I am an immigrant. I migrated to the U.S. from the Philippines. Although it wasn't always the case, today I am learning to peel the shame I used to feel about being an immigrant. Some cringe at the word "immigrant"; some take and use it as an insult. Many believe that it's an F-word; a word that's a curse, a taboo, something dirty, a word people aren't suppose to use, it's thrown around like a weapon of hate.

The history of the word, from my understanding, is that it was used to place an identifier on a group that was seen as an 'other.' It has been posed to me that perhaps the word "immigrant" should not be used in the first place. But I disagree; eradicating the word isn't a protest of disregard of the power of the ruling class. but rather it's an admittance of their power.

Instead of using "immigrant" as an F-word, I'm suggesting that people remember that language is ours; We determine its meaning and its development, not the other way around. I am an immigrant; I migrated from one place to another. There is nothing wrong with that.

(My particular interest is in the undocumented immigrant experience, particularly undocumented immigrant youth. This blog seeks to journey into learning about the lives of immigrants, documented and undocumented alike, and the politics surrounding the subject.)

"google that!"

Immigrant Rights are Human Rights; If a group of people can be oppressed, who decides who's next?

Inform yourself and others, go to google.com and youtube.com and check out things like:

I.C.E. Detention Center / Hutto Dention Center / DREAM Act


Thursday, February 5, 2009

The Office of New York City: PRESS CONFERENCE

Councilman Charles Barron
250 Broadway New York NY 10007
917-584-7604

Thursday February 5, 2009
11:30am
Steps of City Hall

Councilman Barron joins immigrant and community leaders in speaking out against governor Patterson’s selection of Kirsten Gillibrand to the US senate

Councilman Charles Barron, immigrant groups, community leaders, and activists including Viola Plummer and Roger Wareham of the December 12th Movement; Dominican Community Activist Ydonis Rodriguez, Haitian Activist Lakou Dahaud Andre; Teresa Gutierrez of the May 1st Coalition for Worker and Immigrant Rights, Ana Aguirre of United Community Centers, Joy Simmons of Operation P.O.W.E.R.; Noel Leader of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, Rev Paul Mitchell of Changing Live Christian Center; Rev Allen Hand; Kevin McCall and Chris Banks of United Concerned Citizens, and many others are holding a press conference on the steps of City Hall on Thursday February 5, 2009 at 11:30am to speak out against governor Patterson’s selection of Kirsten Gillibrand to the US senate.


Councilman Barron States, “Kirsten Gillibrand should not have been appointed to represent our state, which has one of the largest immigrant communities in the country. She is anti immigration and anti-gun control. She has opposed amnesty for immigrants, she has supported the deputizing of law enforcement around the US border, she has been a proponent of the English only movement, she has opposed the bill that would allow undocumented immigrants to a have drivers licenses, and she supported the policy that requires legal immigrants to reveal their status to businesses before being hired. Gillibrand’s stance against gun control is also unacceptable especially considering the extent that communities of color suffer from gun violence.”


Councilman Barron continues, “It is sad that we had to rely on Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to appoint the only Black person to the Senate. Some excellent choices, who were overlooked by Patterson, include Carl McCall, Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, State Senator Bill Perkins, former Lieutenant Governor Candidate Lisa Yves, and Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown. The governor has the power to select but the people have the power to elect. We will be organizing in our local communities to see that the best candidate for New York State is elected.”


For more information contact Joy Simmons at 917-584-7604 or 917-763-3091

National Grassroots Immigrant Strategy Conference

PLEASE COME!! 4/10-12, 2009 Chicago,IL: NISN National Grassroots Immigrant Strategy Conference
http://www.ImmigrantSolidarity.org/2009Conference/
Hotline: (773)942-2268

Feb. 10, All Out to Albany for the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights!

From: domesticworkersunited@gmail.com

The world is changing around us. We have a new president, a new leadership in the NY State Senate, and the urgency of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Every day, domestic workers are losing their jobs, and will risk losing their jobs as they assert their most basic human rights.

On February 10, domestic workers will be traveling to Albany to push once again for respect, recognition and labor standards. 2009 represents our fifth legislative session of organizing, advocacy and action - to push history forward for this critical workforce whose work makes all other work possible.

Today, on this historic inauguration day, we ask that you pledge your commitment to moving real change forward by signing up to get on the bus with domestic workers as they step up their campaign for the Bill of Rights, toward bring value and respect to all work.

On February 10, buses will be leaving from in front of Barnes and Noble, on the North Side of Union Square Park in Manhattan at 6:30 am.
Take the 4/5/6/N/R/W/Q to Union Square
Food and transportation will be free for all participants, and a commemorative T-shirt, with donations welcome.
We will be returning to Union Square by 7:00 pm the same day.
RSVP today - let's move real change forward, and save your seat on the bus - domesticworkersunited@gmail.com, (212) 481-5747.

Please, also consider adding your name or your organizations name to the list of endorsers for the 2009 Bill of Rights Campaign, and helping with our outreach through sending out the attached flyer to your networks.

Border Agents Say They Had Arrest Quotas

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published : February 1, 2009
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — Border Patrol agents working about 100 miles north of the Mexican border say they have been given arrest quotas at odds with agency practices and threatened with punishment if they failed to meet the number.
Agents stationed in Riverside reported being ordered to make at least 150 arrests of suspected illegal immigrants in January, two of which must lead to prosecutions, said Lombardo Amaya, president of Local 2554 of the National Border Patrol Council.
“They were told if you don’t produce this, we will have to change your weekends off,” Mr. Amaya said, adding that he would discuss the matter Monday with the sector chief. “Sometimes, like in politics, this agency is about looking good.”
An agency spokesman in Washington, Lloyd Easterling, said quotas ran counter to agency practice, which does not set a minimum number of arrests.
“If we had quotas to fill and met those quotas,” Mr. Easterling said, “then would that mean we would be able to stop doing our job? No. Our job is to secure the border and detect, deter and apprehend anyone who is involved in illegal activity between the ports of entry.”
Jeffrey Calhoon, chief patrol agent for the El Centro sector, which covers Imperial and Riverside Counties, said he was not aware of any quotas.
“We would never structure our work environment to create quotas,” Mr. Calhoon said. “We have a union we have to negotiate with.”
The agents’ accusations came weeks after one of their colleagues at the Riverside station was fired over a dispute with local management.
The union has appealed the termination of the colleague, Tony Platell, who said he was dismissed for disobeying an order to remain at a desert freeway checkpoint where six suspected illegal immigrants were picked up. Mr. Platell said he wanted to take them to the station quickly because they looked dehydrated.

Chicago immigration activist marks year in church

The Associated Press
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
CHICAGO: Flor Crisostomo has quietly spent the last year inside a Chicago church writing letters, meeting with school groups and organizing political demonstrations toward her goal of U.S. immigration reform.
The illegal immigrant has defied a deportation order to her native Mexico and lived at Adalberto United Methodist Church, hoping to draw attention to immigration reform at a time when the economy and election of a new U.S. president have taken center stage.
"We have to have a plan," she told The Associated Press late Tuesday, the eve of her one-year anniversary at the church. "My people need a voice."
The 29-year-old Crisostomo said she has no immediate plans to leave, unlike immigration activist Elvira Arellano, who announced the end of her sanctuary at the same church in 2007 on her one-year anniversary. She was arrested and deported to Mexico shortly after leaving.
Crisostomo, who has also pushed for a renegotiation of North American Free Trade Agreement, said her work isn't done and she wants President Barack Obama to make good on campaign promises for reform. She wrote an open letter to Obama and planned to read it Wednesday at a news conference at the church.
"No one wants to end the system of undocumented labor more than the undocumented. That system left me unprotected from exploitation as a worker and unable to visit my children in Mexico. With legalization, we can also have employment verification and enforcement without destroying the lives of families and the economy of the Latino community," she wrote, according to a copy of the letter sent to The Associated Press.
Crisostomo said the hardest part about the last year has been getting politicians to listen to her message and living without her three children who are in Mexico with their grandmother.
"My children are strong and they understand why I am fighting," she said.
Crisostomo left her three children in Iguala Guerrero, Mexico, in 2000 when she paid a smuggler to drive her across the border. She said she was unable to find a job in Mexico that would support her family.
Once in the U.S., she worked at a factory and was able to send home hundreds of dollars each week for her family. But she was arrested by immigration authorities in 2006, during raids on IFCO Systems North America sites across the country. She was scheduled for deportation, but took sanctuary at the church instead.
Agents with Immigration Customs and Enforcement have not made attempts to go inside the church and arrest her.

The Illusion of Immigrant Criminality: Getting the Numbers Wrong

by David L. Wilson, Extra!
September/October 2008

Immigrants aren't a crime problem. "The foreign-born commit
considerably fewer crimes than the native-born," as President Herbert
Hoover's National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement
concluded in 1931 (National Lawyers Guild Quarterly, 10/39;
Immigration Policy Center, Spring/07). While noncitizens now make up
more than 8 percent of the U.S. population, the available evidence
indicates that they account for no more than 6 or 7 percent of the
people incarcerated for crimes in the United States, less than 170,000
of the 2.3 million inmates currently in our federal, state and local
penal systems--not including some 30,000 immigrants in administrative
detention on any given day awaiting deportation. (Politics of
Immigration, 4/2/08, 5/7/08).

Why, then, do so many people believe in the myth of immigrant criminality?

One reason is the mainstream media's habit of giving inflated
estimates for the number of immigrants in prison. [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3683

Note: One of the people discussed in the article is Indiana University
economist Eric Rasmusen, who was quoted in Time magazine last year as
saying that undocumented immigrants commit 21 percent of crimes in the
United States. Prof. Rasmusen is back this year with another
astonishing claim. He signed on to the Cato Institute's January 28
full-page ad against using job creation and infrastructure maintenance
to revive the economy. "Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden
of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost
growth," the ad assures us, as if that wasn't what we've been doing
for the past 30 years.

For more on Prof. Rasmusen and the immigrant prison population:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/2008/04/undocumented-commit-21-percent-of.html

A Shift Toward Worker Power? The Time is Ripe to Tip the System, Now

...This could be a moment for a power shift--from workers being weak
to being strong--but only if people force government to kick in on the
workers' side...

by Allan Nairn, News and Comment
January 29, 2009

In bad situations, people lower their standards for what it is that
constitutes good news.

There's a very sick man with a withered arm, but it hasn't been
amputated, contrary to what a garbled, and panic-inducing, report had
indicated.

Similarly, a boy has been coughing for three months, but a TB test
says it isn't TB.

Saying this, the parent, on a cell phone from the Burma border can be
heard shivering in the rare cold, even though the family has just
invested in a blanket -- their second, which is now handy, since for
three nights they've been sleeping in the forest to dodge police who
(in a case of bad good news) aren't seeking bribes, but are instead
seeking to catch people and -- word has it -- ship them to Naypyidaw
(the capital) for one year's bondage labor.

The question always is, bad compared to what? One person's dump is
another's home hearth. [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.allannairn.com/2009/01/shift-toward-worker-power-time-is-ripe.html

Thousands of US troops to join annual war games in

More than 5,000 US troops were due to arrive in the
Philippines to participate in annual joint military
exercises, a military spokesman said Thursday.

The annual Balikatan (shoulder-to-shoulder) exercises
aim to enhance the preparedness and cooperation
between the two forces in times of crisis and
conflict, Major Ramon Zagala said.

From 5,500 to 6,000 US troops were expected to
participate in the war games, which are be held mainly
in the eastern region of Bicol from February 25 to
April 30, Zagala said.

The bulk of the US troops would arrive on March 16.

About 2,500 Filipino troops would also join the
exercises, Zagala said.

He said Washington would spend at least 2 million
dollars on the exercises and would bring in a number
of warships and aircraft, including F-16 fighter
planes.

Representatives from Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand,
Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, Laos, Australia, New
Zealand, South Korea and the United Kingdom would
observe the war games.

Balikatan 2009 is to be the 25th annual event of its
kind under the Mutual Defence Treaty between the
United States and the Philippines, reported dpa.

...Many of the organizing victories ...

... of the past two decades have been spearheaded by immigrant workers, from the great Justice for Janitors campaigns in Los Angeles and other urban areas to little victories in local restaurants and corner greengrocer stores....

by David L. Wilson, MRzine
January 26, 2009

On Tuesday, December 9, the anti-immigrant lobbyists at the Federation
for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) held a press conference in
downtown Washington, DC to promote their "Immigration Reform Agenda
for the 111th Congress."

The press conference followed the new line that groups like FAIR have
adopted since the financial crisis broke out last September.
Undocumented immigrants "played an important role" in the crisis, FAIR
president Dan Stein insisted. "[T]he recent economic downturn" has
made the "fiscal cost of immigration . . . even more burdensome to the
American taxpayer," FAIR's handout announced, warning that Congress
needs to "take special care to protect the American worker by
restricting the amount of cheap, foreign labor that is allowed to
compete with U.S. workers." [...]

Read the full article:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/wilson260109.html

The costs of crackdowns

Raids that target undocumented workers increasingly traumatize families left behind.

By Christopher Munsey
Monitor staff
Print version: page 46
The growing number of workplace immigration raids is taking a toll on families — particularly those with young children — and psychologists are needed to help them cope with the trauma of abrupt separations, said a panel of psychologists at APA's Annual Convention.
At a session on the impact of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on families and immigrant communities, psychologists shared their own experiences in addressing families' resulting mental health needs.
Amaro Laria, PhD, of the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, saw the policy's impact firsthand last year when ICE raided a factory in New Bedford, Mass. Agents arrested 361 people, most of them women working as seamstresses and many young mothers with infants, he said. Many of the babies were still breast-feeding, and the officials hadn't considered what would happen to them when they were suddenly separated from their food supply, he said.
In the weeks following the raid, Laria and fellow volunteers from the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology ran a support group for families with loved ones in detention. Not only did the women in detention suffer humiliating treatment — with some young mothers claiming that federal detention officers made them prove they were breast-feeding by ordering them to squeeze their breasts — but their children underwent the stress of separation, and many men lost their jobs as they scrambled to care for their children. As a result, families who were just getting by were reduced to deep poverty, Laria said. Some of the long-term consequences included post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, adjustment disorders, domestic violence and substance abuse.
But what shocked him most was the silence about these events. "There's so much talk on immigration, but when it came to documenting abuses, there's been very little coverage at all," he said.
A push for arrests
ICE, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, started increasing the enforcement effort aimed at undocumented workers in 2006, with high-profile raids netting several hundred employees at a time. Congress has twice failed to enact comprehensive immigration reform, and anger about illegal immi gration has spurred the adoption of harsher measures to crack down on illegal immigration. In 2005, 1,116 people were detained nationwide in workplace raids, a figure that more than tripled in 2006 and is continuing to rise every year, said Lydia Buki, PhD, an associate professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The crackdown coincides with broader immigration trends. In years past, for example, men usually made the trip from Mexico and Central America to the United States alone. But these days, entire families, including young children, are coming too, often establishing U.S. households with both parents working, said Melanie Domenech-Rodriguez, PhD, an associate professor of psychology at Utah State University who works with Latino families with young children on promoting family cohesion and preventing child behavior problems.
Current estimates show 4.7 million children now live in "mixed status" families in the United States, meaning one of their parents is undocumented and does not have legal status to live and work here. Of those children, two-thirds are believed to be U.S. citizens, said Jose Cervantes, PhD, a professor at California State University at Fullerton.
In his private practice, he sees the aftermath of the ICE raids moving from the worksite to residences. One of his clients is a teenage girl, who awoke to the tumult of ICE agents barging through her family's door at 4 a.m. in search of her father. She watched as agents caught and dragged him back by his hair, ripping his shirt and underwear in the struggle.
"His daughter's watching this, so you can imagine the trauma that this caused to this kid," Cervantes said.

...Now is the time to act. The status quo has shifted, and people are

by Jane Guskin and David Wilson, NACLA Report on the Americas
January-February 2009

Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, the situation for immigrants
in the United States has turned increasingly insecure. Every week
hundreds of immigrants are arrested in raids on their homes and
workplaces. Hundreds more are arrested on the street by local police
for the crime of "living while Latino" and often handed over to the
immigration agency for deportation. People are detained, deported,
faced with impossible choices, and then blamed for it all. Children
are separated from their parents or jailed in special "family"
detention centers. Workers are exploited and abused on the job,
stripped of their rights to organize, then punished with federal
prison sentences for complying with their employers' demands for fake
IDs. Young people who don't remember the country where they were born
are denied any options to legalize their status and are stuck without
a future—as high school graduates unable to attend college, or as
college graduates forced into low-wage, off-the-books labor.[...]

Read the full article:
http://nacla.org/node/5399

Pro-Immigration Demonstrations: A Reminder to Obama of a Campaign Promise

http://feetin2worlds.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/pro-immigration-demonstrations-a-reminder-to-obama-of-a-campaign-promise/

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor
One day after Pres. Barack Obama’s inauguration, demonstrations were held across the country to remind the president of his promise to address immigration reform in the first year of his administration. Protesters in Washington D.C. and several other cities also called for an immediate end to government raids aimed a rounding up undocumented immigrants.

Demonstrators in San Antonio (Photo: Express-News)
“Immigrants who lent President Barack Obama their support at the ballot box joined those who cannot vote in marches and prayers, writing letters and raising banners from Miami to Los Angeles to push the issue to the top of Obama’s long to-do list,” The Associated Press‘ Juliana Barbassa reported.
The demonstrations were more of a friendly reminder to the new president from activists who don’t want the issue to be forgotten in the din of the economic crisis. “He was the one who told us that you can dream big,” Altagracia Garcia, 25, told Barbassa at a pre-dawn vigil in front of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Los Angeles, where demonstrators lit candles and called for and end to immigration enforcement raids.
“Immigrant advocates know their nativist opponents plan to deploy online organizing and viral communication to counter any attempts at immigration reform this year. They intend to seize every opportunity to build momentum on their side,” Marcelo Ballvé wrote for New America Media after covering the demonstration in front of ICE national headquarters in Washington D.C.
“It’s an opportunity to celebrate, but also to point forward to the great need for immigration reform in the months ahead,” Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, told Ballvé.
The D.C. demonstration featured religious leaders from across the country who conducted a “cleansing” of the ICE building in a symbolic attempt to steer the agency away from the enforcement-only approach that’s been highly criticized by pro-immigrant groups.
Activists also “urged Obama to make good on his campaign promise to push through a legalization plan similar to one that former president George W. Bush twice tried unsuccessfully to get through Congress,” The Washington Post reported.
About two dozen people prayed in front of the ICE office in Atlanta to call for the end of a partnership between federal immigration officials and local sheriffs intended to speed up deportations, Public Broadcasting Atlanta said.

In San Antonio, local protesters were joined by others from Austin in front of the ICE building. “Just like he promised to close Guantánamo Bay, we want him to close down Hutto with detained little children,” said Luissana Santibáñez, of the Austin Immigrant Rights Coalition, referring to the ICE family detention center northeast of Austin, according to the San Antonio Express-News. The T. Don Hutto Family Detention Center has been strongly criticized for the treatment detained families receive there. (Obama yesterday signed an order to close the detention camp in Guantanamo Bay within a year.)
In San Francisco, immigrants and their allies surprised attendees to the opening night gala of the San Francisco Ballet, the Chronicle reported. “With the new administration, there’s hope; that’s why we’re here,” said protester Lulu Rodriguez, 28.
The Chronicle’s Tyche Hendricks added,
As Ballet supporters sipped wine in the City Hall rotunda, the voices of the protesters singing Mexican folk songs outside the mayor’s office echoed off the building’s stone walls.
Obama’s hometown also saw calls for him to start working on immigration reform. Members of the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities held a press conference where they announced a letter to President Obama calling for changes. “They want a halt on all residential and workplace raids as well as stopping immigration enforcement that results in the separation of US children from their immigrant parents,” WLS-TV reported.
Other protests were held in New York, San José and Indio, Ca.
“We want him to comply with his promise of legalization for everybody,” Sylvia Cardona, a Comité Latino member, told The Desert Sun in Indio. “Latinos are putting their hopes in Obama.”Immigrant rights demos across country 1/21