In Our Community: Immigration News

On Wednesday, I attended the arrival ceremony at the White House for President Calderon of Mexico - you can see him pictured above with President Obama. For more on that and other updates, here it is, your immigration news from Monday, May 17 to Monday, May 24.

During a joint session of Congress, President Calderon spoke strongly against the new Arizona law which, as he said, "introduces a terrible idea: using racial profiling as a basis for law enforcement." His remarks on this subject were greeted with a standing ovation. Also during his visit, the United States and Mexico announced the creation of a joint committee on border-related activities.

In the pop culture world, immigration also got a shout-out: The new Miss USA is Rima Fakih, an Arab-American immigrant. She was born in Lebanon and came to the United States as a young child, eventually settling in Michigan. She is believed to be the first Arab American and Muslim to win the contest.

San Francisco is trying to opt out of Secure Communities, a Homeland Security program run by ICE in which fingerprints taken at local jails are run through a national database to check arrestees' immigration status. The city's sheriff has said that Secure Communities conflicts with the city's policy of only reporting foreign-born persons who are booked for felonies. Secure Communities doesn't align with ICE's objective of going after the "most dangerous criminals" - instead it casts a wide net regardless of individual circumstances - and we need cities like San Francisco (and DC) to push ICE to clarify the program's purpose.

As I was perusing the immigration blogs this past week, I came across this concerning clip: South Carolina has introduced a bill copying the Arizona law. The Wall Street Journal has an article on how immigrants are often reluctant to report domestic abuse, if going to the police means risking deportation. This problem, of states taking federal law into their own hands, is clearly going to get worse before it gets better.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (IL) recently endorsed a plan to include LGBT partners in immigration reform. Currently, LGBT Americans are unable to petition for their foreign-born partners. The inclusion of the Uniting American Families Act in immigration reform would end this long-standing denial of civil rights and equality.

Michelle Obama's visit to an elementary school in Maryland catapulted the question of family unity onto the national stage, when a second-grader expressed fears that her mother would be deported. You can watch the video here. According to the Interfaith Immigration Coalition, families can't wait any longer for a just, humane immigration reform bill.

President of Mexico Opposes AZ Law, Calls on Congress to Find a Better Solution

Today, addressing a joint session of Congress, President Calderon of Mexico stated his strong opposition to the new law in Arizona. Mexico has issued a travel warning to its citizens in the United States and has terminated a student exchange program with Arizona.

In his speech, Calderon recognized that each country has the right to enact and enforce its own laws, but he simultaneously stressed the urgent need to fix the "broken and inefficient" immigration system. He favors the creation of a "legal, orderly, and secure flow" of migrants, and pointed out that the border would not be secure without comprehensive immigration reform.

Calling for a "responsible" solution, Calderon said, "I strongly disagree with the recently adopted law in Arizona." Using racial profiling as the basis of law performance is a "terrible idea." He emphasized that the new law "carries a great amount of risk when core values are being breached." He called on President Obama and the Congress to "find a better way together to face and fix this problem."

While Mexico has a lot on its plate - stamping out bureaucratic corruption and bribery, boosting the economy and creating new jobs, halting organized crime, and more - it is clear that President Calderon will not stand idly by as the United States pursues dangerous enforcement policies. From both a moral and practical standpoint, racial profiling and other forms of discrimination cannot be tolerated as legitimate enforcement strategies.

In Our Community: Immigration News

Welcome back for another week of immigration news, from Monday, May 10 to Monday, May 17. Happy reading!

Arizona's new immigration law, which requires racial profiling, goes into effect on July 28. However, some people just aren't that patient. We've heard scattered reports that Arizona police officers are already "enforcing" the new law. What's more, twelve states - including Minnesota, Michigan, and more - are introducing copy-cat legislation. These outrageous proposals should be a wake-up call for Congress - urge your representatives to take swift action to enact immigration reform this year.

Boycotting Arizona? Yup, me too. So is Austin, along with many other cities across the country. We're also waiting for MALDEF, ACLU, and NILC to introduce their lawsuit challenging the unconstitutional and discriminatory Arizona law. The Department of Justice may take action as well, but we are concerned to learn that Attorney General Eric Holder hasn't even read the Arizona law yet. We know he's busy, but it's less than twenty pages.

Mexico has issued a travel warning to its citizens about the Arizona law. In addition, the President of Mexico will be arriving in the United States on Wednesday. We anticipate that he and President Obama will have a lot to discuss when it comes to immigration.

Even the United Nations is taking note of the new Arizona law. A group of independent UN rights experts expressed serious concerns about whether this law violates the United States' obligations under international human rights treaties.

Believe it or not, Arizona keeps coming up with new, innovative ways to take away residents' rights, and now state lawmakers are focusing on education. AZ Governor Jan Brewer just signed into law a bill prohibiting any classes that "advocate for ethnic solidarity" or "promote resentment toward a race or class of people." This bill seeks to eradicate ethnic studies programs, such as those that teach Mexican-American history. I see this as a nativist impulse favoring revisionist history, which seeks to mask oppression and deny students the opportunity to study civil rights. We can do better.

However, the Department of Homeland Security seems to be deporting immigrants at an exceptionally rapid pace this year even without Arizona's assistance. ICE director John Morton has said that he plans to deport people at a "massive scale," and he has set the goal of 400,000 deportations in 2010. He seems to be outdoing himself. Time has reported this astonishing figure:

Thus far this year, some 185,887 people have been deported, a record pace that, if maintained, will nearly double the number of deportations in 2010 to 604,133.

One last note: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has an announcement - the new "green cards" for legal permanent residents will actually be green! Not only that, but they'll incorporate new security measures to avoid fraud.

Last Week: In Our Community

We are a little behind because of Alex's trip to New Mexico, but we've done our best to catch up today. Stories below come from as far back as June 5, all the way up to news from this past weekend.

The Transitional Records Access Clearinghouse reported last week that a shortage of immigration judges has led to a 19 percent increase in backlog of pending immigration cases since 2006 and a 23 percent increase case resolution time. TRAC reports that only 4 more judges have been hired since August 2006, despite the fact that 351,477 cases were received in 2008. At the end of the fiscal year 2008, 186,342 immigration cases were still pending. A few hundred of those affected by lengthy backlogs will be relieved to hear that the new administration has decided to temporarily suspend the policy of deporting widows of U.S. citizens, at least until they tackle immigration policy on a larger scale.

Similarly, a new study conducted by Appleseed, a non-profit advocating for reform of the justice system, reports that low levels of professionalism accompanied by a lack of law clerks has indeed bogged the immigration courts down and obstructed justice for many. The study reports that a mere .0155% of immigration cases involve terrorism or national security concerns, and cases involving any type of criminal behavior amounts to 13% of all cases heard.

Of particular interest to us at FCNL and other faith-based advocacy groups across the nation: Benjamin Knoll, a graduate student at the University of Iowa has arrived at an interesting conclusion in his master's thesis. Knoll has found that the more often people say they attend worship services, the more likely they will have a liberal attitude towards immigration reform.

Also last week, America Fraternity, a Miami nonprofit, held a birthday party for 10-year-old Ronald Soza, who is suing President Barack Obama. Soza, along with 100 other U.S citizens whose parents face deportation, is asking the courts to halt the deportation of their parents until Congress overhauls America's current immigration policy.

On Wednesday, religious leaders with ties to immigrant communities met in Washington and held a prayer vigil in anticipation of President Obama's meeting on immigration scheduled for this week.

Jacqueline Stevens from 'The Nation,' reports from Arizona, where she attempts to gain entry to clandestine deportation hearings. In order to watch deportation proceedings in Eloy, Arizona, a member of the public must submit to a 2 week pre-screening background check, which is bloated with many bureaucratic steps.

Amnesty International reports on human rights abuses in detention facilities, including physical violence, deprivation of legal assistance, substandard medical care and use of restraints. Across this country, ICE houses more than 30,000 detainees each night for a myriad of reasons in substandard living conditions. A compelling case in point comes to us from Atlanta, where on June 11 activists from Georgia Detention Watch conducted a vigil for Roberto Martinez Medina, 39, who died on March 11 in a Georgia Detention Center. There was no investigation into Medina's death. ICE reported that he died of "apparent natural causes." In spite of this, ICE has plans to build a new 1,500-inmate federal immigration prison in Arizona this year. The construction of this new prison will help ICE detain almost 440,000 immigrants this year, up from 311,000 in 2008, reports the ACLU.

The U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services signed a contract with a Union County, NJ juvenile detention center which would house 15 undocumented immigrant minors with criminal records. The facility would provide a secure setting for the young men, ages 12-17.

The Tenneseean ran a story last week about Irving Palomo, a U.S. Citizen of Mexican descent who gained his citizenship from the little-known 'citizenship-by-derivation' clause. After 15 days where he was taken 264 miles from home against his will, Palomo was released and told to find his own way back to Nashville. Another personal story comes to us from the San Antonio Express-News, where Rama Carty, 39, a legal permanent U.S. resident in detention for a drug charge, faces deportation to Haiti, a country he has never been to. Carty was born in the Republic of Congo to Haitian parents, and was transferred to another detention center after his outspoken complaints about conditions in his detention center spurred an investigation of the facility by Amnesty International. Outside the gates of Rama Carty's detention center, one unidentified person conducts a hunger strike.

In an uplifting story of family reunification, a Sudanese family reunites in Brooklyn.

Last but not least, a 'desktop raid' in California leaves workers devastated and jobless.
Thanks for reading!

Secretary Clinton Goes to Mexico

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton heads to Mexico today to discuss a wide range of issues regarding US-Mexico relations. At the top of this list will be the current border violence caused by drug cartels and arms trafficking into Mexico, but immigration will also be a key point of discussion.

Secretary Clinton will be in Mexico for two days, paving the way for upcoming visits by Attorney General Holder, Secretary Napolitano, and (in mid-April)President Obama.

As I've posted before, let's hope Secretary Clinton remembers Leoluca Orlando's model of empowering civil society as the best model for addressing drug cartels and violence.