By Southern Poverty Law Center
February 11, 2014
Laura Franco and her sister thought they had found a life-changing opportunity.
After meeting with a labor recruiter and spending hours browsing through a website, both were convinced that leaving the Dominican Republic to work in Tennessee as part of the U.S. State Department’s cultural exchange program would be a great way to spend their summer break from college in 2012.
According to the recruiter, the sisters would clean rooms in a “fancy hotel” where room and board would be free. The sisters saw it as an opportunity to improve their English and meet people from other cultures – a true cultural exchange.
When they arrived in Tennessee, they found a far different reality. They didn’t receive free room and board at a fancy hotel. Instead, they were ordered to sleep with the horses in the resort’s stables. And, in addition to cleaning hotel rooms, they were expected to tend to the horses and maintain the stables.
Laura and her sister are not alone. [...]
Read the full article:
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/news/splc-report-state-department-cultural-exchange-program-hijacked-by-us-employers-us
Read the full report:
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/publications/Culture-Shock
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Friday, February 21, 2014
Chris Christie’s Texas horror: Meet the scandalous prison company he’s long promoted
A corporation Christie's lobbied for and long pushed runs notorious detention center with a slew of vocal opponents
By Josh Eidelson, Salon
January 24, 2014
A controversial company promoted by Chris Christie runs an immigrant detention center in Texas slammed by advocates as one of the nation’s worst. The facility is used by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to house immigrant detainees who are seeking asylum in the United States.
And, noting Christie’s “long and very close relationship with Community Education Centers,” the private company running the facility for ICE, one critic told Salon, “I think it’s time people start asking questions, because this company’s practices are not confined to New Jersey.”
“I’ve visited a bunch of detention facilities in Texas, and that’s by far the worst,” said the opponent, Bob Libal, who directs the prison reform group Grassroots Leadership and visited the Polk County Adult Detention Center with other activists in 2012 and 2013. His allegations echo a 2012 report from the Detention Watch Network, a coalition including the ACLU and the American Immigration Lawyers Association as well as Libal’s group: “Inadequate medical care, poor nutrition, lack of access to legal services, absence of meaningful programming, and a willful neglect of those who are imprisoned there plague the Polk detention center.” [...]
Read the full article:
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/24/chris_christies_texas_horror_meet_the_scandalous_prison_company_hes_long_promoted/
By Josh Eidelson, Salon
January 24, 2014
A controversial company promoted by Chris Christie runs an immigrant detention center in Texas slammed by advocates as one of the nation’s worst. The facility is used by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to house immigrant detainees who are seeking asylum in the United States.
And, noting Christie’s “long and very close relationship with Community Education Centers,” the private company running the facility for ICE, one critic told Salon, “I think it’s time people start asking questions, because this company’s practices are not confined to New Jersey.”
“I’ve visited a bunch of detention facilities in Texas, and that’s by far the worst,” said the opponent, Bob Libal, who directs the prison reform group Grassroots Leadership and visited the Polk County Adult Detention Center with other activists in 2012 and 2013. His allegations echo a 2012 report from the Detention Watch Network, a coalition including the ACLU and the American Immigration Lawyers Association as well as Libal’s group: “Inadequate medical care, poor nutrition, lack of access to legal services, absence of meaningful programming, and a willful neglect of those who are imprisoned there plague the Polk detention center.” [...]
Read the full article:
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/24/chris_christies_texas_horror_meet_the_scandalous_prison_company_hes_long_promoted/
Friday, January 31, 2014
Review: The Right to Stay Home
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
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
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.[...]
Read the full article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/30/federal-judge-immigration_n_4520028.html
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.[...]
Read the full article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/30/federal-judge-immigration_n_4520028.html
Monday, January 27, 2014
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
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
Saturday, January 25, 2014
The Right To Stay Home: How U.S. Policy Drives Mexican Migration
By Duane Campbell, Talking UnionNovember 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. [...]
Read the full article:
http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2013/11/26/the-right-to-stay-home-how-u-s-policy-drives-mexican-migration/
Friday, January 24, 2014
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
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
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