'Border surge' approval further threatens border communities, migrant safety and well-being
Press Release, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights
June 28, 2013
(Oakland, CA) With the Senate’s passage of S. 744, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013, the Board of Directors and members of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights voiced their disappointment and concern with the dramatic escalation of border enforcement negotiated to secure support from conservative Republican senators hostile to the legalization of undocumented immigrants.
Executive Director, Catherine Tactaquin, commented, “The Senate passed a historic immigration reform bill yesterday. We had hoped the bill would have been historic for upholding the human rights of immigrants, for providing fair and equitable access to visas, protecting their rights as workers, fueling resources to process the long backlog of pending family visa applicants, and ending flawed and punitive immigration enforcement policies at the border and in the interior. “ She continued, “Unfortunately, S. 744 was not that bill. This is not the kind of legislation and deal-making that we can support nor encourage.”[...]
Read the full press release:
http://www.nnirr.org/drupal/senate-bill-dashes-hopes
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Saturday, June 29, 2013
With DOMA Dead, LGBT-Inclusive Immigration Reform Becomes Moot Point
Sen. Patrick Leahy announced that he will not seek a vote on his immigration amendment that would have allowed married gay and lesbian Americans to sponsor their foreign-born spouse for citizenship.
By Sunnivie Brydum, The Advocate
June 28, 2013
When the Supreme Court struck down a key portion of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act Wednesday, it cleared the way for married same-sex couples to access a litany of federal benefits, including tax breaks and military spousal benefits.
But many gay and lesbian couples with a partner who was born outside the U.S. were most excited to discover that the death of DOMA means they can finally sponsor their foreign-born spouse for citizenship.[...]
Read the full article:
http://www.advocate.com/politics/2013/06/28/doma-dead-lgbt-inclusive-immigration-reform-becomes-moot-point
By Sunnivie Brydum, The Advocate
June 28, 2013
When the Supreme Court struck down a key portion of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act Wednesday, it cleared the way for married same-sex couples to access a litany of federal benefits, including tax breaks and military spousal benefits.
But many gay and lesbian couples with a partner who was born outside the U.S. were most excited to discover that the death of DOMA means they can finally sponsor their foreign-born spouse for citizenship.[...]
Read the full article:
http://www.advocate.com/politics/2013/06/28/doma-dead-lgbt-inclusive-immigration-reform-becomes-moot-point
Friday, June 28, 2013
US employers will control immigration: Getting in and getting on
The proposed immigration reforms in the US seem mostly intended to supply cheap and docile guest workers for short-term use by employers, rather than full US citizens.
By Benoît Bréville, Le Monde Diplomatique
July 2013
The US right has harboured two opposing views on immigration for decades. Either foreign workers are a threat, taking American jobs, living on social welfare and challenging public security; or they are virtuous, hard workers who will do jobs Americans now don’t want, determined entrepreneurs who arrive penniless in the US and start up their own businesses. Are they a burden on the nation or an asset to the economy? The conservatives want to protect “American values”, while the neoliberals advocate more open borders to stimulate growth.
Mitt Romney, the Republican Party’s presidential candidate in 2012, urged illegal immigrants to “self-deport” back home — if not, the authorities would do it for them. This did not endear him to the millions of Latinos in the US waiting for a relative to be made legal: he won only 27% of their votes, compared with Barack Obama’s 71% (1).
“It’s really hard to get people to listen to you on economic growth, on tax rates, on healthcare, if they think you want to deport their grandmother,” said Florida senator and Tea Party star Marco Rubio just after the election.[...]
Read the full article:
http://mondediplo.com/2013/07/11us
By Benoît Bréville, Le Monde Diplomatique
July 2013
The US right has harboured two opposing views on immigration for decades. Either foreign workers are a threat, taking American jobs, living on social welfare and challenging public security; or they are virtuous, hard workers who will do jobs Americans now don’t want, determined entrepreneurs who arrive penniless in the US and start up their own businesses. Are they a burden on the nation or an asset to the economy? The conservatives want to protect “American values”, while the neoliberals advocate more open borders to stimulate growth.
Mitt Romney, the Republican Party’s presidential candidate in 2012, urged illegal immigrants to “self-deport” back home — if not, the authorities would do it for them. This did not endear him to the millions of Latinos in the US waiting for a relative to be made legal: he won only 27% of their votes, compared with Barack Obama’s 71% (1).
“It’s really hard to get people to listen to you on economic growth, on tax rates, on healthcare, if they think you want to deport their grandmother,” said Florida senator and Tea Party star Marco Rubio just after the election.[...]
Read the full article:
http://mondediplo.com/2013/07/11us
Video: "Obama, Tear Down This Wall"
Images of border militarization over Obama's recent speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Produced by Laura Carlsen and Murphy Woodhouse of the Americas Program. Original photography by Murphy Woodhouse, Paul Ingram and Sean Arce. Sketch of Operation Streamline by Lawrence Gipe.
tics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU7JuRCh32s
tics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU7JuRCh32s
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Sweatshops Don't Just Happen - They're a Policy
We see the result of these policies in the more than two million Mexicans who now work in maquiladoras assembling goods for the US market, the more than three million Bangladeshis who sew apparel for European and US retailers, and the millions more across the globe who either work in sweatshops or cross borders "illegally" to find jobs in the richer nations.
By David L. Wilson, Truthout
June 25, 2013
On May 5, The New York Times dedicated its "Sunday Dialogue" feature to letters about the factory collapse in Bangladesh that had killed more than 1,100 garment workers a week and a half earlier. The "dialogue" started with a letter from University of Michigan business school professor Jerry Davis, who apportioned blame for the disaster to "the owners of the building and the factories it contained, to the government of Bangladesh, to the retailers who sold the clothing," and to us. Through "[o]ur willingness to buy garments sewn under dangerous conditions," he wrote, we "create the demand that underwrites these tragedies."
There's a striking omission in Prof. Davis' list - the people whose policies make the sweatshop economy possible.[...]
Read the full article:
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/17183-sweatshops-dont-just-happen-theyre-a-policy
By David L. Wilson, Truthout
June 25, 2013
On May 5, The New York Times dedicated its "Sunday Dialogue" feature to letters about the factory collapse in Bangladesh that had killed more than 1,100 garment workers a week and a half earlier. The "dialogue" started with a letter from University of Michigan business school professor Jerry Davis, who apportioned blame for the disaster to "the owners of the building and the factories it contained, to the government of Bangladesh, to the retailers who sold the clothing," and to us. Through "[o]ur willingness to buy garments sewn under dangerous conditions," he wrote, we "create the demand that underwrites these tragedies."
There's a striking omission in Prof. Davis' list - the people whose policies make the sweatshop economy possible.[...]
Read the full article:
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/17183-sweatshops-dont-just-happen-theyre-a-policy
The Fast Against the Firings
By David Bacon, In These Times
June 19, 2013
OAKLAND, CALIF.--Even though the full Senate is debating the immigration reform bill S. 744, labor and community activists in northern California charge that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency of the federal Department of Homeland Security continues to require local employers to fire hundreds of workers, saying they have no immigration papers. In protest, dozens of Bay Area immigrant workers and their supporters went without food last week in a 72-hour hunger strike to draw attention to hundreds of these firings.
The Obama administration, which strongly supports S. 744, calls the proposal “commonsense immigration reform.” The fasters charged, however, there is no common sense in firing workers while Congress debates the bill.
The bill’s supporters tout the provisional legal status it would give some undocumented workers, like those currently being fired. But workers who are now losing their jobs in these workplace enforcement actions will not be rehired even if thebill passes, critics charge. Further, the job losses will push fired workers into poverty, below the income requirement that the bill imposes to qualify for legalization.[...]
Read the full article:
http://inthesetimes.com/uprising/entry/15171/the_fast_against_the_firings/
June 19, 2013
OAKLAND, CALIF.--Even though the full Senate is debating the immigration reform bill S. 744, labor and community activists in northern California charge that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency of the federal Department of Homeland Security continues to require local employers to fire hundreds of workers, saying they have no immigration papers. In protest, dozens of Bay Area immigrant workers and their supporters went without food last week in a 72-hour hunger strike to draw attention to hundreds of these firings.
The Obama administration, which strongly supports S. 744, calls the proposal “commonsense immigration reform.” The fasters charged, however, there is no common sense in firing workers while Congress debates the bill.
The bill’s supporters tout the provisional legal status it would give some undocumented workers, like those currently being fired. But workers who are now losing their jobs in these workplace enforcement actions will not be rehired even if thebill passes, critics charge. Further, the job losses will push fired workers into poverty, below the income requirement that the bill imposes to qualify for legalization.[...]
Read the full article:
http://inthesetimes.com/uprising/entry/15171/the_fast_against_the_firings/
Monday, June 24, 2013
Recruitment Abuses Emerge in Immigration Reform Debate
By Michelle Chen, In These Times
June 12, 2013
Archiel Buagas thought she was doing everything right. The young Filipina nurse secured a special work visa to come to the United States and arranged a job at a New York nursing home with the help of a recruiting agency. Things started to feel wrong when they refused to give her a copy of her contract. She and the other nurses in her group soon found themselves working frantically to care for 30 to 60 patients per shift, without regular breaks, and she was soon driven to exhaustion by the indecent pay and relentless stress.
“I was so scared of going to work that before my shift," she later testified to labor advocates. "I would be crying, I’d be [vomiting] because of anxiety and nervousness. I would have diarrhea.... [T]he only thing that made me sleep was the fact that I’m so tired .... I wanted to go home.”
Buagas learned the hard way that her path to American prosperity would be fraught with betrayal. It wasn’t because she didn’t have the right papers, it was because her papers offered her no protection against an industry that preys on the hopes of migrants seeking a better life abroad.[...]
Read the full article:
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/15136/recruitment_abuses_emerge_in_immigration_reform_debate/
June 12, 2013
Archiel Buagas thought she was doing everything right. The young Filipina nurse secured a special work visa to come to the United States and arranged a job at a New York nursing home with the help of a recruiting agency. Things started to feel wrong when they refused to give her a copy of her contract. She and the other nurses in her group soon found themselves working frantically to care for 30 to 60 patients per shift, without regular breaks, and she was soon driven to exhaustion by the indecent pay and relentless stress.
“I was so scared of going to work that before my shift," she later testified to labor advocates. "I would be crying, I’d be [vomiting] because of anxiety and nervousness. I would have diarrhea.... [T]he only thing that made me sleep was the fact that I’m so tired .... I wanted to go home.”
Buagas learned the hard way that her path to American prosperity would be fraught with betrayal. It wasn’t because she didn’t have the right papers, it was because her papers offered her no protection against an industry that preys on the hopes of migrants seeking a better life abroad.[...]
Read the full article:
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/15136/recruitment_abuses_emerge_in_immigration_reform_debate/
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