Tag: Best of Fi2W

Civil Disobedience: Undocumented Youth Risk Deportation in Push for Immigration Reform

Young protesters and immigrant activists are increasingly turning to acts of civil disobedience, knowing that the result may be deportation for undocumented demonstrators.

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Reporter’s Notebook: Finding Common Ground on Immigration in Arizona’s Dairy Farms

Phoenix-based FI2W reporter Valeria Fernández produced a radio piece for NPR’s Latino USA on immigrants who work in the dairy industry and the farmers who hire them.

Here, Valeria narrates how she produced the piece, which airs this weekend on Latino USA. To listen to the piece, press “play” below.

[audio:http://latinousa.kut.org/wp-content/lusaaudio/859segAZdairies.mp3]

 

By Valeria Fernández, FI2W contributor

For almost two years now, one of my sources here in Arizona had insisted that I do a story about immigrants working in dairies. I finally started to work on this one about five months ago, before I even knew which direction it was going to take, or even that it was going to become a radio piece. I needed to become familiar with the universe of dairies at a time when Arizona was facing an intense crackdown on illegal immigration.

There was naturally going to be fear and resistance on the part of immigrant workers. For about two years now, the state has had a law in place that sanctions companies who knowingly hire undocumented labor.

Cows in Gerald Lunts farm: he says than other than the economy and the price of milk, finding workers to help in his farm is his biggest problem. (Photo: Valeria Fernández)

Farmer Gerald Lunt says than “other than the economy and the price of milk,” finding workers is his biggest problem. (Photos: V. Fernández – Click to see more)

ALSO: Read a diary by the daughter of a Mexican immigrant dairy worker.

The law has been used mostly to conduct work-site raids in businesses, resulting in the arrest of a couple of hundred workers. The number is not large, but the chilling effect on local immigrant communities is much bigger.

In a couple of ways, this was unexplored territory for me. I was as nervous as the subjects of the story. Not only was I going to leave the comfort of print, but also, I was going to do it in English, my second language. I feared leaving my small notepad and using a microphone instead. Often times I would just tuck it away, and listen to people to help them relax.

There have been stories about workers in agriculture, but I wanted to do a story about what life was like in the dairies. I had all sorts of preconceptions.

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One Year After Immigration Raid, Postville, Iowa Struggles to Survive

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor

Tuesday marks the one-year anniversary of the raid by immigration authorities on a kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa. The raid at Agriprocessors ended with the arrest of nearly 400 undocumented workers, and became a symbol of the Bush Administration’s hardline approach to immigration enforcement.

A year later, news reports from Postville make it clear that the town’s survival was endangered by the raid, and the plant’s fate is not yet decided.

After a great number of those arrested served prison sentences and were deported, many local businesses closed and the Agriprocessors plant itself never managed to get back on its feet. The company’s main executives face a number of charges including violation of child-labor, immigration and industrial safety laws.

July 27 Immigration Reform March, Postville Iowa. In support of workers at Agriproccessors plant. (Photo: FlickrCC/Prairie Robin)

July 27 Immigration Reform March, Postville Iowa. In support of workers at Agriproccessors plant. (Photo: FlickrCC/Prairie Robin)

For pro-immigrant activists, Postville has become shorthand for what was wrong with an immigration enforcement approach that focused mainly on lining up immigrants by the dozens or hundreds and speedily deporting them back to their home countries. With the change in occupancy at the White House, advocates are now waiting to see if President Barack Obama — whose administration is reviewing the policy on work-site raids — will call them off for good.

In the aftermath of the Agriprocessors raid, 270 undocumented workers were charged with identity theft — which led them to accept plea deals that included swift deportation. New York Times reporter Julia Preston described the legal proceedings in a speech we published last year:

On May 12, the day of the round-up at the Postville plant, the defense lawyers were presented by the United States Attorney with plea agreements: the immigrants could either accept a criminal charge that would entail five months in federal prison, or go to trial on a more severe felony charge that involved a two-year mandatory minimum. Most of the offenses revolved around the immigrants’ use of fraudulent social security cards or immigration visas, known as green cards, to obtain work. Only a handful of the immigrants had any prior criminal record. They were being treated as criminals for working.

Just a week ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that undocumented workers who unknowingly use Social Security numbers that belong to real people can’t be charged with “aggravated identity theft.” The ruling applies to many former Agriprocessors workers, but they have long since been deported, and are unlikely to benefit from the court’s decision.

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Connecticut Back in Crosshairs of Immigration Debate: Priest Arrested For Videotaping Police

James Manship in court - Photo: New Haven Independent.

James Manship in court. (Photo: New Haven Independent)

Father James Manship of St. Rosa of Lima Catholic Church in New Haven, Conn. pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges of disorderly conduct and interfering with police. Father Manship was arrested by police in nearby East Haven after videotaping town police officers who he claims have been harassing Latino immigrants for a period of several months.

The case once again puts Connecticut at the center of the debate over the treatment of undocumented immigrants. In 2007 New Haven became the first city in the nation to offer ID cards to undocumented residents, allowing them access to municipal services. The Elm City Resident Cards have drawn sharp criticism and court challenges. In communities near New Haven, some say the hostility toward Latino immigrants goes even further.

“My arrest is the tip of a toxic iceberg of racial profiling by East Haven police,” Manship told reporters at a press conference following his court hearing.

On February 19th, police ordered owners of My Country Store, a Latino-owned market in East Haven, to remove license plates that they had used to decorate store windows, claiming they were inappropriately using government property.

Manship, who was in the store, began to film the officers, who then arrested him, claiming that they believed the priest was holding a weapon. (The New Haven Independent’s website has the police report.)

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Election Day Coverage: Feet In 2 Worlds Brought You The Immigrant Vote

ElectionDay

Election Day, November 4, 2008. (Photo: FlickrCC/Sergiocapitano)

On Election Day, the Feet In 2 Worlds team spread out to polling places in immigrant and ethnic neighborhoods across the U.S. to report on how foreign-born voters experienced this historic day.

Our contributors covered voting in battleground states Florida and New Hampshire, as well as Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and New York:

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La Ruta del Voto Latino: Getting Ecuadoran Immigrants to Focus on US Politics

EcuaParade

Sunday Aug. 3 2008, The Ecuador Independence Day Parade in Jackson Heights, Queens, NY. (Photo: Diego Graglia)

At last Sunday’s Ecuadoran Independence Day Parade in Queens, NY representatives of Ecuadoran political parties drew lots of attention, not all of it positive. But at least one community leader at the parade was trying to get people to focus on the US presidential election. As part of our special series La Ruta del Voto Latino – The Road to the Latino Vote, journalist Diego Graglia spoke to Francisco Moya, a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. In fact, he’s the first Ecuadoran to be a delegate to a major party convention in the US. In this Podcast, Moya talks about the challenge of getting Ecuadoran immigrants, including those who a US citizens, to pay attention to US politics.

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Ecuadorans are one of the fastest growing immigrant groups in the New York area. The city’s Department of City Planning says Ecuador is third among the, “largest sources of the foreign-born,” in the borough of Queens, and it is second in The Bronx. There are also large Ecuadoran communities in Somerset and Essex counties in New Jersey and Westchester, NY. Despite their numbers Ecuadorans don’t have much political power, compared to other immigrant groups that have been in New York for decades, like Puerto Ricans and Dominicans.

Diego Graglia is on the road from New York City to Mexico City, talking to Latinos about the issues and the candidates in this year’s presidential election.

To see photos of the parade and Diego Graglia’s road trip, visit the NY-DF Flickr page, and visit his web-page at http://www.newyorktomexico.com/.

Two Standards of Justice: Are Employers Paying a Price for Illegal Immigration?

In a rural Iowa town that was once a bustling model of small-town resurgence, scores of families are left to rely on local food pantries and churches for their meals. Parents have been left to  watch over their children while wearing ankle bracelets but are unable to seek work to provide for them.  The school’s population has been halved, and a gang of minors makes a weekly trip to Cedar Rapids to report to the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency which monitors their status. There’s nothing left to do but wait. Their fate doesn’t rest in their own hands, reports New America Media in a series of articles on the effects of the largest immigration raid in history has had on a local community.

And they are the lucky ones. Nearly 400 workers were arrested and detained in the largest immigration raid in history at Agriprocessors, a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa.  Three-quarters of these workers were hustled through the legal system in a matter of a few weeks — arrested, detained and then allowed to plead guilty to charges they didn’t understand, unaware that they were facing criminal charges and were being sent to prison for sentences averaging five months each. The treatment of these workers lead a long-time court interpreter and college professor, Erik Camayd-Freixas, to break his professional code of silence to report on the abuses that these workers faced in a 12-page essay that made national headlines.  After serving time in jail, largely for identity theft including social security fraud, the workers will be deported back to their home countries, torn apart from their wives or children who are under government supervision in Postville.

For Agriprocessors, however, it’s back to business as usual. After a dip in production and escalating Kosher meat prices (the company produces about 40 percent of the country’s Kosher meat) production is nearly back to normal reports the Jewish Journal. So far only two low-level managers have been charged, despite the government accusing Agriprocessors of paying workers below the federal minimum wage, hiring minors, numerous safety violations and allegations of worker abuse that included a manager duct-taping one workers’ eyes and beating him with a meat hook. The company has also been accused of providing workers with false documentation, such as social security cards, to work at the plant.

There appears to be a stark disparity in the government prosecution of those who work illegally in this country and those who provide them with work despite bombastic claims by ICE officials that employers are no longer safe from prosecution.

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