/review-right-stay-home

Federal Judge Scolds Government For Withholding Documents On Immigrant Detentions

By Larry Neumeister, Huffington Post
December 30, 2013

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge on Monday questioned whether the government was trying to hide or obscure something by failing to give information to a civil rights group about thousands of immigrant detainees held for long periods.

U.S. District Judge Richard Berman's written decision came days after government attorneys insisted they needed more time to comply with his September order granting the American Civil Liberties Union's Freedom of Information Act request.

The ACLU has said it wants to expose a flawed system that keeps thousands of detainees behind bars for long periods while their eligibility to remain in the country is adjudicated.[...]

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/30/federal-judge-immigration_n_4520028.html

More Protesters Arrested As Obama's Deportation Record Nears 2 Million

By Saki Knafo, Huffington Post
December 10, 2013

ELIZABETH, N.J. -- Eight demonstrators tied themselves to one another wrist-to-wrist in the falling snow Tuesday morning, and lay down across the road in a human chain, blocking access to an immigration detention center in Elizabeth, N.J. Detention officers on their way to work waited in a line of cars stretching down the street.

For nearly a minute, the steady blast of a car horn drowned out the sound of the protesters’ chants. By the time the police arrested the protesters about a half-hour later, snow had begun to pile up on their bodies, hiding the slogans on the T-shirts they had pulled on over their sweaters.

The protest was the latest in a recent series of demonstrations aimed at urging President Barack Obama to stop the deportation of undocumented immigrants.[...]

Read the full article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/10/obama-deportation-arrests_n_4420605.html

The Right To Stay Home: How U.S. Policy Drives Mexican Migration

By Duane Campbell, Talking Union
November 26, 2013

The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration by David Bacon is a well written, well informed book that explains political and economic currents shaping the US immigration experience.

The U.S. public is engaged in a sustained and divisive debate over immigration. Unfortunately, at the same time, most U.S. do not recognize that U.S. economic policy, particularly NAFTA, created many of the conditions that produce the very immigration of some 8 million people that many on the Right and the Tea Party so oppose. [...]

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http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2013/11/26/the-right-to-stay-home-how-u-s-policy-drives-mexican-migration/

The State of the Movement for Immigration Reform…as 2013 Comes to an End

We somehow knew that this was the same old game of doing nothing and blaming it on the Republicans to get the Latino vote in the next election

From Centro Sin Fronteras
December 28, 2013

This week we listened to a commentary on our immigration struggle over the last year – and the commentators thoughts on what lay ahead of us in 2014. The commentary was made by one of the great union leaders of our time, a friend of ours and someone we greatly respect. Yet he just seemed to miss the most important point.

He cited the great showing we had made in the last elections which indeed set the basis for a turnaround in the Republican party. That was certainly the truth. Then he pointed to the great way we had mobilized in 2013 to try to get the Republican leadership to pass a legalization bill in the House.

Well, not exactly. A positive point was the increase in civil disobedience, mostly by young people. It was good to see “the dreamers” not just fighting for themselves but fighting for their parents and the families as well.

On the other hand, our marches were very small in comparison with the millions that marched in 2005 and 2006. [...]

Read the full article:
http://lavozprcconline.org/csf/?p=756